we hate you, will you please come back?

After all the tumult with my last employer I was shocked to receive an email inviting me to attend a technical conference that I used to present at (almost) every year. They also offered to pay my way.

For real?????

Yeah.

They better put me in a suite. With a free bottle of wine.

does an explosion count as a "facility mishap"?

I'm obviously not going to win any physics awards today. My excuse - I'm taking dayquil.

I was just washing my tea cup thing. I filled it with soap and water, put the lid on, and shook it pretty rigorously (my tea bag exploded and the inside of the cup was covered with tea leaves).

Weapon or innocent tea cup? Weapon

When I opened the top drinking thing to pour the water and soap out the contents of the cup exploded. Like shaking a coke can and then opening it. I will note the top of the cup DOES have a vent hole so I didn't expect it to explode.

This is after I cleaned most of the explosion up. I opened the DECAF cabinet and more soap came out.

And, I know this sounds made up but it's true, I just happened to be looking at this when the explosion happened:

This sign got doused which is why it's wrinkled.

Anyway, if you happen to have a friend you like to play jokes on, and a cup like the one pictured above (it doesn't have to be pink)...go for it. I'd suggest telling them it's a fresh brewed cup of what ever they like to drink. Make sure you are standing at least 5 feet away before they open it.

This, btw, is not my first explosion at work. There was my cake stealer explosion and my hot dog explosion. Once my dad's office building exploded while he was driving to pick me up at the airport.

And here is a very short history on explosives that I wrote to prove to a friend that a video he sent of guys surfing in a river was fake and not a result of preset charges in aforementioned river.

my mom has a pet owl

My dad said the owl is really big.

Pretty cool! I love owls!

Close up. I bet he can eat a lot of rodents. Hopefully some snakes too.

thanks for fucking up my door bitches

People who have never hung out with me in real life probably think every thing I write on here is bullshit. Everyone else knows it's not.

I just got home from work, am exhausted, was eating a clif bar for dinner, when suddenly it sounded like a SWAT team was trying to bash in my door. As I got up to see what the fuck was going on the handle on my door fell off.

for fucking real

I put the handle back on (more or less) and opened the door. There was an asian guy, his wife, and his 4 noisy fucking kids (who are currently running up and down the hall screaming - good job parents - allow me to give you the asshole of the month award). They had mistaken my room, 241, for their room, 261 (thought asians were supposed to be good at math?). Since the guy was banging and yanking on the other side of the door handle it caused my side to fall off (my guess anyway).

I should mention here that I have a do not disturb sign on my door and I'm listening to ministry, which I'm pretty sure people can hear while standing at my door (I got a room with no guests on either side of me - advantage of having status in a not too crowded hotel).

Twenty years living in hotel but there's always something new happening.

I'm not the only one who dislikes babies on planes

Today some fucktard sat in the bulk head, middle seat, with her child in arms infant.

Only 60 people had boarded the plane. The back of the plane was wide open. Annoying.

Please. Listen. Babies go in the back so we in the front don't have to listen to them screaming and crying for the entire flight (as aforementioned infant did). It's not that bad if you encounter a screaming baby on a plane every few months. But I travel twice every week. And I don't have kids. So it sucks to spend 5 hours every week on a plane (it's guaranteed they'll be screaming in the airport too so maybe that should be 9 hours) listening to someone's screaming child (or, like tonight, 4 screaming kids, two of whom were old enough to not be screaming and crying).

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. I was emailing with my friend Klaus about the screaming infant:

Klaus:

My luck with kids on planes is legendary. I prepared a letter on one of my flights to Europe and handed it to the flight attendants. I couldn’t resist. 

 
Luckily I didn't end up in zip-ties for being a high maintenance-bitch. Of course this is an incomplete list and I forgot smacking on that list and guess what happened on that flight? ;)

the particle zoo! (since it's too cold to go to the Denver zoo)

I'm now two days behind in my dark energy class...

