TMI Thursday: Terrible Date POV

If this does not sate your thirst for awesome TMI stories, then check out all the other glorious tales of things we probably shouldn't tell at LiLu's home for the staunchly raunchy, TMI Thursdays!

My wife was not the first undergrad I illegally dated at Notre Dame. See, we weren't supposed to date any of the undergraduate population because they might have a friend who could potentially be a friend of one of our potential students, potentially. Being that my hormones were more of a driving force than my hunger for a higher degree (which is why I have only a MASTER's degree), I decided to spit right in the eye of this law. What a rebel am I.

To further push the boundaries, I engaged in some illicit tutoring. See, I had this student, Sheridan, who was awesome. She had two room mates who were also in the organic chemistry class that I taught. When they were preparing for the finals for the first semester, they asked if I could come over and help them study and have me there as a valuable resource. Since Sheridan was awesome (and, yes, rather attractive), I was going to say yes, anyway, but then she bribed me with Taco Bell. Taking any payment from the students--monetary, culinary or sexually--was expressly forbidden in the TA charter. Also expressly forbidden? Tutoring in a student's dorm room.

I was off to do both.

To avoid a long and boring part of the story, nothing happened in the room, other than studying and chemistry and shit like that. Oh, and I met this girl named Margaret.

Margaret was pretty, with dark hair and dark eyes. She was shorter, but she was very nice. I crushed on her right away. She lived across the hall from the girls I was tutoring. She would pop in and out of the room from time to time, because she was friends, and six girls shared a couple of rooms, so they shared a lot of stuff. Consider her the Kramer to my friends' Jerry. Except, you know, a lot less crazy.

Anyway, as I was leaving the dorm, I passed her, and I actually manned up (figuring I wouldn't be back there any time soon, should I fail to execute) and asked her if she'd like to go out whenever she was done with finals. To my surprise, she blushed, smiled, and said yes.

Elated, I went back to my apartment and waited until the next day. I called her (I had a university directory that I stole from one of the libraries on campus) and we set things up: we'd go to dinner. Since I had wrapped up my first semester of grad school and I had just scored a date with a very cute undergrad, I planned for some steak. I wasn't shooting for romantic so much as celebratory: the semester was over, Christmas was looming, it was time to celebrate.

On the night we planned--it was a Thursday, after all her finals were done, and mine too, and before we both planned on going to our respective homes for the Christmas break--I arrived at the dorm, showered, shaved, smelling nice, and dressed for the occasion. I called up to her room, and a few minutes later, she came down. She looked beautiful. We weren't formally dressed up, but we both looked nice, she moreso than I.

Dinner was great. The food was delicious, the conversation was loose and easy, and I had a good time. When we were done, we drove back to campus and walked around south quad for a little bit. It was chilly, as Decembers in northern Indiana tend to be. So, we cut our walk short and I returned her to her dorm, fully expecting the date to be over. I was going to be smooth--I had just eaten steak and a salad with onions!--and I wasn't going to try and kiss her or anything.

But then, as I was preparing to say good-bye, she said, "Do you want to come up to my room. We could watch a movie or something."

Fuck and yes.

So, up to her room we went. The dorm itself was spooky quiet--a lot of people had gone home. Margaret, who lived near Chicago, was heading home the next day. Incidentally, my friends and I were having a party the next day, and then Saturday I was heading home. Anyway, we got to her room, took off our coats, and then settled on a movie. It was Never Been Kissed and though I'm not a huge romantic comedy fan, I went with it. It was her room, and, remember, I look like fat Tom Green, so the Drew Barrymore connection was too good to pass up. Well, basically I kind of shrugged and said, "Yeah, that's fine" when she asked.

I think it's at this point that I should write that, when I read about some of the awful dates that many of the fine women of the blogosphere recount in their blogs almost daily, I take solace in the fact that I had never been on a date as terrible as the ones they tell of.

Except for this one.

Things were going great. A few minutes in, she apparently thought I wasn't the raping and killing type, so she put her head on my shoulder. Feeling brave, I held her hand. She didn't back away. Things were going better than I ever could have imagined.

And then because I was feeling good and happy, fate decided to intervene and fuck me over.

My stomach rumbled. Not a hungry rumble. No, it was more of a "Hmmm...we don't like what you've put in here, chief." I paid it little mind. I smiled away the rumble. She smiled back. I decided to--awkwardly, admittedly--try and kiss her. She didn't pull away. Our lips touched.

