My Musings

PS-Ashley Rocks!

Monday, January 27, 2003

Multiple Choice Mania

Kramer Test: 1) any multiple choice test written by Craig Kramer, teacher of physics and biology at Bexley High School. 2) any test that is comprised largely of Kramer questions.

Kramer Question: a type of multiple choice question named after the aforementioned Mr. Kramer. While many teachers periodically make Kramer questions on their tests—thus making the need for a term such as “Kramer Question” evident—Kramer himself is the only one who does it so frequently and consistently. The most notable aspect of a Kramer question is that it is thoroughly unanswerable. Makes things tough, doesn’t it? There are two variants on this simple theme: either there are no correct answers, or there are multiple correct answers. Here is a typical Kramer question of the first variety:

What is 3 + 3?
A. 7
B. 6.1
C. 0
D. 3
E. 33

Notice how the correct answer, “6,” appears nowhere in the list of choices. The question “What is 3 + 3?” is actually a façade for the real, much tougher question, “What the hell does Kramer want?” More like a little puzzle, really—the answer you ultimately pick is based on the path of logic you choose to follow. Perhaps the correct answer is the one closest to the truth (B). Perhaps Kramer accidentally hit “7” instead of “6” when typing choice A (A). Perhaps he accidentally typed “+” instead of “-“ when typing the question itself (C). Perhaps it’s a trick question and you’re supposed to just put the 3’s together instead of obeying the laws of mathematics (E). Or maybe Kramer was just snorting cocaine at the time (D). All are valid possibilities. I’d go with B or D, but you can never know for sure—Kramer questions of the first variety are the hardest multiple choice problems in existence. Their second variety counterparts are slightly less impossible and could go as follows:

Which of the following animals is a mammal?
A. Shark
B. Whale
C. Snake
D. Frog
E. Human

Here we have a problem because at least two of the answers seem to work—whale and human. Heck, as far as I know, frogs are mammals, too, in addition to being amphibians. But if this were on a test, I would rule out choice D because it’s the most doubtful of the three possibilities. Determining between B and E is slightly more tricky. Once again we play the “what was Kramer thinking” game. Maybe he erroneously believes that whales are fish, which aren’t mammals—in that case he’d make Human the answer. But perhaps Kramer doesn’t count humans as “animals.” I mean, we’re smarter than, like, zebras, right? By that logic choice B wins. So which one is correct? B or E? Well, obviously, both—we are dealing with a Kramer question here, after all. But if you want to know which question would give you the point, I’d put my money on B, just because whales are definitely animals and mammals whereas humans are mammals but not necessarily animals. This is the kind of thinking in which you have to engage in order to conquer your average Kramer question.

***

Trotter Test: 1) any multiple choice test written by Dr. Ben Trotter, teacher of world religions, AP European History, and government & economics at Bexley High School. 2) any test that is comprised largely of Trotter questions.

Trotter Question: a type of multiple choice question that appears frequently on the tests of Dr. Ben Trotter, after whom it is named. Unlike Kramer questions, Trotter questions have one, correct answer. They are, however, nevertheless quite distinct from normal questions, and are infinitely more aggravating. Here is a normal question: “How many legs does a donkey have?” Now here is that same question in Trotter form: “Donkeys…” Yes, kids, that’s the whole thing right there—one word and an ellipsis. On a test it would look like this:

Donkeys…
A. have four legs
B. are the result of crossbreeding between a horse and an elephant
C. provide the milk that we drink
D. is slang Swahili for “buttface”
E. is the symbol of the Republican party

Notice how none of the choices have anything whatsoever to do with each other. This is typical of a Trotter question. Notice also how choice E doesn’t make anything remotely resembling grammatical sense—“Donkeys is the symbol of the Republican party” sounds like something Bush would say. Also typical. Generally you’d expect the answer and the question, when combined, to form some sort of logical sentence, as in “Donkeys have four legs,” but Dr. Trotter often arranges it—presumably on purpose to fool the people who didn’t study—so that the correct answer is among the grammatically senseless ones. Case in point: last year I got stuck, as it always seems to happen, between two answers on a government test. They both seemed to make sense logically, but only one made sense as a sentence. So I decided, after much deliberation, to make a stand for grammatical propriety. What a mistake that was. When we got the tests back, I asked Dr. Trotter, very nicely I thought, if it was possible, perhaps, in the future, to make sure that the choices all make at least a little bit of sense. I received the curt reply that grammar and syntax are irrelevant. So choice A in the preceding question could very easily have been “four legs belong to them,” in which case the end result would read “Donkeys four legs belong to them,” and regardless of the fact that a five year-old would drown himself in a fishbowl before writing such an awful sentence, “four legs belong to them” would still be the correct answer.

Now, the Trotter question I gave as an example was rather easy, because while you probably don’t know Swahili very well and are not in fact positive that “donkeys” doesn't mean “buttface,” you do know that donkeys four legs belong to them, and so you know that choice A is the way to go. But imagine if it were a question about European history. Imagine:

13) Humanists…
A. were staunch pioneers of the ad fontes approach towards studying ancient Latin texts
B. regarded Otto Von Bismarck as one of their principal enemies in light of his vicious attacks on multicultural postmodernism
C. one of their main goals was to synthesize the ideas of Wycliff and Hus in order to feed fuel to the fire of the popular piety movement that developed in the aftermath of the Catholic Counter-Reformation
D. I’m running out of obnoxious ideas
E. but I hope you get the point
F. by the way the correct answer is choice A

***

There you have it—four perfectly valid and accepted additions to the English language. Let’s spread them! When these two fine Bexley High School teachers—Trotter and Kramer—retire at long last, and then eventually die, because that seems to be a big fad these days, their names deserve to ring across the country for ages, in all sorts of random places:

Girl: hey, how was the English test?
Boy: well, aside from the fact that there were no right answers , it was fine.
Girl: oh, god. Just what I need—another Kramer test.

