In a recent e-mail, a friend included some particularly acerbic comments on papers he'd recently read. When I suggested that he add Curmudgeon-in-Training to his signature, he wrote:

In training? I'm crabbier than a lobster pot in August and as full of pointless homeletics as a bean is farts. My eyes are in a perpetual state of roll and my head wags like an oscillating fan. People come from far and near to hear me sigh and pronounce jeremiads on life's little pleasures.

At the end of the e-mail, in his signature block, was the title Trained Curmudgeon.

My friends crack me up.

• Currently drinking: Dregs of black coffee
• Currently reading: Technical prose which seemed more lucid when I wrote it