Current Annoyances

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Does it smell like guitar?

[Adam54]

I'm starting to get annoyed by the inevitable appearance of the Facebook memes showing white people rioting after their team won some sort of sporting event, which are meant as a rebuttal to the white Alabaman friends disparaging black people.

Just round and round and round and round in pointless circles the whole thing goes. It's discouraging.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

It certainly feels like we've been here before.

[Dalty]

Come the age of Jubboiter, civil unrest will be dealt with by releasing the tigers.

[Jubbers]

Come the age of Jubboiter, civil unrest will be dealt with by releasing the big dogs.

Fix'd.

[Dalty]

Dogs, no matter how big, are too common for Jubboiter. She smites civil unrest with a touch of exotic class from Asia.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Here's a meme representative of the kinds of memes some of my Alabama relatives are currently sharing on Facebook:

[Dalty]

Bless

[Dalty]

That I stayed up until 5am to watch Mayweather win a fight by running away. Now I am tired and £19.99 poorer.

[neglet]

I heard several people decry that fight as a waste of money. I did not see it, as I was sitting on a siding with Amtrak for an extra hour during my trip back from Michigan. That's annoying, but to be expected. What was really annoying was that after getting to bed at 1, I was awakened by hungry cats at 6. Extremely annoying, but also to be expected. Hopefully I get the okay to feed dry food tomorrow or I may harm them in a state of sleep deprivation.

[omicron]

That I stayed up until 5am to watch Mayweather win a fight by running away. Now I am tired and £19.99 poorer.

It only cost you 20 pounds? Here in the states the price was 100 bucks or 66 pounds.

[Dalty]

Jeebus!!!! How did they get away with it?

[omicron]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/08/media/b ... ?iid=HP_LN

Bill Simmons is leaving ESPN. I am totally bummed by this.

[Corporal_Hicks]

Simmons will find a new outlet, but this news is definitely a current annoyance. He is really good.

[omicron]

My stupid DVR. I recorded the season finale for Agents of SHIELD last night and while it was a 2 hour show, I noticed my DVR only shows as recording 123 minutes.

[Mal Shot First]

What's the problem then?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

It was a typo. He meant 12.3 minutes.

[omicron]

No it said 123 minutes. My stupid ass apparently can't do math. Apparently my brain thought 2 hours, that's 200 minutes. Of course, I still have all of season 2 to watch before I even get to the finale.

You all have permission to mock me mercilessly.

[Dalty]

We've all been there mate. I frequently suffer numbers related brain fade.

[Adam54]

Just be glad you don't have to remember to convert into metric minutes like Dalty always does.

[Dalty]

I just stick with the American system of 13 and one fifth ha'pennies an hour, or one eighth of a cup per calendar month.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Current Annoyances
A former colleague--let's call him Squeaky Wheel--was just hooded at Washington University in St. Louis's spring graduation ceremony. Neither Jubbers nor I ever got any kind of notification or invitation to his defense, so we were surprised to see him hooded. For all we knew, he was still working on his dissertation.

It turns out he still has a chapter to write and has yet to defend his dissertation. If it were the case that he had finished his dissertation but had yet to defend it, I could almost see his being allowed to walk and be hooded. It would be highly irregular, and I'd expect there to be some kind of crazy circumstances necessitating it, but I could almost see it. To find out he still has a chapter to go, though, has left me feeling pretty annoyed at our German department. They seem willing to grant privileges and bend (maybe even break) rules for a handful of grad students. It's not cool. If you're going to bend rules for one, bend rules for all. Otherwise, don't bend the rules.

I grant that I don't know whether or not a rule has actually been bent in this colleague's case. Maybe special circumstances allow for someone who has yet to defend his dissertation to walk and be hooded at the graduation ceremony. If these special circumstances exist, I'd like to know what they are. I've always been led to believe that if you have yet to finish and defend by a certain point in a semester, your defense date gets pushed back and you have to wait until a graduation ceremony subsequent to your successful defense rolls around.

