happiness = n^2 + 35.

I've been told before that I don't want to be happy, or that I enjoy being miserable, or something like that. That is absurd. Sometimes I like to make things difficult for myself but there is nothing I want more than to be happy. I just want to clear that up.

I am so smart. smrt.

People are more confident about their intelligence than they are about their looks. I think just about anyone would trade in some of their intelligence for better looks. Any smart person would, anyway.

They both have two first names.

Ron Paul is the current-day Republican equivalent of yesteryear's Howard Dean.

Social Awkwardness

I am far more socially awkward than most people realize. There are a number of reasons for this but I happened to think of one just now while flipping around in bed not falling asleep.

I was fairly shy as a child. Not very shy, but I never raised my hand and didn't usually speak unless spoken to. At some point, I think around the beginning of high school, I began to view my shyness as a weakness of character and a lack of control rather than accept it as the natural and probably genetically influenced personality trait that it was. So I decided to do something about it. This produced a less shy Andy but with a couple peculiarities. Rather than being naturally effusive and gregarious, I tend to speak out in spurts, like my mind suddenly notices I'm being shy and turns something on and my mouth goes off. The second thing is that for some reason I felt compelled to compensate for the shyness by being louder.

I wonder if there is any way I can fix this or if I should even bother trying.

Difference between Seattle and NY, No. 12231

Relative to the size of the populace, there seems to be a much larger number of people with tattoos in Seattle than in New York, especially striking considering that Seattle is full of white people and white people were the second least likely group to have tattoos in NY other than Asians. The difference, however, is that I'm a bit scared of the people with tattoos in New York and the tattoos here somehow makes everyone seem punier. Suddenly, I'm tempted to go and get that Little Mermaid tattoo after all. On second thought, I'd better not.

it's fun time all the time!

Somehow, my internal clock has adjusted right over to Pacific Time with no hiccups. I'm going to sleep, as I always do, around 3am and waking up around 11am. I ought to test the limits of this by going to China and seeing how I fare.

swift movement.

Packing light is always a revelation. You realize just how mobile you really are. Other than my books, I doubt there's much I'm gonna think about or miss (until it gets cold and I'm lacking my winter clothing, anyway.) The things I'll really miss, of course, are the intangible things - friends, places, etc. It occurs to me that we gather excessive physical belongings at least partly because it anchors us down to where we are so we can't just pick up and leave, a somewhat subconscious desire to settle down somewhere.

I do not plan on buying too many things in Seattle perhaps because it's hard for me to fathom staying there an especially long time. It also helps that I can't really afford to buy many things.

At any rate: Watch out, Seattle. Here I come.

Musical chairs.

Where to sit on the subway in new york can be tricky. The ideal seat is usually the one that is at an end, so that you only have to share one side of yourself with another person. (God forbid you are touching someone!) In the wintertime, especially on a train that spends a lot of time overground like the J or the 7, you might be better off sitting in the middle because end seats are near the door and when the door opens, you get a blast of chill air. On older-style trains that have only benches against the sides, there is the long row in the middle, and the smaller two-seaters at both ends. These "love benches" are great for lovers, and slightly odd for strangers, and a little too small for two people. I think they should be reserved for fat people. (Incidentally, these are the best seats to sit in if you want to eat food. But I don't recommend eating because you'll feel guilty when a homeless man wanders past.) On newer trains that have actual seats and are arranged with right angles in them, the seat against the window is the best one to sit in if you want to take a nap because you can rest your head on the window but is hardest to extricate yourself from so it's best for long rides. It is also not ideal for tall people because it has the least amount of legroom. For them I recommend the seat next to it, which has the easiest access in and out of, and is also best for OCD types because you can "sit" on this seat while using the smallest amount of your ass.

Leaning against the door on the side that opens less frequently for stops is the best place to stand if you prefer to, but it is also the hardest from which to get a seat if you are hoping for one.

If you see an old lady eyeing a seat, let her through because she's going to beat you there anyway; they are somehow the most aggressive demographic on trains.

The Most Pleasant People

Here is my latest sweeping generality based on absolutely no fact or experimentation or study: The most pleasant people to be around are the above-average looking. I am going to broadly divide the population into four aesthetic groups: the ugly, the below-average, the above-average, and the beautiful. Interestingly, there are no average people. This is because no one is actually average. The beautiful are snotty and stuckup. The uglies are bitter. The below-average and above-average are mostly interchangeable, but I'll take the above-average because they're easier on the eyes.