Student: as far as chemistry tests go, I thought that one was pretty easy except for question 37.
His Friend: was that the one that went, “Magnesium, dot dot dot?”
Student: yeah. Trotter questions are such a bitch.

.: posted by Boris 10:35 AM

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Burning Thought

We’ve all heard it. We all think it’s true. We all accept it point-blank as an absolute, god-given fact. But where, I ask, WHERE is the hard, scientific proof that Mountain Dew actually lowers a man’s sperm count? I’d like to see it.

.: posted by Boris 3:07 PM

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Online Wisdom: Part 2

For those of you who haven’t read the first Online Wisdom entry, a short explanation is in order. I keep a text file on my desktop into which I deposit all the dumb and funny stuff people say to me online. When the text file gets big, I make an entry out of it. The first such entry was fairly popular so I decided to make another one. I know there are those of you out there who, as Cherie eloquently put it, think that “copied IM conversations…fall under the category of things that are only really funny to the people participating at the time.” But give this entry a chance! A few good ones are lying around in here.

And for those of you who have read the first Online Wisdom, I should probably say that I’ve changed some things. For one thing my comments, while still in parentheses, can now be found before or after the snippet they refer to, depending on where I thought they fit best. Also, if you see “(…)” in the middle of a line it means I deleted irrelevant parts of the IM in order to make the joke more clear, or maybe just to completely change the context and blatantly pervert what was said. A “[…]” means that entire lines have been deleted so as not to get in the way of the good stuff. Aside from the cutting job I’ve done here and there, the only changes I’ve made were to fix some of the typos that invariably pop up online. Otherwise you have my word that everything in here was actually said and is presented accurately. All right, that’s all I have to say. Now let’s see what you had to say…

swallow2585: you are the root of all problems
(gee, thanks)

(don’t you hate it when instead of making a plain old typo you make one that changes the meaning of your sentence into something dumb, like this?)
Blue Fly 2003 (9:52:45 PM): sorta, I went to the rock-a-thong for choir

(or this?)
BadHair17: I know, me woo

Vorlon says: marina is a chinese philosopher

(it’s good to know that sexism is an evil no longer present in our society)
swallow2585: girls are ten times better than guys

Buffy4386: Okay, I'm being called away to the realtoes.
(as opposed to the faketoes?)

Chessmen15: make a frozen pizza
icetune02: That goes against all my ethics

icetune02: BORIS!!!
icetune02: I have no olive oil
(Oh no! Somebody call 911!)

(I have officially hit rock bottom as far as my laziness goes)
BadHair17: Hey Boris
Chessmen15: hey Andy!
BadHair17: How's it going?
Chessmen15: pretty good
Chessmen15: how are you?
BadHair17: I'm alright, how about you?
Chessmen15: see above

(some people really do talk online just like they do in real life)
slila22: that's beautious.

(not sure if this is a typo or if Steven is just really dumb)
icetune02: are team amassed 14 penalties

swallow~ming says: but fridays, you have your yuker club thinsg
(yuker? Oh brother)

(I swear to god I didn’t tamper with this, and I don’t think she was kidding)
swallow~ming says: and bsides i allways type badly on teh interent

Buffy4386: Ahh. I'm NOT IMing you.

(wisdom from Lila)
slila22: middle school is soooo useless; they should just put everybody on a chain gang and have them clean up the highway. Much more useful

slila22: I think she's a good teacher aside from the sexual harassment and the blackmail and the death room.

Buffy4386: MAN!! I want a good picture of my flipping cocci!!

(Julie always seems to be unsatisfied with the way I greet her)
Chessmen15: hello!
Snobuny4ever: hi
Snobuny4ever: a little too cheery...but ok

(more wisdom from Lila)
slila22: it's good
Chessmen15: I suppose
slila22: what do you suppose?
Chessmen15: I suppose you're right
slila22: I'm always right. There's no need for supposition
slila22: you can't make an ocean out of a bathtub, no matter how long it has sat there

(MAJOR INSIDE JOKE)
Chessmen15: I don't think he does drugs or beats his wife or anything
slila22: nor the turtle in his front yard?

(this is the subject of an email I got, I dunno why I put it in the text file)
Stop Harassing Phone Calls

(conversations like this sadden me)
icetune02: hey
Chessmen15: hiya
icetune02: night
Chessmen15: night
icetune02 signed off at 10:16:50 PM.

(it takes real courage to admit stuff like this)
slila22: my brain is not involved when I talk

Energetic56: boris rocks!
(this is quite possibly the only time in the history of mankind that Ashley used the word “rocks” and somebody’s name in the same sentence and that name wasn’t “Ashley”)

(just because most of you guys don’t know Min doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the pleasure of reading some of the stuff that periodically makes it into his profile)
I think there is more wisdom in a single drop of rain than there is in all the books in all the libraries of the world. Wait, not rain. Super-concentrated brain juice.

