Bruxelles

Pate is not very photogenic.

Croque Monsieur, on the other hand, is a natural in front of the camera.

The mussels may also have a modeling career in their future.

Come in for your close-up, dear.

Sappy in the past and the future.

Note that this post does not have all necessary labels. Freedom of Expression is being limited. But this is not the topic at hand.

The Professor altered the date of this post so that the DFW love would stay at the top of the Workshop for the moment, and so that this post will not negate it.

But readers, have you noticed a turn for the sappy in the Professor's posts lately? The Professor, as a consumer of what one hopes is the objectivest reality possible, wants to know. Re-reading some recent posts, the Professor finds them to be a little sentimental. For instance, the Professor has used the personal pronoun "I" more frequently, no? And the word "love" is occurring more frequently as well. But perhaps the Professor is indeed feeling sentimental, but the blog does not in fact reflect that. It could be that the Professor is coloring everying in shades of sunrise and candy, emotion-wise, including the Professor's own posts. I just don't know. I, the Professor, need your help in figuring this out.

Also, readers, please remind the Professor of the pitfalls of being sentimental, to aid in the Professor's cost/benefit analysis. I guess the good side of sentimentality would be appropriate to hear about as well, for a true cost/benefit analysis. But sentimentality could be said to include an assumption of its own goodness. Or could it? I don't know. The Professor doesn't know. Neither one of us has faith in our own judgment any more.

I think I'll write about tanks or wiring diagrams or something next. Readers, I know the Professor is taxing you with all these requests, but please if you could, suggest something un-emotional for us to disect in the workshop.

Thank you

My hats go off to you, team Marvel. Well done. You've come through for me in a time of need. Not for me, personally, I realize, but for the Workshop. Everybody put aside their busy lives and gave a piece of themselves. Everybody but Perfect, that is. Perfect is likely a perfectionist, composing, as we speak--or rather as I write--a DFW-esque treatise on Snails and Consumer culture. Heavily footnoted, it will be so extensive and detailed that the reminder to vote in the Dignity Poll will have to be placed somewhere in its first chapter.

Team Marvel, please consider contributing regularly. You all did so well, and ... you are my strength. You are the foundation upon which the Workshop rests. Without you, it'd be nothing but a few yellow penises.

I will try to contribute as well, but it's hard to balance the actual Work of the Workshop with the meta-discussion about the Workshop that goes on in the blog. I will try to be meta for you, readers, as the Workshop has been an interesting place recently, and may continue to be interesting into the future. We're using the lab again--firing up the bunson burners, sterilizing the test tubes, hauling the electrophoresis machine out of the hall closet. It's all very exciting and dangerous!!! Look for more or less posting soon as a result of this or something else.

A plea

Postillion, Xbasket, Perfect, King of Balls,

Help the Professor out. I have writer's block, or some similar ailment. I'm not paying enough attention to the words in my brain and the blog is suffering. See it suffer? See the one-line posts? See my agony? SEE? HOW CAN YOU CONTINUE TO STAND BY AND DO NOTHING?!?! I HATE YOUR COMPLACENCY!!!!

Please write and post something to improve the workshop in these lean times. Except for you, King of Balls. Please stop posting in the workshop unless you find something else to say.

I would also like the workshop to have more pictures, because they are each worth 1,000 words, but the yellow penises were so interesting that nothing else in the workshop really compares. [The penises are now in steady-state, by the way: unchanged since their last photo several weeks ago, except maybe a little browner.] [Can a blog have footnotes? The Professor is tangential and without footnotes the posts might become unreadable.]

I will take care of the pictures. You people, the rest of you, please put words in the workshop. Please love the workshop.

If you want a topic to write on, please pick any of the already established topics in the index, i.e. Snails and Consumer Culture, Dignity, Exclamation Marks, etc. Pick one with only one entry, and develop it.

Also Pathetic

How did you guys do this? Most slugs just eat the leaves and flowers. You sucked the life out of them. You must be vampire slugs. Instead of the pellets the Professor should have put little stakes through your little hearts.

King of Balls

I am the King of Balls.

Two culprits killed, little spirals may be exonerated

Two dead slugs have been found. No spirally shells to be seen.

Pictures would be inappropriate.

We still do not know if the lobelia will pull through, but at least the Professor can have "closure" because the victims have been brought to justice. That's the way they say it works, anyway. The Professor is not so sure.

