"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
-Carl Sagan

Update: Dec 20, 2009:

It's been 8 months since my last update of this webpage. Today I found a lemon in the backseat and I got out of the car and took the lemon with me. I held the lemon and tossed it back and forth between my hands as I walked slightly uphill towards the physics builing. It is Sunday today, the 20th of December and there are woodpeckers in the trees... or some other kind of bird. I saw a bird fly out of the brush and I threw the lemon at it as hard as I could.

Update: Feb 19, 2009:

Do, a deer, a female dear.
Re, a drop of golden sun.
Mi, a name, I call myself.
Fa, a long long way to run.
Sol, a needle pulling thread.
La, a genus of moths.
Ti, a drink with jam and bread.
And that will bring us
back to
Do...

Update: Jan 12, 2009:

Dear Diary:

Yesterday I was at Starbucks and you just won't believe what I saw. I saw the Cool Christian Kid! He looked to be in his late teens and he was wearing an overcoat a la John Bender from The Breakfast Club. At first I didn't see him, I only heard him. He was at the table next to mine, talking (or would the term "rappin'" be more appropriate?) with some plainclothes priests. I think they were mormon, but really I have no fucking idea. The priests were older and they were wearing collared shirts. The Kid, on the other hand, was wearing a long sleeve tee-shirt underneath a short sleeve tee-shirt, underneath his overcoat.

But still, you ask, how did I know The Christian Kid was really Cool?! Here is how I knew: About halfway through his rap session with the priests, the Cool Christian Kid stood up from the table. Then he turned his chair around 180 degrees. Then he sat back down on the chair. I swear to god I really saw this happen. And I just had to tell somebody.

Update: Oct 30, 2008

For today's update I will tell you a very subtle joke.

It's so subtle that it's not even funny.

Get it?

Update: Sep 26, 2008:

This one time in high school, the student teacher who taught our math class sneezed. And instead of saying, "Huh-Choo!" he said "Hey-Choo!" And I just couldn't stop laughing. I really couldn't stop. He quickly recovered from his sneeze and went back to teaching. But I couldn't recover. I just laughed and laughed. I tried to hold in my laughs--or at least keep them quiet--but I couldn't do it. I kept on laughing and laughing. Pretty soon he got mad at me and told me to go out into the hall. I think maybe he thought I was high or something. But, I wasn't. Really. I just couldn't stop.

I wonder what ever happened to that guy. And I wonder: Did him ever learn how to sneeze right?

Update: Jun 19, 2008:

Here's my impression of everybody over at CENPA:

"Hey, look at me, I work at CENPA and I drink coffee." 
[Mime holding cup of coffee]. 
"Sipppppp." 
[Mime sipping coffee]. 
"Hey, look at me, I work at CENPA and my pants are normal." 
[Mime having normal pants]. 
"Let's all wear pants and drink coffee." 
"Let's all talk about bicycles when we work at CENPA because blah blah 
blah bicycles. Chain lube. 
Can I borrow your chain lube. 
Do you have any chain lube for my chain lube? 
Blah blah." 
[Mime further speech regarding bicycles].

Update: May 23, 2008:

THEOREM: A banana is not an ideal gas.

PROOF: The proof proceeds via reductio ad absurdum. Assume that the banana is an ideal gas. Then by measuring the heat capacity of the banana we may determine the mass of a banana molecule, which is absurd. Q.E.D.

Update: March 20, 2008:

K, I put the pics online. didn't have time to organize them. Here there are.

Update: March 19, 2008:

Look at this cat-related comic I just drew. And, yes, I do know that I am hilarious. Thank you very much.

Oh, and also, my latest paper just got published online finally:
Here is it

Update: March 10, 2008:

Okay, so I waste paper. I was just looking in my recycling bin and I saw a piece of paper in there with nothing written on it except for the word "indeed" and a comma. Indeed, what!?

Indeed...

So, on Saturday night I came up with an awesome new party-game. It's like ten times better than Charades and fourteen times better than Pictionary, which sucks. My game is called "Somebody's Probably Going to the Hospital" and it can be played with just a wine bottle and a screw driver. All you have to do is get the cork out of the wine bottle as fast as you can, using only the screw driver. Did you manage to get the cork out of the bottle? Next comes "phase two" of "Somebody's Probably Going to the Hospital". This phase consists of you trying to hold onto the cork and then stab the screw driver all the way through it width-wise. And don't forget the most fun part of the game: every time you call 9-1-1 the whole group has to shout out "Somebody's probably going to the hospital!"

Update: Feb 6, 2008:

I told you people, "no pictures." And "no pictures" means "no fucking pictures!" Get that goddamn camera out of my face you son of a bitch. Palinode: I have pictures for you.

1. My halloween costume (Bunny!)

2. That halloween night I walked the four miles from party to home alone. That night I walked in pink slippers from the hours of 2 to 4 A.M. (or was it 3 and 5?), up and down Aurora, around Green Lake the wrong way, then the right way, down past the zoo, then south, then east on 45th thru Wallingford, and finally, finally, home. (Bunny!)

3. And, oh yes, I was going to take pictures of food. I told you I made breakfast for Tina. And I told you she made me dinner. But actually, I made both the breakfast and the dinner. You see? Do you see me?

4. And she helped, or whatever.

5. And I cooked some more. (Impudence!)

6/7. And so then there were pictures of the beautiful beautiful food. See? Here's another picture. Do you see? Can't you see it?

8. Then Christina tried to torture my poor pitiful little kitten. (You insolent fool!)

Update: Feb 3, 2008:

Damn dudes. God damn. I wanted to post some pictures of food. I wanted to prove that Tim isn't the only one who cooks around here. See, I made breakfast for Christina and then she made dinner for me. I have the pictures to prove it. To prove that we were both there. Oh yeah. We were the ones who were there. Oh yeah. But not the ones who say, "Oh, what the hell." The ones who were there. The ones who make love standing in their boots, and imagine they're in a luxurios bed. Oh yeah. The ones who don't enjoy themselves, even when they laugh. The ones who should have been shot in the cradle... Pow! Oh yeah. The ones who believe in everything, even in God. The ones who listen to the national anthem. Oh yeah. The ones who love their country. The ones who keep going, just to see how it will end. Oh yeah. The ones who are in garbage up to here. Oh yeah. The ones who have never had a fatal accident. Oh yeah. The ones who have had one. The ones who are always standing at the bar. The ones who are always in Switzerland. The ones who started early, haven't arrived, and don't know they're not going to. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

...But, I left my camera attachments at home. Oh, indeed I did--I mean, "Oh yeah."

...Sorry. I watched "Pasqualino Settebellezze" last night and I can't stop saying, "Oh yeah." The pictures will have to wait until later.

Update: Jan 24, 2008:

Well, I'm pretty happy. My new paper just got accepted at PRB and the referees only had good things to say--no suggested corrections, no petty criticisms, etc. Here's a snippet of what one ref had to say:

...The authors argue their case convincingly. I recommend publication
of the manuscript in its present form.

Nice, not *glowing*, but nice. Here's a snippet from the other:

...Furthermore, the authors took the calculations beyond
the usual relativistic effects in vacuum to include a macroscopic
frequency-dependent dielectric constant of the medium. They show
that the effects of the dielectric medium are very large at low
momentum transfer. This is a very important result and goes beyond
current theories.

The literature on electron energy loss is extremely large and I was
very surprised to find out that this particular problem hasn't
been treated fully and correctly some decades back. That said, I
think that this theoretical work is very important and could help
avoid erroneous interpretations of spectra in electron energy
loss spectroscopy. 

Update: Jan 17, 2008:

No time. No time for an update today. It's got to be quick and fast. It's got to be stream-of-consciousness story time:

   In the begining God created the moon and hung it in the sky and saw that
is was good, relatively speaking. And the moon was a perfect disk, perfectly
flat, perfectly black, as black as the night sky in which it was hanged. This 
was displeasing to The Lord and so He commanded His angel to paint the moon in 
silver, and the angel did commence to paint it in silver. But the moon was 
large and the angel was slow and by the time the angel had finished, The 
Devil had ordered Her angel to paint the moon black again. At the end of the 
month God looked at the moon and saw that it was black and thus again He 
commanded His angel to paint in silver the moon. But then again The Devil so 
did too henceforth command once more that the black was to be painted again 
over the silver. 

This went on and on for many months. 

In the meantime God created other things such as the toaster oven, the
contraceptive sponge, and the Roman Empire--which rose and fell--not 
necessarily in that order. 

Some people begat some other people who in turn begat sons and daughters 
who again, in their turn, after being begotten, further continued begatting
and bebeing begotten.

And the Sodomites did their thing. You know. In the butt. 

In the begining was the Moon, and the Moon was in the Sky, and the 
Moon was with the Sky, and the Moon was the Sky. Whatever that means. 
And the green creatures of the green earth went forth into the sky 
and were with the Sky which was also in the sky. Which, of course, 
was the Moon. Don't forget that part. And the cock crowed for a third time. 
And the creatures which were black had black legs and they were also with the 
Sky in the sky--I mean Moon; I had meant to say, "Moon." Sorry, I'm getting 
confused. And there were many other things which happened in that time and 
I suppose that should they all be written down they could not be contained 
in all the books in all the world. And all those books would probably 
contain a lot of words. Amen.

Update: Jan 1, 2008:

Apparently, bad poetry comes in twos?
This one I found at the College Inn , written upon a cocktail napkin. Perhaps penned by some romantic dear, who attends the English Grad Pub there? It was also labelled "To" and "From", but on those two names I should stay mum.
If you're ready, then here it goes (read: gooz?):

Heat and snow together come
Apart, my heart, chrysanthemum

While melts the sky, the sun's vendetta
To raise awake my blonde poinsettia

Thee, whose slender leaves of willow
Lie strewn across my lonely pillow.

Then morning air, iced little gales,
Comes swishing all through brown cattails

And up then tulip, fire, snow
To heated hearth, my heart, will go.

Update: Dec 30, 2007:

Here's a poem I found written on a bathroom stall in the Monkey Pub. An obvious bastardization of Keats, no doubt.

Here come the girls with their baskets.
A'carting sweet apples for sale.
They cost but a drink,
And a sly little wink.
But get them before they go stale.

Some baskets are tied up with ribbon.
Some'd rather be tied up with silk.
To securely restrain,
Without causing much pain,
The baskets and apples and milk.

Update: Dec 13, 2007

There's some very important things got to be said today. Very important, indeed. You insolent fool.

HER: I'm a chocoholic.

HIM: You're addicted to sex?!

HER: I said, "choco".

HIM: What's "choco"?

Update: Dec 07, 2007:

Oh snap!

My newest of new papers is now newly on the archive (and also with referees at Phys. Rev. B). It's about magic.

Update: Dec 06, 2007:

This is me. Picture me. I'm standing on a bright blue surface. What is it? I'm standing there, on the mat, in my workout clothes, slightly sweaty, and staring. I am staring--mouth agape--my eyes like dinner plates. Old Ivory Fiestaware to be exact. I can't move. I can't hardly breath. I'm transfixed.

I'm hypnotized by this girl doing the "back extension" exercise on the exercise-ball. Have you seen this exercise? All I can say is, "Wow". And the girl was hot. And the skirt's shorts were next to non-existent. And to the extent that the shorts did exist, they were sprayed on.

"Goodness, me." I thought to myself. "The things she's doing to that exercise-ball are illegal in South Carolina." Then I paused. Then I composed myself. And then I walked over.

"Hello there, young lady." I said. "Whatever might be the name of that exercise in which you are currently so vigorously engaged?"

She said nothing.

"You see," I continued. "I'm going to write about this encounter on my webpage, and so I have to know the name of that exercise. Otherwise I won't be able to write about it."

She looked up and said, "It's called the 'back extenstion'. You have an exercise blog?

"Yes. Yes... an exercise blog. I have an exercise blog. I blog about exercising. Why wouldn't that be the case?"

"What?"

"Nothing. Goodbye."

Update: Nov 27, 2007:

So, I was talking to Steuck about coding since I can't talk to Steuck about riddles since I only talk to Greg about riddles and even then only in run-on sentences. And, well, he suggested that a programming language should have a list of "keywords" which you are not allowed to declare as variable names. But, that's just stupid. For example, as you can see from the following program, it is often very useful to name a variable 'if'. Also, I threw in a few 'gotos' and implicit variables just to make the computer scientists even angrier than they already are:

       program zomgz
c
c zomg
c
       logical else
       real if
       double precision then
       real real
       double precision double
c
c this feels... naughty.
c
       else=.true.
       if = 10.0
       then = 20.0d0
       real = 30.0
       double = 40.0d0
c implicit real! shut up!
       endif = 50.0
c implicit integer (because it starts with an 'm'...pppppbt):
c (I thought I told you to shut up!)
       mod=60

42     continue

c
c now the magic happens:
c
       if (else) then
         print*,if
       else
         print*,then
         goto 69
       endif
c
c that was awesome!
c

       else=.false.
       goto 42
69     continue
       print*,'go fail at life again...'
       print*,real,double,endif,mod
       end

Here is some sample output from the above program:

[asorini@botticelli idiot]$ ./a.out
  10.
  20.
 go fail at life again...
  30.  40.  50. 60
[asorini@botticelli idiot]$

Mwaaa ahaaa haaa.

Update: Oct. 07, 2007:

I know, I know, it's been a good long while, hasn't it? But, now I have something extra special for you--you know that book "Physics for Poets"? Well, I'm going to let you have a little sneak peak at the first draft of my new book entitled "Poetry for Physicists"... Here it is. If you find any spelling errors, please let me know so that I can claim they were typos.

Update: Sept. 15, 2007:

For some reason my alarm clock/radio is set to a top 40 station. This makes for interesting mini-dreams just before or after I hit the "snooze" button. For example, last night I was at a Pink concert with my father and brother. She kept on playing the same song and after the concert my father and brother waited inside a pumpkin while I stood in line for an autograph. I got the autograph, but my pants kept falling down and all I could say was, "This happened last time too."

Update: Sept 06, 2007:

Dudes, right now I'm drinking a glass full of orange juice, or as I like to call it "a virgin screwdriver". Also, when I eat ice I would rather think of it as drinking a "virgin whiskey on the rocks". Or, similarly, instead of asking the baristas at Starbucks for "a coffee", I usually just ask for "a virgin Irish coffee".

Update: Sept. 02, 2007

Did you hear the one about the insect who mingled with Proudhan's friends and Saint-Simon's friends and also Marx's friends?

...It was a socialist butterfly!

(That's not very funny, is it?)

Update: August 26, 2007:

On Friday, I learned how to break into a Master Lock with a homemade "shim" (the kinder, gentler, cousin of the "shiv", I presume). It's a simple process, really, but the making requires that you buy a six-pack of Miller Lite in aluminum cans. Then you have to drink three of the Miller Lites. Then you take a pair of scissors and cut out a small rectangular sheet of aluminum--small enough to cut your fingers pretty well. Next, you have to cut out a shape that is too hard to describe using words. The shape looks vaguely like a rectangle with a few parts cut away. Finally, you insert the shim into the inner left (as viewed from the face) side of the lock and shimmy the shim about for a while. My first attempt failed miserably. My second attempt failed, but in a more meaningful way. And finally, on my third attempt, the lock popped open. I have yet to reproduce this result.

In other news, my cat changed her name again--this time to "Cathode Dee". I told her that I hate her, and that if she doesn't catch a mouse for me within three days I will stop filling her food bowl. In response, she tried to poison my tea. But the joke's on her because I don't drink tea.

In other news, I received a box full of numerous packets of tea in the mail today. The packets are of an unknown brand and are simply labelled with the phrase "Not Poison", and also a crudely drawn picture of a skull-and-crossbones within a circle with a slash through it. Also, scrawled across the side of the box is the phrase "not for consumption by cats!"

Update: August 2, 2007:

Well, it looks like Andrea's boyfriend is going to be moving to Oak Park which is a town famous for, among other things, giving birth to Hemingway.

Hemingway, you might recall, is a writer who is famous for his short stories regarding manly, anti-semetic, closeted homosexuals.

Some of Hemingway's better known works include 1927's "The Jew Puncher" and, of course, his 1949 masterpiece "Yikes! A vagina!"

Update: August 1, 2007:

My kitten changed her name to "Honolulu Catbright." I told her she couldn't, but she did it away.

Update: July 23, 2007:

I know that I have been updating my website a lot these past few days, but this one is gonna be good. I swear.

Adam's Dating Tips:

1. Don't use the word 'cunt'. Never. Not even in passing. Not even in 
   quotation marks. Not even to explain the etymology or historical
   usage of the word. For example, don't say, "In Chaucer's Canterbury
   Tales the word 'cunt' appears as the Middle English 'queynte' which,
   in some contexts, is translated as 'quaint'." Don't say that. She 
   doesn't care.

2. Don't wear that shirt with all the holes in it. It makes you look
   like a homeless person.

3. Stop staring at her tits.

4. For every one drink she drinks, you should drink approximately one
   drink. Not six. 

5. After six drinks even your old stupid jokes are funny. But 
   remember, she has only had one drink. So they aren't funny to her.

6. The waiter did not just give you 'the finger'. Calm down. Some 
   people just point like that. Really. He is bringing you your next 
   drink right now.

7. Hey, are you gonna eat those olives? Or are you just gonna leave 
   'em in the bottom of your glass? Alright, olives!

8. What did you say your name was? Hey, let's get some more olives. 
   I'm gonna get a martini with four olives. You want one? One more? 
   No. Okay, but I'm gonna get one. You want olives?

9. Let's play the piano! You dance. No more like a stripper. Where 
   you going? 

10. Where the hell is that waiter? He is such a fucking cunt.

Update: July 22, 2007:

Today when I woke up, I found that I had acquired an English accent. It was so annoying. My words ending in 'a' suddenly started ending in 'er' and often vice-verser. Needless to say, I was quite confused.

My confusion only increased when I went out to check my mail (you know, the kind of mail that comes on Sunday) and found that I had been drafted as a chim-in-ey sweep--but, I hate cleaning chimneys, Guv'na.

Stupid English accent.

Think about that!

Even by itself chocolate milk is absurd.

Update: July 7, 2007:

Last night, as I walked up University Way towards my home, the sky was very black. I chalked the blackness of the sky up to the fact that it was nighttime and nothing more. This is reasonable. I walked onward and upward--up the big hill--past the sneering and smoking hoi polloi that populate these university streets at night, polluting the gutters with their effortless effrontery. I looked back up at the sky. Did I just see some little flash of light? I looked back down to the gutters and steadied my whiskey-woosy gaze on a piece of trash. There were no flashes in the gutter. I looked back up at the sky which now appeared to have empurpled slightly. Another flash. A small spot of white light was shining at the very top of the night sky; it was from this spot that the empurpling emanated. I continued walking up University Way and as I progressed up I intermittently checked on the sky. The spot on the sky was growing bigger. When I finally made it to the top of the hill the spot on the sky was huge; it was the size of a man. In fact, the spot actually was a man--a glowing man--who was floating down from the sky. The man was wearing a black suit and a bowler hat, and on further inspection it appeared that the man was actually Rene Magritte. Rene Magritte landed softly on the sidewalk next to me and handed me a velvety-soft bowler hat of my very own.

"You'll need this," he said.

"Thank you. Your paintings make so much sense now." I replied.

"You and I are going on a trip." Rene said.

"What kind of trip?"

"We're going on a train ride."

"Where is the train going?"

"It's going into the fireplace, of course."

"May I take my giant apple with me?"

"Yes, indeed. Now let's go."

"Let's go!"

Update: July 1, 2007:

If I was going to update my website today I would probably update it real good. I would update it with a little story about how I like to not call orange juice "orange juice" but rather I like to call orange juice "yum yum juice."

But I'm not going to update my website today--I'm just going to post this link to the pictures from my hike up Granite Mountain with Eric Deyo. We both made it back alive... barely... You see, Eric deyo got one of his paws caught in a bear trap. He tried to free himself by gnawing off his paw, but then I pointed out that he had gnawed off the wrong paw. So he tried again and again I pointed out that he had gnawed off the wrong paw. On the third try he got it right.

Update: June 23, 2007:

I wrote this play today. Read it:

One Night on the Town

(a play in one act)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Characters:

NARRATOR--A kindly old gentleman invisible to all but the audience.

JOHNSON--An up and coming young business man who is proud of his very 
         beautiful wife and very beautiful sports car.

MRS. JOHNSON--JOHNSON's wife. She is beautiful, and she's cheating on him.

AMAD--a non-arab (despite the name) who is quick with his wits and not
      too hard on the eyes either. He is a really totally awesome guy and
      I think he is really cool. His occupation?... A writer. I know, I
      know, isn't that crazy? He's a writer. And I'm a writer. That's 
      crazy.

MARY--She's a virgin.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACT I

SCENE I

(A cozy little restaurant located in the heart of the city. 
So cozy, in fact, that there is only one table at which 
JOHNSON, MRS. JOHNSON, AMAD and MARY are seated and about to
begin their meal. The NARRATOR enters from stage right...)

NARRATOR: Apaka awakataka, paka taka taka waka. Pa pakataka
          pacaka caka. Bakawaka, bacaka waka taka. Taka taka
          taka taka waka! Paka...

JOHNSON: Paka waka.

(MRS. JOHNSON looks at her watch)

MRS. JOHNSON: Waka taka.

JOHNSON: Paka?

MRS. JOHNSON: Waka taka.

AMAD: (jokingly) Paka taka?

(AMAD laughs)

MRS. JOHNSON: Waka taka.