An interesting thing about quarks. They have two parts to them (a positive quark and a negative quark). But even though they have two parts a quark can't exist without both parts, which is why it's considered the smallest particle (even though it can still be divided into two parts). Kind of like siamese twins, or a worm that gets cut in half and forms two new worms. If you try to separate the positive quark from the negative quark they re-bond. One part always has a positive charge and is heavy, the other part is always a negative charge, and light.

Did you know there's such a thing as a charm quark? It's a positive quark, and the third heaviest (mass wise) quark. You can buy a stuffed charm quark doll here if you're a plushie who has a fetish for sub-atomic particles. The charm quark always hangs out with a strange quark. The strange quark is the third lightest quark. They are just two of 61 elementary particles that make up what's called the particle zoo (free admission on wikipedia!).

Charm quarks were discovered in 1969. The November Revolution is not the typical revolution where mobs burn buildings and loot stores and put in place their own government which always sucks worse than the old government. Two different physicists discovered the charm quark at the same time and announced their findings jointly on November 11, 1974 (i.e. the November revolution).

As I was trying to memorize all these quarks I started thinking "who really gives a fuck?" So I tried to find out what the practical usage is of knowing something is a charm quark. I found a lot of stuff like this:

What the fuck does THAT mean????

It turns out there is a practical application for classifying quarks by their mass. It's how particle physicists figure out the decay of a particle.  It also explains how particles can combine. And helps astronomers calculate the weight of things in the universe, like planets. Why would you give a shit in the real world? Because maybe you want to turn lead into gold. Or create an even more destructive nuclear weapon, if you're an asshole.

I might be procrastinating memorizing quarks. But really, I thought you should know about them.

trust me, jesus would laugh

Today I talked a friend into going to the aquarium with me, though it took some convincing.

Our texts:

Friend: we are going to be the only ones there without strollers.
Me: you mean you aren't going to bring a monkey in a stroller? dressed in an elvis costume? the monkey should be wearing big sunglasses.
Friend: Aw, I was going to surprise you with that! now I can't go.
Me: you could always dress up like the pope. that would surprise me.
Friend: the pope and I have a non-compete clause. should I come dressed as jesus?
Me: I have a restraining order against jesus.

parking garage...

Maybe this dream was partially inspired by a strange attractor analogy involving two parking garages...

Last night I dreamed I was trapped in a parking garage with 3 guys in their 20s who didn't have faces. We were on an underground floor and couldn't find a way to the outside. I noticed an opening to the floor above and started climbing up the opening by stemming up the walls. Then I started to fall but could reach the above floor. But the floor was made of bricks that kept crumbling and breaking off. Finally I managed to work my legs up enough that I could grab a concrete pillar and pull myself out.

The boys were afraid to climb up so I said I would get help. I walked to the edge of a ramp and suddenly a black toyota camry came crashing off the above floor. It smashed hood first into the ground. Glass and metal was flying everywhere and I was getting hit with it.

Some other guy who also had no face but who was older than me grabbed me and pulled me behind the concrete pillar. I said that there were 3 guys trapped on the lower floor. The guy said he would help them but just then another car crashed onto the floor and a huge fire started. There was so much smoke I couldn't see anything.

I asked the guy "which way to the outside????" and he said "there is no way out, we're going to die".

Then I woke up.

Funny that today Yahoo had a story about the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who was supposedly given mathematical functions in his sleep. The functions were proven to be accurate. We were just talking about him in my chaos class.

Brain, if you're listening, maybe you could be more helpful re: dreams.

just because it has a formula on it doesn't mean it's a geek t-shirt

I've just started a new course called "Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The dark side of the universe", taught by Dr. Sean Carroll. He's a cosmologist. And he talks really fast.

Interesting side note: cosmologists weren't allowed to win the Nobel Prize until 1973.

Anyway, I didn't entirely understand this completely until I started the class, but gravity is not actually a force. That's because gravity behaves in a universal way through out space (where as forces on earth may not apply in space). Einstein's general relativity theory says that gravity is a component of spacetime, adding a curvature to spacetime.