Sorry, little spirals, but....

... while you may think the workshop is a safe place for you, a place where we engage in the glorification of your species, the sad truth is that you guys and the professor have a complex relationship.

You've been eating my plants again and I'm going to have to kill some of you.

Actually, I don't mind some snacking. As you can see from my behavior with the yellow penis gang, I am pretty tolerant of the non-lethal use of the plants by other species.

I just can't understand how you guys can manage to out-and-out kill a plant just by snacking on it. If you continue to ravage that poor lobelia, it will be dead. It's already almost at the stage where hospice is all I can provide. Once it's dead, none of us can enjoy it. You can't snack on it, and I can't admire it's violet beauty.

Why can't you be more like those crazy plant ants that just kind of walk all over the plants but do not hurt them?

Anyway, I have these pellets. If I remember correctly, you guys like to eat them. Once ingested, they make you guys--and your slug brothers, who may also be in on this--stop eating and drinking. Or maybe just one or the other, I can't recall, but since both eating and drinking are necessary for continued life, you eventually die. I think it takes only a day or two. I'm going to put them out tonight, if I remember to do so. The directions say that they're most effective if put out at night, right before you guys come out and start doing your conspicuous consumption thing.

Consider yourselves warned. You can stop now, and we can all live together in peace. Or, you can continue your reckless disregard for the well-being of the Professor's lobelia, and you can die. I know you guys are reading this.

six-steppin'

I saw some guys six-stepping out at the club the other night. I was bouncing and working tickets at the Cattle Club for Kevin. My gawd, I wanted to do some six-stepping.

I had knee-pads under my baggies. It's the joints - knees, elbows, knuckles, that take a beating. I looked out at the moon from the entrance. I couldn't smell anything because I'm...my sense of smell is compromised by obesity. Well, I saw no...I mean I saw a few people out there. I want to talk about these things! A lot of these people don't stand in the parking-lot and just look at the trees. That's an opinion. Maybe they're drinking or being nervous because of Sweet N' Low studies. Summary: not too many just looking at it all, most thinking back about Denny's coffee w/sexy Sweet N' Low. Sex. One guy smelled like Tide or some detergent and he slashed at me. I didn't take his ticket, I didn't give him a refund, and I don't play that game. I'm like a cartoon. I'm like a... no, but I'm sentimental about stuff. Maybe some crickets. And dry winds and oak trees and wild oats soughing in the night breeze. When the police arrive they always just stare at my tits and I give them an 800 number.

the party's over

Fernando Regis had an eyeball, now disabled, with a diameter which apparently channeled standard 2.45GHz microwaves in addition to admitting light in the typical visible range (400-800THz). George stated he could feel in his eye "a certain tingling sensation" when microwave ovens with leaky seals were operating within perhaps 20 feet of where he stood. He never participated in any scientific study to confirm this. Pretty Polly's subjective experience of microwaves seemed to correspond with a diminishing of Oculus Dexter visible-light sight. Tom's familiarity with the presence of microwave activity, he believed, went hand-in-hand with a simultaneous creation and stengthening of a cataract. He eventually changed his cooking habits but, if cataracts are a function of combined exposure effects or the result of a single trauma, Pietro may have been correct in assuming Tom's ability to determine microwave oven operation came at a great cost to him personally.

Oh Goody

Oh Goody, folks. We have another invitee to the Workshop. Cross your fingers that this individual will accept the Professor's humble invitation. Perhaps, if we're lucky, this invitation will result in more posting than the last two invitations, which between them have produced no posts and one comment. Postillion and I just can't do this alone, people.

Not everything is chaperone, Firefox.

Firefox is displaying alternatives to chaperone wherever the Professor right-clicks, regardless of whether a word is being misspelled, regardless of whether a text editor is being used at all, regardless of whether a word is even selected.

Dictionary.com says chaperone is as valid as chaperon so Firefox should really stop harping on this so much.

The Opression of the Hyperhidric

Hyperhidrosis is a punishing disease.

You may or not be aware: Some people around you sweat more than others. Those people, if they want to be clean, must do more laundry.

The added costs in time, detergent, and awkwardness--or wash-and-fold bills--present a financial burden for the excessive sweater of modest income.