My stomach rumbled again. This time, however, it twisted itself in knots. Things were suddenly not going swimmingly.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, hesitantly. I really didn't know what to do. This was back when I still had a gall bladder, so it wasn't like I was about to shit myself from here to kingdom come. At the same time, I've never really had a history of indigestion like this. Heart burn, yes. Acid reflux, sure. Rumbly tummy that didn't involve hunger pangs? New to me.

My stomach settled down and we went back to watching the movie. About fifteen minutes later, it really went to town. It sounded like some kind of gutter echoing with flood waters. I was immediately embarrassed.

"I'm so sorry, Margaret," I said. She looked confused.

"It's okay?" It was more of a question than a consolation.

This is when my dumbass decided to try and kiss her again. I leaned in, closed my eyes, felt my lips touch hers...

...and my stomach pushed it's contents up my esophagus.

Okay, the bad news first, this date was ruined. My chances with Margaret were gone. Kaput. Over. Finished. I knew this when the vomit hit the back of my throat.

The good news? I was able to hold the puke in my mouth as I dove for her trash can (which, thank God, had a liner and was made of plastic). I emptied my guts into her trash can. What this poor girl was thinking while the guy who had been smooching her a moment before was emptying the contents of his stomach, I shudder to think.

Did I ever mention I'm a loud puker? Especially when I'm sober? I tend to retch before bringing it up. A lot. Kind of like a cat does when puking. You know, that whole body contortion, contraction, and then the loud KAFF and puke? Yeah, that's me. Cat Puke Man in my secret identity.

The smell? Terrible. Again, like the night me and Mr. Wodka got cozy, it came out my nose. I could feel it dribbling from my nostrils.

"I'm sorry, I think I should go," I said weakly when I had control of myself.

"Are you going to be okay?" Margaret asked.

"Yeah," I said, partially laughing. I was trying to make it look like I was laughing to cover up the fact that I was crying. I was crying because I nearly puked on this really sweet, really nice girl that I really liked, I had ruined the date, I had stunk up her room, I had filled her garbage can with bile, ichor, vomit and a whole host of other digestive juices, and I was crying because I hurt. Plus, I just puked steak. Do you know how that shit clings to your throat when you puke it up? Like a fucking tentacled sea monster. It was horrible.

I gathered up the bag o' vomit and grabbed my coat. I walked to the door and she followed. She asked again if I was going to be okay.

"I think so, now," I said. "I'm going to take this" holding up the bag o' vomit, its contents sloshing in the sack "out to the dumpster." I heaved a sigh. "I had a really good time, Margaret," I tacked on hastily at the end.

"I had a good time, too," she said, then, somewhat timidly, "until...you know." She offered a pained smile.

"Merry Christmas," I offered.

"Merry Christmas. Oh, and happy birthday!" I smiled back at her.

"I won't even bother asking if you want to go out again," I said. "I pretty much ruined that chance." I hefted the bag o' vomit again. It sloshed. Again.

"No, no," she tried to reassure me. I could see the fear in her eyes that I would believe her. I could sense her fear, smell her longing to scream "EWWWWWW!" and run to the shower. "Maybe...you know...sometime...after we get back."

"I'd like that." I offered a half smile. Puke still was dribbling out of my nose. "Good night. Thank you, again." I turned, trudged down the hallway, and out into the night. I tossed the bag o' vomit in the dumpster behind the dining hall on my way by. The splattering sound it made when it hit the cold, hard interior metal was reassuring and cathartic.

I returned to my car, still weepy, weakened and sore. I went home, cleaned up, and went to bed.

I never called her back.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Paging the Darwin Awards

Being a chemist, I always keep in the back of my mind what is going on with the reaction I'm about to do or am doing or getting ready to shut down. In the front of my mind, however, I usually keep the "what can go wrong with this motherfucker" file. Can it heat up and blow yellow shit all over the top of my hood? Can it smoke and fume and blow black tar on the inside of my hood which I can conveniently hand over to one of my co-workers as I move to a new lab? Can it detonate forcefully and remove a hand or, worse, my tally-wacker? Will the explosion be that big? Maybe I should work on small scale more often in the hood.

The other thing I do is I look at all the shit around the reaction I'm doing. If it's going to suddenly shoot flames out of the top of the flask, perhaps I'll want to remove all the flammable solvents from the immediate area. If it can explode, perhaps I'll want to put up a blast shield so that nothing flies out and punctures a gas tank or another reaction or my lung. Is there another reaction running that might interact with this and thus make the situation worse?

