People is freaking their shiz out about the economy right now, but you'll forget all about making ninety cents on the dollar with your money market fund when you hear about what happened to me yesternight.

The battery in my MacBook Pro died. For the past month, I've been enjoying the mobile convenience of being able to use my apple computer product, running off the battery, anywhere I want, as long as I don't want to use it for more than fifteen minutes.

I'm thankful in a way. Fifteen minutes of battery life has forced me to do things with my time other than being productive. I consider my day a success if I've managed to get as far as filling in the To and Subject fields of an email before the computer shuts off due to Catastrophic Power Failure. It doesn't say "Catastrophic Power Failure" - I think I saw that on a TV show - but if I were the person in charge of what messages to flash the user when their laptops shut down automatically due to a drained battery, I'd probably tell them that the machine has experienced a Catastrophic Power Failure. Everything on your screen would be replaced by a flashing graphic of the universal symbol for radiation, and a klaxon would start blaring through your speakers (even if you have your headphones plugged in). Just before turning off, I'd change the message to "Reactor Breach Detected: Meltdown Imminent". Everything would flash and sputter for a second, followed by deactivation. This last part might be hard, but if I could manage it, I'd also make the computer squirt a little liquid out of the disc-drive or something - then it would shut off.

Speaking of which, I'm available for hire, by the by, and I'm ready to go back to work. As you can see, I'm an idea guy, interested in the user experience, and particularly the research that's been going on for the past few years into the pros and cons of making users think they're at ground-zero for a nuclear disaster when their batteries run low. It's big time - get in on the ground floor and integrate my ideas into your product before the other guys do. I'm a mercenary, and I go where the money is. Don't get left in the cold while the rest of us ride this tsunami of innovation into early retirement.

Oh, yeah. Batteries.

I went down to the Apple store to destroy this problem right in the face. I expected it'd be a simple matter of giving them my old battery and having them hook it up to their Machines to inject new energy into it. Or to refill it with the stuff that holds onto the energy so it doesn't get away (maybe my battery had a leak in one of its energy-containment tanks?). I think the stuff is glue because glue is sticky. Or honey. I got honey on my fingers once, and it bothered me, so I think it would also work to contain energy molecules.

Did you know that batteries are dangerous and that if you slam one into your forehead to open it (the battery - not to open your forehead) it can damage your region there? IT'S TRUE.

Needless to say, which is why I'm saying it, I didn't want to hold on to this antimatter hot-potato any longer than I had to, so I accepted the help offered to me by one of the Apple Store employees.

Despite my I'm-a-smart-person-intentionally-writing-like-an-idiot-for-fun tone in this post, the following conversation was real - I don't remember it verbatim, of course, but this is demmed close:

Apple Store Salesperson: Hi.

Me: Hey.

ASS: Is there anything I can help you with?

Me: Yeah... the battery for my MacBook Pro is dying, so I need to get a new one. Here's the old one [handing her the old battery for reference].

ASS: Ok. Let's take a look [walking to a nearby MacBook]. Is your battery under warranty?

Me: I don't know. I think the warranty ran out, but I have that Apple Care thing, but I think that may have run out, too.

ASS: Apple Care?

Me: The extended warranty service... Apple Care. Apple Care? I think that's what it's called...

ASS: Oh, yeah. Apple Care. Do you know if your battery is still covered?

Me: No.

ASS: Because you can get a new battery for free if it is.

Me: I had no idea. That'd be cool.

ASS: Do you have your MacBook with you?

Me: No... do I need it for this?

ASS: Well, I need the serial number, and it's on the computer, so...

Me: Is there any way to find out about the warranty without the serial number?

ASS: The thing is, the serial number is on the computer, and we need it to look up your warranty information.

Me: Yeah, but is there any other way to look up the warranty? There must be something...

ASS: If you look here, you need to have the serial number [using the demo MacBook to browse to the Apple Store support page - there's a form with a field for the computer's serial number].

Me: I know, but is that the only way to look up my info?

ASS: What I suggest you do is go home, visit this web site, go to this form, enter in your serial number, find out if your computer is still under warranty, schedule an appointment with one of our Apple Geniuses, and they can test the battery to see if it can be replaced under warranty. If you book an appointment right now, we might be able to get you in on Thursday next week.

Me: That sounds like a lot of work just to find out if my warranty is still in effect. It'd be nice if we could  somehow look it up while I'm down here. Otherwise, I'll have to go home, schedule the appointment, schedule my day around that appointment, whenever it may be, make the trip back down here, and then leave my computer with you guys just to find out if my warranty is current... I'm already down here, and I need the new battery, so if we could just look this up, it could save me several trips and a lot of time. If my warranty expired, I'll buy a new battery. It's fine.

ASS: I really recommend that you do this service so you don't have to pay for a battery if you don't need to.

Me: I agree, but there must be some way to simply look this up while I'm here. I'm not asking for warranty service tonight. It's one little bit of information, and if we could get it now, that'd be nice. So... what's your return policy on batteries?

ASS: Fourteen days from the date of purchase.

Me: Even if I use the battery? I mean, I can still return it if the box has been opened?

ASS: Yes, but then you won't be covered under warranty.

Me: No... but when I get home I can log on to the support site to find out if I'm still covered under warranty. If I'm not, then no biggie - I'll have my new battery. If I'm still covered, I'll just return the new battery within the fourteen day window and then let you guys replace the old one under warranty.

ASS: But we can't do that. You can't buy a new battery and then use it and then get it replaced under warranty. It doesn't work that way.

Me: I know. I'd return the new battery to get my money back and then drop my laptop off for servicing and to get my old battery replaced under the warranty. That way I potentially save myself a few trips back to the store, and I'll also have a battery to use in the meantime. Can I do that? Return the new battery?

ASS: [Long pause - she looks really irritated/disgusted] You can do it that way if you want.

Me: Ok... before doing that, I want to make sure that there's no way to look up my warranty info while I'm down here.

ASS: Not without your serial number.

Me: But I've brought my laptop in for service here before. I bought it here. You must have some kind of records for that - be able to look it up by my name or phone number or something.

ASS: I know we keep records, but I don't know how far back or if that information is available.

Me: Can we check?

ASS: [Irritated - and she actually said this] Then I'd have to go enter all that in - I really think you should just go schedule an appointment.

Me: Um... is there anybody else in the store who can do this? What about the guys back there [pointing at the Genius Bar]? They must have service records back there. I don't see how they couldn't.

ASS: Like I said, I don't know how much of that we keep, and I don't know for how long.

Me: Can I just go back there and ask them? Would they be able to do that?

ASS: [Again, she actually said this - nearly verbatim] No. Don't go back there and talk to them directly. They have a tendency to get a little... pissy.

Me: Uh... is there any way at all of getting them to look it up?

ASS: I'll go back there and see what they can do. Wait here.

Me: If it's all the same, I think I'll come with you [she walks away and I follow - rather than stopping at the Genius Bar, she disappears through the employee door in the back of the store].

