"It surrounds us... it penetrates us... it binds the sandwich together"

I cut short an imagination-packed game of Star Wars this afternoon to make the kids lunch. The Little Guy walked up to me and asked - "What a' yoo MAKING, Darf Vader?" to which I replied... "A peanut-butter-and-Jedi sandwich".

BWAH-HA-HAA!

I think the stay-at-home-Dad thing may be starting to get to me.

nibble...

We're finally starting to see a little interest in the house. We had one couple come look at it two days in a row. We had our realtor call their realtor to spy on them, and found out that the wife LOVES the house and totally wants it, but the husband thinks it's too much money. So, according to the realtor... If she wins, we''ll get an offer... if he wins, we won't.

My optimism is being kept afloat simply due to the fact that I have never known any relationship where the woman would NOT totally win that fight.

Fingers crossed...

yet another karmic bitchslap...

As some sort of cosmic punishment for smugly tut-tutting all of the out-of-control households on "Supernanny", somehow over the past three weeks we have all of a sudden become ONE OF THEM.

I've had it. I swear to fuck if I have to listen to another tantrum or if I hear the word "No" spoken to me one more time by somebody not old enough to vote... I am totally going to fall back on my less-than-enlightened lower-middle-class upbringing and start smacking the shit out of a couple of kids. I'm serious. Living in this house has gotten un-bearable, and I'm out of ideas.

the davinci code? 454/105=4.3

Yeah, I'm a year late getting there, but since I'm unemployed, I figured this summer would be a good time to read some fiction... a rare event for me. After spending 1600 pages or so catching up with the Harry Potter series, I picked up my wife's copy of "The DaVinci Code". I ask you... what the hell kind of 400 page book has 100 chapters? Dan Brown seems to think readers don't have patience to worry over a puzzle that isn't resolved within 4 pages. I'm so-far unimpressed.

I suppose one positive to Brown's writing style is that I can make significant progress through the plot every time I go to the john.

Perhaps I should line up some "classics" for the remainder of the summer instead.

just in case...

If you ever don't hear from me on the weblog for 5 or 6 days... you might want to try a Google search for "gruesome murder/suicide" + "Alabama".

porn clarification...

I never meant to suggest that the image below represents my ENTIRE hard-drive organization scheme... it's just a tiny slice. There are whole folders devoted to individual courses, university administration, images, music, etc. For those who asked about the whereabouts of the pornography, that is neatly tucked away inside the "Movies" folder. Taking a cue from the typical mainstream video stores' soft-core porn section, the subfolder is named "Special Interest".

and yes i realize this is just a displacement thing, and it's my REAL life that is the real mess...

Changing jobs three times in 4 years can really make a mess of your hard drive. I have whole categories of documents with no folder to put them in. I have a folder marked "Current Projects" full of projects that aren't current. I have a Downloads folder packed with everything from journal articles to NY Times stories to porn. Yesterday I decided to go organization-crazy on my Mac's ass. Sample...



And yeah... I know all the REALLY organized geeks say you're not supposed to put ANY files or folders on your Desktop, but they are a wrong. You just need to give them cool custom icons.

to "Mary" who claims not to be a spambot, but never leaves an email address...

Blogger automatically publishes an RSS feed - http://doctorsilence.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Now, quit yer complaining!

ok... maybe "writing" isn't exactly the right word...

The book I'm writing is already 62 pages long. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before. It's an annotated collecion of primary source material in the history of physics. It's split into three volumes (mechanics, heat, and modern physics) and so far I've worked quite a bit on Volumes 1 and 2. Which means... I've pasted together a lot of the primary sources into a single file. I haven't really done much of the "annotating" yet. I haven't really written any of the biographical introductions or review questions yet either.

But still... 62 pages!!! It feels like a real accomplishment. So what if 90% of the accomplisment was "ctrl-V"?

i think once i got some brownies...

There has been discussion on one of my Wife's mom-talk-groups about end of the year gifts for teachers. It seems some ClassMothers are taking up collections asking for as much as $20 from each student in a class of 20. Do the math, folks... that's $400!!! Four hundred fucking dollars for a teacher gift?? Shit, I taught High School in the fucking HAMPTONS for 4 years... I never got a fucking $400 present at the end of the year.