MARY: Paka waka, waka taka?

AMAD: Wakachaka, Baka. Pakataka taka taka waka. Pataka,
      Patchaka waka--

MARY:               --baka paka!

AMAD: (motioning to JOHNSON) Waka. Apaka chakataka taka paka?

JOHNSON: Atakawaka baka paka paka taka. Taka taka.

(JOHNSON takes a long sip from his glass of wine)

JOHNSON: (continuing) Aka, Patakachaka taka paka: "Paka waka,
         waka paka, waka taka, taka paka. Haka haka."

AMAD: (holds his hands about a foot apart) Wakapaka?

JOHNSON: (cups his hands near his chest) Pataka! Baka!

(MRS. JOHNSON gets up from the table in a huff and exits stage right)

JOHNSON: Paka.

MARY: Taka maka paka.

(MARY follows MRS. JOHNSON off stage right)

(AMAD and JOHNSON start eating)

NARRATOR: Apakapaka, paka taka. Waka takapaka bakaka paka taka.
          "Paka waka," waka taka. Pa paka wa waka wakataka.

(MARY and MRS. JOHNSON re-enter and take their seats at the table)

MARY: Baka taka. Pakakataka paka. Awaka taka wa wakataka taka waka.

JOHNSON: Paka?

MARY: (to AMAD) Waka taka paka?

AMAD: (under his breath) Capaka taka...

MARY: (she heard him) Tapaka paka taka...

(they both laugh in spite of themselves).

MRS. JOHNSON: Pakataka waka paka taka waka.

(draw curtain)

FIN

Update: Jun 15, 2007

It's a well-known fact that the American-English slang word "peachy" originated in the late 1920s and/or early 1930s. The rise in popularity of this word correlated strongly with the 1930's rise in popularity of the fad of "going fucking crazy" (cf. "The Life of Zelda Fitzgerald" by A. E. Whitely, Bungtum Publishing, Inc., PC.); a then-popular way to go crazy was to awaken one day and believe that you had been transformed into a giant peach (cf. "The Metamorphosis" (1st Draft) by F. Kafka (nee Kafka), Bantam Classics) hence the phrase: "to go peachy" or more simply "peachy".

Update: June 8, 2007:

1. Riding bikes is fun.

2. Riding bikes with hippies is fun.

3. Riding bikes to go watch hippies pick throught college students trash is fun. (Hey! I found a leash for my ferret!)

4. If you had to keep something in a wooden box which, although it was small and the lid's latching mechanism was quite simple, was beautifully decorated with intricate carved designs and various other wood-workings, you would probably keep a normal-sized green frog in there. And the frog would be wearing a tiara.

5. Sometimes you will carefully and gently lift the wooden box out of your bottom desk drawer where you keep it and you will hold the box next to your ear for a few seconds. Then you will whisper softly sweet words into the holes of the box; you put the holes in the box as a precaution after your last frog died (asphyxiation or suicide, not sure).

6. Then it's off to the frog-jumping contest. Good luck!

Update: May 27, 2007:

The pitfalls of hotel living are manifold. Especially treacherous are those dangers due to the similarity of packagings used for the various sample-sized toiletries and other necessary travel conviencences. These items are often left behind, next to the sink, as pint-sized trojan horses by Housekeeping ("knock, knock, housekeeping, knock, knock, housekeeping.").

Why, just last night I accidentally shampooed my hair with mouthwash and washed my butt with a travel-sized sewing kit.

This picture is possibly the greatest picture ever taken (no, it is not "pRon".)

The cat in the lap
Is lazily licking
Lapis lazuli;
She so blue.

Update: May 19, 2007:

How to weigh yourself in 5 easy steps:
1. Buy a scale.
2. Buy a cat.
3. Have cat weigh itself on the scale (record scale reading).
4. Have cat hold you in its arms and reweigh itself on scale (record scale reading).
5. Subtract the former scale reading from the latter scale reading. This is your weight.

Update: May 17, 2007

He not only writes prose, but he also writes poetry:

Petulant Petunia

Petulant Petunia
Nightshade out of sight
Without moonlight--
New moon, yeah!

Petulant Petunia
Plant her in the sink
And watch her drink
Ammonia

Update: May 14, 2007

The tee-shirts which you ordered two days ago have been printed up, General. We have three versions for your pleasure: The men's version, the womyn's version, and finally the eldery folk's version.

Cheerio.

Update: May 12, 2007

Yes. Yes, I passed my general exam.

Passing my general exam means that I am now qualified to become a General in the United States Army. As an all-powerful General my first order of business will be to initiate a "flat tax" system.

Next order of business: free tee-shirts for everyone! The tee-shirts will be white and tight and will have the phrase "Awesome T-Shirt!" printed across the front. On the back of the tee-shirt there will be printed the phrase: "Seriously, where did you get that awesome tee-shirt?"

Oh man, I have to get home and start working on this tee-shirt and flat tax plan right away. Seriously--that tee-shirt is so awesome--where did you get it? And can I buy one for my pet ferret? He loves tee-shirts about as much as he loves hacky-sacks and doobies.

Update: May 09, 2007

Here is a link to a page that has links to the presentation I'm giving for my general exam: This is that link.

Update: May 06, 2007:

To begin with I would like to apologize for using yet another Latin quotation in the header of my website; overdoing it with the Latin phrases can come across as pompous. I am not a big fan of pomp.

The quotation "Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat" translates to "Every (hour) wounds, the last kills." This quotation is typically found inscribed on sundials. Indeed, this quotation is particularly apt if one happens to have died by being impaled on a gnomon.

ROTFLMFAO.

Word.

Update: May 03, 2007:

Today is the happiest day of my entire life because today is the day that The Stranger published my letter to the editor.

I like writing letters to editors about my cat. Why is it that nobody cares if you de-claw your cat but everyone shits a brick when you de-paw your cat? My cat is going to get new paws made out of solid oak--Beautiful polished and shiny oak paws!--fine kiln-dried oak of the utmost quality. Like Corinthian leather, but oak.

Update: May 01, 2007:

All chaps are "assless" chaps!

Seriously, do you even know what chaps are? The phrase "assless chaps" is completely redundant. Just say, "chaps." JUST SAY, "CHAPS!" Oh my god, I think I burst a blood vessel in my brain due to my extreme rage over the use of the phrase "assless chaps." I'm so angry right now. Really, I am. My rage is so eXtreme that it should be bungee-jumping off a frozen waterfall of Mountain Dew Code Red. Or some shit like that.

Update: April 25, 2007:

Q: Do you know how to say "nosegay" in pig-latin?

A: "Osegay-nay."

That's the funniest thing anyone has ever said in the history of the universe.

Update: April 24, 2007:

My cable telvision keeps trying to sell me cable television.

Update: April 22, 2007 (Sunday):

That Italian proverb in the header [in the version of this site from April 22, 2007 which reads: "chi po, non vo; chi vo, non po. chi sa, non fa; chi fa, non sa. E cosi male il mondo va."] roughly translates to: "He who can, don't wanna; he who wanna, can't. He who knows, won't do; he who does, don't know. And so, badly the world goes."

Speaking of Italian proverbs... Today I sat down alone at IHOP (The International House of Pancakes). Alone, I did eat a large plateful of 125 percent of my recommended daily allowence of sodium. As I ate I recalled the proverb: "Chi mangia solo, crepa solo." He who eats alone, dies alone. Then again, everyone dies alone. Was it because I was seated in an "International House" that I was thinking of Italian proverbs?

Sunday afternoons at IHOP remind me of Lord of The Flys; I have never seen a manager on Sunday, and the cooks and waitstaff seem perpetually on the verge of complete mental breakdowns. For example, this particular Sunday when I entered the (international) house, I nearly ran into the cook who was rushing past me out the door.

"No cook today?" I asked when the waiter/host/busboy finally got around to seating me.

"No," he said in a quivering voice. "He'll be back, he's just smoking a cigarette because he's mad at the morning cooks."

Poor evening cook, I hope he doesn't take it out on my food. I take no solice in the proverb: "Quanti stronzi si vede in un piato di merda." How many turds do you see in a plate of shit? The waiter took my order, and turned to face the kitchen. "In bocca al lupo!" I called after him as he walked slowly away.

So, here we are: I'm eating alone, but happily so; I'm thankful that I am not a part of the food-service industry. I'm sitting down eating my food. I'm quite happy. And then--what do you know?--there is this girl.

"Cherchez la femme." (that's not an Italian proverb--I've just been watching too much film-noir.)

Yeah. There is this girl; not a girl in the restaurant, just one that I've been wondering about a little. There is this girl. This dame. This skirt. This broad. Chick. Doll. Dollface. Bird. Boid. Duck--No, not duck--Moose. Mouse. Rabbit. Squirrel. Tree. Leaf. Hand. Mouth. Tongue. Spit. Wet. Pussy. Cat. Crow. Armadillo. Dillo. Lo. Lo. Solo. So. So, yeah. There is this girl;

One week she wants me, then next week she don't. Why? I'm not exactly sure, but I have my suspicions. It's a bit confusing.

Most women, of course, fall somewhere in between Dante's Beatrice and Dante's Satana (Il Diavolo, or rather, La Diavolessa). But regardless, they all seem to like it when you quote his sonnets: "Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare la donna mia..." So kind and so fair my lady appears to be... blah blah blah.

That's right, girls, I've got two thumbs AND I quote poetry--Italian poetry: "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate." Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

Cheers.

Update: April 15, 2007:

Of Death and Ducks.

We now continue with our usual discussion--and in our usual sanguine manner--of death and ducks, of nothingness and circus bears. As usual, we persist in our delibrate confusion of the horrifying and the hilarious:

When I bent down to pick up the dead duck off the road I grabbed for its throat as best I could in the mixed-up light and darkness--night mingling with the car's headlights. I didn't want to cradle the thing like a baby because I didn't want duck guts on my hands, so instead I grabbed for the neck. The duck was a little heavy and I remember thinking, "What if the head pops off?" I could feel duck throat beneath the soft feathers. The down was surprisingly soft. I lifted the dead duck up by the throat and his beak opened up a bit as if he had some famous last words which needed uttering. Needless to say, the duck did not make an utterance; even if he was a talking duck, he was a dead talking duck.

There were no circus bears that evening. No nothingness neither.

Later that night I received a phone call regarding the loud girls and the quiet ones too. No, I didn't know. Yes, I'm tired. Furthermore, the phone call mentioned a "sit-down restaurant" called Denny's. It is at this point that pancakes enter the story, and at this point that the role of pancakes ends. There will be no further mention of pancakes.

Later still in the night I fell asleep and I received a dream regarding an unknown girl who wanted advice. She was writing in code and I distinctly remember my dream-self stating, "The square root of 500 is approximately 20."

Because I was asleep at the time of the dream, I cannot be absolutely sure that there were no circus bears--nor no nothingness--in the room at the time.

Cheers.

Update: April 13, 2007:

I had a conversation at the College Inn last night. I was there a little longer than I had planned. The conversation was between myself (who will be denoted in the transcription of the conversation as 'AS') and three other gentlemen (who will be denoted as 'X1', 'X2' and 'X3' to protect their identities). Note that 'X3' is rather strangely silent throughout the whole discussion up until the very end. We choose to jump straight into the transcription of this conversation mid-sentence as AS speaks:

AS: ...so why are you lying to me?!

X1: Ok.

X2: That's not funny.

AS: It's not supposed to be that funny. Maybe I told it wrong. Let me try again.

X2: No. Don't.

X1: We got it.

AS: Let me try again. It's like... These two rival business men are waiting for the train at a trainstation in Warsaw and... Hold on.

X1: We got it. You don't need to tell the joke again.

X2: Don't.

AS: Wait a sec... And... And the one says to the other--Oh, I got it now!--The one says to the other, "Where are you headed?"

X1: Okay.

X2: Okay.

AS: Oh, Yes! Yes, I got it now. Let me start from the begining.

X1: No!

X2: Just tell it.

AS: Okay. Here it is... There are these two *RIVAL* business men in Poland and they are waiting at the trainstation together for a train. And so... And... The one of them says to the other, "Where are you headed today?" And then the *OTHER ONE* says, "I'm headed to Minsk." So then--Hold on, I can do this!--So then the *FIRST ONE* says, "You're only telling me that you're going to MINSK because you want me to think that you're going to PINSK, but I happen to know for a fact that you ARE going to Minsk. So why are you lying to me?"

X1: Okay.

X2: Okay, we got it.

AS: So it's not really that funny. But, the other one wasn't lying to the first one, so it's sort of funny, right.

X1: Yeah, we got it.

X2: Yeah.

X3: I wonder what piss tastes like!

Update: April 12, 2007

I just realized something: no one uses the slang "ginny" to mean "drunk off gin" anymore. What the hell? That term was all the rage in France in '05 (1905, that is). Whatever. I'm going to keep on using it. I don't care. Screw all of you.

Update: April 12, 2007

I wish I was in love with a girl named Jenny. Then, because we two are so much in love, I would throw her a party--a birthday party! Her birthday is coming up soon, after all. I would organize a bar-hopping birthday bash for my love and I would post fliers that read, "Get Ginny With Jenny!"

Actually, that is the whole reason I wish I was in love with Jenny: those hilarious fliers. All relationships have to be based on something tangible, and for me and Jenny that "something" is cute birthday fliers. And tang. Not Tang.

But I'm not in love with Jenny; I don't even like her; I don't even know a Jenny.

Update: April 09, 2007:

Hmm... not much today, folks. How about a group theory epigram:

Don't cosset your cosets.

Update: April 02, 2007:

Monkey-Scratch Fever!!!

Today as I was walking to school along 40th I noticed a great to-do all along the street by the architecture building. I would go as far as to characterize the to-do as perhaps even a brouhaha. Yes, I said it: "a brouhaha."

So, I noticed a brouhaha. That much is clear.

The brouhaha consisted mainly of a bunch of news vans and a gaggle of police vehicles and a pride of monkey-wranglers. You can tell that someone is a monkey-wrangler by the neon yellow jacket that they must wear because neon yellow is a very soothing color according to angry monkeys.

More precisely, "gazing at a neon yellow jacket" was voted the number-one most soothing activity among monkeys aged 14 to 36 in a recent USA Today Poll regarding "Soothing Things For Monkeys To Do." What was the number-two most soothing activity? Flinging feces, of course.

Ain't no party like a monkey-feces-party 'cuz a monkey-feces-party don't stop, yo!

But I digress... You see, there was quite a to-do outside the architecture building today because from down deep within the dark and dank sub-basement of the building one of the captive monkeys had escaped from his cage. ("Why do they keep monkeys in cages beneath the architecture building," you ask? That's a good question. I can answer that question with another question: "Why are you so stupid?")

Then--like a flash--this uncaged monkey bolted upstairs from the basement and proceeded to scratch an undergraduate student (probably a hot chick) on the butt with his monkey-claw.

And everybody knows what happens when you get a butt-scratch from a monkey-claw... Monkey-Scratch Fever! Check it and see; I've got a fever of one hundred and three.

Anyways, they had to evacuate the building due to The Monkey-Scratch Fever. After the evacuation, I had a friend (who shall remain nameless) take my picture with one of the brave monkey-wranglers outside the Architechture building. (Note the neon yellow jacket.)

So, what have we learned from this monkey-scratch brouhaha? Simply this: We need stronger locks on our monkey cages! To quote the great prison warden Samuel Norton: "When it comes to monkeys, the taxpayer's money is best spent on more walls, more bars, and more guards."

Actually, the whole story about monkeys was a lie; it wasn't Monkey-Scratch Fever at all that caused the brouhaha. Rather, it was a murder-suicide.

Update: Mar 26, 2007:

Micah put his pictures from our snowshoe/ski trip to Exit 52 online here. My pictures are here.

Update: Date Unknown: Drunk, probably:

I'm morally opposed to any word that is 75 percent made up of the letter 'e'.

For example: "epee."

Update: March 14, 2007:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Update: Also on March 09, 2007:

Some anonymous joker took it upon himself (or herself) to deface one of the fliers which was posted in the physics department elevator and which was serving the very important purpose of announcing the course "Scientific Writing: Astro 482" for Astro and Physics Majors.

For shame, sir (or madam)! For. Shame. You are definitely not me.

Of course, I had to scan a copy of the flier and place it here on my website for you to see.

But not sideways. Only up and down and up and down.

And up and down.

Update: Mar 09, 2007:

Here's a link to a very preliminary/crappy website template for the condensed matter journal club. The superfluids and hydrodynamics links are sort of filled out.

P.S. The CMJC website looks a lot like the "Chalkboard Club" website, but that is only because I totally stole their html source. Mwa haw haw.

Update: Mar 06, 2007:

I remember back, before the war, when we traveled from England across the channel to France. I looked back once, from Calais, and saw the white cliffs of Dover, far off, scars cut across the horizon.

Then we became two doves--a boy and a girl--bumping across the dirt roads, stuck together in the front seat of a coughing choking sputtering beast. From Cologne to Bonn, we became two great hawks soaring down the autobahn with wind in our faces and cool white wine on our lips.

And when the wine ran out, I drank whiskey, and you drank sweet pink drinks down in the bars, down the stairs, down the street from our downtrodden hotel room near the corner of Schellingstrasse and Ludwigstrasse.

And then there was Oktoberfest and we drank beer and I drank whiskey and you drank sweet blue drinks out of tall thin cups. You took sips and laughed and crossed your legs and uncrossed your legs and posed for the boys on your bar stool in your new dress.

Did I say I drank whiskey? Did I say this was before the war? What happened? What awful thing did you finally do--Or, was it me? Either way, we have not talked in over seventy years and I can not say that I have ever forgiven you--Or is it you who have not forgiven me?

Update: Mar 05, 2007:

Ah, Dais-Man (pronounced "Dice-Man")--Remember the Dais-Man, that old blind dog?

Not only do I remember him, but I had the luck of stumbling upon his newly-minted thesis in the library late this evening. Before continuing on about Dais-man's thesis, let me refresh your memory about the man himself.

A quick websearch for the Dais-man's current whereabouts turned up only this weak link. Sigh.

His old website seems to have slipped into the abyss--Gone are his pictures and photographs (ranging from flowers to paralyzed faces) which so embodied the Zeitgeist of his fleeting years (well, not really "fleeting" but "less than ten, probably") here at our fair University.

Perhaps he was best known for his so-called "rant" (really, it was more of a magnificent ode than a rant) on the subject of "Kittel." For the sake of future generations I have repeated this ode in it's entirety below:

Someone in this department took my Kittel "Thermal Physics"
out of my office without my permission. If it is you,
you should return it to myself. I will accept your
apology, but will accept no excuse. You may place the
book in my mailbox anonymously. In this case, you should
live with the disgraceful shame till your soul perishes
to scorching hell. What if you don't return the book to
me at all? Such a puny asshole is not in my sight.
                                                                                
All my books are my best friends and they uniquely exist
in this world because I studied them, not other copies.
                                                                                
Take immediate action according to your conscience.

Ah, such a puny asshole is not in my sight, indeed.

But, I digress, my purpose here is to share with you some choice excerpts from the thesis of the Dais-man. So let's get to it:

He starts off strong, in the very first paragraph, with some great stuff:

...Once, in the lovely city of San Francisco that bears the
mystic fog, I was asked why, then, not the gauge group 
SU(Infinity)? This is a true story though I've read somewhere
a similar anecdote.
   Well, anyway, the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is believed
to describe the dynamics of quarks and gluons...

I'm sure there is more great stuff along these lines throughout the entire thesis, but I chose to skip along to the very last two sentences of the thesis:

Finally, let me add that scientists are the blind dogs, so who 
knows? The QCD dual might be discovered and describe hadron
masses in calculable ways.

Oh, but we are not done yet. Don't forget that at the very very end of one's thesis must come one's "Vita." Dais-man's Vita was short and to the point:

Yamada ain't got no "advanced degree" that is required 
to be listed here.

Goodnight, Dais-man, wherever you are.

Update: Feb 28, 2007:

If you're looking for my vortex notes they are here (ps) and here (pdf).

Update: Feb 24, 2007

Oh man, do you know who I feel really sorry for? Muslims who live in the South Pacific. Specifically, those Muslims who live on Oeno Island (part of the Pitcairn Islands). Unfortunately for them, they happen to live on the exact opposite side of the earth as Mecca. Thus--regardless of whether they are Flat-map Muslims (Muslims who believe that the direction of Mecca should be determined by a straight line on a Mercator projection) or a Great-circle Muslims (Muslims who believe that it is, of course, quite silly to use a Mercator projection map but that, rather, one should choose the direction along a great-circle, duh!)--they must have no idea of which direction to face while praying because the distance to Mecca is the same along any direction. Thus, they should spin in circles while praying and thus they get dizzy and fall down.

Of course, I personally believe that all Muslims should convert to Actual-Shortest-Distance-Islam and just pray in a direction of the line of the true shortest distance to Mecca. The troubles of the South Pacific Muslims would then be solved as they could all simply pray while facing the floor.

Update: Feb 20, 2007:

I was sitting at my desk this evening doing "work" and part of this "work" consisted of me making a plot with Mathematica (see below).

I don't know, but I keep on laughing whenever I look at it.

Update: Feb 20, 2007:

I came up with another Maxim to add to my list of "Maxims and Arrows" (cf. Jan 23 2006 update). Should I just give the Maxim, or shall I explain it? These things are often better left unexplained; the writer then appears to be a deep mystic rather than a shallow oaf. And further, with too much explaination the writer begins to sound like he is over-explaining the punch-line of a joke before telling the joke.

