Twelve months of Professor Chaos meme

Well, really it's eight months of blogging, since Professor Chaos didn't open its doors until May. In the spirit of Abel Pharmboy, the bit of introspection I've gleaned from putting this meme together is that a lot of my blogging is inspired by my fellow bloggers discussing things that resonate in my life. The sad thing is that I'm inspired more often than I have time to write. I have reams of half finished drafts, many in direct or indirect response to things other bloggers wrote that I found intensely interesting. Anyway, here it is, the 8 months of blogging:

May: My First Blog: "I just finished a semester of editing more Ph.D. dissertations than I ever care to do again in a two week period."

June: Advisors (Pt I): One size does not fit all: "Being a new Ph.D. advisor, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what makes a good adviser."

July: The Rabid Reviewer: "Reading Female Science Professor's post this morning about inappropriate reviewing behavior, I was inspired to muse about a common type of review I receive on my submitted manuscripts: the rabid review."

August: Role Models: "A few days ago Isis mentioned that like many young, female academics, she worshiped at the alter of FemaleScienceProfessor."

Sept: What does the authorline of a paper represent?: "As I seem to do at least once a week, I would like to point my readers over to a great discussion occurring at DrugMonkey."

Oct: When five things need to be submitted NOW...: "...you end up with a slightly crazed week."

November: Dreams and Travel: "One of the things I both love and loathe about being an ecologist is the travel: travel to conferences, travel for research, travel to give seminars."

December: Why I love Fridays: "I love Fridays".

Hmm. My second bit of introspection: in the future use more fascinating sentences for the first post for each month!

Six things that make you go...hum

Well, i'm on the road again (the life of a vagrant ecologist) and like clockwork one of the meme things is passing around. I've been watching it pass through the circle of blogs I read like a nasty cold and I thought perhaps I had escaped this one since I've been out of contact, but no.....thank you, Dr Dr A, for making sure I "didn't feel left out". Very....kind. Oh well, I was going to write about this quite intriguing dream I had about PhysioProf the other night (no, Isis, it did not consist of PhysioProf washing your feet in lavender water as he worshipped you for the true goddess you are) , but maybe I'll remember it when I get a chance to write another blog entry next week.

Here are the rules:

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
• Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1) When River Tam was a little girl, she had an invisible friend named "Little Girl", who had no problems telling River's mother when she didn't like what River's mother was doing.

2) River Tam used to go around every Spring, saving all the caterpillars by collecting them and putting them in the mailbox with handfuls of grass. River's mother kindly asked her to stop by pointing out that this was really freaking out the mail man.

3) Art museums are crack to River: addictive and exhilarating, she goes out of her way to find them, and they are a major drain on her productivity.

4) River's goal is to visit every continent except Antarctica (for an explanation of this see #5); she has currently visited 3 of them.

5) River thinks that winter is proof that God exists and hates us.

6) River's college minor is listed as Physics/Math/Chemistry...she has no idea why.

Holy crap, I have to spread this cold to SIX people? Let's see....how about Fia, Nat, Cath@vwxynot (my chaos twin), and...ah screw it. I have no patience for coming up with six people who have not already received this! Enjoy!

Professor Chaos receives weird angel-thingy

After spending the morning dealing with Dr. Crapweasel, I decided that I needed a little break before being let loose in the lab this afternoon. While responding to some comments on my blog, I realized that I had not "opened" a missive from DrDrA. Imagine my surprise when I found that I had won this:

I am not sure what...this...is, but allow me now to express my...gratitude.

I would like to thank all 12 of my readers (who else can brag that 8.3% of their readers nominated them for an award? Huh, that didn't sound nearly as impressive as it did in my head).  Thank you for allowing me to express my inner feelings about the sometimes bizarre things that I experience in this crazy thing we call academia. I especially thank you all for your comments, advice, tough love (yes, I'm looking at you PhysioProf), support (I got a real kick out of seeing me quoted on DrugMonkey...I was so excited I wanted to call my mom, but that would require me to tell her I have a blog and after my comment about the existence of Chuckie Cheese preventing her from drowning me as a child, I don't know how I feel about her reading this) and discussion (one of my highlights was seeing that my post on snowflakes, waifs, and calculators had inspired DamnGoodTechnician and Janeb to write their own posts on the topic). Without all of you, none of this would be possible, or at least I would just be talking to myself, which is more boring and I do all the time anyway!

I would nominate someone, but I think all my usual haunts have already received this...illustrious...award. Oh, wait apparently Nat hasn't accepted his award yet and since he's ignoring all the other memes I've sent his way (okay, so there was only 1 other, but poetically the plural sounded better), I'll add this one to the pile!

