1) She will correct you (and your friends) when you use the word ‘probability’ lightly. Probability means something specific, people.

2) She will make you quiz her on the difference between the Cramer-Rao theorem and the Rao-Blackwell theorem. You will not care, because she doesn’t really care.

3) She will endlessly cite ‘this thing I read’ and then spend ten minutes with her smartphone trying to find it, because she doesn’t want to tell you the wrong sample size.

4) She is broke. (This has nothing to do with statistics and everything to do with her being a grad student.)

5) She is cranky. (See parenthetical above.)

6) She will derail every conversation with ‘I wonder how likely that is’.

7) She will watch all of the episodes of Supernatural that are available on Netflix on an endless loop while she studies. (What, I told you I don’t hang out with other stats students. I have no reason to believe this isn’t true for everyone. (<= That is some TERRIBLE statistical inference that I just did there.))

She wants to graduate more than anything else in the world, including more than she wants to be nice.

Ok, fine. This is basically an apology to everyone for me sucking. And me being mean. And also me being boring. And watching all of Supernatural for the third time (Crockett, that one is for you specifically). I’m very sorry.

I used to like it. I have memories of a time when I would remember to check it every Sunday morning, looking forward to the secrets. I bought the book for a friend of mine when he started a new job. I never considered sending in a secret, but when I used to do my sunday best posts (what happened to those, anyone know?) I would frequently use a card from PS.

Now, when I do remember to check, I mostly feel like smacking someone.

I can only think of two reasons that my love for the site might have changed.

Possible reason 1: I am now a terrible person who doesn’t care about the pain (or joy) of others.

Possible reason 2: There are only so many secrets. Frank, the Post Secret collector/editor fellow, must have literally seen every variation on the same six themes.

• Love.
  Variation 1: I love someone SO MUCH.
  Variation: I/my love cheated. I feel guilty/angry/exhilarated.
  Variation 3: I never told someone I was in love with him or her and now he or she is married/dead.
• Depression.
  Variation 1: I am depressed and don’t know what to do and might kill myself. (I hate these most of all. It’s SO FREAKING SAD and there’s NOTHING I CAN DO TO HELP. Also, do all suicidal people write to PS eventually? There are a lot of these.)
  Variation 2: I was depressed and am all better now. (Awesome, but sort of a smack in the face to variation 1, no?)
• Happiness.
  Variation 1: I am so happy.
  Variation 2: I used to be happy, and then I got depressed or the person I loved left or died or cheated.
• Sex.
  1: I like it.
  2: I don’t like it and don’t understand people who do like it.
  3: I totally COULD like it except my partner(s) suck(s).
  4: I do it in some fascinating way I simply must share with Frank. (I think most of these are fabrications.)
  5: I do something that everyone else does too but I am unaware of that and simply must share my completely vanilla sex with Frank.
• Religion.
  1: God is awesome.
  2: God used to be awesome but now isn’t, which is/isn’t my fault.

Done.

I guess I’m just bored. I am interested in the stories of people I don’t know. (Witness all the blogs in my RSS feed.) Postcards are so small, though, and there’s so little room for explanation, that I think it’s hard not to be cliche.

Hm. I’m adding a third choice to the list of possible reasons why I now sort of loathe the site.

1) I’m a horrible person. 2) Secrets are, by the very nature of humanity, repetitive. 3) Frank loves a cliche.

Maybe I should write him a postcard about my dilemma.

What am I saying – of course you do.

It’s 2011, people.

We all think about reality tv, all the time.

Right?

No?

Anyway, I would be quite lame as a contestant on any show that involved a skill of any kind.

• So You Think You Can Dance? – No, I can’t dance. Not even in my head. I have one move, and it’s best performed when sitting down, and when Crockett and I were driving across country he referred to it as the Emma-dance, and now I’m not going to do it anymore.
• Project Runway – There’s a contestant this season who taught herself to sew 4 months ago, and she’s awesome. Crockett’s mom showed me how to sew a year ago and I’ve made a few purses with varying level of success, and hemmed some stuff. I’m pretty sure Heidi wouldn’t approve.

I could continue, but it would be a variation of those two things. I can’t actually do anything better than anyone else… except make smoothies.

Is there a smoothie making reality show?

Being talentless doesn’t exclude me from the second category of reality shows, of course. You know, the kind where they follow you around and watch what you do.