Anyways, I came up with this Maxim while I was waiting for an elevator and some girl was also waiting for the same elevator and she had pressed the "down" button previous to my pressing of the "up" button. But the "up" elevator came first. Thus:

Never debate elevator logic with an elevator.

Update: Feb 19, 2007:

Aw, shit! Nobody told me that today was a holiday. So here I am at work.

And aw, double-shit; the reason I'm updating my website from work is because the free wifi at my house has been secured. As Elvis would say, "Ding-Dang!"

      "What are we doing here, Jack?"
      "We're digging, kid. Keep digging."
      "But, it's so dark. I can't see. I can't see what I'm digging." 
      "Keep digging."
      "What are we digging for?"
      "Treasure, kid. Keep digging."
      "Treasure? There's treasure underneath all this black dirt?"
      "Maybe. That's why we're digging. To find out. Get it? You put your 
shovel down in the dirt and then you lift your shovel up. And when the shovel 
comes up, some of the black dirt comes up with it. You see? And then you 
throw that dirt over to the left or to the right. That way the black 
dirt--little by little--gets replaced by an emptiness. That emptiness is 
called a hole: A place where there's no dirt, see? When the hole gets deep 
enough then we check to see whether or not there is treasure at the bottom."
      "What if there's no treasure at the bottom?"
      "Then that hole is called a grave: a deep hole in the dirt with no 
treasure at the bottom."
      "How long have we been digging, Jack?"
      "A long time."
      "How long do we keep digging?"
      "Either until we're dead, or until we strike treasure... But, 
actually--oh, never mind."
      "But, what?"
      "Well, actually, there is no treasure."
      "Aw, shit."
      "You said it, kid."

Update: Feb 10, 2007:

Today: An old Joke for you:

   Two elderly couples are having dinner together. As the wives
clear the table and move into the kitchen the men continue
talking. "Joe," says one, "last night we went out to a terrific 
new restaurant. You've got to try it."
   "Sure," says the other. "What's it called?"
   "Um--wait a minute--what's that red flower you give to 
someone you love?"
   "A carnation?"
   "No. No. The other one."
   "A poppy?"
   "No. No. You know, it's red and has thorns?"
   "You mean a rose?"
   "Yes, that's it!" Then, turning towards the kitchen, he yells,
"Rose! What's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?"

Update: Feb 06, 2007:

More regarding the hated Trader Joe's:

I went shopping at Trader Joe's the other day and after picking out a number of different food items I made my way up to the check-out counter. The store was not very busy and I had no trouble finding a check-out counter with no line whatsoever. Behind the register there was, of course, a check-out girl--blonde hair, not ugly, not pretty. I put my shopping basket down next to the register and I waited in silence as the girl rung up my items. Then (as I'm sure all Joe's employees are trained to do) the girl broke the surrounding silence with a cheerful comment.

"Oh, I really love these muffins!" Her enthusiastic cheer was directed at my six-pack of Trader Joe's Lemon Marionberry Muffins; they really are quite good; they are one of the remarkably few good foods that one can buy at the god-awful Trader Joe's.

"Oh, yeah, I like them too."

"I sometimes bribe my roommates with them." She continued, "I can get them to do the dishes by giving them muffins."

"I don't think that trick would work with my roommate."

"Why not?"

"Because my roommate is a cat." I deadpanned. I did not get an immediate response from the girl with respect to my amusing statement of truth.

"Oh. Ha ha." She finally said, but her 'ha ha' rang false.

"I think my cat is trying to kill me." I said.

"What?"

"I think the Lolster will poison me."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing--Say, why don't you open up that package and try a muffin?" Goodness, I am such a generous person. She certainly wouldn't turn down my kind offer of a free Lemon Marionberry Muffin, would she?

"Oh, no thanks." She said, but I could tell she wanted one.

"But, you just said that you loved these muffins."

"Not right now. No thanks."

"Eat one of my fucking muffins."

"Three Bells!"

The End

Update: Feb 04, 2007:

Here's some really really obscure Led Zeppelin humor for you: Have a look at this match-making questionnaire that Robert Plant made up.

Update: Feb 3, 2007:

When I woke up today, I was very surprised to find a pizza in my fridge (I, as a normal person, often use the abbreviated version of the word refrigerator, but it actually doesn't save me any time because whenever I use that abbreviation I always also include this rather long and pointless parenthetical explaination.)

Ah ha! The pizza is topped with mushrooms and green peppers! Interesting. This is good evidence that it was, in fact, yours truly who ordered the above-mentioned pizza. But when? And why? We may never know.

It is a cold and rainy Saturday outside, but inside it is a warm dry Sunday.

There is a thin dividing line between my Saturday and my Sunday; it is called "the bottom of my front door" and along this line I have placed a mat. This mat is awesome.

I bought that sweet-ass mat on amazon-dot-com, and it was shipped to me in a box. Lolster loves that box so much that she refuses to leave it, not even to scratch on her scratching post.

In other random-picture related news, I borrowed a book from one of our department's most esteemed Wolf-Prize-winning professors. Strangely, before loaning the book to me he wrote his name on it three times.

That is all.

Update: Jan 29, 2007:

I would like to choose a fitting name for my house. Something quaint, you know. Like... well, I don't know; I haven't come up with anything good yet.

I would also like to bury a "treasure" in the backyard. Nothing of truly great value, of course. Just a little something that could remain hidden for five or ten years and then be discovered.

Like the house-naming project, the treasure project too remains unfinished for two reasons:

1. It is cold out and the ground, I suspect, is hard to dig; 2. I'm not sure exactly what I would say to the other people who live in my house if they were to come out back and find me digging a hole in our yard. What could I say, really? I would have to lie, and the lie would surely come out badly: "I'm burying a body!" Or something like that.

Maybe the name could be "treasure-out-back acres."

Or "quaintington place."

Update: Jan 23, 2007:

Maxims and Arrows:

There is no point to be made which cannot be made entirely in analogy with pancakes.

There are no grand old sayings which cannot be greatly improved apon by random insertions of the word "pancake" or "pancakes."

Fresh hot creamy buttermilk cumulus stratus pancakus.

To this day, I still have not received my mail-order pancakes which I requested some time ago.

Such a pancake could arrive in a plain brown paper wrapper.

Such a pancake could arrive in an envelope marked "Top Secret."

Such a clandestine pancake would indeed be "syrup-titious."

We may as well destroy the whole of the world, but similarly we may as well just eat those pancakes.

Toast?! Really? Toast? I mean, really, how can you even--Toast?!

Update: Jan 22, 2007:

I was just thinking about things that I like and things that I hate, and I'm so happy to have been able to--on the spot--come up with a bunch of things that I like but hardly any things that I hate. This is good. Also, I have been thinking that I would like to do some gardening. This is probably the wrong time of year to be motivated as a garden cultivator, but perhaps the feeling will stick with me until spring. I also want to take a nice hike; I would like to hike through the cool green mountain trails, past boulders and evergreens and steps made of downed trees. Bears and grass and wild flowers live there along the trail and I will say hello to them when I meet them. Hopefully, there will be beautiful women too--easy ones.

Now, a few things I like:

My new favorite bar (Sorry "The Monkey Pub", you shouldn't have been so crowded that Friday--you and I both know it.) is "Kate's Pub". I kinda like that place a whole lot now.

My new favorite voice-mail message is my new voice-mail message. You really got to listen to the whole thing, the last bit is better than the first bit, but I would say this is one of my favorite voice-mail messages ever. I liked it so much that I video taped myself listening to my message and laughing, and then when I watch the video I laugh at that too. I can feel an infinite regression coming on.

I like trail mix and beer.

Here's what I hate:

I hate fucking "Trader Joe's". I hate it and the only reason I shop there is because it is one and a half blocks from my house. How can you not have cheese dip? What. The. Fuck. Or a giant bag of pistachios--why don't you sell that?! Fuck you, Trader Joe's. Fuck. You.

I talked to The Lolster (my kitten) and she hates Trader Joe's too. I told her that they don't sell cat food there, but that might be a lie.

That's the only thing I can think of that I hate.

Update: Jan 16, 2007:

I once dated a girl who made me sandwiches. Specifically, she worked at a sandwich shop which I would stop at everyday before work. Even after we broke up I still stopped at that sandwich shop to buy sandwiches from her. I think she spit in my food. But I would still eat it, not as some sort of penance, but rather because I liked the taste of her spit.

Many years later I ran over her cat with a steamroller.

Don't cry, your kitty is in a better place now. A two-dimensional place.

I now need only two real coordinates to describe your kitty.

Update: Jan 13, 2007:

I have seven refrigerator magnets on my fridge (I, as a normal person, often use the abbreviated version of the word refrigerator, but it actually doesn't save me any time because whenever I use that abbreviation I always also include this rather long and pointless parenthetical explaination.) and six of the magnets are from Wing Zone (25 flavors of buffalo wings!) but there is one odd-ball magnet which is not from Wing Zone (VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.WINGZONE.COM!) and I don't know how it got there.

Oh--by the way--from now on I will call the refrigerator magnets "stickers" instead of magnets. And, yes, I know what a sticker is, and I know that it is not the same thing as a refrigerator magnet. But--the thing is--whenever I think about shouting at my refrigerator magnets I always want to call them "stickers" instead of magnets, so I'm going to just call them stickers since I plan on shouting at that stupid odd-ball sticker later on.

So, this one sticker on my fridge (I, as a normal person, often use the abbreviated version of the word refrigerator, but it actually doesn't save me any time because whenever I use that abbreviation I always also include this rather long and pointless parenthetical explaination.) isn't from Wing Zone (We Deliver!) it is just a big stupid blue sticker that has the imperative "Smile!" written on it in big white letters. I hate it when my stupid fascist sticker tries to tell me what to do. I'll kill you, sticker! I'll fucking kill you!

So, the other thing that I was thinking about is that I want to buy a (polar) bear skin rug. (No, nerd, I don't mean a bear skin rug that runs from zero to pi. I mean a bear skin rug that was made out of a cold white bear.) And then, after I buy the rug, I want to throw it down on the floor and just lounge on it all day. That will be so awesome that I might not even have to kill my stupid fascist blue refrigerator sticker.

That is all.

P.S. Someone mentioned to me recently that I might do well to add a comments section to my website. But--you know what?--I just realized that I already have a section of my website in which one can suggest a new middle name for my cat, so I can also use that as my comments section. Thus, you may now go to the new comments section and make a comment.

Update: January 02, 2007:

I can't stop using semi-colons; I really want to stop.

I just can't.

Shut up; you shut up.

Update: January 01, 2007:

Nothing happened on New Year's Eve, especially to the people who don't want me to say what they did on New Year's; those people REALLY didn't do anything. Seriously.

Shut up.

Update: December 17, 2006:

The Cup-Girl and The Cupboards.

by Adam Sorini

A door. An old wooden door that used to have a window. Long ago the window was knocked out and covered by plywood, then the whole mess was painted off-white. Or maybe it was painted white, but grew off-white via time and cigarette smoke. This door is not spectacular in any way; it's the same as any other old door, except that it happens to be located in my apartment, exactly two rooms away from my bedroom where I am currently asleep.

The door vibrates noticeably, resonating with a crisp "knocking" sound; it goes like this, "Knock!" Or maybe even, "Bang! Bang! Bang!"

"What is that banging noise?" I think to myself as I roll out of bed and wrap myself in my quilt.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" says the door, again. Jesus Christ-on-the-cross, what kind of degenerate would be banging on my door at the ungodly hour of--I check the clock on my nightstand--eleven in the morning!?

Still half asleep, I shuffle through my apartment, past the ancient piles of clothes, past the nearly invisible (but never quite gone) cat puke stain on the carpet, and finally I am standing in front of my off-white door.

"Click, click," says the lock as I turn it.

"Jingle, jingle," says the chain as I unlatch it. And then I open up my home to the cold December air. There is a girl standing outside with an empty measuring cup, and she is smiling at me. Her smile is quite large.

"Hi, I'm your new neighbor," says the girl with the cup. "I was wondering if I could borrow a cup of sugar?"

"Do people still do that?" I ask.

"What?" she replies.

"Oh, nothing--give me that cup." I grab the measuring cup from Cup-Girl and slam my door. The door says, "SLAM!" After a few minutes of rummaging around in my apartment I open the door again and I see Cup-Girl standing there, exactly as I left her. Actually, her smile is not quite as large as it once was.

I thrust the filled measuring cup towards her and say, "Here!"

She looks confused.

"Umm... this is flour," she says.

"Oh god! Well, why don't you just come in and find the sugar yourself. I'm in no state to differentiate between baking ingredients."

Cup-girl cautiously enters my apartment and tip-toes past the piles of wadded-up paper (broken formulae, wrecked poems, totalled prose) and lumps of dirty socks on the floor. She looks like she is holding her breath.

"Say... Are you holding your breath?"

"NO," she gasps. Then she sets to opening up all the cupboards in my kitchen and hunting down the elusive sugar. She reaches way up, standing on her tippy-toes, and stretches for the top shelves. I watch her as she works [read: I watch her ass as she works] and I notice that this Cup-Girl is rather comely. Her hair is long and blonde and was recently washed; it is still damp. As she reaches up, up, up to the top-most tippy-top of the cupboard, her tee-shirt slides up, up, up, and exposes her soft white belly. "Like an alligator," I think to myself. "Or is it a crocodile?"

"You're like a crocodile with tits," I mumble quietly.

"What? I didn't hear what you said."

"Oh, nothing."

Now Cup-Girl is down on her hands and knees in my kitchen searching through the bottom-most shelves of my cupboards. I really find her quite fetching. Furthermore, I think she has almost found the sugar.

"Ah ha, here it is!" she exclaims.

"Oh, good for you," I say encouragingly.

"But--wait a second!--what is that, back there?!" she cries.

"What is what?!" I'm really not sure what she could have found in the back of my bottom-most cupboard that would cause her to cry out in such a manner. My quilt and I rush over to the kitchen. I get down on my hands and knees next to my fetching comely Cup-Girl and I peer into the darkness of my bottom-most cupboard. What I see is strange indeed. "Looks like some kind of earthen tunnel," I explain. "I'm not sure how I could have lived here for 5 years without ever noticing that."

"Yes," she agrees. "It looks like something out of a jail-break movie; an earthen tunnel just big enough for a person to crawl through. Where does it go?"

"I don't know, I can't see the end of it. It looks like it just stretches on and on forever."

Indeed, the tunnel was very dark, and I could not see to the end of it. As I leaned in very close to the mouth of the tunnel I felt a warm breeze flowing out of it. I also smelled the very faint scent of magnolia.

"What should we do?" asked Cup-Girl.

"Well, I guess we should go into the tunnel."

"You first."

"Okay." I said, as I started wriggling down through the tunnel on my belly. "Are you coming?"

"Yes, I'm right behind you."

The End

...

"But--wait a second--what is that, back there!?" she cries.

"What is what!?"

"That. Back there. It looks like an enormous tupper-ware container, big enough for a person to fit in."

"It actually looks almost big enough for two."

"Let's seal ourselves inside for one hundred years," she says.

"Yes. Yes." I reply, as we both crawl into the giant tupperware. The container turns out to be the perfect size for two people curled up next to each other. "We, will remain fresh and crisp forever," I note.

"Yes. Indeed," she agrees. "Um... what's that poking me."

"Oh, nothing."

The End

Update: December 14, 2006:

A crust of pie,
On sat a fly.
One hundred eyes,
In one day dies.

A crusty pion!
Saturn fly on!
Hyundai hybrid!
Sunday drive-ed!

Update: December 06, 2006:

Today: A conspiracy theory of such magnitude as to rival even my theory of the single severed butt-cheek.

My only excursion into great mystery (outside of physics) this week came apon me suddenly--I was in the midst of muddling through Chapter XX of Messiah's "Quantum Mechanics." After reading through the first five sections (which Messiah himself describes as "Black, but comely") which touch on such topics as: Gamma-Five, Dirac-Parity, Pauli-Theory (we will learn more about the so-called "Pauli-Theory" later), Central-Potentials, etc, (and just before arriving at a section discussing "Zitterbewegung") we arrive at a section called "Negative Energy Solutions and Positron Theory."

This section begins with the cryptic quotation: "&Theta&alpha&lambda&alpha&sigma&sigma&alpha! &Theta&alpha&lambda&alpha&sigma&sigma&alpha!"

This quotation transliterates to Latin letters as: "Thalassa! Thalassa!"

Thus our mystery begins. And thus we digress into something completly different.

In the summer of 1979 a youth street-gang from New York (known as The Warriors) begins a long march back from the Bronx (through hostle territory) to their Coney Island turf. This unfortunate gang of "Warriors" has just lost their leader, or "War Chief" (he was beaten to death by the Grammercy "Riffs"). Another gang member, named Ajax, will soon be lost as well... And now, onto something completely different.

Circa 400 B.C.E., a Greek army (known as "The 10,000") is trapped "up country." Although they have just won a great battle, they have also just lost their great king (Cyrus "The Great"). A new leader (and part-time author) named Xenophon rallies the troops to begin the long march back (through hostile turf) to the Black Sea. The Sea! The Sea!

"The Sea! The Sea!" is a horrible novel written by Iris Murdoch.

The Pauli-theory (which can be derived from the Dirac theory) treats electrons as two-component "spinors." These spinors are acted apon by matrices known as "Pauli matrices" and the Pauli matrices are typically represented by the Greek letter "sigma."

The Latin transliteration of the Greek letter "sigma" (&sigma) is the letter "s." The Latin transliteration of the Greek letter "tau" (&tau) is the letter "t." Often, in physics, the Greek letter "tau" is used to represent the "Pauli matrices" too; "tau" is the second most common choice of Greek letter used to represent the Pauli matrices, the first most common choice being "sigma."

"Thalassa! Thalassa!" reads the quotation of Messiah.

"Thalatta! Thalatta!" reads every other transliteration I can find of: "The Sea! The Sea!"

"Waaaarrrrriors... come out and plaaaaeaaay!" shouts David Patrick Kelly, taunting The Warriors as they approach the dark black sea of Coney Island in the dark black Brooklyn night.

Today at lunch I went down to the coffee shop in the physics building and I purchased a pasta salad; It was called "Athens Goddess Pasta Salad" and it cost me $3.49. And it had alotta olives in it.

So, let me now put all these pieces together for you: In trying to understand the quantum mechanics of single electrons Dr. Dirac wrote down an equation which reduces to Dr. Pauli's equation and further to Dr. Schrodinger's equation in certain limits. It is quite a nice equation, but it has a few "flaws." The equation introduces "spurious negative energy solutions" which Dirac was able to explain away by claiming that all the negative energy states are somehow already filled, and so we need not worry about them. This infinity of filled negative energy states is refered to as "The Dirac Sea!" The Sea! Thalassa! Thalatta!

When The 10,000 finally reached the Black Sea, they knew they were home and they shouted "The Sea! The Sea!" This is according to the historical account written by Xenophon and entitled "Anabasis." (Book IV, chapter 7)

When the Warriors finally reached Coney Island, and with it Brooklyn's very own sea (the Atlantic), they didn't say shit... but one of them did stab David Patrick Kelly in the wrist.

But still, is it "Thalassa" or "Thalatta?" Which do I shout?

"Thalatta" is Attic (as oppossed to the Doric "Thalassa") which was spoken in Athens and is the most similar of all the ancient Greek dialects to modern Greek; it's like the damn Italian that they teach you in Florence: high-hat Italian. I prefer the Doric.

I also prefer to write my Pauli matrices with "sigmas" rather than "taus."

"Thalassa! Thalassa!"

(As a final parenthetical comment, I would like to claim that the conceptual problem of that ridiculous Dirac Sea can be resolved, of course, as all the problems of one's life can be resolved, by repackaging them into a Quantum Field Theory... The only catch is that the Quantum Field Theory is interacting, and thus doesn't exist (Haag's Theorem)... On the other hand, non-interacting Quantum Field Theories are trivial... Triviality or Non-Existence, both are better than a Dirac Sea.)

Update: November 30, 2006:

Today: One new riddle, and some bad poetry--oh n-oetry!

Last night at the physics building, I was talking with some of the boys and I mentioned that I had a new riddle that I would like to test out on them.

"Yes, yes," said the boys. "We shall like to hear your riddle."

So, I told them, and they thought it was not too bad, and so, I will also post it on my website. But first, let me explain how I came apon this riddle.

It was late one night, and I was lying in bed on the verge of falling into a deep and troubled sleep. All through my head ran visions of Green's functions (retarded) of complex argument. I was thinking about the twin aspects of causality and analyticity, and I was wondering what great monsters lay beneath, in the depths of the lower half plane.

On the real axis there is a sign (not unlike those found on ancient maps of the oceans) warning travelers that none shall pass because "here be monsters."

Slowly my thoughts of meromorphic functions passed from Green's functions on to other functions with simple analytic properties and I began to think in particular of the function that makes up my riddle.

About this function I thought, "Hey, I know something interesting about this function." But then I thought, "No--wait, that can't be right." And then again, I thought, "But, it must be right."

I jumped out of bed and worked through three examples to help convince myself that my original thought was correct, and then I wrote down this riddle:

Consider the following meromorphic function of complex argument z:

This function has a lot (42 to be exact) of simple poles, and at each pole there is a different residue. What is the sum of all the residues?

Now here's the shitty poetry:

I got a girl with eyes.
With lips.
With legs.

And again, with eyes... with eyes;
You wrote, "with eyes" a hundred times before you wrote,
"With eyes, half sad, half green and wet; shimmering, shivering..."

