First meeting as WUAT [link horrendously out-of-date] Secretary (having successfully recast the board position from “PR Director”). A promotion from Member-at-Large, which I was after I got myself retroactively elected about a half-hour before the term ended.

Don’t knock knocking it before you’ve tried it before you’ve tried it.

The acting in Clerks is as bad as the scriptwriting is good.

(And for the record, Return of the Jedi. Will explain sometime after 5/19.)

h2g2 had the potential to be awful and was not as bad as I was cynically expecting. My worries about Marvin were unfounded, and the tone was mostly kept, albeit with reduced cleverness. As an admitted Fenchurch shipper, I’ve got to admit that I could have done without the romantic overtones.

It’s just as well the Thursday show I would have tried to see had I known about it turned out the be sold out. Although I did so want to be wearing a bathrobe.

Tonight Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy opens.
However, tonight is also WILD.
However, tonight it’s forecast to rain. And I missed last semester’s WILD and turned out perfectly fine.
However, I doubt I could find any others who would be willing and able to do likewise.
<hint>

Venn Diagram Defense
Let A be the set of food made unkosher by normal kosher laws.
Let B be the set of food made unkosher by Passover laws.
Let x be pepperoni matzah pizza.
So although x is in A, it is not in B QED.

If Moses were alive, he would probably beat me with a stick, but pepperoni matzah pizza is too good.

Will autograph today’s Studlife [p.7] for an enchil… er… pesky Passover…

Prices fluctuated wildly last month as the effects of Taco Bell’s imminent departure were wreaking havoc upon the Mexican food market in the Washington University marketplace.

Danny is a freshman in Arts & Sciences and will miss his sweatshop-produced tomatoes. He can be reached via e-mail at dbravman@wustl[].

Finally got my cheese slicer, at Schnucks of all places. Apparently the technical term for that style is a “cheese plane”. No idea why Target won’t carry them.

Next year in Shanedling. For while I do love Umrath so dearly, its appliances atrociously suck.

[I promised the team they’d get a new cell phone if they decided where they’re going to college... And they decided where they’re going to college... So they’re getting a new cell phone...

Next year in St. Louis!]

Seder preparations. Will be tonight at 7pm in one of the Umrath study rooms.

[The Seder, not the preparations. <grumble> Having to prepare lamb stew in Ruby.]

If anyone has any good ideas for 1 1/2 lbs of lamb and ~12 people, let me know.
Or if anyone has a crockpot.
This is going to be interesting.

Maybe StudLife’s op-ed submissions actually are perfectly representative of mainstream journalism.

“If you were a nuclear power plant, what would your favorite food be?”
Microwave pizza

“What are you more afraid of, getting hit by an emu or a nuclear meltdown (a la Chernobyl)?”
I am more afraid of being hit by a nuclear meltdown

“Do you think a shift to nuclear energy would bring about a proliferation of Mr. Burns's?”
No, for grammatical reasons (possessive; asks about the proliferation of some object of Mr. Burns)

“On a scale from Bob Dole without the Viagra to being in a manatee-dugong sandwich (with pre-Viagra Bob Dole being the lowest), how nervous would you be about living near a nuclear reactor?”
Approximately eating a corndog with a free side salad

“True or false: The US should destroy all of its nuclear weapons. Explain why in between 12 and 13 words, or we will eat your children.”
True; because the US should also destroy every other country's nuclear weaponry

Suspicious of Whistlers
8pm tonight
Gargoyle
*free*

If you're reading this I expect you there.

[Thanks for the attendance! You guys are still awesome!]

“Cardinal Ratsinger dicet amat magna mater ecclesia, sed qui veritas est? Eram prognatus in Germania, ut eram Martin Luther. Validus templum est alius Reformation superstes per a sausages eating bastard?"
"Ego Cardinal Arinze et ego probatus is nuntius.”

Naturally the segment began with an ablative absolute: “With the Pope lain to rest...”

Yay Gumwrapper. [Sorry, Bark wasn’t punchy enough.]

schwamm be gone :(

Shandeling 12. Could have been much worse.

Cell phone working again. At least temporarily, no thanks to Cingular.

lalalalalalalaSCHWAMM

Feeling better, back in my dorm. Cell phone is effectively dead, so use my room phone (5-1392).

Thanks for all the care- you guys are awesome.

If anyone has one of those forehead thermometers, come to U102

Sleeping Beauty become a pumpkin. Time to tell a make-believe story about a showing of Into the Woods.

