Today is my parents' anniversary. Thirty-three years married, and, although the idea is just mind-boggling to me, they were probably even in love for a few of those years. Well, at least they both remembered the event... and by that, I mean at least my dad's not the stereotypical absentminded, neglectful man-fool too consumed with football and farting to remember the day he made a solemn vow with the love of his life. We're all familiar with that character, thanks to every sitcom ever made, right?

Anyway, Dad remembered his anniversary, and he got Mom a card: a blank card with a reproduction of Henri Matisse's Parrot Tulips (II) on the cover. Inside, in his illegible rollerball handwriting:

2004

To Barbara,

With all my Love on our anniversary.
You do so much for me.
Love,
   Dave

Aside from the all-too-blatant truth of "You do so much for me," Granted, it ain't the most moving thing ever written, but I never thought Dad had that in him. Seriously, this is a guy who's going to make a, ahem!, romantic gesture tonight — he and the wife are staying overnight in New York City and they're having dinner at a place called Rosie O'Grady's. If that sounds like the name of an Irish pub, well, it is. And I'll bet anything that they'll be playing Celtic folk music at Rosie's, cause Celtic folk music makes Dad cream himself. (Eeeewwww.) Gaelic — the language of love.

Thing is, Dad never even considered taking Mom to some fancy French restaurant or going tango dancing for, well, certainly not for their anniversary. Or for anything. There's no passion there. Mom's card, in case you're wondering, is pre-printed: "I'm so lucky to be married to my best friend." Which I suppose is a nice sentiment, aside from the rather sad fact that Mom doesn't really have any friends besides Dad. But where's the love? And without the love, what's the point?

Criminal Elements

I was waiting for the train this morning, and there were these two delinquents waiting at the train station and griping across the tracks about their various overnight stays in jail. The girl on the north side said she was ROR'ed — either a Law and Order fan or familiar enough with our criminal justice system to know the lingo — five times while the guy on the south side, looking like the poor man's Fat Joe, said he would've been ROR'ed except that he had a warrant out on him in Piscataway. Poor him.

Now, this leads to a fundamental DUHHH question: why the hell would anybody come to Fanwood just to get arrested? I mean, there's nothing to do in Fanwood in the first place! The only nightclub in town burned to the ground... Are these losers scoring hits at the Dunkin' Donuts at 1:45 in the morning?

As the story goes on, the chick complained about the fifty dollar processing and handling fee the cops charge you when you get arrested, while our delinquent's "boy" came by, bailed him out, and offered him a blunt as soon as he got into the car. Here's a good sign you're addicted to drugs: when you can't wait to get out of the police station parking lot before you get stoned.

Now, the whole thing pisses me off.... Let's say you get arrested once. Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you'll learn your lesson, you deserve a second chance. But these two assholes get arrested over and over and over again, and instead of going to prison, they're having a better time of it than I'm having following the law. It's endemic in our culture, and this is why I love watching drunk drivers get plowed over by big rigs on World's Wildest Police Videos and hate it when the police try to rescue the stop-sign-running jerk trapped in his car underneath a tractor trailer. Let the damn criminals be miserable, I say! Instead, we're all about "rehabilitation," which is only nice when it works, and even then in a limited capacity. Like in that toys-for-guns program they had a few years back, or the way people are getting billions of dollars for getting emphysema from smoking, or that Newsweek article six years ago where they sat in among the college admissions officers at Northeastern as they chose to admit a reformed juvie offender over an equally qualified law-abiding high school student. It's so freaking frustrating! How about, for once in our society, we reward people for not smoking, for not drinking, for not doing drugs, never owning a gun, not cheating on their spouse... in short, why don't we reward people for not fucking their lives up in the first place?

My parents' anniversary is this Saturday, and despite my usual inclination to forget these sorts of occassions, I went to the Hallmark store to buy a pre-packaged congratulatory note. Every time I go shopping at Hallmark — usually around Christmastime — I run into the same bind, namely that I can never find the impersonal corporatized greeting to sincerely express my deep personal sentiments. All the cards are mushy and saccharine — and rhyming — "After all the things that we've been through/I'm still madly in love with you." It's a tear-jerker.

But this year, I found the perfect card for my parents' anniversary, one that says, "I'm usually too busy to care about you, but here's an anniversary card." And says it gracefully.

Through the year so many
caring thoughts go unexpressed—
the daily rush
gets in the way somehow—
But both of you are always loved
and wished the very best...
and what better time
to tell you than now.

Okay, it still rhymes. (I didn't quite read the whole card at the store, so it took me by surprise right now.)

A Tale of Two Interviews

Here's a story about my experiences interviewing for a job, some job, any freaking job. I went to this interview on Monday where I ran into one of those know-it-alls from computer science after computer science class. He wasn't interviewing me or anything, he was just being off-putting as usual.

The real interviewer — the first interviewer — was explaining the company's product to me... and I was understanding him. I signalled my understanding with my trademark yeah-nod, in which I nod and say "Yeah" to indicate my comprehension. Apparently the yeah-nod is the interview equivalent of bluffing with a pair of tens showing; maybe I'm telling the truth, maybe I'm bullshitting just to make you happy. "Don't just say yeah..." Interviewer Guy tells me, as if I'm not a relatively smart person. General rule of thumb for Interviewer Guy: if you can understand the concept, then I can understand the concept. But I digress. Point is, now I'm self-conscious about blurting out "yeah." If only Usher were as self-conscious as I was (am).

But that's not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about the second interviewer, who seemed just as inhuman as the first. (Note: I've already got the feeling that I won't be hired for this job.) We were shooting the breeze, chatting about my favorite classes when out of absolutely fucking nowhere, the guy asks me: "What is first-order predicate calculus?"

I'm stunned. I thought the pop quizzes were over now that I graduated. It's not that I don't know the answer; it's that if my artificial intelligence professor gave me that question on a test, it'd take me a minute or two to figure out how to word it. "Well, uh, it's, first-order predicate calculus, it's this type of logic, it's the most expressive logic that there is, it's with the universal quantifier and existential quantifier." It's a B- answer for content and a D+ answer for cogency. Where the hell did that come from?

I guess it came from the same place as "What's the universal quantifier?" and "What's the existential quantifier?" and "What's a predicate?" and "What's special about predicates?" That's like asking what's special about a hammer? It's a tool for accomplishing a task. I have no idea what this guy's asking. But he keeps going.

"What's Gödel's incompleteness theorem?"

"Do you remember the proof?" No. Do you?

"What's a Turing Machine?" It's sort of this theoretical computer model, there's this tape divided into cells and the machine writes symbols on the tape and moves left or right based on a transition function δ—

"Let's pretend I know what a Turing Machine is. What are they used for?" A Turing Machine is just a computer, it can do anything a computer can.... I mean, numbers, what are they used for?

"Well, there's one thing in particular." The Church-Turing Thesis? "What's that?" Sorry I asked. "No, there's one type of problem that whenever you say 'Turing' everybody thinks..." The halting problem? "Well, the halting problem is one example. This is a problem that Turing famously resolved..."

Undecidability? "Yes." Okay, Reader, note there's no exclamation point. Nothing. Not impressed at all that we were finally on the same wavelength. You see, when I think of undecidability, I think of Cantor and the whole proof by diagonalization listing the Turing machines against the inputs...

"Well, I can see that you know the proof. But you won't be doing any of that on this job."

Asshole!

---

So, today I went to another interview, against my better judgment. Difference between the two companies: one had money to offer, the other didn't. See if you guess which was which.

My Wednesday interview went something like this...

Interviewer: So, I see from your resume that you have a college degree.

Me: Yeah.

[Shit! There's that word again...]

Interviewer: When can you start?

Tastes Like IKEA

Don't get me wrong; I love IKEA. I love everything about IKEA: the catalog, the 75¢ champaigne flutes, the ballpit, the assemble-it-yourself furniture that makes you feel like you're making an important contribution to your dorm room's decor. Not such a big fan of the $99 shipping fee, but that's kind of off-topic here. Point is, I was at the Scandinavian cafeteria AQCafé for a late lunch and the food just plain tasted like IKEA. Not like it was from IKEA or it reminded me of IKEA — it just plain tasted like IKEA.

If it helps to imagine what I'm talking about, let me tell you that I ordered a grilled Scandinavian shrimp sandwich with egg, lemon, dill, and smoked cod spread. I chose it basically because it was the only thing on the menu that didn't seem to bask in an aura of either smoked salmon or Jarlsberg cheese, and, as an added bonus, it didn't have some unpronouncable umlaut in its name. (Examples: Ramlösa sparkling water, Västerbotten cheese quiche.) Now, I can tell you, the food was pretty good considering it tasted like IKEA. However, there's a reason you don't actually eat the Swedish meatballs at the IKEA cafeteria: IKEA is not meant to be eaten.

So, in the end, I have to give AQCafé thumbs-down because Scandinavian food, in general, sucks ass. They've got nice furniture, though.

I've taken up playing imaginary poker on the internet. I'm loving for poker for many reasons, not the least of which is that I get to say things that sound dirty but aren't. Example: Good laydown! And: I flopped a pair of queens! I like saying "flop." Flop flop flop flop flop.

No, what I really enjoy is the mathematics behind the game, which probably bores everyone else to tears. I feel like those whiny storm chasers from that movie Twister: Everyone else is just in it for the money; I'm in it for the science. I get off on considering the expectation value of a certain play or calculating my odds of winning the hand.... Of course, since I've been groomed to hasty and careless in math, I usually get the answer wrong and lose ignominously, but that's gambling for you.

