Woohoo! This past Saturday we moved into a new domicile! Here are some random shots from The Big Day.

The front of the house.

Saying goodbye to the old place.

My friend Laurie came by to watch Zooey.

Mike and Maddi occupying themselves with my Guitar Hero: Metallica game, while their dad helps unload the truck.

View of the dining area and kitchen. We will be painting the walls a lighter color as soon as we get a chance.

Living room. Sorry for the clutter, but it IS moving day.

Zooey entertaining herself with her laptop.

Master bathroom.

This is the view from our bathroom window.

This little staircase takes you up and out to the patio/back yard area. We're planning on using it as a decontamination zone for when Zooey gets big enough to make mud angels in the yard.

I love this yard! However, Nick and I have spent the past several afternoons mowing, edging, ripping dead plants out of the garden, etc., and I have come to a conclusion. Yard. Work. Sucks.

Back view of house with patio for grillin' and such.

Here's Zooey in her new room, sitting in the rocking chair her dad used when he was a baby.

Zooey's bathroom.

Check out that bookshelf. My God, it's full of...dust!

Here's a shot of Zooey's ladybug room. The gorgeous quilt on the side of the crib was made for her by my Aunt Sally. And yes, those ARE movie posters on the wall (A Clockwork Orange and The Rocky Horror Picture Show respectively. Is that weird?

The other side of the ladybug room.

First night in the new house! Zooey seems to be a tad excited about her new room.

As the title indicates, here's a collection of random photos taken over the past few weeks.

First up is my latest project, the Octopus's Garden jacket. I used green and white damask fabric and cut out an octopus shape that I had drawn out. I then applied fusible web paper to the back, heated it until it was attached, and stitched it all on with light blue contrast thread. And added button eyes, natch.

I love this picture of Zooey playing with her daddy.

Mere moments after this photo was taken, the truck unhinged its jaw and devoured the little sedan beside it. Seriously.

"Oh noes! More pictures of me!"

Cute baby, cute dress, nuff said.

I ordered this charm on Etsy (an online crafts bazaar). Remember the evil robot Maximilian from Disney's "The Black Hole"? This is him! Isn't he the coolest?

And last but not least, more Tummy Time!

Here's Zooey "enjoying" her first ever parade. (Don't worry, we put the canopy back over her as soon as the picture was taken. Two weeks is a bit early for a first sunburn, and anyway you know how those newborns can be real divas when it comes to their skin.)

One day I went outside, absolutely convinced that there was some kind of decomposing plant matter nearby. I could smell it everywhere, pungent and rotten-smelling. But when I dragged Nick out to verify it, he wasn't able to smell anything at all.

I don't know how it's possible to be this overheated all of the time. Sometimes my face feels like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

So my body is building a home for the baby, and it's apparently doing it 24/7 based on the symptoms I've been experiencing. Don't they have unions in the uterus? Seriously. Someone's getting overworked.

Flavors are all wrong. I also have a terrible aftertaste following every meal, drink, or snack. What's with that? It's like I taste every flavor, and then I taste the haunted carnival version of the flavor. It's the same basic taste, but all sinister and unpleasant.

Wouldn't it be cool if there were educational tapes and videos that you could use to teach the baby about the world while it was still in the womb? You know, like in Superman.

I have some great news, dear Readers. There appears to be a living thing in my belly, and it's not a tapeworm. It's a miniature person! More info and observations to come, but briefly:

I've recently read some pretty cool books. (Thanks, Brandi, for letting me borrow them!) They include:

Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis. I suppose this would be categorized as . . . uh . . . autobiographical fiction? The author is the narrator in this book, but the story quickly takes a turn for the fantastic, incorporating ghosts and Patrick Bateman (the lead character from American Psycho, which Ellis also wrote) and stuffed animals that have been possessed by demonic forces. It's a strange, riveting story about the things that haunt us. And there were times when it scared the living crap out of me.

