The One That Tries to Be Critical Without Sounding Like a Whiner By Hiding Behind Humor

(made especially for grad students)

Let's talk about soup (I know what you're thinking: way too exciting for a Tuesday! If that's the case, just think about hot water with salt. Okay, now back to soup). If you are like most people (read: not Spanish), you like to eat/drink your soup at a reasonable temperature. Soup often starts out too hot, then is enjoyable for a few spoonfuls, then is cooler than you want it to be. Believe it or not, soup is just like every personal-information internet meme every created.

Imagine it's 2002 and your friend sends you an "electronic piece of mail", which our culture, in its colloquial wisdom, has shortened to "e-mail", if you are familiar with that slang. So you go to your "webmail" on your "e-computer" and find that your friend has sent you a quiz. Oh and in your good fortune, they have filled it out with their answers:

2) What's on your mousepad?
my mouse hehe

4) What is your favorite place in the world?
hawaiiii its so beautiful there i wish i could live there

7) Bran muffin or Fiber One bar?
OMG bran muffin cuz fiber bars dont existt yet

10) Been to the doctor in the last 30 days?
LOL yeah i have some sort of contagious rash on my fingertips

11) Where are you now?
using dan's computer

These are sometimes annoying when they are first sent (because you think: "why do I want this"), but when a good number of people get involved, you might look forward to it. Then a couple of days later you get sick of them.

Now I want to say something quickly here: I have done many self-indulgent things in my life. I have sent quizzes, I talk about my self a lot, and I made a movie starring me as "me". So what I can hope for is that if you send a quiz or 25 random things or whatever, make it useful.

And now we have the Facebook Yearbook picture tagfest using Mr. Mann characters:

The way it works is you put this picture on Facebook and label your friends as "The One that's Always Hungry" or "The Loud One" or "The One that Got Arrested For Murder" (I'm two of three, and I want you to guess).

To each his own. If people enjoy it, that's fine. Unfortunately, I can't delete updates and comments on Facebook fast enough, so I have made a new one for everyone to upload:
Or maybe you could semi-personalize it, like this one I made for grad school, with help from William Cannon Winslow (click for higher resolution):


Someone upload that and tag it. And if the nicest person in your department isn't named Adria then too bad.