Of course... my students didn't really like me very much. That could have been a factor.

money for nothing...

Just on a whim I decided to apply for unemployment today. Next Wednesday I'm supposed to call them up and they'll send me my first check. Just like that! They send me MONEY!

I'm now officially suckling at the teat of the welfare state! I'm a leech feeding off the blood, sweat, and taxes of hardworking Americans!! AND IT FEELS GOOD!!

oh...umm... hi...

We went to a pool party today for my daughter's Girl Scout troop. There were the 6 girls, and assorted younger and older siblings and parents with whom I had to make small talk all day. (Yay.) There was also one girl who was older than the rest who was playing around with them and generally supervising the younger kids, but who clearly was not a sibling of any of them (Hint: six Girl Scouts, white... older girl, black.) The mystery was solved when her Mom finally came by to pick her up, and turned out to be none other than Jackie, the Substitute Yoga Pusher.

Can I just tell you how strange it is to have someone show up in a social context who has had her hands on your ass in a professional context?

Very.

attack of the BLINTH...

So I went out by myself last night to catch the final chapter of Star Wars. The first 90-100 minutes were essentially more of the same as the last two films. (Hey, Lucas... just because you CAN have 500 fucking spaceships on screen at all times throughout the entire movie, doesn't mean you SHOULD.) What you're really sitting there waiting for is the last 30-45 minutes... essentially everything POST-climax! The ending really does tie up everything nicely with enough geek-tidbits to reconnect your inner 8-year-old to the Star Wars Mythos.

A few questions... (Spoiler alert!)


1) First of all the whole battle on Kashyyk (Or however you spell it... sorry, my "Wookie" is a bit rusty) was a huge fucking waste of time. You learned nothing about Wookies or Wookie society... it contributed nothing to the plot other than the bizarre little fact that Yoda was friends with Chewbacca. And of course the nerd in the back of your head starts rifling through scenes in Empire and Jedi trying to figure out of Yoda and Chewbacca ever crossed paths, which of course they didn't. So that was kida weird and random. Although it occurred to me this morning... perhaps we are meant to believe that Obi Wan's and Chewbacca's meeting at Mos Eisley was not an accident... maybe it was destiny or the Force or some bullshit like that? Nah... it's just lame.

2) Somehow it never occurred to me that in the first movie (Episode IV)... when R2 shows the hologram of Leia in Obi Wan's little Tattooine burrow... Did Obi Wan realize who Leia was?? I mean... it never occurred to me to revisit that question after learning the rest of the story. She never says her name, and I don't think she says her father's name. ("General Kenobi, you served with my father during the Clone Wars...") but it seems like he would have maybe figured it out. I have to go back and watch that scene more carefully on the DVD.

Ok. That's enough geekery for one post.

good ear...

I was watching Letterman on the TiVo this morning, and the Little Guy was spinning on a Sit-n-Spin in the middle of the living room. Not 60 seconds into the segment with Dave's first guest, Ellen Degeneres, the boy stops spinning and pipes up with...

"Ah. Me. Watch. Finding. Nemo??"

Coincidence? I think not.

coming to a galaxy not so far away...

A NY Times article published yesterday is reporting that the US millitary is about to start seeking permission to build space-based weapons systems. The best quote from the article...?

General Lord said such problems should not stand in the way of the Air Force's plans to move into space. "Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny,"

Holy crap... "General Lord"? Sound like anyone you know??

because inquiring minds want to know...

The beloved Mimi Smartypants wrote in her blog yesterday regarding the question of washing one's hands after using the restroom, and whether or not it was really, strictly speaking necessary. The post included the following curious statement...

You don't touch anything in there other than toilet paper and flush-handle. (Well, girls don't. Men, do you have to handle the johnson in order to pee? I am not familiar with Male Pee Procedures.)

I was somewhat shocked that an adult woman would be unclear on such a simple matter, so I decided to set her straight this morning via IM. I include the essay below for the benefit of my other curious female readers...

Of Course You Don't Have To Touch It Mimi!

First of all, it is important to note that a Men's room is entirely covered in porcelain from floor to ceiling with a big drain in the middle. It's like being inside a giant sink, really... so it's not necessary to aim.

To begin, you need to get everything out in the open. As you know, the penis naturally seeks out light... so all you have to do is unzip your fly, and out it comes! There is no handling necessary!!