Yellow daisy eyes.
Red rose eyes.
Black pupil eyes.
Green iris eyes?

And again, with lips; wet, red, pink, soft.
And again, with legs; bare, red, yellow, red again.

And--oh, did I mention?--A hot mother-fucking ass;
Hot sizzling fucking bacon ass. Ouch!
Ouch! Okay, I'll stop; that's not very romantic.

Romance is lying very still.
And kissing very softly.
And lying very softly to (or on?) one another.

All this while the lights of the city,
far off,
flash red, 
and yellow, 
and red again,
in the early morning, 
early winter,
bare trees,
empty streets. 
The End.

A shimmering pussy cat
struts across the street
of a city in the winter
where no animal has lived
for one hundred years.

A shivering alley cat
sits in the black dark where
they throw the dead flowers:
Roses, mostly, 
but they all smell like daisies.

Update: November 19, 2006:

It is the end of an era; I finally changed my voice-mail message. No longer will callers have to suffer through the sounds of me giggling while reading Kafka. Now, I have an even more nonsensical message in which I giggle almost continuously. I'm also reading snippets of the first chapter of Italo Calvino's "Marcovaldo." I mean, I'm not actually reading the story. I'm just reading the words of the story, in order... but not all the words.

In order to save you the trouble of actually calling me, I've transcribed my message here:

SPRING

1. Mushrooms in the city

The wind...
brings...
some mushrooms...
every morning.
This Marcovaldo... 
that Marcovaldo...
thus...
near the stop, in the sterile, uncrusted strip...
there were mushrooms, real mushrooms sprouting right in the heart of the city!

to Marcovaldo...
the darkness...
mushrooms...
underground...
six children...
eating mushrooms...
mushrooms.
Where are these mushrooms?

Marcovaldo's...
mushrooms...
fear...
mushrooms...
God help you if you breathe a word to anybody.

Marcovaldo was filled with...
mushrooms...
mushrooms...
--it was Saturday and...
mushrooms...
That night it rained...
"It's raining! It's raining!"...
moisted dust and fresh mold...
It was Sunday...

"Hoorah!"... 
"Papa!"
Michelino...
Amidigi...
mushrooms...
even bigger mushrooms, an unhoped for harvest.
anger...
fury... 
passion...
impulse...
umbrellas...

mushrooms...
Mushrooms are growing here by the street.
"Come along there's plenty for all!"
They all found plenty of mushrooms...
umbrellas...
stomach-pump...
mushrooms...
Marcovaldo and Amidigi had adjacent beds, they glared at each other.

Update: November 14, 2006:

Well, it certainly was a "pants-on morning" this morning, wasn't it? You know, a pants-on morning occurs the morning after you passed out before having a chance to take your pants off. Hence: "pants-on." Of course, the only way to recover from a pants-on morning is to jump straight out of bed, take your pants off, naked-walk over to your laundry basket, and put on your adult-sized pajamas-with-feet. Then you can have a "feet-pajama afternoon." You remember how when you were a kid your pajamas came with feet? Well, I have a personal tailor who tailored me up some adult-sized feet-pajamas.

My tailor killed seven flys with one blow.

I was in for one of the greatest feet-pajama afternoons of all time! I started out my afternoon with some chores: Brush the plant, water my cat, throw garbage in the washing machine--Wait!--Wait a moment; something doesn't make sense... I think I'm still dreaming because I don't even own feet-pajamas! I know this for a fact because the last time I took stock of everything I own I had a special inventory sheet printed up. This inventory sheet had two check-boxes next to everything in the world, one box marked "OWN" and one box marked "DON'T OWN." I distinctly remember that the box next to "feet-pajamas" was checked "DON'T OWN."

I must still be dreaming. Oh, these feet-pyjamas are so comfortable--I'm going to wake up as soon as I finish cutting these pancakes. The Once-ler wants pancakes.

Update: November 13, 2006:

Oh boy, this weekend I was playing poker and I made the most hilarious comment ever. It was so funny, had you been there you would have laughed and laughed. Unfortunately, I can't repeat this most hilarious joke here since it was not really very politically correct. But, trust me, you would have laughed your head off, you fucking racist.

The other thing I was thinking about this weekend was bananas: Now that I eat fruits and vegetables as part of a health lifestyle, I have come to realize what a pain-in-the-ass bananas are; they are green for about 5 days and then they are yellow from 3AM until 5AM and then they are brown.

We banana-eaters need to form a world-wide banana-consortium where we go around and help other banana-owners eat all their bananas before they turn brown. We can also help them move or drive them to the airport.

Finally, if we go over to somebody's house (either to help them move or drive them to the airport or eat bananas) and we find that they are not at home we should leave a note that says, "Came to eat bananas. Broke all your windows instead."

Update: Nov 04, 2006:

Everybody knows that old riddle about the bum and the cigarette butts. You know, the one were we are told that this genius bum has realized that he can make one whole cigarette out of seven cigarette butts. So, if he has collected 49 cigarette butts, how many cigarettes can he smoke? The answer, of course, is NOT seven; the answer is eight. He can make seven cigarettes initially, but after he smokes those seven cigarettes he will have seven more butts to use to make an eighth cigarette.

So, check this out. Suppose there is a quantum bum who also knows how to make cigarettes out of cigarette butts. The quantum bum only needs to collect SIX cigarette butts in order to smoke a cigarette since he can temporatily "borrow" a virtual cigarette butt, use that to finish the cigarette, and then when he is done smoking he can "repay" the debt with his smoked butt.

The only downside to all of this for the bum is that he has to smoke the cigarette really really fast. This is because the mass of the "borrowed" cigarette butt is roughly 100 milligrams and thus by the energy-time uncertainty principle the cigarette butt must be "returned" in less than about a hundredth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. That's a quick smoke.

Update: Oct 30, 2006:

Once apon a time, this one girl I know asked me to explain what "inelastic losses" are. And so I said something about kinetic energy loss and transfer of momentum. And also I gave an example about how billiard balls have almost perfectly elastic collisions, but, on the other hand, collisions between lumps of clay are almost perfectly inelastic.

But, you know, a picture really is worth a thousand words in this regard. So, with that in mind, I asked one of the five-year-olds (his name is Billy) who I hang out with at day-care to draw a picture for me of inelastic collisions between electrons and atoms. Here is the picture that Billy (who happens to like dogs) drew.

Also, I think that Billy's mommy has an extra foot or something growing out of her kneecap... And her hair is totally fucked up.

Update: Oct 23, 2006:

As for me, I would think that the only thing funnier than a bird smoking a cigarette is a cowboy who flys through the air and goes to the bathroom on people's heads. But, if this cowboy happens to poop on you, don't worry; it just means that you will have good luck with your ranching prospects in the future... Unless, of course, you also simultaniously break a mirror in which case the two effects will cancel out.

But, don't be sad; you can always cheer yourself up by attending a meeting of AAA (not the automobile club, but rather the Avian Alcoholics Anonymous) where you are bound to run into many birds smoking cigarettes.

Update: Oct 20, 2006:

Hey. Our paper [Sorini et al., Phys. Rev. B 74, 165111 (2006)] was published online today, and the print version is due out sometime this month. Yay.

If you download the PDF you will notice that our acronym for "Ab-initio Data Model" is "ADM", which was a change from the original acronym which I proposed;
the original was "ADaM."

Update: Oct 15, 2006:

Black black boots:

With every step I took further into the swamp, my boots sunk deeper and deeper into the mud and the muck. And as I pulled my hiking boots out of the wet mud there was a sloppy sucking sound; it was a sound not unlike the sound of hiking boots being pulled out of wet mud.

The swamp grew dark and gray as the sun set. And the color of the mud was the color of my boots. And the waters of the swamp were deep and dark, dark like the darkness of swamp water at sunset.

I kept walking into the swamp in the darkness, in the black swamp-water darkness.

Now my boots were the color of the mud and the mud was the color of the swamp and the swamp was the color of the swamp water and the water was black and the mud was black and my boots were black and all the coal I was carrying around in my backpack was black, and all of the ravens that must be circling overhead were black and black and black and black wings and black beaks and black black boots.

Update: Oct 12, 2006:

So, I wrote a short story a little while ago, and I finally got around to typing it up on my typewriter. Then I scanned the type-written pages into my computer and printed them out on my laser-printer. And then I traced the printed pages onto tracing paper and then etched the traced letters onto a block of stone. Finally, I smushed the stone tablets into my auto-PDF-making machine to create this pdf file.

Adam, out.

Update: Oct 7, 2006:

Yesterday I went to the Health Center to have a little chat with the doctor about my blood pressure. All in all, it was fairly uneventful--except for one awesome thing: The doctor gave me an old-school blood pressure informational pamphlet which contained this amazing picture!

Also, I have been getting my blood pressure taken by some nurses over the course of the past few months and so I made this blurry graph of my blood-pressure versus time. Also plotted are a few common reference blood pressures. As you can see from the graph, there is a good chance that I am a either a robot from the future, or possibly a robot from the past. But, either way, I am most likely a good-natured and benevolent robot and not an ultimate robot killing machine. (An ultimate robot killing machine is a just the same as a normal robot, but it is pushing around a wood-chipper).

Update: Oct 4, 2006:

Oh lord, the students are back. They're back, baby! And you know what that means... Thongs, thongs, thongs... and also, sexual harrasment workshops for all of the incoming teaching assistants. I was first reminded of this fact when I noticed all of the nicely thonged ass cracks walking around campus, and also because--just the other day--I happened to catch a glimpse of our very own university ombudsman-woman stalking her hunched back around the physics building.

So, I thought, mostly for the sake of the new incoming TAs, I should write about a little hypothetical situation that might just come up during the course of teaching a lab course for undergraduates. I have also included in this write-up the BEST way to deal with this type of situation. Here's it:

Here's what you do:

You should discreetly walk over to the young lady (or tramp--I mean, slut) and whisper in her ear, "The next time you come to lab I don't want you to wear any underwear at all." Then you go on to explain, "You see, when I see your thong sticking out of your ass-crack like that, I am really quite tempted to slide my number 2 pencil in there with it." (Although this action is considered, in many countries, to be nothing more than a formal greeting--on par with a bow or a curtsy--some people in this university community might construe these actions as being sexual harrassment.)

Then she (or he) will say to you, "Oh, thank you teacher. What an excellent idea." Then she will probably chew softly on the tip of her pencil and bat her eyelashes. Then she will say, "By the way, my grade in this course is quite awful. Is there anything--anything at all--that I could possibly do for a little extra credit?"

At this point you should reply, "Hmm, well I think that I could envision working one on one with you on a certain special project that involves fluid dynamics. For example, the specific problem of the injection of warm viscous fluids into thermal cavities."

And then she will say, "Oh, you mean like how when I suck my coffee through a straw it shoots right down my throat?"

And then you say, "Um, yeah, I'm interested in something sort of along those lines."

At this point the conversation has gotten a little stale and now you and her should just totally just start "doing it" on the lab table. Her lab partner won't mind and will be able to use the lab's Video-Point software to analyze the motion of your two bodies writhing in ecstasy.

[Note: Answer received 10/6/2006: Ass crack need not be hypenated. Thank you.]

Update: Sept 26, 2006:

For today, I am zee birthday child!

Since it is my birthday (and since I am thus one day closer to my ultimate reward [nothing]) I figured that (instead of the usual epigrams and epithets) I should write an epitaph.
A very long epitaph.
But not an epitaph for myself, though.
I'm actually just transcribing this very long epitaph from a tombstone that I found while walking through a hilarious cemetary.
This epitaph was engraved on a marble tombstone.
Here it is:

JOSEPH POOPENHAUS
R.I.P.
BORN: JUNE 9, 1969
DIED: SEPT 6, 1996

Here lies Joe the Dynamite Salesman. 
You can probably guess what happened to him. 
He was hit by a bus... 
A bus full of dynamite. 
But, actually, that's not how he died; 
He was stabbed to death... 
With a sharpened piece of dynamite.

By the way, I am carving this epitaph into a block of marble 
With just a hammer and chisel.
Chiseling all that took me about two months to chisel.
Chiseling to you about how long that (I.e., the above sentence) took to chisel 
itself took about a week to chisel.
It is hard to chisel 'e's.
I'm going to chisel a picture of boobies on this tombstone.

Good night

Update: Sep 18, 2006:

Nothing interesting today, just the answer to the Rubik's cube riddle of Sept. 6:

Answer: n = 105

Explaination: After 7 applications of (U*R) the edge pieces will return to 
              their exact starting locations. After 15 applications of (U*R) 
              the corner pieces are back to their starting spots too. Thus 
              since 7 and 15 have no factors in common it must take 15x7 = 105 
              applications of (U*R) to return the cube back to its starting 
              formation.


Answer to Bonus Riddle: m = 84

Explaination: After 12 applications of (U*R*F) the edges come back exactly to 
              their starting locations. After 28 applications the corners are
              back to their starting locations. But, 28 = 4x7 and 12 = 4x3 thus
              we only need 4x7x3 = 84 applications of (U*R*F) to return the 
              cube back to its starting formation. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.


New Riddle!!!: Show that the equation
                 x^n + y^n = z^n
               has no non-zero integer solutions for x,y, and z 
               when n is greater than 2.

Answer: The solution to the above riddle is laughably trivial, only a 
        goat-nippled fool would not be able to solve it. Are you a 
        GOAT-NIPPLED FOOL?

Update: Sep 13, 2006:

The answer to the hobo's balls physics problem, assuming a ten mile per hour speed of light, is roughly:

8.5032093163112794772

The true answer is roughly:

9.89949493661166496

And the non-relativistic answer is roughly:

9.89949493661166534

Yawn.

Update: Sep 12, 2006:

HOBO PHYSICS PROBLEM:

A good-for-nothin' hobo (let's call him Tin Pan Joe) is free-loading a ride on a slow-moving flatbed railroad car, and also he is playing with his balls.

The railroad car on which hobo Joe resides is moving westward at a speed of three miles per hour.

Another no-good dirty hobo (let's call him Toothless Sam) is sittin' on a stump and watching the railroad car go by, and also he is fixing himself up some of his "world famous hobo chili."

Suppose that hobo Joe takes one of his balls and throws it straight up in the air at a speed of seven miles per hour. Suppose further that hobo Joe takes the other one of his balls and throws it directly westward also at a speed of seven miles per hour.

What is the magnitude of the difference in velocity of hobo Joe's balls according to hobo Sam?

Assume that the speed of light is ten miles per hour.

Update: Sep 11, 2006:

Dudes, I've been looking at some of Google's "Query Stats" for my webpage, and I have found that
the top two search queries originating from Australia that most often returned pages from this website are:
'shark finn inn' and 'chuch norris.'

The top two queries originating from the Philippines are:
'sorini' and 'sterling's approximation.'

And finally, the single query which originated from Japan and which returned pages from my website was:
'"a titty".'

I wonder if they ever found that "a titty" they were looking for?
Probably so.

Update: Sep 07, 2006:

About two weeks ago, Me and Rob Johnson and Matt Luzum and Doug Faust and Doug Faust's friend (whose name I forgot) and Myself and Doug Faust and Matt Luzum and Me and Rob Johnson and I and Me set out on a journey--a magical journey--a journey to climb up to the top of a peak known only as "The Tooth."

Do you know why the peak is called "The Tooth?" Well, it's because it "looks like a tooth." But, do you know what else? Every fucking peak in the world "looks like a tooth." What else can a peak look like, really, other than a tooth?

Our journey began under the cover of fog, and due to the fog we lost our way; We never found The Tooth. So here is a picture of Matt Luzum's butt. Here is a picture of me and M. Luzum drinking beer. Here's another shot of us drinking beer and me hugging M. Luzum 'cuz he's cold (and queer as a three dollar bill). Here's Doug and his friend (read: life partner) drinking beer. And, just in case you think that all we did out there was drink beer and hug each other, here is a picture of Doug about to be squished by a big rock.

Here I am nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. (mi ritrovai per una selva [not really very] oscura [at all])... and not too foggy neither.

Here's Matt standing by a rock, and me standing on that same rock.

Matt by a wall. (This will be the last picture of Matt, thank goodness; The rest are of me.)

We walked through many mountain meadows on our way, and I stopped to look at the flowers. Then I smelled a flowey. It smelled pretty good. Also, did you notice that I changed my tee-shirt? I brought three tee-shirts with me. That tee-shirt I'm smelling flowers in has a picture of the elusive Dr. King on it. On the tee-shirt he's saying, "Feel me!" and I have no idea why he is saying that. He's also pointing at something off in the distance, and do you know what I think he is pointing at... I think he is pointing at the elusive Tooth.

Another shot of me on a rock (pointing at the elusive Tooth).
Yet another "me on rock"-themed picture. This one is a big rock.
Here's a picture of me on a rock stacking rocks on top of other elusive rocks.

Finally, a picture of The [elusive] Tooth. Note that there is still some snow on the ground.
Once we finally made it to the snow, I couldn't help but make a snow-angel.
Here are a few photos of me as I proceed to make a snow-angel.

Okay, fine, here's one more picture of M. Luzum with a snowball.

Now, back to more pictures of Yours Truly: Me standing at the bottom of the first pitch of our climb (it only took us two 60 meter pitches and a little scambling to make it all the way up).
A picture of noone at all, just the edge at the top of the first pitch.
Me coming over that edge.
Me pretending to be struggling for a good fake action shot right before M. Luzum's camera broke.

That's all.

Update: Sep 06, 2006:

Oh cherished reader, did you hear what Tim said after looking at our (yours and mine, dear reader) two most recent updates? He suggested to me that perhaps we are slowly descending into madness. Of course, this is not the case; as Dali said, "The difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad."
That being said, I should now like to put forth a non-crazy--did you hear that? NON-crazy!--a non-crazy quick update.

First quick rational point to make:

My mutha-fucking article is finally going to be published! Yee! It is approved for publication in the Oct. 15, 2006 issue of Phys. Rev. B.

Second quick rational point to make:

My riddle! My riddle! Here is a long-winded introduction to my riddle:

This riddle is about a "Rubik's cube," but it can be solved by pure thought alone; only the idea of a "Rubik's cube" is needed.

I will not bother explaining what a "Rubik's cube" is.

If we hold the cube as a whole fixed and only let the faces rotate about their pivots, never rotating the cube as a whole, then we may unambiguously label each of the six faces by the six names "up", "down", "right", "left", "front" and "back."

Let us now consider a certain group of operations (brutal twists of the faces) which can be suffered by our poor cube:
Let the operation of turning the "up" face by ninety degrees "clockwise" (where we adopt any convienient definition of "clockwise") be denoted by the symbol 'U'.
Let the operation of turning the "right" face by ninety degrees "clockwise" (where the same definition of "clockwise" is used) be denoted by the symbol 'R'.
Et cetera for symbols 'F','B','L' and 'D'
The above defines six symbols which we will now play with a little. But, before we can play with our symbols, I would like to define "multiplication."

Let "multiplication" of two symbols such as U*R be defined as the operation of first turning the right face ninety degrees clockwise and then turning the upper face ninety degrees clockwise.
Et cetera. For example, L*L*L is a turn of the left face by 270 degrees (which is the same as a "counter-clockwise" turn of the left face by 90 degrees).
Note that, unlike with ordinary multiplication of numbers, the order of our "multiplication" matters in some cases. For example, B*L does not equal L*B. Nor does B*R equal R*B, but B*F does equal F*B.

Oh, hell. While I'm busy defining shit, let me define the symbol '1' to mean the operation of not doing anything to the cube. I.e., leaving it alone. For example,
R*R*R*R = 1
R*R*R*U*U*L*L*L*L*U*U*R = 1
The first of the above equations is true since turning a single face 360 degrees (I.e. four times 90 degrees) is the same as doing nothing. It is also easy to see the that second of the above equations is true since the four 'L's are just '1' and can be removed, but then I have four 'U's sitting next to each other which can also be removed, but then I am just left with four 'R's, which is 1.

Okay, one more little thing, to make the notation less cumbersome. Instead of writing something like "R*R*R*R*R*R" I will just write "R^6" ("R to the sixth power"). Or, instead of writing "U*R*U*R*U*R", I will just write "(U*R)^3" So, finally, here is the riddle:

What is the smallest positive integer 'n' such that (U*R)^n = 1 ?

Bonus riddle: What is the smallest positive integer 'm' such that (U*R*F)^m = 1 ?

Hint: 'n' must be a multiple of seven.

Hint #2: I was surprised by the answer to the bonus riddle.

Hint #3: Even though these riddles can be solved by pure thought alone, it did sort of help me to have my Rubik's cube handy... It especially helped me in realizing why 'n' must be a multiple of seven and why 'm' must be a multiple of 28.

Good day.

Third rational quick point to make:

I'll kill you, Honky!

Update: Sep 05, 2006:

Riddle time. It's time for riddle time. Yay. But first...

Everybody knows the old pangram (a phrase which contains all the letters, 'a' through 'z'):
"The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog."

Here is another one which you may not know, but which I kind of like:
"Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs."

Or, how about this one:
"You dumb mother-fucking jumping zebras had better quit x-raying Wolfgang von Goethe's glockenschpiel!"

Oh my god, that's hilarious.

Picture One. We both have our eyes closed.

Picture Two. We don't both have our eyes closed.

Picture Three. Jon looks a little fat in this one.