(what can I say, I’m a sucker for praise)
Buffy4386: Whatcha doing?
Chessmen15: updating my blog
Chessmen15: this is looking to be another long one
Buffy4386: YAY!!!!!
Buffy4386: YAY!!!!
Chessmen15: hehe
Chessmen15: I'm glad that updates to my blog bring such happy cheers from my audience :-)
Buffy4386: I LOVE it when there's a new blog entry.

(don’t you hate it when your caps lock is down and you don’t know it?)
Buffy4386: wHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE PLAY?

(here’s a Roger joke I didn’t understand)
nerdami2k: of course Czar Gudanov

(I guess this is what passes for a compliment from Lila)
slila22: nice job w/bullshitting

(Dan, be thankful that you have people like Marina to defend you from the wrath of my blog entries)
fly197: Boris, I must comment, would YOU, Boarass, the biggest chickenshit alive, REALLY get up and chase after the girl? Not a chance in hell! So give up!

(I don’t know how funny this is but I had to put it in here just to show that there are people out there besides myself who find the AIM character limit annoying)
Swimming, and tomorrow there is a chess tournament, and for those of you who want to come and cheer on the Bexley chess team as they compete (which will only be three people as far as I know) it is at Whetstone High School on Henderson Rd. just east of Rt. 315. The first round I think is at 10:00, but I don't know when it ends. If you show up and nobody's there, you're either at the wrong place, it's already over, or my information is wrong. In any case, don't come. It'll be very boring. So boring that I don't like going just to watch, and I play chess, so think about how you'd feel! Well that's all for now, and I'm sure I'm over the character limit for this thing (WHICH IS WAY TOO SHORT). Talk to you later. Bye! [I capitalized, emboldened, underlined, and italicized a certain section there to prove my point, but it wasn’t originally that way in Andy’s profile]

(another Roger joke)
Chessmen15: I see
nerdami2k: good I thought you'd taken off your glasses

snobuny4ever: (…) boys’ penises are yucky
[long, awkward, painful pause during which I desperately try to think of something to say]
snobuny4ever: hahah! You don’t know what to say to that!
snobuny4ever: jajaja

(more Roger-ness)
Chessmen15: ahhh
Chessmen15: gotcha
nerdami2k: what?!
nerdami2k: speak up
nerdami2k: my vision ain't what it used to be

(more blatant self-praise)
Buffy4386: I need a new blog entry!!! I'm going into withdrawal!
Chessmen15: but...but...the last one was just Thursday!
Buffy4386: I know... :-(
Buffy4386: So long. *sigh*
Buffy4386: ago

Buffy4386: brb (…)
Chessmen15: ok
Buffy4386: backaddydackady

Buffy4386: Okleedoklee
Buffy4386: Remind me NEVER to say that again
(Mandy, don’t EVER say that again)

(I have to really watch myself or else every single thing in this blog entry would be from Roger)
nerdami2k: righto
nerdami2k: pip pip then

(Marina’s attempts to hook me up with girls)
fly197: call her, invite her with us, call back in a few, say marina's not coming, is that ok
Chessmen15: *groan*
fly197: she'll say 'of course, this way we can molest each other '
fly197: and it'll be good
fly197: stop *groaning*
fly197: before I *smack* you

Buffy4386: BORIS!!!!
Chessmen15: Mandy!
Buffy4386: I saw you type!
Chessmen15: I saw you type, too!!
[…]
Buffy4386: :-D
[…]
Buffy4386: YAY!!!
Chessmen15: hehe
(only the true AIM freaks out there will get this one)

(good old Roger)
nerdami2k: Boris why are you not here now?
Auto response from Chessmen15: I'm spending a wild and crazy night out with two girls!!
That is, Marina and Lila and I are seeing Frida. Is it a good movie? A bad one? If you care, ask me afterwards and I'll be sure to tell you.
nerdami2k: dude never say that first sentence again
nerdami2k: by the way, where's my car

Energetic56: boris finally got some girls
Energetic56: bout time boris, bout time
Chessmen15: lol
Chessmen15: I'm glad you approve, Ashley
Energetic56: very much so
Energetic56: hop on that horse buddy
(I really don’t know what she meant by that last remark and frankly it worries me a little)

(yet more Roger)
Chessmen15: have a happy thanksgiving day!
nerdami2k: have an nice red
nerdami2k: you
nerdami2k: TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[the O's continue here and are followed by a string of exclamation marks so long that when I tried to put it all in just as Roger said it the margins of my whole blog were stretched to outrageous proportions]
nerdami2k: that was pointless
Chessmen15: it really was