Next, there are The Straps. You see, if the penis simply hangs there, you may just pee on your shoes, or worse - your pants leg... So there are straps hanging from the ceiling, like in a subway car. That way you can hold onto a strap and leeeeeeeean waaaaaaaaay over so that the stream descends at a more favorable angle.

Then there is the issue of residual dampness and lingering drops afterwards. This is where the Hot Air Penis Dryers come in. You may have seen hot air dryers in Women's restrooms used for drying hands. These Men's Room appliances are very similar, only they are mounted at waist height, and the air is somewhat cooler, as you can well imagine. At very fancy hotels and restaurants, there may be an actual Human Penis Dryer right there in the Men's room to assist you. (A tip is customary.)

Finally the penis must be returned to the pants. This can be accomplished by a rapid and vigorous squat.

So as you can see Mimi... a trip to the Men's room involves NO HANDLING OF THE PENIS WHATSOEVER!! I hope this clarifies things for you.

helpful parenting tip...

If a half-hour-long screaming-crazy-berzerk-tantrum-fit ALWAYS results in a four-hour nap...? It might not be such a bad idea to get him that pissed off every day!!

and it's SO OBVIOUSLY what Hasbro planned...

Anyone present at the local Target this morning would have witnessed the amusing spectacle of a 35 year-old supposed adult trying to talk a 2 year-old child INTO buying a number of Star Wars Galactic Heroes preschool toys.

Adult: Check it out, it's like a space-rocket-plane with a robot and lasers.
Child: I. Don't. Know...
Adult: How about this... look, it's Chewbacca!!
Child: I know Chew... Bacca!
Adult: Yeah. So.. what do you think? Do you want Chewbacca.
Child: Chew...Bacca... pwetty... CWAZY!
Adult: Look, do you want these toys or should I put them back?
Child: You. Put. Dem. Back.
Adult: Ok... no toys for you today.
Child: No. Toys. Fo. Me...
(pause)
Child: Toys. Fo. Daddy??
Adult: No... apparently not...

Maybe I can convince my daughter to want them.

general life news...

I just had a fairly crappy weekend (I'll spare you the details, or rather, I'll spare myself the task of writing OUT the details) and now It's leading directly into the dreaded semi-annual stressfest known as The Week Of Grading. My online class (which was an unmitigated disaster, I might add) just wrapped up and now I have a week to grade 24 term papers, and review 300 discussion posts and figure out some way to assign grades to them. Should I have thought about that before now? Shut up.

So that's the kind of week it will be.

In other news, no news on the house. We had a nice Indian family come by and look at the place. They really liked it (having just looked at houses ourselves, you can definitely tell) but the father said it was too big and a little out of their price range. Yeah, well... so was the house we just bought in NY, chump... make us an offer.

In moving news, we donated and/or gave away our big faded, cat-scratchy sleeper sofa and loveseat. Meaning... we tried to donate them, but when the truck came to pick them up, the guy said they couldn't take stuff with scratches on it because it wouldn't sell. (REJECTED!! BY THE POOR!!). So he took the old computer desk and left the receipt, but the receipt still said sofa/loveseat on it. Aha! So we gave them away on "freecycle" and we're still going to write them off on our taxes.

Nobody who works for the IRS reads this weblog, do they?? IT WAS MY WIFE'S IDEA!!

Also in moving news, we had TWO people move in this week right down the block, and they are giving us ALL OF THEIR BOXES!! Which saves us about $200, probably. So we're giving each couple a nice bottle of Kendall SomethingOrOther Sauvignon Blanc that my boss gave us. Free gift, one less thing to move, and a metaphysical nose-thumb to the ex-boss. It's all good.

STOP IT...!!

I was washing dishes today and I heard the toilet lid in the kids' bathroom slam. The girl is at school, so that means it was the boy, and he doesn't USE the toilet, so I suspected he was up to no good.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE?!"

"I go potty..."

Sure enough I follow a trail to the bathroom... shorts on the floor... diaper on the floor... and there he is, naked from the waist down having peed in the potty and trying to figure out how to "dump" it into the toilet.

Now that's great and very independednt and all, but... WE ARE MOVING IN EXACTLY ONE MONTH AND WE'LL BE SPENDING A HUNDRED FUCKING HOURS IN THE VAN!! DO NOT TAKE IT UPON YOURSELF TO SELF-POTTY TRAIN NOW!!!