After she disappeared, I went to lean against a table while waiting for her. I was facing the Genius Bar, and because she cautioned me against addressing the Geniuses directly, I avoided eye-contact and let my gaze wander over the various products back there. The Geniuses weren't doing anything. I wasn't doing anything. We were several feet from each other. It was awkward.

After a couple minutes, and with a puzzled look on his face, one of the Geniuses asked me if I needed help with anything.

Me: I do, but the person who's helping me is in the back. It's something I think you guys could help with, but she told me not to directly address you, so I've been avoiding eye-contact.

Genius: What?

Me: She said you guys didn't like it when customers came and talked to you without an appointment, so I'm just hanging out, waiting...

Genius: What's the problem?

I told him, and he had my warranty information up in about a minute. My girl returned soon after and, seeing that I was in a conversation with a Genius, got an agitated look on her face and then stood by silently while he helped me. She didn't say anything the entire time, and I assume it's because she didn't find anything about my warranty while she was busy with what was probably a bathroom break.

A couple more minutes, and he told me everything I needed to know. My warranty was expired, but my Apple Care plan was still in effect. However, batteries aren't covered under Apple Care, so I'd have to buy a new one. He explained the technical reason for batteries dying (which I already knew, but he was so nice and was such a relief after the salesperson that I let him continue while I nodded appreciatively).

I thanked him for his help and then the girl sold me a battery.

People have bad days. I don't know if this was one of hers. Whatever the case, it was absurd: arguing with me for ten minutes, trying to convince me that, rather than looking it up (with her having to do all that work), I ought to go back home, log into Apple's support site, provide my serial number, read the warranty plan to figure out if my battery's covered, and then schedule an appointment with a Genius (a week out), drive back out to the store, drop off my computer, and possibly have to leave it (meaning I'd have to drive back out again to pick it up), all just to figure out IF my battery could be replaced under warranty.

That kind of behavior is acceptable in socialist countries where nobody wants to do any paperwork, but someone who refuses to do three minutes of work that could potentially save me hours of lameness (driving, dropping off, discussing, picking up, etc.) is an asshole. I'm freaky polite, especially with people in customer service positions. Customers can be bastards. I don't want to make things worse on someone who already isn't getting paid enough to field the whining they get from people who ran their ten year-old laptops over with a monster-truck and think Apple should pay for it.

Something for which I have little patience is the creation of problems. Problems will arise naturally when circumstances are right - they don't need us helping them along, generating new ones unnecessarily.

It's messed up, man.

Messed up.

Apple has a reputation for hiring smug know-it-alls for their stores, but this was messed up.

Messed up, man.

This was messed up...

A couple years ago, I had an idea for a mobile app that would revolutionize the universe. It was innovative, solutionable, and coked to the gills with passion.

It was everything the World 2.0 wanted as well as a bunch of stuff it didn't.

I could have written it back then, but the tech required was a touch beyond what was available in most consumer mobile devices. It needed too many stuffs that weren't there. Like certain microchips and transistors and tubes and also magic and wires that are good.

Now, two years later, approaching the end of the first decade of the 21st century, in the year 2008, the technology is here, and it's in the hands of your average jackass moron mallwalker. And if it isn't already stuffed in your pocket, somebody at the mall will sell it to you on your way out of Forever 21 where, although you're only 13 years old, your boyfriend has just purchased $600 worth of lingerie for you, and your parents are Ok with it. If somebody can tell me what the hell's going on with today's youth, speak up.

I've been approached about producing the app. I haven't decided yet if it's what I want to be doing right now, but it's very tempting. To get a feel for what it would take to write and sell it, I've been doing a bit of research.

As far as hardware goes, I have options. The app has been designed to run in several modes. There's an active mode that requires a net connection and GPS. For the passive mode, all you need is a net connection. There's a possibility of doing a version for poor people that only uses texting, but that's a nice-to-have I won't bother with until the "real" app is done.

When considering which platform to use, there aren't many criteria (in my mind, for something sophisticated, the only sane platforms are the iPhone and Microsoft's Windows Mobile - if you aren't familiar with development for mobile devices, then just trust me when I tell you that developing for that crap "free" phone you got for "free" when signing your ten year service contract is hell on Earth):

1. I'll target the platform that gives me the most access to your money. That means many people own the device, and there's an easy way for you to send me your money in exchange for A COMPUTER PROGRAM THAT WILL IRREVERSIBLY TRANSFORM YOUR WORLD FOR THE BETTER AND MAKE YOU FORGET ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU HATE LIFE.
2. Because of hardware requirements, I'll target the platform that meets my needs and has the most uniformity across implementations. One of the hardest things about mobile app development is knowing what kind of hardware your users have. If there's a way of ensuring (more or less) that they'll all have the same hardware, then that way has an advantage.
3. The better the distribution options for my app, the better for me. When you make something - such a piece of writing - every choice, at least if you're relatively unknown, involves compromise. Here, I can easily push whatever I want out to the web without editorial oversight or the fear that I'm going to piss off my investors. I'm not competing with anyone else for this space. It's guaranteed that my work, should I want it to, will, barring technical malfunctions due to my ISP being run by The Three Stooges, appear on the site (there's another compromise - if I were willing to pay more than, like, $3 a month for hosting, I could probably get service run by sentient beings). The trade-off here is that my site has nowhere near the reach of a big publishing house. You have to find my site accidentally or hear about it from your mother-in-law who's one of those people who've dedicated their lives to forwarding other people's mail to you. Somewhere in there is a "loook it this site is lolol called NFIPFOEOPOLEON.COMCOM." I'd much rather have the wider distribution, and if I knew how to get it, I would, but that doesn't mean I'd be equally excited about losing so much of my freedom to publish crap. These same compromises exist when distributing your app. You can do it on your own and have complete control, or you can use a distribution service. With apps, I'd much rather have the service, as I don't want to have to assemble the shopping infrastructure myself, and I don't want to wait for people to accidentally find me.

There's more to consider, but those are big time stuffs.

Here, from what I've learned, is how iPhone and Windows Mobile rate against these criteria.