Chessmen15: nifty, eh?
Buffy4386: Nifty difty

(all right guys, enough of me making comments and pasting stuff. Let’s make this blog interactive. Let’s play a game. You ready? All right! Your object is: read the following conversation and try to locate the completely irrelevant and off-topic comment that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what we’re talking about)
Buffy4386: My family is bonding over X-Box.
Chessmen15: lol
Chessmen15: cool thing, the x-box is
Chessmen15: too bad I suck horribly at all of its games
Buffy4386: Yes, Yoda.
Chessmen15: hee hee
Buffy4386: Ohhh, my goodness. Not nearly compared to me.
Chessmen15: hey, you're really good at Goldeneye
Chessmen15: I think if you put your mind to it you can Halo with the best of them
Buffy4386: But that's N64
Chessmen15: very similar
Buffy4386: I hope to.
Chessmen15: shows you have talent
Buffy4386: I've just gotta get those controls down.
Buffy4386: They freak me out.
Buffy4386: I was like, "What?!! Ahh!"
Chessmen15: yeah, it's confusing
Buffy4386: But I only touched them once.
Chessmen15: at Dan's?
Buffy4386: Actually, your house.
Chessmen15: oh, I remember
Buffy4386: Yeah
Chessmen15: so you've never played it at your house or at Dan's house?!
Buffy4386: Not yet....
Chessmen15: interesting
Buffy4386: No, not so much. Pretty boring, actually.
Chessmen15: I think it's interesting how you have an x-box at your house but you've never played it
Chessmen15: I certainly would!
Buffy4386: It's not AT my house, it's only occasionally at my house.
Buffy4386: Since it's my brother's, and he lives somewhere else.
Chessmen15: he moves it around?
Buffy4386: I'm as round as a fat ripe red berry.
Buffy4386: Yeah, he sometimes brings it over here.
Chessmen15: ohh, I see
Buffy4386: To socialize with
Chessmen15: that's not very cool of him
Buffy4386: You think he should leave it over here forever?
Chessmen15: of course
Buffy4386: :-)
Buffy4386: Of course

(well, I admit it—I love praise for my away messages)
EaTuMbLeR: I like your away messages
Auto response from Chessmen15: I'm not here, but you are, which is too bad, because I'm not, and if I was, I would talk to you, but I'm not, so I can't :-(
EaTuMbLeR: I am going to copy this one
EaTuMbLeR: :-D

Energetic56: aww Boris
Auto response from Chessmen15: Pep band tonight at 7! See you guys all there!!
Not. Anyways, afterwards I'm going to Marina's house to watch A Beautiful Mind. That is if Julie remembers the DVD...
Energetic56: out with the girls AGAIN
Energetic56: that’s great buddy it really is
(I know, what am I gonna do, I’m just a player at heart)

nerdami2k: I'm psycho
(I’ll go with that)

(Roger acting British)
nerdami2k: boris old cork how goes things?
Auto response from Chessmen15: I'll be gone until about 6 or so at my tennis lesson, and then at 7 euchre club is here!
nerdami2k: tennis is it?
nerdami2k: well

slila22: Boris, you've been playing all day. For your own mental health and stability: stop. Now. Before the evil demons of hell come destroy your brain and all its powers.
(to which I say: what powers?)

(sigh)
nerdami2k: where be boris?
Auto response from Chessmen15: Gone at pep band!
nerdami2k: pep that!

DanTheMan1010101: damn I'm hot
(well, now we all know what Dan thinks of himself)

(more Lila-talk)
slila22: how are you?
Chessmen15: pretty good
Chessmen15: and you?
slila22: just dandified

(obviously Roger has not discovered the beauty of checking people’s away messages by right-clicking on their names in the buddy list)
nerdami2k: boris the almighty and unseen, where is he O great auto reply function?

(you have to realize the humor of this being said online)
Buffy4386: Don't give me that look!

(I thought we were good friends, and then it turns out she can’t even remember what my name is)
Buffy4386: BORI!!!

(“What?! I could have SWORN I selected Andy’s name in the buddy list. What is this crap? And now BORIS is talking to me. Egh. Screw this.”)
S10penguin: hey
Chessmen15: hiya
S10penguin signed off at 8:46:37 PM.

(Fun With Roger)
Chessmen15: well, my math homework beckons and I heed its call
Chessmen15: see ya, Rogerata
nerdami2k: still does not work
Chessmen15: see ya, Orogeratio
nerdami2k: stop it boris
Chessmen15: see ya, Raja
nerdami2k: go do your homework
Chessmen15: see ya, Rogerrrrrrrrrrr
nerdami2k: and DO NOT use that one, Klaiber uses it and I hate him more for it
nerdami2k: raja I mean
Chessmen15: ah
[…]
Chessmen15: see ya, Rogue Warrior
Chessmen15: oh! oh! Here's a good one!
Chessmen15: Rogrim
nerdami2k: you are - - this close to being blocked

(I am too vain for my own good, I swear)
cBearFunk: I can't wait for you to update your blog boris

Toxin1234: I saw two towers
Chessmen15: oh?
Chessmen15: how was it?
Toxin1234: awesome
Toxin1234: if I had a choice between this and hot hot sex
Toxin1234: well I would have the sex
Toxin1234: but this would be a close second

Toxin1234: steal a new biology book

(“God, I swear, that stupid Bori kid messages me every single flipping time I get online. It’s high time I used the block button. … Ahhh, much better.”)
Chessmen15: hey Mandy!
Buffy4386 signed off at 3:18:42 PM.

(EVEN MORE MAJOR INSIDE JOKE)
Chessmen15: we're not going to go to sleep
NeoSandmaker: oh.....
Chessmen15: at least those of us who are man enough aren't going to
Chessmen15: there are always the wusses who crash on the couch
NeoSandmaker: lol em... isn't there gonna be girls there?
Chessmen15: of course
NeoSandmaker: so you can't really say "those of us man enough"
Chessmen15: okay, Min the Feminist
Chessmen15: I see debate camp rubbed off on you :-P
NeoSandmaker: :p

(pretty soon I think Sasha and Roger are gonna be competing for space in my text files)
sushi1323: omg I wish I were an alcoholic

sushi1323: splattah!

(nobody seems to want to talk to me these days)
Chessmen15: hiya
DanTheMan1010101 signed off at 6:40:48 PM.