That, obviously, is because I don’t do anything. Ever, really.

• This fall on Fox: 30 Year Old Grad Students and the Laptops that Love Them.

Finally, it goes without saying that I would get my ass kicked in any competition based show. I’m not eating anything disgusting, thank you very much. I’m surely not swimming for my supper, either. Obstacle course? Sure, as long as I had some help reaching the high parts, or it was a special course for short people.

Basically I believe I am destined to go to my grave un-televised.

How very 1980s of me.

About them: Here at Spilled Milk headquarters, we combine food and comedy in a bowl and stir it up until it explodes. Join your jovial (possibly too jovial) hosts, Molly and Matthew, for recipes, cooking tips, winning lotto numbers, and catfights. Spilled Milk has not been evaluated by theFDA and is not intended to treat any disease, but just between you and me, it probably cures chlamydia.

Chlamydia, people. This is comedy gold.

Lubec, Maine

As you can see from the sign, Lubec is as far east as you can get in the United States. Of course, Canada is just across the Quoddy Narrows.

I’m pretty sure this is the kind of place that rejects you if you aren’t 17th generation or if you accidentally say ‘Quoddy’ wrong.

I kind of want to move there and make friends with some old men and eat a lot of lobster rolls.

Hunting Arrows

Who knew that arrows following your mouse around a screen could be so purdy?

Emma’s unite:

I couldn’t find this image on his website, but according to alphadesigner.com, Emma and Maria are the names to beat. He’s got a bunch of other maps too.

You might’ve heard.

Bin Laden was apparently killed.

Two things:

1) What does it say about me that I feel that it’s necessary to insert ‘apparently’ into the former statement? Does it say that perhaps I read too many political thrillers? Why yes, I think it does. Quite literally, the first thing I thought when I realized the headlines weren’t jokes (why I thought they might be jokes is an entirely different and perhaps more sinister question) is ‘yeah yeah, show us the body and maybe we’ll believe you’. I mean, if true, this is a massive win for Obama. Remember when what’s his face, though… um, Hussein? Saddam Hussein was captured the year before Bush was up for reelection, and everyone suspected that we knew where he was and Bush just postponed it until it would do him good politically?

All I’m saying is we’ve apparently already dumped Osama’s body at sea.

And 2012 is an election year.

And also I really have been reading too much David Baldacci.

2) If it weren’t for news organizations buying advertising on food and humor websites, I would never know any major news.

I may watch the ceremony. On ABC, probably, because that seems to be where it’s streaming live.

(If you don’t know what ceremony I’m talking about, where the hell have you been for the last three months? No, really? Did you go to space? Was it nice there?)

I don’t really care about Wills and Kate in any major way. I sort of knew that Prince William had a girlfriend, and I was sort of cranky because that meant that I wasn’t Prince William’s girlfriend (or more accurately, Princess-to-be Emma). I’m not nuts about Harry and his Ron Weasley hair.

I do, however, have a few more chances to become a princess.

Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum

Pros:

• He’s almost the same age as me (being that ten-years older queen screams of Katherine, sent away by Henry VIII when he found someone younger).
• He’s pretty cute.
• He’s the hereditary prince of Dubai. You know, Dubai? Where they build islands shaped like pineapples just cause they feel like it?

Cons:

• “Sheikh Hamdan also has a passion for camels, cars and skydiving.”

Prince Azim

Pros:

• He apparently throws banging parties (his 27th birthday was named Party of the Year in 2009). Diana Ross was there. Meeting Diana Ross would be almost as awesome as marrying a prince. Plus, Scarlett Johansson was there, and in 2009 she was still with Ryan Reynolds, and he was probably there too, and he is one of my many potential soulmates, and I bet he totally would make out with a princess.
• He is all kinds of charitable.
• He is heir to a the $22 billion fortune of Brunei.

Cons:

• It’s rumored that he pays those celebrities to attend his parties.
• Look at his goatee.

Prince Carl Philip

Pros:

• Just look at him. A prince and a face like that? Dude.
• I can in fact point to Sweden on a map. Dubai and Brunei? Not so much.

Cons:

• He has a girlfriend. Or possibly two. Maybe three. One was named Emma.

Prince Andrea Casiraghi

Pros:

• Again – how do you get to be the heir to a throne AND LOOK LIKE THAT?
• I bet if you’re dating the prince of Monaco you get some wicked good seats to that car race thing they do.