And finally, I consider my outfit. No, no, I don't worry about the stylish duds I'm sporting. If I have a shit ton of hot chemical blown all over my person, I want to be able to strip off my soiled clothes (and my soiled underclothes). I might also want to protect my eyes, so that I don't have to remember how gloriously awesome breasts are, but I can reaffirm for myself on a daily basis. Of course, reaffirm too much, and I'll go blind for other reasons. Curse you, nuns, you were right! Also, if I'm reaching toward something that's potentially going to explode or spew hot stuff at me, I want some gloves so that they can at least find my fingers when they're severed and--if not too mangled--reattach them.

With that in mind, let's watch this dumbass trying his best to win a Darwin Award:

Let's see how he did, shall we?

No goggles.
No lab coat.
Jesus Fuck Christ! This guy is apparently wearing Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Labcoat!
No gloves.
No blast shield.
Not working in a hood, where all those toxic fumes you've just created can by shunted out to mother nature.
Bottle of potentially flammable solvent sitting two feet from ground zero (or table zero, I guess). I think it's ethanol, but it might be a halogenated solvent, in which case, we just have to worry about it shattering and filling the lab with nasty vapors.
Stirring, boiling flask sitting two feet in the other direction. Probably a water-based reaction, but could be caustic and/or acidic.
Electrical cord running right through the blast area.
Boiling flask is not secured in any fashion.
Lighting shit on fire without a fire extinguisher anywhere nearby. But not to worry. The Big Bad Idiot Wolf huffed and puffed and blew the fire out.


That's a pretty good list right there. Not to mention, a rainbow-colored windbreaker is the ideal thing to wear when you're working in the lab. Granted, after blowing his eyebrows off, the rainbow-colored windbreaker was now striped in a very lurid brown color.

This is exactly why I shouldn't be a teacher--I'd kick this kid's ass for being so totally fucking stupid. And then I'd fail him. Insult to injury, baby. Basically, this guy was fucking lucky. Kids, don't try this shit at home. Or in the lab. Or anywhere near me.

But, if you do, at least wear goggles.

A Few Follow-Ups

I told you I used to be a member of the Liberal Media, right? If you're new to the show, back when I was in high school, I wrote a weekly column about my small town for the local rag. At the same time, I had an opinion column with the high school paper. I got burnt out pretty quickly doing two gigs like that, which is kind of funny, since one was a weekly column and the other was bi-monthly. Still, I had lots of activities going on, like quiz bowl (what? me? do trivia? never!), basketball, trying to get into college, trying to get laid. You know, the usual shit.

Anyway, what sort of journalistic integrity would I be providing if I didn't do a few follow up stories to those things I've reported here previously? A pretty lousy one, that's what, so to prove that I'm better than Keith Olbermann, I'll do those follow-ups, and you'll like them and not see them as a thinly veiled attempt to hide the fact that I was too lacking in creativity to give you anything new today.

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Remember when I told you about that brutal and savage criminal, Joseph Carnavale? He was the man responsible for inspiring terror during rush hour traffic because he built a barrel monster out of the orange and white barrels lining every fucking street in the Raleigh-Durham area and then set said monster alongside the road. Well, not only did he flash a few moments of brilliant creativity, but he also proved that the Raleigh police department is filled with humorless asshats.

Mr. Carnavale, a student at NC State University, had his day in court yesterday and was given 50 hours of community service. Carnavale said he would like to serve his sentence by working with Habitat for Humanity. Clearly, this is a deranged lunatic prowling our streets...at least according to Raleigh police.

"The law is what we enforce," Raleigh police spokeswoman Laura Hourigan said. "We go out every day and do our job, and the job is enforcement, and that's why we did what we did."

And good for you, Laura Hourigan. God bless the men and women in blue protecting our streets in Raleigh.

Meanwhile, the guy who killed Jenna Nielsen is still at large. Raleigh police have no leads at this time.

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Last Wednesday, I told you of James Waylett--the dude who plays Vincent Crabbe in the Harry Potter movies--and his...advanced studies of herbology. He, too, had his day in court (which apparently was also his 20th birthday). He was sentenced to 120 hours of community service.

He will spend most of it polishing the trophies with Filch. The rest of it will be spent changing Mrs. Norris' litter box.

Since Waylett, who was looking at a possibility of 14 years in prison, was quick to admit the pot was his and cooperated with the police so well, the judge saw fit to give him the community service rather than sending him to the hoosegow. I'm sure Lucius Malfoy had nothing to do with this.

Incidentally...my spell checker is perfectly fine with "hoosegow", but gives me a red underline for "herbology".