For example, in the movie "Saving Silver" (starring Steve Zahn and Jason Biggs) we get to see an operation where Darren (Jason Biggs) receives a single silicone butt-implant, but we never see the second implant (contrast this with the movie "Safe Men" (also starring Steve Zahn) in which Sam Rockwell wears butt-pads (not implants) during the burglery).

But, even earlier in the literature (1991), we also find the single butt-cheek appearing. The above date refers, of course, to Stephen Jay Gould's collection of 'Reflections in Natural History' entitled "Bully for Brontosaurus" the very first essay in the book is called "George Canning's Left Buttock" and it includes the immortal line,

'...the latest biography of Castlereagh holds that Canning got it "through the fleshy part of the thigh," but I have it on good authority that Canning was shot in the ass [emphasis added]... in any case, both men subsequently resigned.'

But, we can trace these butt-implant/butt-shooting/butt-cheek-chopping roots even further back (circa 1749) through the history of literature to Voltaire who, in "Candide", writes

'...I would be glad to know which is worst, to be ravished a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have one buttock cut off [emphasis added], to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fe, to be dissected, to be chained to an oar in a galley; and, in short, to experience all the miseries through which every one of us hath passed, or to remain here doing nothing? [Candide replies, "That, is the grand question."]'

But, we can go even FURTHER, back, back, back... all the way to the Bhagavad Gita (circa 100 BCE) where we read

"I am become death, destroyer of worlds... and one butt-cheek."

Actually, I made up that last part of that last one.

End.

Update: Sep 02, 2006:

Dudes, remember how I keep on harping on the fact that I am now a Zen Buddhist, and I need to impart to you the three central tenets of Zen Buddhism? Remember that, dudes? Well, I will... just you wait. But first I have to explain, and then show, the 30 AWESOME pictures.

The explaination of the 30 AWESOME pictures is as follows: We have all played the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors." This game is free for all to play, but I decided to buy my game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" from Milton Bradley. The Milton Bradley brand-name version of the game is called "Stone, Dinosaur, Tomato." (Stone beats Tomato [sqwish!], Dinosaur beats Tomato [chomp!], and Tomato beats Tomato [smapdy!]).

There is a lesser known, but still super-fun, game of full-body "Rock, Paper, Scissors" known as "Cowboy, Bear, Indian" (Cowboy beats Indian [sqwish!], Indian beats Bear [a-woo woo woo woo! Hi-yii, yii, yii, ya!], and Bear beats off Cowboy [Meow!]). In the full-body version of the game each player has to make a pose of the character they choose and then the excitment begins.

So anyways, my point is that I have invented an even more awesome version of full-body "Rock, Paper, Scissors" that involves no less than TEN different characters... and then, after I invented the game, I "tricked" two of my co-workers into doing the poses for each character in front of my camera (have you ever had the pleasure of asking someone to "pose like a Mennonite?" It is an experience which I highly recommend). Anyways, go ahead and click on the links as I explain how the game works...

You see, it goes like this: Rock crushes Scissors, Scissors cuts Paper, Paper covers Cowboy, Cowboy shoots Indian, Indian skins Bear, Bear eats Amish, Amish eats Menonnite, Menonnite crushes Elf, Elf bests Baby Elf , and finally, of course, Baby Elf trounces Rock... and, of course, nothing beats Rock. Trusty Rock.

Okay. I was going to write something more in depth, but this update is getting outrageously long as it is... so here are the three central tenets of Buddhism:

1. Cats make fine housepets

2. Please do not store your video-cassette tapes in direct sunlight.

3. Blowjobs for everybody!

Now, I also wanted to write a dark and dreary story about one's unfulfilled and discontented (and unmoved and unmoving) Zen life, and about one's (nonexistent) Zen girl, and one's (not-existing) Medicine Man (because all Buddhists have a Medicine Man).

But, I don't have time for this shit, so I just sketched the story out a bit. You can fill in the details... Or, as we say in the world of Mathematics, "the details of the proof are left as an exercise for the reader":

1
2
3

You are a Buddhist. Your girl is a Buddhist. Your girl is the girl. 
Buddhists spend a lot of time sitting in a tee-pee and smoking. 
The medicine man is a Buddhist too. 
This is where the story starts. 
You and the girl and the medicine man go inside a tee-pee 
and you sit down cross-legged on the ground in the tee-pee. 
The medicine man gives you and the girl a bowl of soup 
and you eat the soup and she drinks the soup and then you drink the soup too; 
you put the bowl up to your lips and you pour the cold soup down your throat. 
The soup is thin and it has strange bits floating in it. 
The strange bits taste bitter. 
Now you look around 
the tee-pee 
and 
the 
walls 
are blood red; all the 
way around the tee-pee 
and all the way around, the walls are blood red. 
Then 
you look very fast to your right and you see the girl and the medicine man 
and 
they 
are 
discussing 
murder. 
You stare blankly at the girl's mouth and you can see that she is chewing on a 
tarantula and two of its long black hairy legs are still sticking out of her mouth 
and wiggling. 
She chews it and chews it and black blood drips down the black legs--
and then the blackness spreads out of her mouth and over the whole tee-pee 
and over you and you fall down
into nothing... 
nothing... nothing... nothing... 
then--you are in a bar sitting under a neon sign that is so bright it almost knocks you off your bar stool. 
The sign is a picture of a woman/girl with giant bottles of beer and giant breasts. 
Your (the) girl's back is to you. 
She turns around. 
She throws her drink in your face. It burns a little. 
You pick up a full pitcher of beer off the bar and pour it over her head. 
She looks mad. She scratches your face. 
The medicine man calls a cab.

Fin.

Update: Aug 31, 2006:

I just realized that this website looks best when viewed with the Mozilla Seamonkey, and then second best when viewed with Mozilla Firefox, and then next best when viewed with anything else, and then last best when viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer. I was going to make hyperlinks to those programs, but then I figured that you can just fucking google them if you care. I apologize for using the F-word.

I gotta lotta stuff to update my website with, namely 30 AWESOME pictures, but I also have to go to the bar and play some pool because I gotta keep my chops up, so we will see if I end up fucking doing that today or not. I apologize for using the F-word.

The fucking End.

Update: Aug 22, 2006:

Just a quick little update here with something I thought was funny. Since I'm flying to Michigan tommorow I figured I would look at the TSA website to see what was and what was not allowed on the plane (P.S. I can't remember who it was who told me this, but somebody told me the other day that they saw a TSA employee downtown begging for change. That's fucked up, man).
Anyways, here are some rather amusing items which are either allowed (YES!) or not allowed (NO!) for carry-on:

Corkscrews (YES!), Cigar Cutters (Yes, of course!), "Bubble bath balls" (NO!)... Why the fuck would you carry on a "bubble bath ball" anyways? What snizatch would be silly enough to think that there is a bathtub on the airplane?

Plastic or Blunt Metal Scissors (YES!), Metal Scissors with Pointed Tips (YES!), Shampoo (NO!). I like how they explicitly state the you CAN bring sharp pointy scissors on the flight... just as long as you don't run with those scissors.

Okay, okay... here is the best one yet. I know that you were wondering about this one so I saved it for last... you ARE allowed to bring "Toy Transformer Robots" on board, thank god. Now I won't have to leave you at home, my dear sweet Optimus Prime!

APS over and out.

Update: Aug 20, 2006:

A five million dollar reward is being offered for the safe recovery of the priceless works of art which were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. According to the FBI the details of the robbery are as follows:

The Museum was robbed by two unknown white males dressed in police uniforms and identifying themselves as Boston police officers. The unknown subjects were also wearing special Boston police underwear.

The subjects gained entry to the museum by advising the on-duty security personnel that they were responding to a call of a disturbance within the compound. Security, contrary to museum regulations, allowed the unknown subjects into the facility.

Upon gaining entry, the two unknown subjects abducted the on-duty security personnel, securing both guards with duct tape and handcuffs in separate remote areas of the museum's basement. The guard's hands were secured behind their back with duct tape and the guard's mouths were handcuffed shut.

The video surveillance film was seized by the unknown subjects prior to their departure. Indeed, when else could it have been seized?

While in the museum from the hours of 1:24 AM to 2:45 AM the unknown subjects seized an estimated 300 million dollars worth of priceless art including: five Degas, a Manet, three Rembrandts (including a self-portrait) and a landscape by Flinck (which, until recently, had been attributed to Rembrandt). Also stolen was a self-portrait of Vermeer (which, strangly, had also been attributed to Rembrandt).

All logical leads have been followed through to conclusion with no postive investigative results. Numerous interviews have been conducted, many accompanied by polygraph examination, with no substantial positive information developed... etc.

Persons with information regarding the Gardner Museum theft should contact the Boston FBI office at 1-617-EAT-SHIT.

In other news, it well known that when Gregor Samsa awoke one morning he found himself transformed into a vermin. I beg the readers indulgence for repeating a brief descripton, due to Kafka, of the situation:

"One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself,
in his bed, transformed into a monstrous insect. He lay on his hard armor-like
back and, when he lifted his head a little, he could see his brown vaulted
belly divided into stiff arched segments."

Today, as I awoke from a sleep that was dreamless, dark, deep and seemless, I was not at all surprised to find myself untransformed. But then, as I lay on my back, I lifted my head a little and looked down at my belly. On my belly, slightly below the belly-button, were written several large green letters. "Must be a word," I thought to myself.

Glancing over at the clock I saw that it was 10 A.M. I also noticed that my head hurt. I think my liver hurt. I went back to sleep until 1 P.M.

Apon reawakening, I was slightly surprised to look down and still find the large green word written across my belly. My head still ached, and it ached more the more I tried to lift it in order to read the green word. What did it say? I couldn't quite make it out. I got up out of bed and walked over to my bathroom mirror. As I looked at my belly from this mirror-reversed perspective it appeared to me that the green word read "Jazzercise."

Hmm... had I taken part in some sort of strange Jazzercise-cult ritual last night? I think not. The more I stared at the green word the more I grew suspicious that it was illegible not only due to the scrawling drunken handwriting and not only due to the unusually hard-to-see location, but it was also illegible due to the fact that it was not an Engligh word.

Who would rightly write a foreign word on another human's belly? Everyone knows that the upper arm is the only place that one should write green foreign words. In fact, just last night I had scrawled the phrase "Sic Sempre Tyrannosaurus" on the upper arm of a fellow female inebriate using a green washable [let's hope] marker.

The phrase "Sic Sempre Tyrannosaurus" translates as "Thus always to tyrant lizards" and it is what the assassin John Wilkes Triceratops shouted when he shot Tyrannosaurus Lincoln right in between his two stubby little arms. After being shot Tyrannosaurus Lincoln fell down into his chair with a thundering crash, crushing his signiture stovepipe hat that he had placed there just moments before. Tyrannosaurus Lincoln also wore a full beard, and he knew just how long a man's leg should be (long enough to reach the ground, of course.) Also, Tyrannosaurus Lincoln was born in a log cabin, and also he founded the Republican party, and also he was married to Mary Todd Tyrannosaurus Apatosaurus Lincoln.

But, I digress from my belly, to which I must now return... After further study I decided that the green foreign word, which had looked very much like "Jazzercise," actually was written in Chinese. And, if I had to guess, I would guess that the Chinese word translates roughly as "a fitness program that combines elements of jazz dance into aerobic exercise."

Now that I had solved the case of the strange green word I decided that I should probably take a shower. After disrobing, I drew back the curtain of my shower, and I was quite surprised at what I saw: approximately 300 million dollars worth of stolen Dutch artwork sitting there in my bathtub.

The End.

Update: Aug 13, 2006:

One only updates one's website in a very short and bashful way on this the thirteenth day of August in the year of one's lord (One's lord is, you recall, Kali) two thousand and six. In witness whereof one has hereunto subscribed one's Name.

A. Sorini--Presidt. and deputy from Virginia

P.S. One continues one's humble update in the safe and calming confines of the postscript. It is very quiet in here. Moreover, one has decided to seclude one's writing even further within the unassuming womb of the following parenthesis (and by doing this one implies the rather inferior nature of this current website update which one wishes to (even now) apologize for profusely. One feels the need for yet another parenthisis (ahh... much better. Now one is just far enough away from the maddening main body of text that one might relax. In fact, one is becoming so very relaxed that one might just poop one's pants.))

Update: Aug 8, 2006:

I have so much crap that I need to post on my website. But I have no time, no time at all. So I'm just going to do one quick update about a new recipe I learned. My ever-loyal and ever-gentle readers will, of course, recall the first secret family recipe which I posted a while back. This new recipe is perhaps even better because it does not call for both cheese AND the absence of cheese. Rather, we take the existence of cheese as given (which is reasonable, for Parmesan). Here is the recipe, as I remember it, with pictures to go along:

Recipe for "Zucchini a la Sorini" (zucchini soup with stuff in it):

1. Let's see now... I think what you first have to do is go and get yourself some nice zucchini and some other sort of yellow colored zucchini-type vegetables from the zucchini store (I prefer to shop for zucchini at "ye olde zucchini shoppe", personally).

2. NEXT!... um... let me try and remember now... Oh yes--you must now chop up the green onions (I forgot to say that there are onions) while Phil (who is an orthodontist) sits at the counter in the kitchen of the condo in Oregon that you and he and your father are staying at while on vacation. Phil (who is, as you recall, an orthodontist) watches very carefully as the vegetables are chopped. (This reminds me of a funny albeit parenthetical story about Phil: One morning I was sitting out on the couch of the condo that me and my dad and Phil were staying at. I was eating my breakfast and Phil came up to me with a bottle of shampoo and said, "Smell this." I said, "Okay, Phil." and I smelled the bottle, and it surely did NOT smell like shampoo. "Doesn't that smell awful," said Phil. I nodded in agreement and stopped eating my breakfast. I also noticed that the supposed 'shampoo' looked rather watery and I asked where exactly Phil had found that particular shampoo bottle. Phil then explained how he "found it in the shower" and "shampooed [his] hair with that [darn] stuff and [it] smelled [bad]." To this I replied, "Yeah." Then Phil said, "I think some [one] pissed in the [darn] shampoo bottle." I said, "That sounds like a reasonable conclusion." Moments later Phil asked my father to smell the shampoo bottle too, and the two of them also reached the conclusion that Phil had shampooed his hair with somebody's piss... two days in a row.)

3. NEXT! Ragu! We must have Ragu! And olive oil too. And Tippecanoe and Tyler too. And William Henry Harrison too.

4. NEXT! Sausage! Sausage!! Sausage!!! Right at this moment I have just finished a big-ass cup of coffee from Solstice Coffee Place and it is making me want to add a lot of exclamation marks... But I will try (!) and resist the urge. (!)

5. Okay. Calm down and think. Try and remember what comes next--oh yes, you must chop and chop and chop at the vegetables until they are rather quite piecewise. Then sweep them off the cutting board and onto the dirty countertop for some reason.

6. I should temporaily digress in order to remind you that I have a bunch more pictures that I still have to update my site with later on (probably next week) and I also still have to explain how it is that I am now (just now) a Buddhist. Stay tuned to learn about the central tenets of Buddhism (hint: They involve video casettes recorder tapes).

6. (step 6, for real this time.) Put the zucchini into a pot.

7. Don't forget to add some salt to take the water out of the zook.

8. Mix it all into the pot along with some Parmesan cheese and the oil and zook and salt and sausage and... don't you think that that pot is a little too small to hold all this stuff?

9. Also, don't forget to put in some heavy whipping cream to semi-neutralize the zucchini flavor (not too much!) (!).

10. Go to the store and buy another pot because--guess what--you were right, that single pot won't hold all that stuff. We need another pot.

11. Cook up two big ol' pots full of the soup.

12. The people who rent out this condo are super old; they gots a record player which is bigger than my foot!

13. The end.

Update: July 30, 2006:

Dudes, I was going to post an update wif all those picture I took, but I just have not had enough time to do it since I'm getting ready to go out of town tomorrow for a week. I'm going to post the 30 awesome/jiggy pictures when I get back... For now, I have just written a little FORTRAN 77 program which I find particularly amusing... it is a good program to run and kill time during long bus rides with your eight grade class on your way to Ceder Point, Ohio... there is a special hilarious comment that perhaps only the peeps in my group will find amusing. tee hee.

P.S. the program works best if you compile with 'ifort -O3.' Oh my god, for that comment I'm going to nerd hell when I die. Here's the program:

      program brsng
c
c  first coded by a. sorini on 30 Jul 06
c
      implicit double precision (a-h,o-z)
c
c may be bug. ala. fix later
c
      do 15 i=100,0,-1
        if(i.lt.100)print*,i,' bottles of beer on the wall.'
        if(i.ne.0)print*,i,' bottles of beer on the wall,'
        if(i.ne.0)print*,i,' bottles of beer.'
        if(i.ne.0)print*,'Take one down, pass it around...'
15    continue
      end

P.P.S. If we have group meeting this week can somebody print this program out in full color on nunchuk and present it as my contribution for the week?

Update: July 25, 2006:

Today Tonya, my piano TA, asked me if I knew what a pirouette was. I said that I thought it had something to do with ballet. She agreed. Then I said that actually--now that I think of it--a pirouette is really a little cookie-like desert type-of-thing. Tonya didn't agree. I tried to explain further, but I soon realized that there simply are no words to describe what this pirouette-thing is... or why such as thing exists, alone, in a cold and indifferent universe.

The pirouette (either the cookie, or the dance-move) is a (creme-filled) non sequitur among other (perhaps creme-filled) non sequiturs all struggling with their own (creme-filled) solitary existential crises. 1. Nothing is ever gained, 2. Nothing is ever gained, 3. Nothing is ever gained, 4. Our poor pirouette defines himself by his actions, but his definition (though creme-filled) is meaningless--our bourgeois pirouette simply chants "p or not-p." Thus our pirouette remains quite alone--although he may insist otherwise ("can't you taste my creme-filling?")--until at long last he falls dead into his (cookie-shaped) grave.

So, the reason that me and my Piano TA were talking about pirouettes is because I am learning a song by Chopin. There is this one part at the beginging of the song that my TA told me to play "as if it were a pirouette." I think what Tonya means by that statement is that I'm supposed to play the opening line as if it were an oblong cookie with a sweet creme-filling.

Chopin himself indicates this direction on the sheet music (though rather subtly), as you can see here.

Update: July 24, 2006:

I think it would be nice for someone to cook up some pancakes (in a frying pan--or bake them--or whatever you do to make pancakes) and then mail them out via the postal service one at a time in nice little flat packages. Then some person would one day be opening their mail and finally they would get to this one flat little package and they would open it and inside would be--yup, you guessed it--a pancake! What would you do?! Would you eat it? I wouldn't eat it, but I bet that I would be happy for the rest of that day that I received a single pancake in the mail.

On a more obscene note, you are probably quite amused when you realize that one could (if one were an obscene degenerate) replace the word "port" by the word "pussy" in the short little ditty I wrote about port in my previous update. You nasty!

Update: July 21, 2006:

Oh, I had to drink port last night! And so to get myself psyched-up to drink the port I composed this short ditty about port.

Update: July 19, 2006:

                  A Poem About Hippies 

                                -by Adam Peter Sorini

                  Hippies, hippies, hippies.
                  Hippies everywhere.
                  Hippies, hippies, hippies.
                  Have a lot of hair.

                  A - B - C - D - E - F - G.
                  H - I - P - P - P - I - E.
                  That almost spells hippie.
                  Very bad smell, hippie!

                  A Poem About Adam Sorini
                              
                              -by A Hippie

                  Adam Sorini, Adam Sorini, Adam Sorini.
                  Adam Sorini like what the hell, man?
                  Adam Sorini, Adam, Adam--what? I mean, like, where am I?
                  Where are we, man?

                  Don't you get it, man?
                  It's just like the whole world is totally trapped inside the tip of my littlest pinky finger.
                  It's just like all inside *there* man, right *in there*, man!
                  Oh yeah, man. Yeah--Yeah, turn that up! Yeah, I love this song, man. Totally chilling out with 
                  Zeppelin or some shit. It's the best... I'm totally gonna go 
                  and get my ferret out of his cage, man, and we can like blow smoke at him, he loves that. Dude, 
                  my ferret is so cool, he love Zeppelin too man, it's so sweet, 
                  chilling out man, chilling with my ferret and like Zeppelin, man. 

Update: July 16, 2006:

Hi. I've started a new organization called M.A.A.D.D. That is an acronym for "Me, Adam, Against Dippy Douche-bags." The ultimate goal of our (i.e., my) organization is the stamping out of douche-baggery in all of its many forms.

As an example, if you are talking at the same time that I am talking, then you may very well be a douche-bag. A simple remedy for this mild form of douche-baggery is for you to just shut up, douche-face.

A more acute, and far more dangerous, form of douche-baggery is owning a Corvette. At the time of this writing, there is no known cure for this form of douche-baggery, but there is a lot of hope that researchers in the field of drive-your-fucking-corvette-off-a-cliff will come up with a major breakthru.

There are many more forms of douche-baggery that are known to exist in the wild. Sadly, I have neither the time nor the patience to detail all these many forms of dippy-douche-ness at this juncture.

This key-signature problem is related to the well-known joke about how when you are crossing a busy road at night you must "C-sharp or B-flat" (Ha. Ha. get it "see sharp or be flat." Ha-fucking-Ha.)

Not so well known is the fact that when you are popping a balloon that is NOT full of pancakes you must "B-sharp or C-flat"... which makes sense because pancakes are flat.

Update: July 13, 2006:

Sheeeee-it man, the weirdest thing happened to me yesterday-night. Of course, I'm going to write about it, but I'm going to write about it in the form of a "Dear Diary" type-of-thing.... Because I fucking feel like it. That's why.