“We are leaving EARLY FRIDAY MORNING. I forget exactly what time, but we'll say it on Thursday. A[], we will take a chainsaw to your door to get you out of bed if we need to.”

Texas Chainsaw Aperture

<0>

If a girl is waiting for me outside Ursa's, I can hit Bear's Den in under 2 minutes.

1:58:57, to be exact, but I'm positive I can improve on that.

I offer without support that Rodriguez was likely frustrated by a text he was required to study in college, and this is an ironic attempt to have his audience empathize with him.

o TROGDOR o kaiomenoV

To begin, draw a sigma, for snake... er, drakwn, whatever. Next, we’ll draw a more different sigma.

“Trogdor was a man... I mean, he was a dragon-man... er, maybe he was just a dragon...”

<== You must be this tall to date C[]

The package is in the mailbox

“There’s no glossary?"
Yep. That’s what we just discovered this morning.
<professor enters>
“So it’s just as well I didn’t buy the book.”

“Someone wrote ‘Lectures are boring but at least Prof. G[] seems to be enjoying himself.’”

“This is like my personal belief in God, but I don’t believe the author sat down and was like, ‘I’m going to emphasize fs in this paragraph.’.”

“I wonder if the copyright logo is copyrighted. (c)(c)”

“What’s Brownesque about this?”
“Anger.”

It sounds like a euphemism, like for chatting: ‘My brother and I were shooting the cat...’

I had several opportunities to make several rather tasteless remarks about Terry Schiavo, but, probably for the best, didn’t.

Does anyone have brilliant April Fool’s ideas which don’t involve having the humor-impaired campus newspaper suffer thousands in damages?

If not, the usual...
A fireman carrying a screwdriver runs into an elementary school classroom and says, “Listen very carefully, children... This is not a drill.”

I will look back on 3/30/05 9am-3pm as one of the highlights of my life. I still don’t know how I did that.

When pre-frosh are visiting, which headlines are from the campus newspaper, which from the underground parody?

Bon Appetit to begin charging dorm entry fee
Israel-Palestine conflict resolved entirely within Student Life forum section
“Kick the kosher cart” campaign causes campus controversy
Prof screens graphic porn films to provoke conversation
Student defecates in RA’s dorm room
Student Life stolen from newsstands

[2 of the real ones formed part of a trifecta on fark.com]

Saw Goodbye Lenin, which besides fascinatingly turning the fall of Communism into comedy, manages to simultaneously transform the perpetrated lie into an allegory for Communism itself. Aside from a craving for pickles, it promotes a particularly poignancy. It is more remarkable for accomplishing comedy by being intelligent.

I probably could have done better at the single-elimination chess event in the Residential College Olympics had I realized when my 10:30 match began before 11:15.

“I was dying in your arms tonight...”

This Easter thing is actually kind of cool. My egg is so awesome. It’s *plaid*. It makes cool patterns when spun. It’s so pretty I don’t want to eat it.

So I don't have to keep carrying it around, can I just leave my egg in your refrigerator?
"Wait, your refrigerator has an egg slot?"
"Of course! Don't all refrigerators have egg slots?"
"Mine doesn't have an egg slot."
Mine doesn't either.
"Wait, you don't have egg slots? I don't know if I can talk to you two any more!"
I think I need to tell you something: see, girls have egg slots, guys don't.

Still not sure what the third game in Tripoley is.

“From the halls of Montezuma...”

A Plutonic relationship is one without romantic intimacy: to love someone only for their money.

Half a box of Samoas is better than none.

“To what do you attribute the greatest cause of global warming?”
Cows.

At 1:20 in the morning, I am “somewhat informed about global warming”, “hell yes concerned about it [...] but the Kyoto protocol won't do a damn thing”, feel that US efforts rate a 3 “compared to other nations' efforts at combating global warming” where “US” is not well-defined, and “don’t really give a fuck about current data that supports the argument that excessive fuel use is contributing to climate change”. [Sorry, but I am being given a survey at 1:20AM.]

[This Away Message will remain incomplete until I decide how much material from Monday I should commit to a non-Monday Away Message. In the meantime, I apologize. And this week might be one of extreme apathy.]

Liked Romeo + Juliet because I like such transformations, especially exploring the contrast between the modern setting and unupdated dialogue. Unfortunately the title characters lacked the acting ability present in the similar version of Hamlet. At least it fulfilled the rule of seeming like the title character ought to have been Mercutio.