How come my mom and I are the only two people on the planet who think that Bailey's tastes like Robitussin and cream? See, I don't know what's sadder: that Mom and I are on the same side of an alcohol issue or that the rest of the world is too enchanted by the whiskey to compare Bailey's to cough syrup. I'm so lonely.

"Patriot" Day

Today is so-called Patriot Day, which I find kind of ironic, since there's nothing less patriotic than using the September 11 attacks for your own self-serving political purposes, inciting fear among the voters so they'll ignore the fact that you've done absolutely nothing to actually protect the country from terrorism. Not to mention that you took the country to war based what you should've known was flawed intelligence, that you lied to the American people about the non-relationship between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, and that you de-stabilized the region, making it a haven for terrorists plotting attacks against Americans. Or that you showed your patriotism by allowing massive corporations like Enron and WorldCom to run over the economy, not to mention small investors, so the fatcats could grease their wallets. So, Mr. President, Happy Patriot's Day. Now, sir, if you want to do something truly patriotic, you could beat Paul Wolfowitz over the head with a shovel.

Lying Eyes

I've only had these sunglasses on for about twenty minutes, and they don't even look particulary good on me, but already I'm loving the damn things. I used to have this really sleek pair, but they were stolen off my face last year, and I'd totally forgotten about how great it can be hiding your eyes from society. Like, right now, for example. I'm sitting in Bryant Park, staring at all the shirtless freaks and the big-titted girls with the short skirts, and nobody notices... well, not like anybody notices anyhow, but today, if someone were to look at me, they'd just see a blank vacuous face with black ovals for eyes.

I should be playing poker right now.

But, since no one can see my tell where my eyes are looking, it seems like a good time to gripe about everyone's favorite bitch-and-moan topic: the opposite sex. (Don't complain — yet — cause you've done it too.) So, there are some women — and, it goes without saying, we're being superficial jerks right now and only talking about the attractive ones — in the world who get offended when you, as a largely undatable male, stare at their boobs. Or, say, masturbate in front of them while they're trying to study in the library. (No, I did not make this up from personal experience. A non-me guy was caught, repeatedly, in Columbia's library doing that. And of course there were some negative Nellys — mostly from Barnard, I think — who complained to security and tried to ruin this guy's fun.) And I can see their point, in some cases. But I'm sorry, there's some point in our "Britney Spears milkshake back that thing up" society where people are turning into hypocrites. That line is fuzzy, but I think it can be approximated with two words: low-cut. Okay, that's one hyphenated word, but whatever.

Speaking of our "Britney Spears milkshake back that thing up" society, I saw Paris Hilton at the Virgin Megastore yesterday. She has a new book out — a picture book — and she was doing a signing. It must have been mentally taxing for her, not only because she had to remember how to spell her name, but also because the first person on line was, ironically, an obese woman in a motorized wheelchair who will never, ever be a socialite. Paris is now scarred for life. (Goodie!) Anyway, I caught a glimpse of Paris from the escalator. I didn't have my sunglasses with me, so I couldn't stare too long lest I catch something from her. Seriously, the woman looks like a Barbie doll with a venereal disease.

Anyways, seems kind of hypocritical: you put on make-up and do your hair and, uh, use deodorant so straight guys and lesbians will want to fuck you. You wouldn't be complaining if it was Matt Damon or Colin Farrell or, uh, who else do the women find sexy... Regis Philbin. But then, this poor guy, who, let's face it, isn't gonna get it any other way, wants to fuck you, and you call security. Creepy, oily guys need lovin' too. (I speak from personal experience.) And until somebody takes one for the team, they're just going to interrupt your mid-term studying, get over it.

Somebody's A Gullible Fool (and I don't think it's me)

I was at the theater today working with this guy who's putting on a one-man show next week. His name's Ehud, and he's a mentalist. But wait! He's not just a mentalist — he's also a Kabbalahist and claims to be a mind-reader. I don't believe him; he was being way too amiable for someone who knew what I was really thinking right then. Heck, the guy even invited me to lunch.

I don't know; maybe he is a fraud. More likely, he totally believes everything he says about the Kabbalah and mysticism, and it's me and my closed mind that are the problem. But seriously.... First of all, if Madonna's doing it, I simply can't respect it. Like how she wants to be called "Esther" now. Please. How about "One-Named Pop Star With a Senescent Image who Can't Keep Up with Eminem and Osama bin Laden When it Comes To Shocking Middle America"? Madonna could be going to the Sudan to stuff polenta in the mouths of every single one of the displaced Africans, and I'd be like, "Oh, look at her now. Feeding the Darfur refugees is so totally for posers." Of course, Madonna's not feeding the refugees — she's buying a twelfth-century Kabbalistic text and wrapping it up for Britney Spears' birthday, which I'm sure is exactly what God had in mind. And by the way, Britney Spears, Louisiana's only Jew, lends so much credence to Kabbalah. Like Maimonides in a halter-top.

Truth is, when I got home, my mom had to remind me that there are people in this world, probably including Ehud, who legitimately believe in Kabbalah and aren't in it for the fad. My bad to them, but I still don't think you should believe in something that's not supported by empirical evidence. Faith is for fools.

Anyway, just so I can look like more of a prick, Ehud says that he does his show to "bring people the [metaphorical, I assume] light," to spread happiness. He sounds so Elysian when he says it, too, and I sound like such a cynic. What could be wrong with making people happy? Well, get out your Vicadin; I'm going to tell you. The problem is that the world totally sucks ass. This isn't a state of mind thing where most people are about as happy as they make their minds up to be. It's just a goddamned fact: people, despite their good qualities, are largely greedy, ignorant, antipathetic — and there's no good reason for this! We could have a culture that discourages avarice and supports education, creativity, and reason, but in order for that to happen, we can't just be content with the far inferior way things are. No one who was high on Vicadin or Kabbalah or soma ever invented anything or discovered anything or made any improvement to the world that stretched beyond his own mood. Now, if you ask me, that's selfishness.

Finally, I need to end this blog entry with a link to James Randi's website.

Scotch Brownies

So I stayed up late tonight baking those whiskey brownies. I found a bottle of scotch in our pantry that's probably older than I am, kind of screwed up with the measuring, and splashed maybe a little too much into the batter. Baked the whole thing up, and that's when I knew I was in trouble. See, with the odor of alcohol overpowering the aroma of chocolate in the kitchen, I had a revelation: I don't like scotch. I don't like alcohol, period. My bad.

Anyway, I tried a few scotch brownie crumbs. They've got a very, very sharp antiseptic taste; I can see how the chocolate and whiskey fit together, but it's just not for me. Anybody want some brownies?

I caught a few minutes of the MTV Video Music Awards the other day, and there was this obese rapper on-stage getting the whole audience semi-dancing. I mean, people like Will Smith and J. Lo, who should be able to afford better music. Seriously, can you believe these douchebags are getting paid millions of dollars for saying "Lean back!" and "Yeah!" over and over again? Lyrics that capture the spirit of a lazy and retarded-ass generation.

Honestly, I don't think there's been a bigger gathering of no-talents since Jessica Simpson — or J. Simp, as I call her — had her last family reunion.

A few other points that must be made:

• Marc Anthony looks like the poor man's Steven Weber. (I know, I know, you thought Steven Weber was the poor man's Steven Weber. Turns out Steven Weber is the poor man's Tim Daly.)
• Usher is freaking gay!!! He dances and dresses like the sixth member of 'NSync. His videos, with the synchronized choreography, look like boy band videos did five years ago. And you've never seen him and Lance Bass together, have you???
• What was the point of having the Bush twins and the much hotter Kerry daughters on stage together? Was there supposed to be a catfight or something? You know, I don't think the audience was booing the Kerry daughters so much as they were booing the fact there wasn't a mudwrestling ring on-stage with them.

Butterscotch Brownies

In my culinary self-education, which isn't as dirty as it sounds, I've been spending a lot of time baking brownies. They're just the easiest things in the world to cook; if you can stir, you too can make brownies.

---

Butterscotch Brownies

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 8 oz. butter, melted
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• pinch salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour

Combine the brown sugar and butter. Stir. Add in the egg and vanilla extract. Stir. A lot. Finally, add the salt and flour. Stir. Pour the batter into an eight-inch square baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. Lick the bowl, spoon, rubber spatulae, and electric mixer clean.

---

The wonderful thing about something that takes zero brain cells to cook is that it takes very little to inspire me to get baking. I'm becoming quite the expert on brownies and brownie-like confections, or at least as much of an expert as one who's baked four batches of brownies can be on the topic. I'm even starting to deviate from the cookbook and experiment; today I added unsweetened chocolate to the butterscotch brownies (1 ounce, melted together with the butter already in the recipe) to dull the saccharine sugar rush from the pure molasses forming the brownies.

Next up:

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Whiskey brownies

• 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
• 8 oz. butter
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup bourbon, Scotch, or other whiskey
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract and/or ½ tsp. almond extract
• pinch salt
• 1 cup + 1 tbsp. flour

Combine the choclate and butter, and melt them together in the microwave. Add in the egg, whiskey, and vanilla extract. Stir. Add in the salt and flour. Stir some more. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. Lick the bowl, spoon, rubber spatulae, and electric mixer clean, getting sloshed in the process.

---

Fact is, I'm just looking for an excuse to go out and buy some booze.