Cons:

• He’s apparently sort of a player. That’s a mediocre con at best.
• He’s 26. That’s not quite Katherine territory, but it’s getting close.
• He’s not actually exactly a prince. Prince Albert II has to die without having (legitimate) kids, and then Andrea has to chance his name to Grimaldi, and then he’ll be prince.

Princes Albert

There are at least two Prince Alberts. One races cars and one might be gay and also has to die so that Andrea (above) can be prince.

Cons:

• … in a can.

Prince Wenzeslaus

Pros:

• He’s 36.
• The Liechtenstein royals are the richest royal family in Europe.

Cons:

• He used to date Adriana Lima (the Victoria’s Secret model).  There’s nothing wrong with that, I just don’t really feel like seeing my picture next to hers in every tabloid forever and ever.
• There are a bunch of pictures of him in stupid tee-shirts.

Prince Philippos

Pros:

• He goes to Georgetown University – easier to find.
• Greece is cool.

Cons:

• Greece technically abolished their monarchy, so the princess thing is sort of nominal.
• He’s 25. And also looks like he wears a lot of hair product.

There you go. Those are my remaining chances for having a royal wedding of my own.

Unless of course Crockett has royal lineage and hasn’t told me.

But if I’m secretly hoping for a surprise royal lineage, I’m going to go ahead and hope that it’s mine, not his.

I want to be my own princess.

Tomorrow – the royal wedding food!

Friday, if I feel like it, perhaps I’ll liveblog the wedding itself!

(Apparently I care about this more than I claimed several paragraphs and princes ago).

Not drinking, all together.

Because you can only go like 3 days without water.

So I heard.

So just alcohol.

I chose booze for two reasons.

1. I like drinking, so this is an actual sacrifice. I could have given up chocolate, but I don’t really eat that much chocolate. As a matter of fact, I could still say I am giving up chocolate, because I’m pretty sure I haven’t had any since Wednesday. I could have given up cursing, but I don’t really cuss that much anymore and also, I enjoy it when I do do it. Alternatively, I could have given up meat – but that would have been a gigantic pain the the butt, up to and including dealing with a bunch of stuff that’s in our fridge that Crockett would have had to consume all on his own.
2. Drinking is expensive, both monetarily and calorically. Therefore it’s good for me to stop, on both counts.

The thing is, it’s spring break.

This was a stupid idea.

What game, you ask?

The movie drinking game.

Here’s the general outline: we pick a movie neither of us has seen. We make up drinking game rules, without knowing how applicable they’ll be. We drink. This has gone wrong on a couple of occasions – for example, when we watched 29 Palms, we were supposed to drink when anyone said ‘bag’. That movie, turns out, is about a stolen bag of money. Yeah.

Our flick last night was Rumplestiltskin, from 1995. It was awesome. My head hurts.

Here are the rules we chose (a * indicates that this happened and we drank to it):

• if someone is wearing a green shirt
• if someone spills *
• if there is a horse or goat or llama
• if a woman screams ‘not my baby’ *
• if there is an obvious reference to another horror movie
• if someones hands get dirty and they look at them in a shocked manner
• if we see Rumplestiltskin’s nipples
• if a big guy kills a little guy (this is a standard no matter what movie we’re watching)
• if a little guy kills a big guy (ditto) * (we may have been mistaken here – we thought Rumplestiltskin was a little guy but it later appeared that he was just crouching down)
• if someone barfs
• if someone drops silverware
• if someone kicks a dog
• if Rumplestiltskin kills a pet
• if we see bottom half nudity *
• if there is a really gross bone breaking *
• if something happens that we can specifically trace to a conversation we had today *
• wacky computer action (this one is a new standard and is awesome – basically, if someone uses a computer to do something that computers don’t do, or does something like hacks into the pentagon in three minutes, etc)
• if the movie has it’s own theme song with lyrics (new standard)
• if there’s a super animal of any kind

That’s six drinks, yo.

Here’s the progression of our conversation during the movie as recorded on my iPad. All grammatical and typing errors have been left in. You know, for authenticity.