---- Windows Mobile

1. My access to your money: If you have a WM device, you probably have money. Even with carrier "discounts" they're not cheap. If you know what to get, it's worth the moolah, and you'll take advantage of what your chosen device has to offer by downloading apps that make use of it. This is as easy as:
   1. Trying to figure out where the big app stores are. There are a few, and they don't all support Windows Mobile, nor do they all have apps that will run on whatever version of WM you've got. It can be frustrating because Microsoft's practice of renaming products and slapping weird version numbers on things that are meaningless without context can easily leave you wondering what version of Windows Mobile you have (and wondering if what you've got is  the same as/compatible with PocketPC, WinCE, PPC, etc.).
   2. If not big stores, then searching the small independents where devs post their stuff on sites that look like they were made with a beta release of the first version of FrontPage.
   3. When you find an app, you go through whatever arbitrary transaction process the store/dev is using. This might mean creating an account with a site you'll never return to, handing your credit card info over to an independent whose trustworthiness is unknown, or even going through PayPal and then having to wait for the dev to check his email and manually respond with a serial number (or whatever).
   4. Run the app on your desktop which will kick off ActiveSync's install bits that install stuff on your PC in addition to the device.
   5. After clicking "Yes" or "I think so" or "Sure" on a few dialog boxes that pop up on the desktop and on the device, a CAB file is opened on the device and a local installer runs. This can mean more dialog boxes, and it can also mean having to make choices about things you don't understand (many users aren't going to comprehend the impact/difference between installing to the device's memory or to an expansion card).
   6. Run the app! Easy as 1-2-3-4-5-6!
2. Uniformity of platform implementation: Unless things have changed, although the fundamental bits of the OS are the same, the configurations of Windows Mobile vary depending on the device. Some features might be stripped in favor of a smaller footprint for a device that's light on memory (why has it taken so bloody long for WM device makers to provide users more than, say, 128MB of storage space (without the user adding a memory card)?). Who knows what those features are. Even similar phones from the same manufacturer and carrier can vary enough that you can't rely on much beyond the expectation that there's some kind of phone hardware in place (some people still make calls with their phones).
3. App distribution options and ease of install for the customer: As you may have figured out from my "Easy as 1-2-3-4-5-6!" list above, finding, buying, and installing apps on WM devices has always been a pain in the ass. Going back to my first PocketPC (the first iPaq (the 3630)), I wondered why I needed ActiveSync just to install some stupid little app. ActiveSync makes sense if, say, I'm syncing something with the desktop like mail or calendar data, but it doesn't make sense if I'm installing Super Solitaire 5000 Deluxe Color Edition. Where do you sell your app? How do you get the word out? I haven't looked into it for a while because it frustrated me so much in the past. I'm going to take a look again, and, because I plan to target one specific platform for my app, I also plan to develop for others. In the case of Windows Mobile, I'm hoping Microsoft copies Apple's model.

Speaking of which...

---- Apple's iPhone

1. My access to your money: Apple's users tend to be enthusiasts. They blow money on stupid shit like knit cozies for their iPods and $3,000 earbuds that might sound great to a trained sound engineer, but which, compared to the buds that come in the box, sound no different to your sloppy unrefined auditory senses. If people are willing to pay for that, then they'll be begging to fork over dough for my app. It's a market of overeager zealots who will pay for things because they're new and different, but not necessarily because they're better (with most of Apple's own product-line excluded, as Apple's been doing beautiful stuff this century). People are still in the phase where, rather than buying iPhones to run their apps, they're buying apps to run their iPhones. It's gadgetophilia.
2. Uniformity of platform implementation: You might have an iPod Touch. You might have an iPhone. You might have an iPhone 3G. You might have version 2.0 of the OS. Whatever it is, it's basically the same across devices. Different for the iPod, but the iPhone is quite sufficient. With the iPhone, you have a good idea of what you're getting, so you don't have to plan for as many oddities. Someone might have GPS, as with the 3G iPhone, or someone might have Apple's less precise, but still useable, location services that rely on cell and wifi information to determine your location. It's close enough for what I'm doing. As long as either of those things is present, we're good, and as I can count on those things being present, we're good.
3. App distribution options and ease of install for the customer: Apple users have been bitching about using iTunes to install iPhone software. If they had any idea what it's like with other platforms, they'd shut it. While iTunes as an app store feels wrong and stupid and lame and stupid to me, at least iTunes is an app everybody has nowadays (aight - not everybody, but many, and that's good enough). Not that it matters much - with the introduction of Apple's App Store, you can browse apps on your phone, pay for, and install them without having to do some stupid syncing thing. You could be out at a bar where Jolene Blalock is hitting on you, and without having to run home to your iMac, you can buy, install, and run a crossword game before you've even had the chance to realize you've just made the biggest mistake in your life by ignoring her. And when you do realize it, and you see Jolene running off with another man, at least you'll have your crossword puzzles.

---- It's the Little Things

Microsoft is still so focused on the idea that the OS is what makes everything happen that they've let opportunity after opportunity pass by in the way of services.

In 1985, the relatively large amount of software you could buy for your IBM PC gave it a huge edge over technically superior platforms. It didn't matter so much that the disk in the box was the wrong size for your drive or that you needed a different video chipset - you could get those things, and if you were buying a game made by Origin, you did buy those things.

In 2008, if people have to work to get your bits onto their devices, you've screwed up. If they have to do the legwork themselves, figure out specs themselves, get around gotchas themselves, then you've screwed up.

Microsoft has been in the mobile space for a very, very long time. My introduction was, I think, eight years ago. In eight years, how much progress has been made in making it easy for the consumer to buy apps and install them? Not a whole lot. Yeah, there are ways for people to download apps directly to their devices, but that hasn't been the norm. Microsoft's own Windows Live app, which is great by the by, updates itself without going through the desktop, but it's not necessarily the case with other apps.

Apple has been at it for what feels like two weeks, and they've already taken on the problem of making it possible for people to buy and install apps even while driving. The solution is rough and needs work - you'll find plenty of bitching in the Apple magazines - but at least it's there, and you know Apple is going to refine it to the point that you'll wonder how buying apps on your device ever could've been done any other way.

There's plenty to whine about, and the princess-and-the-pea Apple crowd is doing a fabulous job, but with the iPhone where it is, there's no way Windows Mobile would be my first choice for a consumer app. Enterprise apps are a different story, but this post isn't about enterprise apps.

---- Microsoft Smudges Poop on Mona Lisa's Upper Lip

Whatever you anti-MS people say, Microsoft has done some brilliant work.

Of everything they've done, aside from Windows Mobile (which, despite my lack of interest for it as a consumer product, I love for many reasons), the Xbox 360 is at, or near, the top of the Microsoft heap.

Microsoft seems to be terrible at getting media companies to sign on for their services, but even with its small catalog of movies and TV shows, the Xbox Live Video Store rocks. There are some UI pains, but the experience is generally pleasant and makes me want to spend a lot of money.

That's where Microsoft made a mistake. That's where Microsoft smudged poop on the upper lip of its Mona Lisa (I'll explain what that means in a moment). There are other smudges, but we'll leave 'em for now. I only need this one as an example.

A couple nights ago, following a firmware update to my Apple wifi router, I was finally able to get my Xbox back online. For months it wouldn't connect. I stopped trying because I got tired of the letdown, but I was feeling unusually brave and resilient when I tried, and succeeded, to connect. It was awesome.

I went and browsed through the Video Store to see what had been added since the last time I'd been able to connect. Not much it turns out, but they have the new Stargate movie (Continuum) up there in HD, and that was enough to get me feverishly pressing buttons that I hoped would perform a transaction that would end with the movie being downloaded.

Unfortunately, I was too low on points (points are like funny-money that only work with Xbox Live). The obvious solution was to buy more points.

Typically, this is a fairly easy process. My credit card info is stored, so I don't have to reenter it. I just click a button to buy points, and then, after a brief video chat with some of Microsoft's lawyers who want to let me know how many years I'll go to jail should I abuse the point system, I get my points.