So Nick and I were downtown this weekend, and we happened upon this freaky car show and parade. My guess is that there weren't any rules dictating car design . . . you just had to make it as unusual and distinctive as possible. Take a gander at some of the entries.

Hey again, silly-muffins. I know I've been MIA for quite a while (and for that I apologize), but I've been doing lots of secret agent stuff lately and I just haven't had a minute to myself. I hope to do better in the near future. For my first foray back into Blogland, I thought I'd post some examples of Nick's recent knitted projects. Biff! Bam! Zowie! It's like having my own personal sweatshop.

(DISCLAIMER: This is not an article about Che Guevara or the movie (really good) that was made about him. This is a narrative about my personal harrowing experience attempting to ride a motorcycle. So if you're a Che-ophile, and are uninterested in anything obtaining to other topics, I'd advise you to stop reading now. However, if you are the sort of person who finds it funny when other people fall down, you should probably continue with this article. Someone definitely falls down in this story.)

Bob Davis Interviews Three Applicants for the Human Resources Job

Bob Davis: Hi, I'm Bob Davis, the vice-president in charge of Human Resources for Polaris Inc. I hope you don't mind the group interview format, but we have a lot of promising applicants and this is the best way for me to get a sense of who you are and whether you'd be suited for the position of Human Resources supervisor. So, I'd like you all to tell me a bit about yourselves and your previous employment experiences. Tell me why you believe you are qualified for this position.

The Grand Inquisitor: Ahem. Well, I spear-headed the Inquisition program for several years, and that taught me a lot about conflict resolution and how to deal constructively with difficult employees. I was also responsible for incorporating some fun, teambuilding exercises into the workplace. An interrogation session can be a great icebreaker for employees who don't know each other very well.

I Would Like:

To host my own surrealist cooking show, which may or may not have anything to do with the preparation of food.

To invent a space-age weapon that could reduce a human being to a pile of cotton candy. It would have a candy corn setting, for safety.

To play old-school Nintendo with Bruce Campbell.

Mayonnaise, if it didn't make that awful sound when stirred.

You to purchase a 50-inch television and leave it outside my door.

Ray Liotta better if he wasn't always beating up someone named Karen in his films.

Some more coffee, please.

Dear Friends and Family (or Current Resident),

Well, the holidays are over. It is my sincere hope that all of you got what you wanted, although the gospel of the Rolling Stones tells us it's not always possible to do so. Anyway, here are some general observations about the holiday season that has just concluded.

First, I'd like to discuss the Ghost of Christmas Commercials Past. What is it with that ancient Folgers coffee commercial? It's at least 25 years old, judging by the feathered hair and the fact that I remember seeing it from the womb. You know the one I'm talking about. The strapping young son surprises his family by coming home from college or something. He smells the coffee brewing. His precocious little sister runs to embrace him. Then mom comes down the stairs in her bathrobe and exclaims, "Peter?!" Everyone smiles. Good-old dad, honored member of the bowling club, steps up to greet his son. It's the most tiresome Norman-Rockwell-on-lithium family portrait ever, and yet we are re-introduced to it every year, because—I suppose—if the milk is good enough, it never ever goes bad, right? Is this the advertising world's version of playing Bing Crosby records every Christmas? Is it supposed to be vintage chic? Just because legwarmers have come back doesn't mean that we should revive every other trend from that era. What's next, exhuming Reagan? Don't forget there was some nasty Cold War stuff in the 80s. Not to mention the hair. My God, the hair. Even Linda Kozlowski looked like something the cat expectorated. Let's let this Folgers commercial die a natural death, instead of lengthening its agonizing existence with yearly life support. I mean seriously. Twenty-five years is a long time for your advertising guys to be out of ideas.

Well, The Onion does horoscopes, so I thought I'd give it a go. If you like this new feature, I may do it again. If you hate it, I will probably do it again anyway. You should know that it's not that I don't value your opinion. Of course I do. After all we've been through together, how could I not? I love you like (please choose the appropriate category): a brother/a sister/a grandmother/a best friend/my lesbian lover/Benicio del Toro/suede boots/Moons Over My Hammy. But seriously, if I have fun writing these horoscopes, then I'm likely to do more in the future. There's not much you can do about it.

