The proper term of contrast with "old-fashioned" is "new-fangled", not "new-fashioned"! Jesus christ!

1: Why are you so old-fangled about usage, neb?

That essay, boring though it may be, is probably way better than the column it responds to.

1 is more of a style claim than a usage claim.

Still, the larger lesson I take from Joanna's essay is how thoroughly you can psyche yourself out of a goal before you've even begun.

Ain't it the truth?

I wish she hadn't had a modern love style "epiphany" of her own. I wish she had just said "I wanted to punch him for saying that his side, while not the whole truth, was emotionally truthful to _him_." Because that's how I felt!

Off the record, having seen both "real story" sides of the Crap Email from a Dude feature at Jezebel (which I can no longer read, as it makes me so angry and negative), I can attest that the editors really take liberties in writing up the stories. I blame Nick Denton's pay-per-click model. They'll embellish the story to make the protagonists more sympathetic and the dudes more douchey, and mischaracterize the events even if you supply the truth. So, in this era of "let me tell you my story, which isn't true but contains 'emotional truths'", I'm not surprised to see "the other side" come out as "that's not what happened!"

Oh oops, my comment number 6 was in response to this column.

I blame Nick Denton's pay-per-click model.

No longer how they get paid.

I blame Linda Hirshman for the source of my error.

So what is their excuse for being sensationalizing, deceitful dillweeds?

So, now stalking and being stalked are as boring as everything else? Hmph.

11: I don't know. This is why I leechblocked it 24/7, and took out the ability to change the controls. It would mess up my Year of Reducing Negativity. Like I couldn't read that article saying "can we stop shaming those who use the withdrawal method" article linked to here>.

This is why I leechblocked it 24/7, and took out the ability to change the controls.

Well, you could still use another firefox profile.

7: They'll embellish the story to make the protagonists more sympathetic and the dudes more douchey, and mischaracterize the events even if you supply the truth.
11: So what is their excuse for being sensationalizing, deceitful dillweeds?

'Soap opera.'

max
['Ad traffic.']

There was a reasonable discussion of this (Googling, ex'es, etc.) here on the Mineshaft about three years ago...

"on" s/b "at". Or maybe "on" was right in the first place, who knows.

I miss Ogged.

16-17: I should think "in" would be the obvious favorite.

16: And at other times too.

10: I found that Linda Hirshmann essay absolutely fascinating, it's getting to some very deep issues with feminism and liberal individualism in general. This is part of an ongoing back and forth between Jezebel and Hirshmann about feminist responses to male abuse of women.

The Jezebel people are a big hot mess, but Hirshmann has the liberal humanist flaw of simply not acknowledging or understanding that the darker, sadomasochistic side of human nature is just as fundamental as the cool autonomous prudent side. Freud is a better guide to human nature than JS Mill.

"Freud is a better guide to human nature than JS Mill."

Maybe, but telling your wife she's just got penis envy is a really bad argument.

Better, or as good? You did just say "just as fundamental".

OK, not better. There's a lot of BS in Freud. But the general perspective that people are a little crust of conscious rationality floating on top of a sea of unacknowleged irrational desires.

Maybe, but telling your wife she's just got penis envy is a really bad argument.

Though perhaps preferable to her saying the same to you.

24: True, buy having a son has convinced me that the whole Oedipus complex thing wasn't pulled out of thin air. He actively tries to push me out of family activities.

"True, but", not "True, buy". Sorry.

Never have children, people.

I really miss having a baby around. Not that I don't like the toddler.

25: You and Gonerill should form a support group for the oedipally threatened.

6, 8: wow, now that's a real story -- having your ex write one of those clasically prick-ish asinine Modern Love columns. What a jerk. The problem with the one Almeida linked to is that it was about an unusually bland and inoffensive ML.

The thing with ML is that it's written by these mediocre writers who are and always will be obscure failures. So the excuse that "I was an asshole for Art!" is revealed in all its shallowness. I mean, that excuse works for Pound, Picasso, etc. but almost no one else.

Picasso maybe, but Pound went over to the fascists during the war. I'm not certain anyone could write a good enough poem to cover that.

The link in 8 is the one I referred to in 19.

See?

It's acknowledged at the bottom of the republished version. I hope she got paid this time.

32: I was gonna say! I was quite confused while reading the link in 8, thinking I have certainly read this before but it claims to have been published last week. Until the very end that is.

Pound went over to the fascists during the war. I'm not certain anyone could write a good enough poem to cover that.

e e cummings, who had been a prisoner of war in WW I, defended him, which is good enough for me.

