Monday, November 24, 2008

Apparently, It's "Make Nathan Dance Like A Monkey" Day!

Since early this morning, I've been letting people push me around and tell me what needs to go on my blog. If you scroll down to today's earliest posts, you'll see that pretty much everything I'm posting is in response to some helpful tip, request, goad, demand, etc. Somehow, I'm OK with that...for a day.

So, I've set it up so that this post will stay at the top of the page until midnight. I tried to make it so that this post would stay at the top of the page until midnight, but it only showed as "Scheduled". Hey, people visiting here today may become confused. Strangely, I'm OK with that too.

So go ahead. Make the monkey dance. I'm spending most of the day at home so I'll try to respond quickly. Every response will be in the form of it's very own new post.

-------------------------

Note: Occasionally, things come completely off the rails here at Polybloggimous. This is one of those days. I'll try to remember to keep changing the time on this post so it stays at the top of the page; otherwise nobody will have a clue WTF is going on here.

45 comments:

Random Michelle K said...

I'd also like world peace.

Random Michelle K said...

To go with my rocket launcher.

Nathan said...

Done!

mattw said...

Shit! Is it Make Nathan Dance Like a Monkey Day already? I didn't have time to decorate. And we didn't set out the mustache comb for when The Great Nathan comes down the chimney in his no math required shirt to dance for good girls and boys. Of course you can't ask The Great Nathan how he is able to get to every house in one day, because that would require math.

What should I ask for this year? I better make it good, because Make Nathan Dance Like a Monkey Day only comes around once per year.

O Great Nathan, I would like a squirrel in a cowboy hat riding a saddled rooster for this most blessed of holidays.

Oh, no, wait. How about a video of The Great Nathan dancing like a monkey?

John the Scientist said...

I just want Nathan to click on my links in the Puke Bucket.

What?

mattw said...

Not the Puke Bucket links! I clicked on one of them and holey moley was that awful.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to see some video of said Nathan Monkey Dance. Kind of like Chad Orzel's monkey dance. Because THAT would be fun.

Surely Nathan, Film Geek extraordaire, has a digital video recorder laying around the house somewhere?

Anonymous said...

Would/Could you vacuum?
Anon GF

Anonymous said...

Make that "extraordinaire". Apparently it's spelling-problem Monday.

John the Scientist said...

Matt, in order to have the right to express an opinion, you have to have clicked on all of the links. :p

Random Michelle K said...

Anon GF FTW!

Anonymous said...

I would like a video of Eric dancing like a pygmy marmoset.

And Anon GF is awesome.

Anonymous said...

Well, you seem to have a lot of extra time, today.
Anon GF

Janiece said...

Anon GF, any day is a good day for Nathan to vacuum.

Bwahahaha!

Tania said...

I want happy memories of childhood and holidays.

:)

Tania said...

Nathan, listen to the Anon GF

Men who do housework get more sex

This could be a situation that leaves everyone satisfied.

Eric said...

Carol Elaine, don't you know? The pygmy marmoset dance is the dance that ends the world and opens a rift into the vortices of Infinite Pain that lie between our universe and the chaotic realm the foolish ancients named "Hell" because humans cannot conceive of the terrifying, mind-cracking truth.

Nobody does the pygmy marmoset dance. Nobody. Even if it is pretty adorable for the first five-point-forty-seven seconds, you know, right before the mindless screaming and mass suicides start.

kimby said...

I would like Gene Kelly's to sing in the rain. The rain that we presently have falling here..instead of snow :(

Thanks Santa.

vince said...

I would like Monty Python and cheese.

Actually, I'd like several stiff drinks, no family issues, and a week without someone wanting me to do something, even though they're willing to pay me.

But I'll settle for Monty Python and cheese.

And no degloving.

Anonymous said...

And I'd like no migraines, a six month sabbatical to write and an actual vacation of some sort on the horizon.

Barring that, I have another wish!

::small voice::

Chapter 36.

Anonymous said...

Eric, if I ever come to your house for dinner, I am NOT drinking the kool-aid.

Random Michelle K said...

Vince, that's why you should make sure that any rings you wear can be cut away with the tools available at your local hospital.

MWT said...

What? We've gone this far in the day without making Nathan attempt to do any math?

Here Nathan, solve this:

2x + 4y = 36
15x - 2y = 20

What are x and y? :D

Anonymous said...

Eric, you namby pamby. That's what you get a slayer for. I mean, sure, the title says they're just supposed to slay vampires, but I've found that they're equally good at saving the universe as we know it from being drawn into a soul-wrenching, flesh-flaying vortex of hell from which there is no escape. Even when the pygmy marmoset dance is done.

This blonde slayer chick in California must've saved our universe at least a hundred times over the course of seven years - I've seen the historical records. I'm sure she or one of her ilk (did you know that they train all over the world? Really!) could take on pygmy marmosets.

Nathan said...

MWT,

I don't even have the first clue how to go about figuring that out. I'm sure there's some really easy algebra for it, but I took that exam years ago and promptly forgot.

Just by thinking a little, I'm guessing that 'X' is a fairly small fraction.

MWT said...

Bravo! :) X is indeed a small fraction.

That's farther than I was expecting you to get on it. Really I just threw a bunch of random numbers together for the humor value, not for actual solving. ;)

Nathan said...

well show me the solution!