Well, we've reached that blessed time of year, the time of Mother Nature's annual hazing ritual, in which I have difficulty concentrating on even the most mundane things due to constant sneezing. Yes, I have allergies. Nasty ones. Ever since my freshman year in college, they have acted up from late August through early October, and during that period I am like a little bird feathering its nest with Kleenex. There must be a box in every room, and there is always a trash can nearby that is virtually overflowing with the unsightly origami of used tissues. The same is true of my handbag and the pockets of my jeans. Let me tell you, when allergy season rolls around, I am a pretty, pretty girl. Also, my sneezes are of such a volume and timbre that they sound more like coughs, so it probably seems to everyone around me that I have consumption. At times I worry that my violent sneezes have somehow damaged my organs. They practically register on the Richter scale, after all. Perhaps these olfactory seizures have shaken loose some grey matter, causing my brain tissue to leak out, little by little. Could it be that I have lost some critical brain functions or memories? Maybe I went sky-diving one time, and I just don't remember it. Or maybe I have lost my ability to whistle. Nah, I'm fairly certain I couldn't do that to begin with. All I can say with any certainty is that I don't feel like I have forgotten anything. And did I mention that my eyes are itchy? As I discovered last winter, I'm ridiculously allergic to angora, so now whenever my eyes get senstive and teary, I can't help but picture an invisible man dangling an invisible rabbit in front of my eyes. A rabbit with fangs.

Here's what's been on my mind lately.

Item 1. The new high-backed chairs in my coffee shop are kind of freaking me out. They are made from a blue velvety material and they have tall, wide backs that face the door. Every time I look up, I expect them to slowly swivel around to reveal a couple of grinning corpses or something. It's spooky. I don't like them.

I have compiled your itineraries. Your summer activities will likely include:

1. Reading at least 20 super-easy picture books so you can qualify for the Book-It pizza party without much effort
2. Basting yourself in coconut oil and climbing into the kiln
3. Barbecuing ill-tempered penguins
4. Applying temporary skull-and-crossbones tattoos to eyelids
5. Playing kid-friendly, non-grave-robbing version of Ghosts in the Graveyard
6. Purchasing self-adhesive prosthetic six-pack for a day at the near-sighted nudist beach
7. Drinking enough beer to fill that huge can outside the Coors brewery
8. Drunken Red Rover
9. Drunken lawn darts
10. Drunken tug-of-war with Uncle Fred's toupee (hippie braids will also work)
11. Sending blood-inked love letters to Johnny Knoxville
12. Playing Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, which entails throwing youngest brother in pit of lava and fashioning a robotic suit for him to wear
13. Family vacation to see the World's Largest Prairie Dog, followed by Carhenge

