Chaucer’s review of SOAP.

Just another cracked out New Hampshire personalized license plate. What the hell is a meat ring?

Wow, bet this dude was shitloads of fun in seminar while he lasted, a fortiori for his apparent need to use phrases like a fortiori every couple sentences.

I find especially delightful his implication that Eva Brann’s winning the National Humanities Medal is just one more thing for the school to be ashamed of.

But what can you expect, really? He was a Febbie, after all.

No, I don’t eat pizza every day; yesterday I had a guava and cheese sandwich and a watermelon soda at Café Pamplona, just so you know. But today I did decide to go back to Cambridge 1 to try one of their more traditional pizza offerings, having enjoyed their New England-y pizza very much on Tuesday.

Melissa– whom those of you who think I make excessive references to the New Yorker should really meet– posted under my pizza a link to a site that bills itself as news for nerds. Since almost all of you are nerds, and in some cases super nerds, I thought her discovery ought to be moved up to a main post.

(And no, Melissa, I haven’t read that article yet because I left town Tuesday and my NYer doesn’t come until Thursday or Friday. Can you imagine?!)

On the balance, I guess I prefer Boston drivers to Chicago drivers. Chicago drivers are malicious, whereas Boston drivers just act dumber than a box of rocks. Bostonian drivers aren’t out to get you or anything like the psychos in Chicago who try to run you off the road/ play chicken with Mack trucks/ beat people with bricks/ swing baseball bats at each others’ windshields/ throw cabbies under their own cabs; no, Bostonians are just going to do jackassed things because hey, it’s their habit. They seem especially fond of blindly pulling out of driveways with no regard for traffic, and making left turns across oncoming traffic as soon as their light turns green. Whoever’s first in line in the left turn lane considers it his god-given right to make that left immediately. I’ve nearly hit a bunch of these jackasses who make eye contact with me, see me coming through the intersection and fucking turn in front of me anyway, with stupid, resolute looks on their faces as they do it.

But like I said, still better than Chicago. The accent is a tougher call: I’m not sure whether it tweaks me more to hear “Chicyaigo” or “Baaaastahn.”

Apparently the cool thing to do at Harvard is to alter the campus’s emergency telephone signs so that they say “ASS STANCE” instead of “ASSISTANCE.”

I’m in Boston doing research, which means I’m also “researching” the lunch options around Harvard Square. Today at Cambridge 1 I had a tasty pizza with a delicate, thin crust, topped with plenty of things that are fresh and delicious in New England this time of year: lobster, corn, scallions… with a dusting of cheese and some cilantro oil to tie it all together.

So I stumble down the hallway at 4.45 AM this morning, headed towards Jason, who’s in the living room throwing on some clothes to drive me to the airport. I get to the end of the hall and hear Jason casually say something that sounds like look out for the bat. I stop and very fuzzily replay this sentence in my head. Meanwhile something winged makes a hairpin turn into the hallway, clearing the top of my head by about six inches. Look out for the bat indeed.
Bat’s entry point: unknown.
Exit point: back door, after being pursued for 10 minutes by Jason and one of the cats.

If you have work you’re trying to finish–say, for instance, a paper you’ve been trying to wrap up for weeks– I recommend you stay away from this evil word game that Jon sent me.