I guess this is what happens when you omit links.

You know, both my current boyfriend and my last boyfriend and the guy I dated before that were quite forthright about googling me when we met (it probably helps that two of these people have worked at google); my current boyfriend so easily assumed that I had done my google due diligence on him that he was truly surprised when I had missed an amusing easter egg on his father's homepage. I think I would be offended if I went on a date with someone and they hadn't googled me.

Huh. I just googled myself, and the first and second results were my profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook respectively. The results after those are the ones that have been coming up for years, but those two are new.

Wow. I haven't Googled myself in a while. Google no longer finds my current website (at least in the first few pages of results), but does find my website at my previous institution. And it brings up Facebook and LinkedIn profiles for other people with my name. What a mess. Surely anyone Googling my name is looking for me, right?

Since I can't be googled, I don't want to google acquaintances with less generic names, since that would be using an asymmetric advantage I have.

Surely anyone Googling my name is looking for me, right?

Depends who those other people with Facebook and LinkedIn profiles are, I guess.

My name is sufficiently odd that it's extremely unlikely there's anyone else out there with the same name, so anyone googling it is presumably looking for me. This could be either good or bad, I suppose, but none of the results at this point are things I wouldn't want people to see, so I'm fine with it.

Since I can't be googled,

Wait, what? Some sort of magic unicorn bless you or something?

Ned's real name is extremely common, so it returns massive numbers of google hits, none of which refer to him.

Depends who those other people with Facebook and LinkedIn profiles are, I guess.

Google used to find my papers and talks pretty efficiently. So when I wrote the above comment I was thinking, wasn't that more useful than just redirecting people to Facebook or LinkedIn, when anyone looking to reconnect with someone with my name on Facebook would just do the search on Facebook? Google linking to my papers seems more content-ful. But on the other hand, anyone looking for my papers can find them easily enough anyway, and would probably be using a more specialized site than Google. So maybe they're equally useless. It does seem like the kind of search result Google prefers is changing, though. (It also seems like it's more likely to link to things with video content?)

Probably the only person with my name getting any benefit out of Google searches is the preacher with the blog.

Your real name, on the other hand, returns a bunch of hits about some drummer.

46 to 43.

It does seem like the kind of search result Google prefers is changing, though.

Yeah. They seem to put wikipedia links at the top of the list a lot more consistently than they used to as well.

Google does still find my papers and talks pretty easily; they're the results just below the social-networking profiles. On the other hand, given that those are the only things on the internet with my real name on them, and given the uniqueness of that name, that seems like the only plausible result of a search. I agree that it's a little odd to list the profiles so prominently, though.

46: Fucking drummers, man. They ruin everything.

The web is now littered with links to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and so every page on those domains is artificially bumped up in Page rank, even though your actual papers and content are probably have a better true Page rank than the url of your FB profile taken alone.

Googling my real name provides zero links that are actually about me. Sweet!

51: Damn, that's some far-reaching and consistent prudence.

There is a principal of an elementary school in upstate new york who shares my name, but he's not til pretty far down in the listings. I noticed just now that the first 5 google results for me are all different lives -- in addition to FB, there's my band, my old job, my wedding and a protest I flacked for some years ago.

For the first time, I was able to find something related to me on the first few pages of my google results (searched as a phrase). It used to be I couldn't find anything in the first 10 or more pages.

I'm sure this is by no means an original observation, but it strikes me that there's a real divide in attitudes toward this issue between people with common names and people with uncommon names.

I don't know if my name's that common, I just don't use it on the internet very much.

Although working through some permutations I did eventually find something.

Your name's common enough that there are a bunch of other people who share it and do use it on the internet.

At least a couple, true.

And the individual elements of my name are quite common, which helps even more.

||

Christ, Flickr is driving me crazy. This is the first time I've tried to upload a bunch of pictures using the network here in a long time, and I'm remembering why.

|>

And the individual elements of my name are quite common, which helps even more.

Yeah, the individual elements of my name are pretty rare, and the combination of them is vanishingly so. I'd be seriously shocked to find someone else with the same full name as me.

I once met somebody who had my first name for a last name and my last name for a first name. Not unlikely, exactly, but pretty funny.

||

Finished! If anyone has a pressing need to see what Farmington looks like, you now have a place to go.

|>

Your real name is excellent, teo. In retrospect I should have given it to my last-born child to help muddy up the Googles for you. But I don't know if it would suit a girl.