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On Monday, I told you of my drunken interactions with a couple of my students in a little afterhours soiree--and by soiree I mean a poorly-judged stumble onto campus.

Curious as to what happened to the students in the story (I never learned Barefoot Girl's name...other than it was Carrie, so no follow up there). Turns out that both of the students are now doctors. Sean is a podiatrist in Chicago. Andrea is a doctor at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis.

Andrea is also married. I only know this because her Facebook profile has a picture of her in a white dress dancing with some guy in a tuxedo. My brilliant powers of deduction have led me to this conclusion. Also, I found a wedding announcement from her local paper.

As soon as I find Sean's email address, I'm going to find out if he wants me to repay him for that burger and fries.

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And finally, the other night my wife and I were lying in bed discussing how limited our childhoods were when it came to music and television. The whole story can be summed up as thus: if it wasn't the Judds or the Beach Boys, she didn't listen to it growing up, and my favorite band when I graduated high school was Simon & Garfunkel.

Television was not much better. She watched a lot of Golden Girls, 227, Amen and Empty Nest, whereas I watched Leave it to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, and the Waltons. I sighed and then said, "Yeah, I spent a lot of time reading when I was a kid."

"And masturbating," she added.

"No, not so much. Don't you remember the Jamie Randol story?"

"Oh yeah. How long would you go in between?"

"Like, weeks. Months, if I could. One of my main reasons, aside from feeling guilty, was that my mom had me terrified that Jesus was retuning at any second!, and I really didn't want to be lying there beating off when the Rapture occurred."

"Wow, so, what, she told you that if you stroked the one-eyed monster, Jesus would come?"

*pregnant silence followed by gales of laughter*

When I composed myself: "I am so blogging about this."

Seeing Yellow

If you went anywhere near Nickelodeon this weekend, you probably would have stumbled upon this show called "Spongebob Squarepants". It's this little cartoon about the misadventures of the title character, his pink starfish best friend Patrick Star, his self-adoring and arrogant neighbor Squidward Tentacles and the misplaced underwater squirrel scientist, Sandy Cheeks.

Okay, I'm done insulting your intelligence. Of course you're heard of Spongebob Squarepants. Even if you're not as intimately familiar with Spongebob as I am, you at least know of him. This weekend, he turned ten years old, and I've been watching the wacky shenanigans of Spongebob, Patrick, Squidward and the rest for nine years and ten months. It's about as close to love-at-first-sight one could have hoped to have had with a cartoon.

I remember the first time I watched Spongebob...more or less. I was in my first year of graduate school at Notre Dame and one Friday evening I had nothing better to do, so I was on campus. I went over to hang with my friend, Dr. Assy, whom I had just met a couple of weeks earlier and also with whom I was teaching undergrads every Tuesday and Thursday morning. I went over to his place and we shot the shit for a while until his other room mate--Captain B--came home. We shot the shit some more, all the while a powerful thirst was building within my parched throat. It was the kind of thirst that could only be slaked with alcohol.

So, we went to the liquor store right next to campus and Dr. Assy got a bottle of Canadian Mist whiskey, Captain B got a bottle of vodka, and I felt my quota of Captain Morgan was running low, so I picked up a bottle. We returned to Dr. Assy and Captain B's joint and proceeded to drink about three quarters of the bottles, apiece. The height of our drunkenness crested sometime around 3:00 in the morning. At that time of the night, naturally, the first inclination is to go onto campus and start some shit...which is exactly what we did.

There happened to be a restaurant/student center that was open 24 hours, which is where we ended up. I don't remember the walk into Reckers (the name of the place); I just sort of ended up there. And, of course, since we were drunk, we knew we were smooth with the ladies. Captain B made the first move and was chatting up this girl who was from California. Captain B, in all seriousness, then said, "We have so much in common. You're from California, I'm from Connecticut, and they both start with 'C'."

I still have no idea how he didn't score that chick.

I met some girl who was taking the organic class that I was teaching the lab for (red flag alert!), but that didn't dissuade me one bit. Instead, I moved in for the kill. She was cute...at least, I remember her being cute...but she wasn't wearing shoes. Things were going along just swimmingly when she folded her arms and hopped up and down because she was cold. I mean, it was four thirty or five in the morning in September when we were out there, so it was a touch nippy--at least for those who were sober or at least sobering up. I remember her saying, "Jesus, I hope I don't get pneumonia and die." Except, my drunken ears heard "ammonia". So, I held a hand up, all smooth like and waved it back and forth.

"No, no," I said, all suave and debonair, "you're in organic now. You won't get ammonia. You'll get methane."