Sweet fancy Moses, the aliens are attacking! There's a spaceship hovering over Lawrence, and I've got a pretty good idea that those are laser beams shooting out of the side of it. Even as I watch the town hall get incinerated, I can't help noticing that the lasers look a little bit like disco lights. How sad, that disco may be the last thing I ever think about. I have to think about something else real fast—something cooler—so that my last thought will be a good one! Let's see...um...Morrissey! I love Morrissey. My last thought will be of Morrissey! Or Miller's Crossing, maybe. That's a great, great movie with Gabriel Byrne and Steve Buscemi who was funny as the serial killer in that one movie, Con-Air, or whatever. No! Con-Air can't be my last thought! Crap, Karen, think of something else! Man, those little Jetsons cars shooting out of the spaceship look cool. I can almost see what the aliens look like through the bubble glass at the top. Let me just climb atop this pile of rubble that used to be my house so I can get a better view. Yeah, that's better. Oh, they look just like the guys in Flash Gordon, with the bald heads, fu manchus, and crazy high collars! Who would have thought, after all the cinematic mutations aliens have gone through since the invention of sci-fi, and they turn out to look just like the guys in Flash Gordon! Maybe if I wave at them, they'll think I'm one of them and come down to rescue me. I'd have to wing it from there, of course, and they probably don't know English, but still, it's a start. Oh wait, though, that'd make me an alien collaborator! I can't do that, I can't betray my whole race for the sake of my personal safety. That's just not cool. But then maybe it's all a mistake in the first place. Maybe they are accidentally attacking the wrong planet, or they just need someone to explain to them that Earthlings aren't so bad once you get to know them. Okay, so I'm waving at them now. Not that panicky, stranded-on-a-desert-island-kind waving, but the kind that looks friendly and casual, like "heya neighbor, mind if I come over and borrow some plutonium?" Looks like one of those little Jetson ships is coming this way. Oh my lord they're firing at me they're firing that narrow gun thing! No wait, that was just the windshield wipers cleaning off some bird scat. Whew, that's a relief. I can't believe I'm still alive. I can't believe the grocery store near my house has just been destroyed. Funny, there's a crate of milk sitting there totally untouched in the middle of the rubble. I think when they pick me up I'll do some recon work under the guise of collaboration. I hope they're at least reasonably pleasant to me and not the sort of aliens that are into the probe thing. Wow, I can't believe it took me this long to think about that, but it's too late to back out because the ship is landing right next to me. Ok, the Flash Gordon guy is getting out and walking stiffly over toward me. I wonder if these guys even have joints. And I bet when they speak they have robotic-sounding voices and don't use contractions. Is he smiling? Maybe where they come from, smiling is like frowning. He greets me by slapping my shoulder hard and then hands me a manual. He then begins pointing at various knobs and deely-bobbers inside the little Jetson ship, looking at me periodically as if assessing my reaction. I'm doing my best to look enthusiastic, but this is really, really weird. Suddenly, it's clear to me. He's a used spaceship salesman. This is sooo cool, but I wonder what they use for currency. I'm holding out some money from my wallet, but the salesman only looks puzzled. He shakes his head and gestures at my watch (a cheap digital with rubber straps). I hand it to him without thinking and he hands me the keys. After a couple of false starts, the ship kicks into gear and lifts into the air. And now I'm reeling around, doing donuts in the air over the ruins of Lawrence. This baby is hella responsive. Talk about a sweet ride!

Last Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a change to its existing regulations in order to better enforce a law that bans "obtrusive" advertising in space. Spokespersons for the FAA declared that oversized billboards set in low Earth orbit could keep astronomers from doing their jobs.

Now that the discovery of extrasolar planets has been verified (planets outside our solar system), many scientists have shifted their focus to determining whether any of these planets have conditions appropriate for Earth-like life. Already we have MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations in Stars), a Canadian spacecraft that observes and records how much stars dim when their planets pass by them. It's like our own little private investigator, the Magnum P.I. of the skies. Of course, if any of these planets show promise they will undergo even greater scrutiny. I predict that MOST will discover:

This was intended to accompany the Wednesday blog, but I didn't get around to posting it. I love the new food pyramid!

No one knows who built the original food pyramid. The method of its construction is likewise a mystery, one which has occupied historians and conspiracy theorists alike for years. At the time of its appearance, you see, the American civilization simply didn't have the technology to create something so complex. Some see this enigma as evidence that an alien super race inhabited America at the time I was a child and has now moved on to build food pyramids on other inhabited planets. I've never been able to embrace this view. Sure, the pyramid is unbelievably cryptic and unduplicatable, but I'm of the opinion that certain highly advanced individuals on our own planet were responsible for its existence. I prefer to see it as evidence of our own greatness.

Like every baby boomer, George W. Bush is a lover of music. In particular, he listens to Joni Mitchell, the Bee Gees, George Jones, George Clinton, Zamfir (Master of the Pan Flute), and the Knack.

