Expect Me When You See Me

I just had the best exam ever! It was for zooarchaeology and he'd told us we'd really just have to identify a single animal bone and tell him all about it, but I kinda hadn't believed it would be that easy. And yet it was. I walked in and he handed me a femur! (which, while it isn't the easiest bone in the body to identify (there are no easy bones) is relatively straightforward). I told him everything I knew about it from latin names to it's purpose and design, and that was it. It was brilliant!

Of course, I had a major advantage over everyone else having spent a month of my life sorting through fragmentary human skeletal material, thus I already knew the names of all the bones and the basic latin terms and just had to memorize a few of the rarer ones and more generic terms plus usage (mammalian bones being almost exactly the same as human bones, just differently shaped in places). It was still so lovely to have such an easy exam, since I was well prepared to explain the entire skeleton if it was called for. Pity the exam only counts for 10% of my grade.

And now, more quotes from my Zooarch. professor. They are unfortunately the last set of quotes since he is returning to Budapest tomorrow. Oh well.

On bone size - "You have wee little sheepy bones too."

On bone tools - "One of my favourite tools is the beaver mandible chisel."

On neolithic tools resembling shoe horns - "I don't know what you call them, those spoons that you use for putting on shoes."

On his elk obsession - "I always wanted elks."

On zooarchaeologists' competiveness - "Is my sheep earlier than your sheep?"

On his dog catching a live chicken and accidently letting it go - "Lucky for me since it wasn't my chicken."

During the exam - "I must ask you a nasty question... What is your name?"

It's freezing cold out. I just got back from an extra lecture on the colour of animals in archaeology, done by my zooarchaeology professor, which is the only reason I attended. Now I have less then an hour before I have to decide if I want a cold walk to and from karate tonight for a seminar which I'm not at all sure about, or if I want to skip that and go to a flatwarming party, or stay home and watch the tele. Guess which one is winning.

Quotes from zooarchaeology professor:

On drawing animals - "Now I'll make a nice and graceful, tasty cow."

On drawing bulls - "This is a male. I indicate this with a horn and not something more pornographic."

On domestication - "Domesticity. That's the end of free love for domestic animals."

Bowling went well. I surprised myself by winning the two games we played, and ended up with a really cool Tokyopop poster. I'm also rather surprised that of the three icons I had in contests this weekend, two of them won first place.

I realized last night that I forgot to post my Zooarchaeology professor's best quotes from Friday's lecture, so here they are.

On leaving class - "If you just fall over, you can leave at any time."

On his computer's wallpaper - "Oh, even kitty's back. That's good." He then proceeded to tell us what great scavengers cats are and how they'd devour anything, bones and all.

On his slide show not working - "I tested everything to make sure it worked perfectly, which is why it isn't."

On his slide show - "The photos are not so pretty. They are all dead animals."
(Which wasn't technically true... in fact, there were scarily cute pictures of tiny dogs posed strategically with bones, both of which I have found on the internet.)
( Cute )
I'm not exaclty sure how we were supposed to take him seriously when he explained what ferocious carnivores dogs are while we were staring at those pictures.

On thinking - "I hope your brains are clicking around."

On finding hamster bones in a burial - "Of course, it was not a ritual hamster sacrifice."

On feet - "I'm so excited about metapodia!"

On eating - "the fun of having a delilcious spoonful of marrow."

On feeling your own bones - "You can feel your patella. It's one of those bones that's very handy."
"You can feel it in the bathroom at night. Ah! This is my calcaneus!"

On not drinking in the lab - "If someone peeks in, they shouldn't see an orgy going on with mineral water."

On his drawing skills - "This is *not* a tortise! It just looks that way."

On finding animal bones to show us - "Oh! These are human. Sorry."

On what he forgot to tell us in the last lecture - "I woke up at night and said, "Jesus! I didn't mention the epistal sylopodia!"

Well, it appears the black belt fairies were feeling generous per say this time around. Today, after over a month since it was shippped, my black belt that my mum sent me finally arrived. I stared at it in bemusement, and would have gone back to sleep if not for my portfolio which, while completed the night before, had to be printed out. This took an exceedingly long time, but it's handed in and that's all that matters.

In zooarchaeology we have a new lecturer from Budapest who has a habit of phrasing things in such... interesting ways. A few examples -

On comparing antler bone to regular bone - "not your bones which are swimming in blood."

On skull survival - "The happiest part of the dead animal's head is the teeth!"

"Thoracic vertebrae have extra articular surfaces that make them look like Winnie the Pooh in a tophat."

On mammalian birth - "Babies and puppies are sort of softy and gushy and can be squeezed out any which way."

That, combined with his habit of drawing smiley faces on random animal parts, had me stiffling laughter through half the lecture.