Spacetime is the point of Einstein's special relativity theory, which is that space and time can't be separated and need to be considered together. The conclusion is that time is no longer absolute (if you've ever had a flight delayed you know what that means - time can go by excruciatingly slow). Anyway, since time and space are no longer absolute Einstein had to figure out a fixed speed limit for the universe. That's why nothing can go faster than the speed of light (in theory).

The curvature in space means that objects can be detected because they curve spacetime via gravity. Picture a flat handkerchief suspended by its four corners. If you put a tennis ball on the handkerchief it will bend around the ball. And if the ball were invisible you'd still know there was something in the handkerchief because you can see a dent where that invisible object is sitting.

Anyway, that's how they know about dark matter even though no one can "see" it. Yet.

The whole point of this post is that people walk around with shirts that say "E = mc2" and people think they're geeks. Well, if they really WERE geeks they would wear a shirt that says:

if you're wondering what happened to the internet, it was me

Perhaps I shouldn't discuss the Lyapunov exponent because the internet can't handle it.

Think it's time to get a new router...

my hero - Susan Oguya

Just read this very inspiring article about geek girls starting a technology club in Kenya. They call it Akirachick.

Sadly, there aren't that many women in technology. Which is a mystery to me because we're a lot better than men.

(no offense - our problem solving skills are just better suited to computers, mostly because they require logic and rational thinking - okay, that sounds mean towards men, but when was the last time you saw a woman lighting her farts on fire? - I just saw a man do that a month ago, and then film it with his iPhone to share on facebook)

I think Susan Oguya is the shit because she created a software program to decrease corruption in Kenyan farming even though she was discouraged from doing so because apparently some shit for brains people think women are incapable of coding.

And some people think being a geek is weird. Exempli gratia, an email exchange I had yesterday with a friend who competed in the Ice Breaker earlier this month (ice breaker wall explains the log reference). I was watching the last of my chaos classes and the professor, Dr. Strogatz was talking about how the heart works using chaos. Of course I had to share the information with someone:

Me:

How weird is this?????

Dr. Strogatz is talking about the Lyapunov exponent. It measures the butterfly effect in people's brains (if you remember the picture I sent you of the strange attractor - looked like a butterfly). Anyway, it turns out we all have chaotic brains and nerve impulses are ALWAYS on the strange attractor EXCEPT in the brains of people with epilepsy. Crazy! Less chaos in the brain leads to seizures!

Gross. He just showed some dude with electrodes sewn into his scalp so they can see which parts of that dude's brain cause the seizures. Apparently they can do some kind of surgery to fix the epilepsy.

Something else cool! When your heart beats not all the muscle tissue is beating, only parts. Makes sense, otherwise that would be a crazy muscle since it can't ever rest (until death anyway).
 
Heart arrhythmia is caused when part of the heart who are supposed to be resting keep beating. I have heart arrhythmia from when I got shocked back to life during my knee surgery. Apparently that's a draw back of being resuscitated.

Was eating a sandwich but he showed a rabbit heart and a dog heart in a chaos experiment to fix arrhythmia and now I'm not that hungry. Gross.

Friend:

I'm glad you're as weird as you are. Other people are eating chicken and drinking wine because it's Christmas Eve, you're contemplating chaos attractor schnazzle with respect to when you got shocked back to life. Solid. Drinking wine and eating chicken here. Keep it weird!

Me:

You dry humped a log hanging by a chain from a boom, but I'M the weird one?

Those fucking paddles burn the heart. That's how they get the heart beating again. My heart has literally been burned. 

There's a Leonard Cohen song or alka seltzer joke in there somewhere but I'm too busy being weird to figure that out.

Enjoy chicken. They roll around in their shit and peck each other's eyes out. Yum.

Friend:

Proper response.

Anyway, the important take away is that it's okay to be female and a geek. Own it.

Yeah, there are lots of girls out there. Some just aren't worth talking to.

My brother's ex-girlfriend got back in touch with him this week. Guess it's obvious why they broke up:

My Brother:
[A bunch of blah blah about working on the Mars rover.]

Here's a pic.

Mars Rover! So cool!

