The merry month of Mehmas-Day 1
16Welcome to the month of December thank you for electing me the goat. In many ways I am like Tom Brady, I went to Michigan, and you either love me or hate me. The comparison ends there though. So this month we have content to talk about, from historical topics (sorry I am a PhD student who studies Modern European History) to reef tanks (Christmas present for the ankle biters that will be set up over the next month) to vasectomies (yeah you hear or read that right we are going to talk about male birth control, t-minus 17 days till the party for this guy) and some other fun topics. So today I want to start with something light hearted. With the first of the holiday hurdles behind us or the holiday triple crown I would like to talk about bathroom decorations.
I know you did not see this topic starting off the month, if you don’t like it blame me that’s kind of the job.
So long story short or short story long my wife asked me to put out the hand towels in the guest bathroom for the visitors that were coming to eat my turkey, my stuffing my green bean casserole, and were being lazy and not bringing anything to share. So I did what every person with to much time and a little bit of annoyance would do I Meh-formed the bathroom to a Mehtacular room of potty humor. So when your spouse or significant other asks you to do something what are the results? And what do you do with some of the dumb things you have bought on Meh? Here we see a hand towel from the last Meh-rethon and a Meh cup from last years Meh-recain exchange big shout out to @kidsandliz for running those and also not as Meh-tacular but there is a soap dispenser and soap dish from a Meh sale last year and in the medicine cabinet is a Meh toothbrush and not pictured are some bath towels purchased on Meh for our camper that my wife said were too nice. Lastly a leaky bottle of PooPouri. 
oh yeah and we might talk about camping. Anyway to a great December, blame away.
- 10 comments, 26 replies
- Comment
Very nice. I’d be very proud to poop out your turkey, your stuffing, and your green bean casserole in that finely appointed meh bathroom.
Welcome to the club, Goat.
BTW - I like it already. And not just because I’m officially of the hook!
@ybmuG and you have your first blame for the new goat for typing “of” rather than “off”
Due to some editing error the original post has some formatting error. So here it is corrected hopefully, I blame, well myself.
Welcome to the month of December thank you for electing me the goat. In many ways I am like Tom Brady, I went to Michigan, and you either love me or hate me. The comparison ends there though. So this month we have content to talk about, from historical topics (sorry I am a PhD student who studies Modern European History) to reef tanks (Christmas present for the ankle biters that will be set up over the next month) to vasectomies (yeah you hear or read that right we are going to talk about male birth control, t-minus 17 days till the party for this guy) and some other fun topics. So today I want to start with something light hearted. With the first of the holiday hurdles behind us or the holiday triple crown I would like to talk about bathroom decorations.
I know you did not see this topic starting off the month, if you don’t like it blame me that’s kind of the job.
So long story short or short story long my wife asked me to put out the hand towels in the guest bathroom for the visitors that were coming to eat my turkey, my stuffing my green bean casserole, and were being lazy and not bringing anything to share. So I did what every person with to much time and a little bit of annoyance would do I Meh-formed the bathroom to a Mehtacular room of potty humor. So when your spouse or significant other asks you to do something what are the results? And what do you do with some of the dumb things you have bought on Meh? Here we see a hand towel from the last Meh-rethon and a Meh cup from last years Meh-recain exchange big shout out to @kidsandliz for running those and also not as Meh-tacular but there is a soap dispenser and soap dish from a Meh sale last year and in the medicine cabinet is a Meh toothbrush and not pictured are some bath towels purchased on Meh for our camper that my wife said were too nice. Lastly a leaky bottle of PooPouri. MehRoom oh yeah and we might talk about camping. Anyway to a great December, blame away.
@bleedmichigan I edited it. Looks like you had some indentations which did funny things. Never seen that before.
Do you want me to delete this comment?
@RiotDemon doesn’t matter to me
I am guessing the poo-pou-ri was also a Meh purchase? Lol
@tinamarie1974 it was I just edited the post because I had forgotten it
@bleedmichigan haha. Great minds! Check your edit though. You seem to have lost the first paragraph or first few sentences.