Kids... even their SUCCESSES can drive you crazy sometimes.

old...

I've never paid much attention to "Garbage" but somehow I still think of them as a band that "The Young Kids Listen To These Days". I had no idea Shirley Manson was three years older than me. I saw her on Letterman, she looked like Chrissy fucking Hynde!

We're all getting old. Pretty soon I'll see Eddie Vedder on the teevee and he'll look like Keith Richards.

really... which is worse...?

I saw a news story today from the Telegraph in the UK stating that a study revealed that...

"Hospitals are dirtier than food factories, Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, suggested yesterday as she acknowledged the extent of the MRSA crisis."

And of course, the immediate reaction to that is - "Yeech!" Of course, that's only until you realize that, had the headline been - "Food factories have more germs than hospitals" - your reaction would have been EXACTLY THE SAME!!!

and yet they always come up with some kind of cute crap like this...

I've recently mentioned the Little Guy's musical proclivities. He's got a great sense of melody, but he doesn't sing. He only hums. He hums the ABC song, he hums cartoon themes... so it's a big deal when he puts words to music. Well today he did just that, when he came into the room singing the My Little Pony theme song...

"Yeetle My Pooonieee, Yeetle My Pooonieee, hmmm-hmm-hmmm-hmm Hmm-hmm-hmmm..."

"Little My Pony?" How fucking cute is THAT??

dave's freelance proposal gets rejected, dave drafts nasty (unsent) email...

>>[The Boss] has taken to writing future scripts and everyone seems quite pleased with them.

"Everyone" - meaning presumably "[The Boss]" , since you've finally purged the organization of anybody other than YesMen who are afraid to speak up when something sucks? That's just great.

>>At this time, that is the direction we will take.

Good luck with that. Here's a tip - Something can't be "incredibly unique". Nor can one thing be "more unique" than something else. That's one. There are literally a hundred more. Do yourself a favor - convince [The Boss] to hire a copyeditor. Somebody needs to make it clear to him that he writes like a 10th grader if you ever want your videos to see the light of day and not be laughed at by the Discovery Channel, or anybody else who is used to receiving professional-quality work.

>> Best of fortune to u and your family.

Fortune? You mean while paying two mortgages for three months with no income? Thanks, we'll need it. I guess that whole "parting on good terms" and "continuing future projects" and "helping you through the transition" talk was just bullshit, then? Nice. "Best of fortune" to you too, [VP]. I hope when you die of a heart attack after another 10 years of 80 hour weeks your kids remember what you look like. In the meantime, just hope that [The Boss] doesn't decide he's a better graphic artist than you.

Fuck you both.

Dave

i really need to go back to work...

Parenthood moment to share. My 2 year old son just walked away from Blues Clues a few minutes ago and walked up to me with his hand held out kinda funny, and said - "I. Touch. My. POOP?"

Actually, it could have been worse, and I'm quite proud of myself for maintaining my Mr. Rogers Facade, and responding with "Well, I guess we'll have to wash our hands and get a diaper change, then." As opposed to the more appropriate and instinctive - "IF YOUR HAND EVER GOES ANYWHERE NEAR YOUR ASS AGAIN, I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL CUT IT OFF!!!"

amazing race finale...

Rawb was rawbbed.

That AA plane's doors were CLOSED and the jetway was pulled back. I think the producers had a hand in getting Uchenna and Joyce on that plane. Just my own sneaking suspicion.

you mean i took all those graduate courses in quantum mechanics for nothing...?

Here are a few pages from a Chick tract on evolution that somebody left sitting on a table at our yard sale. The evolution stuff is your standard creationist drivel, but it's when they get to particle physics that things get REALLY interesting...











--- --- ---

This is just SO priceless. Nobody has seen a gluon, which makes them a "made up dream". But electrons? Oh... THOSE are real!! I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

dave drops a comment to the Kansas Board of Ed...