My brother's ex:
Cool pic... what is it exactly?

MB:
It's a robot car that drives around on Mars doing science experiments and looking for aliens.

EX:
that is so awesome... looking for aliens lol.

MB:
Actually, it is looking for aliens (in the form of amino acids and stuff, aka germs)  

EX:
oh ok, that's a totally different type of alien...

Um, what??????

first dinner party in the new kitchen!

I think it was a success. Though, I am worried that I served chicken. Hope no one gets sick.

Speaking of chicken, here's a fucked up meat thing I just found out about today. I bought the meat first because I don't like the smell of raw meat and wanted to get that part of shopping done. I have this thing about meat on the bone (gross) so I asked the butcher guy where the flat chicken was. He was like "what?" Dude, the chicken that doesn't have anything but chicken in it. Duh.

So he showed me where it was and I found this package that said Chicken Tender. I thought, that's what I want. Tender chicken. And I thought they were being super fancy like the fucking french, always putting words in the wrong order (like milk of goat - just say goat's milk, for fuck's sake). Anyway, it turns out chicken tender is little chicken pieces. The butcher said what I needed was chicken (hee) breast. So I said "I didn't realize chicken had breasts." And immediately regretted it.

Then I went to the vegetable and fruit section and my guy was there who holds designer apples for me and who just got grapples in on Wednesday (hooray! Denver bitches, I brought you grapples. No graffiti on my garage for at least a year, please.). He gave me a 10 minute lecture on potatoes in general and then we had a consultation session about what I wanted the mashed potatoes to be like so he could select the right potato for me (his advice was perfect so I have to bring him some beer tomorrow).

I made the mashed potatoes by hand, including the part where you have to crush them. l also learned a new trick (not in Betty Crocker) to microwave the milk before you put it in the potatoes from my friend Cam.

I found the chives all by myself without asking anyone.

As long as no one gets sick I would say my first dinner party was a success. Plate hand made by artist Annie Glass.
Actually, that chicken looks gross. Like an abortion. But it tasted good.

parent of the year

PARENT OF THE YEAR

My flight was delayed 2 hours and the airport was full of morons and screaming kids. My favorite was a little, would guess 5 or 6 years old, boy running around the gate screaming and crying. His dad was wearing noise cancellation headphones and watching a movie on his ipad.

Parent of the year.

Then the boy ate shit after running into some hapless business man's suitcase. Parent did not look up from his movie. Business guy was traumatized and trying to find out whose kid was laying on his suit case, screaming and crying. Woman in a wheel chair was like "Oh, he's been doing that for an hour. Don't worry."

Is this the best my generation can do????

RUNNER UP

While waiting to board my plane, which finally showed up.

...a father told his 2 year old daughter, Summer (gay name, she's not even blond), to pull a booger out her nose and eat it (she did).

I thought I was going to throw up.

The mom kept singing that ring around the rosie song. I wanted to punch her.Then they (mom and dad) argued over who was going to change the kid's diaper (you wait until boarding time to think of that???). Kid was crying and grabbing for sippy cup but mom refused to let her have a drink because she doesn't want to change the kid's diaper on the plane (just repeating what she said - husband said "then stop showing her the sippy cup"). Summer kept calling her mom "nanny". And the mom kept saying "I'm not your nanny". No. Shit.


Then they put Summer on a fucking leash.

I fucking hate them. Summer cried the entire flight to Denver, though, she was at least 5 rows away and I could tune her out.

And that's when I realized - I don't hate kids that travel. I hate their parents.

not that hard to crash Windows 8 - or, at least, the booth

Oakland airport was insane tonight. The worst I've seen it. The flight before mine at the gate was going to Salt Lake City and had been delayed 8 hours. They gave everyone a $200 voucher. That still sucks.

Anyway, there was nowhere to read without a billion annoying people around, so I was hiding behind a Windows 8 booth where they demo the software (at the airport - only in California). Anyway, I was pacing, smoking, and reading and accidentally tripped over a power cord and turned off all the lights in the booth.