The strangest thing happened to me last night at the bar. Well, Diary, you just are not going to believe what happened, it is so strange. But, I guess I'll tell you anyways. I mean, like, who-the-fuck-else am I going to tell?

Anyways... I was sitting at my table with two other fine young upstanding gentlemen, and one of these fine young upstanding gentlemen decides he's going to go talk to some short girl. Diary, this girl was short, but she didn't look like it because the backs of her shoes were really long. I think they call them "high" heels. It's a trick, Diary, a dirty shameful trick to make oneself look taller. But, I digress, the shoes with long or "high" heels are beside the point.

Here's the point: This girl had a friend, Diary. And so I should probably go talk to the friend, right? My friend is talking to the short girl, so I should talk to the short girl's friend.

Allright, so I'm going to go talk to the friend... I'm going! I'm getting up! Here I go:

I start walking over towards this group of three people (the short girl, her friend, and my friend). And this is all happening in slow-motion in my mind's-eye as I remember it. I'm walking--almost gliding-- in slow-motion towards these three and, just as I arrive at their little group, the short girl look right at me--look's me right in the eyes, Diary-- and mouths the words, "You are a fucking asshole."

Now, I have never been good at figuring out what people are trying to say when they mouth words, but this was crystal clear: "You are a fucking asshole."

Diary, I hadn't even said a word; I didn't know this short girl at all... It was just the strangest thing. So (still in slow-motion, of course), I simply turned around and went back to my seat. There is no need to press one's luck in a situation like that. Certainly, if someone knows that I am a fucking asshole without ever even saying a word to me... Well, there's just no arguing with that.

I guess the moral of this story is simply: Short girls are fucking crazy.

Update: July 02, 2006:

It's all hot and sweaty outside and so now I have a zit on my face.
I wrote this about it:

I have a zit, and I named my zit, "Zitty." Me and Zitty go everywhere together: to the park, to the movies, we even go to pooping-station together.
BTW, "pooping station" is the new "Hip" thing to say instead of saying "The Toilet."
Notice that use of the phrase "pooping-station" precludes the use of an article.
Let me give an example:

It is incorrect to say,
"My landlord had a plumber come over to my house last week and install a brand new shiny pooping-station in my bathroom. Me and Zitty were so happy!"

Rather, one should say,
"My landlord had a plumber come over to my house last week and install brand new shiny pooping-station in my bathroom. Me and Zitty were so happy!"

"Oh Zitty," I said, "look at brand new shiny pooping-station! Aren't you so happy?"
"Oh, I am," said Zitty, "Don't let's ever forget just how happy we are right at this moment."
"Oh, Zitty!" I exclaimed, "Don't ever leave me!"

             The Evening which Itself was Wearing a Suit of Armor
                                                    -by Adam Sorini

   In the morning I awoke and, after a few morning preliminaries (including, of
course, pooping-station), I took my breakfast as usual: one cup of tea and one
scrumptious crumpet.
   I've never actually made a crumpet, and I never will. In fact, I believe 
that I could scarcely even recognise a crumpet were it not placed on my
breakfast table right to the left of my one cup of tea.
   I DO NOT make crumpets (which I told you before). I don't know who makes
them, and I don't know how they get there--sitting there--sitting there 
staring at me with their little crumpet eyes--sitting there next to my one cup
of tea. I believe that they (these crumpets) simply materialize out of the
aether. This is a hypothesis.
   So, as I say, I took my breakfast in the usual way in the usual place and
at the usual time that morning. I was all asit on my chair at my table in front
of my one cup of tea and my transcendental crumpet. And I ate the latter and I
drank the former and then I was done with breakfast.
   After breakfast I watched TIVO for seven hours.
   Then it was time for lunch and I placed myself asit anew infront of my table
who I call "Tabley." Yes, that's right, I call my breakfast table "Tabley."
   "Well," you ask. "Why didn't you call the table 'Tabley' earlier in the 
story when you first mentioned your breakfast table?"
   Fuck you. That's why.

Update: June 29, 2006:

cloppp-cloppp-cloppp clop-clop-clop-clop
cloppp-cloppp clop-cloppp cloppp-clop cloppp-cloppp-clop-clop-cloppp-cloppp
cloppp clop-clop-clop-clop clop-clop clop-clop-clop
clop-clop clop-clop-clop
clop-clop-cloppp-clop clop-clop-cloppp cloppp-clop-cloppp-clop cloppp-clop-cloppp clop-clop cloppp-clop cloppp-cloppp-clop
clop-cloppp clop-cloppp-cloppp clop clop-clop-clop cloppp-cloppp-cloppp cloppp-cloppp clop
clop-cloppp-clop-cloppp-clop-cloppp
clop-clop-cloppp cloppp-clop clop-clop cloppp-clop-cloppp-clop cloppp-cloppp-cloppp clop-cloppp-clop cloppp-clop
clop-clop-clop-clop cloppp-cloppp-cloppp cloppp-cloppp-cloppp clop-clop-cloppp-clop
cloppp-cloppp cloppp-clopp-cloppp clop-cloppp-clop clop-clop-clop clop
cloppp-clop-cloppp-clop cloppp-cloppp-cloppp cloppp-clop-clop clop
clop-cloppp-clop-cloppp-clop-cloppp

Update: June 24, 2006:

Today I found two very tiny glass pieces that are part of a gigantic glass puzzle which, when you get them all together, takes the form of a 20 foot tall unicorn statue with a beard (Ol' Gran-Pappy Unicorn). I was going to take a picture of these glass unicorn pieces and post it on my website but I lost the pieces. So instead I took 6 pictures of other stuff.

First Three:

I like to use gaussian units with the explicit four-pi's because we do (after all) live in a three (spatial) dimensional world...
But some people HATE gaussian units...
and some people LOVE them. I love them a little.

Second Three:

Another thing that I love is my NEW VACUUM CLEANER. Yes! I bought it from Daisuke for 40 bucks because he is going off to his post-doc in Jerusalem.
I do so love you, vacuum cleaner.
I do I do I do.
Hold me, vacuum cleaner. Just hold me.

Fin.

Update: June 22, 2006:

Cherished Reader, I wonder, do you remember this: Do you, dear sweet Reader, remember when they told you that Jack Kerouac wrote the entire first draft of "On the Road" in a single sitting on a single spool of typewriter paper that was made up of a bunch of pieces of typewriter paper all taped together (or some shit like that)?

Well, that is a lie. The truth is that he wrote the whole first draft of "On the Road" on a single spool of toilet paper. It is true. And in that first draft there was this whole big long prologue in which Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise go to a haunted house and try to catch some ghosts. That prologue never made it into the final draft of "On the Road" because one day Alan Ginsberg (accidentally) wiped his butt with it.

Update: June 17, 2006:

Today is the day. Today is the day! Today you are finally going to finish (and start) your first novel. Today you are going to get out there in the sunshine and plant your whole garden green. Today you are going to reach for the stars, grasp hold of that brass ring, go for the gold, et cetera. Today--right this second-- you are going to jump out of your bed, put on your cleanest pair of pants, and go out to seize the day! Because today you feel GREAT! But that's probably just because you woke up drunk... again!

A drunk walks into a bar and says to the bartender, "Have you ever been sitting down at that IHOP over there on Brooklyn Avenue waiting for your 'Big Combo' and 'Stuffed French Toast Delight' to arrive and you are reading a book as you wait. The book has a little picture of a famous actor on the front with a caption that says, 'Tie-in to the major motion picture'. But when you bought the book you thought that the caption said, 'BASED on the major motion picture' and you were real excited because you think that books which are 'novelizations' of movies are awesome."

And the bartender says, "Yes."

And so then the drunk says, "Okay, so then let me ask you this totally unrelated question. Why did you paint the walls in this bar pink? And, for that matter, why is there carpet in this bar? Don't most bars have hardwood floors? And finally, why is that big white horse standing over there in the corner of this bar?"

And so then the bartender says,"That's not a horse, that's a unicorn."

Prancing to and fro and to and fro / These beasts they prance. / They prance and they dance / And they do a special "prance dance" with no pants.

Anyways, the last thing to say is that the metaphorical "drunk" in the above joke (see above) is NOT obviously representative of any one person. The only thing that we can be sure of is that whoever this "drunk" really is, that person is certainly quite awesome.

The End.

Update: June 14, 2006:

Matty-boy sent me some pictures of our climbing expedition, so I decided to make a NEW butt-game. This is a multiple choice butt-game; simply match the name with the butt. The choices for names are:

Adam,
David,
Eric,
Matt,
Rosie.

And here are the butts:

Pic1,
Pic2,
Pic3,
Pic4 (and 5).

Also, Mike introduced me to this interesting program called "Mup." I used it to roughly write down the bass-line for Immigrant Song. AWESOME!

Update: June 08, 2006:

The ass-game (see June 03, 2006 update) is over. Andy did not win.

Update: June 03, 2006:

I am the world's greatest--or at least most creative--living electric bass guitarist (YOU suck on it, Tim).

I am the de-facto treasurer of an Association of Samurai.

I am a two-story tall terrible lizard king or "T-Rex."

I am a blonde T-Rex sitting in a coffee shop taking quick sips of my pipping hot coffee with my tiny T-Rex arms.

I am a T-Rex at the barbershop getting my long blonde hair cut and then I pay for my haircut, but I do not tip.

I am someone who finds pictures of certain people's butts and posts them on his website. Play the butt-game. Guess whose butt this particular butt is.

Update: May 27, 2006:

This update is the one in which I apologize for my previous update in which I accidentally called our state's Governor a stupid "see you in tea."

To that end I now show you another picture of a unicorn. This particular unicorn is smelling a flower. I drew this unicorn. I know that this unicorn also looks like a dog or a cat.

Here is another picture I drew of a transverse phonon whose momentum is a little less than one inverse lattice spacing (times hbar).

Here is a picture I drew of myself. Both of the scars on my face I got with my mouth. One I got by biting an electrical cord too much, and the other I got by talking too much. I also drew my moustache (moo-stache). I shave and I shave but my little moustachio just won't stay away.

Update: May 24, 2006:

Did you know that one of the ideas for the Washington State quarter was that we could have a two headed quarter. I.e., the back of the quarter would be Washington's head too. That would be sweet-awesome... But I think that a better idea would be that the back of the quarter is THE BACK of Washington's head. That would be awesome-sweet.

Josh (Josh is the man, not the baby in this picture) thought that the back of the quarter should be Washington's butt, but I don't think that is very appropriate.

Okay. Here's one more thing for those of you who missed Joe Kapusta's colloquium.

At the colloquium the chair of our department introduced me and then I had to get up infront of the audience and god and everybody and introduce Dr. Joseph Kapusta with a little speech. Here is the speech I gave:

... Thank you for that lovely introduction. That was the beloved 
chair of our department, everyone. Let's all have a big hand for
the chair. He has very pretty eyes.

Today is a wonderful day, for today we are going to hear a fully grown
human baby speak about a topic that is of interest to various people
who perform various tasks and duties and responsibilities.

I forgot to say before, "My name is Adam Sorini." Also, "Hello."

Dr. Joe is a leading nuclear [I pronounced it "nuke-you-ler"]
theorist who has done things. Many various things.

One time I was lying in bed in the morning half-asleep waiting for
my alarm clock to go off a second time and I accidentally pooped in 
my pants a little bit.

Today's colloquium speaker is wearing shoes.  

One time I saw a ninja (a magical ninja) wearing a t-shirt over his
regular ninja outfit. And the t-shirt said, "Moustache Rides: 10 cents." 
And I don't mean that that was WRITTEN on the t-shirt, I mean that the
t-shirt actually SAID that. And so then I said, "But, t-shirt, you don't 
even HAVE a moustache." And the t-shirt said, "Yeah, I know. That's why 
it's funny."

Dinosaur bones are a hoax. The earth is 5000 years old and shaped like 
a tea-cup.

Thank you to everyone for listening to I. Now let's all sit back and 
relax while this guy over here tell us something about something. 

That speech was awesome-awesome.

Update: May 9, 2006:

Oh my god-DAMN IT! I can't STAND these stupid mansilk silk underpants I've got on today! All day long they just keep shifting around underneath my pants and they are driving me fucking crazy.

"So, if you hate your silk underpants so much, why did you buy them?"

Well, voice in my head, that's a good question. I didn't buy them. My mother bought them for me. Yes that's right, stupid voice, MY MOMMY BUYS ME UNDERPANTS... do you have a problem with that?!

"No."

Fine then... and I'd like to explain further about the underpants by saying that they were a Christmas present. They were Christmas underpants just like my Christmas football, but made of silk instead of --Hey, wait a second-- maybe I should make myself some new pig-skin underpants out of my Christmas football. That would be awesome... But do you know what is even more awesome... This story:

          The Princess and the Pig-Skin Underpants
                   -by Adam Sorini

  Once apon a time there lived a beautiful princess whose 
name, as you might have guessed, was Princess Butterfingers. 
The beautiful young Princess Butterfingers loved to play 
football and she wanted, more than anything else in the 
world, to play wide receiver for her castle's inter-fiefdom 
girl's football squad "The Lady Unicorns". But, poor poor 
Princess Butterfingers couldn't catch the football to save 
her life, and so she was not allowed on the squad. She was 
very sad, and she cried and cried for days and days. 
  Then, one fine spring day, a handsome young man rode into 
town wearing nothing but pig-skin underpants. 
 The young man rode right up to the princess and he said, 
"If you rub your hands on my pig-skin underpants--

No! You dumb voice! I'm just writing some little story. Why do you always have to over-analyze everything? It's just a story.

"I'm not over-analyzing anything. I'm simply saying that your stories are stupid. And they are weird and also too short."

That's because I get sick of writing them. Like right now. I'm just going to quit and nobody will notice. See how sneaky I am. Nobody reads this far anyways.

Update: May 7, 2006 (for real):

The new phonebook's here! The new phonebook's here! [ref] I finally AM somebody!

...In other words, our paper is up on the arxiv, and will soon (hopefully) be published in PRB. That's "PRB" not "PBR." PRB... That's how I roll, son! I keeps it real.

Update: May 7, 2006:

Woooooo (ghost noise) whooooo, I am frooooom the fuuuuture. Woooooooo. That last post suuuuuucked. (P.S. If you are reading this on May 6th then this is HILARIOUS, but if not then this is fucking STUPID).

Update: May 6, 2006:

Oh, man. Speaking for fans of my web-site. There is no bigger fan than this guy here, i.e., me! I check my own web-site like two of three times a day even though I know that it hasn't been updated because I haven't updated it... except I am updating it now... "Yes!!! A new update," Future-Adam will think to himself. "Past-Adam (who happens to be Present-Adam (i.e. Adam) at the moment) is hilarious!"

So, one thing that I think is funny is how I (Adam) wrote about how the Seattle locals are called "Loakies" by the "True-locals." That was on Feb. 1, 2006... but that's like the only funny part of that post (stupid Past-Adam). The True-Locals call the Locals "Loakies?" That IS funny. And do you know what else is funny? My next post (by Future-Adam) is going to be about how this post sucked. Fuck you, Past-Adam.

Update: May 05, 2006:

It's five of May, today! Hooray for five of May. Today is a very fine day to post some pictures of people. I was hoping that I could find more humiliating pictures to post, but this is all I could get:

Here's a picture of my latest web-site-fan who is now also my facebook friend. (Yesss! I have 12 now! Just like Jesus!).

Here's an AWESOME picture of the fan I wrote about in my last post.

Hey! Do you remember Tall/Angry guy, who I wrote about a while back? Well, guess what... I don't know if he's a web-site fan or not, but he's still super angry. Also, I know his name, but I'd rather call him "Tall/Angry."

Finally, I wanted to end with a reminiscence of the long-forgotten "Steukblog", so check out this sweet picture that I managed to take of Mat Steuk in his "Softball clothes" and Mike Marino in his "Bike pants". D-iz-amn Mat Steuck, you nasty.

That is all.

Update: Apr 22, 2006:

In the first place, I am happy to report that I am now officially world-famous. You see, I recently recieved a message via the facebook from a nice choo-cha (that's how they say "girl" in Equador) who wrote:

From:	Kathryn (Penn State)
To:	Adam Sorini
Subject: Your website rocks
Message: I love your update of the "gayest unicorn you could find"
         you rock.. if you ever come to Penn State you have to 
         hang out with me and my friends.. we love you..

See! I am world famous now! Although [like Scarface (Al Pacino), Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), and Machiavelli (also Al Pacino)], I would prefer to be feared rather than loved. But whatever.

Whoa! I just realized some fucked-up shit. The president of Penn State University is Graham B. Spanier... who went to high-school with my mother. Also, according to his Bio, he and his raquetball partner are SIX TIME co-ed intramural CHAMPS! For more information on the mysterious Graham B. Spanier you can check out this bio from the penn state web page, or this Wikipedia article about him.

Hmm... this begs the question: Now that I am world-famous (just as famous as Graham B. Spanier or Al B. Pacino)... WHERE THE FUCK IS MY WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE?!! and also... BRING ME MY PRINCELY ROBES!!! AT ONCE!!! YOU SWINE!!!

Speaking of Wikipedia, there is now an Italian Wikipedia entry about EXAFS (which is what I "do") that cites my boss's review article.

Finally, I'm upset that there is no Wikipedia article about one of the most famous pirates of all time, Captain No-beard. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article that never was:

Captain No-beard was one of history's most infamous pirates. During battle he would not braid burning matches into his beard because that just doesn't make sense.

Captain No-beard had two peg legs; A shark bit off one leg and he got it replaced with a wooden leg, then No-beard bit off the shark's fin and the shark got it replaced with a wooden fin. How No-beard got the second peg leg is unclear, but some scholars believe that No-beard got wasted one night and thought to himself, "you know what would go really well with this wooden leg?... another wooden leg!" He also thought that he should get a tattoo of a butterfly on his lower back.

Captain No-beard also had a metal hook for one hand and a metal whisk for the other hand.

Captain No-beard also had wooden eyes and ears.

And a wooden nose.

By the end of his life Captain No-beard was 90 percent wood, 5 percent metal and 5 percent robot.

Update: Apr 11, 2006:

I have removed my previous update and in its place I have put the gayest picture of a unicorn that I could possibly find.

Update: Apr 08, 2006: [Update removed, so instead why don't you...]

Look at this unicorn.

Update: Apr 02, 2006:

There is an old saying of the Chimchakamaka tribe (who's people live in the remote Eastern part of North-Western South America) which is as relevant now as ever; It roughly translates as:

"If you are a lion, I give you two coconuts.
If you are a stolen goat, I give you one coconut.
If you are anything else, I also give you either one or two coconuts."

The Chimchakamacockians also have a few other interesting sayings which, unfortunately, are untranslatable.

And they also have one saying that can be translated, but then can't be translated back.

Update: Apr 01, 2006:

14 NEW elements were discovered today!!!

Everybody knows that there are like 14 "Lanthanides" in between Lanthanum and Hafnium... but just today two independant teams of top scientists (one group from the U.S. and one group from Tuvalu) have announced the discovery of 14 NEW elements in between Yttrium and Zirconium (see periodic table detail here). One leading scientist, when asked to comment on this amazing discovery said, "Whoa, that's cool."

In a related story that displays the interconnectedness of science and mathematics, today several top mathematicians announced the discovery of 14 NEW integers in between thirty-nine and forty. One leading mathematician, when asked to comment on this amazing discovery said, "That's totally awesome, man."

In an unrelated story, the leading mathematician who was quoted in the previous sentence is obviously a hippy. When asked to comment on this story the mathematician from two sentences ago said, "I can like totally SEE the music, man." When asked to comment further the mathematician said, "It's like I can just totally SEE the music, man."

Update: Mar 26, 2006:

Well well well, it looks like Patti (shown here most likely wearing two or more pairs of long underwear) finally got around to sending me some pictures of her trip out to Seattle. Here are a select few:

• Here is a picture of me taunting a live (and extremely dangerous) crab.
• I was not present at school on the day they taught all the children how to smile. Patti told me to clench my teeth.
• Here is a picture from Pike's Place market (yes, we indeed visited the market, can you believe it?) where one brave crab is making a break for it. His crab brothers are all cheering him on... Sadly, he did not make it to freedom since once he crossed the east perimeter a "sonic restraint" collar which is worn by all the crab-prisoners blew his head off! (Running man reference!)
• Next in our crab picture series (note california rolls) I display my broken finger.
• Here is a picture of Patti trying to force a Fresh Whole Large Wild King Salmon down her throat.
• This man is proudly displaying the dead alien baby he caught on his last trip through "The Portal"... or it's an octopus. I'm not sure.

Update: Mar 05, 2006:

I've been eating a lot of soup lately since I have been sick and when you're sick you eat soup. Besides eating soup I mostly have been sitting around at my apartment and watching TV. I did take a short break from watching TV to go and wine and dine the prospective physics grad students on Friday, but beside that I have just been eating soup and watching TV.

"What the fuck is my point," you ask? Who fucking cares that you have been sitting around and eating soup, asshole.

Wow, you need to take a chill pill, voice inside my head. The point is this: I have been watching this commercial for Domino's new "FIVE FIVE FIVE" deal; It's THREE medium one-topping pizzas for just FIVE bucks each! [Aside: Oh my god... I just realized that I'm an idiot... It's a damn good thing that Andy checks these posts every night before they "go public."]

But, I digress... Oh wait, I want to digress even further by saying that I want to write a short story called "The Valet and The Valetudinarian." Anyways, I disgress twice, but now I'm back, baby, I'm back!