This annoyance is increased by Squeaky Wheel's failure to correct all the Facebook friends calling him Dr. Squeaky Wheel and congratulating him on his accomplishment. It's also increased by his making smug, pity-poor-Squeaky-Wheel posts about how he's having to widen his apartment search to include trailers. Trailers are, of course, beneath his station, but he got a one-year appointment at a public university (also beneath his station) located in the Southern United States (most definitely beneath his station), and sometimes you just have to *sob* take what you can get. *sob*

If it turns out that absolutely everything was on the up-and-up, that Squeaky Wheels got no special treatment, and that things like this happen from time to time, my annoyance in the walking and hooding regard will disappear like cigarette smoke in a steam room, I will feel foolish, and my heart and head will make a silent and long-distance apology to Maybe-Someday-Assuming-Dissertation-Completion-and-Successful-Defense Dr. Squeaky Wheel.

I'm also a little annoyed on Jubbers's behalf by another colleague's having gotten a dissertation fellowship despite her having yet to turn in a chapter. This same colleague, who hasn't taught in something like a year and a half, also inexplicably just won a teaching award. From what I understand, a lot of other graduate students in the department are confused and upset by this.

I'm annoyed on Jubbers's behalf because Jubbers was once told her having yet to turn in a chapter made her ineligible for the fellowship.

I've been pretty annoyed with Jubboiter the last few days. She's been a real jerk. She's been pretty screamy and whiny throughout the majority of her toddlerhood, but it's been worse than usual, lately. Could be a growth spurt. Could be teething. Could be related to her adjusting to her new glasses. Who knows? Toddlers, man. They're too dumb to be able to tell you why they're being assholes. (I guess there's no guaranteeing an adult will tell you why he's being an asshole, so maybe it's unfair of me to be annoyed with her for still being incapable of expressing herself as fully as I wish she were able to express herself.)

One final annoyance involves some copy-editing I'm doing. It's for a Baptist pastor who's trying his hand at writing a book of religious fiction. I am surprised and a little impressed by just how much copy-editing has been required. It has taken me weeks just to get through his first 4,500 words. I've written 9,000 words in response to these 4,500 words--and that's on top of the many, many edits I've made. The guy has two doctorates (a D.B.S. and a Th.D.), so I had this idea that his writing would at least be somewhat clear. (On the other hand, for all I know, these doctorates could be from degree mills.) This hasn't been the case. He seems like a really nice guy, he's enthusiastic about writing, his preteen daughter just died a couple months ago, and he's been impressed by my work, so that has helped soften things a bit. If he were some kind of pompous jerk, I'd be more annoyed than I am.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Now I'm sitting here wondering if any of the above comes across as sour grapes. It isn't meant to. Of course, nobody *means* for their sour grapes to come across as sour grapes.

[Mal Shot First]

I'm not sure what the actual deal is with walking at the hooding ceremony before you've completed your dissertation. I had the option to do this in May 2013. My defense date was set for August that year and I still had to submit my final chapter before then. I didn't want to do it because I was pretty sure that my wife was graduating the next year, so I chose to postpone my ceremony until May 2014 in order for us to participate in the same ceremony.

Our mutual acquaintance from the German Derpartment (I'll call her General Naggie) also walked before she defended, as far as I know. In fact, it seems to be such common practice that people I know from other departments were actually pissed off because their advisors wouldn't agree to hood them before they had actually defended their dissertation. I guess it might be at the discretion of your advisor. If he/she is confident enough that you will soon finish, they might agree to your participation in the ceremony. I doubt that rules were broken in the case of Squeaky Wheel.

The thing about the dissertation fellowship is also B.S. I remember when that happened to Jubbers and couldn't quite believe it, since I had submitted what was essentially a draft of a chapter by the time I applied for the fellowship and it was granted to me. Again, it seems as if the advisor plays a huge role in this decision, which seems unfair.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I had two chapters in. The first chapter had been seen and commented on by my first, second, and third readers, but the second chapter had only been seen by my first reader. I don't know that it was a rule bend, exactly, since I had technically turned in two whole chapters. It was one of the only times I was actually on time with something.