300 W. Arrington is neat.

300 W. Arrington is neat.

Yeah, it's an interesting building. I forget what's in it; just some random offices, I think.

Your real name is excellent, teo.

Thanks. I like it.

Both search results I found for my name were places where it was used in a professional capacity. I generally only go by my real first name when I'm just casually online. Or by the name I use here.

My middle name remains unique (though there's now a search result for a string that matches it in a long list of terms). The first results are actually google suggesting I mistyped and was searching for some other name.

My last name is also a city name: currently, the first result for my name (without quotes) is Google Maps: "Local business results for [first name] near [last name], [State]."

The non-Maps results are one or two false positives, me on LinkedIn, and then a whole lot of genealogical records - my patrilineal ancestors immigrated early.

I have a problem inviting people to Google my real name, since it's quite unusual but not quite unusual enough: there are about half a dozen other people living in the UK with the same name and high Internet profiles.

I could, of course, invite them to google Jesurgislac... but perhaps not on a first date.

Common name. With my middle initial, still pretty common, but my firm bio is the first entry. They deleted my Wikipedia entry, since I'm not really famous, so when my firm bio goes dark, I might be dropping out of sight altogether . . .

. . . and I use the familiar form of my first name on Facebook in hope of maintaining at least a thin veneer of separation between worlds. On Google.

I was quite disgruntled to find someone reviewing a hotel under 'my' name on a web-site that I had actually used. Then I checked facebook, and there are at least another two of us. Most of the google entries out there are me, though.

I've also noticed that what appears when I search my own name changes radically. I searched it a few weeks back and got a completely different set of search results, which is odd.

54. You may be right. I love my anonymity, which comes guaranteed with the name. Not that I'm shy about using my name on line, but it's so common I never have to worry about anybody finding me. If I was called Pantagruel Polperro and accidentally did something newsworthy, I'd have to spend weeks google proofing myself.

I was OFE until I got married -- you could pull a couple people with my first and last name out of any decent-sized crowd. Then I hyphenated, and I'm unique now. I don't show up online much -- lawyers get mentioned in court opinions, political donations, my scary grandmother's obituary, but nothing all that personally interesting.

Despite a very common first name and a last name the same as a small country, I come up first on Google (and on Bing).

They've changed something, I used to be much further down not long ago and I'm not at all as active in the venues they list as I used to be.

41 was supposed to be disagreeing with Ile's 38, by the way.

Back in in the paleowebic era, before there was google, I took part in a training session at my employer on using the web for research. The trainer was showing the audience how to do a web search on yahoo (yeah, I'm that old), and asked the audience for a search term. I suggested my name.

Now, it happens that I had written an article that reported some little-known facts that could be used in support of some fairly radical critiques of the democratic capitalist order. Consequently all kinds of Marxist and radical web sites (early adopters of the medium) had been citing my work in support of their views. The first three pages of yahoo search results, displayed up there on the big screen for my colleagues to see, were full of text fragments like "www.revolutionaryworker.org...Smash the imperialist oppressor state...[pain perdu] writes that...solidarity with Cubu and North Korea."

The trainer diplomatically speculated that it they referred to another [pain perdu], but alas, my name is uncommon enough that this simply wasn't plausible.

And 78 was by me. Dammit! Can someone change it?

77: Congrats on the success of Swansea AFC, Jason.

My Facebook profile comes up on the first page of google hits for my name, but after a muscle-bound guitarist/singer in NM, a playwright in MD, a crapload of LinkedIn Russ Barneses, and an ice rink in Canada.

I'm the only one who comes up on google even if you just use my first name alone.

And when you look at 63, think, "hey, Jammies went to high school here! neat."

Googling my name I only get to me on the sixth page -- the top hit for my name is a fugitive on the America's Most Wanted web-site.

Google my full name in quotes, and you find exactly three hits: the local newspaper's story about my high school graduation, and two blog comments where I point out how weird it is. (My dad's family name was pretty unusual, and when he married my mother they hyphenated, and decided to give me this unique first name.) Google my full name not in quotes, and you get Billy Ray's spawn.

Google the version of my name I use whenever I can (first name and the part of my last name that came from dad), whether in quotes or not, and you find my facebook page first and all but one or two of the next several pages are relics of my last job as a reporter.

I wish I had legally changed my name. Dumb of me not to have done it while at my last job. But I didn't need to change it then because I could just introduce myself as what I wanted and my real name was between me, my parents and the woman who took care of payroll. Now I have to show two different ID cards with my full name on them to get to work in the morning and my work e-mail account is linked to one of them and so on. Hard to introduce myself as I prefer when I have to keep explaining why that's not what's written.

