I think I would have been more upset about Jon’s last show, but I lost my Jareth kitten, so I’m numb to other tragedy today. That said . . .

THE SIMPSONS: Springfield voters reject the leading candidates and embraced a write-in: Ralph Wiggum. Although no one knows for sure which political party Ralph is representing, he insists that everyone is invited to his party in the “E Pluribus Wiggum” episode of THE SIMPSONS Sunday, Jan. 6 (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (Pictured: guest voice Jon Stewart. THE SIMPSONS ª and ©2008TCFFC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I have seen almost every Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I started watching when Craig hosted, though due to cable issues I wasn’t as faithful to him. Over these past many years, I think there are maybe 8 episodes of TDS with Jon I haven’t seen, mostly due to overseas travel.

Jon brought something that Craig didn’t–a decidedly political focus. When I think of Craig’s show, I remember laughing, I remember his 5 questions bit, I remember Olivia Newton John not getting the 5 questions right although they just wanted her to say “grease,” and I remember Bill Murray singing some lyrics for the theme song. There’s more to remember about Jon because his show was more meaningful.

You all know what I’m going to say: More people got their news from Jon than from anywhere else. Their coverage won 7 Peabody Awards and an Orwell. The show launched the careers of some of our best comedians.

The last episode featured many, many correspondents (and his crew)–as it should. It was their show, too, and Jon made sure their voices were heard. Many have talked about how Jon made them better writers–that they learned to write for a purpose, for an audience, and with concision in mind–in addition to being funny.

Jon allowed them to play and to ridicule him. His brand of comedy was unique, in fact, because while the show was often satirical, the true satire was always in the hands of his correspondents. That is, satire plays on a level of meaning–it’s possible to misunderstand it. It depends on a naive narrator. Stephen Colbert’s show was all satire because Stephen was in character (and many did somehow miss that he was). While Jon sometimes used sarcasm for comic effect, he was sincere. He was angry at the VA, at those who fought to screw over first responders, etc. It wasn’t an act.

Those of us of a certain age will always remember Jon’s first show after 9/11 and the strength of his words.

When I teach satire, the segments of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart I use come from the correspondents, since they can’t come from the straight man that is Stewart (like this one).

Here’s what I’ll most miss. Jon’s honesty. His laugh. His using opponents’ words against them (by simply showing them saying the thing they said they didn’t say, etc.) The way he made the other side go crazy. If he were just a clown, they never would have had to mention him. But they did–they tried to take him down as if he were a serious newsman, as if he were a powerful political player.

And that made sure he was both.

(Maybe that’s why they decided to do their first debate after he was gone.)

A brief story, from several weeks ago:
A man “met” me online. He never actually asked me out, but he would ask how my day was, what my plans were for the weekend, etc. I would tell him what I did that day, what I was going to do (grade, see friends, etc).
At one point, he wrote, “You seem pretty busy. Too busy for a new man in your life. 🙁 ”
[That sounded a little whiny.]
Me: Well, I am a busy person–I don’t sit around twiddling my thumbs. But when someone asks me out, I make the time to see him. I’ve been able to make time for a few dates this week, in fact.
Him: WOW. THANKS FOR THE TMI.

That was his last message.

So you meet a woman on a dating site, but then you get offended that she’s dating?
Wow. Thanks for the heads-up that you’re insecure!