Between now and the last time I bought points, my credit card info was acquired by some very bad people in China who wanted to use it to buy things with my money. Modern tech being what it is, my bank's sophisticated Big Brother software noticed that, two minutes after paying for a latte on Hawthorne street in Portland, I tried to spend several thousand dollars on a sex slave in Beijing. They phoned immediately:

Bank: Mr. Blyth, our databanks show that you just purchased a latte in Portland and then tried to purchase a hooker on the other side of the planet shortly thereafter. The purchase got flagged as "Funny Business" in our system, and it's our duty to call you to get to the bottom of these shenanigans.

Me: Oh, well, I thank you for calling, sir, and, yes, these are shenanigans that I did not authorize. Please use your technology to stop these shenanigans.

Bank: Yes, sir. Can I put you on hold?

Me: I'd love it.

[Pretty music plays for thirty minutes.]

Bank: Hello, sir, are you still there?

Me: Yeppers.

Bank: All right. I just wanted to let you know that we've gone ahead and put a block on the payment for your latte. Is there anything else we can help you with today before I transfer you to Account Services to get you a new card?

Me: Thank you, no. I am very pleased with today's service. Please call me anytime.

I got my new card and then went about the tedious process of updating billing information for my car payments, insurance, and diaper service. Because Apple's router was being wonky at my Xbox, I didn't bother with Xbox Live at the time.

When trying to purchase those new points the other night, I finally got around to updating my billing info with the new card, but, by the end, rather than being excited to pay for videos, I was hoping to find a service through Xbox Live that would, in exchange for some of my points, electrocute me through the controller and put me out of my misery.

To begin, I couldn't find a simple "Buy You Some Lots of Points" button. There was a "How Do I Buys for Myself Lots of Points?" button, but all it did was take me to a screen that instructed me to return to the Xbox Live home and then, surprise!, buy some points. It really was that helpful. Since I'd gotten to this screen from the Xbox Live home (or somewhere near), the circular reference was unwelcome in my life, and I cursed out loud.

After much button slapping, I found that I could buy points once I'd navigated to the thing I wanted to buy. For the movie, that meant going to the Video Store, browsing the movies, selecting the one I wanted, and then clicking the "Add Points" button (or whatever it actually said). It was retarded. If MS wants my cash, they should make that the biggest button, and they should put it on every screen. They should build it into the Xbox controller itself. They should embed one in my forehead.

Making people search for a way to give you money is stupid. When you buy a pack of gum at the store, does the cashier argue with you? Do you have to walk through a hedge maze to get to the checkout? Are there a bunch of signs that say "Cashier This Way" that lead you in circles? When you get close, do they turn on the smoke machines, blindfold you, and spin you around?

No. And without various laws we have in place, they'd probably just shoot you on your way in to the store and then go through your pockets for change. Their goal, as is often the goal in business, is to take your money as quickly and as easily as they can, and in as great a quantity as possible for the least amount of work.

Buying points is metawork - it's the work you have to do to get your real work done. When I log on to Xbox Live, I don't do it because I want to spend my night trying to buy points. Buying points is not a game (if you work in the Xbox division, please print that phrase out and tack it on every wall of every hall and office in your building). It should be over with a push of a button. That's it.

It was an exceptional case since I had to put in new credit card information, but that was part two of the retarditity.

I don't have a USB keyboard, so I have to use the controller and the onscreen keyboard to enter text into the various fields of the credit card form.

Since this is still my account (RoryBlyth), you'd think it'd be a given that, though I have a new credit card number, all other things may very well be the same. Things like my name and address. But those things weren't automatically inserted for me. The form was blank, and I had to type everything out from the beginning.

It's a pain to enter in the credit card number and expiration date, but it's understandable. If MS already knew my credit card number, we'd have a problem.

But my name? And address?

How effing hard would it have been for Mister Lazy Stupid Coderpants to have taken that information from my account info and automatically populated the relevant fields with it? So what if there are minor details I might have to correct - my name doesn't appear on my credit card exactly as it does in my Xbox Live account info, but we're talking about the difference of a letter (one of my middle initials). I'd much rather go through the trouble of moving the cursor over to add two spaces and a letter to modify a populated field than have to type it all in from scratch.

Same with my address. It's the same damned address. Have you ever used an onscreen keyboard and console controller to type in your name and address? It's like trying to play Bach's cellos suites with your nipple on a gong.

Is it a legal problem? If so, just ask to access that info. It's not like there's a phobia at Microsoft about making users click "Yes", "No", or "Maybe So" eighty million times when they try to do something as simple as rename a file.

It's that kind of thinking - or lack of thinking - that smudges poop on Mona Lisa's upper lip. You're so close to something amazing, but you just had to go and smear feces on it.

I got a text a few days ago from a friend of mine who has a T-Mobile Dash. She had accidentally activated T9 input. The Dash has a thumb-keyboard, so T9 is a useless nuisance.

I have the same phone, albeit the unbranded version direct from HTC, and to shut off T9 I tinkered with the registry. This friend of mine, a "normal" user who knows nothing about tech, can't be expected to do the same thing.

I figured it'd be easy to turn it off, and that my difficulties were due more to owning the "raw" version of the phone rather than the one offered by T-Mobile. It's not as user-friendly. It's great if you're a dev, but you're probably better off going with the T-Mobile version if you, like my friend, just want to use the thing.

I googled for a solution, but all I found was frustration. It turns out this is a major flaw experienced by tons of users. There's no obvious way to turn T9 off. You can temporarily disable it for individual emails or texts, but the system reverts back to T9 when you're done. It's insane.

How could that have happened? It's such a fundamental thing. The rest of the phone is amazing, but the experience is seriously marred by this incredibly stupid oversight.

Like I said, it's the little things.

The iPhone isn't perfect. I think the complaints are a bit much and the result of people expecting perfection. Apple will continue to iron out the bugs. It'll be fine.

Imperfections aside, the iPhone is looking like a much better choice than a Windows Mobile phone for my app. I love the dev tools for WM, but that doesn't solve the problems I've detailed here.

We who live in the Portland, OR, great city of the United Places of the 'Merica, have little to brag about, but what little we do have, like a cow in the Great Depression, we milk for everything we can, and then we sell the rest to glue factories, dog food companies, and school cafeterias.

We're known for being uppity about trees getting chopped down. Your trees, our trees - it doesn't matter - we just don't like it when you get all chop-chop on the majestic forest-y towers of nature.

We're known for our superhuman smugness. It enables us to get upset at you for renting a tree in twain, though all the while we're clear-cutting something to make room for a new hybrid car factory. Then we drive our hybrid cars at you. Not near you, not around you, not over you - at you. Nothing says I'm-better-than-you than strapping yourself into something that gets slightly less bad gas-mileage than the lightweight econobox being driven by someone who didn't have the tens of thousands of dollars lying around needed to purchase the ultimate license of self-righteousness.

We're also known for having, during Portland's developmental years, moved all the minorities (in this town, that means roughly a dozen people) into the swampland just north of the city proper.