I can't leave well enough alone, so I'm planning on deviating from the recipe in the book by just a little bit. Instead of straight whiskey, I got the idea of using Bailey's Irish Cream... but first I had to do a little bit of research. For example, I needed to find out what the hell Bailey's Irish Cream actually is, aside from a liquor that's approximately the same color and consistency as an enema. I hadn't drunk Bailey's in three or four months, and all I remember from that experience was thinking, "This has a pretty sweet, creamy taste and texture," and then, "OHMYGOD, MY THROAT IS ON FIRE!!!!" So, a naif, I headed over to the Bailey's website for some info.

Now, before Bailey's will give you the info you need, they want to promote responsible drinking, so there's a little form to fill out — your country and birthdate — I shit you not. Like no one's going to be able to fool this thing. Even though I'm over twenty-one, and even if I weren't, it's not like there's anything illegal about looking at liquor, I told them I was born on May 22, 1975. I wasn't carded or anything. (Hint: if you go to the Fanwood liquor store and tell them you're using the booze for cooking, they don't card you either.)

And so you log on to the Bailey's website, and the first thing you notice is that there's a sweepstakes. They're giving away a car. Yes, that's right, because they care so much about responsible drinking. Boy, I sense an ironic crime happening in the future. Anyway, long story short, it turns out that Bailey's = whiskey + cream, so we're cool there. Not sure how the cream is going to affect the brownie chemistry, but life is full of risks.

Back in book seven of Plato's Republic, the Core Curriculum darling writes about censorship for the good of the city-state. In Plato's utopia, he outlaws sappy, weepy love poetry — it turns the citizens into a bunch of kolpoi — and for reasons known only to classicists, he also bans music in the Lydian and Phrygian modes.

Now, I've listened to Z100, "New York's Number One Hit Radio Station," to find myself in complete agreement with Plato's analysis. You've gotta understand that amidst the incredible variety of similar-sounding songs that define Top 40 popular music, there's a surprising paucity of non-sucky songs. And Z100 makes a point of never playing one of them. Instead, Z100 plays Ashlee Simpson approximately nine-hundred times a day, only pausing for screaming used-car salesman commercial breaks. When I become world dictator, this is going to stop.

Sorry, insipid people who still hold up signs outside MTV's studios when "Total Request Live" is filming, even though Carson Daly has been replaced with some random guy. When I'm in charge, we'll be corralling you and putting you to use as human speedbumps.

What I don't understand is why the hell anybody even considers listening to, much less paying for, this Ashlee Simpson crap. What's going through their incredibly dense minds? "Well, she sounds like she's in desperate need of a lozenge, but her sister doesn't know the difference between tuna and chicken. That's gotta be worth eighteen dollars and change."

I bring all this up because I was listening to Fordham's radio station, WFUV 90.7 FM, which, if you've got good taste, you'll take a listen to by clicking here. That's where I discovered I'll Be The One by Alice Peacock, which will never make mainstream radio because it's a perfect example of what teeny-bop actually ought to sound like. Besides not being totally vapid, Alice can sing like there isn't a giant phlegmy hairball lodged in her trachea, which is a trick that Ashlee, not to mention the Duff sisters, might try mastering before an entire generation of music fans goes totally deaf. Which would actually be a bit of a relief, come to think of it.

Helpful Hint

If you mute the TV, sometimes there are hotties on the "Lifetime" network.

Ditto for The View; Barbara Walters and Starr Jones make us wanna wretch, but Elizabeth Hasselbeck is kinda hot when something vapid isn't coming out of her mouth. Really, she's the only reason to watch The Look For Less on the E! network. Well, her and those two twins who run around the mall with the fashion victim.

Oh, wait, those are dudes. Incredibly effeminate dudes...

I'm thinking of putting a "John Kerry" bumper sticker on the back of my car. That way, people tailgating me will know who I'm voting for.

---

I think most tailgaters are Republicans. 8-(

Let's say you have eight balls. They're all exactly the same, except that one of them is heavier than the other seven. You have a balance; how many times do you have to weigh the balls to figure out which is the heavier one?

Now, I was sitting in a barren room — just a desk, a phone, two chairs, and an interviewer — being put on the spot with this stupid academic question. "Have you done any work with distributed computing?" No.

"Have you done any work with deadlocks?" What does that even mean? Is he asking me if I've ever had to debug a deadlock? Just theoretical work. In my operating systems class.

"How good are you with algorithms?" Unquantifiably good? "Let's say you have eight balls...."

Hmmm, Interviewer Guy, maybe I'd be able to puzzle out this question if I weren't under pressure here. But instead, no, I look like a fool. I kind of feel like I just wasted the interviewer's time.

By the way, the answer's the base-2 logarithm of eight, which is three. I should've known. In algorithm analysis, the answer's always the base-2 logarithm.

Brains Versus Bad Language

My parents raised me to be a sweet, passive-agressive pussy — er, I mean person — and I've found that no matter where I go, I can't shake that totally pathetic persona. It's so ingrained that even in the relative anonymity and security of the cyberworld, I let people call me a loser and a fag without any sort of retaliation. That might make them angry.

So, I was playing Yahoo's cheap Scrabble ripoff, Literati, and this guy "spasticasautisticus" — I'm assuming the screenname "doucheyasshole64" was already taken — sits down to play with me. The first thing he says to me is just plain cryptic: leave it out what the fvck is that. I ignore him, mostly because I can't even understand what the hell this jerk is trying to say, although someone trying to play Scrabble really ought to have a better grasp of the damn language.

Then I play "win," "mi," and "en" for 22 points. The following conversation ensues:

Loser jackass: what is mi mean
Me: as in do-re-me[sic].... it's solfege notation
Me: sorry, do-re-mi-fa...
Loser jackass: is your fvcking head the size of a fvcking planet you big headed cvnt
Me: your jealousy amuses me

And this douchebag leaves in a huff! He can't think of a retort, and I guess he used up all his swear words. My wit and psychological acuity defeats this asshole! Yay for me!

Getting older just doesn't seem to be working out for me. Like tonight, when my parents had these guests over. This was the first time we had guests over in like three years, even though my dad insists that we always keep our house in guest-ready mode — no soap scum in the bathrooms, the living room couch pillows must remain fluffed at all times — just in case the someone like the pope randomly decides to stop by.

We don't do much entertaining.

Tonight, our visitors were Barbara and Dick, the people who sold my parents our house. They hadn't seen me since I was nine months old, and I guess that no one can go a full twenty-two years without seeing me. So, I had to join their (really) little party and make inane small talk. What did you major in? What are you doing now? Like I don't have pre-packaged answers for those questions.

I even tried a question of my own: "So, you used to live here?" Not quite a question, but it did start a conversation. A long, tedious conversation that made me acutely aware of how much my butt was itching. That's the thing — most of my experience meeting my parents' dull-ass friends and relatives occurred when I was around five years old, and back then it was okay to look away, disinterested, like I'd rather be playing GameBoy. Can't do that anymore. Gotta pretend the real estate market is interesting.

Wasn't interesting back when I was five, still not interesting. Just shut up, parents' friends.

What the...?

Okay, I'm not that into soccer, and I wouldn't spend money to sit out in the heat watching it. At least not at the Olympics or World Cup. But at the Paralympics, which is apparently all about helping people God hates feel good about themselves in a very after-school movie sort of way, that's another story completely. In the midst of such weird adaptations as wheelchair fencing and amputee cycling, there's blind soccer.

That's "visually impaired" soccer, for the politically correct of you. But to make sure that everybody's just as visually impaired as the next guy, all the players except the goalies were blindfolds. (The rules state that the goalie can either be sighted or visually impaired, because you'd obviously want a guy who can't see the ball covering the goal.)

How the hell does this game work? It's one of those things that I'd love to see. It'd be fun, in a mean, exploitative sort of way. But I imagine there's a lot of players crashing into each other, tripping over the ball, scoring in their own team's goal, randomly running off the field and into the stands. It would be a blast.

You know what would be even better though? Blind NASCAR.

Watching the Olympics on CNBC and MSNBC and, uh, ¡Telemundo!, I'm growing more and more annoyed with anti-soccer Americans. I'm not talking about people who just feel that soccer isn't to their personal taste; I mean people who'll go out of their way to voice insipid complaints about the low scores or frequent tied games. People who hate on soccer the same way that I hate on NASCAR.

I caught Iraq vs. Australia and Mali vs. Italy, and, to be honest, I can't really see what there is to complain about. Soccer is one of the most exciting events at the Olympics, even thought that's not really saying much, given that most of the sports at the Games are nothing more than people running around a track. Soccer, at least, is like an action movie — you've got ninety minutes or so of people running around, trying to get their goals. Every now and then, there's a catharsis when the ball rolls out of bounds, or there's a tense moment when you lean forward in your seat a little. And sometimes there's a massive arena-wide fight scene at the end.

That's why I never understood American sports. Baseball's slow as shit — continuing with the movie analogy, baseball would be some nineteenth-century period piece chick flick based on an Edith Wharton novel. "Look at me, I ran around the bases once! I've gotta sit down. There any chewing tobacco anywhere in the dugout? No? How about any steroids?" Basketabll — do they have to take a nine-minute time out every eight minutes? Even when there's just four seconds left in the game?

Football? Just plain gay. Seriously.