Was that flaming glitter
Come bring the pain
Why would you make it so that the wish of a child would break your curse
So..he’s totally thinking inside the dinosaur poop
Hi mr police officer
How did getting shot in the heD not make it on my list
IS SHE A MIME.?
Is that person eating cat food? Is that an entire aisle filled with spderwebs?
Alien mettallic turd dick
What is wrong with his hair? Uhhh, it’s just a boatload of grease. An epidemic of grease.
Oh! Is she totally getting it on with her dead husband? Ohh, wouldn’t it be creepy if she woke up in bed with his two years dead corpse? Ys, ut would.
Wait, since when is ‘you can’t kill someone who doesn’t have a soul’ a rule?
Broekn arm flips off driver – us: “yes!”
Omg he totally has like doc martens
Why did you crash, it was just a spray of water
Lady, that’s a baby. You’re putting a baby in my truck. Theres never been a baby in my truck.
He’s following me down a very slight incline after making a very soft right turn. I’ll give you this much, he’s a hell of a driver!
I don’t understand several things. How did they he find out they as no brakes while they were going uphill? Where did he get that shirt? How did they skid to a stop with no bakes? Why is he weing that shirt without zubas? Why does his truck have flags?
Wile rp was crashing his car, he yelled “oh fuck its me”
DID YOU GET IT?. DID YOU GET THE Pun? She can really SPIN a YARN
Can you imagine if we’d called ‘stabbed with an. American flag’?
My minds not as sharp ss it once ess. 20 years of cat food and vicars will do that to you.
Simultaneously- he can summon bodies with electricity? He can make electric zombies?
Why is he crouching so much? He kxut he reqlh storing tights.
She id chant three times, Nd now I know what she meant. She meant driver a flaming bulldozer while wearing a USA jacket!
Did he say aw shit when he got scooped n the bullsodxer of fire?
I’m going ton say it right now. You can’t get your sleeve caught on a atteerrjng we hell. Thats not thing that can happen.
We called rps bottom falling off SSS bottom half nudity.
Di you need t be able too take memories to be traumatized.
FUCKING SHOW THE OTHER SLEEVE OF THENGODDAMN JAVKET

Yeah.

I think I might have picked my current major of Computer Science because of Hackers. Sure, that sounds like the kind of life decision one might not want to leave to some mid-90s movie. But if one were going to do such a goofy thing, one could do worse than Hackers.

First and most pimportantly, the technology was so fascinatingly fabulous that it makes anything I can currently make a computer do look like a monkey with a stick did it.

No computer lab I've ever seen has looked anything like this.

Nonsensical text rarely floats around my head while I program.

Sure, it’s unrealistic. But it’s so purdy!

Secondly, how cool are hackers themselves?

The hotness!

Really fucking cool, that’s how cool.

Thirdly, there is a sense of humor and insiderness that I simply must be a part of.

The blue poster: Information is Penetration. Tell me that's not an inside joke and I'll tell you that you obviously weren't watching this movie as carefully as I was so you should probably zip your lip before I zip it for you.

And finally? The nicknames.

Sure, Crash and Burn are taken, but I'm sure I could find something else. Also, does anyone know why the lights in this office building are connected to a computer, making them hackable?

I’m a sucker for a good nickname. Some of my ladies on twitter are currently calling me Cajun Spice (for no good reason that I can see, but that’s not really the point, now is it?), and I’m accepting suggestions for a good hacker nickname.

So, Hackers, thank you. Thank you for shaping my life. And for being unrealistic, funny, and full of hot people.

Hack the Planet, y’all.

Apparently it went something like this.

Crockett and I were in Buffalo. We’d been to the bars, and it was 3 am. We had my car and instead of driving home, I insisted that we drive around the Buffalo neighborhoods so I could use my Zillow app to marvel over the cheapness of the houses. (So far dream Emma is exactly like real Emma).

I then saw a townhouse that was merely five thousand dollars. According to Crockett, it looked like a crack house, but my response was ‘but it’s huge!’. I then parked my car in a dark, drug dealer friendly parking lot and took off for the house, insisting that I just wanted a flyer.

Dream Crockett apparently yelled at dream Emma, which is hilarious because even when I can tell that real Crockett really wants to yell at me, he doesn’t.

While he was yelling, the dream drug dealers stole my car, drove around the corner, balanced my laptop on top of a light pole, and then drove away.

This dream leaves me with three questions.

1. Is dream Emma foolhardy to give Crockett the chance to subconsciously yell at me, because he never does it in real life?
2. Why balance my laptop on a lightpole? Those dream drug dealers are wacky, I tell you.
3. Are there really houses available for $5000 in Buffalo?