The spelling bee

I watched the last hour and a half of the spelling bee on ABC last night. 4 of the last 7 were Indian girls. With names like Aishwarya, Kavya, Ramya and Anamika. The words were weird...as usual. Nothing we'd ever heard of..like palatschinken..a pancake of some kind.

So, they can spell oriflamme and neufchatel and oeillade. But Aishwarya misses menhir. Menhir. I say..get your noses out of the dictionary and go read an Asterix comic already. Its almost ironic. That was the only word (apart from iliopsoas and Becquerel) that I could spell correctly.

When I have kids..they will be spanked if they ever read a dictionary. And for every A they get in school, they'll be grounded at home. They can be Wimbledon champions or bikers. Or struggling artists. But definitely not overachieving spellers who go on to become neurosurgeons. Not to take anything away from these clearly intelligent (and supremely hard-working) kids. But it just seems to me to be a sort of boring competition. But thats just me.

For the moment, lets all of us South Indians forget the ignominy heaped on us by Kavya Viswanathan and bask in the reflected glory of Kavya Shivshankar instead! Nice job Kavya!

Joke of the day

This morning my advisor was laughing when I walked into his room for our weekly chat. He says, we have a student coming in the summer, and its going to be really confusing, guess why? I was like..Oh..I dunno. He says we already have a Hong (himself) and a Hang (post-doc) in the lab. Guess what this student's name is? I was like..dunno...you tell me.

His name is Hung.

Can you believe that..we'll have a Hong, a Hang and a Hung. I mean this is hilarious. I laughed for about 5 minutes before we started to talk science.

Made my day, it did.

Season finales

So, I'm addicted to House and Bones. They both had their season finales this week. House had a pretty interesting case of "alien hand syndrome" and a hallucination that he did it with Cuddy. The soap opera twists are why we really watch the show...the medicine is just a sideshow anyway. And the ending was pretty nifty. I can buy that House hallucinated the sex and everything else. How he still managed to be his usually brilliant self and figure out his patient I do not know. I have a bone to pick with the House producers. Why do the season enders always have to be so damn dark? Last year Amber died. This year House went to a Mental Hospital. And Cuddy. I don't get Cuddy. She's a conflicted woman she is. Anyway..the season ender was not too bad, but not great either. A solid B-minus.

Bones, is a totally different story. Their season finale was total, utter and complete rubbish. There was no case that anyone even superficially cared about. It was some weird story/alternate universe/dream thing that annoyed me, my roommate and every Bones fan out there. We love Bones because of "I don't know what that means" Brennan and the Cocky belt buckle wearing Booth. Not some lovesick couple who are totally secure in their love for each other. Thats not Bones and Booth. Also, we love Bones because of the totally far out Forensic Science that mostly makes no sense but is cool to watch. Also, we love their holograph machine and we like to see Hodgins and Angela get it on. We like the chemistry between Bones and Booth, we like that she is super-intelligent and he's quite accepting of the fact without getting all touchy about it. We like her lack of social skills. We love Sweets for his lovable puppy dog eyes and his psychobabble. After last season's Gormogon shocker, this finale was a total letdown. Also, the whole amnesia thing. Was that really necessary? What is this, Days of our lives? Get over yourselves. I can deal with Bones and Booth not getting together...that is A OK. But this whole cow patty in the form of a season finale is not acceptable. Sorry. You get an F.

Lie to me had an excellent season ender. Twists and turns, accidents and separations. Love and infidelity and terrorist attacks. I like Tim Roth. But since the show is only about 11 episodes old, its too early to make a judgement about it. They still have plenty of time to screw it up. Also, Lie to Me has a totally far out premise as its basis. It might be based in science, but certainly isn't as solid as they make it out to be. I liked last weeks' episode even better than the season ender. There's nothing better than a well-played serial killer angle. Good on you, Lie to me. So far, A minus.

NCIS ends next week. Should see some sparks what with Tony killing Ziva's boyfriend and all.

I do work as well. I know this doesn't sound like it. But I do. Promise.