I still have no idea how I didn't score that chick.

As the morning ground on, one of my students--a dude from Maine named Sean--showed up (red flag alert!). We chatted things up a little bit and then I uttered the magic words: "Fuck, I'm hungry." Since it was a restaurant, they were able to serve me up a cheeseburger and fries, but when I got to the end of the line, I realized that I left my wallet back at Dr. Assy and Captain B's pad. Undaunted, Sean swooped in and saved me, buying my food for me. Awesome. I gave him an A- for the semester. He was a B student, but when grading time came out, I said to myself "Dude bought me a burger and fries. I'll put a minus on there to make it somewhat legitimate." When it comes to academic honestly, I'm dripping with it.

As I was sitting there eating, someone slid onto the bench beside me so much so that their hip was pressed next to mine. I looked up just as she announced, "Hey! You're my orgo TA!" And, it was true (red flag alert!). There, sitting beside me, was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I had to shift around to hide the fact that I was not suffering from whiskey dick. That's how badly I wanted her since the first day of class, but being a TA, I couldn't try and make a move on her. Her name was Andrea Goldyn. She was a stunning brunette with deep, velvety brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a radiant smile that caused her eyes to sparkle like diamonds. She was shapely, curvy and smelled extraordinary, especially at 5:00 am.

"Hey, Andrea!" I said. She sort of hugged me (red flag alert!), and I was able to keep my burger and fries out of her wavy, curly brown tresses. It was the kind of hair that my friend Jim would describe to me some years later as "sex hair", and while I wanted to touch it, I didn't want to sully it with a Reckers burger. And, as carnal as my passions for this woman were, I didn't want her hair in my food.

We talked for a long time. Mostly about class and then the conversation turned to football--duh, it's fucking Notre Dame. Since it was the fall, football had already started, but I missed the first game of the season because I went to Columbus, OH for a bachelor party. See, my old room mate--also named Matt--was getting married. The next two weekends were games at Michigan and then at Purdue, so I had yet to get to a game, and the Purdue game was tantalizingly close down in West Lafayette, a mere three hours away. It so happened to be that Matt was getting married on the day of the Purdue game...so, in other words, he was getting married about nine hours from when I was sitting around drunkenly chatting up one of my students.

And, it turns out, that gorgeous Andrea had a ticket to the Purdue game...and an extra ticket. Which she offered to me (red flag alert!). Enter moral dilemma. Do I go to the game--that I desperately wanted to go do--with a woman--that I desperately want to do--who is also one of my students--that I desperately want to do--or do I go to my friend and room mate's wedding in Chicago?

And here's the thing: I could see--even through the clinging, lingering tendrils of a long night of drinking--how this would play out. I had to drive, so, naturally, why bother coming back to campus? She could just come home to my apartment, and, in a few hours, we could leave from there. We've both been up all night, so we're going to need to shower before we leave for the game. And, if we're already naked, might as well do it. This might not have been her plan, but it sure sounded good to me.

Sadly, I took the moral high ground and declined Andrea's offer to go to the game with her. We talked for another fifteen minutes or so, and then departed. Happily, I didn't use the "ammonia/methane" line on her. I do remember part of my subconscious screaming "idiot" inside my skull while I watched her perfect ass swaying away from me.

The sun was coming up as we dragged our asses back to Dr. Assy and Captain B's pad. I laid around for a little while. It was a little after 6:30 when I finally decided I should go home and try to get some sleep before driving to Chicago for my friend's wedding. So, I drove to my apartment--admittedly, I probably shouldn't have, but I was feeling pretty sober; the greasy Reckers burger kind of helped in that department, and Andrea's offers and my depraved visions took care of the rest.

However, when I finally fell into my apartment, I couldn't sleep. While the greasy Reckers burger helped to clear my head and sober me up a touch, it still was sitting in my gut like a ton of Crisco. So, I sat there in my chair, sick to my stomach, exhausted, beginning to feel the onset of a wicked hangover. I decided I needed to find something to watch on the tele, so I clicked it on and my channel-surfing landed me on Nickelodeon, which was showing Spongebob. I sat there, enraptured, watching every little bit of it, from the hydrodynamic spatula with port and starboard attachments to the sound advice of "when in doubt, pinky out".

After watching Spongebob, I got up from my chair and brought up the Reckers burger and some of the Captain's Booty. I went back to my chair, collapsed and slept until well past noon. I woke up with a monster headache, Hey Arnold (also a fine cartoon) on the television, and my clock telling me there was no fucking way I was making it to Matt's wedding.