All those undone Greek verb sheets were good for something after all: I’m not sure I would have been able to watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas otherwise.

Nobody does work on Friday evenings. But that's because Nobody can get into the library then. <grumble>

You Make Wash U
SCHWAMM!!!

Erin go bragh. The relevance of this act will be elaborated upon Wednesday... which was yesterday, so I hope you were paying attention, since I’m not repeating it until next year. In the meantime, the word relinquishmentificationality should be used more often.

Celebrate. The relevance of this act will be elaborated upon Wednesday. Which happens to be today. So:

Today is the null holiday I created, celebrating to preserve what little festive momentum there is from Pi Day and the Ides of March through until St. Patrick’s Day. I’m still considering ideas for such details as traditions, rituals, and a decent name.

Really, this week needs all the help it can get in preserving festive momentum.

[Possible reasons to celebrate might include a love for the American justice system.]

"And so it is. For this time I will leave you:
To-morrow, if you please to speak with me,
I will come home to you; or, if you will,
Come home to me, and I will wait for you."

Beware the Ides. The relevance of this act will be elaborated upon Wednesday. In the meantime, if anyone wants to read Julius Caesar in a stairwell, wake me up.

The Annual Biggs Lectures in the Classics would have been nicer had it been more Classics and less Philosophy. Though we did make the discovery that Europeans are unable to celebrate Pi Day, on account of April having only 31 days, and there being no 14th month.

“If you leave children to themselves, and not let them get corrupted by adults, they’ll become philosophers.”

Act irrationally a little before 2 o’clock. The relevance of this act will be elaborated upon on Wednesday.

I don’t suppose anyone has a clue where a binder (black, 3”) approximately might have wound up? Not urgent, yet would be nice to have back.

[Since I seem to be in a particularly cryptic mood, something baked to whoever gets the reference to the first in the second. To whoever spots the second I’ll actually deliver.]

[Discovered: was left it in my last class before Spring Break.]

Spring Break was oodles of fun, yet somehow I have a backlog of work from before and during which I never really got around to. Was either too afk or else too at the mercy of the cable people, so I have a comparable backlog of Away Messages.

Game 2 of online mafia (Newbie 85) ended disastrously. As the cop, I (1) cast the deciding vote to lynch the doctor day 1, (2) had my investigative target killed by the mafia night 1, and (3) wound up getting lynched day 2 to end the game. Moreover, at the end I suspected 2 innocents, each of who suspected each other as well as me, leaving the mafia freest from suspicion. At least I got a cookie for participation.

Missouri to California to Pennsylvania to Maryland to Missouri. With a couple stops in Arizona somewhere in the middle. For $216.60.

I need a vacation after this week. And after venturing into Koenig. (Or maybe Liggett. Whichever isn’t the one I’m now definitely not going to go into.)

"I don't want to know about the things I don't know about."
I know whether this is or isn't a quote of Rumsfeld's.

Will autograph today’s Studlife [p.7] for candy. (Ironically, it was originally intended for WUnderground.)

So, you know how $1,638 worth of stuff is missing from Millbrook Market? Well, it was me. Yeah. Sorry about that...

Danny is a freshman in Arts & Sciences and has a huge crush on the Orbit Gum girl. He can be reached via e-mail at dbravman@wustl[].

What are the happiest words to hear on a Monday?
“EComp’s canceled.”
What are the next happiest word to hear on a Monday?
“Analysis paper delayed until after Spring Break.”

If I turn up dead, half the freshman class will have had a motive to kill me. Perhaps I’ve been studying how to irritate people too well.

Since it’s Monday, let me collect some tasteless quotes that I’d been saving.

“What’s the attraction for girls kissing?”
See, my theory is that guys like slutty girls. But we’re also possessive, so we don't like seeing girls act slutty with other guys. But there’s no problem if the girl’s with another girl.
“Then how come I don’t like guys kissing?”
Well, it must be because you're not possessive.
No. Hm.
Nevermind then.

"What device, invented in 1869, was originally used to treat hysteria?"
I didn't know you could do that with a sheep!

“I don’t date whores.”
You’d make a very bad guy.

Dear Mr. or Ms. 382388,
I was just wondering whether you had any plans for who you’d be rooming with next year. Oh you do? NOT ANYMORE!

3228/4357, which I think good considering the lowest freshman lottery number is ~2800. I’ve begun evaluating upperclassmen dorms, with my, having become too exasperated with the washing, drying, and change machines, ironically going to Mudd to get clean clothes.