Good God, where do these things come from?

BikeMonkey thinks I'm worrying too much. Looking back at my past week of posts, perhaps I can concede that I have been a bit....somber and irascible. However, his prescription for me is another meme. I suspect that being tagged has nothing to do with improving my mental health and everything to do with trying to find someone who will play, but I'm willing to give anything a try at this point.

Usual meme ground rules, bold those you’ve eaten, italics those you’ve tried and couldn’t gag down, strike anything you would never, ever, ever consider eating.

1. Venison (had a boyfriend who hunted, I've had venison steaks, venison chile,....)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare (have you people never had a food bourne diseases class?)
5. Crocodile

6. Black pudding (honestly, I think the English have some weird psychological problem with food)
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp -

9. Borscht (not as bad as I thought it would be)
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle (just the tiniest little shavings in a risotto in a foreign country but damn it was pretty good) 
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (not proud, but yes)
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (do I get extra points if they're in my backyard?)

23. Foie gras (when in France....)
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese (no, I mean really. What is wrong with the English?)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper-

27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda (no, but damn that sounds good. I have got to go to Italy!)
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi (I've had almost every other type of lassi, maybe I'll have to order this one just to say I have)
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (Cognac yes, fat cigar no)
37. Clotted cream tea (all right, so there is one non-disgusting thing the British have done to a food-type object, but it is a shockingly short list)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail (I found it hysterical that ProfinTraining is a 'picky' eater and has all sorts of comments about other foods but this one she ate and it passed without comment on her list....having said this there is a possibility I have eaten  oxtail. I once visited a land far far away where the people giggled at me in a pub for eating something that obviously Americans would shudder at and locals thought was great...In retrospect, it might explain the weird bones....)
41. Curried goat (goat yes, curried no)
42. Whole insects- (so, is this list about things we've eaten by choice? Because I have definitely swallowed a few insects but I don't know who was more surprised, me or it.)
43. Phaal (good god, hotter than vindaloo? Do you have to have proof of health insurance before they serve it?)
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (I prefer to not eat anything where I have to trust someone else to have done it right or it'll kill me)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut- (BikeMonkey is clinically insane if he thinks Dunkin’ Donuts are better.)

50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer-

55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini (Gin is the most disgusting alcohol....ever)
58. Beer above 8% ABV (love that Belgian beer)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips (my parents were health nuts...try explaining carob chips to other 6th graders)
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads (Dude, it's a gland)
63. Kaolin (again, is this by choice? Because I took a pottery class once and it wasn't pretty)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake- (honestly funnel cakes are the best part of childhood).
68. Haggis (Dude....did Freud ever analyze the psychology of the culinary practices of the British Isles? I mean a deep seated hate of food)
69. Fried plantain- BikeMonkey may be clinically insane, but I agree with him here. In my mind, the plantain is the best evidence available for some sort of superior being running the universe

70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho - (soups should be hot)
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill-  (I refuse to elaborate) 
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (shudder)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (it's even better when you have to spit out the buckshot)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (I assume they put them on the plate at restaurants because they're edible...though I have never eaten one where I thought "Holy Crap where can I get more of that?")
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam  (yes, I have eaten it, no I will never eat it again)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish (not too digusting if it's fried....heavily fried)
95. Mole poblano (ummmm, mole)
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake- the rattlin’ variety (me too)

Maybe I do feel a little better....

Now what do I do with this? I owe PhysioProf, but see that BikeMonkey got there first. Well, since Nat is busy constructing his own meme, I'll get him before he gets me, and let's see....how about some regular commenters at Professor Chaos that BikeMonkey hasn't already gotten to: DamnGoodTechnician and Academic!

“what lame crap music is on your iPod”

I'll start today's blog with PhysioProf's comment to my blog yesterday:

There's nothing wrong with ignoring this "meme tag" shit.
BTW: TAG!
HAHAHAHAHAH!!