As a science educator and university professor, I'm appalled. I find it impossible to understand how people can look at language in a document like that and NOT hear the echoes of Galileo's condemnation for teaching that the Earth goes around the Sun. People using the same arguments and the same Bible tried Galileo for heresy because he espoused a fact that even the most ignorant among us today knows to be true. How can someone look at that and not think that maybe... just maybe we should stop looking to interpretations of Scripture to draw conclusions about the physical (as opposed to the metaphysical) world. If these changes pass, you have earned a place in history alongside the Inquisition in the story of the progress of human knowledge. Congratulations.

price for dave's "will-to-live"...? $629...

We had our yard sale yesterday. Next time I have a yard sale, the first thing I'm going to do is set up a table full of watches and clocks. This is so when people come at 6:30 in the morning while I'm setting up to ask "Do you have any fishing tackle?" or "Do you have any collectible spoons?" I can say, "NO but I do have some quality watches and clocks... and they all keep perfect time... see? They all say SIX-FUCKING THIRTY!!! Come back in an hour and a half when the yard sale actually starts and they will say 8:00 and you can BUY ONE since you are clearly MISTAKEN about the hour of the day."

In other news... do you have any idea how hot it can feel in Alabama at 9:30 in the morning?? I swear, 9:30 in the morning and I'm wearing sunscreen and sweating and the Sun is beating down from directly overhead like I'm in the Saraha at noon on the solstice and I'm on the ground crouching in the shade of a loveseat like Gollum under a rock. "The Yellow Face! IT BURNS US!!!"

Anyways... we've still got a vanload of rejected items to haul to the Goodwill, and we need to call someone to get these damned sofas, but overall... a successful and fairly profitable purge. It's funny, when having a yard sale, you frequently have the thought - "God, I can't believe people will BUY this CRAP". That is until you realize - "Wait a minute... WE bought this crap!"

Music News..

Man, I bet Zack de la Rocha is PISSED!!

baby beethoven...

My son was in the car with me the other day. I had picked up the "Complete Beethoven works for Piano and Cello" from the library, and had it in the CD player. The first track was a variation on a theme from "The Magic Flute". At one point, the Little Guy pipes up from the back seat... "It... sound... like... Beebee.... MO-ZART!!" I'm sure he would think anything played on piano would sound like Baby Mozart, but that piece from The Magic Flute IS, in fact, in the video... so I'm just going to pretend that he did honestly recognize it and is actually a musical genius.

The thing is...my kids have good music-listening genes. Once when my daughter was three, my wife was litening to Aida (Elton John/Tim Rice) in the car, and suddenly from the back we hear - "This sounds like Lion King music."

Which may be more of an indictment of Elton John than an impressive story about my daughter really, but... still.

sign me up...

It's official, folks. There is now officially a drug for everything... including THE JIMMY LEG!

I so need me some of that.

welcome...!

If you are an Angry Feminist who has followed the link over here from Bitch, PhD and wish to complain about the recent PMS post, please use the link below. We here at "second order approximation" depend on our female readership and welcome feedback from our female readers.

Please don't hurt me...

15 minutes a day...

I have a scheme going with an InternetFriend to encourage ourselves to get off our respective academic asses and get some things published. We have a deal where we will both write for 15 minutes a day. Not blog crap, not outlines, not sketches... real writing with real sentences for a real journal.

I did my first tonight. It's very exciting how easy it is to get 400 words on a page if you just force a 15 minute spew. Here they are... just for fun...

--- --- --- --- ---
Entropy is a Number

Most textbooks for high school students, as well as most conceptual physics texts for college students, treat entropy by suggesting it is some measure of "disorder". (references and examples?) This definition is fine for relating some of the basic implications of the Second Law, but it doesn't have the same precise feeling as most of the other physics concepts that the student has become familiar with - acceleration or force or energy for example. I've always had the impression that statement "entropy is disorder" can be a less-than-satisfying one for students.
(SAY WHAT THIS PAPER WILL DO HERE? OR LATER?)

Witness a conversation I had with a student one year in an introductory physics class.

I was making a statement about the relationship between entropy and information, and the student told me that "There is really no such thing as information. Information is just in our heads. Like when I look at this piece of paper, I see a bunch of information, but really it's just a bunch of random squiggles. The information isn’t on the paper, it's just in my mind."

It was difficult to convince the student that the difference between order and disorder was NOT some kind of fuzzy side-effect of human perception. The suggestion that disorder (and thus entropy) is somehow a subjective concept is difficult to escape without a more mathematical treatment of entropy.