In that last case, by "known for having," what I meant was, "You've never, ever heard about this, and as long as we continue to make smugness the state bird, you never will. Except for here when Rory opened his big mouth. We already hated him, and now we have enough cause to ride our bicycles out to his home in the middle of the night to poke him with pitchforks (made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic) until he repents. After that, we'll tie him up behind someone's eco-friendly vehicle (probably a Segway) and drag him around town, picketing and protesting him the whole way because of the way his body parts are littering the street and destroying the natural environment. We knew he was evil when we found out he got a job with Microsoft - it's time to pay the piper. And wouldn't you know it - the piper's having a sale..."

These attractions aside, we have one (1) thing for which we deserve to be smug as all get out:

Powell's Books

It's famous. Maybe not as famous as that chipmunk or whatever it was that made the hilarious face on YouTube while this funny music made it look like the hamster or whatever it was hiccupped and scared its panda baby while lighting its own flatulence - nothing is that famous - but still pretty famous, at least based on the meatspace variety of celebrity where you can become reasonably well known without being a gassy rodent.

As far as bookstores go, there's nothing like it. If you say otherwise, and if you can prove it, Portland will have you assassinated, so best shut up, sit down, and keep on reading. Nobody likes a whistle-blower. Unless they're dead. A dead whistle-blower is an Ok whistle-blower. So don't try to be a hero. Not today.

I have set foot in every part of the globe that is the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Fiji, or continental Europe. Taking into account the total area in which I've actually traveled, I figure only 99.9% of the world is yet virgin to my boots. I've seen the way they do surveys - the opinions of an entire nation can supposedly be divined from phone conversations with .000001% of a population during dinner time. Doesn't seem like much of a stretch to say that, based on my representative treks, I can authoritatively comment on the entire planet. It's all just McDonald's and Starbucks now anyway.

Considering my status as a man of the world (which I proved in the last paragraph), I feel confident that I can state this fact and delete any comments of yours that contradict me:

Powell's Books is the largest bookstore in the universe. It might be the largest store of any kind. You can see it from outer-space. Powell's Books covers 9/10ths of the Earth's surface and 10/10ths of the moon's. It's that big.

A view from the street of one of Powell's many spacious bathrooms

I've lived in other cities, and they were all stupid. The people were different from the people I'm used to hating. It takes a lot of effort to get to know a city well enough to be able to stereotype its inhabitants. I like it right here, thankyouverymuch.

These other cities had nothing at all like Powell's. There are these stupid bookstores littered across Mother Gaia that have stupid books in them and stupid people who work there and, to get the stupid book you want, you have to order it. If I wanted to order a book, I'd have picked up a menu. Yeah! ZING!

You say you don't have shelf space for the rare out-of-print edition of "Handguns for Dummies" (with blood-resistant plastic coating) I want? Well, sir, then I say you don't have yourself a customer! Yeah! ZING!

That's the beauty of Powell's. Unlike other stores, there's infinite shelf space. Every book ever made ever is in that store. With Powell's, everything I've never wanted is right there.

"Hello, Powell's, employee," I might say, "Could you perchance direct me to a book on communist tomato stockpiling?"

"'New Age'," says the employee, "Walk three miles over that way [pointing] and turn left at our life-size recreation of Mount Rushmore. Oh, and did you want books on Marxist tomato stockpiling, or Maoist tomato stockpiling?"

"Neither," I'd say.

"We have that, too," would say he.

"Bless."

The other day, I visited the science wing of Powell's. I like to educate myself on things that make me sound smart at parties.

"Hey, Cindy," says some scrumptious party-goer to another, "Did you see that hot guy over there? Not only is he really hot, but, aside from being hot, he also knows smart things. He was telling me about something called 'electricity' and I thought it was witchcraft, but he's so hot."

"Really? I saw him earlier and he's SO hot, but I didn't know he was smart, too. Yum-yum."

"I saw him first."

"Back off, bitch."

While looking for one of these smarty science books, I accidentally found something called "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science" that was written by some jackass science fraud named Tom Bethell. I would've missed the book, but I noticed a biggish black thing on the shelf. It took me a minute, but I figured out that it was a mini black-hole, probably created when the stupidity of the book in question reached critical density and collapsed in on itself, capturing nearby light and putting all the legitimate knowledge on the shelf at risk.

If you like stupid, you'll love Tom Bethell

Being a General in the Army of Genius, I was able to reach in, grab the book, and remove it from the shelf before it damaged anything else. It scalded my hands (or my hands scalded it - hard to say), but, nevertheless, I wrapped it in my coat, ran for the cashier line, ran past the cashier line and right out the exit. Two security guards followed me out, yelling at me, telling me to stop. Normally, when stealing something, I'm very cooperative, but this thing was bigger than me - bigger than those security guards. This was about saving others from Tom Bethell's glossy paperback lobotomy. I shouldn't have done it, but I turned around, pulled back my coat, and flashed the book at the guards. They came to a dead halt, fell over, and their eyes glazed as they started mumbling something like, "AIDS is a sham... AIDS is a lie... AIDS is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by black commie lesbian homosexual cross-dressing atheists..."

There was nothing I could do. They must have accidentally seen some of the words on the cover of the book when I used it on them. Unprepared, few people could withstand such an assault on the intellect. I only survived because I have so much brain to spare that a few cells 'sploded by Tom Bethell's concentrated stupidity aren't enough to make a difference. I think. Hang on.

Ok...

Wait...

Fine. I'm fine. Just wanted to check to see if I could still calculate pi out to the trillionth digit in my head in the same amount of time it would take Tom Bethell to verbalize the totality of his scientific knowledge. That's about zero (0) seconds. Everything checks out. Cool.

Back to the book.

Having saved the world from the copy of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science" I got at Powell's, I decided to read it. Given Tom's involvement with The Discovery Institute and The American Spectator, both so insanely conservative and counter to the advancement of the human race that they should even shame most "normal" Christians, it's not easy to ignore his writing. In fact, if you're a Christian, and if you're "progressive" enough to get that modern Christians, when acting with compassion the way Christ did, can do a hell of a lot of good for the world, you should consider it your duty to educate yourself about how certain people are making your religion look very, very bad. I'm not sure that the Christ who fed the poor and cured the sick would be too happy with the way a small, but noisy, group is using his name to strive for just the opposite.

Sure, The Discovery Institute presents itself as an organization seeking to better stuff 'n things with science 'n stuff, but unless you're as talented at self-deception as the guys who run it are, it doesn't take long to see it's just religion with faux-scientific window dressing. In that, it's an insult to science and religion.

No honest scientist could possibly accept The Discovery Institute as having anything at all to do with real science, and Christians ought to be miffed by their promotion of things like Intelligent Design - crap theories wrapping religious ideas in bad science that undermine one of the foundations of Christianity: faith. The Discovery Institute isn't supporting science with its promotion of Intelligent Design, and it isn't serving Christianity by implying that Genesis needs a scientific explanation. If anything, it makes evolution look more credible by validating it with an elaborate attack in the form of ID. Nobody except these namby-pamby intellectually anemic spreaders of the butter of ignorance on the toast of humanity could possibly gain anything here.

The problem is that there are plenty who have something to lose. One of the most famous examples is the Kansas State Board of Education embarrassment. If you missed it, a squad of asstards tried to get Intelligent Design into the schoolbooks (President Bush wouldn't have minded either - as quoted on page 199 of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science": "Both sides ought to be properly taught so people can understand what the debate is about."). I don't know exactly what he meant, as I'm not sure he "understood what the debate is about."