My OKCupid profile is down for a little while. I suffer sometimes from OKCupid fatigue–this is one of those times.
That’s not to say I’m not going on dates.
What have I learned in my short time revisiting online dating?
1. Men care about pictures more than anything else. When I was revising my page, for a few hours, I just had pictures up. I got hundreds of “likes” and several messages when the only info there was my face.
2. Some men think women only care about the picture. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the benefits of OKCupid is that people can answer a bunch of questions and they can put together an appealing profile if they’re willing to put in a modicum of effort. However, many men will post one picture and then message with a boring “hi.” (For some reason, all of those men in this cycle have been Indian.) I have told a few of these men that we need a little more to go on. One man said he didn’t want to fill in his profile because he was hoping for “love at first sight.” Sigh.
3. The vast majority of men think “women have an obligation to keep their legs shaved.” Yes, that’s a question people can answer. I can understand if men said they would prefer for their girlfriend to be shaved, but believing that all women have that “obligation” is irritating.
4. Either men can’t read or they’re liars. One explanation for the problem in #3 is that men mean to signal a personal preference for their partner and that they don’t really read closely. I’ve had several guys who are tagged as bad matches–men who click yes on “I’m looking for a partner to have children with”–say things like “LOL. Did I say that? I’m still trying to figure out this app” when I ask about it. Um, either you don’t understand the difference between saying yes and no OR you are one of those guys who wants to lie to me (maybe hoping that you’ll be that one guy who changes my mind) OR you checked yes to lie to the women who *do* want that quality in a guy. Either way: red flag.
5. I’m tired of married men looking to cheat with me.
6. The vast majority of men are not bothered by spelling mistakes and would date someone who was messy or ditzy. Many would be fine dating a woman who had a strong negative opinion towards a particular race. Most say “the world would be better if stupid people weren’t allowed to breed.” Almost no one knows what “wherefore” means in R&J. Yes–these are all questions.
7. I would be dead if I’d ever played a drinking game with “LOL,” even if the rule was that I only had to drink when LOL accompanied an objectively nonfunny line. I’ve had to stop talking to several guys who use it at both the beginning and ends of perfectly serious sentences. “Have a good weekend. LOL.” “LOL. Maybe we should get a drink. LOL. How’s Saturday?”
8. Men get frustrated by my unwillingness to “chat.” I treat OKCupid like email before smartphones.* A few times a day, I go check my messages. I’ve had to turn off the chat feature because I wouldn’t actually be able to check messages if I were engaged in all the chatting people want to do. Many men then want to turn regular messaging into chats–when I log on, they say “good morning” & want me to answer–and keep answering–right away all day.
Usually I have about eight new messages when I log in in the morning–one or two from brand new people and several from guys I’ve been trading my apparently infrequent messages with. It’s all I can do to answer those messages and then get ready for work–I just can’t be starting eight involved conversations that are going to go on for a while.
I don’t know the guy point of view here–if they’re dealing with fewer people at any given time or whatever. I do know that the guys all seem to have OKCupid as an app on their phones–which thus notifies them the second they get a message–but I would find that to be a huge time sick [suck] and vaguely oppressive somehow (since I don’t do regular email that way).
I think the bottom line for me is that I want a few messages to see that you’re interested and that you don’t overtly suck. Then we should have a date. If it goes well, that’s when I’ll want to let you take up a lot of my time.
9. Many guys who’ve become friends with me in other social spaces, like Facebook, have expressed concern that they’ll end up in this blog. I’ve explained that only the most egregious cases end up here. I must also admit that I could certainly end up in other people’s blogs if they were writing. What’s up with that woman who won’t chat? What’s up with that woman who thinks the “Wherefore” question is important? One guy could tell a story about how I threw up on a date recently–thanks, ongoing medical mystery that is my body!
10. I’ll leave you with a ridiculous conversation with a guy who was never going to get a date with me. He started with “hi.” He’s my son’s age. His whole profile is about fishing. Turning him down was easy:
Me: It doesn’t look like we have anything in common. I hope you find what you’re looking for–have a great day.
Him: We don’t, but maybe we could be friends with benefits.
Me: I have friends for that. I’m looking for a partner.
Him: Well then maybe you could help me out–I don’t have that.
Me: My friends are actually my friends–whether I’m currently sleeping with them or not. You aren’t my friend–you’re a stranger. I’m not looking for a stranger to have sex with, as my profile makes clear.

(It should be noted, of course, that there were several hours between each exchange since I’m difficult.)

* I had to add the words “before smartphones” because it occurs to me that most of my readers treat regular email differently than I do, since I don’t work on my phone.

One of the new pics I had posted.

No.
It seems like every time I turn on the computer, someone is arguing that The Simpsons “predicted” something or other. Most recently, people are pointing to an episode (“Brother’s Little Helper”), in which the Cardinals spy on people. This is being sold as evidence that The Simpsons has some kind of predictive power.

The MLB satellite

Of course, in that episode, Major League Baseball is spying on all of us–a Cardinal player (Mark McGwire) is just the representative shown. In that case, The Simpsons predicted McGwire’s cheating and every other baseball related scandal too.

Sigh.

