erika j: I had to read "Old Man and The Sea" over the summer once. Though it was short, I'm apparently still quite bitter about it.I remember thinking "If I wrote that, I'd shoot myself too,"

In Natter:

ita:

Elena, is there maybe a more bootstrappy solution for you? It would take more geekery, but a video card with TV input can theoretically do the job (please note the ATI in Wonder I have can't even come close to TiVo, but there must be better).

Elena:

Elena, is there blah blah blah boot blah blah? Blah, blah, blah, TV, blah blah (blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah TiVo, blah blah).

I feel like a dog.

She even refers to the lack of context:

Liese: years from now when I've forgotten all context and I'm searching old threadsucks, I'll be all...why was I claiming to be a deity?

In The Quotable Buffy: She said that? When?

(Elena is outlining her Quote Deathmatch plans for the next day...)

Elena: [...] (oooh, the final four matches, the winners of which will pair off and the winners of that will compete for the final! 7 more matches. Done in no time. Now I wonder what to do next.)

helentm: What about Jenny, Elena?

Elena: Okay, we'll do Jenny tomorrow.

Daniel C. Jensen: Well, that's what Giles thought at one point. Sigh.

Steph L : (I admit that, driving in to work this morning, my under-caffeinated brain thought "Wow, the highway is empty -- wonder if it's because of the hurricane?" Then I remembered I'm in southern Ohio.)

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Allyson, because of things like this? --

Dear Scientists,

I am unsure which one of you is the motherless, corn-encrusted poop ball that left our gorgeous new conference room a total sty, so if it wasn't you, please feel free to ignore the rest of this letter.

One of you, and perhaps several witnesses/accomplices used an overhead marker on the whiteboard. I understand that people make mistakes. If you didn't realize what happened and moved on to y our science-making, I would understand.

However, you did realize that you made an error. So you thought maybe you'd try and clean it. Then you discovered that it is incredibly difficult (yet not impossible) to clean overhead marker off the whiteboard. So, you left a big blue smear, not unlike smurf roadkill, across the board, mixed with other techincal sketches and equations in a rainbow of colors.

Your secretary cleans up the coffee cups and soda cans you leave strewn about the room. She pushes the chairs back in and puts away the wires to the equipment, so none of you clumsy fucks will trip and break your skulls. We need to protect your precious brains. I feel like it's the least I can do to propel mankind's understanding of the universe.

This was the last straw. Forty minutes of scrubbing, and ten blue fingers later, the board is clean. The secretary is now on strike. I am no longer in charge of the conference room.

If you lose the remote control, it is your responsibility to find it or buy a new one. If there's an awful stench eminating from a random cup or soggy lunch bag, you will have to learn to like it, or learn where the trach can is.

If all of the dry erase markers dry out because you couldn't be bothered to put the caps back on them, you'll have to open a vein and write in your own blood, asswipe.

Love,

The Secretary

lori: What the fuck is wrong with people? Why are these people such idiots?!?!

Allyson: Perhaps we can get a grant to study the problem further.

Typo Boy in NATTER 16: RIO'S MAKE-OUT DEN

Another friend of mine is a high school teacher, and babysits her grandson (a toddler) regularly. Today, she had no alternative but to drag him with her to an administrative meeting. (She is a deparment chair.) This was not a big problem - has been trained to play quietly when Grandma is in a meeting. (If I learn how, I will certainly share the secret.) But today he had a minor lapse. About twenty minutes into the meeting he toddled up to Diane and asked: "Grandma - aren't you going to get a chance to shout like everybody else?"

The JZ and Susan W. Show, talking about gossipping relatives:

JZ:

Huh. Susan, are you sure your MIL isn't my mom and your SIL isn't my aunt? Because I swear on a stack of multicultural sacred texts your family is mine.

Somehow I think there are as least as many incarnations of the Unbelievable Relative and the Family That Can't Help Talking About It as there are One True Black Cats.

[edited to make Cindy look crazy]

(Theo, that wasn't Cindy.)

eta... It was the lovely JZ.

Madrigal in Bitches:

I thought the association of beds and Vikings was a Xander-thing, though the phrase "he's a Viking in the sack" just makes me think that his idea of sex is to steal her panties and set her on fire.