Vincent Van Gogh liked peanut butter sandwiches. It's a fact. This is why he used such thick swaths of paint in his work. It made him feel like he was painting with peanut butter. Sometimes he ingested the paint, and this may have contributed to the schizo behavior reported by his contemporaries. (Especially that business about cutting off his ear to spite his face.)

Before long, a company called LifeGem will be offering an unusual service to funeral home customers across the country. For a small fee (4,000 Washingtons on the cheap end), they will convert your loved one's remains into a quality diamond. That's right, a diamond. What's that? It can't be done? Well, I assure you it can be done, and LifeGem is going to make oversized bucks doing it. Here's a quick science lesson to explain the process. (I know, I know—the original Ms. Liberal Arts Curriculum is going to explain the complicated science stuff to people who probably know way more about it than she does. But it's my blog. My forum. So deal with it.)

Puppy Bowl, on Animal Planet. This was what we watched on Sunday instead of that other game. There was a pen designed to look like a football stadium, containing two goal posts, yard markings, tiny painted people in the crowd (with simulated flash bulbs), and lots of frolicking puppies. There was no format, just a bunch of puppies playing. If one puppy jumped on another one, they'd do an instant replay. Sometimes they'd show the Puppy Cam or Bowl Cam (from inside the water bowl). There was no announcer shouting in the background, only the kind of easy listening you hear on the travel channel when they do a panoramic scenery shot. I cannot tell you how mesmerizing this show was. It was like that Bob Ross "Happy Little Tree" show in days of old. Ten minutes into Puppy Bowl, a thin thread of drool began to slip from the corners of our mouths, and I had the distinct sensation that we resembled those children who stand in front of the television, worshiping the Teletubbies for hours on end. Puppy Bowl rocks!

News item #1: After a night of dreadful insomnia, Nick and I have concluded that our bed is all used up. My theory is that there is a given number of sleeps per bed—about 1,000 probably—and we have exceeded that number. I asked the employees at Bed, Bath & Beyond about purchasing a replacement pack for our bed, but they didn't seem to know what I was talking about. Poseurs.

The latest death toll from the Asian tsunami is around 71,000. Can we even fathom numbers like this when it comes to human loss?

Here are some aid organizations, if you're interested in helping out your neighbors across the globe:

Dear Reader:

Nick and I have been busy this year. We hooked up a new DVD player, and then climbed both slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro (the first task was the more difficult). We also adopted a small goblin who claims to be from Milwaukee. Milwaukee—Algonquin for "the good land." Mostly, he lives under the sink and tampers with the hot water heater.

Well, it's the holiday season in Lawrence, Kansas, and this means one thing in particular to those of us who are natives—there is a massive influx of traffic from Johnson County. Here we are, a town full of artisans and students, hippies and thinking people, and assorted others who make their living pretending to be all of the above. We are the Berkeley of the Midwest. We are the Village people (heh heh). And we have the kind of cultured ambience that summons affluent characters from the suburbs of Kansas City.

Dear Santa

How are things at the North Pole? How is Mrs. Claus? I have been very good this year. There are a few things I want to ask you for.

I just realized that Six Months of Solitude has been online for nearly a year—suckers!—so I thought it'd be fun to look back on all the different ways people have found my site. By and large, the hits are from people who make direct requests or come from links, but each month I get a goodly number of hits from inquisitive folks who are looking for something in a search engine. With this in mind, I reviewed my usage data for the past eleven months and compiled a list of my favorite search strings. Keep in mind that someone typed each and every one of these gems into a search engine, and then—through the sublime magic of the internet—ended up at my very own SMoS. Some of these I can figure out, some are pretty random, and some I'd prefer not to even think about. Enjoy.

When I was in second grade, my parents were counselors for a horse-riding camp. The camp was for area youth groups (grade 9-12) so I was way too young to attend, but they brought me along and let me stay in the lodge with them anyway. I had a great time. I got to ride horses, and the older kids were really nice to me. It was all the fun of camp, without any of the ugly parts, like homesickness or barely cooked biscuits.