(geeze, I copied a lot more flattery into here than I thought)
sushi1323: write in your blog
Chessmen15: lol
Chessmen15: sorry, I can't write on command
Chessmen15: that's why my entries are so sparsely separated
sushi1323: lol but I want to read more

sushi1323: Boris... you are my Jesus!
(thanks, but can I be your Moses? I’m Jewish, you know)

Chessmen15: thanks
DanTheMan1010101: np bug butt

(thank you, Einstein)
sushi1323: Blood is wet!

(yes, I suppose Mandy and I need to have a talk sometime with regards to what my name actually is)
Buffy4386: If I were there I'd MAKE you say hi to me, Noris.

(some people are a bit on the slow side)
Chessmen15: but I gotta run, I'm afraid
[…]
sushi1323: afraid of what?
Chessmen15: ...
Chessmen15: I'm afraid I gotta run
sushi1323: ...?
sushi1323: Oh I see
sushi1323: lol

sushi1323: I don't want you to die... yet
(gee, thanks)

(“Noris…Moris…what’s that guy’s name? Why is he stalking me??” *BLOCK*)
Chessmen15: hi Mandy!
Buffy4386 signed off at 8:06:42 PM.

(“AHHH! I blocked him and he still tries to talk to me! Stupid stupid flipping AIM! BLOCK, dammit!”)
Chessmen15: hiya
Buffy4386 signed off at 11:01:40 PM.

(Lila puts her wisdom into her away messages, too, so that we can all benefit from it on the go)
Auto response from slila22: food is necessary

(one of my favorite Ashley’s away messages)
Auto response from Energetic56: You have just received the Amish Computer Virus. Since the Amish don't have computers and probably don’t have computer viruses, it is based on the honor system. So please delete all the files from your computer. Thank you for your cooperation.

Well, that’s it for this installment of online hilarity! Can you believe that it was almost 10 pages long? Went by fast, didn’t it? And now I’m off to go make odd3.txt so that perhaps in a few months’ time we will have an Online Wisdom: Part 3. See you then!

.: posted by Boris 7:41 PM

Saturday, January 11, 2003

The Yellow Light Dilemma

My least favorite part of the day occurs when the sun dips to about eye level but hasn’t set enough yet so as not to be so goddam bright. I don’t know why, but whenever the sun shines into my eyes it ticks me off like none other. This becomes a problem when I’m driving, because angry drivers who are concentrating more on fumbling with the sunshade to ensure proper protection of the eyes than on the road to ensure not wandering into oncoming traffic are bad things. To my great misfortune, I have found that this most irritating time of day occurs right around when my Saturday tennis lesson ends, so every week I am subjected to the torture of driving with the sun in my eyes. This undermines my already putrid driving skills, so today I decided to take the long way back via Brice and Livingston instead of going on the highway. Less bad stuff can go wrong if I’m going 35 miles per hour than if I’m going 65, right? Ha ha. Don’t be silly.

Two interesting things happened on the way home from tennis today. The first was that until I turned off Brice onto Livingston, I was behind a lady (well, I assume it was a lady) driving a white Jeep with the following license plate: R U PMSN2. I don’t know, I thought that was pretty funny. Well, maybe not funny, but certainly very creative. I hope if I ever get a customized plate I can come up with something more creative than just BOARASS. Maybe “I CNT DRV.” What do you guys think?

The second interesting thing occurred on Livingston. Behind me now was this military truck-looking thing, kind of like a jeep but higher off the ground. This was fine with me. I was driving along and everything was fine for a while, and then I ran into a common problem. I’m sure all you drivers out there have experienced what I like to call “The Yellow Light Dilemma.” Basically, it’s when you’re driving along towards an intersection, and the light is green, and everything is fine and everybody is happy, but then that stupid retarded light goes and screws it all up by turning yellow, tearing to smithereens your heretofore peaceful, bucolic existence and forcing you to think fast. On the one hand, you don’t want to slow down; you want to keep going. But on the other hand, you don’t want to die, and you don’t want to get ticketed for running a red light. You gotta decide RIGHT NOW if you dash or brake. For some people this decision comes easily. Like Dan, to name one good example. Dan will always run a yellow light. Heck, Dan will run a red light if he looks and there ain’t no cars comin’. For me, though, the decision is much more difficult. I’m cautious by nature and I don’t want to break laws. I have run red lights before and it makes me feel bad.

So maybe that explains why, when I was faced with The Yellow Light Dilemma today on Livingston, I decided to stop. But as it turned out, I was going way too fast relative to my distance from the yellow light, and as the intersection approached my car with alarming alacrity despite the pressure I was putting on the brake, I figured that maybe I had made the wrong decision. Further evidence of this was how I pretty much ended up having to floor the brake in order to stop on time, and how there was this rather nasty grinding noise as I came to a very unpleasant halt. Still further evidence that I had erred became clearly visible to me when I heard the sound of tires on gravel and saw the military jeep thing pull up next to me on the right. I was in the right lane at the time, so the jeep was not, technically speaking, on the road. The driver had pulled off of it and temporarily parked his car beside me in order to avoid making a Metal & Boris Sandwich out of my car.

I’m generally pretty bad at describing my feelings, but I will try now. At that moment, I felt: really, really, dumb. REALLY dumb. UNIMAGINABLY dumb. Embarrassed, too. Julie, who for some reason takes great pleasure in the fact that my ears turn red when I blush, would be happy to note that my ears were probably purple. Proceeding as though this sort of thing happens to him all the time, the driver slipped into reverse and backed up into his former position behind me. I wanted to die. Even though it was out of my way, at the next possible light (which wasn’t yellow, thank god) I turned right to get away from any possible witnesses of the event still driving in the vicinity. Somehow I made it home alive.