Pre-meeting Googling is reasonably (though not perfectly) correlated with good manners in general. If you know a lot of rather intimate information about a person, it's not polite to start interrogating them about it upon first meeting.

I've often thought that the worst thing would be to be a person with a distinctive name who was inadvertently involved in a high-profile crime or unpleasant news story, and is young enough for all of the clips to be easily accessible.

But even there, I think, the relevant factor is not entirely whether your past is Googleable, so much as how people choose to use it.

The fact that a lot of people are maleducados is a complication, I admit.

My first name is common enough, but spelled in a not very common manner. My last name is common enough in Italy and sort of common here. Googling the two together you basically get me in every case -- except one.* She just finished nursing school and got married. I'm very proud.

*If you use another weird spelling of my first name + my last name, you get a raw foods restaurant owner. I've had friends parents call me up to congratulate me for all my success thanks to this one.

Google my full name not in quotes, and you get Billy Ray's spawn.

My friend's 5 year old kid accuses my friend "Stop being Hannah Montana" whenever her mom does anything that the 5 year old percieves as being innapropriately teenage-ish. Like using dated slang sarcastically, or mock dancing or singing.

87: Oh, she's just being Miley...

At least six of ten first hits on Google are me - didn't click through the linkedin and facebook links to see if they were. Aqoul seems to have fallen off the first page.

Googling 'Moby Hick' brings you to an episode of Popeye before you hit Unfogged.

79: Back in in the paleowebic era, before there was google,

When AltaVista first came out, a guy who worked for me pointed out that the first result for my name was an archive site that had picked up a Usenet post I had written on ""Socially Camouflaged Technologies: The Case of the Electromechanical Vibrator," (published in an IEEE journal) by Rachel Maines whose work was prominently featured in the film Power and Passion, The Technology of the Vibrator" (discussed here not too long ago). Did not care about that other than the special bonus inclusion of my work e-mail address (early Usenet dumbness c'était moi).

I once met somebody who had my first name for a last name and my last name for a first name.

Mine is much more common that way, which results in my often being misfiled.

Tell me about it.

It may get a little better with time, Obama.

I think 94 is the VJ from MTV!

Don't ask what happens when you google my name.

96: 'Cuz if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

There was a whole young adult novel about that, Kennedy, McDonald, and Obama.

Also, 80 to everyone with power.

98: Got it.

98: got it.

Kobe pwnage. Drat.

Anybody else want to get it?

101: Kwbage.

You can get to me by googling [firstname] harvard german (no quotes). ([firstname german harvard doesn't get me for quite awhile though.) When I used to online date, this meant there was pretty much no hiding, even if I didn't reveal my last name or institution right away. And lots of explanation: no, really, multiple Fulbrights is not a super huge deal when you're in some sort of area studies.

I think I've shared before that when I googled myself a whil ago I came upon some woman's blog post in which she described being horribly stricken with an attack of pain in sort of a seizure. she was lying on the floor of the bathroom or whatever and she started repeating my name like a mantra until the pain went away. she said that afterward it made her feel weird to read my blog, so she stopped.

e

kicking it read style.

I swear I just posted a comment about 104, but wevs.

I seem to have been successful in purging my real name from google as regards unfogged.

107:

Results 1 - 10 of about 437 from unfogged.com for "___ _______"

My name is totally unique, so far. Which means that the blog post where some asshole excoriates me for an article I wrote is pretty much with me forever. Also a bunch of red websites which posted the entirety of an online petition I signed in the Web's infancy. (I don't think I even signed it on a website -- an acquaintance emailed me to ask if he could add my name to a petition for a cause I supported and I said okay. Hmph.) Plus Facebook, Myspace, many other bits of journalism and my one actual personal academic journal appearance. (Top of the results, currently.)

But the very best thing about my current Google results is that someone in a scholarly journal (of dubious scholaricity as it will be seen) seems to have quoted a throw-away line from a movie review I wrote about a particular pop-psychology phenomenon, that I only put in the review based on a several-years-old reading of Douglas Rushkoff, who himself probably didn't do any serious research. I don't have academic journal privileges right now, but unless the cite was along the lines of "look at how the popular press misinterprets psychology" then I think the author is full of shit.

Crap. I didn't even try a site search, just googling my real name. OH WELL.

I can get the article for you if you want, minnie.

#105. Possibly, she was confusing you with Avalokiteśvara.

Dammit! The bizarre cite vanished down the hoohole, to be replaced by a completely different bizarre cite.

