Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Last night, we had another fancy dinner cook-off with some friends (with nice seared duck and some pork/gouda open faced sandwich things) and our friend, Chris, told this joke:

A man went into a pet store one day. He said to the clerk “I want a parrot, and it better be able to talk.”

The clerk replied “We have one talking parrot, but we’ve had some trouble selling it.”

“I’ll take it.”

“But…”

“I don’t care, I just want a talking parrot.”

When the man brought the parrot home, he placed it on its perch. Immediately, the bird let loose with a string of expletives. Cursing and squawking, it paced back and forth on its perch. Hours passed, and the bird still wouldn’t say anything but curse words. Finally, late that night, the man burst out of his bedroom in frustration. “Shut Up! Shut UP!”

“*bleep* up! *bleep* UP!”

In a frenzy, the man grabbed the raucous bird, and thrust it into the freezer. Immediately, the bird let out a string of expletives. After 5 minutes of squawking and cursing, the freezer suddenly fell silent. Worried, the man cautiously opened the freezer door. The parrot calmly walked out onto the man’s finger. “Sir, I am most sorry for subjecting you to such language today. I solemnly promise not to curse in your presence again. I will do my best to be a kind and humble pet to you from this moment forward.”

Puzzled, the man placed the parrot back on its perch, expecting another outburst. Instead, the bird turned to him “Sir, may I ask… what did the chicken do?”

It's an oldy but goody, and now, on with the show.

Monday evening I had class until late, which seems to be the theme of this semester: wake up early and get home late. I'm amazed I still manage to get my bike home so late so I can ride it to my 8am class. Rebecca, in the meantime, tries to go in early when I go in early and goes in later when I'm coming home later. During the day, on Monday, I drove down to Santa Cruz to find a pan-handler's sign. Although I found a good one, my professor apparently has different tastes than me in what he considers "authentic pan-handling signs." He wants them used, I care for the content. I found a kid who couldn't have been much older than 18 requesting money because he family was kidnapped by ninjas and he needed to take karate lessons. While this pan-handling text has been passed around the internet for several years, it shows the astute business sense of the kid I bought the sign off of to have gone online, found the most active sign and used it to his advantage to get money from passer-bys. I'm still planning on entering this sign into the show, but I'm also attempting to get another one.

So, Tuesday evening the head of my area (digital media) gave me a good scare. Although some fantastic things are happening in this area (expanding to integrate the facilities and students with a prestigious residency program), this puts enormous pressure on the graduate students to take their work up a few notches as well as being more visible to the outside community. All of which, I'm not certain how to do. So I was in quite the panic Tuesday evening, but Rebecca was there to comfort me, so it all turned out fine.

Most of the second half of the week it has been raining here, so it is a good thing we decided against going camping up at Lehi park. In California, because there is no snow, people drive really slow in the rain to make up for not having ice to drive on. Rebecca and I decided Thursday morning that we would drive up to the city that afternoon to listen to a lecture/open forum with Manuel de Landa at the SFMoMA. We were hoping to hear more about his projects (especially his more recent projects on genetic algorithms), but instead he talked more theoretically about the notion of fingerprinting on artwork and singularities. Reminding Rebecca of projects she had worked on at UCSD.

But we hung out with some of the CADRE people afterwards and I was able to figure out how most people go about deciding who to put on their committee. I need to have a committee for my thesis decided soon, but I wasn't clear how to choose my professors (since there are only three in my area of concentration). [Apparently most people only have one or two professors from their area on their committee, and then go to professors in other concentrations. Reminds me of how they chose the third committee member for my thesis -- the graduate coordinator just thought a bit and said "so-and-so. He doesn't have too many students right now." -beck]

Saturday morning, after cleaning house, we again tried to find some good signs in downtown Santa Cruz, to no avail. We did, however, stop by the UCSC campus and that is a beautiful place. I can't imagine going to school in someplace so distracting. The entire campus is a huge redwoods forest and, especially on a foggy and rainy day like Saturday, the place has a very old growth feel to it. But I'm not going to school for the campus, I'm going for the connections? At least I should keep telling myself that.

Saturday evening, we invited some friends over for a cheese cook-off (with a center piece of duck). Unfortunately, some people couldn't make it, but the food was still really good and we chatted for a while after dinner. I'll be sure to post the recipe because it was well worth making again.