The summer after Kivawood, I ended up at Circle-C Ranch. Circle-C was a Bible camp, and the emphasis was on developing "soldiers of the Lord." Partly, this emphasis was evidenced by the military-type room inspections, and the fact that we had to stand in formation by the flagpole at 6 every morning.

Camp is a way to get kids out of the house. They are packed up—their names lovingly Magic Marker-ed onto their clothing tags—and then are shuttled off to some tick-infested wilderness, where a single ill-timed heart attack would leave them entirely to their own Machiavellian devices. At camp, you can learn new skills, like canoeing or making lanyards. You have allies, and you have enemies. You can get lucky and be praised for your successes, or unlucky and be put under house arrest because some other kid TP'd the counselor's cabin and blamed it on you. At camp, you will find nice people and mean people, joy and heartbreak. In other words, camp is life.

Take your Christmas lights down. Sweet crackers, madam! Do you realize it is still a week before Thanksgiving? The holiday season goes on for long enough as it is without the likes of you prolonging it even further. Are you so desperate for the approval of your neighbors that you must engage in this shallow display of merriment before anyone else? Are you worried you won't be the first, because somehow your self-esteem is tied into your placement in the holiday lights one-upsmanship contest?

October 2004

Dear Mr. Sean O'Keefe, c/o NASA;

I was downtown a few nights ago, just browsing the shops and what-not, when a disheveled young man came up and asked for twelve cents.

"Twelve cents?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yeah, twelve cents would be great."

I just stared at him for a moment, then reached for my wallet.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Integer ac lacus nec wisi mollis suscipit. Praesent turpis diam, mattis vitae, suscipit at, ultrices in, nibh. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Vivamus dictum diam. Cras auctor, est vel laoreet fermentum, nisl arcu feugiat leo, ac fermentum risus nibh sit amet enim. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Aenean tincidunt orci. Donec urna sem, consequat sed, mollis sit amet, porta at, metus. Sed egestas massa at wisi. Fusce ultrices urna eu lacus. Etiam molestie. Proin eleifend, ante et fermentum mattis, erat eros porttitor mauris, quis rhoncus lorem nulla nec libero. Nullam a mauris in lacus commodo consequat. Pellentesque magna. Nullam ante lacus, iaculis non, convallis sed, malesuada eu, leo. Nullam nec augue a lorem vehicula viverra.

Sweet, sweet nectar! Six Months of Solitude now has the potential for interaction and dialogue such as the gods themselves will be envious of! Yes, I'm talking about a comments feature, written up by my very own Dr. Nick, the King of All That is Technical. All who breathe, stand in awe of his creation!

Last night I dreamed I walked awhile to find
You, of the darkest hair and brooding eyes.
I bought you whiskey, seeing there behind
That side-slung jaw, a lover in disguise.

Act III.

MAL, ADJUS, and TED are still sitting in the yard, but MAL and ADJUS are sitting back to back. TED has not moved from his original spot. The sun is going down, it's fairly dark, and the mood is tense.

MAL: I mean, what if he was wrong? I saw Father Miller at the store the other day and he was counting out his change, and he had to do it three or four times to get it right, and I thought to myself, "this guy doesn't seem to be very good at math. . ."

TED: How dare you!

MAL: No, no, all I'm saying is that this is a pretty tricky proposition here. If he claims to have calculated the precise day of the Second Coming, how do we know he didn't switch the numbers around? How do we know it wasn't the year 3481? That would make us about fifteen hundred years early.

Act II.

MAL, ADJUS, and TED have not moved from their respective spots in the yard. It should be clear from the light that it is no longer morning, but mid-day. A faint rumbling sound can be heard in the distance.

ADJUS: (perking up) Is that the distant thunder? The golden chariots swooping down to earth to whisk us away? A storm cloud lowering from the sky, about to engulf us in the fog of heavenly bliss?

MAL: It's the man with the ice cart.