"Fuck me," I said, getting up, scratching the back of my head, and stumbling into my bathroom to brush my teeth. I came out and changed the channel on the television to find that the Purdue game was about to kick off. Suddenly, the conversation I had the night before with Andrea came rushing back.

"Oh," I groaned around a mouthful of toothpaste, "FUCK ME!"

There you have it. The story of how I came to be a fan of Spongebob Squarepants.

Anyway, here is a list of my favorite Spongebob episodes, and since it's his tenth birthday, I thought I'd give you ten of them. In some semblance of my favorites, here they are without further ado:

1) Artist Unknown
2) The Camping Episode
3) Band Geeks
4) Tea at the Tree Dome
5) The Fry Cook Games
6) Dying for Pie
7) Sailor Mouth
8) Graveyard Shift
9) Suds
10) Sandy, Spongebob and the Worm

Even doing that, I could list another ten I consider my favorites, but, hey, maybe I'll tell the same tale on Spongebob's 20th birthday, and I'll make the same lame list and tell the same lame story. Hooray for the forgetfulness of old age!!!

Oh, hey, did I ever tell you guys about the first time I watched Spongebob?

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Return

After a brief hiatus wherein I discussed conversations I've had with my dick hanging out and reports of large, feline predators stalking my property, we've returned with the series of posts most likely to get DHS rifling through my trash cans: Totally Blow Shit Up Tuesdays, Poobomber's Brainchild.

Today, let's take a look at what some people have dubbed the "methane tower". Here, we have an attractive dark-haired girl filling a sink with methane gas and a dorky side-kick with a flaming stick. Awesomeness ensues.

Okay, so it wasn't necessarily an explosion, but there was a towering flume and some bright lights. What happened was the attractive dark-haired girl took some soapy water and bubbled methane gas through it. Being lighter than water, the methane gas rose to the surface and was trapped in the soap bubbles. Once a nice pile of bubble has accrued, we touch a flame to it and *poof* we have a giant column of flame. No word on whether the Israelites are following it by night yet...

This is a classic combustion reaction, wherein we take a hydrocarbon (methane) in the presence of our friendly neighborhood gaseous oxidizer (oxygen) and we get the bane of Al Gore and the aliens from Signs (carbon dioxide and water, respectively).

CH4 + 2O2 + ignition source -----> CO2 + 2H2O + bitchin' light show

This is also the recipe for the "fire triangle":

Fuel + Oxidizer + Ignition Source -----> Increased Insurance Rates + Ostracized Catalysts

At this point, we should ask ourselves, where do we get methane? Methane gas parades about under the clever guise of "natural gas" and can be harvested from natural reservoirs, typically along coastal areas. It is a by-product of the natural decay of organic material, so the effervescence you see in bogs and swamps and such is a release of methane gas from material rotting on the lake bed. Occasionally, these will catch fire and float eerily over the surface of the water and are called "will-o'-the-wisp(s)".

Another source of methane gas is in your bowels. Yes, flatulence is primarily a release of methane gas (with some sulfurous compounds thrown in for taste). Essentially that means that, what we've seen here, is the lab equivalent of lighting farts...just without the feculent odor and singed ass- and grundle-hairs.

And you guys thought science was boring!

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: A Science Lesson

Did you miss me yesterday? Yeah, I missed you, too. I had one of them meeting things that the corporate world is so fond of. It was alright. I got free lunch, I didn't have to work in the lab, and I giggled and tittered and tee-heed at my boss' picture from a recent skiing trip in which his goatee--coated over with snot-drippings and snow--caused him to bear an uncanny resemblance to Wilford Brimley and/or Diabeetus Cat. The only drawback was the chair I was sitting on made my ass hurt. A lot.
Anyway, let's talk less of my boss' resemblance to old men with oatmeal fetishes and more about blowing the living hell out of some shit! Remember last week's post, in which a bunch of morons were blowing up a balloon and deafening themselves at the same time? Here's a link to take you back in time and refresh your memory, should you need it.

The comments section (spurred on by my own concrete lack of knowledge) brought about quite a number of guesses about what was in the balloon in order to cause it to detonate so grandly. I originally wavered between hydrogen and methane (both readily accessible); Scope thought it had to be something else, something incendiary; Hap thought that since it wasn't fully buoyant that it had to be something like methane.

This is where blogging life spills over into real life. My friend Joe--the third smartest person I've ever met, right behind Dr. John Nichols and Dr. Xavier Creary--knew exactly what was in the balloon. Apparently, when he was in undergrad, he had a professor who showed the kids how to make good homemade bombs. After Joe told me about this guy, I suddenly thought that maybe I would make a good teacher...except for that whole stare lingering too long over the comely lass in the front row with a short skirt. Wait, where the hell was I?

