Tonight’s accidental discovery: it turns out a handful of M&Ms and a glass of gewürtztraminer are a lot less incompatible than I would have guessed.

I was looking forward to getting into the office today and brewing myself a cup of French Vanilla tea I’d bought on Friday and stashed in my desk drawer. I love vanilla, and was really looking forward to drinking some the morning’s oatmeal. Somehow, though, despite its rich vanilla aroma, this tea manages to taste almost nothing like the storied bean. It’s just “tea”. Meh. What a letdown.

Phencyclidine, better known as PCP or “angel dust“, was first synthesized in 1926* for use as an anesthetic but discontinued because of the disassociative (read: gonzo freakout) side effects. In 1952 it was officially patented as an anesthetic but withdrawn again from human use in 1965 because—surprise—it still caused unpleasant psychotic effects. Nonetheless, it was remarketed in 1967 as an animal anesthetic but withdrawn again for pretty much the same reasons as before. Einstein’s definition of insanity comes to mind.

*Depending on which source is consulted.

It’s been a long, long time since I actually had to care about it, but I realized the other day that I’ve been completely compulsive about my gig line ever since I got dressed down for it by dear old Lieutenant Dye many years ago. Funny how some things stick without you even being conscious of it.

The University has been getting deluged with phishing attempts recently. Many purport to be from generic organizations like “Webmail Support Team” or “IT Staff”, but of late we’ve been seeing spearphishing attempts as well, spoofing UC Davis e-mail addresses, and the like.

One of the more pathetic attempts billed itself as being from “UC DAVIS UNIVERSITY OF CARLIFORNIA (WEBMAIL ACCOUNT SUPPORT)”. Thanks to the egregious misspelling, it doesn’t appear anybody was suckered by this hamfisted bid, but it did inspire this glorious vision:

After some mutual pondering with my officemates and a quick bit of research, it turns out that the plural form of cervix is cervices, and that, technically, the plural of octopus should be octopodes, since it’s a word of Greek derivation, not Latin, as commonly held, due to its ending in -us.