The professor is considering starting a charity. For research & laundry costs. And maybe psychotherapy.

Why bring the therapy community into this?

Good question. You see, the sweaty can also be oppressed socially. Wet arm pits or a sweaty handshake can ruin a job interview or a date, for those unlucky enough to be involved with people who judge others based on their sweatiness.

Also, sweat can sting when it gets in your eyes. If other people's sweat gets in your eyes, it tends to sting more than your own sweat. So, the hyperhidric harm their lovers.

Sweating in a positive light

Sweating is misunderstood. It is, in fact, good for you. Sweat contains a germ-fighting agent that can help fight off infections. Researchers found the gene behind the protein it produces. They named the protein Dermicidin. Dermicidin is manufactured in your sweat glands where it is injected into your sweat which then takes the Dermicidin to your skin's surface where it protects against bad guys like E. coli and Staph, and Candida. Link.

Thus, the sweaty are also the healthy.

And, in New Orleans, folks are actually proud of their sweatiness and were displeased to learn that they were the third sweatiest city in the U.S., coming in behind, of all places, San Antonio and Dallas. Link.

New Poll!!!!

Your vote can help shape the future of the workshop. Please vote in the "what topic should we cover next" poll. The topic with the least votes will be selected. VOTE NOW!

Update: voting closed. Thank you all for voting. Since multiple topics had the same number of least votes, the topic with the most votes will be covered. This is best. Think about it: if you read the rules you were really voting against a topic by voting for it, so for all intents & purposes sweatiness does have the least votes.

Something exciting

Something exciting may happen at the workshop soon. Are you ready to hear what it is? It has to do with dignity. To add dignity to the workshop, we have invited a new guest author. Who will it be? What will they write? Will this author see the same level of popularity as the controversial Postillion has? Only time will tell.

When will we find out if the new author accepts our invitation? Soon, Soon, the Professor hopes.

Bookmark the workshop now and check back often for the latest developments.

A Big Thank You

... to whoever voted in the snail poll. It's folks like you who keep democracy alive.

Oh, the crazy things that go on here in the workshop! Look how many of you are undignified. What has become of us, as a culture? In my days -- even when I was just a pup -- I strove for dignity. I would never call myself undignified, even in an anonymous poll.

But clearly times are changing. I will try to change too. I consider myself a modern Professor, so I insist on keeping up with the latest fads. I will try to be undignified. I will lose some dignity. Back to the workbench to figure out how!

Thanks Postillion

Don't forget to vote in the Dignity Poll.

Postillion: Professor Marvel has decided that your additions to the blog are worthy.

ATTENTION READERS: If at any time the arrow in the Dignity Poll message does not line up properly with the Dignity Poll in your browser, PLEASE open or close the Year and Month headings in the Archive list just above the poll until the poll and arrow line up properly.

re: sudoko

I find that the pleasure of sudoku varies over time. Yes, the fun diminishes, but then you put the sudokus down for a while -- weeks, months, years -- and then some day, you're riding the bus, and it's exactly what you need. The pleasure v. time graph of sudoku is shaped like a roller coaster. I will draw it on a bar napkin for you one day and post it here in my workshop.

Don't forget to vote in the Dignity Poll.

Some free floating quotes on the state of human kind, contempt, bordeom, the quotidian, and a Sudoku question

Why not use your fluttering tongue to wipe the sweat off of that starling who is trying to strip off her wings. It's so distant of you, my aroboreal lover on the outskirts of town. From the shadow of the clothes hanging in a thrift shop, a single antelope watches you. Steel-colored eyes of contempt. Takashi Hiraide, For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut (trans. by Sawaka Nakayasu)

Or, Cyril Connolly from The Unquiet Grave:
Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy-years' life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?

And back to Takashi Hiraide:
One day, in the afternoon after the rain, on the escalator going from the west side of the first floor to the second floor of the Takashimaya store in Nihonbashi, I saw a single snail in front of me, and found myself sighing deeply at the pointlessness of his rhyme. Would he now proceed to the grocery on the rooftop, or head straight to the kitchen of the dining hall. Or perhaps he has some shopping to do. At least get yourself up to the magic section, little spiral. I whispered words of encouragement, but all I saw was maybe a shy little twitch of the tentacles.

By the way, is there diminishing returns of pleasure on Sudoku?

~posted by Postillion