Right now I would like to use this space to issue forth the following statement: if you own, or have ever owned, a military-ish type jeep vehicle thingie, and you were ever driving this vehicle in the vicinity of January 11, 2003 at about 4:45 PM down Livingston behind a dumbass in a fuchsia Subaru who put an inordinately overoptimistic amount of faith in the braking power of his car and forced you to drive off the road in order to avoid smashing his sorry ass into a patty, then I would just like you to know that I, Boris Dvorkin, am that dumbass, and I would like to apologize for having the same level of common sense as an eyeliner pencil, and I would also like to thank you for, like, not killing me.

And for those of you out there who just got your license, I would like to offer some advice: run all yellow lights. Even if they’re red. I don’t care. Also, remember the following equation: Brakes = Bad. If at all possible, remove the ones that came with your car. You’ll be better for it. Drive as recklessly as you can; drive like Dan. Yeah, you might get a ticket, or obliterate a couple of kids playing in the street while driving 89 miles an hour in a residential zone, or run into a telephone pole and die, but at least you won’t embarrass yourself. If you’re gonna be stupid, use that stupidity to run into somebody else; don’t use it to make somebody else run into you.

Right now I am thoroughly convinced that for the betterment of mankind I should never be allowed to take command of a car or a bike or a go-kart or a pair of roller blades or anything along those lines ever again. If there’s anybody out there who’s really young, like I’m thinking maybe 7 years old here, and you can’t wait to drive, or if you keep failing the drivers’ exam, or basically if you’re somebody who really wants to have a license but can’t get one, email me and we can work out a deal wherein I give you my license and you give me some "compensation," if you catch my drift. I prefer cash. You’ll have to dye your hair kind of brownish-blond and put on some glasses and maybe shave your face a little less often than you’re accustomed to, but other than that I have a very common face and I’m sure you’ll be able to impersonate me very easily. One kid at the tennis lesson today told me that I look like the Boris from the movie Goldeneye, his sole reasoning being A) we’re both named Boris, and B) we both wear glasses. This is just one example of how easy it is to look like me. I could write a whole blog entry about how all throughout my life I’ve either met people who look like me, or been told that some famous person looks like me (hmmm, I just may have to do that sometime…). So my point is, if you had my license, you could easily fool even the most hardened observer into thinking that you're the guy on the picture (unless you're a girl, in which case, yes, we may have some problems), and you could drive around with impunity until you get pulled over and they put the license through the little machine and you get imprisoned for 17 years for fraud. Like I said, email me and we’ll talk. I’m thinking maybe a good starting place for negotiations is 250 bucks. Lemme know.

.: posted by Boris 8:54 PM

Thursday, January 09, 2003

The New Phone

Most people hate telemarketers, but I love them. I pick up the phone, I hear some random voice asking if a certain Mr. Alex…Dev…Dvoo…Devvvoorrckin is there, I say no, I hang up. Bam, done, two seconds. But heaven forbid it’s that friend of my parents who always seems to call when they’re not home, who calls so often and sounds so sad that I begin to feel guilty for my parents’ neglect of him, and with whom I have spent approximately 37 hours of my life having the “mom and dad ain’t here but I’ll tell ‘em ya called” conversation. Or, even worse, some distant relative who, upon blabbering for five minutes and then finally asking for my parents and then finally learning that they are not available, insists upon talking with me, and who apparently is completely deaf to the fact that my choppy, two-word responses spoken in a flat monotone to every single thing they say are an indication that at that point in my life I wish nothing more than to hang up. And of course there are the phone calls from my parents or grandparents, which I don’t really mind too much (except for when it’s my mom and she insists upon expounding to me in great detail how exactly to prepare dinner that night because she and dad are gonna be late, and painstakingly describes where and how to find every single food item she thinks I may or may not want to eat or consider eating or debate throwing directly into the trashcan, when she knows that I will go to Chipotlé a thousand dinners in a row before I concede to prepare dinner for myself), but which can still be annoying because there’s something in me that just protests against having the peace and quiet of a house all to myself disturbed by forced human interaction.

But this isn’t a rant against phones. This is a rant against a specific new phone that my dad put in the computer room. It’s one of those cheap, plastic five dollar phones that consist of nothing more than a phone and a little tray that you slide the phone into and it beats me how it shuts the phone off. I bought this phone in 7th or 8th grade at a Charity Newsies auction. All I can say regarding this purchase is: screw charity, I want my five bucks back. There used to be a fine, if somewhat old, phone in here that stood on the edge of the small cabinet next to the scanner that we never use. Aside from a cord that was overly prone to tangles and my amazing ability to find ways to knock the phone off its precarious perch and send it crashing to the floor despite the fact that all I ever really do with it is pick up and put down the receiver, it was a good, stouthearted phone that served me well. But apparently my dad decided that it wasn’t stouthearted enough, so he brought up the cheapo phone from its former residence on the edge of the tool table that we never use in the basement and took the old phone away somewhere. The “new” phone now sits on top of the CPU because the cord is too short to put it by the scanner, which means that whenever it rings I have to lean down and carefully, gently, try to pull it out of the damn tray without breaking it. And the phone itself is really uncomfortable to hold, whereas the other one was one of those nice big ones that molds well to your head. So this phone and I had a rocky start.