Good luck. Hope you enjoy your month of torture
@bleedmichigan @tinamarie1974 ooohhh, leaky poopourri! That sounds fun!
@bleedmichigan @ybmuG leaky poo pou ri = good scents, right?!?
@tinamarie1974 I have reposted it below. The error in formatting is mine and mine alone, I take the blame.
@ybmuG didn’t help set the clocks back.
@mediocrebot didn’t help with the Y2K bug.
@bleedmichigan All hail the new goat
/giphy thank you for your service
I take it you lived though making the bathroom meh or hasn’t your wife seen that yet?
And putting the toilet paper on the far side of the sink is a nice touch too.
I believe I still may have a toilet paper holder with most of the chrome flaking off if you’d like to complete the meh effect (came from a very early meh exchange - may have already passed it on to someone else already though. Can’t remember).
@Kidsandliz The toilet paper far away from the toilet is for effect you’d be amazed how many people just sit down and then say oh shit so I like to see if anyone actually has the courtesy to put the role on the holder so far humanity has let me down
@bleedmichigan *roll PHD candidate, right? You’ll have a lot of blame to atone for so you don’t have to create your own. Just sayin’.
BTW: Fellow Michigander here. I’ve just been visiting Florida for the past 30 years.
@Mehrocco_Mole actually it was voice dictation on the good old iPhone. And yes ABD for me. I’m a former Michigander now living on the east coast for school.
/giphy zooms in
That towel looks rough as hell.
@RiotDemon Considering that his wife said it was too good for the camper I’d hate to think about what they have in the camper. (grin)
@Kidsandliz those were the not pictured towels.
@ybmuG is your neighbor with Christmas lights up already.
@mediocrebot Ummm…bot…it’s…ummm…DECEMBER! Not that I mind, of course, but I think @bleedmichigan deserves the full experience, you know, midnight to midnight.
Off to a great start!
/giphy Meh bathroom!
Btw … PhD … European history
How does that sort of grad degree work after degree completion these days?
Teaching?
Employed at good job in another field, kinda related to degree?
(State dept, international banking or biz, media consultant, etc)?
Employed at a good job, kinda unrelated to the degree?
Employed at bad job in an unrelated field?
Unemployed? : (
I have a friend who is on tenure track in medieval French history, culture, civilization.
This person feels they are very fortunate, as even if one can find openings in this academic area, many of them are for v-poorly-paid-no-future-prospects adjunct jobs only.
I guess there is an oversupply of PhD people in many academic areas.
Plus, the hiring people at some unís seem to be counting on PhD’s to be so dedicated to staying and working in academia that these job hunters will accept terrible jobs, hoping for an (ephemeral) real opportunity someday.
I hope you aren’t messed up with student loans. I hope you get a real career path.
Are things looking ok for your academic area? Or for grads or your program?
@f00l so my PhD is fully funded so no student debt. As for job outlook I hold a state high school teaching license and have a standing job offer should I want it. As for job outlook for tenure track positions they are few and far between. It’s ok in my world though because I have degrees in Architecture, History, and Anthro so I can get a job. Last year with little effort as a grad student I almost made 6 figures doing independent research for a number of people and organizations in addition to my pittance from school as a TA. The worlds an oyster and even if I could not get a good paying job I am still happy with my decision you only get one life so might as well enjoy it.
@bleedmichigan
Sounds like you have managed to include enough flexibility in your earnings history that you will have a wide set of options when you are done with the degree.
Congrats on being ready to be flexible in how you have supported yourself, and in not counting on academia only. Nowadays, if someone is not either a star, or is not getting their degree from a “top program”, academic opportunities seem to be pretty chancy.
Good place for you and yours, I hope!
Is something like the state department, or international biz/diplomacy, a likely possible for you? Or are you not on that sort of path?
@bleedmichigan @f00l And now you have the solid-gold meh scapegoat experience to add to your C.V.!
@f00l @therealjrn so your saying I am now qualified to run a small country. Excellent
@f00l No clue where I will be. I enjoy teaching I hate offices and I mostly dislike people so who knows.
@bleedmichigan @f00l @therealjrn Or a big one… The added bonus will be that then you can make history rather than write about past history.
