Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Productivity, with gender

I started seriously working today on the lecture series I'm running this year. I'm very excited, as it will combine musicology and hostessing, two of my skills. Hosting, you might correct me to say, but you would be wrong. My abilities are distinctly those of the hostess, baking and cleaning ahead of time, tupperwaring leftovers and cleaning afterward, and making sure everyone is happy and having fun during. Go go gadget gender stereotypes!


Speaking of genderisms, Bitch PhD. linked to a silly little internet widget today that claims to calculate your gender based on your browsing history. I was intrigued, of course, and I clicked the button. My results?

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 95%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 5%

I had no idea that women were so much more likely to look at gay male pornography! Astounding! Actually, the results seemed largely to be based on my recently frequenting the websites of 1) cable internet providers and 2) cheap airlines/cheap flight tickets. Plus 3), LiveJournal.


Anyway, after that sidebar, I return to productivity. Today I met with someone I have decided to call the Vampire Slayer to discuss the lecture series, compiled a list of 31 notables to possibly invite as lecturers, composed an apologetic letter to a speaker we accidentally forgot about last year, put possible lecture dates into iCal for the whole year, and roughly planned food for the entire series, all between 2:30 and 5:00 PM.

After 5:00 I input my fall schedule into iCal, decided on a way to use up the Mysterious X's strawberry cream cheese frosting, made some substantial progress on Project Wedding Present, figured out what to do about GoddamnFuckingAwfulTimeWarnerCable, and ate all that was left of the delicious salad from last night's dinner on homemade bagel chips. Before 2:30 I had a lovely lunch at Fritto Misto with Fatso and his mother. This was preceded (around noonish) by a lovely conversation with an equally lovely customer service representative at TimeWarnerShitForBrainsCable during which I explained that they needed to stop calling me to schedule an installation, as cable was still connected to the apartment and I couldn't have my new service installed without first disconnecting the old service. How did I know this useful fact? I'd had this conversation with two other customer service reps from TimeSchmuckWarnerCrapfest earlier this week. In fact, one was earlier this day. At 6:15 AM. While I am quite happy about my potentially much faster and slightly cheaper internet service, I am not happy enough to enjoy a 6:15 AM call to set it up. Especially since I had already hashed out the unable-to-install-new-service issues yesterday.

Tomorrow the TimeWarnerCableAssface a few blocks away opens at 8:30. I will be there with proof of not being my old roommate, account info for my new service, and a can of whoop-ass. Just in case.


This productive surge makes up for my several days of just hanging out and having fun with friends. My guilt is assuaged, and I can now have fun this weekend.

ADDENDUM: This post is about eighteen hours late because of my favorite people in the world, my cable internet providers. Read it as posted late last night.

4 comments:

Alexandra said...

1. Wtf is going on with the cable/internet? I feel guilty that I'm not helping you, as clearly this will directly affect me. Is there anything I can do? (I know the answer is "not really" but asking makes me feel less guilty.)

2. I did that internet browsing history thingy and my result was 50% male, 50% female. This seems somehow very significant, but what could it possibly mean? (Probably answer: "nothing really.")

Unknown said...

1. my browser freaked out so i couldn't take the test. gender tests are usually 75%-99% sure i am a man. sexuality tests say i am an extraordinarily straight female. clearly something is misfiring.

2. more importantly: if it's any consolation to you, your description of the cablemorons made me literally roll around laughing.

3. things are betterish.

Alexandra said...

In the comment above I meant "probable" and not "probably." And I also, I wanted to add that I am really glad that frosting is getting eaten because it is SUPER-DUPER.

Kate said...

clearly, i need to learn from you about hostessing, as i'm great with the baking aspect, but once the guests arrive, i'm clueless.

and ... wow. my result was 100% female, 0% male. guess i'm girlier than i thought...