“try {
            quiz();
} catch(DontKnowWhatRaceConditionIsException dkwrcie) {
            wait(12:52);
            instructor.announce(definition);
            problem2.doExampleFor5pts;
}”

Forget about perfect attendance. Did anyone skip only 1 class this week?

Waif, free from wavy hair
And fragile flair,
Let those outgrown lie prone: don’t bear
Escaped Medusan lair.

So, you know how $1,638 worth of stuff is missing from Millbrook Market? That was me. Yeah. Sorry about that.

[IM me to read the rest of “Confessions of a Candy Thief”, which due to some unfortunate logistics will not be published in the upcoming edition of WUnderground.]

Splintered by wintered sting,
Speechless dreams fling
Back harpy’s sharp keen: Let nothing
Befall the future spring.

While reading “Brown” I notice two girls on my left and two guys to my right.

As one guy is ready to concede that differences in the sexes exist, they postulate hypothetical explanations before confirming beer pong plans. One girl doesn’t get some of the stereotypes, scornfully dissecting picked out phrases for her preoccupied friend.

There is silence.

One guy has discovered the context for the quotes, and the other reasons he is pro-antidiscrimination. One girl observes that while it’s only a theory, it is on the Times front page, which other girl defends; both want to see the primary source, but instead talk about a test.

Both pairs are discussing the same article and only I realize it. It was too surreal to ruin by revealing.

Yesterday was a good Friday, for EComp was canceled.
Speaking of Good Friday, I’m giving up Christ for Lent.

"Now is the winter of our discontent...."/You're probably looking for the other side of this card. It's not too late to flip over!/Modified Avalanche: 1) Rock 2) Rock 3) Paper 4) Rock (if necessary)/James Abram Garfield was the 20th US President./o matrix/(T): Add (W) to your mana pool./For more information, AIM: EmpTyger and ask for a cantaloupe./+> N/My other cheat card is deliberately left blank./Below is an inside joke from Math 201 involving striped shirts./If this were for a Baernstein exam, it wouldn't be the file card which would be lined.../But does your mouth feel clean? FABULOUS!/3x5 card = 15 card/If LOST, return to ABC Wednesdays, 8/7 central./The word cantaloupe appears on this card for no apparent reason./Not valid in Quebec or Lichtenstein. See store for details. Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary.

There seem to be only 2 kinds of dryers here: ones that don’t work, and ones that don’t dry.

Having taken cold medicine and naps, I’m feeling better. Yay zeugma.

“Valentine’s Day sucks if you’re single.”
“It also sucks if you’re not.”

Anyone up for a little Lupercalia instead?

Vacuum (second eulogy)

Oft tell the timeless toils of souls now soiled
In times of grief that lie nigh lonely night,
When helpless spotted doth spot new hope spoiled:
Hero lain uncovered ‘mid uncleared blight.
Heartlessly slain upon a heartless day
Ere night ere rise of love’s impassion’d dawn
As heartless lie aggrieved in thoughtless way,
Left silent, warcry turned to fun’ral song.
On evil surface, walked upon unpaved,
Give too much dirt to too much death in dearth.
The worth of wholesome living left unsaved:
Eternal life etern’ly ruin’d by birth.
Never old in dying rust.
Ashes, ashes, dust, dust.

Add this sentence to your profile if you add stuff to your profile because someone else’s profile tells you to do so.

Add this sentence to your profile if you don’t add stuff to your profile because someone else’s profile tells you to do so.

New whiteboard finally mounted at 3pm yesterday. Stop by and give your prediction on how long before this one kills itself.

Not freezing like an ice parrot, or avoiding class like a mixed metaphor. For those who missed me in Village 3, I didn’t not perform.

Ehn. It’s been a bad week.
Out like a bad simile.

Zen counting the days until the weekend. Let me know when I can open my eyes, though I’m probably already asleep.

If it’s Monday, it must be time for tastelessness:
The University of Missouri-Rolla’s mascot is the Miner. So, like we have outside our library a statue of George Washington, they have a statue of a miner, with a hardhat and pickax, only their statue is inside the building we were in. Naturally, I had to have a picking of me molesting the statue, going for the “inappropriate relationship with a miner” joke. Of course, at that point I must follow-up with the “statutory rape” pun, and then I may as well 3-for-3 by “pulling on his tool”.

And then the next improv scene prompt just happens to be “Coal Mine”.

