So how does it feel to make out with your sibling?

Is it hot? Or is it weird?

What's that? What do I mean, you say? You two are going out, aren't you? I thought so. You were giving off that, "We're going steady," vibe. So, yeah, how does it feel then, making out with your sibling and all?

Oh, I'm sorry, you're not conjoined twins? My mistake. I made that assumption based on the way you were unable to separate in order to allow people to pass you on the sidewalk.

You must be royalty, then! Boy, is my face red. If I'd have only known - I would have thrown myself into the street as you approached, instead of trying to rudely maintain my position on the sidewalk as I passed you.

Next time, I promise a bow, if the cars don't hit me first.

Roadnotes: Vancouver 3

Christmas is never the best day to find a fantastic breakfast, but there is a coffee shop open around the corner from the hotel. The girl working there has a lovely French accent without any hint of a superior attitude. Truly delightful.

Then, it's a quick walk to the bus station and a tolerable journey back to Seattle. I have a modest pile of Christmas gifts to open and all the elements of a superb Christmas dinner await me in the refrigerator at home.

Roadnotes: Vancouver 2

The library is pretty spectacular. I was expecting more show and tell than practical use of space, but I was wrong. It is beautiful and efficient.

Stanley Park is awesome. I'm jealous that they have that so close to the city.

And I just had the best Malaysian food. Oh it was good. It was so good that I don't have anything to compare it to in order to get across how good it was.

It's Christmas Eve in Canada. Oh yeah.

Roadnotes: Vancouver 1

So I reserved tickets through Amtrak's web site to go up to Vancouver. Silly me, expecting to ride a train and all. Nope, I was put on a bus.

Always ready to put a positive face in things, I thought, "Well, at least we'll be on time, eh?" I'd heard of trains being as much as eight hours late.
But no again - we sat on the bus for 20 minutes waiting for two people transferring from Chicago. They were late because of their train.

Incidentally, it's amazing how traveling a few miles outside of our borders increases the availability of responsible news reporting.

You have to be smarter than smart to be considered smart

...because the test is written by someone much less intelligent.

It's kind of like what Nicholson Baker said about John Updike. Updike is more than genius because he can make his genius understandable. You see, if you have a genius concept and you want to get it across to stupid people, you have to be even more genius than the original concept: double genius!

That's what you're up against, smart people.

It was a dream and I take NO responsibility

I don't know what Gary R Smith II was doing in my dream, but he was there with his obnoxiously cool shades and everything.

I woke up Sunday morning and discovered that I'd written this down:

Okay, Once I Became All-Powerful

One time Erik and Sera and I were waiting for dinner at a restaurant and I decided that we should play the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern game. So I pulled out a quarter and explained the rules.

"The person who gets the most heads in a row wins, but that's going to be me because I'm going to win. Sorry about that."

Obviously, there was an intense level of interest expressed by all as I flipped the quarter.

"Heads," I said, stating the obvious. That is also part of the rules: you have to say, "Heads," when you get a heads.

Sera and Erik exchanged subtle glances of wonderment and anxiety.

I flipped the quarter in the air and looked at the result.

"Tails."

Confidently, I gave the quarter to Sera. She would only have to get two heads in a row to beat me and thus derail my whole me-winning prophecy, but I wasn't concerned.

And what do you know? She got a tails.

Then Erik got a tails on his first flip and I won, just like I told them I was going to do.

They looked awfully baffled at how I knew I was going to win.

"Want to know how to do that?" I asked.

"Sure," Erik said.

"You become God."

And it works, too. Trust me, if you become God, you will find it very easy to rig a coin-flipping game.

Later that day, I also decided to win a game of bowling.

Fanletter: Jacques Dominique

Dear Aaaaaaron,

I am a reader of a lot of time of its blogs and the joy. But today I write to ask a favor.

In you profile, says that you are a "Defender of Obscure Social Interests." Well, I am a member of the Group of Support of Haiti, an association of individuals that maintain the Haitian people in his fight for the justice, for the human rights, and for the participatory democracy. Although there is now a formal democracy in Haiti, the poor majority he continues to be excluded of the process.