Fun With Etymology

Due to my nerdy nature, I find much amusement in certain words. One of my favorites is moxie because it sounds good, has good meaning, and especially because it is named after the supposed oldest continuously produced soda. Last summer, I attempted to acquire a taste for it just so I could drink it whenever I felt low on moxie, like a superhero drinking superjuice, but even after dozens of cans, it was still foul-tastingly medicinal. In fact, it was marketed as a panacea of sorts back when carbonated beverages were still called "elixirs."

Another kind of word I really like is one that seems vague but is actually very exactly defined. A dash, for example, as in a dash of salt, is an eighth of a teaspoon. A jiffy is a hundredth of a second. I don't know any more but I would guess that these precise amounts were given after the fact. I bet a foot wasn't always 12 inches, a cup wasn't always 8 ounces, and a penis wasn't always 6.1 inches.

In the interest of my current boredom, I have decided to start giving arbitrary but exact measurements for vague terms. I therefore declare a trot to be 6 miles per hour, tone-deaf to be someone whose pitch is at least a half-tone off, an inkling to be a quarter of an ink, a glance to be a half-second look, and a mouthful to be a cylindrical form of 4.8 inches in circumference and 6.1 inches in length.

The Top 10 Cereals That Leave The Tastiest Milk

Some cereals leave milk so good at the end, that I look forward to it more than I enjoy the cereal itself. My list seems to skew towards cinnamon, but that is only because cinnamon is great.

10. Frosted Flakes - In my mind the epitome of sugar cereal, it is inedibly sweet, but the milk is nicely sweetened. I suppose you could just add some sugar to your milk, but it won't dissolve nearly as well and would require some rigorous stirring.
9. Cookie Crisp - The leftover milk is pretty good, except that, like Cap'n Crunch, it is greasy with puddles of oil in the milk, which is always disconcerting, and so I put it near the bottom of this list.
8. Life - One of the few times when the cinnamon variety is not as good as the original; Life leaves a milk that is a great flavor but too weak. Also, it is difficult not to leave a milk that doesn't have little Life pieces of straw in it, and that ruins it.
7. Special K Vanilla Almond - I always get it in my mind for some reason that Special K is healthy and plain, and therefore pass over it, but it's actually fairly sugary with good texture. The Vanilla Almond leaves especially good milk because it is probably the sugariest one and has a bit of vanilla as well as honey in the undertones.
6. Honey Nut Cheerios - As far as honey-flavored cereals go, Golden Grahams is superior, but the Bee-sponsored cereal leaves a sweeter, and therefore tastier, milk.
5. Cocoa Krispies - I like Cocoa Puffs and Cocoa Pebbles far more but those corn-based chocolate cereals just don't leave as much chocolate goodness in the milk as the Krispies does, which seems to spill into the milk like dripping paint. Just like chocolate milk, but better somehow. (Cocoa Puffs, by the way, is the best cereal of the three if you can time the puff-milk saturation just right and leave a softly-giving epidermis into the firmer, but not crunchy, dermis.)
4. Fruity Pebbles - Similar to Trix, but with more surface area, the resultant milk isn't so much fruity as it is rainbow-flavored, but rainbows are delicious. Fruity Pebbles is, incidentally, probably my favorite sugary cereal.
3. Boo Berry - A highly underrated cereal, probably because it is difficult to find, but its blueberry-sugar flavor dissolves into milk quite nicely.
2. Cinnamon Toast Crunch - An intense and unabashed sugar and cinnamon rush, but sometimes a little too sweet, depending on how quickly you eat the cereal.
1. Apple Jacks - Leaves a delightful pink/orange-hued residual milk that is the perfect balance of sweetness and cinnamon, even if it doesn't taste like apples.


Speaking of cereals and hippies, I used to buy Good Friends cereal now and again. On the box, they profile a pair of friends, one of the silliest ways to sell a cereal. Anyway, they once had a woman on it so unattractive that I couldn't stomach the cereal with the box sitting in front of me. I stopped buying Good Friends cereal after that.

Lost in the Bookstore.

