Category: silliness

the conference pants study: interim results

Background
Yesterday, as I headed off to a conference wearing my black pants, I presented to you the Black Pants Hypothesis, a nascent theory of lower-body-garment-wearing behavior of women attending professional conferences. My expectation was that black pants would be the most frequently observed category of leg-and-bottom-covering clothing at the conference I attended.

Interim results
After two days of conducting research on the garments worn by women at the conference I attended, I have been able to make the following observations:

  1. It is very tricky to try to actually tally rates of black pants wearing while attending and working at a conference, at least without actually making efforts to record such observations and potentially appearing creepy. Methodology was therefore not systematic.
  2. Informal pants counts supported the expectation of high rates of black pants, however an exact measure was not determined. In spotting clusters of women conference attendees, it was not uncommon to see a rate between 1 in 3 and 2 in 5 black pants wearers. Counterexamples were observed, whereby a group of 3 or 4 women were observed of whom none were wearing black pants. However, all observations of groups of 5 or more women included at least 1 wearer of black pants.
  3. Rates of black-pants-wearing were particularly high among women giving oral presentations at the conference. In a sample size of 8 talks presented by women attended by the experimenter, at least 5 of the presenters wore black pants.
  4. Other highly frequently observed bottom-half-covering garments among female conference attendees included jeans and black skirts, with rates of jeans-wearing appearing to be similarly high to rates of black-pants-wearing.
  5. Gray, brown and tan and other neutral-colored pants were fairly frequently observed, with 2 outliers sighted wearing red pants.
  6. There were occasional sightings of non-black skirts or dresses.
  7. There were no observations of shorts, swimwear or nudity.

Discussion
The current study could neither confirm nor disconfirm the hypothesis that black pants are the most frequent bottom-half-covering garment worn by women at professional conferences. While large numbers of black pants were observed, the methodology was flawed such that it was not possible to determine actual rates. Further, the pants wearing behavior of women at professional conferences may be quite variable by both field and geographic region, such that the population of the currently studied conference may not be a representative sample of professional conference attending women as a whole. Pilot survey data were inconclusive, with some women affirming the essentialness of black pants, and others stating the lack of ownership of any black pants. However, correlations of these responses with professional-conference-attending behavior was not determined. Additional data will need to be collected.

Conclusions
I was glad I was wearing my black pants yesterday when I spilled coffee all over them shortly before getting up on stage to introduce presenters.

wearing my conference pants

I mean that literally, actually.

When I tell you I’m wearing my cranky pants, I don’t have a specific garment in my wardrobe that I wear when I’m being cranky. I can be cranky in any of my pants. I can even be cranky when I’m not wearing pants. (On the other hand, I do find it harder to be cranky in my flannel polar bear pajama pants.)

Today, though, is not a day for polar bear pajamas. Since I’ll be working at the conference, I need to look moderately professional. And while I can get away with wearing my cranky pants, I’m also wearing pants that seem to be my conference uniform. Black pants. (Which, now that I think about it, were also part of my uniform back when I did catering as an undergrad, and when I waited tables.) (Not the same black pants, mind you. This pair is relatively new.)

I submit to you that black pants are the single most common garment worn by women at professional conferences. This weekend, I will be on the lookout to test this hypothesis. I will attempt to take some rough quantitative measures. I predict that the rate of black pants will be greater than that of other categories of leg-and-rear-covering garment among females attending this conference.

What about you? Can you support my hypothesis? If you are a woman, and you attend professional conferences, do you wear (at least with greater frequency than your other categories of garment) black pants?

Quiz: How compulsive are you? (Halloween costume edition)

Halloween is coming, and you want to get costumes for your 2 kids. How do you go about getting their costumes?

    A: Don’t stress about it. You’ll figure something out from things you have around the house.

    B: Pick up something at the store that will fit. There are plenty of inexpensive new or used costumes, and your kids are so young that they probably could be talked into liking just about any of them. If you wait till a day or two before Halloween, you can find something really cheap.

    C: Find out what your kids want to be several weeks in advance, and order something online.

    D: Decide on a theme for your kids’ costumes months before Halloween based on some accessory you’d gotten on sale a couple of years before, and plant the seed of the idea in your kids’ heads so that they think they want to be those things. Decide that you want to make as much of their costumes as you can. Less than a week before Halloween, buy a sewing machine, even though you haven’t used one since junior high. Figure out how to use it, including doing types of things that you’d never even done in home ec. classes. Spend a bit of time each night working out the design of a costume. The night before you plan to use the costumes, stay up past 2 in the morning. Work for a couple more hours the next day getting ready for your afternoon departure to a place where the kids will be in costume, including stitching on some proper straps to the accessory you’d bought a couple years ago because the glue is coming apart and one of the cheap plastic straps has already come loose. Continue to work on the other costume in the passenger seat on your way to the Halloween event, sewing on embellishments until your fingers are so sore and tired that you drop a needle in your lap while trying to thread it just one more time, and then spend the rest of the ride trying to find the damn needle, and convincing yourself that you will either be sitting on it, or poking a small child with it in the near future. Spend even more time finishing up the costume the next day, and then make a costume for yourself while your youngest child is napping. In the end, you are still vaguely unsatisfied, because there are a few details you never found time for, and getting kids to cooperate for photos is really tricky, so none of it looks quite how you imagined it anyhow.