And the absolute worst is also, apparently, our retarded nation's most popular: that gas-guzzling redneck abomination, auto racing. Now, I know that you NASCAR fans are all from the South and/or Midwest, and only the most radioactive mutations of cosmopolitan America — Hilary Duff, professional wrestling, George Dubya's "integrity" and "family values" — reach you in the boondocks, but, people, it's just freaking driving!!! If auto racing is going to be a sport, why don't we make sports out of all our mundane daily activities? There could be, for example, a grocery shopping event at the Olympics, where the athletes would have to clip coupons, run through the store finding the best bargains, then wait on the checkout line behind an old lady having trouble with her checkbook. (Oh, wait, we already have that... it's called Supermarket Sweep, and was entertaining before the show devolved into people waiting for the coffee grinder to finish so they could collect a $200 bonus.) Or how about a "brushing your teeth" competition — cleanest chompers win the gold.

How long till Ken Jennings comes back on Jeopardy?

Top Secret!

Maybe I shouldn't be writing this, but one of the combinations to a lock at work is — and I'm not making this up — 1-2-3-4-5. Seriously, people! Haven't you seen Spaceballs?

I'd hope that after reading this, they might re-program the lock, making it somewhat harder to break into. However, judging from their choice of combinations, I don't think they're all that big on security.

There was a bug flying around the kitchen this afternoon — a big one, that insisted on pounding into the walls and ceiling like a drunken redneck. I freaked out. In fact, I screamed like I was a fifteen-year-old girl at summer camp and the fly was an axe-wielding serial killer. In my defense, it was a wasp.

Thankfully, Mom was there, so I put her to work doing one of the few things she's actually good at: killing insects while I scream, "KILL THE BUG!!!". (Others include cooking dinner and doing my laundry. I'm such a lazy bastard.) Unfortunately, Mom's no pro-basketball player — if there were an anti-basketball sport where it paid to be short, slow, and uncoordinated, Mom would be a first-round draft pick — so she couldn't really do much except watch the wasp fly around the ceiling.

The next few minutes were, ultimately, uneventful, but you wouldn't know that to listen to me. "Mom, Mom, get some hairspray, spray the bug! Mom! Do we have any hairspray?" No, but Mom suggests that we assault the poor insect with a canister of aerosol air freshener, so it can terrorize me in a springtime-fresh kitchen. "No, Mom, we need something sticky!" And no pussy-ass Clairol Herbal Essences crap out of a spritzy plant-watering container; I'm talking full-force flammable compressed spray here. Eventually we settle on a decades-old can of Raid; meanwhile, the bug's trying to get out on the back porch, so Mom figures we'll just help it along a bit and opens the back door.

Now, the wasp's flying around on the porch, Mom's out on the porch following the thing around with our Raid, and I've slammed the back door closed. I've got my weight against it, just in case the wasp develops superpowers and tries to push the door back open. Mom is spraying Raid on the insect, but I'm skeptical: We used to have major yellowjacket issues around our house in the summer, and I'd walk around outside spraying every living thing with Raid. Nothing died. Not even our plants. But Mom's still spraying the life out of this wasp, and after a long, long time, it falls to the ground and all it can do is try to crawl away. From behind the door, I'm still screaming at Mom, "SQUASH IT!"

On our porch, we have a cement brick and a piece of aluminum drainpipe. Guess which one Mom uses to squish the bug. The drainpipe. And she doesn't even use the side of the pipe — she uses the hole. I shout at her like it's Let's Make a Deal: "THE BRICK! USE THE BRICK!" After the longest ten minutes of the day, the wasp, and me, are put out of our misery.

It was a while later before I started thinking what it must have been like for the wasp, especially during those fifteen or so seconds when my mom was spraying it with insecticide. Cause from its point of view, it doesn't know that it's not supposed to be in the kitchen. It's probably wondering, "Why the hell is that kid freaking out all of a sudden? What, is he autistic? God, he's driving me nuts. I've gotta get out of here." Then he's choking and sputtering in this toxic cloud, struggling to get up the energy to fly away or keep its extraneous feet stuck on the wall.... God, what a sad way to die.

Not that I wouldn't do it again should I come across another unfortunate wasp in the house. The lesson here: don't anthropomorphize insects.

Olympic Fever

Normally, twelve years of being picked last for gym class turns me vehemently anti-Olympics when the Games roll around. Not to mention that phoned-in John Williams theme song, the corporate sponsorship, those same commercials over and over and over again. And honestly, you have any idea how freaking boring watching someone swim back and forth and back and forth and back and forth is? I do. I spent a whole semester doing it.

But this year's different, because NBC is broadcasting the Olympics on five networks, not counting Telemundo, and since there's not enough boring-ass track and field events and rhythmic gymanstics — my impression of rhythmic gymnastics: Look at me! I'm throwing a ball in the air and catching it! Give me a medal! — they're showing sports that don't get their proper due in America. Water polo, table tennis, women's ten-meter air rifle. That last one isn't even a sport, but the Ukranian gold medalist was hot, so no complaints.

In that sense, things are going well. The Dream Team, what Carlos Alazraqui called our national 'fuck you' to the rest of the world, got their asses kicked by Puerto Rico. Neither bridge nor poker nor bowling nor fucking auto racing made their way into Athens. I sort of figured out the rules to handball, except I'm still not quite sure what a seven-yard penalty is. Doesn't make much sense in the context of throwing a ball into a kids' league soccer goal.

Phone Manner

I'm thrilled that in my two days as intern at Theatre Row, I haven't answered a telephone once. Not that I haven't tried, but Theatre Row has these supercharged multi-line telephones that I can't figure out for the life of me. Every time I answered, the line would be dead, but I guess that nobody was really calling for me anyway, so I can't say that it mattered. I'm just proud of myself for answering the phone in the first place....

Back in third grade, my friends and I were pretty much given free reign over the school after school. I guess the adults knew that we were there, but since we weren't in high school yet, they trusted us not to kill each other. So we'd run around the classrooms, write whatever dirty words we knew on the blackboard (always write left-handed, so no one would know it was you if you got caught), and, of course, crank call each other on that most sacrosanct of not-a-toys — the intraschool phones. This was unthinkable stuff back in the third grade; the phone was even more the teachers' domain than were those J.L. Hammett pens with the blue ink on one end and red ink on the other. But alas, soon we grew up. Or at least I did.

Truth is, I never really felt any need to play with, or what the heck, even use, the telephone. In eighth grade, a few of us yearbook folk were working late in Mrs. Pirraglia's room and, out of some sick habit, I picked it up. And then this thought rushed over me — I'm not supposed to be talking on the teachers' phone — and I whispered to Aneesa, "What do I say???"

Aneesa: "Uh, hello?"

Duh.

So now I'm trying to break that habit. I let the answering machine get the phone at home, and I wouldn't answer my loaner phones at Sparknotes either. Unfortunately, that makes me look like a pussy who won't pick up a harmless phone, and since I want to turn over a new leaf at this job-like job, when that uberphone rang the first time, I hesitated... and then I picked it up.

Dial tone.

Over the next seven or eight times that the phone rang, I playing secretary and pushing all manner of extraneous phone buttons before, during, and after these frustrated calls. Nothing. I think maybe it's God trying to tell me something.

Started at my internship today, so I'm going to plug Theatre Row, the off-Broadway playhouse where I'm semi-employed. It's a pretty sweet job: I'm working with some cool people, doing web updates, it's air-conditioned, the bathrooms are clean, and sometimes Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz drop by (really). There's just one tiny, tiny problem that I can't believe no one else notices — there's not a single window in the entire freaking building!!! Good for a mole person, not so good for me. Now, I've literally gone for three days without leaving my seven-by-nine foot dorm room. I've spent a week without stepping a foot outside my house. But I honestly don't know how long I can go working in a what's pretty much a concrete block with high-speed internet access.

Now, as the intern, I had the official Intern Travelling Workspace, which I guess I carried over from Sparknotes. First, they put me down in the basement, in a little security office by the studio door, complete with clip-on mini-fan, three intercoms, and a Glamour magazine for down-time reading. I'm in a glass case, and I keep on forgetting that people outside can see and hear me inside my terrarium. Every now and then, a brilliant thought would escape my lips, and I'm sure the other people in the hallway thought I was crazy. First impressions.

Tastes Like Chicken

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Mom spends three days, two nights at an East Brunswick hotel for some New Jersey Arts Educators conference. I get the whole house to myself (until Dad comes home, of course), and being the crazy kid that I am, I decided to break Mom's house rules and cook a cornish game hen. Yes, Mom really does have a "no cornish game hen" rule in the house.

I made a list of all the animals Mom won't let me cook in the house, then headed off to Super Stop & Shop — just like a regular Stop & Shop except with heat vision — to see what I could find. Rabbit, bison, eventually I found these cornish game hens. They look like chickens, only smaller and harder to find. Cheap, too: only two bucks a pound. Take the hens home, and first things first, there's a plastic bag full of bloody poultry flesh stuffed up the poor thing's butthole. Eeeewww. What could I do? I dumped the innards in a pot, added water, and made a sort of gritty cornish game hen stock that'll sit in the freezer forever.

So I chopped up the bird, basted it with a chicken soup/red wine vinegar mixture, broiled it until the skin popped. It was a lot of trouble to go through for a mini-chicken, smashing its backbone, finding the bird's wing joints, slicing up my finger. Still, after an hour of work, it just tasted like chicken.

I've Been Heard!

Finally, finally, my blog received its first comment, from a self-described child-raping alcoholic named Jasmine. For those of you too lazy to follow the link I've so helpfully provided, the comment reads as follows: "Work sucks. Avoid it all costs."

Okay, so it's not the most lucid thing ever written. But it is, in fact, a comment, and that's all that matters.

Of course, nothing encourages more comments like disparaging the one comment I've already got and alienating its writer. Sorry Jasmine.