Then I ran away. Not sure if anyone saw me. I went two gates away and then, after 10 minutes, snuck back to my gate. Looks like the lights are back on.

Joys of holiday travel. Glad I'm home until next year.

BTW, you may have noticed, the world didn't end today you fuckwits at Fox news. Though, I guess we have 24 hours.

final installation of the new croco-diamond story

I'm le tired but finished the croco-diamond story. Got 3 hours of sleep last night. Ending is cheesy but remember it's a story for kids.

And so the croco-diamond began reading the story, though his glasses had fallen off. Since croco-diamonds don’t have ears they can’t wear glasses. And Marie had noticed that the glasses somewhat resembled the glasses of the head mistress. She put her head down on her desk and hoped they weren’t the head mistress’ glasses.

“One day, the man (“who claimed to want to watch the chrysalis turn into a butterfly”, the croco-diamond added), noticed the chrysalis struggling in its cocoon. It was trying to escape (“to be born as a butterfly, we can presume, otherwise why leave the comfort and convenience of a cocoon – the inside of a cocoon is soft and warm, like sleeping in cotton candy, if cotton candy wasn’t sticky”). So the man wondered if he should he help the chrysalis escape the cocoon.

I might add at this point, children, that helping people obviously results in tragic consequences as related through the story of my uncle and the button. Surely there is a moment of happiness when one sees a butterfly emerge in all its glory, but really, should one help people? Because we have no idea what’s in the cocoon. It could be a trick. In the cocoon there could be a spider PRETENDING to be a butterfly. After all, this was just a random cocoon the man found in the woods. And frankly, he doesn’t strike me as being very bright.

I don’t like spiders at all. I remember once…”

“It’s a butterfly. It’s a STORY ABOUT A BUTTERFLY.” Said Ms. Kaeli.

“If you insist.” Said the croco-diamond. “Well, there is also the concern of  disappointment. After all, it may be a speckled wood butterfly that emerges from the cocoon. I don’t find them particularly attractive. But I do admire colorful butterflies such as the Rusty-tipped page, the Australian painted lady, the purple spotted swallowtail, the blue morpho, the peacock...”

There was a noise from the back of the room, near the fish tank, which sounded like Ms. Kaeli sneezing, except the sneeze, instead of sounding like AH-CHOO, sounded like “quinoa snacks”.

“Carrying on,” said the croco-diamond nervously. “The man decided to help the chrysalis from the cocoon. He was about to cut the cocoon open, when, suddenly, a voice spoke:

DO NOT CUT THE COCOON! THE CHRYSALIS WILL BE INJURED! LEAVE IT ALONE!”

The croco-diamond picked his (or maybe the school mistress’s) glasses up from where they had fallen on the floor. He held them in what he hoped was a scholarly way, between two fingers.

“Now children, it appears this man, who steals cocoons and does other bad things that we can only imagine, is now hearing voices in his head. I must question whether this narrator is, what is the polite term? Crazy. I once thought I heard a voice, which said “help me, help me!” But it turns out it was my brother, who had crawled up the drainage pipe on the side of our house, and, having just eaten a large meal of brussel sprouts, had gotten himself stuck due to his tummy full of gas.

Well, we sent for the croco-doctor, who told my brother to burp to release the air to shrink his stomach so that he might get out of the pipe. The house began to rattle with each burp, as if a terrible storm was happening. Or maybe an earthquake. Soon the shingles were falling off the roof and the china cabinet almost…”

A quinoa snack splattered on the black board directly behind the croco-diamond. None saw who threw it.

“Let’s see. I’ve lost my place.” Said the croco-diamond, fumbling with the book anxiously. “Oh yes, “And so the man did not help the chrysalis. He watched for days as the butterfly struggled to be born. It seemed as if it would never succeed.

And then one day the man awoke to find a beautiful butterfly.”