But that’s not the end of it. Yesterday my dad and I found out that the darn thing doesn’t even work, when my dad called me from his cell phone somewhere to tell me something (shows how great my memory is that I can’t remember where my dad was or what he wanted from me yesterday) and discovered that he could not hear a single flipping thing I said. Well, he could hear me periodically, enough to know that I was there, but not enough to actually have a normal conversation with me. It’s like those old people we all know who can hear everything you say splendidly, but only on the 17th consecutive time you say it. The weird thing is I could hear him fine. Eventually we finished talking and I hung up. Now, a smart person at this point would have taken one of the three cordless phones we have lying around the house and brought it to the computer room so that he could use it the next time somebody called, instead of the one-way plastic piece of crap, something that would have required all of maybe five seconds, but my laziness knows no bounds. I stayed put, and when my uncle from Canada called, I had to use the malfunctioning plastic devil phone in a tray from hell, again. I can’t remember how the conversation went, but I’ll recreate the basic gist of it for you:

(spoken in a flat monotone by Boris) “Hello.”
“Hi Boris!”
etc etc the greeting, hi, hey, howsa goin’, great, good, you?, great, wonderful, fantastic
“Boris, I can’t hear you at all.”
“Yeah, it’s a bad phone.”
“Are your parents there?”
“No.”
(long pause)
(the pause continues)
(I begin to get the feeling that my uncle didn’t hear my “no” and thinks that I’m getting my parents)
“They’re not here,” I say.
(long pause)
“They’re not here,” I say again.
(long pause continues)
“Hello?”
(silence)
“Hello?!”
(more silence)
“HELLO!!!!”
“Huh? What?”
“My parents are not home right now.”
“Oh. Is your dad there?”
“Uh…no.”
“May I speak to him please?”
(dumbfounded pause)
“Um, he’s NOT here. I said he WASN’T here.”
“I can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying.”
“Yeah, it’s a bad phone.”
“Is your mom there?”
“Ummm…no…”
“May I speak to her please?”
“Errr, she’s not, not, NOT here!!”
“Oh. I can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying.”
“Yeah, it’s a bad phone.”

Something like that. Eventually I think my uncle understood somehow that my parents, indeed, were very much not at home, but the phone was not very conducive to his understanding of this immensely important fact.

In addition to not working, this phone also chirps. Whenever somebody picks up the phone, any phone, anywhere in the house, I hear a quick “breep.” Somebody hangs up the phone, “breep.” It’s a really annoying noise. But the worst part—I really hate this—is that the phone breeps right before it’s about to ring. So here’s a typical example of what will happen after school:

Breep. *oh no, is the phone about to ring?!* RRRRRRRRRRRRRING. *DAMMIT!* RRRRRRRRRRRRRING. Boris glares at the caller ID. *ARG, my mom. Ah, screw it.* RRRRRRRRRRRRRING. *But I really shouldn’t ignore her. She’ll get pissed off later.* Boris picks up the phone.

(spoken in a monotone) “Hello.”
“Hi Boris!”
etc etc the greeting, how was your day, great, great, wonderful.
“Listen, Boris, we’re gonna be a little late tonight…”
Groan.

I hate that breep. It’s like the calm before the storm, or before the plasma grenade in your back yard explodes disintegrating your house and, more importantly, you. If the phone’s gonna ring and interrupt my civ3 game, fine, but I don’t want to know about it in advance; and if I’m gonna have to talk to somebody who’ll make me wish I had just let the answering machine take the call, I don’t want to have to say everything twice. I get enough of that with my grandpa. I mean, I know he’s deaf in one ear, but it’s just too much of a coincidence that he always hears my answers to his questions on precisely the second time I give them. Like this:

Grandpa (in Russian): Boris, how do you pronounce “vacation?”
Boris (speaking slowly, clearly, and loudly): VAY-KAY-SHUN
Grandpa (leaning forward and cupping one hand around the ear): huh??
Boris (speaking quickly, quietly, almost swallowing the word whole: vacation
Grandpa: Ohhh, okay. Vacation. Vacation. Am I saying it right?
Boris: yes, that’s fine.
Grandpa: what??
Boris: YES!!
Grandpa: Ohhh, okay. Thanks. Vacation.

But I’m not trying to complain about my grandpa. I love him. This is my grandpa on my mom’s side, by the way. He’s a cool guy, though he always turns up the TV really loud, so we whenever he’s here we get day-old Russian news blasting through the house. Anyway, what I’m getting to is: dad, I don’t know if there’s any way you could ever possibly be reading this, but if you are, please get the freaking breeping thing out of here. Thanks.

.: posted by Boris 4:25 PM

Wednesday, January 01, 2003

DVD Antics

As other people were sure to be out drinking and smoking themselves silly while attending extravagant parties involving topless tap-dancing upon parading elephants, the four of us decided to spend the Friday night after Thanksgiving at Marina’s house. Yes, it was going to be an exciting night—“A Beautiful Mind” awaited us on DVD. The excitement just doesn’t stop when you’re with the cool crowd. I got there first, to be followed shortly thereafter by Lila. We were going to start watching the movie without first waiting for Julie, because we’re just adventurous and crazy like that, but then we realized we couldn’t do that, because Julie had the DVD. Oops. Well, that wasn’t going to stop us. We were gonna have a wild night, gosh darn it. Julie finally arrived. Somebody, I forget who because by then I was already starting to get a buzz from the vodka Marina was constantly pouring into our crystal champagne glasses, ha ha yeah right, put the DVD into the DVD player and we all settled on the couch before the TV and got ready to watch the movie.