A Completely Impartial Review of the Men's Room at Ralph Lauren on 72nd and Madison

First off, I do not belong in Ralph Lauren. The clothes are too expensive and too trendy and I have trouble telling the men's clothes from the women's clothes. But I downloaded this program to my cell phone that tells you where the nearest restaurants or movie theaters or banks or bathrooms are to you, and I was playing around with it. This program, Vindigo, is coincidentally made by the company that I interviewed at today. Now, Vindigo doesn't just tell you where the bathrooms are; it also reviews them, and Ralph Lauren's potty sure got a stunning review.

Five stars. "Clean, safe, free, recommended." Recommended! And only ten blocks away. Now I had to check it out.

And it is one sweet sweet bathroom. Stylish clear sinks, framed photos on the wall, the stall doors go from the ceiling to the floor — even in the urinal stall. It was the first time I ever felt comfortable whipping my penis out of my pants in a public restroom. Good for me!

There's also a vinyl blue bench in the bathroom, I guess so I can sit comfortably and wait for my male friends to finish putting on their make-up.

And I believed this city didn't love me.


Take the elevator to the lower level; the bathroom's on your left.

A Completely Impartial Review of the Movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

Which totally sucked. I mean, the movie itself was fine and all. Funny, but not hilarious — somewhere in between Hollywood Homicide and Top Secret. Let's put it this way: if Harold & Kumar starred Julia Roberts and Kirsten Dunst and were called "Mona Lisa Smile," Mom would think it was the best movie of the summer.

But damn the Loews theater chain! $10.25 for a movie — it's enough to make me want to dig up the corpse of Marcus Loew and vomit in his skull. Thus, I always plan on seeing two movies on the same ticket: Harold & Kumar ended just in time for me to sneak into Open Water, which is what I really wanted to see. But curse my luck: H&K was playing in a lower-level theater and all the other movies were on the second floor. (Well, I could've snuck into Catwoman, but that dreck didn't seem worth the trouble.) Now, I've only pulled this trick off once, and it was at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street, which is too indie for me to want to really screw over, but when this little scam works, boy does it feel good! It's that feeling you get of taking on the System — the Man — and winning. Or, dare I say it, arriving at White Castle stoned after a night full of farcical misadventures. No, maybe I shouldn't dare to say that. That's retarded.

Okay, here's something I don't quite understand. What the hell were those old people doing at that stoner movie? There were like four of them in the theater, and I don't mean they were like middle-aged old. They were senior-citizen discount old. And two of them were together, but the others just wandered into the theater and sat down like it was a bingo hall. I don't know. Maybe The Notebook was sold out.

Immortality

Some days — depressing days — I worry that life is meaningless. I mean, we're put on this planet, live for a few years — an instant in the entire span of the universe — and then we die. Our families die, our friends die, and soon enough, our ashes are swept into the dustbin of history. I wonder, what will my contribution be, how will I make my mark? Will the world be any different for my having been a part of it?

Well, my friends, I am proud to say that I've finally drawn my name in the wet cement of creation. If you'd like to check out my lasting effect, you can visit it at the Barnes and Noble on Sixth Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets. One day, I was in B&N with my laptop plugged into a socket, and the nefarious B&N heavies freaked at this unauthorized use of their electricity. Security kicked me out. (Okay, that part's not true. The security guard told me, "You can't have that plugged in here," to which my witty comeback was, "But... but I've only got it plugged in." Then I hung my head in shame and slumped out, but not before re-shelving whatever books I could get my hands on in the wrong departments.) I went back to the offending B&N today to pee on their bathroom walls — er, I mean, use their bathroom — and I saw what yours truly set in motion taped right above the electrical outlet in the Eastern religions section: a "for employee use only" note.

Actually, three strips of tape — that's how seriously these dickholes take their electricity.

Speaking of which, what the hell do the employees need to plug in there? Are sales associates blow-drying their hair in the Eastern religion section after their shifts? God, Barnes and Noble sucks....

'Nother job interview today: Vindigo Studios. Seems like a cool place to work, 'cept for what may or may not be the corporate dress code — one of the guys who interviewed me actually apologized for dressing casually. Sooooo cute... I wanted to hug him. But I didn't, although I'm not sure how that would've affected my chances of landing the job. For my part, I was dressed up with the white button-down shirt and otherwise comfy khaki pants, but Mom the fashion maven made me tuck my excessive shirt in, so I was spending the entire interview trying not to think about the lumps of fabric clogging up my ass.

I've complained about "business-casual" before, but this was the first time I really took a look at how other people were dressed. Gave me something to do on the train while resisting the urge to scratch my butt. I think I've come to a conclusion: different people look good in different outfits — the traditional semi-formal look ain't workin' for everyone.

Despite the excess wardrobe around my waist, I managed to do relatively well in the interview. Surprising, in fact, since during the telephone pre-interview, I could barely string a sentence together. I think it's important to remember that your interviewers are just people too, who put on their unnecessarily prim dress slacks one leg at a time. They have likes and dislikes, senses of humor, and the fact that they have a job and an apartment and the power to hire you doesn't make them superior. But, sadly, the fact that they look good in business-casual does.

Parked the car on the lawn this ev'ning. Not parallel with the street either. Too bad I couldn't park the thing upside-down: could've had a hat trick there.

Caring is Sharing

These days, caring just doesn't get you as far as it used to. Grandma sometimes tells me this story about the old country, ostensibly for the purpose of making me feel like a total shit. It goes a little something like this (it's best if you imagine hearing it in Grandma's barely accented voice)...

"Back then, my father, he was a tinsmith. He had a shop on the main road in town, and every Sunday, the market would come into town, because back then, they didn't have any supermarkets, so people would travel from town to town selling things. And people would come to town, and they'd ask him where was a good place to set up their tables. And he'd say, 'You can sell right here, in front of my store, it's right on the main road.' And anybody who'd come along, he'd say, 'Set up right in front of my store.' So he got to know everybody.

One time, after the market closed, we all got together at our house for dinner, and while we were eating, we hear this loud crash outside. And everybody was like, 'Oooh! What was that? What was that?' So, he went outside and there was this woman, and she must of gone to the bar and she was a little, uh, drunk and she must of fell against the window. So my father, he brought her inside and he told her, 'You rest here, and then tomorrow you can leave.'

Now, when my grandmother died, they had to sell her house, so my mother had to go to town, and they didn't have money for a donkey, so she had to walk, and it was a couple hours walk. Now, along the road there were — como sei dici? — le brigande — the bandits. And while she was walking, one of the bandits, he stopped her and asked her who she was and where she was going. And it turned out that after the market closed, my father was in the bar and he bought a drink for this man. So he let her go. And he sent a signal to all the other bandits: don't bother this woman. And she went and came back, with all the money from selling the house, and nobody bothered her. All because of one drink."

Which all just shows Grandma's old-timey heartland Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul naivete. Honestly, who the fuck does this nowadays? You buy someone a drink and suddenly it's an awkward invitation to get all personal and shit. I'm not the only one that's uncomfortable with this, but for some reason, Grandma seems to lay the entire burden for society's alienation with the individual on me.... I guess when you're old, things are different. If you're twenty-two years old, and you're male, and you bake cookies for your neighbors — well, that's just creepy. Do the same thing when you're post-post-menopausal, and it's not only innocuous. It's sweet.

Bitch.

Well, tonight's the big night! Has it really been a full year since the last Miss Teen USA pageant? Evidently, yes, it has been.

Teen delegates from all over the United States gather in the desert oasis to impress a panel of judges with their poise and beauty. During the telecast on NBC, the final 15 are announced and they compete in evening gown and swimsuit competitions as the finalists are narrowed to the top ten and the top five.

Two questions now emerge. First, who the hell cares? I'm heterosexual, and it only took me about thirty seconds to get bored with the damn thing. Honestly, I just wanna fuck 'em, not watch 'em prance around the stage and answer inane questions. And second, we're still letting girls compete in beauty pageants, completely oblivious to how pointless and misogynistic they are? Okay, I've seen "Showbiz Moms and Dads," and I understand that there are still tubby, oily-skinned white trash moms with drooping boobs out there, living vicariously through their hot daughters, feeling a warm maternal glow every time one of those Z-list judges rates their progeny a ten. But maybe, please, can Child Services help these poor, poor people out — give 'em a Vicadin maybe, or a hobby, or perhaps a real job. Could be that a few preening-free days as a corporate shill will wipe those smiles off their vacant faces.

The YMCA smelled like death and chlorine today.

Every time I go back to New York City, it seems like a less and less welcoming place — by which I mean that it's becoming painfully difficult to find a bathroom clean enough to go number two. Remember that Seinfeld episode where George takes Jerry and Kramer into a random office building because it's got "the best bathroom in the city?" Well, you can't do that anymore.

Nowadays, every freaking building's got its own police unit, complete with automatic weapons and German shephards, which, oddly enough, make me feel much less secure. Everybody's got a photo ID badge clipped to their lapel, just in case they forget what they look like; there's elaborate front-desk sign-in procedures, security cameras, a guy with his high-school equivalency and a generic cheap suit and tie watching over you, and I just want to not crap my pants! Even libraries, the last refuge of civilization in this world (well, not the children's section... or the Internet filters... or the fact that there's 2500 holds out on The Da Vinci Code... or the incessant librarian yakking...), have closed off their bathrooms, leaving the irritable-boweled among us to settle with the ad hoc microbiology labs in the back of the Strand.

Well, at least you can get some reading done while you're in the bathrooms there. And no, you're not allowed to take books in.

See, the trick is to find bathrooms that are public, but that are also off in some obscure corner of the city where no one knows about them. Hotels — ritzy hotels — are usually a good bet, especially since they tend to employ a team of underpaid immigrants to keep the bathrooms clean. The Marriot Marquis in Times Square is my favorite in the area as long as my bladder can survive the eight story jet-elevator ride to the bathrooms (sometimes it can't), but for pure pointless luxury and white-trash watching, you can't beat the bathrooms at the Plaza. They have a guy whose whole job it is to hand you a paper towel after you're done washing your hands, because getting your own paper towel would take a lot of effort. Then you have to tip him. (I wonder how much I'd have to tip him to get him to wipe my ass for me.) He also stares derisively at you if you choose not to wash your hands, just to let you know that you're a disgusting human being. Actually, come to think of it, he probably stares derisively at just about everyone in the bathroom.

But can you really blame him?

Interview today: possible internship at Theatre Row, an off-Broadway theater most likely founded by a Brit or some slightly dyslexic American. Sylvia took me to see a play there last Thursday, and flipping through the playbill, there were about fifteen interns listed in the crew. I figured, "Why not sixteen?"

As usual, the interview went pretty well, considering how I've been cutting back on my Paxil. Besides, today was an important lesson: I should probably research what the hell organizations actually do before blindly asking for an internship. Not that the idea of working backstage at a theater or theatre doesn't seem cool, like a great learning opportunity, but what really caught my eye was the idea of working with people producing plays, sucking up to people who might eventually produce my play, should I ever finish it.

Okay, to be honest, I can't really imagine myself sucking up to anyone.

Lies! All Lies!

It's slowly dawning on me that just about everything that my teachers have told me is nothing but lies, hokum, and flim-flam. Like my seventh grade social studies teacher, Mrs. Selesner, who, on sweltering May afternoons, wouldn't let us fan ourselves because, she claimed, "it would only make us hotter." So, now, nine years later, I came across this article, which not only contradicts Mrs. Selesner but also includes a lot of math, thus giving it credibility that my ex-social studies teacher lacked.

Okay, so it's not exactly a lie on the magnitude of "Saddam is hoarding weapons of mass destruction" or "America is safer now thanks to George Bush's leadership," but sheesh, she's a teacher for Christ's sake. She's in a very powerful position, filling young tabulas rasas with whatever horseflop comes into her uninformed head. Now I've got to call into question everything she's ever taught me, like whether the Missouri Compromise really happened and whether Parliament really passed the Declaratory Acts. (We already know that the whole "No taxation without representation thing" was a bald-faced lie.) Because honestly, we were in seventh grade — the hell do we know? She could tell us that the Pilgrims came from Mars on the U.S.S. Enterprise and we'd believe her.

Maybe I'm being unduly harsh on Mrs. Selesner; I still nurse a grudge against her for putting Dave Loewinger, Kevin Grinberg, and me in a group with Phil Trout because quote that's what the Japanese do. (She meant that Japanese mega-corporations evidently group their disinterested, troublemaking burnouts with honor students in order to reduce overall productivity.) How much of an education do you really need to be a seventh-grade social studies teacher? Prolly none — all you do is read from the teacher's copy of the textbook with all the answers in it and hand out dittos. Besides, from what I heard, the other social studies teacher was worse.

You know what would be awesome? A Kerry-Edwards vs. Bush-Cheney tag-team cage match. They could call it the "Altercation for the Fate of the Nation," or I suppose they could have Don King get out his rhyming dictionary and come up with a name that's actually half decent. Now, I see several advantages to holding this once-in-a-lifetime event:

1. It would be a lot more fun to watch than the conventions, and it would get wrestling fans excited about the electoral process.
2. Good odds on John Edwards kicking Dick Cheney's ass. Better odds on Cheney having a heart attack before the fight even starts, which means Kerry and Edwards can gang up on Bush, two against one.
3. Condy Rice can be the ring girl. Or we can scrap Dr. Rice and have Bush's two hot daughters as the ring girls instead.
4. Colin Powell could wear the striped "Foot Locker" polo shirt and referee. He could also provide the pre-show entertainment.
5. We broadcast the fight on Pay-Per-View and use the profits to pay off the national debt. I mean, even I'd pay $24.95 to watch Kerry beat Bush over the head with a folding chair.

Found the following in the New York Times Job market:

STATISTICIAN

 

Full time position for statistician, or social scientist with superior methodological & statistical skills, supporting a joint JBFCS/Mt. Sinai School of Medicine program of research & treatment on traumatized young children. The candidate will: design databases, participate in designing analytic strategies, conduct analyses & prepare draft results reports. Participation in designing research studies, preparing funding proposals & preparation of papers for publication included. Contact: Robert Abramovitz, M.D., Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, Center for Trauma Program Innovation, 120 West 57th Street-9th Fl, New York, NY, 10019. Fax: (212) 307-7896

 

JBFCS

Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/D/V

Only opening for a statistician in the entire newspaper. And I thought my job prospects sucked...

Job interview today; first in two years. Don't tell Mom, who thinks I've been going to interviews and applying for temp jobs for the past two months.

So, once again, the parents insist I get all dressed up for the interview. This is because they're old fashioned: Dad gets dressed up, not only for the courtroom, but for meeting clients, working alone in the office, and going to the movies. Mom's not as bad, but she believes that my wardrobe is responsible for me not getting the imaginary jobs I pretended to apply to. She thinks I should've worn a suit and tie and, uh, not worn shorts.

I disagree. My very first job interview, at the United States Small Business Administration, I got all dolled up on my parents' advice — slacks and dress shoes, a suit and tie, I might have even been carrying a leather attache. I hadn't worn a suit since my confirmation, and apparently, I'd grown a bit since then. And the tie... it serves no freaking purpose whatsoever other than choking me!!!! Damn, that's a lot of exclamation points. And because it was a good hundred degrees in downtown Manhattan, I came into this interview nervous, uncomfortable, and sticky — the perfect candidate. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. I blamed the tie.

When the interviewer tells you that you look a bit uncomfortable, that's when it's pretty much time to walk out the door.

After that fun, fun day, I decided that from now on, I'm making the fashion decisions on interview days. (I make the fashion decisions on non-interview days, too.... Ever since I turned fourteen.) I got my job offers at Sparknotes and the New York Times (Digital) wearing jeans and a standard Jay Harris pullover t-shirt. I'm going with a white button-down shirt and khaki pants — my semi-formal couture — and I brought a pre-tied tie just in case inspiration strikes. It didn't.

Thing is, even with the light summer look, I was still every interviewer's dream: a sweaty mess. Maybe next interview, I'll take a mister with me too, and retouch my make-up right before the big moment. (Thanks to Sylvia for that last tip.)

Adventures in Cooking

Funny story about lamb... I found a recipie for broiled butterflied leg of lamb in coconut milk with Asian spices, and since I adore cute barnyard animals, I just had to try making it. Now, it turns out that lamb is not the easiest animal to get your hands on, and that lamb appendages are the hardest part of the lamb to find. I went to three supermarkets, finding lamb shoulder, lamb shank, lamb ribs, even lamb neck, but no leg of lamb. So finally, I gave up, I went to Joe's Meat Market, and I learned a little something...

See, growing up in the suburbs prepares you for practically nothing in life. In particular, it leaves you unprepared for those moments in life when you'll have to hack an animal to bits in order to drown its meat in coconut milk and tumeric and have a delicious meal. All I knew about the ovine species is what I saw of those Claymation sheep on the mattress commercial. Turns out that real lambs are a little bit larger than that. Seven pounds and $24.50 larger, in fact. To put that in some sort of perspective, remember in the opening to The Flintstones, how they go to that prehistoric drive-thru and order a rack of mammoth or something that causes their car to topple over? Well, that's how big this lamb's leg was.

Point is, now we're going to be eating nothing but lamb for the next month or so. So, is anybody hungry?

Martha, Martha, Martha

I'm outside the federal courthouse in New York City, along with a zillion news crews waiting to find out Martha Stewart's fate. Personally, I hope the bitch fries. (And I think, from now on, I should end all of my posts with "I hope the bitch fries.") But not only that; I'm absolutely sick of Martha's defenders with their signs and decorating tips and conspiracy theories — "She's only being prosecuted because she's a celebrity." "She's only being prosecuted because she's a powerful woman." Bullshit. She's being prosecuted because she's a criminal, moron.

I can't even comprehend where all this munificence toward Martha is coming from. If you walked out of K-Mart carrying sixty-thousand dollars worth of Martha Steward Living Easthampton-style linens under your shirt, you'd be arrested and you'd go to jail, and you wouldn't see Martha coming to the courthouse, filing an amicus brief in your defense. She'd probably pop a cap in your ass and then go back to P. Diddy's bling-bling party.

Wouldn't it be nice if the TV weatherman could be a little less, I don't know, apocalyptic? It seems like the only weather forecasters out there who don't get their jollies scaring meteorologically ignorant people into stocking up on batteries and bottled water are Al Roker and Willard Scott, both of whom are way too saccharine to wake up to at seven in the morning. There could be a hail of fire falling upon Rockefeller Center, and Al Roker would still be out there talking to tourists holding up signs (which would most likely be burning up in the fire-hail). Apparently, the weather has become too controversial a topic for Willard; he spends his time on-air congratulating people who should be dead by now on continuing their long and pointless existences, which is even more depressing than floods, tornadoes, and tsunamis combined.