The croco-diamond paused, set the book in his lap, absently scratched his nose, and then said, “This is the worst story I’ve ever read. The plot is quite boring. The narrator is at best crazy and likely imagining this whole episode. Finding a cocoon in the woods? Preposterous! I can’t help but to think of better books I’ve read, such as the poggly woggly adventure series, book four in particular, where the poggly wogglys encounter a pirate ship made of peanut butter and jelly that is set to attack! Thinking fast, they turn their surf boards into a knife of sorts and gather all of the bread in their village…”

There was a sound from the back of the room, as if someone was covering her mouth and screaming. All turned and looked to the back of the room.

“The pirates, as it turns out, were made from marshmallows and were easily defeated by the poggly wogglys. I will now turn things back over to Ms. Kaeli,” said the croco-diamond, who might have realized Ms. Kaeli was upset about something. Though he couldn’t think what might have upset her.

Ms. Kaeli was resting on the bean bags in the back of the room, and appeared to be quite worn out although it was not even lunch time yet.

 “What do you think the moral of the story is?” she asked the croco-diamond.

 “The…moral?” asked the croco-diamond.

“The lesson. What can we learn from the man who let the chrysalis struggle to become a butterfly?”

“Well. First we can learn that if one hears a voice that doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere, and one doesn’t have a burping brother caught in a drain pipe, that one is possibly crazy. And not as in ‘Johan goes crazy and throws toys’ way. I mean certifiably mad.

Once in my village there was a man who went to Varenham’s Finest Foods with three cats on his head. The cats were named Eenie, Meenie, and Miney. The man would pretend he had gone to Varenham’s to buy pumpkins, even though, I might add, it was NOT Halloween. And, I remember now, he had large green galoshes, the old fashioned type with the hooks on the front, and he would ask for…”

“Mr. Croco-diamond, please answer the question.”

“But I can’t because I feel faint just now, thinking about those cats. One cat, Eenie, no, it was definitely Meenie, no, perhaps it was Miney, used to ask the poor croco-didis “are you a member of the push in the bush club?” The croco-didi would say “Why no, I am not a member of such a club as you’ve mentioned. I’ve never heard of it.” Which, of course, would be the polite thing to say. The cat, Eenie, Meenie, or Miney, I can’t remember, would push the croco-didi into a bush! Why, the shrubbery in the whole town was being destroyed!”

The croco-diamond fell, rather dramatically, to the floor, curled into a ball, and said “Oh! You evil cats! Eenie, Meenie, and Miney!”

Marie raised her hand. “I think I know what the moral is.”

“Tell us.” Said Ms. Kaeli.

“The moral of the story is that sometimes you have to let people struggle and not help them so they can become the person they are meant to be. The chrysalis would not have become a beautiful butterfly if the man had helped it.”

“PRECISELY WHAT I’VE SAID ALL ALONG!” declared the croco-diamond, suddenly recovering from his remembrance of Eenie, Meenie, and Miney and leaping to his feet from the floor. “One must never help people! You’ll only fall into an abysm, be attacked by cats, and then the spiders will come…”

“Croc,” said Marie. “Sometimes you are so ridiculous. Of course you can help people. You just have to know when to help them.”

“Marie,” said the croco-diamond, “you are very wise. I have learned something from you today. Now, how about a warm bowl of soup. I’m positively famished!”

And so all the children ate soup, and didn’t have to eat quinoa snacks, and the croco-diamond surprised everyone with fresh dragon fruit for dessert. Though, some of the dragon fruit had lint on it from a ball of yarn the croco-diamond had put in his picnic basket.

“I HAD to bring the yarn.” The croco-diamond explained.  “One never knows when one may need some emergency knitting.”

Johan was allowed to keep the croco-diamond’s bongos. The head mistress retrieved her glasses (as it turns out, the croco-diamond had mistaken them for his part of his secret agent disguise, which he found in his picnic basket while retrieving the dragon fruit). And Ms. Kaeli said that the croco-diamond could come back to school again, for story time.

 After lunch Marie, wrapped in the croco-diamond’s sash, fell asleep on the bean bags while the croco-diamond picked up all the toys.

And he did it very quietly.

never invite me to a christmas party unless you want santa set on fire

We had our work christmas party today.