111: Thanks, now I can't find it. It's just like at the thrift store. If you see something: Grab it!

Googling my pseud gets you this site.

Oh man...

If you google my name, you get links for just about every aspect of my life, but I didn't put them up. Someone who writes a personal blog doesn't really get to complain about being overexposed, but you still (knock wood) don't get to my personal blog from my name. You do, however, get to see my college thesis, every sports event I've done, the times I get quoted in the paper, my work, my other work, another paper, mentions of my community garden. I didn't post a single one of those and was never offered a chance to be cautious about having my name give me away online.

115: So, is that link you or not?

And lots of explanation: no, really, multiple Fulbrights is not a super huge deal when you're in some sort of area studies.

I don't believe this for a minute.

117: Yes, I am indeed a teenage girl. Trapped in the body of a middle aged man. Laydeez...

118: There's a test to see if you're right or not. Google 'overly modest' and see if Blume is in the first 100 or so hits.

Clearly I'm getting pointless now. Time to pull the cord and get work done.

115: Can we start changing ToS's handle to "iluvlovespink83"?

105 is the strangest thing I've read in a long time. I love it.

Not true. Top twenty results:

catholicforum.fisheaters.com: HELP: Protestant friend starting to outright oppose Church
realzionistnews.com: Why I Left Judaism
myspace.com/kevin_okeeffe
jewishjournal.com: Muslims heart 'The Daily Show'
joshuapundit.blogspot.com: Why Don't Jews Like Christians Who Like Them?
israelect.com: To Seduce the Elect - Part 2 of 7
Challenging the Bible (s) Part One, by Mohamed Khodr
Communist History Network Newsletter: Charles Poulsen (1911-2001): Cabbie, novelist, historian and poet
Kesher Talk: "Go Grab His Ass"
Dungeons & Dragons Wizard Community: WWIII or a new era of prosperity - Page 14

The imarealtuffie spiel tos has is one of it's weakest; as a self respecting troll, it should consider dropping it.

On the other hand it's fair evidence the tos actually is a tween age girl stuck in an (approaching?) middle aged man's (slightly balding, slightly doughy) body. So at least we've got that visual now.

110 -- Anyone who would know to search for you @ unfogged likely would already be able to identify your comments anyway.

And lots of explanation: no, really, multiple Fulbrights is not a super huge deal when you're in some sort of area studies.

This translates more or less into, "Yes, I'm really fucking smart, but I swear I am not going to make you feel inferior and stupid every time you open your mouth."

127: and she doesn't! Genius.

127: You can communicate that with clothing.

129: What, short skirts and lots of cleavage?

130: If a woman. A man could use a WWF t-shirt or something.

131: Or biking apparel!

Blume's ability not to make people feel inferior and stupid makes me feel inferior and stupid.

But aren't you a graduate student? Graduate students are supposed to feel inferior and stupid, punctuated by all too brief bursts of monomaniacal confidence, when the bulk of the work actually gets done.

Glad I have exactly one more day of studenthood. Commencement tomorrow! The final final exam: figuring out how to iron this hideously wrinkled and oddly constructed polyester robe.

Hang it in a hot shower to get the major creases out, and don't bother otherwise?

135: Congradulations. Don't iron it. You still get the same degree.

Wrinkles aren't important, like spelling congratulations correctly.

138: You will? Dammit, I have a phone call to make.

135: Glad I didn't get that far. It would have hurt a lot worse, if I made it all the way to the ceremony only to be tossed out at the last moment because of my lack of ironing skills.

Also -- CONGRATULATIONS!

I thought MH was making a lame greeting-card pun.

ConGRADulations, Blume!!!

Congratulations Blume!

I'll try the shower thing. I wouldn't bother, except that the creases are really bad, and the robe is hot pink (er, crimson) rather than black, so they show up quite well. And I'll be photographed quite a bit tomorrow.

What they don't tell you when you apply to grad schools is that you have to live with the regalia for the rest of your life, if you stay in academia.

Congratulations, Blume! Hang the polyester wizarding robes up in the shower.

145 is true.

You can't change the color scheme (and most of the good ones were taken 400 years ago). They may also make you wear a very silly hat.

On the other hand, if you do get stuck with the colors, at least you don't have to be stuck with the material.

148: No, if you stay in academia, you have to write your own material.

The ToS reveals himself in the latest to be akin to a professor at Steinford, who regularly says of the grad students whose origins are European that they, being educated, of course know Greek.

Thanks all! Steaming has commenced. The first time ever that having a miniscule bathroom has been a good thing.