Oh, yes, last week's explosion. Apparently, if you combine hydrogen and oxygen in a stoichiometric mixture, you get a bang like that. It just flashes and "boom" and very little fire is given off from the explosion--it's gone in a flash. For instance, there's this; apparently, someone snuck a camera into Joe's professor's lectures:

Now, compare that to a "pure" hydrogen fire. There's plenty of sound and there's plenty of flame...which I've never understood because hydrogen itself burns with no visible flame, according to experts. Being as how I'm just a schlub, I'll take their word for it, but I've seen it burn this bright yellowish-orange flame. In fact, here's a pure hydrogen balloon going up.


Notice how that guy was all safety first, what with the gloves and the long pole to ignite the fire. Fuck safety glasses, he said. Tsk tsk. We'll have to write you up, Mister Hydrogen Balloon Man.

So, what's the difference? Apparently, the presence of oxygen is the key here. See, in the second balloon, the oxygen is pulled from the surrounding atmosphere. In the first, I assume that the hydrogen has been mixed with the correct amount of oxygen in order to undergo the accordant combustion or combination reaction (take your pick which you want, since--technically--this reaction falls into both).

How to know the amount of oxygen to mix in there? That's a good one. You need to balance you some equations. For instance, we know that what we have here is hydrogen reacting with oxygen. Hopefully, you also know that hydrogen and oxygen mix to form water. I'll also assume that you know that hydrogen and oxygen are both diatomic molecules. What, were you sleeping during chem class? So, we write the reaction like this:

H2 + O2 ---> H2O
Except, you'll notice, that on the left hand side of the arrow (which is used to show a reaction has taken place), you have 2 oxygens and on the right hand side, you have only one (remember, subscripts go with the element in front of them). Since matter cannot be destroyed nor created, we have what is called an unbalanced reaction. Therefore, we must put numbers out in front of our reactants (on the left hand side) and our products (on the right hand side) so that all the amounts of atoms match up. It should look something like this:

2H2 + O2 ---> 2H2O
So, essentially, what that tells us (other than the fact that you can't subscript on Blogger), is that you need twice as much hydrogen as you do oxygen in order to get the big ass bang that we saw last week and in the first video.

And who says science can't be fun? Oh, right. Everyone. And they'd be right.

And now...I'll let Chemgeek--a Real Professor of Chemistry--pick apart my post.

Table for Homina?

I was standing at Target the other day, and I had that ethical dilemma of "do I stare at the woman in front of me while she purchases her many items, or should I cast my eyes around the store in an attempt to look like I'm not staring daggers at her for arguing over the price of a see-through plastic tote?". I decided to do the latter--in between telling my children they could not have a piece of candy, because, hey, Halloween is in a few days--when my eyes should fall upon the following:
After pushing my goggling eyes back into my head, rolling my tongue back up and putting it in my mouth, and taking a hit off my asthma inhaler to try and curb the panting, I wondered, "Who is Amy Adams?" Not wanting to waste my lustful exuberance, which I had previously reserved for Tiffani, the dark-haired beauty running the check out, I did not pick the magazine up to thumb through it in a quest to sate my libidinous curiosity. Instead, much like if I wanted to find out information about Ron Paul or That Blue Yak, I googled my query. The innernets did not let me down.

Instead, quickly, they caused me to sit in my chair (I had to sit down because the blood rushed elsewhere) and utter "homina homina homina homina..." over and over again. I discovered that Amy Adams was the woman who played the real life princess in Enchanted, and I also quickly rued the fact that I had not taken my daughter to see it when it was on the big screen, thus depriving myself of twenty-foot tall slabs of pure sex appeal and gorgeousness. I mean, here is a woman with red hair, shapely hips, beautiful eyes, gorgeous voice and big, round luscious breasts, and I didn't know about her??? Moreover, you sonsabitches didn't tell me about her. Curse you all. Douche bags.

This has caused a bit of friction at home. I asked my wife--yet another red head with shapely hips, beautiful eyes and big, round luscious breasts--to sing True Love's Kiss rather than our normal sexalicious song, The Theme from Shaft (can you dig it?). While not amused, she accommodated me because she's just that awesome. I mean, it was bad enough when I told her we needed a bigger bed so that Leelee wouldn't be upset by being relegated to the couch. Now this. The Mrs, however, took it all in stride. What a trooper. Unlike Leelee, who went out and tried to make me jealous right away by being pictured with other fellaz. I guess that whole woman scorned thing has a merit of truth to it, eh?