The party was about 30 of us in my manager's condo. There was a nice christmas cake, which I wanted to eat. My colleagues Y and J dared me to eat the santa on the christmas cake (which had not been cut yet). They said it was edible. So I carefully pulled santa from the cake and tried to bite his head off but only managed to scrape his face off. What ever the santa was made of, it was a pretty hard substance.  Then the serial murderer consultant said "you're eating plastic!" and I was like "bite his feet off - it's definitely sugar". He took the santa and said "I'll scrape some of his feet off but I'm not going to bite it because I have a lot of crowns."

My colleague W said "I'll bite it" and he bit off santa's back pack. Then Y bit his shoes off. They said the santa was sugar. Then the brit sloppily pulled santa's sleigh off the cake (totally damaging the rest of the decorations on the cake) and bit it in half (it sounded like some of his teeth broke). He had a big blob of white icing on his face so Y made fun of him, and the brit wiped it off of his face and threw it on my leg.

A contained food fight sort of ensued. I stood by the wall.

The brit kept saying "you ate plastic! you ate plastic!" so I said "if the santa is plastic we can tell by setting him on fire". Which the brit did. Santa was definitely sugar. 

I like parties where we can set things on fire.

Around midnight my manager was like "get the fuck out of my house!" (in a joking way). Best party I've been to in a long time.

Santa with the scraped off face before we set him on fire.

croco, continued, with a sad story about a hunt for a missing button

(note that Marie doesn't like the quinoa snacks served at her school - I had to destroy them somehow in the story)

She thought for a few seconds, and then stood up on her desk. Then she shouted as loud as she could, “YOU DIDN’T ANSWER THE QUESTION!”

At this all the commotion in the room stopped. Toys fell to the floor. Crayons were gently put back on desks. Johan, who had left the playloft, stopped throwing the quinoa snacks in the goldfish bowl.

The croco-diamond, who had construction paper butterflies stuck to his jeweled spine and glitter on his head, stopped dancing and throwing things too.

“What ever is she talking about?” asked the croco-diamond.

“I don’t know. Can I keep your bongos?” asked Johan.

Everyone stared at Marie expectantly.

“Ms. Kaeli asked what we would do. Would you help the chrysalis out of the cocoon or not?”

“Are you asking me?” asked the croco-diamond. “The answer is obvious. I would not help the chrysalis. Croco-diamonds do not help people. Since we are royalty, people help us.

In any case, helping people can only end badly. Once my uncle, I remember this as if it happened yesterday, was enlisted to help Lord Fangerly of Elsmuck, or, wait, was it his brother Lord Socksworth of Shutterdam? It’s not important.

In any case Lord Fangerly, or Lord Socksworth, I’ve said I don’t remember, had lost a button while cycling through the moors…or perhaps it was climbing Sgor an Lochain Uaine, which, I’m sure you know, is the fifth highest mountain in Scotland, in Cairngorms…”

“Croc,” said Marie.

“And while looking for the button my dear uncle, who was quite precious to all, but especially to me as he was mentoring me on fractal theory, well, as luck would have it, somehow he managed to fall into an abysm, which, as you know, is a hole that has no bottom, so he is still falling today. But he does manage to write home quite often and has found many interesting things in the abysm, including a kimono. He says it is quite comfortable to wear a kimono if one must be in a constant state of falling. And, we’ve found we can deliver things to him by throwing them in the abysm using a complicated system to control the falling. I, of course, was instrumental in devising aforementioned system. I’m good at physics.

His family throws him a new book every few days. Besides math my uncle is quite fond of the sciences and various periodicals. And my cousin, who is a great gourmand, throws my uncle meals, and has worked out, through various physics formulas, a method for delivering the meals right at the hour of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My uncle did enjoy a fine steak, but, as it turns out with abysms, sandwiches and meat balls fall faster so sometimes the steak…”

“Croc!” said Marie, but louder this time.

