Things I learned last night

• It's not a real party unless a late-straggler climbs in the window.
• On a related note, vehicles passing by will stop or slow down to watch the spectacle.
  
• Hospitality is letting your guests know you cooked your "baby" just for them.
• There aren't levels of heresy, just different types.
• It is possible to run into people off-line who are familiar with and adore XKCD.
• The moment one half of a married couple mock-strangles his/her spouse, out comes the camera.
• As soon as one person mentions "nudism," the noise will drop to a lull as everyone pauses the various side conversations to listen.
• A conversation that begins with nudism eventually transitions to "boobs." That said, the conversation needn't devolve into fifth-grade-boy chortles, amazingly enough.
• Also amazingly, it is still possible to be in a room full of people and have only one person with Internet on his phone.
• Finally, showing up in a cape is a sure-fire conversation piece.
  
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  Now playing: Danzig - Mother
  via FoxyTunes
  

Free show

While this (last... past tense, dagnabit) week was my spring break, it is not my friend's, so I had to wait a few hours in the airport before catching the shuttle to her place. No problem; I putzed around on the internet and then finally settled down to some grading, which I brought with me, knowing it wouldn't grade itself in my absence.

Sometime between when I finally settled down to grading and when I looked up in need of a distraction, I noticed a young, shaggy-haired man, standing off by himself, juggling three pins intently. He wore a white sleeveless top, the better to show off well-tanned arms, kakhi shorts, and a black fedora with a feather over his right ear. Up went the blue and green pins, followed by the orange, which detoured behind his back before becoming airborne, followed in turn by the blue, and so on. They'd stay up a bit, then come clattering to the floor with hollow thuds. Then he juggled them all in front of him, until again, some would clatter to the floor.

I went back to my grading. When I looked up again, he had four pins: the green, the orange, and two blue pins. His companion, whom I hadn't noticed before, made an attempt at a backflip that ended with him sprawled on the floor. Having decided to give up on the acrobatics, he joined his juggling friend, a yellow pin somehow materializing in the process. They juggled pins back and forth after a couple false starts when they were negotiating how far apart to stand. I don't know if they were trying to provide entertainment for anybody else, or just themselves, but I enjoyed the show, and several people wandering by stopped to observe them. The second juggler finally wandered off, bored, leaving the original entertainer to goof around, less enthusiastically, with the yellow and blue pins.

I finally decided to grab paper to capture my impressions of the scene before me. When I glanced up after three paragraphs crammed onto the back of a half-page grading rubric, the juggler seemed to have vanished. I could see neither his shaggy, emo-haired head nor his jaunty feathered fedora. One last glimpse, and I was ready to assume he's gone, off to catch a flight or a shuttle, when I see what looks like a musical instrument case standing on end by a pillar. The juggler has one more trick up his sleeve--he pulled out a banjo and begins picking out what sounded like an improvised tune.

All told, I may not have gotten much grading done, but the grading will be there, waiting for me to pick it up again. When you've got an impromptu show in front of you, it seems a shame to squander the opportunity.

Overheard at the coffeestand

There's nothing like a hot cup of tea to ward off the chill of winter (so says the 20-something...). On my way off campus today (last teaching day!), I stopped to get a cup of tea.

After I paid, the time it took for me to put away my wallet gave me the opportunity to overhear an interesting conversation.

The guy behind me stepped up, began talking to the lady like he's a regular.

"So, do you read [the student newspaper]?"

"No, I... sometimes. Why?"

"Well, if you pick up the new one, I'm in it, and I don't want you to be upset or anything."

I don't recall what her response to that was, but he continued, "I was arrested this week. But it was for a crime I didn't commit." The paper does print names and addresses of students arrested for crimes, 75% of them being minor in possession charges.

I was certainly intrigued by this point, but my wallet was in my purse, the lid was on my tea, and I could only be so surreptitious before I, er, stopped being surreptitious. I only caught the beginning of his story. "See, it was really my dad. He's already got a prior conviction, and he'd be in trouble if he got another, so he gave them my student number..."

I'm guessing some sort of possession charge. Still. Either that's a whopper of a tale, or he's quite the dutiful son to take that rap.

Reality is 99% perception

Overheard today:

"What is it?"

"Um, a beetle?"

"I don't know. It's green and kinda furry."