Most introductory students will be unable to fully appreciate the full S = k ln W treatment of entropy. (In fact, many of them may not know what a logarithm is!) So, in my teaching, I have tried to find a middle ground - one which hints at the fact that entropy is a NUMBER, something you can calculate, even if the actual calculation that physicists normally use is just a bit beyond our grasp in an introductory class.

Most students have had enough experience with statistics to have seen the kind of Gaussian histogram that arises from rolling two dice. But even so, I begin by having students construct this graph experimentally in small groups. We then pool the results to produce a class histogram for the sum of 2 dice. (FIGURE 1) This opens the door to make a very important point in thermodynamics - even though the rolls of each individual die are essentially random, there is a predictability inherent in the system as a whole.

--- --- --- --- ---
Pretty cool, huh.

Also... I jogged today.

DID TOO!!

computer potato...

I'm lying here reading a book this morning and it occurs to me... wow, I never DO this anymore. The Internet has almost completely displaced reading for me as a source of information and entertainment. Instead of reading for an hour before I fall asleep, I lie on the sofa with my laptop... reading blogs and news sites and chatting with strange women. I'm starting to forget how good reading can be when reading is good. I also think it's killing my attention span. (I blame the kids for that as well.)

The other thing that is happening lately is that I am getting FAT. Not just few-extra-pounds-around-the-middle fat, but like... FAT GUY fat. Why? Because I'm unemployed and all I do is sit around in sweatpants all day and EAT. I ty to console myself with the fact that once September rolls around, it will all melt away on the streets of Manhattan. Of course that's assuming I can still drag my fat ass down the block by then.

at least i can blame the appearance of my eyes on allergy season...

Ever have one of those days where you wake up having dreamt of someone who you really wish you could stop dreaming about becuase it's been like five fucking years already and yet an hour later you find yourself in the car listening to a CD that you KNOW is just going to wreck you for the rest of the fucking day but for some reason you can't really help yourself...?

Yeah. Me neither.

has ANYONE ever answered "no" to that question...?

Went to yoga class today knowing full well that Cute Pregnant Yoga Kelly was going to be out, and that her replacement was going to be Power Yoga Jackie. But I had forgotten that Power Yoga Jackie is also a Pusher.

Now I have mixed feelings about the Pushers. On one hand... you know... it IS a woman, like... touching you. And that is seldom a bad thing. On the other hand, though...

Ow?

I mean... there is good pushing and bad pushing. Like sometimes I'm in a position and I can't really go any further, because my MUSCLES just can't push any harder... it's not a flexibility issue... it's a strength issue. In that case, a push is actually really nice and stretchy in a good way. That happened a couple of times today. But sometimes, I'm like... there already... y'know? As in... if you stretch that any further it is going to break or tear or pop or something and ow, ow, ow... stop climbing my fucking back woman!! Yeah. That happened once or twice too. And you can't just say - Ow quit it - or you feel like a pussy, so you just sit there and let this woman tear your fucking tendons apart.

Anyway, I guess there are worse ways to spend a morning than having a muscular little woman walking around you saying things like "I'm going to straddle you now, if that's ok with you?".

suspend thy disbelief, little guy...

My 2 year old just watched "The Jungle Book" for the first time. The whole movie went like this...

"Takking Effants! Daddy! Yook at dem! Takking bwack CHEETAH! (that's a panther, buddy) Yook at it, Daddy! Takking MONKEYS!!

DUDE - ALL THE ANIMALS TALK!! GET OVER IT!!

chapter closed...

Just finished my last script obligation an hour ago at the coffee house. In 50 minutes I'll be officially no longer getting paid by anyone. I'll mail in the file tomorrow and put in some happy talk about the supposed freelance arrangement, but I no longer have any expectation that it's going to happen.

If the house sells soon, there will be no problem. July... August... then things will get tight.

We're already starting to argue about money... which I can't even remember the last time...

So. That's that.

Can I call myself a college professor again? Do I have to wait until the contract starts? (July) Until classes start?

I think I'll start early.

bark, bark...

Those of you with kids, have you ever had one of those days when you feel like if you were replaced by a rabid, snarling pit bull that your kids would actually be better off?

God, I hate the sound of my own voice today, but seriously... could everyone please just shut up for 10 minutes?