“And though my uncle was quite fond of peas, they just don’t fall correctly. Nor feather pillows, which we have tried to deliver many times, unsuccessfully.  They tend to return as a spray of feathers and some tattered cloth. Einstein may have solved this problem but we are only now just reading his unpublished notebooks. The feather pillows will take time.

One can only be grateful he fell into an abysm and not a schism. Or a crack. Or fissure. Or a rent or a rupture. Imagine if my uncle had fallen into a split or a sunder. Though I supposed one might not be able to fall into a sunder. And all for a button…”

“CROC!” yelled Marie.

The croco-diamond looked quite offended that he had been interrupted.

“It was a very IMPORTANT button. It held the coat closed, that is to say the coat of Lord Fangerly. Or Socksworth. I wish I could remember.”

“Children!” said Ms. Kaeli. “This interruption has been…interesting…and perhaps… educational. But I would request everyone return to their seats so we can finish the story and see what happens to the chrysalis. Croco-diamond?”

“At your service!” said the croco-diamond, and he slightly bowed toward Ms. Kaeli. Some glitter fell from his head.

“I have a suggestion. Why don’t you finish reading the story to the children?”

“What a wonderful idea. I do have a fine voice. I can sing and have often been asked to read the speeches of kings who have not such a nice voice as mine and the need to sound royal. I often have been disguised as a king, and, dressed as a king, given speeches to hundreds. Yes, thousands of people. In particular I remember a speech I gave disguised as King Umblebumble, of the Feiganbaum clan, in the upper swath of what is now referred to as the territories of…”

“Croc!” said Ms. Kaeli, who might have been about to lose her temper, if Ms. Kaeli ever lost her temper. “PLEASE read the story.”

She handed the croco-diamond a book, though Ms. Kaeli had been telling the story without a book. One NEVER asks a croco-diamond to tell a story unless one also gives the croco-diamond the book that contains the story. Else the croco-diamond may end up telling some story that’s entirely different from the story he was supposed to tell.

“Ahem. The print is quite small. Let me get my glasses. Johan?”

Johan ran to the picnic basket, opened it, and pulled out the stop sign, which was no longer flashing as the solar batteries had died. He also removed a chess board, a china salad bowl, two sets of silverware, a banana, a pair of croc-o-socks, the fifth book in the poggly woggly adventure series, a mirror, what appeared to be a half completed science experiment involving rust rates of nails, bunny slippers, a post card from Vancouver that was not in fact addressed to the croco-diamond and that appeared to be addressed to Marie’s father and perhaps stolen from Marie’s mailbox (though the post some times makes mistakes), a dive mask, and then, finally, the croco-diamond’s glasses.

The croco-diamond slowly put on his glasses, and then stared in the distance. “Get in character,” he whispered to himself, “the character of a man who might watch a chrysalis.”

Then he said “To remind you of where we are in the story, I will give a summary. A man has found a cocoon in the woods, and, for reasons not yet revealed in the story, he has taken the cocoon home. The man has claimed he wants to watch the chrysalis turn into a butterfly, but should we believe that? One may never know why a person does what a person does. For example, the other day, I was brushing my teeth, and I suddenly wondered, “What if I brushed my teeth while doing a headstand? So I began to…”

Ms. Kaeli, who was taking quinoa snacks out of the gold fish tank, interrupted. “MR. CROCO-DIAMOND, please proceed with the story.” And then said, in a manner one normally would not associate with Ms. Kaeli, “Or I will order more quinoa snacks to be brought to this room. And you will have to eat them. ALL of them.”

At this the croco-diamond looked scared. “Perhaps, Ms. Kaeli, I am the only one to notice that the important part of the word quinoa is “no”. Which would imply, “no, I don’t want to eat quinoa snacks.”

“THEN READ THE STORY!” Ms. Kaeli, ahem, said. Perhaps a bit louder than she usually said things.

croco-diamond updates

I've updated the earlier two postings for the new croco-diamond story. Changes include clarifying some parts of the story that sucked and more details about the flying mountain made of mashed potatoes.

just finished decorating for Christmas!

So. That's it for decorations. I'm a jew and a minimalist, what more do you want from me?