What Cheer, Netop?

Having driven around some of the backroads in Providence tonight, I am impressed at how, five days after it snowed, many of them still have long stretches which are covered in sheer ice. Is Providence unfamiliar with the use of sand in such circumstances? The sidewalks are even worse.

I don't look forward to trying to get around after the first really big snowstorm.

Walking down Thayer Street today, cgoldfish and I passed a guy listening intently to a cell phone. Suddenly, he said: "Did you say cereal?"

I went to a Pawtucket Red Sox game today with cgoldfish. The game was disappointing, but, man, there was some AWESOME PARENTING going on in the row behind us!

At one point there was an announcement that since this was the last game of the season, there was going to be some sort of celebration after the game.

So one of the kids asked if they were going to stay and watch it.

The father said that he wasn't sure, that it probably wasn't going to be that exciting and it wasn't like the players were going to do a song and dance or anything.

The mother was a little shocked by this and said, 'You should be encouraging them! We're raising the next generation of baseball fans here! Do you want them to be sports fans or do you want them to be ballerinas?'"


At another point, they were discussing friend dough, and the mother promised that they would have fried dough for dinner sometime this week. But the kids wanted fried dough immediately, so she had to explain, "No, we can't have any friend dough now -- mommy spent all her money."

Also, one of the kids kicked me in the back kind of hard at one point.

They were still more entertaining than what was going on on the field, though.

The end.

I think this was last week. cgoldfish and I were walking from Wickendon Street to Wayland Square when a guy on a bicycle went weaving past us. He was steering with one hand and talking on a cell phone with the other and was really not concentrating on going in a straight line at all, so it was a little hazardous. It wasn't really clear who he was talking to, but we did hear one snippet of the conversation as he went past:

"I'm just really frustrated! I haven't had any sex!

So now whenever I see someone riding a bicycle in a kind of a hazardous way now (which isn't an entirely uncommon occurrence) I think to myself, "Aw, he's probably just frustrated because he hasn't had any sex."

The end.

Last night, after many phone calls and some thought, it was decided that Craig (who's visiting for the weekend and is sleeping on my futon couch) and I would go to Federal Hill to pick up some Sicilia's pizza and some desserts from Pastiche, and then would head over to Keeney Quad (one of Brown's dorms; during reunion weekend visiting alumni are allowed to rent a dorm room to stay in) to pick up my friend Greg, and we would then head back to my apartment to watch videos, eventually to be joined by a few other people.

When we picked Greg up he suggested stopping by a convenience store to get some diet caffeinated soda (he's diabetic), so we stopped by the East Side Mini Mart. It turned out that a bunch of people in my knitting group happened to be in front of the Mini Mart just then, so I was greeted with hearty shouts of "Jake!", "Hey! We were just talking about you!" "Hey, Jake, we were just talking trash about you!" and "Jake! I am sooooo absurdly drunk right now!" Craig and Greg were confused and befuddled by the commotion and retreated into the store to get soda while I stayed outside and chatted with the knitting folk for a few minutes, until they suddenly announced that it was "time for phase two" and disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as they appeared. Craig and Greg emerged from the store and asked, "Who were those people?" All in all, it was extremely awesome.

We then returned to my apartment and watched a bunch of videos. Craig recently bought a DVD and has been capturing little bits of teevee ephemera that he thinks are funny or particularly notable; possibly the best (for the crowd of mathematicians and engineers that collected at my apartment anyway) was a late-night ad for the Forever Shaker Flashlight, which starts out normally enough with an illustration of the problem with regular flashlights but then at a key moment says, "Based the Faraday Principle of Electromagnetic Induction!" and flashes something like the following equation on the screen:

∮Eds = -∬BdA

It was pretty much the only time I've seen a double integral used in a late-night advertisement. (Or a path integral for that matter.) Edit: The equation on the screen is actually slightly different from the above. Pictures under the cut.

( Pictures of the ad )

We then watched two episodes of the new Doctor Who: the Dalek one and the one with the crashing flying saucer. At that point it was like quarter to two in the morning so everyone went home.

Now I am in my bedroom typing away (thanks, wireless network!) waiting for Craig to wake up so we can embark on today's adventures.

Here are the pictures I took at the City Farm Plant Sale before my camera's batteries died.
( pics )

This is from last Thursday's Providence Phoenix. It's in the classifieds under 'Gigs'. I've redacted the phone number. Yes, that is how 'Beatles' is spelled in the ad.

Angels of the Light Live in Same House Singer, songwriter, producer seeks euphoric, patient, mellow musicians to put together a good band. Seeking all types of instruments. Inf: Led Zeppelin, Moody Blues, Doors, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Rush, ELP, Fleetwood MAc, Jimi Hendrix, Scorpions, Van Halen. Bealtles, BOC, Bob Marley, Queensryche, RJ Dio, CSNY, Neil Diamond, Whitesnake, Bread, Donovan, The Dead, Deep Purple. On the 1st CD we'll sell 75 to 100 million copies non-competitively. All original music. Must be vegetarians. No TV, radio or newspapers. 75% of our music will be above our love for women as they dearly love us. 25% about the natural phenomenon of the world. We must have faith in the infinite God and his/her angels of love, light and eternity. The path to heaven is open for all of is. The love in our hearts must triumph over our intellect and that pertains to all of us. There will be reincarnation and a great resurrection for all that was good, kind and benevolent. We must have: God, love, peace, faith, hope, truth, freedom, compassion, trust, happiness, harmony, satisfaction, patience. In life and in this band patience is universally important. What we need for this band is a feeling of the love that would fill up a 7 billion seat stadium. A world of total love, peace and freedom will come very slowly. Ask for Neil xxx-xxx-xxxx.

I was in the burritza place on Thayer Street and I noticed that the burrito half had a sign up with prices for side orders. The cheapest item was like 55 cents.

But instead of rendering this as '55￠' (fifty-five cents) it was rendered as '55⊄' (fifty-five is not a proper subset of).

This made me happy.

The other day I listened to a 78 record of Dinah Washington singing Big Long Slidin' Thing, and that (maybe combined with it being around tax time) reminded me of this little story, which I see I originally wrote up on April 13, 2000.

Today I went to the post office to mail off my tax returns.  As I was being assisted Butterbeans and Suzie's song "I Want A Hot Dog For My Roll" started playing over the PA system.  When the chorus started a woman in the next booth over snickered, at which point the postal employee assisting me looked over at her and said in a matter-of-fact manner:  "Those double-entendres will get you every time."

For those not familiar with the song, it contains bits of dialogue like the following:

Butterbeans: Now here's a dog that's long and lean.

Suzie: No, that's not the kind of dog I need!

Butterbeans: Now here's a dog that's short and fat.

Suzie: Well, I sure need something different from that!

Butterbeans: Now, where's your roll?

Suzie: Here's my roll.  Now where's your dog?

Butterbeans: Uh-uh!  That roll of yours could fit a half a hog!

While doing the vital research for this post, I happened across this strange Butterbeans & Suzie takeoff I wrote last year. It is very, very puzzling. I don't remember much about writing it, except I think I looked up the word 'couch' in a bunch of thesauruses. (Thesauri?)