Intelligent Design should be taught, I think, and it has been taught for years - in philosophy classes. The most famous example is from William Paley, the guy who brought us the watchmaker analogy. Overly simplified to fit in the space of this paragraph, the watchmaker analogy is the idea that, should you happen to come across a watch, its various qualities suggest that it was designed and created by someone - someone intelligent - an intelligent designer, and that we can view life in the same way. It's fuel for navel-gazing, but ideas about watches don't, without a lot of forceful grunting, work for explaining what evolution does so well. In other words, Intelligent Design, if it's taught in schools, belongs in philosophy classes, but has no place in science classes. If taught in biology, unless it's taught as an example of faulty scientific thinking, can only take up time that could otherwise be used to, I don't know, teach kids something that isn't totally retarded.

Still... as the title of the post suggests, people like Tom Bethell may actually be geniuses.

In reading his book, it's obvious he's done his research. He quotes and refers to major evolutionist works and authors. He often quotes them out of context, frames them as morons, and tampers with their words in other ways, but he has studied this stuff. He's not stupid. I hate to say it, but he's just not. That's probably the scariest thing about it.

After studying evolution, reviewing the evidence, engaging in debates, writing papers, writing books, and basically living his life around ideas, this guy has still managed to present his case in a way that gives you the impression he actually believes what he's saying. If this is part of some greater agenda that'll somehow make him and his cronies a bunch of money, I'm actually all right with it. They'd be no different from proponents of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine or the guys who peddle all the "As Seen on TV" garbage to poor people who're up in the middle of the night because they don't have jobs to go to the next day and have a little room to spare on their credit cards.

If, however, this guy truly buys his own arguments, then he's a genius. If your standard Christian rejects evolution based on nothing more than a lifelong association with the religion and the Bible, I actually get it. If you haven't made an effort to learn about evolution from practitioners of "good" science, if you have no reason to believe it, and if you think believing it would go against your faith, then discounting evolution isn't such a crazy idea. But if you, like Tom Bethell, have immersed yourself in, researched, and written about evolution, and if you've done so to the extent that you've managed to get people to give you money to do it, you've encountered the evidence, and you've somehow defeated it in your head. The evidence in favor of evolution is so strong that going against it, when you're immersed in it, is like trying to swim upstream with all your limbs cut off, pulling yourself along the bottom using only your tongue.

There are a few widespread gross misunderstandings of science out there. The one I encounter most often is the belief that we only use 10% of our brains. That's worthy of its own post. There's potential for crossover in respect to Bethell's thinkmeat, but, again, in its own post.

One misunderstanding you'll encounter almost as often is a belief that, when scientists say evolution is a "theory", they mean to say that it's a loosely assembled collection of vague notions. We hear it on TV and in movies all the time in phrases like, "Theoretically speaking..." and "...but it's just a theory" that imply a speculative stance rather than one of certainty.

When used in science, the word "theory" is just a smidge away from "fact". Some people are comfortable calling evolution a fact, but the truth is that, abundant as the evidence is, we don't have, for example, a PBS documentary showing macroevolution (the kind of evolution that produces animals like you 'n me) taking place with time-lapse photography. We can't. Humans have been around in their current form for a long time - as much as 200,000 years. We've only had PBS for a small portion of that time. If direct observation of macroevolution is a criterion of proof, we're a little screwed. If that PBS special is the line between theory and fact, I'm all right with that. Plus, microevolution - evolution on the scale of things that are alive and that comfortably exist in populations of bajillions inside your nose - isn't such a mystery. It's not like we're entirely unable to directly observe some form of evolution.

Like any analogy, this one ultimately sucks, but: We don't have to travel to another star to determine its composition. We didn't have to be around a few billion years ago when our sun was formed to be able to determine its approximate age.

We also don't have to observe evolution as it happens to be able to show beyond doubt that it's real. We sentence people to death and invade countries based on evidence that isn't remotely as conclusive as that for evolution.

It's amazing that people deny that the evidence for evolution is insufficient, yet they're fine with the idea that there's an Intelligent Designer. If proof of evolution is incomplete, proof of a designer is non-existent. It's a fantastical guess.

For me, the easiest thing to do is accept evolution as fact-ish. I don't have the time or energy to construct the mental scaffolding necessary to support "scientific creationism".

Tom Bethell clearly has more time on his hands, and that's saying a lot since I'm unemployed.

If he really believes what he's putting out, his creative abilities and his intellectual capacity to make his fantasies real are the mark of genius.

But that doesn't make him not a poo-face.

Hi, there.

Rory here.

As the CEO of Neopoleon Company, I sometimes have to do things to ensure that I don't go completely bonkers from writing on a fairly regular basis for years on end.

My most recent strategy was something I call "stopping." Basically, to give myself a chance to rest and recharge, I stopped writing. More accurately, I stopped posting, but since you haven't seen anything I haven't posted (and if you have, we're going to have to have a little chat with the computer police), the point is moot. As far as you know, except for the fact that I just told you otherwise, I haven't written anything in a while.

I want to change that. To do so, I've employed a special writing technique I call "writing." The words you read this very moment are the product of this radical system.

"Writing" itself is part of a greater discipline I call "actually doing it instead of just talking about it."

Well, here I am, actually doing it instead of just talking about it.

During this recent hiatus, I thought long and hard about Neopoleon: Does the world need it? Does the world deserve it? Is the world even ready for Neopoleon?

The answers are:

1. Not really, no.

2. Absolutely not.

3. Is Neopoleon ready for the world?

    3a. You answered my question with a question. That's not an answer.

        3b. That's not my problem.

            3c. Well, actually, it is your problem, because I'm you.

                3d. If you're me, then what am I thinking about right now?

                    3e. An ice-cream cone.

                        3f. Drat!

In light of these factual statements, I went back to the drawing board and then threw it away because I don't use drawing boards. I use computers, and a computer is what I used to produce this update on the state of Neopoleon Company, and particularly the ways in which Neopoleon Company operates in an eco-friendly manner.

Unless you've actually been reading it, you'd know that Forbes Magazine named Neopoleon Company one of the top five companies in the WORLD for ecological friendliness. We're so friendly with ecology that it's pregnant.

Whatever Neopoleon Company may have done to bring about the current state of the US economy, you can't say we aren't passionate about high-fiving spotted owls and then relocating them to pet shops after bulldozing their homes just for the sheer fun of it.

What follows is true information about Neopoleon Company.

If at any time while reading you have a question about the presented literature, close your eyes, count to five, and then punch yourself in the face - the question should be gone by the time you regain consciousness.

---- Neopoleon Company and the Environment: Sitting in a Tree ----

As professional resource users, we at Neopoleon Company understand the importance of clean, renewable energy such as petroleum and coal, and we've taken great pains to share this with both our staff and the Neopoleon Company community at large.

We believe that accountability starts at the top, so we've instituted a number of corporate policies to help clearcut the dark, musty wood of outdated energy thinking and pave the way for a better, cleaner tomorrow - today!

