The Bathtub

Shiny Happy Caitlar: Queen Bee

Andy Poo and I were hanging out the other day and while we were waiting for our clay facial masks and pedicures to dry, we flipped on the TV to find much to our delight that one of the best movies ever made was on: Mean Girls. I love Mean Girls, not only because it is actually a very funny and well-written film, but because I feel like it truly reveals the inner-workings of teenage girls. Although it doesn't really explain why girls treat each other the way they do, it is an accurate portrayl for the most part of how girls can be. The Queen Bee is central to this theme. Just like LiLo in her last commercially successful role, I find myself drawn to the Queen Bee of the film, Regina George; I agree with Lindsay's character Cady when she says, "the weird thing about hanging out with Regina was that I could hate her, and at the same time, I still wanted her to like me."

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E-Bathing: Bee-bay

Bees are all over ebay. They are on ceramic figures and applique tee-shirts and a ridiculous number of teacher-related crap. Many of these items include ridiculous bee puns, and are best left un-publicized. There is, however, an entire genre of bee merchandise that merits exploration. After the jump, bees!

The Omniscient Omtubsman: Justin Douglas Soiled the Tub

Justin Douglas is a jerk. I once heard an anecdote that he invited his whole cross country team over to dinner while he was still in high school for a nice dinner and tricked the whole team into eating dog food. Why would he do such a thing? Because Justin Douglas is the type of guy that looks like he'd be very nice and mild-mannered but actually, underneath his polite exterior, is just a jerk who revels in screwing with people.

Thus, when Justin Douglas first proposed making "Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil" the theme for last week I wasn't really all that surprised. It just supported my working thesis that Justin Douglas is a jerk. For those who aren't in the Tub's inner circle, our internal communications take the form of long email chains among the contributors. The email chain that notified the other contributors that Knut Hamsun's opus would be our topic came with the subject "next week's theme: knut hamsun's nobel prize winning novel "The Growth of the Soil" from Justin Douglas, with no text in the body of the email. What followed was a chain of 27 emails expressing various levels of disgust, confusion and shockingly, some support. But the common theme was disbelief. Would a tubtributor really pick such an arcane topic that many of the Tub's contributors had never even heard of the subject of their writing? Yes, as confirmed by Justin Douglas in two subsequent emails:

KELLYq & a: A Lessonz about Suffixerz. Seriouxbeez

Primarily my services in the tub are advice-oriented. My dual degrees in adviceonomy and adviceology have served me well lo these many weeks. However, I'll be donning a different hat for today's post: the hat of a teacher.
By now, you may have noticed that I occasionally will add ridiculous suffixes (-erz, -x, -zorz,-beez) to my words when I speak or type. I typically do this in the comments section.  Lauren as well has adopted this pluralizing, suffixating lifestyle, adding "z" and "x" to many words which did not have it previously. Lauren has chronicled two seperate instances (and possibly more, though I can't be bothered to find them right now) of this bastardization of human speech. While it is generally rather humorous, it occasionally renders conversations relatively meaningless.
Many of our friends and colleagues continually mock this speech pattern (Phylan, Justin), while others (Caitlar, O.O., Jeromerz) have adopted it (to a lesser extent) in their own speech.
Today, I've made a worksheet to help you too learn the ways of bastardizing your speech patternsby adopting "modern" suffixes.. This worksheet focuses on suffixes. An answer key will be posted tomorrow!  Study hard: if I notice you slacking, I will give a pop quiz. (Yes, I can do that.)

One Nation Under Jerome: No Hablo Ingles

Sorry folks, this will not be a satisfactory post.  I don't even know what the theme is.  It could be leprachauns, or the gout, or diseases Rory has. 

I'm actually in Spain, on a fact-finding mission to decide whether I should pen a Spanish column "Un Nacion de Jarom."  I'm pretty sure I shouldn't.  But who the hell knows.

See ya next week!

Too Much Information: The Five Ps of Bees

For a bunch of American 5th-8th graders and their families, this was already Bee Week before The Bathtub had anything to say about it.  258 kids--most of them even nerdier than Justin Douglas--have descended on our nation's capital for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which starts tomorrow and, after five grueling rounds, concludes Thursday night in a live, televised championship round on ABC from 8-10 p.m.

That's right--prime time, baby.  And these kids deserve it.

If you've ever caught the bee on TV before, or if you've seen the fantastic documentary Spellbound, then you don't need me to convince you that Thursday's finals are worth watching.  You already know.  I'll be watching too, with the nostalgic perspective of a former competitor who still cringes at the ding of a bell.  I never made it big time (in retrospect, I was just a bit too well-adjusted), though there were fewer rounds than you could count on your fingers separating me from the Scripps stage at one point. So I know these kids and how they tick.  And I know the edge that separated me from the winners.  After the jump, I'll tell you the five qualities that turn a good speller into a champ.

[Cue Eminem's "Lose Yourself."*]

Reasonable Doubt: There Is Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself. And Bees. You Should Also Fear Bees.

I'm afraid of bees.  I have pretty funny reaction to them.  When I see one (or god forbid, more) coming at me, I panic.  I stop breathing for about an instant, and my heart jumps into my throat like I just took a nose dive off a tall building.  Once I was doing roof repairs and found a beehive just under the awning of the roof, and I literally jumped off a short building to avoid the swarm.

And that was before I got stung.

Since the roof incident, I've been stung, and I know it's no big deal.  I take a little pleasure in the fact that that yellow asshole is dead and I remain quite healthy.  Because of the irrational fear, I am also afraid of everything near me that might be a bee, until I see differently.  Knowing that a bee sting is nothing more than a very sharp rubberband snap does not assuage my fear in the slightest.

It also doesn't keep me indoors or out of the woods or even away from beehives (Sometimes I wander near them just to get my blood pumping.  Cheaper than coffee!).  I'll always be afraid of them, and I know I don't like the results of being stung, but hell, that's life and I'll be damned if I'm going to do anything any different.  Being afraid of bees is the worst part about them.  It's hard to look cool when you're ducking and dodging a butterfly just because you saw something flying out of the corner of your eye.

Where am I going with all of this?  Well, I'm afraid of Bs in the exact same manner.

Too Much Information: Let's See If I'm Funnier on Tuesdays

First off, the theme this week is "Bees."  Poor Caitlar has food poisioning, but she chose that for this week.  I think it's a great theme and I hope she is back to feeling shiny and happy in no time.

Second, due to the holiday I will be posting tomorrow.

Nerdish Leanings: Bees Save the Future from Robot Apocalypse

Clanky has cleverly arranged for Justin Douglas to be indisposed this week. That's right: Clanky travelled back in time, engineered history to culminate in the U.S. Civil War, and then nurtured a grassroots movement for the creation of "Decoration Day". All this was done with the express purpose of removing Jusin Douglas's meddling influences for a short period of time: but long enough by far to suit Clanky's needs.