On June 7, 1843, thousands of disciples of the New York Second Advent Association, led by William Miller, donned white muslin "ascension" robes and prepared to be transported to heaven. "Father" Miller claimed to have calculated the precise date of the second coming, and followers all over the country believed him.

MAL: Man in his 40s. Full, graying beard and a stern expression. Skeptical.
ADJUS: 16-year-old boy. Overzealous.
TED: 20ish, with preternaturally white teeth and superior eyes. Sanctimonious.

Act I

MAL, ADJUS, and TED, clad in white robes, are sitting in a small yard. Behind them is a row of tightly packed, two-story houses. The occasional bird can be heard chirping in the distance.

ADJUS: When's it going to happen? Father Miller told us it was today. What if it's not today?

TED: It's today.

ADJUS: But how can you be sure?

TED: Because Father Miller is a prophet, and the Lord gave him the power to calculate the precise time of his coming.

MAL: It's special math, Adjus. Special math from heaven.

As you will recall, faithful reader, I've been lifting weights. The muscles are not huge yet, but they are rock-solid and well on their way to looking like Linda Hamilton's. Since the initiation of this weight regimen, there has been a distinct improvement in my strength. I can now wrestle full-sized alligators to the ground.

Brian Greene is my favorite living scientist.

My first exposure to him was on a NOVA mini-series that aired not long ago, entitled "The Elegant Universe." He was the host, and at first I figured he was just an actor hired to guide us through the brave new world of string theory. He probably didn't even know what he was saying, I thought. He was just too charming, too well spoken, and too entertaining to be a scientist. Then it listed his creds: he's a professor and researcher at Columbia who specializes in string theory and quantum gravity. "Okay," I thought. "So he's a scientist. It's not like he wrote the thing." Turns out, of course, he did. And not only did he write the program, which was adapted from one of his books (of the same name), he's written a bejillion journal articles with names like "Duality in Calabi-Yau Moduli Space" and "Orbifold Resolution by D-Branes." This guy is seriously smart.

Hooray! Nick and I will be going to New York this Saturday for a week-long, belated honeymoon. I am terribly excited. I just know that from the moment I step off the plane, I'll have to fight to keep from belting out "New York, New York, it's a wonderful town" like some barrel-chested, tap-dancing sailor on shore leave. Indeed, I'll be looking for the ghost of Gene Kelly, and for Lauren Bacall in a fabulous dress. If anything remains of Dylan's New York, or that of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, I want to find that, too. I wonder how much of my knowledge of New York is fiction and how much is fact? Will we see Snake Plissken or Akim or the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man? Will we see De Niro drive by in a taxi?

Did you notice that the winner's box was empty? That's because you people are incorrigible slackers. I have monitored my inbox for a week, and slash fiction is nowhere to be found. Nothing, zip, nada, the big goose egg. There is only a vacuum where the entries should be, and boy does it suck. I give and I give, and all I get in return is two viruses and a spam offer for cheap Valium (which I am about to make use of, thank you very much).

Mrs. O'Malley

Mrs. O'Malley is giggling with glee;
Her troubles are over, she thinks.
She's butchered the vegetables in the ice tray;
There are gruesome remains in the sink.

The Tattoo

The Man sat morosely behind his desk,
Victim of the seething yellow envelope.
Less threatening blue counterparts hovered nearby.
Feeling suffocated, he suddenly stood,
Discarding the petrified remnants of his egg and toast,
And defiantly strode out.

The man felt plucky walking into the boxy little store,
But was startled to see the shopkeeper
Like an aged Viking, noble and haggard,
His bald head dotted with patches of hair,
Like scattered grasses on a plain,
(His teeth of the same green sanctuary.)
The Man hesitated.
He recalled Geraldo's warning about psycho tattoo artists from hell who actually buy the oh-so-sharp knives advertised on television that no one could ever use but that could cut through a medium-sized building if such a situation arose,
Then resumed his calling.