So, in this Domino's commercial they say that with three one-topping pizzas and 26 toppings to choose from the possibilities are "Endless." Oh my, oh my, where should I even begin with this one.... First of all there are NOT really 26 toppings to choose from. There are only 14 standard Domino's Topings:

Pepperoni, Ham, Mushroom, Black Olives, Bacon, Onions, Green Peppers, Tomatoes, Extra Cheese, Cheddar Cheese, Sausage, Jalapenos, Beef and Pineapple. That's 14, bitches, not 26. The only way you can claim to have 26 toppings is if you enclude all the specialty international toppings. I.e.:

Squid from Japan, Tuna and Sweet Corn from England, Black Bean Sauce from Guatemala, Barbequed Chicken from the Bahamas, Capsicum from Australia, Lamb and Pickled Ginger from India, Creme-Fresch from France, Portuguese Sausage and Spanish Sausage from Portugal, and finally Grilled Lamb from the Netherlands.

So, YES, if you enclude all of these specialty foreigner toppings, then there are 26 toppings. But, who the Fock is really going to order one pizza from France, one from England, and one from the Netherlands (which isn't even a real country for god's sake!)?

Just for the argument's sake, suppose that we do get our choice from each of the 26 total toppings and we get to shuffle them amoung our three one-topping pizzas. Even in this case there are actually only 3276 choices... That's hardly even big, let alone endless.

Fin.

Update: Feb 27, 2006:

Oh man, I haven't updated my website in 18 days. That's crazy.

Update: Feb 09, 2006:

This is the pub crawl schedule... only 8 bars, pussy:

• College Inn (6:00PM - 7:00PM)
• Big Time (7:05 - 7:50)
• Finn McCools (7:55 - 8:45)
• Flowers (8:50 - 9:40)
• Kai's (9:45 - 10:35)
• Galway Arms (10:45 - 11:35)
• Irish Emmigrant (11:40 - 12:30)
• Knarr (12:35 - 1:25)

Update: Feb 06, 2006:

Before I post some of the more humiliating/interesting pictures from Matt Hahn's party there is something I really must first get off my chest. I submit for your perusal this open letter to Al Michaels which I was inspired to write after watching the Super-Bowl (as told by Al Michaels and John Madden).

Dear Al Michaels,
Would you please-- please, for the love of god-- please, go out to your local hardware store and buy the biggest, heaviest sledgehammer you can find and hit John Madden in the face with it as hard as you can. Yours truly,
Adam Peter Sorini

• As soon as I got the the party I, of course, had to go to the bathroom. This girl was in line ahead of me and did not want her "picture took."
• This is me and one of Matt's friends whose name I can't remember so I will call him "Tall and Angry Guy."
  But as we will see later he is actually Tall and Angry and Sad.
• Here is the birthday cake.
  You should make a point of remembering the girl in the pink pants who is holding the cake.
  We shall see her again and we shall find out something about her underarms.
• This is a picture of (from right to left): Deb's eye, Matt, Tall/Angry, The Girl Who Tried to Kick Cihan in the Face and Then Puked on the Couch at Matt's Last Party.
• This is a picture of Andy, Tim and Andrea sitting on the couch.
  Guess which one of them is really drunk.
• Another shot of the Andy and Tim.
  I think Andrea is trying to LEAP into the picture from off camera.
• Here is a picture of Andrea cradling a sweet drunk little angel-baby in her arms.
• This is a picture that portrays the most humiliating of all human endeavors... dancing.
  Two noteworthy humiliations are: (1) The Girl-in-Pink-Pants has sweaty underarms, (2) Tall/Angry Guy is over there on the far right and he looks like he is about to start crying.

Update: Feb. 04, 2006:

I have two good quotes from my solid state professor that I thought I should share with the world. I can't remember the exact context of this first quote, but I think he was trying to explain what it means to be uncorrelated:

"Go out in the street and hit someone in the face. What is the probability that in a year he is your boss?"

This second quote is from when the prof was telling us that people who do numerical calculations are losers and that people who do analytical calculations are not losers. Also, it's good to keep in mind that these quotes should be read with a thick Russian accent:

"When I was young I look at television and I see singers. And I see dancers. But not both. Today they do both. Also, the singers were usually very fat."

Update: Feb. 01, 2006:

First of all, I have been pressured into moving my pub-crawl from this friday to next friday because of the busy-ness of the super-bowl weekend what with the game and with M. Hahn's party. So there's that. Also, I have a true story about why it's scary to leave the physics building and walk thru campus. Read on...

No sooner had I set out on my merry way than I was accosted by six young asian ladies with purple paper pamphlets explaining the dangers of Domestic Violence.

Together we strolled down the lane, this set of six tender descendents of the inhabitents of asia, and I. Arm in arm in arm in arm in arm in arm in arm.

The lane was skirted on one side by a tall green hedgerow and on the other side by a hedgerow that had a bustle in it [Manditory Led Zeppelin Reference].

I suggested to the girls that perhaps they add a section to their pamphlet entitled "Domestic Violence... Am I Asking for It? Some questions to ask oneself include: Do I... back talk?... talk sass?...sass back?... If so then maybe I am 'Asking for It'." [Note Added in Proof: I do NOT condone domestic violence... I only condone violence against those who are COMPLETELY defenseless like de-clawed kittens and the very very very elderly.]

The oriental sextet of sweet nymphets was not interested in my suggestion and furthermore they did not want to engage in a game of "Sticks 'n' Balls" (or, as it is known throughout Asia, "Green Felt Table Tennis That Dishonors my Family"). So I continued on to the "HUB" alone with only my thoughts and my pamphlet.

That is all.

Update: Feb. 01, 2006:

Hey, check this out. My uncle (Lt. Col. Dr. Peter Sorini M.D. P.C. Esq.) is the doctor who fixed ABC co-anchor Bob Woodruff's broken brain. Here's a story from ABC News in which he is interviewed.

Update: Jan. 28, 2006:

I've found out that there is a very nice collection of mugshots at The smoking gun. Here are some that I found particularly interesting:

• A very happy Tom Delay smiling for the camera.
• A very unhappy Nick Nolte.
• Here's an old one of Machine Gun Kelly.
• P. Funk's George Clinton.
• Bill Gates.
• And finally, I will end this list with a series of three Stripper/Prostitutes: A happy stripper/prostitute, an indifferent stripper/prostitute, and a sad stripper/prostitute.

Update: Jan. 24, 2006:

Harken all your earholes towards yonder ASTOUNDING pronouncement of VAST importunateness and OVERWHELMING Joyiousitude...

...Ladies, get ready to dust off your fanciest of underwear.
...Gentlemen, get set to break out your fanciest-of-underwear remover.
...Everyone, get go --get go??-- Whatever, what I'm trying to say is that I am officially anouncing the

1st Annual "Up Your Ave." Pub Crawl.
Friday, Feb 3, 2006.

... Graciously hosted by yours truly, Adam Peter Sorini.

I have yet to figure out all the details, but we will be starting at the very bottom of the Ave. and working our way to the very top. Tentative Schedule: College Inn, the bar in Cafe Allegro, Big Time, Finn McCools, Flowers, Kai's, Tommy's [if no cover], The District, The Monkey, Giggles , Dante's, Galway Arms, The Irish Emigrant, The Knarr.

There's probably some bars I forget. I forgot Earl's, The Rainbow, and The Blue Moon on purpose because they put us too far off our route... Anyways, like I said, this is a tentative schedule. I'm going to do some "research" this weekend and come to a final decision on the schedule next week. There will also be "suggested drinks" for each bar, and a special prize for the gentleman or lady who makes it the furthest "up the Ave." Suggestions are welcome.

Also, I think it would be good to shoot for about 1/2 an hour at each bar (about seven hours total), which means we start at about seven to finish around 2. People who want to join late can do so because we will have a well timed schedule and will be sticking strickly to it.

Update: Jan 17, 2006:

As promised, here are 9 awesome pictures... I decided not to put up the one shitty one.

Update: Jan 16, 2006.

Oh man, I was going to update my webpage with nine cool pictures and one stupid one, but then I decided I have to get the hell out of here (the physics building) so I'll just write some random crap. The pictures will come later.

So, what am I going to write about. Well, actually, I'm going to write about something that I was planning on writing, but I didn't. That is to say, I was planning on writing a novella, but I couldn't because I came up with too many titles and not enough plots.

Here are some example of titles that I came up with:

"The Squashening Story of Samuel Pomegranate,"

"The Spatulating Story of Fox Paw Joe,"

"Who the Bell Tolls For" [This story was going to be about a Guy named Captain Ned who goes around with a group of spanish-speaking freedom-fighters and during the day they all blow up bridges and stuff, and then at night they come back to camp and all sleep in sleeping bags. Then all the freedom-fighters make fun of Ned because he 'wets the bag.' Idea for ending: The enemy replaces Ned's sleeping back with a totally rubber sleeping bag and he pees so much that he drowns himself],

"The Wisk and The Ladle,"

"The Long-Handled Spoon",

That's it.

Update: Jan 12, 2006.

Did you know?... The metal with the highest melting point is Tungsten!

Did you know?... Tungsten (also called "Wolfram") is Atomic Symbol 'W'!!

Did you know?... Strangely, Tungsten's melting point is EXACTLY the same as it's freezing point!!!

Did you care?

Update: Jan 04, 2006.

I know I said I wasn't going to post about Tim's theta-function dilemma on my website... but, what the hell. I don't have anything better to do -- Oh, and just so that normal (non-physicist) people arn't bored with the post -- I have decided to write about this amusing (and somewhat embarrassing for Tim) incident it in the style of a movie screenplay:

                                                                       FADE IN:

INT. AN OFFICE -- DAY

Empty. In one corner of the office a computer hums quietly. The 
shelves are littered with books and papers. It looks as if someone 
left in a hurry.

INT. WINDOWLESS BASEMENT LABORATORY

Also empty. Giant metal support structures loom down from above.
Various odd-looking instruments and coiled lengths of cable and 
wire are strewn about the lab.

                                                                       CUT TO:

EXT. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON -- DAY

Just your typical busy college campus with students scurrying around 
and busses roaring by. Washington is a fairly good public university; 
a little better than UC-Davis, a little worse than UC-SB.

EXT. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, DRUMHELLER FOUNTAION -- DAY

We are TRACKING three young men as they walk briskly towards THE HUB. 
It's cold and wet outside and they are on their way to play a game of 
pool. We FOCUS IN on the young man in the middle. His name is TIM and
he is complaining to JOSH and ADAM about a MATHEMATICA program.

                           TIM
             (Continuing)
             ...And so, I had to divide by a theta function.

                           JOSH
             But wait. Isn't the theta function zero most of
             the time?

                           TIM
             Yes, and so to avoid divergences I had to 
             multiply by a theta function.

                           ADAM
             (nonplussed)
             The same theta function?

                           TIM
             (oblivious)
             Yes.

An awkward silence hangs in the damp Seattle air. But before any 
of the young men can comment again on the theta function we...
 
                                                                        CUT TO:

INT. COFFEE SHOP -- MORNING

JULES lowers his gun, lying it on the table.

PUMPKIN looks at him, to the money in his hand, then to YOLANDA. 
She looks back.

Grabbing the trash bag full of wallets, the two RUN out the
door.

Jules, who has never risen from his seat the whole time, takes
a sip of coffee.

                           JULES
             (to himself)
             It's cold.

He pushes it aside.

VINCENT appears next to Jules.

                           VINCENT
             I think we oughta leave now.

                           JULES
             That's probably a good idea.

Vincent throws some money on the table and Jules grabs the
briefcase.

Then, to the amazement of the PATRONS, the WAITRESSES, the
COOKS, the BUS BOYS, and the MANAGER, these two bad-ass dudes
-- wearing UC Santa Cruz and "I'm with Stupid" tee-shirts,
swim trunks, thongs and packing .45 Automatics -- walk out of
the coffee shop together without saying a word.


                           THE END

Update: Dec 29, 2005.

I don't have a special section for recipes... unlike some people I know. But, my family has it's fair share of secret recipes and so I figured that I would share one of those recipes with all of you. Here's the recipe:

Salty Peppery Cheese Water ala Sorini

Ingredients:

Swiss cheese
1 raw egg
1 boiled egg
Honey
Mustard
Honey-mustard
5 oz. whiskey
Salt/Pepper

Directions:

 Fill a large BLUE pot with water and bring to a boil. If your swiss cheese has
holes then seperate the cheese from the holes and put the cheese into the pot.
Save the holes for later. Spin the eggs. When the raw egg stops add salt. When 
the boiled egg stops add pepper. Discard eggs. Discard mustard. Using a spatula 
and a tuning-fork coat the underside of your mattress and the mattresses of your
loved ones with honey. If you run out of honey, use honey-mustard, but first beg
forgiveness. Dish out the cheese-water into paper bags or, if you don't have 
paper bags, use the good china. Drink the whiskey. 

That's all the recipes that I'm going to give away at the moment, but stay tuned, there might be more coming... you never know!

Update: Dec 28, 2005.

As promised, I am posting some pictures of my apartment. I took these pictures when my apartment was in a state of great disarray. But, do not be alarmed; I have since cleaned it.

• This is a view out my kitchen window. Usually there are no birds sitting out there, but this day there were twelve birds. I have taken it apon myself to point out some of the more interesting aspects of this picture. I am, for some reason, reminded of the interesting equation: t w e l v e + o n e = e l e v e n + t w o.
• Here is the inside of my kitchen. The books are on the floor over there because I am trying to flatten out a picture that got bent.
• Yet another room in my apartment. Can you spot the ninja?
• Finally, I have a picture of my bedroom. The Lolster was asleep before I came in to take this picture. She mad now.

Update: Dec 19, 2005.

Now that I solved that unsolvable riddle from Dec. 14 about the chicken I have been getting a lot of emails from the Standardized Testing Community. They want me to write up a few different versions of the chicken-egg riddle for various standardized tests, since now the answer (The Chicken!) should be fairly common knowledge.

Anyways, here are some test questions that will most likely be included in the 2009 version of the respective standardized tests.

SAT question:

    1. Which came first: the chicken, or the egg?

       A. The chicken
       B. The egg
       C. Our lord, Jesus Chirst
       D. A and C
       E. D

LSAT question:

    2. Legally speaking, which came first: the chicken, or the egg?

       A. Ipso Facto
       B. Pro Bono
       C. Not guilty, your honor!
       D. Hang by the neck until dead
       E. The chicken

MCAT question:

    3. Medically speaking, which came first: the chicken, or the egg?

       A. A urine sample
       B. A stool sample
       C. A and B
       D. Two parts A, one part B, one part vermooth, blend until froathy.
       E. The chicken

GED question:

    [STOP! Do not proceed to the next question until prompted to do so by
     your proctor. Do not read the question out loud, read it silently
     to yourself. Try not to move your lips when you read the question.]

    4. Find the letter to the left of the words "The chicken" and fill
       in that letter on your scantron sheet. Do you think you can handle
       that? Are you moving your lips when you read this? What did I just 
       tell you?!

       A. NOT THE ANSWER
       B. The chicken
       C. NOT THE ANSWER
       D. NOT THE ANSWER
       E. C and D

      1. A , 2. E , 3. E, 4. B

There's an old riddle that goes something like, "Two trains are racing towards each other on the same track. Both trains are moving at 50 miles per hour and they start off 200 miles apart. A fly starts from one train and flys at 75 miles per hour towards the second train. When he gets there he turns around and flys at 75 miles per hour back to the first train, then he turns around and flys at 75 miles per hour back to the other train, and so on, and so on, until the trains crash into each other. What is the total distance traveled by the fly?"

There's a "trick" way to answer this riddle by just realizing that the trains crash after two hours and so the fly must have flown 150 miles.

Here's a better riddle, "Two trains are racing towards each other on the same track. Both of the trains are moving at 50 miles per hour and they start off 200 miles apart. A fly starts from one train and flys at 75 miles per hour towards the second train. When he gets there he undergoes a perfectly elastic collision and heads back towards the first train, and so on, and so on, until the trains crash into each other. What is the total distance traveled by the fly?"

That riddle is a bit harder, but in order to make your life easier you should consider the train to be infinitly more massive than the fly and also you may (but really you shouldn't) ignore special relativity.

Here's an even better, super-easy variation on the same riddle, "Two trains are racing towards each other on the same track. Both of the trains are moving at 50 miles per hour and they start off 200 miles apart. A fly starts from one train and flys at 75 miles per hour towards the second train. When he gets there he undergoes a totally INELASTIC collision (as would happen in real life, i.e. SPLAT!). What is the total distance traveled by the fly?"

A playwright once wrote that life is like a play, a play which signifies nothing. But, I don't think that's quite right. Life isn't like a play about nothing, it's more like a really really boring porno. In life there's all this boring dialogue and stupid plot development while you just keep waiting and waiting for the sex scenes. I mean, who cares about some dude going to the bank to deposit his check on his way to the physics building. Let's just get to the hardcore fucking, already!

I'm so excited... And I just can't hide it... I know, I know, I know, I know how to hook up my new digtal camera to my linux machine at work, finally.

And it only took me about 2 weeks to figure it out, but now that I have I can finally start putting some more pics on my website. I will start off by posting the few pictures that I took of my trip back to Ann Arbor for Thanksgiving.

Coming soon will be a digital camera tour of my apartment. Aren't you just so excited that you just can't hide it?

Anywho, without further ado, here are the pictures:

• When you go back to Ann Arbor, you must always remember to meet up with your highschool friends at the bar. Here's a pic of a subset of such friends. From left to right we've got: Mike F., Patti C., Johnny U., Jon M.B. (my brother), J.T.T.T., Adam S., and Patty ?. (cant remember last initial, sorry)
• Here's a pic of jon and patty about to get in a fight. And good ol' J.T. is fanning the flames. good job J.T., are you perturbed yet? Nah.
• Thanksgiving dinner number one was at my dad's house. I took this picture of Jon, Patty, Kelly, and Dad sittin' around the dinner table.
• Thanksgiving dinner number two was at my mom's house. I took this picture of Patty, Jon, Doug, and Mom standin' by the TV with no volume. I am an awesome picture taker.
• Here's one last picture I took of Tom Moore's sister and Bart Fisher's sister and some dude who I don't know is standing in between them.

Just a quick update tonight.

I have solved the "unsolvable" puzzle: 'Which came first, the chicken, or the egg?'

It was the chicken.

I'm still feeling a little under the weather, but I managed to get out to Ballard on Saturday for Andy's birthday and also we watched the awesome awesome 80's ('89 to be exact) action movie "Tango and Cash."

You might think that this movie is about two dudes who get paid (and who don't accept credit of checks) to dance like turn-of-the-century Argentinian prostitutes... but it's not. It's really about "Two of L.A.'s rival cops [who] are going to have to work together... Even if it kills them."

Long story short, Ray Tango (Stallone) and Gabe Cash (Russell) get framed by a drug/gun smuggler named Yves Perret. Along with being a rug/dung smuggler Yves also has a weird obsession with mice and keeps two (or more) mice in a box on his desk. He also, apparently, had someone construct for him a really large television that is made up of a bunch of smaller televisions for the wall of his office. Oh wait-- another weird thing about Yves is that he has like four or five old jeep wagoneers that have fucking missle launchers attached to their roofs. And oh yeah-- he also has a specially designed dodecahedral room that has mirrors for eleven of the walls and a glass case for the last wall so that he can "hide" in the glass case in case he needs to supply a lame (I mean awesome!) ending for an 80's action movie.

Whew, that was a lot of typing... but let me just tell you about two more scenes.

One: There is actually a scene in this movie where Kurt Russell shoves a live grenade down some english guy's pants. Wow.

Two (this is actually a pretty complicated scene to describe, so stick with me): Cash is on a couch getting a massage from Tango's sister, Katherine 'Kiki' Tango (Teri Hatcher), and Tango has snuck into his sister's house and is, for some unknown reason, hanging out in the corner of the room and watching them. Then, all of a sudden, Tango spots someone lurking behind the screen door and so he leaps over the couch to attack the lurker. The force of Tango's attack busts down the screen door and both he and the screen door and the lurker fall to the ground. Now Tango has the lurker pinned to the ground and is choking him through the screening of the screen door. But then -- this is the twist -- we all realize that the lurker is just our good ol' buddy the police cheif who has come to give us some information or something. The police chief, with his face still smushed up against the screen door and still half choked by Tango, then deadpans, "Is this how you SCREEN all your guests?"

If that is not genius, then I don't know what is. To have the presense of mind to be able to come up with a pun THAT BAD under those extreme circumstances just boggles the mind.

I'm back, Baby! I'm Back! Yeah!

I guess I should first give a shout out to the medical students who supposedly (according to my god-damn brother) read my website. Now I can stop addressing all my posts to Andy and Tim.

I only have one interesting thing to say today, but -- god-damn it -- is it interesting.

You know how sometimes your alarm clock goes off and you are just laying there in bed thinking about how tired you are and you want to go back to sleep but you know you have to get up?

Don't you wish there was some really easy way to get yourself motivated to hop out of bed and get in the shower?

Well, guess what? I just discovered how to do that; Just shit your pants a little bit and, trust me, you will jump right out of bed and run to the shower.

It works like a charm.

It will probably wake up your girlfriend pretty good too (Note: Physicists, replace the word "girlfriend" with "life sized replica of Star Trek TNG character seven-of-nine that you sleep with" in the previous sentence).