One of the more annoying articles about this came last year, when people “discovered” that The Simpsons made an Ebola joke in 1997. This was evidence, apparently, that The Simpsons knew there would be an Ebola outbreak in 2014, rather than being evidence that The Simpsons made a joke about an earlier outbreak (which is why we all got the joke in 1997).

I’m tired of it. The Simpsons writers are brilliant; they’re great at tapping into the zeitgeist. And, with 26 seasons of episodes, there’s bound to be a lot of overlap between the fictional and the real.
However, we need to stop jumping to conclusions that any of this is intentional, especially without doing some research first.

For example, some of my students watching “Duffless” thought an ad for Duff Beer was a parody of Red Bull ads. The Duff Beer ad was created way before the Red Bull ones, so it would be more logical to assume that Red Bull owes The Simpsons some money. However, both ads are playing off of old-fashioned ads for cigarettes.

Duffless Ad

It’s tempting to see things and to try to create a pattern. I did it years ago when I noticed that three Simpsons episodes about spiritual quests feature the song “Short Shorts” (“The Mysterious Voyage of Homer,” “She of Little Faith,” and “Homer the Heretic”).

Homer the Heretic

She of Little Faith

The Mysterious Voyage of Homer

Thus, I did what any Simpsons’ scholar would–I asked someone on the show. Chris Ledesma, music editor extraordinaire, took my question to the writer/producers. They were floored by the coincidence. They were also floored that nerds like me are paying that much attention.

I would still like to believe that the show has a subtle message: To achieve enlightenment, wear skimpier clothes.

All that said, I’m surprised I haven’t been bombarded by articles about something The Simpsons may actually have anticipated.

Remember back to a few years ago, when bacon with chocolate was new? When it seemed odd, but you decided to try it?

In 2003, Homer Simpson commands God (through prayer) to come up with a new taste sensation–a new snack. Homer’s prayer then inadvertently (or advertently–God works in mysterious ways) causes an accident between a bacon truck and a fudge truck.

Homer thinks it’s awesome.

So do I.

Coincidence?

That’s bacon covered fudge flying to him!

“The Smell of Desperation”

My profile’s been up for a few weeks now, but I’ve only had a few dates, both because some people screw themselves out of one (see Entry 1) and because of time/inclination.

Recently, I had a rather sad one. A handsome, smart Indian man met me at Sophia’s for drinks.

The problems? He’s moving to San Jose (pretty far) and he’s just filed for divorce. The arranged marriage was never good, but now, 10 years on and with an oops 1 year old, in addition to 2 other children. they’re calling it quits.

That was a lot to take in, but then he explained that he’d decided to put his profile up for two weeks, and that if he didn’t find someone in that time, he’d give up for a while. He said the two weeks were up.

Before I could even assure him that finding someone takes more than two weeks, he pulled out his phone and showed me the four other women he’d contacted.

It was a weird move.

Apparently, two of them never emailed back, and one emailed to say she didn’t want to date a man with kids.

“That leaves you.”

What could I say?

“I have to get home and make dinner; it was great to meet you.”

Usually, when my allergy shot nurse opens my folder, I see a picture she took of me years ago in the very front, before pages and pages of records. Today, I saw myself–but it was a different picture–the picture UCD used in celebrating my teaching award here.

This was both flattering and ironic. A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues mentioned that she wasn’t surprised by my teaching award because she heard so many good things about me. It seems she had been to the UCD medical center. When she mentioned where she worked, people asked if she knew me and apparently said nice things about me. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it had nothing to do with my teaching–it’s just that I’m at the medical center an inordinate amount (I’ve had four visits for treatments/tests just this week) and that I’m a lovely patient.

Now, though, they may be able to mention my teaching. 🙂

***

This week started out rocky–I had a flare up of my stomach problems again. I threw up on Sunday and then found myself nauseated for several days after, including the day I got the teaching award. Luckily, I managed not to get sick all over the Chancellor and the Provost.

The ceremony was actually really nice. Several people were being honored, both in the Senate and the Federation. Margie Fergusen, who was my prof in grad school, and who is the current President of the MLA, won an award for teaching graduate students. She mentioned having so many gainfully employed students, which gave me the perfect opening to start my talk. I thanked those who taught me, my students, my friends and family, my union, the Federation, my department, etc. I did an ad for my department, got a couple of little giggles with asides, and told them about my current stand-up class.