But it turned out that the movie wasn’t quite ready to be watched. You know how it is on DVD’s, where you have the little menu and you have to select “PLAY MOVIE” to get the movie to play? Well, when the DVD started, the little cursor thingie was settled on “SPECIAL FEATURES,” and no matter how hard we jammed the buttons on the remote, the cursor wouldn’t move up to “PLAY MOVIE.” There wasn’t really much we could do, so we opened up the SPECIAL FEATURES in the hope that it would start the movie, but instead the DVD cheerfully displayed for us a long list of—you won’t believe this—special features. A brief glance revealed to us that there were actually multiple pages of these, and we scrolled through them several times in the hope of finding “PLAY MOVIE” among the lengthy list of options. Our efforts were in vain, of course, because the movie is not a special feature. Special features are the cinematic things crammed into a DVD that are everything but the movie, when what people really want is to watch the goddam movie, not some interview with the stunt coordinator’s milkman.

Now things got hectic. We tried a lot of things. One time we selected “interview with the producers” or something like that from the special features screen, thinking that perhaps this would play the movie. Instead, we saw—whoa, major shocker coming up—an interview with the producers. This was really boring and we stopped it. Next we tried rolling the previews, which was, now that I look back on it, a decision made on the basis of some really astoundingly awful logic. Here was our thinking: when you go to a movie, they show you the previews, and then the movie; thus, if we watch the previews on the DVD, once they end, the movie will start. I don’t remember if we actually watched the previews all the way to the end, but I sure hope to god that we didn’t, because if we did, then we were a lot stupider than I thought. And why the hell were the previews there in the first place? I mean, previews are like the movie equivalent of commercials. How many of you ever think, “Boy, I want to turn on the TV and watch some commercials!” What’s the point of sticking commercials into a DVD? Grrr.

Frustration set in pretty fast. Here we were, four smart, intelligent people, national merit semifinalists, 4.3 students, 1500’s on our SAT’s, and we couldn’t get a DVD to run. Throughout this whole entry I’ve been saying “we,” but it was mainly Marina and Julie at first, because they really wanted to watch the movie. I had seen “A Beautiful Mind” already, many times in fact, but after a while I joined the fray anyway because, as you will note, I was the only guy present in the company of three alluring girls, and I wanted to impress them with my technical expertise (Hey! Quit laughing! Every guy has to find some way to impress the girls, okay?). I came up with the creative and ingenious albeit horribly wrong theory that if we perhaps reset the DVD and don’t touch anything on the remote, the movie will start on its own. Silly Boris. Next I decided that the manual buttons on the DVD player itself were far superior to those on the wussy remote, and could make the cursor move up to “PLAY MOVIE” when the buttons on the remote couldn’t. I don’t know where I come up with this crap. Eventually I ran out of ideas and then joined Marina and Julie in the usual fare of button-mashing and confused head-scratching. The most brilliant young minds in the country, the future of tomorrow, kids who between the four of them had sent applications to MIT, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, and others, super-dorks who preferred to spend potentially wild Friday nights watching deep and thought-provoking movies about schizophrenic math geniuses, and we couldn’t work the DVD player properly. The irony was brutal.

The only person I haven’t mentioned much yet is Lila. Though she did partake somewhat in the festivities, for the most part she sat on the couch and bemusedly watched us as we desperately tried to get the movie to work. Finally, after thinking the situation through, she loudly and forcefully broke our frantic discussions of the grave situation at hand with the question, “Did anybody look in the DVD case?” For a moment the room grew a little quieter. I prayed that Lila was wrong, still clinging to the hope that I could be the hero of the day. But when Marina examined the inside of the movie case, it soon became apparent that Lila was on to something. The case contained two DVD slots—one of them held the “MOVIE” DVD, and the other one was empty because the “SPECIAL FEATURES” DVD that formerly occupied it was currently in the DVD player, where we were stoically trying to get it to play the movie.

I bet we all felt pretty stupid at the time, except for perhaps Lila. Actually I still feel pretty stupid right now. I bring this up because last night at the euchre club party we tried to play a DVD, and though the DVD player claimed adamantly that it was indeed playing the movie, all we were seeing on the actual TV was an unwavering blue screen. Chris tried to get it to work, failed, called me away from my game of ping pong to come take a look, I don’t know WHY, I’m me and I still would be the last person I’d ever ask for technical advice on anything, and my strenuous fiddling with the back of the DVD player resulted in the astonishing accomplishment of: I accidentally unplugged the DVD player. And I didn’t know how to fix it. Chris managed to at least fix the little bit of things that I had made worse, but we never really moved on from there. Eventually we gave up on the movie. Everybody thought that the DVD player was hooked up to the TV incorrectly, but I bet if Lila had been there she would have figured it out, and it would have been something incredibly stupid. After sitting on the couch and filing her nails for a while, watching me and Chris futz with the wiring protruding from the TV, Lila would have spoken up, completely indifferently, “Did anyone check to make sure you’re trying to play the DVD in an actual DVD player and not a wall socket?” And then Chris and I would have given each other a look, and we would have been like, “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” and everything would have been dandy.

What I need is to clone Lila in the form of a talking leech and carry her around with me all day. She could tell me how to avoid, or at least get out of, the problems that constantly arise before me because of my amazing lack of good common sense. In exchange for her help, I’d let her sit on my shoulder and suck my blood a lot. It’d be worth it. And the next time a DVD player gives me difficulties, so help me I’m gonna hurl the damn thing against a wall.