With two meme tags going around yesterday (the 100 books tag I blogged on yesterday and the iPod tag I'm going to do today, I've had plenty of opportunities to observe the sociology of meme tag. As any good scientist should do, I have allowed the data to inform my interpretation. Yesterday I struggled with my painful childhood memories of chain letters as social control implements. However, after yesterday's shenanigans, I think it's clear that is not what is going on. My new hypothesis is that meme tag is a blogging form of "butt sniffing". For those of you who do not own dogs (and may be wondering if this blog has just earned an X-rating), butt sniffing is how dogs get to know each other. Seeing what "shameful" music PhysioProf or DrDrA has on their iPods - and what they consider shameful - tells you something about them that does not necessarily come through in blogs...same with assessing whether someone has a similar "literary background" as you do. While I have deep issues of doing things because people expect me to do it, I have no problems with butt sniffing (I should also probably note at this point that the opinions expressed in this blog are solely mine and do not reflect those of my institution, my funding agency or General Disarray who may all have fundamental issues with - and possibly regulations against - butt sniffing). So, since PhysioProf sniffed my butt, here we go:

I don't quite know how to judge "lame" or "embarrassing" objectively (obviously if it's on my pod, it's because I love it or because General Disarray put it there). Given some of the things that are on people's lists, I suspect there is a lot of music on my pod I SHOULD be embarrassed by! So, here are the things I was embarrassed by when my students walked into my office and it was playing... loudly:

1) Black Eyed Peas- "My Humps". I honestly thought it was hysterical the first few times I listened to it, then a student walked in while it was playing ("My humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps") and I was mortified (and wondered if I could be sued!)

2) Avril Lavigne - "Girlfriend". Sheer mindless (teenager) fun, which is only embarrassing because...well...I'm a little beyond my teenage years and do not have a teenage daughter to blame it on.

3)Gwen Stefani - "Hollaback Girl"

"Uh huh, this is my shit
All the girls stomp your feet like this
A few times I've been around that track
So it's not just gonna happen like that
Because I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl"

Really, what's not to love about that song?

4) Dido - "Here with me". I try to hide it sometimes, but I really am a girl at heart....sigh.

5) D-12. "My band". A hysterical spoof on boy bands by Eminem and his crew. It is a really funny song....but not something my students seem to understand.

And there you have it. To quote Dr. Free-Ride: "You're tagged if you want to be"

Apparently I've been....tagged?

I don't get many comments on my site (honestly, I'm not complaining as I'm pretty antisocial anyway and don't really know how to respond to people commenting on what I say) but I was caught by surprise this morning by a comment that said only: TAG! After cautiously exploring the link attached to the word, I found I had been tagged in a game called 'meme tag' by BikeMonkey....well, that actually didn't clarify anything for me. So, after some googling, I found a blog that explained the rules of meme tag. General Disarray, who had been following my befuddlement (worried that I had been cyper-punked by some female scientist hating stalker, I assume), snorted and said "It's a chain letter".

I hate chain letters. I was always the kid in school who hated the social obligation pressure of "not breaking the chain" and so would, of course, break the chain. (I was - perhaps not surprisingly - not very popular as a kid). So here's my dilemma - my innate personality against my true enjoyment of the people in the blogosphere and therefore my desire not to be rude and make people mad... therefore here's my compromise: I have played the game but I have not tagged anyone - therefore I am both playing AND breaking the chain. (Crap, I'm going to get chased around the playground again by an angry mob, aren't I?). However, I invite my seven readers (whoever you are) to play if you wish. Here are the rules (plus the rules for meme tag if, like me, you are new to this concept):

a) rules for this particular game of tag: On your own blog, take the list of books below and highlight in bold anything you read completely. Put in italics anything you started but didn't finish. Leave in normal font, anything you have not read.

b) rules of meme tag in general: at the end of the blog where you have done the above, you should list 6 people who you "tag" and are supposed to do this particular activity on their blog. Go to their blog and leave a comment letting them know they've been tagged.

c) While not in the rules on the blog I read, I think you are probably supposed to also include a link to the blog that "tagged" you so people can trace it back to the hypothetical originator.

Okay here we go (along with some comments from me....)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (went through a phase where I was all about all things Austen. I think I was fascinated by what happens when people actually follow social norms...)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I really tried to read it from cover to cover but got hung up on all the begats)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (and they are indeed pretty dark for "children's" books, interesting though)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (one of the best books ever and I'm convinced that it's the inspiration for much of university policy)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (yes, I honestly read all of them and I did it in the 7-12 grades....afterall, it was better than being chased around the playground by the angry mob!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (my last attempt at doing what all the girls were doing....they loved it and wanted to be Scarlett, I thought Scarlett was a whore. That's when I switched to Shakespeare).
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (yes, I really did read the whole thing. It was great, but I had spent so much time with those characters that I felt like I was losing some of my closest friends when I finished the book)
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (when my life is not Alice in Wonderland, it's Mr. Toad's wild ride, that's all I'm going to say)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (shudder, a little too close to home)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (I'm still confused....)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo