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The strangeness that is Philadelphia
Sep. 12th, 2007 02:32 pmOh, dear lord, lecturing can be so exhausting.
We went to the first 60-Second Lecture, given by Michael Gamer. It's what it sounds like: a sixty-second lecture. It was odd--indeed, afterwards, he commented that it was "the strangest thing he's ever done", and he was a participant at Otherworld last year. So that was of course odd (though entertaining).
Then we went to lunch, where the people at the next table were apparently planning a pirate-themed party, and were therefore telling the usual dumb pirate jokes. ("What's a pirate's favorite planet? Marrrrrrs!") For a while, the worst of them was "How does a pirate feel in the morning when he doesn't feel well? Letharrrrrgic!" You can see how it was hard to focus on our own conversation. Then someone came around with fliers for a farmers' market, and they asked her about ways they could pay, which (after she left) led one of them to ask, "What's a pirate's favorite way to pay for things at Penn? Dining dollarrrrrs", which the table agreed was the worst of them.
We were about to leave, and I hesitated, but decided I had to. I turned to them and, with a serious expression, asked, "You gentlemen do know what pirates buy at farmers' markets, don't you?" They kind of stared at me, and I said, "Arrrrrrtichokes!" Then we left.
(Of course, I just spent the last ten minutes talking about an article by Ken Hiraiwa discussing Chomsky's Defective Intervention Constraint, or DIC. Apparently, some people giggle at phrases like "triggering the DIC" and "has been shown to provide empirical evidence for Chomsky's DIC". Don't look at me; I pronounce it "dee-eye-cee".)
It's just that kind of day.
We went to the first 60-Second Lecture, given by Michael Gamer. It's what it sounds like: a sixty-second lecture. It was odd--indeed, afterwards, he commented that it was "the strangest thing he's ever done", and he was a participant at Otherworld last year. So that was of course odd (though entertaining).
Then we went to lunch, where the people at the next table were apparently planning a pirate-themed party, and were therefore telling the usual dumb pirate jokes. ("What's a pirate's favorite planet? Marrrrrrs!") For a while, the worst of them was "How does a pirate feel in the morning when he doesn't feel well? Letharrrrrgic!" You can see how it was hard to focus on our own conversation. Then someone came around with fliers for a farmers' market, and they asked her about ways they could pay, which (after she left) led one of them to ask, "What's a pirate's favorite way to pay for things at Penn? Dining dollarrrrrs", which the table agreed was the worst of them.
We were about to leave, and I hesitated, but decided I had to. I turned to them and, with a serious expression, asked, "You gentlemen do know what pirates buy at farmers' markets, don't you?" They kind of stared at me, and I said, "Arrrrrrtichokes!" Then we left.
(Of course, I just spent the last ten minutes talking about an article by Ken Hiraiwa discussing Chomsky's Defective Intervention Constraint, or DIC. Apparently, some people giggle at phrases like "triggering the DIC" and "has been shown to provide empirical evidence for Chomsky's DIC". Don't look at me; I pronounce it "dee-eye-cee".)
It's just that kind of day.