Why did the chicken cross the road?

I take attendance by having students answer a question.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Two traditional people went for "to get to the other side."
Others made it bird- or chicken- specific:

• to beat the egg
• because it's a bird.
• to avoid being dinner
• to become dinner
• to escape the farm
• to get hit by a car
• Chipotle > Chick-Fil-A

Many people tried to make this question class-specific:

• to study algorithms
• to get to the other side in constant time
• the algorithm told it to
• to study the runtime of doing so
• to find its friend on the trail
• to add this class (from the waitlist)
• I'm tired. & trying to pay attention to what we're doing in class

... ouch. I try to make the class fun, engaging, and interesting, but I guess there can be such a thing as too many attention-grabbing events. I'll try to rein it in.

Others went off on in various directions:

• deep question...
• for cookiez
• cuz it was bored
• to do what it was destined to do
• because it had a reason to do so.
• to look at the sparkly thing
• It's a mobius strip.
• entropy?
• It forgot its phone.
• because it did
• so that it could be right (it was on the left side)

The teacher's favorite award goes to "motion is an illusion." I'm thrilled to hear it!


This post's theme word is dégustation, "the careful, appreciative tasting of various foods, focusing on the gustatory system, the senses, high culinary art and good company; more likely to involve sampling small portions of all of a chef's signature dishes in one sitting." (This was one of the specific French vocabulary words I only acquired after subtly translating with my phone under the restaurant table.) Welcome to our cheese dégustation! I recommend you start at this end of the table.

I Hate Everyone But You

Allison Raskin and Gaby Dunn (comedy duo with YouTube channel Just Between Us) write/create/star in funny video sketches, and vlogging(?)/advice snippets, and also have now written a book!

The book is called i hate everyone but you, and it is a modern epistolary novel --- it consists of text messages and emails sent between two friends (parallelling the real-life friendship and characters of the authors). The book contains some pop culture references, some timely culture references (the issues of today!), and lots of feelings between best friends attending college on opposite sides of the continent. In two completely different ways, they manage to have "usual" college first-year experiences, with the added update (from my now out-of-date memories) that everyone has a smartphone all the time, which makes documenting and contacting anyone instantaneously available.

I liked it. The book was cute (it's marketed as YA, so it's a little outside my usual reading zone) and funny. In an amusing meta-twist, one character suggested to the other, "Maybe start a YouTube channel! Those things can blow up!" (p. 109), and later links to the Just Between Us channel and says "You're such an Allison" (p. 282) to the obviously-an-Allison-analogue character. 

I also appreciated the overwrought, highly-dramatic versions of their lives that the characters wrote in emails; there are certainly emails in my own "sent" folder that are as ridiculous, condensed, and silly. In the midst of juggling a description of many people attending a party, we have this snippet (p. 158):

Cassidy preferred to join a grating conversation about the semicolon. He could later be heard quoting Oscar Wilde from the other room. The night proceeded without further incident until...

Possibly it's not as funny without the context, but I'm unwilling to type in pages of text and besides, you should read it for yourself! It's a quick, fun read.

This post's theme word is tarnal, "damned." The comments section is full of the tarnal dregs of the internet.