By subscribing to our bulletin, you will be capable of helping us unite with organizations of the local level there and still more the cause of the justice for a people that are needed. I thanks for its aid.

Sincerely,

Jacques Dominique

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Dear Jacques,

I would love to help you but your cause is just not obscure enough. I really do have a deep level of commitment to fighting for obscure social interests, but the cause has to be a lot more obscure than the one you approached me about.

As you may have noticed, there are actually quite a few poor people in Haiti and this makes their situation not so much obscure as disastrous and incredibly harrowing. So, you see, it is just not my thing.

Examples of obscure social interests I have taken up in the past are these:

1. Will LEGO release a Black LEGO figurine? (They now have.)

2. Will libraries ever adopt a best practice book for labeling materials? (This, I'm still working on.)

I wish you luck, and if your cause happens to grow much more obscure in the future (like, say, if you get the number of poor people down to about two or three), please feel free to approach me again.

Aaaaaaron

I Will Become A Super Hero

I will chew a ton of Everest gum and become a super hero.

But soft! What sense is this traveling through yonder window in some sort of mockery of Shakespearean language? It is perfect sense, as any comic book reader who is pseudo-knowledgeable about aspartame would know.

Yes, Everest gum contains aspartame, which has been said to cause cancer, confusion and "like thinking in a fog." Even so, I continue to chew it because nothing else freshens my breath so completely. Mints will not do. Other chewing gums will not do. I tried the Altoids mint gum, but it is not as good as Everest. Everest is the perfect size, soft and chewy and they use real peppermint. Also, they come in a steel container that looks very professional in a business meeting or at a conference.

But anyway - I will become a super hero by chewing a lot of it because aspartame transforms into Formaldehyde at a certain temperature, or some such factoid that I read on the Internet.

Yes, I can see it now - I will have just gorged myself on aspartame gum and then, by accident, I will fall into a molten pot of iron ore. At first, it will hurt, but as the aspartame converts to a super high-powered kind of formaldehyde I will become preserved. I will realize that the boiling liquid metal is no longer hurting and I'll climb out of the vat and a bubble will come out of my mouth and on the bubble will be written the words, "I am henceforth, to be called, MR. FORMALDEHYDE!" or something like that. Naturally, at that point I will be able to fry things with laser vision. It is all in the plan.

But wait, what is the Internet telling me now? Aspartame is safe, says snopes.com and urbanlegends.about.com? How can this be?! This was my one true chance! My one chance at greatness! You've robbed me of my future heritage, Internet!

Ah, but here is new information - thanks to Wikipedia, I can see that there is still some controversy regarding the safety of aspartame. Perhaps, I can yet become a super hero, after all! Thanks, Internet! You're always there for me.

Garlic and olive oil: quick tip

So many great recipes require you to sizzle some garlic in olive oil to the perfect golden state of being. If you're new to this, you might end up screwing it up in several ways - like sometimes you heat the olive oil up and when you throw the garlic in, the oil's too hot and it totally scalds the heck out of the garlic.

I regularly throw the olive oil AND the garlic in the frying pan, THEN turn on the burner and heat up the oil. This lets you monitor the heat of the oil better and you can hit that perfect state of garlic perfection a lot easier.

This of course is not too much of an issue for those of you with ranges that let you select a low heat setting quite easily. My range is always rental quality - a sort of finicky low-heat setting that means it is either off (you turned it down to low) or it is too hot to even keep spaghetti sauce warm without spattering all over heck.

Johnny Cash!

What, do I need to say more?

Once, A Woman Thought I Was Impotent

This came about because we were discussing life one time and she asked me why I was sad.

And I don't remember what I said, exactly, but it was something vague, like, "Life...has been very difficult for me." (Yes, I even paused like that because I like attention.)

I was meaning because of my chronic depression, because of my view of life as a series of mechanical movements - like a game that you've figured out all the rules to and thus discovered: there is no point to the game!

But she took this to mean I was impotent.

It was a simple mistake, really. They are pretty much the same thing.