Estoy esperando en el aeropuerto ahora, and I just got coffee at Starbucks. I just wanted black coffee, and their menu lists “el cafe del dia” (sorry no accents, I’m too lazy).

Here’s how it went down:

Starbucks employee: Que quieres a tomar? [What do you want to drink]

I: Que es el cafe del dia? [What is the coffee of the day?]

SE: Cafe del dia? Cual talla? [Coffee of the day? What size?]

I: (emphatically) Que es? [What is it?]

SE: What size?

I: Que es el cafe del dia? [What is the coffee of the day?]

SE: What size (indicating the different sizes)

I: Alto, por favor. [Tall, please.]

Here’s a bad joke I came up with just now:

Q: What did Pontius Pilate say when St Thomas Aquinas asked him to prove Christ’s divinity?

A: “I find no cause in him” (John 18:38).

If you haven’t seen it yet, you may want to check out Garfield Minus Garfield, a website that a friend of mine pointed out to me today.

Someone mentioned the ‘L-word’ the other day, and with today’s being Caturday and all, I quickly found myself hitting the Lolcats pretty hard.

Well, I’ve been on a meta kick lately (not a meta-kick, although if I start thinking about that, I’ll end up on a meta-meta-kick, etc.), so I decided to try my hand at coming up with some meta*-humor (the star indicates a variable number of ‘meta’s).

Feel free to try these out and alienate your friends with an awkward silence as you pause for laughter that never comes. It really works!

Joke 1:
A: Have you heard the self-referential joke?
B: No.
A: You have now.

Joke 2:
A: Knock, knock.
B: Who’s there?
A Incomplete self-referential “knock knock” joke.
B: Incomplete self-referential “knock knock” joke who?

Joke 3:
Two theoretical linguists walk into a bar, and they’re depressed because they haven’t laughed in years. Jokes have become boring, and even meta-jokes seem tedious. So, they have a few drinks and the first suggests to the second that they should try to find a joke with an infinite level of recursion so that it will be infinitely funny and they’ll never stop laughing. They have a few more drinks and ponder the idea intensely. Eventually, the second linguist perks up and says to the first, “I’ve got it! I found a joke with an infinite level of recursion.” The first asks, “Well, what is it?” The second replies, “Two theoretical linguists walk into a bar [Continue with the original joke as verbatim as possible until people get it.].”

Joke 3¹:
Two theoretical linguists walk into a bar, and they’re depressed because they haven’t laughed in years. Jokes have become boring, and even meta-jokes seem tedious. So, they have a few drinks and the first suggests to the second that they should try to find a joke with an infinite level of recursion so that it will be infinitely funny and they’ll never stop laughing. They have a few more drinks and ponder the idea intensely. Eventually, the second linguist perks up and says to the first, “I’ve got it! I found a joke with an infinite level of recursion.” The first asks, “Well, what is it?” The second replies, “Two theoretical linguists walk into a bar …” The first linguist interrupts him and says, “What is this, a joke?”

Joke 3¹¹:
Two theoretical linguists walk into a bar, and they’re depressed because they haven’t laughed in years. Jokes have become boring, and even meta-jokes seem tedious. So, they have a few drinks and the first suggests to the second that they should try to find a joke with an infinite level of recursion so that it will be infinitely funny and they’ll never stop laughing. They have a few more drinks and ponder the idea intensely. Eventually, the second linguist perks up and says to the first, “I’ve got it! I found a joke with an infinite level of recursion.” The first asks, “Well, what is it?” The second replies, “Two theoretical linguists walk into a bar …” The first linguist interrupts him and says, “What is this, a joke?” The second interrupts the first and says, “What is this, a joke?” [This can be repeated in the same fashion ad infinitum]

I just discovered in my archives, a self-referential post, which just goes to show that I’ve transcended blogging for the brave new world of meta-blogging.

Apparently, Members of Atheist Alliance International are considering a new symbol.

The last time I checked, this symbol meant ‘at’ as in dylanschrader@gmail.com rather than ‘atheist.’ I hope the fact that it’s capitalized won’t introduce confusion when giving out email addresses: “Is that a capital ‘at’ or a lowercase ‘at’?” We already have some people making the distinction between “upper caps” and “lower caps.”

In my post on simulacra castorum (Beaver Statues) I expressed some wonder about whether the legend about the medicinal value of the beaver’s testicles was the source of the name “castor oil.” Well, my brother (the brother) and I did some Wiki-research on this issue.

Here comes the science:

1. “Castor oil” comes from the castor bean.
2. The castor bean comes from the castor oil plant, which is technically called Ricinus communis.
3. The reason that the plant is called the “castor oil plant” is that the oil from its beans was used as a replacement for … you guessed it: castoreum, which is a glandular secretion of the beaver, to put it diplomatically.

I finally got around to subtitling Seminarians in the Third Millennium.

Two subtitled versions are available: MPEG-4 (25MB) and Microsoft MPEG-4 (25MB).

I have not tested these with Windows Media Player, etc. If both do not work, please let me know so I can re-encode them.

You can find the video in various formats on the media page of my Kenrick website.

The Kenrick Alumni Dinner was last night. For this occasion, some of my classmates and I made a video, which was shown to the alumni and seminary community. I think it went over pretty well.

The premise: The class of 1957 made a film about what the seminary would be like 50 years in the future, i.e., 2007. This film appeared on an obscure ecclesiastical television show entitled “The Rectory.” Our video is (ostensibly) a segment of that television show, which includes the video from the class of 1957.

You can watch Seminarians in the Third Millennium on YouTube.

Seminarians in the Third Millennium is in various formats on my Kenrick website.

Evan (Billy O’Malley) Harkins’s blog: Galea Salutis.

Anthony (Narrator, Smoking Seminarian #2) Ochoa’s blog: Sonet Vox Tua, including his post on the topic.

Nick (Video Editing and Encoding, Rev. Schmitz, S.J.) Winker’s blog: Clever Title Goes Here.