Maybe it's the way we treat the weathermen that turns them into prophets of doom, how we blame them when the weather's bad or when the Doppler radar gets the prediction wrong, how the other anchors ask them inane questions that have nothing to do with the weather and then don't bother to listen to the weatherguy's answer. How, as weatherdude interns, they have to go out to the beach in the middle of the freaking hurricane wearing the official Channel 7 weather poncho, as if we wouldn't believe that there's a hurricane if we didn't see cars and trees and unsecured lawn furniture flying around the poor guy.

"...And as you can see, Chuck, the wind is really picking up out here, the tide is at least twenty feet above the dunes, and I nearly got swept out to sea twice. Town officials are warning everybody to stay inside until the storm blows over, and while there's theoretically no reason I myself couldn't heed that advice and give the exact same report from the studio, I'm risking my life to come to you, live from Sea Girt, in hopes that one day it will be me standing in front of the green screen, doing the national weather forecast."

I'm sure these companies are just trying to be difficult when they ask me how much I want to get paid. Sure, they put it in nice euphemisms — "salary requirements" — but they're really asking for a valuation of how much I think I'm worth. And then, they'll tell me that I'm wrong. I mean, no matter what, the prospective employee gets screwed — either you ask for less than you're worth and the Man snickers as he underpays you, or you ask for more than you're worth and the executives call you a greedy, egomaniacal jerk who'll never land a job with those kind of expectations.

So from this point on, I'm going to be honest. I'm looking for a job that pays fifteen million dollars. An hour. Also, I want benefits, a 401K, and a flat-screen plasma TV in my office. But I'm willing to negotiate.

A Picture is Worth...

Boy, do I envy people who photograph well. Whenever someone takes a picture of me, I invariably look hung over, with my face flushed and fake smile askew. It is, to be honest, mortifying... which is why you won't see any of these photo gems posted on my blog. (Of course, I don't seem to have a problem posting a picture of me wearing a dickish swim cap on my blog, but bad lighting — that's another issue entirely.)

It's been a problem plaguing me pretty much from birth and ignored by my parents because they thought I was always "so cute." At least if you're an ugly kid — and your parents aren't in denial about it — the parents can work to make you a little more attractive, using, say, makeup or hair product or plastic surgery. But when your parents honestly, truly, naively believe that you'd be eye candy for any girl, that's when you're screwed. For reasons unknown, from the moment I had hair, my mother insisted that I have bangs down to my eyebrows and a fuzzy coif that could double as a feather-duster in an emergency. (In the summer after sixth grade, my family took me on a six-week trip to Italy — the only cool thing I've ever done with them — and, to my mom's horror, I had my haircutter shear off six weeks worth of hair and I never looked back. Now if only they could take some of that hair they cut off and glue it to my chest...)

As you can tell from my swimcap mugshot, I also got the corrective lenses gene, and Mom and Dad thought I was too irresponsible — what with my straight A's and spending hours a day in the library reading the encyclopedia — to get contacts as a young'un. They're like Spanish: either you learn 'em young when you don't mind poking yourself in the eye, or you don't learn 'em at all. I spent many years thinking acne scars were beauty marks, and, just to top off the selective-breeding-gone-wrong dweebishness that was my countenance, I was an orthidonture victim from fifth grade, when braces were cool, until tenth grade, when they were way beyond passe. All the time, Mom reminded me that I was cute, rather than the Frankenstein's monster that I was.

Thus the memories: me as a kid who couldn't get it together. Nowadays, I think I do a little better with the look on a moment to moment basis, but the photographs, like I said, don't tell the same story. Which I find frustrating on several counts. Aside from appearing in the background of random Japanese tourists' home videos, I don't find myself the subject of a photo all that often, so when I do have the good fortune to be recorded for posterity, I'd like to look, uh, not retarded if that's at all possible. Not only is it disappointing on its own to see myself in a moment not knowing how to smile, but I realize that, thanks to the digital age, other people also have copies of me at my most mediocre. Who knows... I may even be someone's desktop wallpaper, or they might be distributing pictures of me like its the Paris Hilton sex tape. (That's two too many Paris Hilton references in a week.) I can't even Photoshop the shame of my dour image away.

All I want is to preserve myself at my best, and I think that's going to take some practice posing in front of the mirror in order to get it right.

Massive Inner Squirming

Grandma and I are sitting on the couch, staring, doing nothing. She, because she's old, and me, because I'm just plain dull. Mom is in the other room.

Jay: Mom! I'm bored!

Grandma: You should get a girlfriend.

Apparently, the concept of a non-sequitur is unfamiliar to Grandma.

Grandma: Why don't you go find yourself a nice girl? You know some girls, right?

This, unfortunately, was not the first time Grandma's hinted that she wants to see me married off. I guess it was my sophomore year of high school, before I met Anne, and my cousin Lexy and her mom were over at Grandma's house. Lexy is my age, and I guess the grown-ups thought it would be really cute to leave us alone together, watching TV, and let nature and hormones take their course. (By the way, Lexy is my cousin by marriage, so we're not like some inbred Alabama family. Nevertheless, Grandma often suggests going to a family reunion to meet girls, which I believe is on Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck" list.) Nothing happened between Lexy and me; I believe a proved myself to be a total faggot by watching Oprah or something with her in utter, nerve-wrenching silence.

Nuttin attracts dem girls like dat tere Oprah Winfrey...

It's just that as if the dating world wasn't awkward enough, being a three in a world of eights and nines, Grandma's got to push her agenda through committee too. Not that I can really blame her; she's old and she might not have that much time left to see her only grandson get paired up. But sheesh.... she's my grandmother. And I don't see her getting dressed up, doing her make-up, and slutting around at the senior citizens center. (Thank God, now that I've got that image in my mind.) I hate to disappoint the woman, but I just can't imagine the whole two-by-two thing working out the way she expects. "What, you're not gonna hold the door open? A gentleman always holds the door open..."

Or, "Back in those days, the gentleman always paid. Not like they do today, today they split everything." And there's the music, and the "I don't like this kind of show" TV shows, and the way the kids wear their fucking pants around their ankles so you can see their underwear. (Gotta agree with Grandma on the last one there.) My grandfather, her husband, actually had to ask her dad before — not before he could propose — but before he could just take her to the movies. And this was the forties, so it's not like they had make-out flicks back then... all they had were black-and-white movies of people spontaneously tap-dancing, and you can't make out to that. And she had to be back home by eleven. (At night, I think...) And Grandpa "checked my coat..."

Jay: Wait, they had a coat check at the movie theater?

Grandma: Well, sure, it's not like today where they just throw everything anywhere, and get their soda and popcorn and blah blah blah...

I think I bring out the bipolar in people. Like pheremones, only in reverse.

I'm so thrilled about the Freaks and Geeks DVD set, I don't know where to begin. I've been watching the first two discs pretty much non-stop today, and I've still got about six or seven hours of material to go through. A geek's paradise of commentary tracks and deleted scenes.

Thing is, even though I totally sympathize with the Weir youngsters, my own high school days were never anywhere near the typical freak or geek experience. Mine were anticlimactic, four years of essentially nothing, waiting to party or get picked on or for Melissa to grasp what a great catch I'd be. (It never happened. Too bad, it was her loss.) But the one thing that still shines through the high school years, and the college years, for that matter, was the utter helplessness — being at the mercy of all these icky, slimy grown-ups, ignorant and convinced of their own wisdom, like anti-Socrates demagogues, and not being able to say no.

Even now, I go back to the high school (well, I've decided to stop re-visiting the high school — I don't think it's all the healthy psychologically, and besides, most of the cool teachers are gone) and I smile and shake Ms. Karanik's hand like I'm happy to see that emasculating bitch again. Seriously...

Ms. Karanik: Feel better, Jay.

Jay: Okay, thanks.

About five minutes later...

Jay: Wait a second, I'm feeling fine.

And that's what I do. I write in this blog. Passive-aggressive like.

---

Final note: Back in the eighties, I looked exactly like Sam Weir did...

Republicans Eat Babies

Hmmm... maybe that title won't help Kerry and Edwards get elected in November. But it's still true.

I worried for about three or four days that Kerry would pick Dick Gephardt or Tom Vilsack as his running mate instead of Edwards, and it would've been a political disaster. Not that I have anything against Dick or Tom, but we democrats need someone running who's charismatic enough to counterbalance Bush's lowest-common-denominator correct-pronunciation-is-for-academic-pussies folksiness that appeals to Americans who beat up members of the chess club back in high school.

All that being said, I really think it would be cool for America to have a non-gazillionaire president and veep, but we all know that I've got a better chance at winning the White House than Nader does, and I'm not even old enough to be president. It just stings a little bit. It's not that I don't believe Kerry and Edwards sympathize with my middle-class white-guy plight, but it just seems tacky for the less-fortunate masses to elect someone whose gets Robin Leach narrating their biography. It's like voting Paris Hilton for senator or somtehing. (And while we're on the topic, if Bush is that desparate for my vote, he can win it by imprisoning Robin in a Scrooge McDuck style vault so the rest of us can live in peace without Leach's painfully loooooong vowel sounds.)

Relief nonetheless. When I heard the announcement, I was swept up in Edwards's charisma, just like every other well-behaved Democrat. Repressed soccer moms, and even some drunken NASCAR dads, were putting Edwards pin-ups on their bedroom walls. (Nader-freak stoner dudes were putting pin-ups of Edwards hot daughter on their bedroom walls.) I forgot all about the facts that John McCain would've made a mind-blowing vice presidential candidate, that Teresa Heinz Kerry lives on a ninety-acre ranch and I'm so poor I've gotta live with my parents, that the Dems are closing forty miles of highways in Boston this August. For a few shining moments, until the words "trial lawyer" came out of some Republican devil's mouth, all was right with the world.