Saw “Trojan Women”, which was, as said by others, most fairly described as “interesting”. Hecuba was too whiny, Talthybius spoke too softly, the genre shifts were too done too abruptly, Helen honestly seemed cast solely for her ability and willingness to pole dance, and the theatre was distractingly too warm. However, Andromache was very good, as was Poseidon, and Chorus A of course contained some excellent performing.

No SI mentions this week, although Rolla’s statue of a miner and his tool evoked a triple of tasteless double entendres, and that was before dinnertime jokes about Ray Charles, Helen Keller, and Nazis in general. I’d repeat them, but I’m already babbling like a bad simile. I’ll provide salacious details when I’m less tired and have located photographic evidence.

Team Poisonous Platypi did remarkably well considering they were but 2 freshman who could not answer a question about Maryland for their lived-in-Maryland-for-most-of-their-lives. In fairness, I did preface by warning I'd be doing some crazy negging.

Anyone up for the ultimate roadtrip: Haugesund, Norway -> Trondheim, Norway, with MSN as the travel agent?

Seriously, I need plans for summer vacation.

[Gr... apparently Microsoft decided to actually fix a bug for a change. As it was, courtesy snopes.]

Mnemonic creation is the ultimate Rorschach test, only sometimes there are wrong answers. For {menw = I wait}, the correct mnemonic is not “men wait for me” but rather “a waiter brings you a menu”.

+1/2 but I’m getting the wrong answer.
My first (partial, though I was activated as a replacement very early) mafia game online (Newbie 76) has been more successful: as a vanilla, I was killed Night 2- with the cop killed Day 1 and the doctor Night 1- but before dying cast enough suspicions on the final mafia member that the town obtained a victory on Day 3.

It's Disneyland.
"No, I think it's Disneyworld."
No, my sister was just there.
"I've seen the commercials."
So have I!
"Should we vote on this?"
"I think it's 'world."
Anyone?
Please?
Fine.

Team Enrobed Milanos by 2 points over the too-tasteless-by-probably-only-a-week Team Tsunami.

I'm sorry, but I can't let you do this. It's 'land.
"Give me the paper."
I had seen the commercials with my sister, and we couldn't tell what they were for, and she was just at Disneyworld and it wasn't that!
"When was she there?"
A week and a half ago!
"Hm."
Look, I'll pay $5- to each of you- if I'm wrong.
"Hm. Okay."
Let me just check see that I have $20.
"Wait, I thought you were sure?"
No, I am. But my sister so owes me $20 if it isn't.

“If you see a mime sometime between now and then do not try and engage him in conversation, instead flee, flee for your very lives.”

I wish someone did get the officer’s name to find out if it were Beth; though since it was a middle school and not a church, discretion would concur that continuing the rapid movement away from the suspicious noises would indeed be most prudent.

*8* consecutive RPS victories in a room of 10 players is pure skill.

“Whistle while you work...”

“One man deserves the credit, / One man deserves the blame...”

Borrowing from Lobachevsky.

“...Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.”

Free pizza/free t-shirt. Probably the only reason I wouldn’t sell my soul for such is that it would be logically impossible.

Danny’s Corollary to Pascal’s Wager
Use who rather than whom.

“I’m guessing the 4x4 matrix is impossible, because otherwise you’d have to spend a long time doing it.”

Continuing Work-Study might be impossible.

Going to Suspicious of Whistlers for free pizza merits a callback?! Clearly I am an expert on intelligence.

Did you just say custard?
No, mustard. As in, we could relish some mustard when we catch up.

Okay I'm out like... like... we have both a banana and mozzarella cheese in the freezer.
Is that a metaphor or a statement of fact?

“Oedipus conjugated when he should have declined.”

I fear I hear Cat purr
And grow sadder
Since they, who sublime climb had, were
Upon fallen ladder.

For some reason my Away Message was not set yesterday, so all of you missed a bad pun. Similarly, my SI entries were overlooked this week. (Including one that could have been much funnier were I one who watches the OC.) So if you heard some bad joke coming from me this weekend, it wasn’t my fault- I swear it there was something in the French fries. (Like vodka, only without the alcohol.)

A man walks into a butcher shop and says to the butcher, "I bet you $5000 that you can't reach the meat on the top shelf". The butcher thinks for a second, then says, "Sorry, no, those steaks are too high.

“It’s an incentive to stay on top of things. You don’t know whether there’ll be a quiz. I don’t know whether there’ll be a quiz.”