Well, this will probably be the last update 'till I get back from my Thanksgiving/NIST traveling extravaganza. I'm leaving on Wednesday and coming back on Sunday and then I'm leaving again right away on Monday and coming back on Friday. Woo hoo.

So, I have three things for you:

1. I scanned the actual letter that I was talking about in my Nov 18th update, so there's that

2. I found a local news story which gives yet another reason to never ever go to the fucking mall. I hate the fucking mall. (Note: Tacoma is a few miles south of Seattle in case ya didn't know) (Note Also: I'm not totally sure that that link will work, so I hope it does.)

3. Here is a picture of Fermi's Golden Rule for photon absorption by an initial state containing one cat. (Note: I am in the dipole approximation, though it's most likely not applicable unless we are talking about a really small cat. Even smaller then the Lolster.) (Note Also: That theta-function in the 2nd line IS supposed to have a close parenthesis on it, but it got cut off by the scanner. Sorry.)

That's all.

Hey! The Daily published my letter to the editor in their Friday edition... I think the Friday letters section is where they just publish all the crap letters that have been collecting up over the week, but whatever.

The bad part is that they edited my letter to remove the P.S. at the end... but, man, that was the best part.

Here is the letter in its entirety, Postscript and all:

Dear Daily,
                                                                                
   You know how everyone always 
says, "The Daily is a no-good rag 
that's not worth the paper it's printed 
on and I only use The Daily to line the
bottom of my bird's cage?" 
   Well, it's just not true.
   Take, for example, the excellent 
front-page article from Monday's
edition about campus crime rates 
("Campus crime rates decline," Nov. 
14, 2005) in which we are treated 
to the passage, "Instances of bike 
theft have more than doubled since 
2003... 94 occurrences of bike theft 
were reported in 2003. The number 
jumped to 170 last year."
   I applaud this bold declaration 
that 188 is less than 170.
   One more time, really slowly -- If I 
double 94 I get 188 and since bike 
thefts have "more than doubled" this 
means 170 is more than 188.
   Am I right, or am I right?
                                                                                
Adam
                                                                                
P.S. I want to climb up on the highest mountain-top and shout "I love you,
     Daily!" for the whole wide world to hear. The Daily will respond, "I
     love you, Adam" and we will embrace and spin 'round and 'round in
     each others arms. Later that night, The Daily and I will make love on 
     the soft grass of that mountain-top meadow underneath the stars.

In case you haven't heard, Andy, Tim has a waking-up-naked story posted on his website. You see all the awesome stuff that you miss out on when you are sober, Andy.

I have a similar waking-up-naked story that also involves cheese-dip and an illegal Equadorian immigrant, but I will spare you the details.

On a completely different topic: Do you know what is the average distance between two random real numbers within an interval from zero to ten?
The answer is totally fucked up, man. Me and the Dice-man (Daisuke) were flipping out over this problem at the physics building today.

Wow, this is crazy. I was just looking for restaurants on "Citysearch.com" and I have found that there are:
495 Japanese restaurants,
311 Chinese restaurants,
19 Korean restuarants,
2 Indonesian restaurants,
and 1 lonely Malaysian restaurant.

But here's the crazy thing... Citysearch also says that there are only
48 Asian restaurants.

This means that there must be some other Asian nations who contribute
Negative 780 restaurants.
Whoa.

Also, I want to tell you something about Indonesia: Indonesia comes alphabetically directly before Iran which was known as 'Persia' until 1935. As far as Persian Rugs go, it is NOT recommended that you hang one on your wall (as you risk damaging the rug). But if you MUST it is standard to use 3 or 4 inch hook and pile fasteners (A.K.A. VELCRO which is a brandname, like XEROX or KLEENEX or APPLE or banana). Over half of the world's bananas were produced in either; China, Brazil, Equador, or India which comes alphabetically directly before Indonesia.

Story Time:

   Once apon a time there lived an awesome samuari who was in love with a 
beautiful female samurai. 
   This awesome samurai could kill you like-THAT! Just that fast. The 
beautiful female samurai could also kill you like-THAT!
   If you were holding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in your hand and
you accidentally dropped your sandwich at the exact moment that the samurai
decided to kill you... guess what would happen? Here's what: The samurai
would kill you AND make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich AND EAT IT
all before your sandwich even hit the ground.
   Also, if the samurai was still hungry he could probably catch your sandwich
and eat that too.
   So, anyways, one day the awesome samurai was at his job at the physics
building and there were some other samurai friends there and they were talking. 
   The awesome samurai was all like, "Oh man, that beautiful female samurai who 
works at the INT as the new administrative assistant is hot!"
   The other samurai were all like, "Yeah!"
   The awesome samurai and the samurai friends talked about some other
stuff too and after a while the awesome samurai told some hilarious joke that
made all the samurai friends laugh.
   Then, just as all the samurai friends were laughing, the beautiful female
samurai stepping into my office and said, "That's hilarious... I am totally 
going to fuck whoever told that joke."
   The End.

Today is the day that I decided to document the BLATANT RACISM that is rampant on the fourth floor of the physics building.
For example, just look at these recycle bins, don't they just reek of an Alabama bus. [when you click on the picture be sure to note the long-haired racist hippie in the background.]

So, I guess nobody is wondering why the hell the title of this web page was changed to... well, seeming gibberish. I just guess nobody god-damn cares.

The number 'e' has a value of approximately 2.718281828... and it is often refered to as "Euler's constant" (hence 'e').
'e' can be defined many ways, but perhaps a nice way is to say "take all the factorials (e.g. 0!, 1!, 2!, 3!, 4!, etc) and then invert them (e.g 1/0!, 1/1!, 1/2!, 1/3!, 1/4! etc) and then 'e' is the sum of all those inverted guys (i.e. e = 1 + 1 + 1/2 + 1/6 + 1/24 + ...)."
Now, let me reiterate a key part of my rant: 'e' is refered to as "Euler's constant."

The number 'gamma' has a value of approximately 0.57721566... and is a bit more obscure than 'e', but trust me, it apprears often enough in physics.
A nice way to describe 'gamma' is to say that it is the difference between the most slowly diverging integral of a power (i.e. integral from 1 to infinity of 1/x) and the most slowly diverging sum of a power (i.e sum from 1 to infinity of 1/n).
'gamma' is sometimes called the "Euler-Mascheroni constant," but more often than not it is just called the "Euler constant."

The number 'e raised to the power gamma' is approximately 1.781072, all it is is the number 2.718281828 raised to the power 0.57721566.
Guess what they call this number? That's right: "Euler's constant."
So, apparently "Euler's constant is Euler's constant raised to the power of Euler's constant."

Stupid mother-fucking number-namers.

Oh, I almost forgot... the awesome equation. The awesome equation relates the value of the "gap" in a superconductor at zero temperature (called Delta_0) to the superconductor's critical temperature (called T_c). The equation is:

e^gamma*Delta_0 = pi*T_c

In the above equation pi is the constant 3.14159265... and e is Euler's constant and gamma is Euler's constant too.

Last night I was pleasently surprised when I went to my local video store (Scarecrow Video) and found that they had the fourth season of the most fucking awesome HBO series ever: "Curb Your Enthusiasm" starring Larry David.

The show is mostly ad-libbed -- so there's no script -- but I felt the need to put down onto paper the most awesome pick-up attempt ever. The following dialouge is from the first episode of season one and it takes place in a Kakaoke bar. Larry walks up to a nice looking young lady and says:

  Larry:  Do you like karaoke?
  Girl:  Yeah
  Larry:  It's good, you know. It's something to do at night. There's
         nothing to do at night. What can you do at night?
          Bowling, movies -- it's like a third thing to do at night,
         after bowling and the movies.
          I don't know it you bowl or not; I don't go that often. But,
         it's fun... It's fun.
          You can't find a ball, that's the problem.
          I don't know, maybe you own a bowling ball; I don't own a 
         bowling ball.
          My whole life, every time I'm at a bowling alley, sticking
         my fingers in all these holes, picking up balls...
          You gotta get your own ball.
          I don't bowl enough, I think, to get my own ball; it takes
         up a lot of space in the house. You'll end up looking at it
         in the closet going, "What am I doing with a bowling ball? 
         I don't even bowl!"
          ...You know what I mean?
          ...Say you want to get rid of the ball. How do you get rid
         of a bowling ball? Think about that. Who do you give a bowling 
         ball to? Nobody bowls. Their fingers -- it only fits your 
         fingers. You throw a bowling ball in the garbage can, you know
         what that sanitation man's gonna do? He's gonna knock on your
         door; that's how upset he's going to be. He's gonna say, "Who
         the fuck threw a bowling ball in the garbage can?"
          ...[long pause as Larry looks away]
          ...Okay... Allright...
          I'm around town.

Okay, let me explain my other update. Today I was reading our awesome school newspaper, "The Daily."
Of course, I am being sarcastic; The Daily is a fucking rag which has but one redeeming quality: a crossword puzzle.

So, anyways, I was flipping through to get to the crossword puzzle when I saw that there was a Horoscope section. I hate the fucking Horoscope and I don't even feel the need to explain why. Let's just say that If you don't hate the Horoscope then I hate you.

That being said, I decided to write my own Horoscope section, so here it is:

Horoscopes, by Adam Sorini:

Something will happen to you today, Aries. And do you know what?.. it's going to be bad.
Real bad. You should probably just stay inside and hide under your bed all day today.
And if you have to go to the bathroom, Aries, just go.

Your horoscope is exactly the same as Aries' except that if you have to go #2 then you should definitely hold it.

Today you're going to go over to your friend's house and find him hiding under the bed trying to hold in his shit.

Hey Cancer, this week during your weekly naked pillow fight with your sorority sisters you should make sure to heed this warning: watch out for Nerds!

Today you will die.

...?

This week you will update your website by writing a bunch for hilarious horoscopes... but you won't be able to come up with anything for Virgo.
Also, you are fucking awesome, man!

If I know you, Scorpio, then I know what you've been wanting to do all week.
And, well, I think you should just go ahead and take the plunge.
So, why don't you just go and stab that hobo to death already. Geez.

Do NOT -- under ANY circumstances -- stab a hobo this week.

Maybe you should stab a hobo, but then again, maybe you should not stab a hobo.
It all depends on the color of his bindle.
Here is a poem to help you decide:

A Hobo's Bindle: by Adam Sorini:

If it be red, then stab him dead. 
But if it be blue, then you shouldn't do
it.

Aquarius, you suck!

Today you'll go over to your hobo friend's "house" and find him hiding under his "bed."
And also, someone will have either stabbed him, or thought about stabbing him based on the color of his bindle.

Today, I am the birthday child.

"In Chermany it is the birthday child who buys the beers."

Today I went to the IMA and there's this hot blonde sitting there checking I.D. as people walk in. She seems to have just returned from some tropical clime since her legs, which are kicked-up on her desk, are a nice deep tan.

But, let's not focus on her slim tan legs. Those legs are beside the point. The important thing for you to know is that she is wearing a bright green t-shirt. A tight bright green t-shirt with big yellow letters across her breasts (the two of which are aged no more than 19 year by my estimation... and really quite nice) that says "Brazil!"

I guess green and yellow are Brazilian colors.

So, I give her my I.D. and I say, "Are you from Brazil?"

She says, "No, but I went there this summer."

I reply, "Oh, that's interesting. When you were in Brazil did you meet Blanka?"

Today, I got a phone-call from a certain J. who requested to remain nameless. Or - wait a sec - maybe I should refer to him as T. Today, I got a phone-call from a certain T. who requested to remain nameless.

T. also requested that I not write on my web-page about his recent amorous pursuits with a fellow co-worker (at C.'s restaurant and bar) who happens to be a full seven years his junior. "For shame, J." ... I mean, "For shame, T."

Of course, if there is one lesson to be learned from all of this, it is simply that you should never mention specifically that you don't want something online. That's like saying "Don't tickle me." Well, of course I'm going to tickle you now.

Ever wonder what good ol' Adam Sorini is doin' when he's not out drinkin', drugin', sexin', or puttin' apostrophes at the end of words?

... He's doin' physics!!!

But what, exactly is this physics that he is doing (no apostrophe)?

Well, shit. Have I got something for you.

Hot off the presses, it's a short little report I wrote about what the hell I did all summer.

It comes in 3 flavors: "Portable Document Flavored" (PDF), "Postscript Flavored" (PS), and "Prostaglandins Flavored" (Get it?... Comes in 3 flavors. Is that funny or just horribly disgusting?... Or BOTH!)

So now when people ask Adam Sorini, "what do you fucking do all day!" I can respond, "Why don't you taste my prostaglandins first, then I'll tell you."

ROTFLMPO! (The 'P' stands for 'Prostaglandins'.)

As usual, I came into work around 3:30-ish (Seriously, I was working at home... REALLY!) and sat down to read Tim Fister's webpage as I usually do.

Tim had posted some links to various George W Boosh approval rating polls, and I took it apon myself to make a gnuplot of the data as a function of months since September 2001.

I was getting all into making my plot and thinking that I was so damn fresh when Andy waltzed into my office and told me that there was already a way-more-cool-than-my-plot plot of President G.W. Ba-Ba-Booshka's approval rating posted outside of Kaplan's door.

"Damn your eyes!" I screamed at Andy, as I do to all bearers of bad news. "But does that OTHER plot have a Theoretical Approval Rating for a Mixture of George W. Bush with Metallic Copper at 300 Degrees Kelvin as Generated by Feff?" No? Well this one does. Yeah!!!!

That way-more-cool plot really does look a lot like some sort of spectrum with a bunch of peaks.

I was wondering what events caused those spikes in Mr. Poopy-pants' approval rating, so I've tried to look back on current events and figure out what in the fuck did it.

Of course, the big peak just after Sept/2001 is obvious.

The next spike near April/2003 is right around when we "Won" ("Mission Accomplished") the war. We really did beat the fucking hell out of that Iraqi army... but weren't we supposed to be beating the fucking hell out of Mimosa bin Ladin? What happened there?

Then that next peak near Dec/2003 is when Mr. Underpants (A.K.A. Saddam) was capture in his "spider-hole." Remember? Remember?

For the life of me I couldn't figure out what that last little broad peak was near February 2004... Do you know what it was? Was it the Tsunami? No. That are before... but 'member that? Yeah I do.

I finally got it though. That last spike was the successful (should I put that in quotes? I don't know... 'member there was that happy Iraqi lady with the ink on her thumb, or whatever. She sure was happy.) elections in Iraq. 'member? 'member? I 'membered!

P.S. I think that we should spell Iraqi Iraqui (pronounced: Ira-qwee) since in nature q's always occur before u's.

And also, French people will think we don't know who Ira is.

"Ira who?"

[French Accent] "I do not know, perhaps Gershwin?"

"Shut up, Frenchy!"

If your name is Andy O'Bannon, then you have already seen this. Otherwise, click the link to see Tim's Aug 29 update. I found it quite amusing.

I would like to share with you a quote from my cell phone's user's manual (the "Samsung a650 User Guide") regarding battery care:

  Section: Caring for the Battery
  Page: 110

      "Never dispose of the battery by incineration."

Damn good advice, don't you think?

  Section: El cuidado de la pila
  Page: El 110

      "Nunca deseche la pila mediante la incineracion!!! Ayeeee, Poppeee!"

Here's what I don't understand: Why, in the section title, did they choose to capitalize "Battery" in english, but not "pila" in spanish? That's just not consistent

Speaking of consistency, I have a quote for you that I came up with whilst working on some x-ray theory:

      "A self-consistent piece of crap is still a piece of crap."
                                                    -Adam Sorini
 

      "Un pedazo self-consistent de caca sigue siendo un pedazo 
       de caca!!! Ayeee, Poppeee!"
                                                   -El senor Adam-sito

Anyways, I rented Woody Allen's movie "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask" last night. The movie consists of seven unrelated vignettes, but only the first and the last are any good.

Here's a quote from the first segment in which Woody plays a court jester who is trying (literally) to get into the queen's chastity belt:

    "I must think of something quickly because before we know it the
     Renaissance will be here and we'll all be painting."

    "Iay ustmay inkthay ofay omethingsay icklyquay ecausebay eforebay eway
     ownay itay ethay enaissanceRay illway ebay erehay anday e'llway allaw
     ebay aintingpay!!! Ayeeeay, oppeeePay!"

These quotes are both Physics related. The first one is a description of Woody's character:

    "He has no spiritual center; he's spending everything on physics and pussy."

Not a bad idea...

    "I'm more powerful than you are because I'm a bigger sinner. Because you're
     a fallen angel, and I never believed in god, or heaven, or any of that
     stuff. I'm strickly quarks and particles and blackholes. All the other
     stuff is junk to me."

Also, not a bad idea...

Woo boy, that's a lot of quotes for ya... Good night.

I bought a cell phone today. The guy at the store said it was 'top of the line.' I should say that I quite agree with him. Here is a picture of my awesome new green phone.

The number is [I am obfuscating a bit because I am paranoid about www-bots [you know, programs that visit web pages and mine them for personal info such as email addresses and phone numbers]] 'two oh six three seven five one won for five.'

Hey! Did I tell ya? I'm a god-damn mentor, bitches!

Yeah!

Hey! While you're at it, why don't you look at this fucking hilarious cartoon about everybody's favorite elemental solid... That's right: Lead!

What the hell? I thought that I had already put a link to the following Deja Vu stuff on my webpage.... but apparently I did not.

Anyhow. We took Adam Clark to the Vu for his bachelor party. Here's the scoop.

Time for a Story [Short, not Lanky]:

    He arrived about an hour early. I remember that much because I had
just looked down at my watch and all the little numbers were perfectly
correct, except for the hour-number; That number was one too small.
    Anyhow, he was a lanky fellow all right - and quite old! An old lanky
fellow was he. And he strutted around with a slight bounce in his step
in that certain way that old (and lanky) fellows do.
    Actually, maybe "lanky" isn't quite the word to describe this certain
fellow. Maybe what I really mean is that he was "gangly." Yes, that's quite
right! Gangly. And maybe, I suppose, he wasn't quite so much "old" as he was
actually rather "young." But he sure was early.
    "Old mister lanky" we would have called him, but instead we just called 
him "young man gangly."
    Also, we beat the living crap out of that guy.    

Time for a Classic Joke:

      Little Herbie had been blind since birth. One
    day at bedtime, his mother told him that the next
    day was a very special one. If he prayed extra
    hard, he'd be able to see when he woke up in the
    next morning.
      The next morning she came into Herbie's room
    to make sure he'd prayed hard the night before.
    "Well then, open your eyes and you'll know that
    your prayers have been answered."
      Little Herbie opened his eyes, only to cry out,
    "Mother! Mother! I still can't see!"
      "I know dear," said his mother. "April Fool."      

Oh man, check this guy out.

Lately I have been reading a lot in this book called "Numerical Recipes in Fortran 77."

I am becoming a big fan of this book, and so I would like to share with you some choice snippets from the text... Here they are (along with the corresponding page number):

(from p.333)
"Selection is sorting's austere sister. (Say that five times quickly!)"

(From p.387)
"...the production of wheat in the U.S. must be a non-negative number."

(From p.438)
"Suppose that the salesman has an irrational fear of flying over the Mississippi River."

(And finally From p. 268 I quote the authors quoting a programming consultant)
" "We guarantee that each number is random individually, but we don't guarantee that more than one of them is random." Figure that out."

  Riddle: How many times a day do the hands (minute and hour) on a clock pass each other?

Answer

Another God-damned bug related update.

No fancy media to go along with this update; I just had to get it posted as soon as possible for everybody's safety.

You remember how a long time ago I posted a picture of the huge fucking spider that I had been seeing in the first floor men's (of course) bathroom of the Physics Building? Yeah, well, guess what. After over seven months of huge-spider-free bathroom time, I just saw that fucking spider again today.

Goddamn it, don't huge spiders ever die?!

I am never taking a shit in that bathroom again.

Damn, there's a bunch of stupid bees building a nest right by my front door.

... and they are killing at random.

... and even the LAPD's "Zombie Squad" can't stop them.

... But what about this guy?

You have no reason to believe this sentence.

   A guy goes to his psychiatrist and says, "Doc, I think my friend is crazy, he thinks he's a chicken."
   The psychiatrist says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?"
   The guys says, "I would... but I need the eggs."

Gentle reader, in regards to the riddle of July 18th: Please note that, for all intents and purposes, the speed of sound does NOT depend on pressure.

Whence, the solution of the aforementioned riddle does not have to do with a pressure difference.

Also, I know that I spelled "embarking" incorrectly in the riddle. I mean, of course I know how to spell "embarking". I was obviously just testing you with a mini-riddle; a spelling riddle...

   Adam: My fellow nerds, rejoice in the glory of the coming of a new riddle.
   Nerds [musically]: Ahh-ahh-ahh-ahhh-men.

Last night I went over to G's appartment to watch the 80's action classic "Raw Deal" starring Ahrnold.

If you haven't already seen the review of this movie from "The Ruthless Guide to 80's Action" I highly recommend that you check it out.

The movie in a nutshell is this: Ahrnold kills 40 mobsters and then heals a cripple.

But here's the funny part. Ahrnold was partly responsible for crippling the cripple that he healed. Also, instead of speaking in tongues and rolling around with snakes like most faith-healers, all Ahrnold did was walk into the cripple's hospital room and shout at him until he started walking.

Ahrnold has the power to give life, and he has the power to take it away.

Today I made some wiggly lines with 'feff' which is a computer program that you use to make wiggly lines.

Today's wiggly lines were GOOD wiggly lines. You can see what GOOD wiggly lines look like right here.

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one great thing.

-Archilochus