Jokes, Fandom, and a GIP

[zana16]

An amusing physics joke
passed on to me by Aprille

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington,
chemistry mid term exam. The answer by one student was so "profound"
that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of
course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs
heat)?



Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law, (gas
cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:


First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing over time. So
we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. Of course, if, Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.

The student received the only "A" given.



An appallingly bad joke
courtesy of sylvanstargazer

A doctor retired and followed his dream: playing golf for the rest of his life. One day on the links, he noticed that one of the foursome up ahead appeared to be swooning, but he didn't want to leave his friends. At the next hole he saw that the other golfer had gotten worse. Reluctantly, at the urging of his friends, he went up to the golfer, who was leaning against his caddie, clutching his chest.

"I think you're having a heart attack!" the doctor said.

"No, it's just some indigestion," gasped the golfer.

"Listen, I used to be a doctor, and you're having the classic symptoms of a heart attack!"

"Just let me be, and I'll be alright."

As it turned out, the golfer, who was having a heart attack, keeled over at the next hole, dead.

The doctor sadly trudged back to the clubhouse, where he related his story to the bartender.

"I told him he was having a heart attack, and he didn't believe me! Why wouldn't he listen?" sobbed the doctor.

The bartender replied, "I know what you mean. I don't like strangers, and I used to be a doctor myself. I get frustrated when people don't take my advice. But it's like they always say: no one respects the clannish ex-physician."


Zana-news:
Well, there was some stuff I wanted to update about. Then I was sidetracked by the Irish Cream and have managed to erase my memory. Mmmm, Irish Cream.

Although I do remember that lycaste and I went to UMass last night for a Tom Stoppard play, which was incredibly cute. On the bus back we met the insanity (in a good way) that is KoriandJess. I discovered upon returning to campus that last night was the drag ball. I discovered this when a young man in a cowboy hat sauntered by and said "Hi Janaki!" and I was like, whatthefuck, I don't know any tall blonde guys with moustaches, and then I'm completely bowled over because "Sonora?!" Only the femmiest straight girl I know. I thought about going too, but realized I'd just end up missing Sarah--we went together, both years, and we tied each others' ties and everything even though we weren't actually dating anymore by the second time. So I didn't.

WARNING: the following contains Zana being bitchy, elitist, and Old Skool about her fandom. Also she generalizes like mad. Deal.
I have been reading LotR slash all evening, which I should not have been, since I have several hundred pages of reading to do for my paper due Tuesday. But the really good slash, the stuff written before the movies came out, is just so incredible. These people actually know what they're talking about, can spell, and do not accidentally pair up Eowyn with Eomer, having for some reason not caught on that they are siblings. Unfortunately, most of these people (like me) ran screaming shortly after the first deluge of movieverse!fics emerged in 2001, so they do not write in the fandom anymore. Sure, there's some good new stuff, but I have never read anything particularly memorable by someone who hadn't at least read the books after the movies came out, if not before. So, yes, I am a stuck-up purist. I slash only couples that could be feasible in canon--and whoever wrote Frodo/Denethor (theirloveissonotevenfeasiblegiventhattheyneverMEET) needs to be shot. That said, I'm open to other pairings--one of the best stories out there is Elrond/Legolas and frankly the idea would never even have occurred to me--ME, the girl who slashes EVERYTHING without even thinking about it. But the author has read just about everything Tolkien ever wrote, and she uses it in the story very well.

Which brings me to the story behind my new icon. Back in my sophomore year, when the torrent of awful movieverse fics had just begun and 50% of all the Tolkienverse fanfic out there was actually decent and grammatically correct, I didn't really get the Legolas/Gimli pairing even though it's the pairing most feasible in book!canon. I didn't get it mostly because they had this great friendship going on and I was sex-phobic at the time having recently unsurfaced the memories of being raped as a kid, so I said to my resident hobbit:
"Legolas and Gimli have the perfect relationship, except that there's nothing sexual about it."
- Janaki
"Come on, Legolas says, 'I'll show you my trees, if you show me your caves.'"
- Beth
And that was the beginning of the end. And since Gimli was not done justice to in the movie (wtf was with the whole "let's go through Moria even though we've had no news of Balin for about 30 years and fear the worst" that PJ decided to stick in there, anyways?), the teenies who have invaded my fandom have left him well enough alone, thank God. So, at least 30% of L/G fics out there are good as opposed to the 2% good-to-bad ratio in the fics in general (I cringe from a fandom that has a fic titled "The Fellowship Goes to the Orthodontist"). In fact, some of the best stories in the entire fandom are L/G. When I actually get around to revamping my webpage (ie, not anytime soon), I will have to make a recs page, and that will be the ONLY category with more than one fic in it. I've read some absolutely amazing fanfic, mostly experimental fiction that's more profound than most novels I read, and I can count them on one hand. Four or five of them are L/G.

Of course, I'm not in the LotR fandom for the smut; lots of people are. There's plenty of well-written erotica fanfic out there, but I don't often read LotR stories for the smut value. That's what other fandoms are for. HP, anyone? No, not the KIDS, ew... But I often get the question "what's fanfic good for?" and there is this handful of fics that have actually deepened my appreciation of Tolkien and my understanding of his world for my reading them, and I want to have an instant computer and bring them up and say "Read! Read and you'll understand!"

Hence, my icon. My sylvanstargazer made it for me. Eeeee!

Back to Irish Cream. And laundry. Ain't my life just a barrel of excitement?

Comments

[synapsepi.livejournal.com]

HP? HP lovecraft? I *cringe* at the smutty fan fic people would write about his stories. Some things, like Cthulhu's tenticals best be left alone...

[synapsepi.livejournal.com]

errr...
it has been done...
http://www.cthulhu.org/smut/

[zana16.livejournal.com]

Oh, good Lord, no.... *cringe* mental imagery--now I'm gonna have tentacle-nightmares.

HP=Harry Potter
"not the kids"=underage sex does not in any way turn me on, so I mostly read smutty fics about the grownups--Remus/Sirius is always good, tho my otp of choice is Sirius/Snape

[sylvanstargazer.livejournal.com]

Yay! It was the second icon I ever made, and the first one was just to figure out the program :-) It makes me happy when I see people using my icons. ::warm glow::

I agree with the L/G slash being better. Actually I've become a lot more of a Gimli fan since the movies came out, precisely because it sets me apart from the girls swooning over Bloom. Diddo with Sam, except that Sam still is in the movie to an acceptable degree. Still, most of the girls who like him are straight as sticks and *like* that he is the proper, hetrosexual man in the film. ::sigh::

I hope they do make a Hobbit movie; then they would *have* to put in awesome dwarves :-)