How did you answer? Please match your answers to the evaluations below.

    A: While some may call you lazy, others envy your ability to keep things in perspective, be laid back, and not spend crazy amounts of time on something that will only be worn for a couple of hours.

    B: You are both sane and prepared. You probably get all of your work done on time, and still have time to relax in the evenings. Others probably resent you for this.

    C: You are moderately compulsive, but as long as you don’t spend countless hours or insane amounts of money to find “just the right thing,” you are not certifiable.

    D: You are freakin’ insane. Don’t you know you have an abstract due in just a few weeks? Put down the needle and thread and get back to your research.


The beautiful butterfly.


Caterpillar and butterfly. (Photo by John.)


Caterpillar and plant. (Photo by John.)


So over it.

John has posted a few more photos on Flickr, too, if you want to see more. (See, for example this, this, this, this and this.)

falling down


It’s autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere. Fall. Here in New England, the leaves are changing colors. And falling.

But leaves aren’t the only things falling.¹ Gravity appears to have been at work in many areas, as evidenced by the fallen items below.

  • Humpty Dumpty: He had a great fall. (Actually, it didn’t turn out so great for him, what with the breaking up. Maybe his summer was better.)
  • Jack (of Jack and Jill): Fell down. Broke his crown.
  • The sky: It’s falling. (At least according to Chicken Little.)
  • The cradle: It will fall. Out of a tree. With a baby in it. (I’m not sure why a song about a baby falling out of a tree is supposed to help bring on sleep…)

  • London Bridge: It’s falling down. (Falling down, falling down.)
  • Falling Down (1993): A Michael Douglas movie
  • “Falling:” a song by Julee Cruise that was well known as the theme song for the TV series Twin Peaks.
  • The Fall: a “post-punk” band
  • take the fall: to take the blame for something
  • fall guy: someone who takes the fall, a scapegoat
  • The Fall Guy: An 80s TV series about a stunt man starring Lee Majors (better known for his 70s role as the “bionic man.”)
  • to fall short: to not meet expectations
  • fall asleep: to enter a sleeping state
  • fallout: consequences, especially those that aren’t immediate
  • fall in: to get into line
  • fall in love:an expression meaning, um, to fall in love. Crap. How do I even paraphrase that? I guess “become enamored of, usually in a romantic way.”
  • fall for someone: an expression meaning “be won over by someone,” or sometimes “start to like someone”
  • fall for something: to be tricked
  • fall into the pudding: this isn’t actually an expression²
  • “Fall on Me” A song by R.E.M.
  • When I Pretend to Fall: an album by the Long Winters, and a line from the song “Stupid.” She laughs when I pretend to fall…
  • Ring around the rosie³:

    Ring around the rosie
    Pocket full of posie
    Ashes, Ashes
    We all fall down

And there it is. We all fall down.⁴

—–

¹ Clearly I’ve been falling down on the job with my ThThTh posts, seeing as the last one I posted was in December.

² There are loads more real idioms involving falling

³Apparently there are many different versions of this, some of which don’t even involve falling down. Theo has been reciting a version of this lately. Mostly what I hear is “Asses, asses, we fall down.” I don’t recall seeing that one on the Wiki page.

⁴ Often on our asses.

Cradle falling image from The Only True Mother Goose Melodies, by Munroe & Francis, 1833, found on the Gutenberg Project.

Ahoy!

Today be the 19th o’ September, and lest ye be not aware, International Talk Like a Pirate Day.¹ Arrrrr.

¹ I hae been a celebrant o’ the holiday since 2007 when I first learned of it. That year I enthusiastically put together a series of posts, including a throw-away pirate name post followed by a rather dorky post on how to talk like a pirate, complete with spectrograms of “arrrrrrr.” I feel I did redeem myself, however, with my pirate resume and subsequent rejection letter. In 2008, I put up a pirate ThThTh list. In 2009, I apparently completely forgot about this important holiday. (My excuse was that I was in Spain. This is one of my all time favorite excuses, and I hope to have more opportunities to use it in the future.)

6 in a million giraffes

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a friend telling me about a cool online project: One Million Giraffes. Someone has started a website where he has the goal of collecting, as you might guess, one million giraffes. What you might not guess is that he is trying to do so by 2011, and that he wants all the giraffes to be created by participants without using a computer as part of the creative process. (For the full rules and more details, check out the rules page. There’s even a blog featuring favorite giraffes.)

Whereas my immediate response in learning of this project was to make some giraffes, it has taken me over a month to actually send mine in. But I’m happy to say that I uploaded my photo of 6 giraffes last night, and they now appear on the site. They are currently on page 2 of the site, but I expect they’ll be bumped down pretty fast. For the direct link, go here.