Then I told them what I tell my students on our last day of class:

“You’re job, while you’re here, is to think. No matter how stressed out you are, remember how lucky you are. Most people in the world will never get the chance to be where we are.

“Most people would give anything to be where we are.

“I love this all so much that I just moved from where you are to the other side of the desk. Let’s think about what I do for a living.

“I think about stuff. I come into class and tell you what I think. I make you write papers about what you think. Then I tell you what I think about that.

“That’s amazing. I’m incredibly lucky. We all are.”

***

In other news this week, I got to have short Twitter exchanges with two of my heroes: Dan Savage and Harry Shearer. Dan Savage was interviewed by another one of my former profs, Beth Freeman, at the Mondavi Center. (I do have to say, though, that I’m disappointed that he got downgraded to an interview due to a protest.)

HuffPo contacted Denise and I about recording a question for Harry Shearer. Du didn’t have time to do it, but after about 40 minutes of technical difficulties, I got a question out and recorded for the ages. I assumed that lots of people had been invited–that I would be part of a big Q&A. Instead, Harry was interviewed and my question was the only “fan” one. His answer was insightful, and I’m shallow enough to have let out a little squeal when he called me “Dr. Karma.”

You can see me not knowing where to look and positioned awkwardly in my office at minute 24 in this video.

***

This weekend, I’m going to try to catch up on work, to have some wine, and to celebrate over two decades of motherhood with my special little guy.

It’s been a pretty good week.

Don’t assume I’m not into sci-fi or that I’m one of those people who seems proud to announce that they’ve never seen one of the most groundbreaking series in movie history.
I can recite the three original films. I can recite the pieces of commercials that ended up on my VHS recordings of those films too.
There’s a two foot tall R2D2 living in my room–he’s rocking my David Bowie Goblin King wig.
My favorite childhood T-shirt, with an iron-on of Princess Leia, has been lovingly sewed into a pillow.
The reason I don’t give a damn about the new movie trailer is because WE’RE ALL GOING TO SEE THAT MOVIE ANYWAY.
Some parts of the trailer are cool; some suck–it doesn’t matter at all.
Oh, a woman takes a light saber? Well, the woman with the light saber in the last film was the only Jedi to go down without a fight.
Oh, there’s a black storm trooper and that’s impossible? He could be dressing up like that to rescue a princess–it’s happened before.
Oh, an ancient Harrison Ford wanders in and you wonder if Shia Labeouf is right behind him?
It doesn’t matter–we’re all going to see this movie.
Most of us are suffering PTSD from the prequels, but we’re still going to see this movie.
Let’s be honest. That trailer could have been filled with nothing but Ewoks and Jar Jar.
It could have announced that this new film was going to be called The Star Wars Christmas Special Returns: Now with more Itchy and Bea Arthur!
WE’RE ALL GOING TO SEE THAT MOVE ANYWAY!

There’s absolutely no reason to read this unless we’re close.

As I write this, I’m lying on my couch after another night of vomiting.

As many of you know, I’ve had many episodes like this over the last several months. We’re ruled out food poisoning, an infection, etc. We’ve ultrasounded where my gall-bladder used to be to see if a stone got left behind. We’ve done a test to see if I have a blockage in my system. No and no.

The vomiting is happening in a certain context, however. I have bile in my stomach now that the gall-bladder is gone. Due to a hernia at the top of my stomach that prevents the stomach from ever closing all the way, bile and acid frequently reflux. My esophagus spasms (it’s weird until I remember that all of my muscles are prone to spasming). Ever since my gall-bladder surgery two years ago, I’ve woken up with digestive issues. (This is normal for a little while, but not for two years.) I have to take at least half an immodium a day to go to work.

This is all gross, which is why most of you don’t know about it.

My gastro-interologist has narrowed things down a bit. So here are the current theories–something called abdominal migraine (of course I would get that). Vomiting due to the bile reflux (though it should be more frequent in that case) or from a worn system from the stress it’s under (again, it should be happening more).

The gastro-doc is leaning toward the first problem; however, that’s something for my neurologist to deal with, and she’s incommunicado cause she’s on maternity leave.

We’re also going to take a picture of my brain. Just cause.

I’m gonna build up a little more strength this morning and then demand some attention from neurology.