No, if you stay in academia, you have to write your own material.

At least, in theory....

Oh boy! I have spare discretionary funds that must be spent up. Time to buy a Drobo.

The ToS is also about as intimidating as the average professor at Steinford, so there is that.

"intimidating" should be "physically intimidating" in 154 of course.

And the average properly only includes faculty over 45.

The ToS aspires to be the homeless and pathetic man's Charles Bukowski. And yet I believe Bukowski was homeless and pathetic himself for much of his life, making this a singularly unimpressive ambition.

Hook 'em, Blume!

Time to buy a Drobo.

I suppose a dobro wouldn't accomplish the same thing (interesting, the FF spellchecker doesn't recognize dobro).

Congrats Blume!

Dobros are cool.

Das ist fantastisch. Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Blume!

I suppose a dobro wouldn't accomplish the same thing

No, but it's a lot more useful without electricity.

Time to buy a Dropo!

||

Status updates that make one SO glad to be with Jammies instead of with one's ex:

life's a series (cycle?) of sacrifices, juxtaposed in parallel with complimentary rewards

|>

Hey, congrats Blume! So great!

Congratulations Blume!

164: I don't get it. What's wrong with that, the turgid prose? (To be fair, I can see how that could be a problem in a relationship.) Or does what he said make you think of some history particular to the two of you?

Congratulations, Blume.

Also, you're not supposed to hang it in the shower, you're supposed to wear it in the shower. Didn't ogged teach you people anything?

Also, congratulations Blume!

Congrats, Blume!

Don't forget to drink heavily.

Let me be the first to offer you sincerest congratulations, Blume. I'm quite surprised noone has woo!ed you yet either, but I'll hold off so someone else can have that honor.

The hell I will: woo! Hook 'em!

168: oh, it's just a particularly cheesy facebook status. I don't have any hard feelings towards him.

One piece of advice when dealing with graduation robes. If it rains, you might want to take-off the robe if you like what you are wearing underneath. The dye job is every bit as cheap as the fabric. (Fortunately, I skipped my rained-on graduation and learned this second hand.)

164 does not make me glad to be with Jammies. OTOH, it does make me glad not to be with Heebie's ex, so at least there's that.

Mazel tov Blume! Does this mean you're changing your pseud to "BlumePhD"?

UeberBlume!

The robe I wore for graduation had been handed down amongst friends and siblings over many graduations without ever being cleaned. It had big splotchy stains and smelled like beer and had spent at least a year wadded up in the bottom of someone's closet so it was about as wrinkled as a raisin. I actually had competition to wear it.

178
The robe I wore for graduation had been handed down amongst friends and siblings over many graduations without ever being cleaned... I actually had competition to wear it.

And what did the winner get?

I suppose a dobro wouldn't accomplish the same thing

Made in some mountain range? Sounds like a mountain range in love.

Congratulations, Blume!

Graduate students are supposed to feel inferior and stupid, punctuated by all too brief bursts of monomaniacal confidence, when the bulk of the work actually gets done.

I still feel that way, except that in the brief bursts of monomaniacal confidence, I don't really get much work done.

And when you look at 63, think, "hey, Jammies went to high school here! neat."

You can see the stadium at the top of this picture. The rest of the school is behind it, but I didn't take any pictures of it. The daughter of one of my coworkers just graduated from there. Go Scorpions!

We are the Scorpions!
We don't give a hoot.
If you try and cross us,
you'd better check your boot.

Maybe you could succeed in telling me about the Opeth concert.

I still feel that way, except that in the brief bursts of monomaniacal confidence, I don't really get much work done.

true. Also, "The bulk of the work", sadly, does not always imply very much work.

And what did the winner get?
Lice?

->(18{5,2}).

185: Careful, it only encourages him, essear.

They may also make you wear a very silly hat.

I love the hats so much. There was an Italian professor at U of C who I swear I saw in a green velvet version of Aladdin's lamp with a tassel hanging down from a central point in front of his eyes, making them cross. I was very sad that a JD, while in some technical sense (i.e., not really) a doctoral degree, doesn't come with a silly hat.

My dad refused to get his LL.B. turned into a J.D., but probably would have agreed if he got a hat.

189: Don't rely on weird academic conventions for your silly hats, LB. You can wear a silly hat for no reason at all, which is pretty much the best reason to wear a silly hat there is.

I dream of a world with more silly hats. Really takes the edge off, you know?

