PhD Comics

[wombat]

Grad school would have been easier to bear if this comic had existed.

This one is actually not typical:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1347
I considered posting this in a thread called "Things only Inev will care about." It talks about a guy who is working on a theory of the linguistics of the visual language of comics.

I could also go into a whole long story about my connection to the guy's advisor, but then this thread would have to be called "Things no one will care about."

[jay-ell]

Pedro reads PhD daily, even though he has never been a grad student. It's quality chuckles. (I read it occasionally.)

[theinevitable]

I love the phrase "a former student of Noam Chomsky" because of the other bitter thing my linguistics professor told us.

which is, before a certain point, if you wanted to be a linguist and work on syntax, you just went to MIT and worked with Chomsky, and then you could get a position wherever you wanted.
This was his explanation for all the really stupid/obnoxious theories in syntax. "this guy was one of chomsky's students."

[littlefallsmets]

I like to imagine Noam Chomsky having a jolly anthropomorphous hippopotamus mascot named "Norm Chompsky".

[wombat]

This was his explanation for all the really stupid/obnoxious theories in syntax. "this guy was one of chomsky's students."

Your professor was a wise man.

[theinevitable]

yeah, I was a big fan of that guy. He was grumpy in a way that was clearly to mask the fact that he was kind of a pushover.

also, he had us over to his house for dinner. Cute kids, nice wife.

Her name, due to marriage, is "Katie Cate." She must really love him.
(not her actual name, but almost exactly equivalent... I changed the base name, but her name is _-ey _. Like Marky Mark).

[wombat]

I could tell another whole long story that no one would be interested in about my connection to your professor's advisor.

[littlefallsmets]

I suddenly imagined Frau Blucher from YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN yelling...

"He vas... MY LOVER!"

[AugustWest]

"He vas... MY LOVER! BOYFRIEND!"

FTFY

[wombat]

No, although, you remind me that at one point in my grad school career, we sat down and made a chart of all the linguists we knew of who had slept with each other so we could see who was connected to who via who. I am pretty sure my advisor helped with this. Is that kind of weird?

[jay-ell]

No, although, you remind me that at one point in my grad school career, we sat down and made a chart of all the linguists we knew of who had slept with each other so we could see who was connected to who via who. I am pretty sure my advisor helped with this. Is that kind of weird?

If by weird, you mean HILARIOUS.

[jaydub]

My early-internet days, post high school circle of friends was infamously incestuous.  This was all centered around a subscription, dial-up, bulletin-board chat system so the pool was kind of self-selected for kids with a lot in common.  I'm still friends with everyone (at least, everyone who's still alive...) and at one point, over several weekend evening's discussions at Lyon's we sketched out the web of hook-ups - which for obscure reasons included the Pope - referred everafter as The Napkin.  (serviette for Commonwealth cousins).  Of all those, only one resulted in marriage (ironically the one linked to the Pope).  My wife is curiously sanguine about all this, considering we regularly see several of my paramours at gatherings.

[jay-ell]

Oh, yeah. I ran with the theater crowd in high school, very insular and incestuous. My BFF and I counted it up one time, and of the dozen or so guys we each made out with in high school, fully two-thirds of the names are on both lists. Including Pedro. We're the only ones who came out the other side and got hitched, tho -- everyone else found someone else during or after college.

Strangely, we never made out with each other, even though we're both bi. We've slept in the same bed, showered together, etc. and never gone there -- not even close. She's just not my type, nor am I hers -- strictly platonic, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

[wombat]

By the way, the aforementioned chart wasn't about linguists in our department or even our town. It was everyone we could think of in the whole country. Actually, probably the whole world, all those Dutch people and such.

This is what we had to do for fun before we had the Internet.

[theinevitable]

one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life was a Swedish linguist at the linguistics conference thing I went to last year.

I tried to turn on my charm, and I think I was fairly successful, but I could not pronounce her name. Also she was in her mid-late 20s. I'm no Judy, my cutoff is girls who are like... 2 years older than me?