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.

From Angel, context be damned:

amych: You're so un-thralled by the shiny blond thing. You make the Baby WB Marketing Department Cry!

(Gods of the Phoenix: let this all fit in one post. And let all the tags be closed. Thank you.)

From Bureaucracy:

Sophia: I think we should make Allyson a verb to mean graciously collecting donations for charity.

ita: But you'll have opposition from those that want to use "Allyson" to mean "to wittily eviscerate". It could get confusing.

Cindy: I think "to ita" already stands for "to eviscerate." We could Allysonly ita someone, I suppose.

Hec: Really? I think of ita more as a head-kicker. Of course, we did just send her two knives.

Matt: What, Allyson can't have layers?

Allyson: I have many layers.

I also have a paypal account.

Allyson@davidfury.net if anyone would like to toss a few dollars toward Danny Strong's charity marathon thingie. I'll collect until next Friday, k? Should this go in Press?

Jon: Sure, put it in press, Allyson.

DX: Yup. We should always put our allysoning efforts in Press, because a lot of people don't read this thread.

Cindy: That's because of all the Cindying in here.

Hec: Ooh, look at that shameless fishing for gerundification.

amych: Yo, Hec, I think the word you're searching for is gerundage.

DX: No, amy, Cindy doesn't want to do a gerund, she wants to *be* a gerund.

amych: See, this is what making people into verbs leads to. The floodgates open, and everyone wants to be a part of speech.

PMM: Sure, just cause you have heckling in the bag... Rest of us have to work for our gerundage, babe.

ita: ITA.

DX: Sadly, the only thing my name could be used as a verb for is shortening overly long links, and I'd really have to kill anybody who tried to apply it that way.

Katie M: Well, you could always use it as a short-form for "miraculous end-of-story copout, perhaps involving a deity."

Cindy: Every time in the future that I have to put a pipe over a crowbar, to help me get leverage when loosening the lugnuts on a flat tire, I'm going to say I'm DXing it (because Theodosiaing it is just too difficult to pronounce).

Sean: Damn, Katie beat me to the really obvious joke...

Katie M: I'm not brilliant, but I'm fast.

Sean: Sadly, I appear to be neither. If I thought about it, I'd probably cry.

DX: So I'm going to be the verb of bad writing? 'Cause that's *so* much better...

Katie M: Well, you could always be Greek instead. I'm not sure if it counts as bad writing in that case.

DX: Oh, right. There's the whole "It's classical" loophole...

Gandalfe: Dear Stompies:

Here's a present for you! It's an Open Italics tag!!!!!!!!

Don't say I never did anything for you.

- Gandalfe

DX: Thanks ever so much, Gandalfe. I was ever so happy to have a chance to fix something. I'm the happiest stompy EVER!

Oh man, does my life suck or what?

In NATTER 16: RIO'S MAKE-OUT DEN

DebetEsse: Ok, watching "Lie to Me". I maintain that sore thumbs stick out becasue when your thumb is sore, you don't want to press it against things you're holding, so you hold it away, and it literally sticks out. I'm looking for back-up. Anyone have an authoratitive voice I can cite to my roommate?

DXMachina: Sorry, want to help, but I can't. I've gotten caught in these religious brouhahas before, and they just never end well.

Nutty lets us in on her plans for when she's king of the forest, in NATTER 16: RIO'S MAKE-OUT DEN:

I have spent many minutes dilligently trying to train Starbucksistas to say what they mean when they serve me drinks. Therefore, I ask for a small or a medium or a large, not a tall, taller or fricken ginormous. Also, when I ask for a cafe au lait, I damn well better get a cafe au lait, not a misto. Because the first time they did that to me, I stood around lost for 5 minutes while the guy yelled, "Misto??" and I was like, Dude, I am waiting for a cafe au lait.

This was in the Newbury St. Starbucks, but apparently word got around. The Boylston St. place says both now, when they finish making the drink.

Secretly, slowly, I am changing the world!!

flea: "So, that means you're really annoying and pedantic?"

Peanut gallery. I fly 100000 miles to have a peanut gallery.

Perkins: I have a new tooth!!!!

Ken Buddha: The posters here are getting younger and younger, I tell ya!