I suspect that its' the silly hats make the rest of the getup ok, for what it's worth; at least, for convocations. It's a way of paying homage to a long tradition and taking the mickey of yourselves a little bit at the same time, which keeps it from being insufferable, or something.

I still feel that way, except that in the brief bursts of monomaniacal confidence, I don't really get much work done. wind up commenting here.

I dream of a world with more silly hats. Really takes the edge off, you know?

This also is true. However, I suspect LB was bemoaning the formal bestowal of her own silly hat, which isn't quite the same as realizing that you can just just wear a hat if you want. Or make one for your kid or whatever.

I wear silly utilitarian hats to keep the sun off -- from June through September I'm usually in something that looks like the hat you'd put on a mule to keep it cool on a hot day (except without the holes for my ears), and in the winter I tend toward the giant mass of fake fur. But that's less satisfying than the pure bizarrerie of academic headgear.

This is awesome and appropriate for many occasions. Wear it to court!

My unreliable memory suggests it's been linked here before, but I'm a rebel and all, so what the heck.

Aaaaaand pwnage! Ow ow ow.

They may also make you wear a very silly hat.

The hat really is what does it. When I tried on the whole getup, the robe was still in the same realm as past graduations and choir robes. But putting on the hat suddenly made it all medieval. Though it isn't exactly the same hat, one of my first thoughts was, Hey, I'm Erasmus!

I've long had a wish that men's hats (like from the 40s and 50s) would come back, but I'm not a trend setter, so I've never dared to wear one.

193: So sad, but pretty much the truth about me.

(Yes, I know Erasmus wasn't medieval.)

Wow, your memory must be unreliable if it can't span from 194 to 196.

The pwnage, does it burn like having a shark eat your head?

Also, it's sad how many North American universities just use a default (mortarboard) silly hat. Where's the fun in that?

If I don't get a goddam octagonal tam I'll be really pissed.

Apparently I do, but the rest of the outfit is so heinous I'm pissed anyway.

I think I've already mentioned this somewhere on the internet, but a week or two ago I saw an old woman in full academic regalia (black gown, only mildly goofy black-and-blue hat) on a New Jersey Transit train. I can't imagine walking around a crowded train station in that gown and hat. I assume she was heading to a Rutgers graduation ceremony, but surely there's a way to pack the clothes and change there?

I really should get a picture of myself in my Smokey Bear hat.

THE OPETH CONCERT, ESSEAR!

204: Looks liek it would be good for doing an "I am the God of hellfire!" reprise.

204: As noted, the bloody europeans mostly grabbed all the good color schemes (and some of the awful ones) before anyone over here had a chance.

a week or two ago I saw an old woman in full academic regalia (black gown, only mildly goofy black-and-blue hat) on a New Jersey Transit train.

If I had to pay $359.00 for an outfit, I'd wear it like all the time.

209: Just like with colonialism.

That's no excuse for those sleeves, soup.

I like the sleeves. It's like your hands are being licked by golden flame.

THE OPETH CONCERT, ESSEAR!

See, I never really listen to metal, or even to proggy rock for that matter, so I don't really have anything very interesting or insightful to say. The opening band was Enslaved and they had major sound problems and I think the metal-muppet-voices are hilarious. Opeth was decently entertaining, and kept making half-audible jokes about Skid Row in a very prim Swedish accent. The number of mullets was astounding. I don't think I can say much more than that.

Mikael Åkerfeldt's accent is kind of amusingly prim, given what he does.

And yet I believe Bukowski was homeless and pathetic himself for much of his life, making this a singularly unimpressive ambition.

The man had a real talent for drawing funny cartoons, though. Examples are hard to find online (examples of Bukowski's art can be found here, but the cartoons are lacking), but he drew lots of cartoons of Bukowski-like people doing Bukowski-like things in a bold, colorful style accompanied by bleak captions. In my favorite, a little Bukowski dude sits in an overstuffed chair surrounded by bottles with Snuffy Smith XXXs on them. The caption says "I go home and drink 18 bottles of beer."

The ToS should take up painting, I think.

I'm pretty into the Stanford outfit, nosflow.

I'm also excited that my advisor, who will be giving me the diploma, got her doctorate in Germany, and therefore has fur trim on her outfit. It's brown rabbit fur, she tells me. Not as cool when some guy in the Slavic Department got a special honor a few years ago, and a bunch of people from Poland were hanging out around my building in outfits with lots of snow white fur.

Regalia is awfully expensive.

nosflow, that's true. It's like some of them go out of their way to be hideous.