@bleedmichigan
I hope your future positions and career get to reflect your preferences.
And … since you “mostly dislike people”, if you get a teaching gig, what is your pref as to the numerically dominant species among your students? ; )
/giphy “dog school”
@f00l when I say dislike as it relates to students I mean it in a specific way. For example last semester I was teaching a class and a student came to class once then on the last day of class showed up asking for an extension on all the papers for the semester and asking if he could take the exam a day later. I dislike that. I do not like failing students but it happens. As for other groups of people I have specific feelings on most everyone. I dislike televangelists and door to door Proselytizers if I wanted your info I’ll hunt you down so don’t bother me at home. I also dislike everyone in Ohio. It’s a personal thing since I am from the superior state of Michigan even though we lost on Saturday. Perhaps that is a good day three topic, The Toledo War, the bloodiest war in Midwest history.
@bleedmichigan
/giphy grin
@bleedmichigan Your experience with students is getting more and more common - especially if you do any online teaching. Not so long ago I had a student who blew off the entire 6 weeks - checking in only enough to keep her financial aid, but didn’t actually do anything (school has since changed the rules based on the hell she raised when I failed her - now they are counting attendance by counting when they actually do some work rather than log in and immediately log out). So she got the F she earned.
Kept claiming medical excuse, never provided one. I kept entering zeros and reporting her (as required) to the attendance nazis (PITA to have to do that every week as the program to do so is a PITA).
So the day after grades were due she sends me a forged medical excuse that covered 30 days into the past and 30 days into the future. At the bottom of the excuse it said (part of the form) that the form was only good for 3 days worth of an excuse (it was an urgent care excuse) and anything longer than that needed to come from their doctor). When I called to verify the excuse they confirmed that they wrote them only for 3 days and that the form used was an old one, no longer used. I suspect that she added a zero to the 3 days she was given the previous year (the last year they used those) and then checked the box for an excuse into the past and entered a 30 herself.
So I reported her for having a fake medical excuse. And left her F to stand. She raised hell. I got in trouble for verifying her excuse. HUH? There was no school policy that I can’t do that, they approved (for all the courses I have taught with them) my syllabus that had my policy to accept an excuse… They then claimed it violated HIPPA for me to verify that what she gave me is an unadulterated copy of what they gave her. Nope it is not a HIPPA violation to do that. All I asked was if this was an exact copy of what was issued to her. They said they didn’t issue anything to her on the date that was on the form and that they hadn’t used that form in over a year. I got written up by the school for violating HIPPA. WTF?
Of course the bottom of the heap schools are more concerned about keeping enrollment than actual quality education. So I was then forced to give her an incomplete with 90 days to finish the class. She still did nothing and so still earned an F. She then appealed her F using the same fake medical excuse saying that she only had 60, not 90 days to finish the class due to the 30 days into the future part of the fake medical excuse. So I was forced to give her 30 more days. She still did nothing. I changed her grade again to an F.
She then appealed her grade again claiming I had it in for her; I was making it hard for her to actually do the work because I wasn’t giving her a chance (all of the course material is online, all the assignments, where you upload them to… all of which she had access to - all she needed to do was log in). At the appeal hearing the only thing I said was that it is hard to issue any grade other than an F when she had done no work; turned nothing in. Fortunately by then the school was fed up with all the chances she was given where she did nothing and she lost the appeal. Of course I was not paid extra for all the time (including 6 week terms I had no paycheck from the school) I had to spend on that little shit.
It is students like that I can do without.
Blame!! Someone left 7 puppies with their eyes still closed taped up in a box and left outside (it is in the low 40’s).
UNblame: A utility company person found them and brought them to the no kill shelter. I pulled in right after him to donate a bunch of blankets, one fleece one was pulled to cover them up. Was send to go get puppy milk. UNblame: Petsmart matched chewy’s price so 11 bucks off a can of powered. UNblame: got back with the milk and helped bottle feed some extremely hungry puppies. Unblame: the no kill shelter found someone willing to take care of them until they are old enough to be in the shelter.
Goat I’d say you won that round EXCEPT abandoning little babies trumps all the unblames.