A few examples of just how serious we are in our commitment to the environment:

- The Neopoleon Company building is made entirely out of asbestos and mercury, two extremely dangerous materials that would otherwise be poisoning children and fish if we hadn't taken them off the streets when we did.

- Because of our interest in these materials, we've been working with local governments to institute recycling programs for asbestos and mercury. If you live in an area where the services cannot be offered, you will be provided an alternative where craftsmen go door-to-door, causing people brain damage and giving them cancer the old fashioned way.

- The first and third Tuesdays of every month are "blackout days" during which no electricity is used anywhere in the building. Employees still put in full 10 hour days, and productivity is generally unaffected. Actually, sometimes it's higher!

- We have an onsite generator, powered only by the burning of plastic bags and manatee blood. Last month we were able to handle a full sixtieth of our weekly power requirements with Old Smoky, saving us over $15 after taxes and giving untold numbers of threatened, at-risk marine species a new lease on life (some species, however, refused to sign the lease, and had to be exterminated).

- No employee parking, plus no bike racks, divided by no access to public transportation, equals everybody walks to work! Have you ever been thanked by your heart and future generations at the same time? It's a good feeling. A Neopoleon feeling.

- Our building offers neither heating nor insulation, driving home the harsh realities of climate change and its impact on human activities.

- We understand that every child born, no matter how genetically perfect or well behaved, is just another hungry mouth vying for teat-time on our beleaguered Mother Earth. We therefore offer financial incentives to employees who participate in our Mandatory Team Member Sterilization Program, and discriminate against "breeders" to the full extent of the law.

- The Neopoleon Company Private Harrier Jump-Jet has the highest fuel economy in its class, and is rarely used for trips of less than five miles each way.

---- Our Commitment Doesn't Stop at the Word "Us" ----

As good as it feels to be doing our part here at home, we realize that resource depletion is a global problem, and that global problems need global solutions, and that global solutions need global efforts, and that global efforts need global thinking, and that global thinking means we need to outsource almost everything we do. It is therefore only natural that we should look to our nation's leading scientists for answers to these totally unrelated questions:

- What is energy?

- Can we have some?

We at Neopoleon believe that the key to responsible energy consumption is not the wanton development of strange new technologies like "wind" and "solar" but rather the continued extraction of energy from existing sources like desert, rainforest, and whale.

---- An Excuse Can Still Be a Good Justification ----

Why is this such a good idea? For starters, the infrastructure is already in place. Who wants to perform surgery on a perfectly healthy man? If even just 10% of US car owners switched over to hybrid electric autos this year, not only would every gas station in North America be forced to add an awkward, costly new "hybrid" pump, but the entire interstate highway system would have to be torn up and repoured from scratch. (And this is to say nothing about the cost per gallon of "hybrid" at the time of this dispatch.)

But it ultimately comes down to our children and whether or not we have the courage to make them Priority Number One. Neopoleon Company says we do. Nobody benefits from a free ride, and coming generations will, by definition, be far more resourceful if we have the strength to deny them petroleum now while we still can. In turn, their children - and their children's children (see earlier note about the Neopoleon Company breeding program) - will stride confidently into the 22nd century, meeting challenge after challenge with the sharp eyes and steady hands of a generation that burns clean and doesn't know the meaning of the word "can't" or where their own country is on a map.

---- A Path to Follow ----

As a shareholder, you're probably asking yourself these questions right now:

1. Shouldn't we [Neopoleon Company]  be off making money instead of making the world a better place?

2. How does a company keep up this kind of caring momentum?

The answers are simple and should put to rest any concerns you may have:

1. Yes. I mean... yeah. Obviously. Of course. Duh.

2. Hire Bono.

As you've no doubt already computed, the best way to steer Neopoleon Company back toward profitability is to hire Bono to take on the charity work for us. That way we can focus on the details of running a business while contracting out our philanthropy work to an Irish rock star for a meager bundle of dough, the amount of which we'll disclose when you subpoena (bring it on).

If you don't know him, Bono is the rock and roll musical singer man who, blindfolded, stepped out in front of the out of control semi-truck called "Africa" on the Highway of Justice. There he whipped out his hollow-body electric guitar and rocked until he exorcised the demons from the land. Some say you can put your ear to the ground there and still hear the sound of a distorted E chord followed by the whimpers of the devil hisself.

Now he will do the same for Neopoleon Company's ecological initiatives.

Bono's first assignment for us is to go play a series of concerts at loggers throughout Oregon's coastal range forests. If he meets with any resistance, we've given him permission to turn it up to 11.

We're serious about sending the logging companies a message, and with Bono representing, that message is going to go something like this [falsetto]:

Lemon

See through in the sunlight

She wore lemon

But never in the daylight

She's gonna make you cry

She's gonna make you whisper and moan

When you're dry

She draws the water from the stone

This is a job Bono was obviously born to do.

On that note, the Neopoleon Company PR Team would like to call it a night, but before doing so, leave you with this summary:

- Neopoleon Company is committed to investigating profits for 2008/2009

- Neopoleon Company is more dedicated than ever to being committed to investigating those profits

- Neopoleon Company has hired Bono

We just looked at our map, and it would appear that Neopoleon Company is sailing straight into the Land of Good and Plenty.

How can we lose?

We can't!

From all of us here at Neopoleon Company, thank you for your continued support.

[All Neopoleon Company employees may now rise and sing the company anthem "Cross Your Fingers and Shred the Evidence"]

I certainly am. There's nothing I like better than being passionate about utilizing my core competencies to effect strategic outcomes. Except, perhaps, for utilizing my core competencies to effect strategic outcomes and win-win solutions.

I'm also passionate about recognizing diversity in the workplace. I'm passionate about embracing diversity in the workplace. Hell, I'll make out with diversity if that's what makes you happy.

My life is amazingly good. I'm thankful to be alive, and that makes this period rare in the history of Rory. I'm also thankful to be in mostly good health, as being in mostly good health is not how I've been spending my year. Believe it or not, I still haven't fully recovered from my problems in June. Fortunately, nothing's wrong enough to detract from the quality of my life, and the relative difference between now and life in June is enough to have me thinking I'm a perfect specimen of humankind.

However, since it's apparently vital to the continued functioning of the universe that something in my life be all bust up and crapsticks, I'm looking for a job.

The plan was to keep on keeping on the way I've been keeping on since quitting my job in October, but when I rebuilt my life around savings rather than income, I didn't foresee the arrival of the bidniss that would bring to my life something all bust up and crapsticks. It was unexpected. That means I didn't see it coming. Put another way, if I were psychic, I'd have known it would happen, but I'm not, so I didn't. I know there are tons of people in this world who call themselves psychics, but, despite their ability to connect with the spirits of dogs in doggy heaven to see how things are going, they're terrible at predicting stuff. If it weren't for all the concrete proof that they can and do listen to the whispers of kitty phantoms, I might even say they aren't psychic at all. Not that the discrediting of psychics is a priority for me. Even if it were, I'd keep my findings private, as I don't want to be the one to have to tell all the weirdoes that nobody really knows if Mr. Fluffles is having an A-Ok time up in the heaven. Let these people have their comfort.