When I go to the gym, all I want is some old-fashioned solitude. This is one of the few times I get to be by myself, and it's every bit as crucial to my well-being as food and oxygen. (I'm an only child, after all.) When I'm working out, I want to be inwardly focused, to concentrate on the kinetics of bones and muscles. I do not wish to be spoken to. This is especially true if I am on the treadmill, where my heart rate is accelerated and I'm already in a heightened state of primitive energy. If you talk to me then, I am liable to become enraged, and then I cannot be held responsible for my actions.

Dear Diary,

Don't tell anyone, but I'm in love with Donald Rumsfeld. Donald H. Rumsfeld is the paragon of manhood. He is a warrior for our times, a military strategist with the genius of Napoleon, a Machiavellian prince who is both feared and loved. That lantern jaw, those adorable specs, and that broad forehead cradling the biggest, most remarkable brain in existence. That brain, that luscious brain—I'd love to obtain just a little sample of his brain tissue to fry up and eat, like the Celts, so maybe the tiniest bit of his formidable wisdom would be imparted to me. Am I freaking you out?

There was a time when I gave blood every few months. I've never really had an aversion to needles, so it was an easy way for me to feel I was helping out the community. In fact, the only problem I ever had giving blood was when a delusional Nurse Ratched-type, convinced I was on heroin, kept checking my arm for needle tracks.

That was until a bright, sun-shiney day last May, when everything changed.

Thine father, oh he must have been a thief,
He stole the stars and put them in thine eyes.
The time I hath to live, my dear, is brief.
Hast thou not seen my missing Nobel prize?

My arms are skinny, and I want them to be muscular, so I've embarked on a mission to beef them up a bit. I won't be using steroids or anything as gauche as that (after all, W made a pretty persuasive case against steroids in his last SOTU address, didn't he?). My inspiration in this endeavor will be Linda Hamilton, as seen in Terminator 2. She is my muse of all things muscular.

I just watched Jeffrey Blitz's documentary, Spellbound, about the 1999 National Spelling Bee, and was completely sucked in by it. I used to be in spelling bees myself, back in the day, so I identified with the kids in the film. The overconfidence, the nerves, the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, the private tics and mannerisms that suddenly become obvious to the world, the sweet dorkiness of the other contestants (I certainly wasn't dorky), the backstabbing, the stalling for time, the glorious and infernal bell that signals your fall from greatness, and the nauseating re-entry into the dreary world of the proles once the whole thing is over—it's all part of what makes spelling bees so great.

My wife loves Capone. Thinks he's the sexiest man alive. I see him on Clark Street today when I'm out with my cart selling fresh flowers. Daisies, gardenias, hollyhocks, I've got 'em all. And I'm seeing lots of business, seeing how every poor schmuck wants his girl to think he's a romantic on the Big Day. It's cold like February always is, and I'm shivering in my big overcoat that almost reaches down to my brogans.

I just finished re-reading a children's book called The Girl with the Silver Eyes, by Willo Davis Roberts, and it brought back a deluge of memories. The heroine in this book is a 10-year-old girl with telekinesis, and when I first read it, I thought this ability would be about the coolest thing ever (second only to meeting that dreamy boy from Flight of the Navigator). So I tried to do it. I tried to move stuff with my mind. But the results were disappointing, to say the least. It just wasn't fair, I thought. Why couldn't my mom have taken a dangerous, experimental drug when I was gestating, so that I would end up with bizarre abilities that would make my classmates fear me? (Children have a natural Machiavellian sensibility, which is why they go all "Lord of the Flies" every time a bunch of them get stranded on an island together.)

Recently, I have begun to suspect that I have a mild form of hypergraphia, that insidious neurologic disorder that dampens a person's impulse control, causing him or her to write obsessively. It can be rated on a scale of 1 (nagging preoccupation, can't go more than a few days without writing) to 10 (Stephen King). I have to admit, if this is true, it's kind of a cool affliction to have. I always wanted some sort of debilitation or tragic moral failing to give me credibility as a writer—something like gambling or womanizing or the compulsion to collect excess fertilizer on weekends and shape it into tall, grooved mounds like Devil's Tower.