(no subject)

[sciatrix]

The weirdest coincidence on that mammoth rant and the asexually reproducing whiptail lizards that kept coming up is that I happen to work in the department where much of the original research on those lizards was done. Specifically, I share a floor with one of the primary fellows who did it.

He dresses exclusively in Hawaiian shirts and ponchos. Although he isn’t currently working on whiptails that I know of, the man is a major packrat–there’s things still on the walls that date back by to before I was born, and our hallways are lined with empty terrariums. It’s not uncommon for me to go digging through one of the hall cupboards for some unattended piece of glassware or elderly specialized equipment and suddenly find myself staring into jar after jar of indifferently pickled lizards.

Comments

[wellthisisnice]

Academia stories are always so weirdly funny, yet the only weird story i can think about my professors is that one older dude specialized in databases who still believed in WinISIS (a cataloguing software from the 80s obsolete since Windows 7) and who, after an accident that left him with partial vision loss, carried a real magnifying glass with him to read his computer's screen. Every week we just sat there, silently seeing him read his PPTs with his magnifying glass, powerless to convince him that tech accessibility tools are an actual thing now because they weren't a thing 20 years ago.

[sciatrix]

Oh dear. Yes, I can imagine certain folks of my acquaintance pulling that, although not anyone I work with.

I'm almost tempted to put out a list of Stories I Could Tell for a while about my workplace--everything from the mystery of the bloodied hands on the sliding glass doors to the ex-postdoc who had to be evicted from the sixth floor to the smaller mysteries, like Who Painted The Creepy Disturbing Mural Down The Steps or Why Is That Small Black Button That Goes Ding there or Where Did The Giant Centipede Some Jackass Was Keeping As A Pet Escape To?

[wellthisisnice]

The Small Black Button reminded me of a story about how science and magic are the same thing depending of your perspective, involving a switch in drawer that wasn't connected to anything yet could shut down a whole computer room.

It's been an hour. I can't find it anywhere. Ugh.

[jesse_the_k]

I'd be interested in the telltales between expertly and indifferently pickled lizards?

[sciatrix]

I mean, I would expect that lovingly and expertly pickled lizards would be prepared in some way that appeared to have taken more time than "take dead lizards, dump en masse into jar of formaldehyde, move on."

What on earth do you use that for, aside from alarming Halloween decor?