The travel section in Barnes and Noble is terribly disorganized, or perhaps just very illogically done. There are the two main subdivisions, which are fine: US and World. I did not look too closely in the World section, but within the US, it seems haphazardly alphabetical by both city and state, but after you go from A-Z, somehow it starts up again at A for another go around to Z, again haphazardly with both cities and states. (Washington DC mingles with Washington State, and then Yellowstone National Park, which is inexplicably next to Alabama. or something.)

If I were to redesign the section, I'd have a large shelf made in the shape of the United States and put the books where they belong geographically. Then people could learn some geography while they're at it. (Though it might take the uninformed longer to find what they're looking for.)

conversation I had today.

Andy: I somehow gained nine pounds in the past six weeks.
Emily: Jesus. What the hell were you doing?
Andy: Eating.

The Second Greatest Toast

I thought it was lost forever, but I've recovered the index cards on which I wrote the toast I gave for Jason's wedding. Here it is:

I would like to preface this by saying that when Jason asked me to be best man, he said it was on the condition that I be nice. I had no idea what that meant. So I tried to reassure him by saying that I would give the greatest toast ever and strangely this only worried him more. So let me just say that at best, this is only the second greatest toast, and we can all thank Jason for that.

I first met Jason in the first week of college almost nine years ago and I said, "you look like Alex James," who is a good-looking popular-with-the-ladies British musician. I did not speak to Jason again for a year, but I saw him again, he remembered me, and we started hanging out. It is funny because I imagined that Jason must know all the pretty girls, must be really good around them. Turns out I was absolutely wrong. See, Jason and I would go to parties and end up talking to each other. It was hard to tell which of us was actually worse around girls, and it was like we sat around trying to figure it out to no avail.

Well today, Jason got married. It would seem that he figured it out before I did. This is not true. I'm pretty sure Jason did everything wrong and I can prove this because Jason asked me for advice. What happened was that Jason got extremely lucky. That is honestly what I think. Jason got very lucky because he met Sunny and Sunny was a girl for whom none of the games and posturing mattered, and she saw Jason for the great person he was right away. The two of them realized very early on that they had something special not even my bad advice could deter.

I was there on their first date, for part of it anyway, with some others at a bar in Ithaca. I wish I have an amusing anecdote, some snippet of conversation, to report, but I don't. The two of them were sort of off to the side whispering to each other, and if you saw them at any point tonight, you'd know what I mean because they do exactly the same thing now.

I think this tells us two things. The first is that from their first date, they knew they'd found someone to confide in. The second is that they still constantly find new and fresh little secrets for each other today just as they did when they first met. I know them both very well and I don't think they'll be running out of things to whisper to each other. So please join me in a drink for Sunny and Jason, both of whom I love dearly. I hear they're going to Costa Rica so instead of cheers let me say: Arriba, abajo, al centro, para adentro.

expectant tragedy

Whenever I hear a car skid or screech from braking suddenly, I am always so disappointed when I don't hear it crash... all buildup and no release.

so i kicked him off, you know, at the next stop

It is very cold and the bus is very late, as evidenced by the massive number of shivering people that no longer fit on the sidewalk. Finally the bus comes and what pisses me off isn't that the bus is late but that there doesn't seem to be a hint of remorse or guilt on the bus driver's face. I walk in all miserable. He greets me with a fucking smile.

Doritos

Frito-Lay has been busy with their Doritos line of chips. They have dropped Nacho Cheesier and Cooler Ranch back to just Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch. (One would've thought they'd logically follow with nacho cheesiest and coolest ranch.) But now there is a huge assortment of flavors:
Spicy Nacho, Blazin' Buffalo & Ranch, Black Pepper Jack, Salsa Verde, Taco, Ranchero, Fiery Habanero, Salsa, Natural White Nacho Cheese, and our favorite, Toasted Corn. Toasted Corn! That's Doritos-flavored Doritos! About time.

A few weeks in south dakota.

In Gregory South Dakota the entire town shows up for the high school basketball game and everyone fits in the gymnasium. The two middle time zones are weird because the ten o'clock news is on at nine. Deer walk right by the window. Bald eagles are really majestic. And it is goddamn cold. Sadly too cold for the corn palace. Alas!

Feeling Safe

Those Volkswagen commercials where the drivers suddenly get into an accident, presumably to show how safe their cars are, make me not want to own a car at all.

A new, novel way to meet people

I am going to try to be friendly.