Oh well. Now that we're all done worrying about red states and blue states, we can get back to the real important things: women with red hair. I think both sides of the aisle can appreciate that that is truly change we can all believe in.

Warning: Scientific Content Ahead (sort of)

The other day, several blogs were abuzz about the possibility of reality coming to an end in the blink of an eye. Or faster. Unlike the last time, the Catholic Church was not involved. Hooray for us. At the same time, while people were taking to the streets, gnashing their teeth, tugging at their hair and fondling beating their breasts, there was a lot of "Wait, how does this thing work? What's it looking for again?"

Enter the scientist to answer these questions.

What the Large Hadron Accelerator was looking to do was to recreate the conditions that occured shortly after the Big Bang. Now, we are fairly sure we have an idea--sort of--of how things were right before the Event that Inspired Creation, however, there's a lot of things that we don't understand yet, like, how did gravity form. It's something we take advantage of every day, and yet, we have very little idea how or even why gravity is here. We know how it works, we know how to overcome it, we even have all sorts of equations to describe its interaction--the equation even has it's own constant...you know we're dealing with serious science here if a constant is involved.

So, here's the deal. At the Beginning of It All, everything in the universe--you, me, horses, Saturn, the Crab Nebula, Boba Fett--we were all crushed into a tiny little space in the middle of nowhere. Except, you and me, we weren't. In fact, our atoms and molecules even weren't. We were just energy. And the space we were moving around in? Take a pencil, sharpen it as sharp as you can get it, and barely touch it to a piece of paper. See that dot? Shrink by about a thousand. That's how big all the matter in the entire universe was when it was crammed together.

I made this allegory over at Falwless' blog, and I'll repeat it here and expand upon it. Think back to college. Think back to your typical dorm party. Everyone in the dorm is there, right? Plus, lots of others. You've got people from the next dorm, from across the quad, townies, professors who refuse to acknowledge they're not young anymore, and a keg. Everyone is crammed next to one another, hardly anyone else can fit in the room, the music is blaring, and basically all you can do is wiggle around in a sort of "dance". That's what the Universe was like prior to the Big Bang, except with a lot less egregious ass-grabbing.

Now think of the Big Bang as security showing up, busting the keg. When that happens, everyone disperses. As people are stumbling out of the room, they're drunk, lonely, horney, still looking for a good time...everything. Some people head off to couple up. Some people head back to their dorm room with some friends to keep the party going. Some people fly off by themselves, some people couple up and then get real kinky and pair off with another couple. Some people go for a walk to clear their head. Some people run around Halas Hall with "Styx Rules" scrawled across their chest in black marker. Some people get together and bang a townie named Joyce.

But, everyone goes somewhere and does something. The couples who go off and bang are akin to interstellar hydrogen. It just hangs out, doing its own thing, glowing afterwards. The people heading off to their room to start the party back up are kind of like stars forming. The people who wander off alone are sort of like dark matter--nobody knows what's up with them, but they know they're out there. The guy dashing around the dorm with Styx Rules? Yeah, he's an interstellar body, orbiting a larger body. The guys riding the train called Joyce? A planetary system.

The thing is, all of these interactions have a reason. It might be that the people (particles) are in love, or are stupid, or are brooding, or what have you. We don't know. Every person (or particle) goes off and does its own thing. Some are needy, some are Emo. The thing is, all of these interactions took place millionths or billionths of a second after the Event occured. Talk about a lack of staying power...

What the Large Hadron Collider is trying to simulate is that millionths or billionths of a second, post-Event. They're taking sub-atomic particles and accelerating them at speeds pretty close to the speed of light and letting them smash into each other, hoping that, when they do, they'll catch a glimpse of the dorm party energy that was pulsing prior to the Big Bang. With luck and further experiments, they'll be able to see how that energy interacts with itself to form the very basic foundation for matter creation (remember, matter is stuff with mass...again with the Catholic Church).

Unfortunately, some folks were worried that a black hole would open up under the French/Swiss border and swallow us whole. There was a (approximately) one-in-fifty million chance of that happening, but there was a chance nonetheless. When the media got ahold of it, they tried to incite riots. Obviously, we're safe, but I know some people are still worried that creation could be destroyed, plenary indulgence-style.

Again, enter the scientist, this time to allay your fears.

If you are one of those worried people, you can always ask the question: Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed The World Yet? Keep checking the site to allay your fears.