Random Michelle K said...

2x + 4y = 36
15x - 2y = 20

x = 18 - 2y
y = 7.5x - 20

x = 18 - 2(7.5x - 20)

x = 18 - 15x - 40

16x = -22

x = -22/16

x = -11/8

Is that right?

Random Michelle K said...

Shit! Foiled by simple math! That 20 towards the beginning was 10. DRAT!

Random Michelle K said...

- 1/8

Is that right?

Nathan said...

I hope you're not asking me.

Tania said...

Cool! This is exactly the portion algebra that I've been tutoring.

Michelle, you posted

x = 18 - 2(7.5x - 20)

x = 18 - 15x - 40

Which, never mind the 10, the sign should have changed when you calculated -2*-20 to a +40.

So, making the correction on that and the division, the values I come up with are....

x = 2.375
y = 7.8125

I've got to help this poor kid get out of high school so he can sit in his room watching ESPN and doing bong hits without Algebra homework hanging over his head.

Nathan said...

OK, here's the best part. I never bothered coming to the blog to look at the math problem...I just looked at the version blogger emails to me. The problem with that is that a lot of times, the formatting gets so whacked that the message is unreadable in the email.

It looked readable in the email, so I went with that. So basically, I was trying to solve a problem totally different from the one MWT posted...and the one you guys were working on.

I was trying to solve

2x + 4y = 3615x - 2y = 20

That space "new line" thingy after the 36 makes all the difference in the world. BTW, I don't know if the problem I just posted has a workable solution. Give it a whirl.

Random Michelle K said...

Ack!

That's what I get for trying to do math in my head instead of with a pencil on paper.

vince said...

Nathan, the shirt I sent you would have helped you solve the problem. At least as MWT sent it, not as you saw it.

And Michelle, any rings that, due to a cosmic calamity I couldn't remove myself, wouldn't not need to be removed from any body part that is normally required by law to be covered.

Eric said...

::sigh::

Carol Elaine, Carol Elaine...

Carol Elaine, Slayers, including the long-lived blond last seen, if I recall correctly, dancing in Italy after her hometown was turned into a crater*, can't do anything about dancing pygmy marmosets.

It's against union rules.

____________________

*I haven't read the "Season 8" comics and, to be honest, don't care to. Actually, and I hate to say it, I sort of wish they'd left her in the ground at the end of Season 5 if they were going to have her mooning over her attempted rapist in Season 7. Just saying.

MWT said...

Woo... successful hijack with math. :D (At least until Eric came back.)

2x + 4y = 36
15x - 2y = 20

x + 2y = 18
x = 18 - 2y
15(18-2y) - 2y = 20
270 - 30y - 2y = 20
270 - 32y = 20
32y = 270 - 20
32y = 250
y = 250/32 = 7.8125
x = 18 - 2*7.8125 = 2.375

... which means that I actually did it wrong the first time, because I subtracted instead of added at the "-30y - 2y" step. Tricky negatives! Sorry Nathan, x isn't a very small fraction after all. ;)

MWT said...

As for the other one:

2x + 4y = 3615x - 2y = 20

3615x - 2x = 4y + 2y = 20
3613x = 6y = 20

x = 20/3613 = 0.00553557
y = 20/6 = 3.33333...

:D

Random Michelle K said...

Vince,

I was meaning platinum rings, or rings made with another metal that can't be cut by the tools in the emergency room.

i.e. if you were to severely burn your hands they'd have to take your rings off. If they couldn't cut them off, you'd be left with the horrid degloving.

Anonymous said...

Eric, if things keep going the way they're going, many unions will be busted, including the Slayer Union. And we can all be saved from the wrath of the pygmy marmosets. Frankly, I'm willing to risk that to see you do the pygmy marmoset dance.

___________________________________

I haven't read the Season 8 comics either. I have mixed feelings about seasons 6 & 7 - I certainly understand what you're saying, and I sympathize, but if that had happened, there would have been no musical episode, which I simply cannot live without (even though Whedon gave Tony Head the hardest song to sing - maybe because Whedon knew Head could handle it). And Magic Giles! I loves me some Magic Giles. Or Giles in any form, to be honest.

___________________________________

Glad Eric was able to momentarily wrest the comment thread from recreational algebra and Jeri and Michelle kept it up - here's my attempt to do the same. 'Cause that shit's just weird.

Ya know, I'd never heard of degloving until I started hanging out with you lot. That's something about which I would have been very happy to remain ignorant.

Anonymous said...

But... what about my chapter 36 request? I got it in before midnight. :(

Our Hero really, really needs to 1) get elected and 2) get laid, in no particular order.

Nathan said...

Jeri,

I didn't reply to that one, cause I've made enough promises about that one without any follow-through to date.

As to him getting elected, I don't think that's the ending I'm headed toward. At least it wasn't when I started. And he's gotten laid once in the story already...I just closed the curtain before it happened. :D (I am not going to try my hand at writing a sex-scene.)

Tania said...

Hand. Sex scene. Who says they're mutually exclusive?

Not many people I can think of.

Nathan said...

Now why did I know using the word hand in that sentence was going to be a mistake?

Tania said...

Hey, if I'm anything I'm predictable. Michelle is the random one.