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2002-04-22 | 11:29 a.m.

Falling asleep last night, Duff explained that archaeologists, er, no, paleosociologists had put forth a theory about why yawning is "contagious." Having to do with a sort of truce called between warring alpha males at bedtime. So of course I had to make fun and ask him if that was a burgeoning field, paleosociology. Or did he mean, I wondered, paleosociobiology? Or paleosociobotany?

"Whatever," he said, yawning.

(But you know, "paleosociology" is a real word. I just looked it up.)

Then I remembered seeing a promo for a show about "our common ancestor," and he said, "Hey, Luuuuuuuth-cy," like Ricky Ricardo, and I said, "No, Eve," because that's what they call her, our hypothetical yet not hypothetical ancestor. Lucy is just ... Lucy. So then I wanted to know how come the Neanderthals and homo sapiens never cross-bred. He said, "I don't know. I never understood that. Maybe they weren't in the same place at the same time."

(But you know, they were in the same places at the same time. I just looked it up.)

So then I wanted to know if "Cro-Magnon Man" is the same ... thing, classification-wise, as Neanderthals and homo sapiens. "I don't know," Duff said. "I don't know that much about archaeology."

"That's not archaeology!" I said. "That's ... paleo-, paleo-, paleosociology."

(But you know, it kind of is archaeology, though the more correct term is apparently paleoanthropology. I just looked it up.)

I fell asleep chuckling over something else entirely, though. I was remembering how he had played a game on Yahoo called Graffiti, based on Pictionary, which requires you to draw things with your mouse. This is very difficult, of course, even though they provide you with several different colored "crayons" to use. He got the word "bagpipes" and while drawing the pipe leading from the bag (a riot of orange and red) to the bagpiper's mouth (with me in the background shrieking, "add a kilt! a kilt!"), someone guessed that the word was "vomit." I thought I would die laughing.

I'm on deadline today. You see me procrastinating.

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