In theory there is a 1/6 chance of having a pop quiz in CompSci. In practice, it’s a lot closer to 100%.

Google’s best advice regarding the current noxious influx of Spam-IM:
“One of these days, an attractive girl named Megan is going to im me and i'm not going to believe it because i'll just assume she's another one of these spam im things” [sic]

Four-square naturally evolves into dodgeball.

Wash U B (Team Korean Raw?) won 5 of our first 6 games- and then dropped 7 in a row to finish 5-8. At least we got propped as the funniest team there.

Highlights:
The appropriate incentive to discourage tardiness: having to take “The Judge”- a suitcase with 9 lights on the side that contains the buzzers, a battery, and a lot of wires- through security.

Fluxx. [It still might be my turn.]

Shuttle drivers and car rental agents will laugh at you if you try to take 9 people in 2 mid-sizeds.

Weakest Link. <[space]>

Ironically, one must be 19 to gamble in Canada.

RPS. [When it counted, 3-0.]

<sports bar trivia>
What kind of category is “Famous Roads”?
“How about the one Not Taken?”
“The Yellow Brick?”
Colossus of?
“...That’s the nerdiest thing I’ve heard all day.”

In an earlier Away Message I stated that
I am in a state that begins with M and is 8 letters long.

I think everyone who read that guessed wrong at least once, and most did so twice. For the record, there are 3 states {Maryland, Missouri, Michigan} that fit the criteria of beginning with M, being 8 letters long, and having me be in them while such an Away Message was displayed.

Appearing in Maryland while I was in Michigan was an SI entry attributed to Missouri which I composed in, er, Molorado. [Unprinted was Disquali-migration: Technical term for a Nannygate.]

I am in a state that begins with M and is 8 letters long.

I think my New Year’s resolution is to next year not have to make the New Year’s resolution to buy a calendar before New Year’s by buying a calendar before New Year’s. For the second consecutive year I am in mid-January scraping through leftovers trying to find a decent page-a-day calendar. Sure, they are discounted, but the saved money isn’t worth the hassle from limited selection.

(Finally decided on the Escher.)

“Catch-22” seemed more a collection of character sketches than an actual story, yet the further I read the more I became absorbed. There was an “Atlas Shrugged” moment, when like “Who is John Galt?” a phrase in the book transforms into an idea in the real world while still in the book. Nately’s whore’s kid sister reminded me of “Les Miserables”’s Cosette; I’m not sure what Rome was. Orr’s unexpected secret fit so perfectly [though I cannot remember what it reminded me of]. The narrative style convinces that Yossarian is insane, then that everyone is, and finally that Yossarian is the only sane one. But the biggest problem I had with “Catch-22” is that I thought “Caine Mutiny” better: the former says that war is crazy; the latter says why.

“The Dick Cheney Code” is more effective as a satire than a parody. I kept expecting the plot to perfectly parallel the source, but it instead diverged, probably to allow the political humor to be more one-sided. Most of the political jokes are the ubiquitous type; they are not as memorable as how effectively the book labels as bad a bestselling novel thought good. The book’s missed opportunities are equivalent to those of the Da Vinci Code.

And besides, the author also writes Latin humor books. And the local geography is too familiar.

Singled in this week’s SI. I’ll assume it was the best I submitted, since I don’t have access to my rejected entries.

For that has been the only critical disappointment with Vanessa: the lack of portability hence flexibility. Otherwise she truly has been fabulous. I’d forgotten how annoying it is to type on laptop’s keyboard, or to accidentally use the touchpad, or to try to angle the display. To say nothing of sharing.

The difficulty is somewhat ameliorated by the perfectly named external 80 GB offshoot or division of the main portion of a structure. Another contraption which happens to be a useful holiday gift.

Saw Wicker Park, having not given in despite my stalker having drugged me on the outbound flight, sabotaged the third in-flight movie on the return flight, and scratched tonight’s DVD. The random squeals emitted by the speakers were less painful than the dramatic irony the film is saturated with.

It is gratifying that he knows about the “used to be funnier” stage, and that it is so historically fundamental. For there is a cycle, one I have witnessed in others besides myself, going from introduction to discovery to reading to fanatic following to clipping columns to purchasing books to aforementioned realization. But following that final realization, after which the fanaticism leaves and one seeks humor elsewhere, there still remain too many uninitiated, who will not get some allusion, just waiting for their introduction into the greatest humor writer of the era.

Dave Barry Was Here