Here are the giraffes I cut out the same night I got the email–I took a piece of orange construction paper, folded it into 6, and cut the giraffes in a stack free-form. Then I taped them to the window.

These are not llamas.

Phoebe observed, very observantly, that my giraffes had no tails, and that giraffes have tails. She was right, and my giraffes looked more llama-like than giraffe-like. So, I retrieved them and retooled them to be tailed.

I also liked this picture of their shadows.

off the top of my head

Hi! Remember me? Wow, it’s been ages since we last talked. It seems like years. Has it really been only a couple weeks? What have you been up to? Yeah? Man, I had no idea they could do that. With gouda even? Seriously, I’m constantly amazed by the power of cheese. I was thinking about you earlier today when I was going about my business. No, not that business. Sheesh. No, I think I was driving or ironing toilet paper or staring at my toes, or whatever it is that I do most of the time. It was getting close to lunch time, and I had this intense craving for ramen noodles. Which naturally led to me thinking about brains. And then zombies. Then mummies. And then dust bunnies. And then Welsh rabbit. So naturally I couldn’t help but remember that time when you got caught with the…ha ha ha, yeah. We totally don’t need to go there. Oh, you already went there. Again? Did they recognize you without your…Oh. Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to bring up such a sore subject. Right, right. I understand. Beach balls and ninjas. Say no more. Well, I’d better go. I have a lot of stuff I need to do. There’s a whole pile of lentils that I need to alphabetize. Good talkin’ with ya.

—

So, um, yeah. It’s been a while. Things have been crazy. Here’s a few things that I could write lots more about, except I should probably sleep instead:

    • We finally moved Theo into Phoebe’s room a couple of weeks ago. It’s been going really well.

    • I’m heading to Chicago next week for a conference. Solo.

    • I have a lot of stuff to do before I leave.

    • My poison ivy is still healing, over 4 full weeks after initial exposure.

    • Phoebe started preschool this week, and Theo started going to daycare 5 days a week. (Phoebe will be at the preschool 3 days, and at the old daycare with Theo two days.) This new schedule will give me 2 more days a week to do my work. Or alphabetize lentils.

    • I’m not really getting into Twitter. My romance with Facebook is flagging. I’m considering breaking up with both and taking up smoke signals.

    • I’d really hoped to resume last year’s “merry merry month of metablogging” this May. But seeing as I have so much going on, I probably won’t manage.

    • There are other weightier things on my brain that I can’t get into here. Imagine, if you will, my cartoon brain with a large cartoon anvil on top. Now put a cartoon elephant on top.

    • Finally, here’s a picture of Theo as a little baby with an octopus on his head. Actually, I don’t really have a lot to say about this.

Oh, and one more final last thing. Can you identify this movie quote?

When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.

I have nothing clever to say at this time

You know, I hate it when I go a long time without really posting. I feel this sort of weird pressure that whatever I post after a lull should somehow sparkle. Be…worthwhile. So I end up thinking a lot about posts I’d like to write, things I’ve been composing in my head for ages. But by the end of the day, when I have a chance to sit down, I’m just tired. I don’t feel like I have sufficient time and energy to write something that I want to write. I might get part way through a draft of a post, and then give up and go to bed. So, once again, I’m writing something utterly dull.

The Unbearable Tightness of Pants

Conflict.
Betrayal.
Angst.

Pants.

The Pants Institute proudly presents the Pants Cinema Film Festival: Masterpieces of Pants Drama.

Here are some of the films on the schedule:

    The Unbearable Tightness of Pants: A young woman feels increasingly uncomfortable in her pants, while her husband seems unable to keep his own pants on.

    What’s Eating Gilbert’s Pants: A young man is disturbed to realize that clothes moths have gradually overtaken his family’s closets.

    My Own Private Pants: Two misfit young men in misfitting pants embark on a journey to find pants that fit them more comfortably.

    The Last Pants of Disco: A pair of young women struggle to adapt to the changing pants fashions at the start of the 80s, and must bid their bellbottoms goodbye.

    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Pants: When a man picks up his clothing from the drycleaners, he finds the pants that are returned to him to be hauntingly familiar, yet he can’t remember ever wearing them.

    The Remains of the Pants: An aging butler reflects on his life of service, and notices how threadbare his trousers have become.

    Pants in Translation: A young American woman visits Tokyo, and is unhappy to find that she can’t find the Japanese word for “pants” in her phrase book.

    The Pants Hereafter: A town struggles to cope with the gap left by the closing of a prominent pants retailer.

    Pants Labyrinth: A young girl tries on magic pants to escape the dark realities of her family life.

    Pants of a Lesser God: Not all pants are made the same. See label for care instructions.

    Pretty in Pants: A teenage girl runs into conflict when she announces that she wants to wear tuxedo pants to her high school prom.

    Edward Scissorpants: I can’t even go there. Ouch.

——-
I’ve been keeping these pants packed up for ages, and it seems a fine time to air them out.