A convocation related conversation: picture family gathered around a graduate student of my acquaintance afterwards. Her excitable mother wanted to know everything, and was badgering her about details like "ok, I understand now why the professors are all dressed differently, but why are your people wearing different color tassles and kerchiefs?" after a moment of discussing types of degrees and why some people can wear the gold tassles and some people can't, one family member turns to another and says "Oh, so it's like a hanky code" At which point newly graduated girl turns an interesting shade of pink and family friend snorts half a soda through their nose.

205: I wore my gown and hat on the train to graduation, and through a walk to campus. It was one of the most communal, happiest moments of my college career (I was a commuter student) and most of the cheers and good wishes were from total not-connected-to-the-university strangers.

213 gets it exactly right. Nosflow, when you graduate you should rig up flamethrowers inside your sleeves.

Regalia is awfully expensive.

Especially if you lose the stuff you've borrowed for the ceremony, I've heard.

#221. And you should pass out candy.

And you should pass out candy. at the after party.

If your regalia is grand enough, you can hide many things in the sleeves.

Regalia is awfully expensive.

No shit. And for such poor quality! A friend was negotiating replacements for her wrong-sized regalia, and happened to remark on how insanely expensive it is. The company representative said, But it's Turkish polyester!

I bet Turkish polyester is fabulous. It makes me think of T.E. Lawrence, heavily disguised, wandering the casbah in search of stretchy disco pants.

rock the Casbah!

REGATTAS ARE AWFULLY EXPENSIVE.

||

Huh, I didn't know southern California had hailstorms on sunny days in June.

|>

If your regalia is grand enough, you can hide many things in the sleeves.

According to Dorothy Sayers, cigarette cases and wadded up hankerchiefs are traditional.

I am in the process of trying to figure out where I can stash stuff on my person. I need at least my camera and my phone. The latter so that I can later find my way back to the people who will have my wallet and keys. Too bad my camera phone isn't better.

231: +d

Small handbags, small bottles of champagne, digital cameras.

I'm still kicking myself that I didn't buy a set from the miscellaneous doctoral regalia that was on sale when they merged the U of Mn bookstores a few years ago. I don't even remember what the colors were, probably some technical thing where everybody's too rich to worry about getting a bargain, but they seemed like decent quality polyester and the price just dropped and dropped. Would've been good for a lot of free drinks every May. Damn.

I guess taping flasks of bourbon to my legs the way we used to do to smuggle it into the Kentucky Derby is unnecessary.

Only because you don't need the tape.

Anyway, it's a celebration! Class it up. Tape a flask of cognac to your leg.

I'd rather do something like this, but with champagne splits. Oh well, failure to plan ahead.

Late to the party, but congratulations, Blume!

Congrats, Blume. Ya' made us all proud!

Vee haff vays of making you wear a funny hat. Congratulations!

but they seemed like decent quality polyester

I don't think I ever had the option of polyester. Undergrad & masters robes were poly. unsurprisingly, but all the doctoral gowns were mad e of sturdier stuff. So you could borrow for the ceremony, or have some made for several hundred dollars. The latter option makes some sense, if you've got to drag them out yearly for 30 years or whaever. You can always skint on it by grabbing a robe off the rack, but that's probably bad form if you're walking a ph.d student of your own.

204: Whoa, looks like a koi costume. NTTAWWT.

I just googled myself and the video I did for these people is finally up on their myspace page. A very silly piece, but I got to try out a bunch of things.

at the next unfogged meetup, everyone has wear appropriate academic regalia, or at least a very silly hat.

246: the next unfogged meetup

Googling my real name brings up a blog called "Handlebar Moustacheland". (Unfortunately, the name is the most interesting part.) My blog doesn't come up in until page 9, oddly.

Googling "teofilo" comes up mostly with a bunch of people named Teófilo, although my Flickr page is in there and my blog is at the bottom of the first page of results.

Hoch sollst du leben, Blume! Ich gratuliere!
Hey: dreimal hoch!

247: I've already got the costume.

If I had ever finished my PhD and had gone on to an academic career, I so would have cut my polyester regalia apart to use it as a pattern for a set made out of some material I actually like. That's not, like, academic misconduct or anything, right? And the regalia itself is just basically a smock, so how hard would it really be to sew together?

251: Nice. Did you serpentine during the race?

We did!

I now have an image of Shriners in little cars serpentining across a runway under machine gun fire.

Following up, I am at this moment in possession of pictures of Blume wearing her academic regalia, and let me tell you people: she looks fantastic. Some people are just made to rock Erasmus's hat.

yay blume!!