So Disillusioning...

I found the following classified ad on mediabistro.com. It's for a Life & Medical Sciences Book Editor/Senior Editor position at John Wiley & Sons, which is a publishing company & evidently the ampersand capital of the world.

You will be responsible for the development and implementation of the strategic publishing plan in the life and medical sciences ensuring the effective management of the publishing program, including the acquisition, development and profitable publication of books and products in other delivery formats. You will manage the backlist to develop revisions, negotiate terms of publishing agreements, manage the pre-production development, develop sales forecasts and participate in selecting, coaching, developing and appraising editorial support staff.

Candidates must have in-depth knowledge of the editorial job, and proven expertise in acquiring and developing projects and successfully managing and expanding program. Excellent analytical skills and judgment, negotiation skills, strong interpersonal skills and financial management skills required. To be considered, candidates must have 3 to 5 years experience in acquisitions editorial area and possess a BA or BS; PhD preferred.

We offer a competitive salary, bonus potential and a comprehensive benefits package.

You'll notice how often the actual task of editing appears in the job description — not freaking once! Okay, it says candidates need in-depth knowledge of the editorial job (incorrect use of the definite article there, by the way), but the entire position is devoted managing and negotiating and generally avoiding the written word save for those showing up in contracts. Now, call me old-fashioned, but the reason I got into this business that I haven't quite finagled my way into yet is because I like writing! I like ideas, I like words, I like language, and I like reading what others have written. (Not as much I like having others read what I've written though...)

Anybody who gets into publishing for any other reason, Dan Weiss, deserves to spend their afterlife in the third circle of hell, with nothing to read but trade magazines and Jackie Collins novels and paperback romances with a shirtless Fabio on the cover. But that's just my opinion.

Lamest Fortune Cookie Ever:

:) You are a hard worker. :)

What, were the fortune cookie muses on strike or something?

My dad, who's happy to eat the cookies but who thinks the fortunes themselves are sophomoric, got "You are an inspiring and exciting person." Maybe today is opposite day.

You all remember T.G.I. Friday's, right? — That restaurant at the Blue Star shopping center with the nauseatingly perky waitresses where you and your friends would go to eat mainly cause it's the only restaurant in town. Well, I had my Fourth of July brunch :( there with my wild and crazy family, and I'm happy to report that T.G.I. Friday's has a new employee dress code. No more vaudeville-style red-and-white striped vests, like their waiters are walking barber poles; no more cheesy-ass "pieces of flair" (that's stoned-happy talk for pin-on buttons); same saccharine attitude from the staff, meaning it still takes the same amount of self-control not to beat the living shit out of your hostess. Okay, I guess it doesn't take quite as much self-control, considering how I no longer go to school with anybody working at T.G.I. Friday's.

---

Good news: Palmer Video was showing Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky, which means that the employees there actually have some semblance of taste. I get worried every time I go into that store and see thirty-eight copies of some DVD starring Tara Reid sitting on the shelf, right next to "Cruel Intentions 3."

Bad news: No one was actually in Palmer's at the time, becoming enlightened to Miyazaki's genius.

What I should've said...

Dr. Schlessinger: There's one thing I'm curious about. Why did you decide to use mescaline in your play?

Jay: They say to write about what you know.

Wardrobe Function

For some reason, Mom believes that I've got a job interview today. Maybe it's because I told her last night that I'm going into the city for a job interview, but I don't claim to understand how her mind works. In any case, it's the last time I lie to her about having an interview, because this morning, she went into conniptions when I refused to wear khaki pants to this imaginary interview. The arguing went back and forth...

Mom: You have to wear long pants.

Jay: But it's going to be eighty-seven degrees out!

Mom: You can't go to a job interview in shorts.

Jay: But I don't want to be all sweaty all day long!

Mom: No one else there will be wearing shorts. Some people will even being wearing ties.

Jay: Stop telling me how to dress! You always treat me like a child!

At which point I locked myself in my room and told her, "La la la, I'm not listening to you! You're not the boss of me!" 8-)

Mom points out that there are lots of people, lawyers and CEO's and poor dudes working at the Mens Wearhouse, who have to wear a suit and tie every day, no matter wha t the heat index. I even wore a suit and tie to my first job interview, at the U.S. Small Business Administration. It was approximately a hundred degrees outside and I was being slow-roasted in my own sweat thanks to the wardrobe. Needless to say, I didn't get the job, and I blamed it on the tie. (Honest. The interviewer told me I looked a bit uncomfortable — always a good sign — and I told it was cause of the tie.)

Getting dressed up just seems stupid, and I personally have as little respect for people who wear three-piece suits and ties in the middle of fucking summer as I do for people who go around shirtless in February. Unless they're chicks, in which case they can go shirtless whenever they like, and I won't complain. Mom says, "Well, what would you do if you if you lived in colonial times, when people wore layers and layers, all wool, no matter how hot it was outside?" I'd die of heatstroke, that's what I'd do.

And I'd like to point out to everyone who says people got along fine back in the day, even though they dressed for a blizzard no matter what the season and it was scandalous to show a millimeter of ankle and there was no air conditioning and no electric fans: back in those days, life expectancy was in the late thirties, and people said "thine" and "thee" and "methinks," and there was slavery back then.

There, I said it: suits and ties are racist.

I never gave much thought to the dreaded job applicant question until I ran across it filling out an online applicaton yesterday. Describe a time when you worked in a team and your role in the team. I grumbled, longing for the day when the anti-socialites take over the world and reminding your co-workers that there's no 'I' in "team" will be a federal offense. But the more I looked back on it, the more clear it became that I actually went through four years of college not once working with a group of my fellow ego-driven, obsequeious, capitalizing user classmates — er, I mean, a team. No massive projects, no sports, no quiz bowl or Parliamentary debate or planning committees or — what else do people do as a group? — or orgies (damn!) or relays-for-life.

Didn't matter all that much anyway since the job is in Upper Saddle River, wherever that is. Apparently it's quite a hike, and I'm given to daily complaints about the off-hours commute into New York. So, I left the question blank. I told Anne about the questionnaire and my non-answer; she admonished me: "You can't do that," in that tone that tells me she's sick of my indignant impudence. And for my part, it was only an amusing anecdote. I know that I should have a happy teamwork story; that here I was talking to a computer that couldn't care less about, and hell, might possibly share my contempt for my fellow man; that when I'm sitting across a desk from an executive in a tie and he wants to know about a time I worked with a team, it's gotta amount to more than "Can I get another question?" The job market's not looking too good for jaded loners.... Well, maybe the post office is hiring. 8-)

But, for now at least, fuck team playing, fuck extroverts, and, while I'm at it, fuck Mr. Goudy and his sandbox skills. And the truth is, it ain't my fucking fault that I'm cynical!

Lemme tell you a little story about one time I tried accomplishing something with a group of other people.

It was junior year of high school and I was invited to some extracurricular literary-magazine how-to-be-a-humorist program at William Paterson University. For reasons I can only attribute to general asshole-ness of mankind, a mass contingent of retards, slugabeds, and jerks also managed to rummage up invites, as did Ankur, who isn't a retard, slugabed, or jerk, but who fits in with them effortlessly. It was some sort of creative expression program, where the administrative hand divided us into groups of twelve-ish whose goal was to produce a short game show skit and perform it in front of the larger congregation at the end of the day.

I found myself in group ten — and you know it was a incredibly lame experience when you still remember your group number six years later — and group ten didn't have particularly creative members. Or particularly funny ha-ha members either, for that matter. We did, however, have nine members who thought it'd be damn enlightening if we just copied those Celebrity Jeopardy parodies they used to have on Saturday Night Live, down to the fake questions that weren't all that funny when the professionals performed them.

Now, it's late at night, so I don't really have any brilliant game show ideas at this moment. But back then, at eleven in the morning, I had one or two that would've made Merv Griffin himself say, "Gee, I wish I'd thought of that.... Jay, your ideas make Wheel of Fortune look like the intellectual skeeball tournament that it is." My so-called team would have none of it. This color ends in "urple." What is light urple? That's comedy zirconium there.

Making matters worse, I had another brilliant idea that I shared with the group: we should write a script, rather than simply telling our "jokes" to each other and then forgetting them. Somehow, that idea got nixed, too.

Long story short: after lunch, I wandered away from the group and sat outside, writing. Figured that they didn't seem to need me anyway. The adult supervisor freaked, like I was alone in the playground while the killer bee swarm attacked. In fact, I think that bitch would've freaked less were I being attacked by killer bees instead of, uh, writing and not plaigarising. Actually, it took about two hours before anyone even noticed that I was gone — "Hey, wasn't there a kid with glasses here suggesting we write up a script? Our group could use a stenographer..." And the manhunt was on. Eventually, Napor and Aneesa and Jason Meehan came to my rescue and offered me coffee (group four, their group, got the classroom/lounge with the coffeemaker), but I spent the rest of the day moping on a cheap collegiate couch. Why couldn't I get the group with people I liked, why couldn't I get the group with the coffeemaker, why, if I made the world a better place by murdering my nine ex-groupmates with an axe, would I be the one going to jail?

It was the best field trip ever.

Nevertheless, it seems I'm still a bit resentful.