The nature of this unexpectedness is familial. "Familial" is a fancypants word that means "people you can't date." It refers specifically to your family. That's people who are related to you, many of whom have genetic abnormalities similar to your own. If you have a giant horn instead of a nose, and if you live with someone who also has a giant horn instead of a nose, that person is very likely a member of your family. Don't date this person. It's the fact that someone up your ancestral line was "indiscriminate" with another family member that got you a face-horn in the first place. In fact, don't date anybody. Don't reproduce. Keep indoors and watch TV until you pass from this world to the next. We don't want abominations like you walking among us. We don't even want you hidden among us. Just go away. I'm sorry I brought this up.

Because the issue isn't mine own, I shalln't produce its mysterious ways in word form upon this screen. What I will share is that it involves someone I'm very close to, and that something is going wrong in this someone's life that will, sometime in the next few months, make this person's life much more difficult, and it's something from which this person is unlikely to recover.

It doesn't involve jail time or pregnancy or any of the other things that would normally ruin your life (though I hear prison isn't actually all that bad). The one bright side is that this problem can be dealt with in part through money. A lot of money. Probably more money than I could produce, but not more money than other members of the family, in cooperation with The Smartest Man in the World, could produce together.

According to my original plan for post-Microsoft life, I was going to hang out, recover, write, socialize, and decompress from years of madness and stress. Despite a couple periods of suicidal depression and too much time spent in hospitals from an allergic reaction to meds, I think I'm getting there. Like I said, my life is amazingly good.

A side-effect of this leisure is boredom. Most of my friends work, so I'm left alone during many hours of each day. I've been passing the time by working out an easy, single, unified math to replace all known forms of the mathematics. I used it last week to prove that light is neither particles nor waves. It took fifteen seconds and two symbols, and looked quite elegant on paper thanks to my math's wingding-based notation.

You can understand why I'm so bored.

So, because of a looming financial issue and growing boredom, I started looking for "normal" work around the beginning of July. Something where I get up in the morning, make my way to a place where people I don't want to see are waiting for me, sit down at a desk, and wonder what in the hell I'm doing with my life.

Of everything I've done, I miss public speaking the most. You'd think it'd be easy to find such work since most people fear public speaking more than death, but there's not much out there. I found a position for United Way that sounded good. United Way guilts people out of their money and then distributes that money among various charities, local and national. The fact that it paid so little that its employees are probably more in need of donations than the charities they're collecting for was offset by the coolness of using talking skills to improve somebody's life at the expense of someone else's.

It was shortly after finding that job that I learned of the familial predicament. Fun is no longer the primary criterion. Gobs of cash. That's the new one. I need gobs and gobs of cash. I'm putting my soul on eBay. I've never understood what people mean by the term "selling out," but I like the sound of it. I'm ready to compromise everything I believe in for ingots of gold and silver and anything else valuable that can be shaped into an ingot.

You might wonder why I would put any of this on myself when it's someone else's problem. I don't have an answer. I think you either get it or you don't, but one way to try to understand is to ask yourself if you love anybody. If you do, what would you be willing to do to help them? When it comes to people I care about, I'm generally willing to go much further to help them than I ever would for myself. Don't know why. I feel like it's hardwired. To stand by and do nothing is much harder than to work like mad to help, and that's just the way it is.

These new priorities widened my search significantly. I told myself back in October that I'd stay away from tech, but I've been taking a look along with everything else. The two things I'm working on hardest are writing and music. Everybody tells me that both lead to destitution, but I've noticed that the writers and musicians who actually have talent also have a better shot at making gobs and gobs of cash. Plus, I have excellent connections on the music side of things. Not so much for writing, but I'm trying to figure out how to change that.

Still, I figure it's smart to have something to fall back on. Something, you know, like a job.

I've looked through a ton of tech listings, and although I'm qualified for everything, I don't think I have the patience to go back into a corporate environment. Seeing all the corp-speak turned me off. When I'm dating someone, I need to be able to respect her. This is not, oddly, a requirement for some people. Similarly, I need to be able to respect the people I'm working for. If I take a position with a company I don't respect, it gets hard to respect myself, and I like respecting myself.

I don't see how I can respect a company that employs people who communicate in corp-speak.

The lack of imagination kills me. The qualifications necessary are insane (you must have every skill, five degrees, ten years of experience, an IQ of at least 70, be able to type 300 WPM, and run the entire business with your smallest, least useful appendage). The language used in the postings is horrific.

Check out this BS:

Do you have a passion for collaboration and customer service? Do you love public speaking and delivering group presentations? Do your strengths include initiative and innovation? If you answered yes, then you'll want to explore this exciting entry level opportunity.

What is it with the word "passion" nowadays? My dictionary defines "passion" as "strong and barely controlled emotion." Is that really a quality you want in your employees? Particularly when it comes to "collaboration and customer service"? When I think of passion and collaboration, the word "orgy" comes to mind.

Continuing with the alliterative theme, what's the deal with "initiative and innovation"? What happened to passion for collaboration? Initiative, by most definitions, is something you do on your own. It means that you can, on your own, get things started. Or that you can, necessarily without the help of others, take charge of something. That's not collaboration - that's domination.

Then there's my favorite word: innovation. It has been so abused by corp-speak that it doesn't mean anything. Looking at recent years in tech, innovation seems to involve buying someone else's product, branding it, and then selling it in your own box. I've also heard the word used in reference to the creation of a feature nobody wants, needs, or can figure out how to use, but that hasn't been seen before. Again, do you really want that?

Come join a team that is cross-trained, goal oriented and eager to see everyone succeed. We recognize both individual and team contributions to success. We're seeking creative candidates who are out-of-the-box thinkers with a passion for problem solving, utilizing win-win solutions.

The first sentence is meaningless, brain-dead drivel, but also a sentence you'll see again and again relatively unchanged. Isn't it a given that the team is "goal oriented and eager to see everyone succeed"? Is this to imply that other teams strive for failure through aimlessness?

It's good to see they "recognize both individual and team contributions to success." I feel good about it. I really do. Really, really good.

What does it mean?

The word in that sentence with the most impact is "and." That's creepy.

The phrase "out-of-the-box" is dead. It never made sense. It's incompatible with corporate thinking. It's hard to have passionate collaborators when they're all moving in different directions. In the old days, if you were an "out-of-the-box" thinker, you knew it because your ideas were greeted by, "She's a witch!"

People don't like "out-of-the-box" thinking. Even when they believe they do, they don't truly accept it. When someone asks you for out-of-the-box ideas, you're really being asked to leave your box for a different one. It might be a bigger box, but it's still a freaking box. The reason HR pushes so hard for "appreciating diversity" is that most people hate diversity and need to be told what to do with it.

There are so many people who claim to be out-of-the-box thinkers that out-of-the-box is the new box.

Continuing, the word "passion" returns, but is overshadowed by what might be the most horrific word of them all:

Utilize

It doesn't mean "use". It's heading that way, but only through constant abuse by... well, by pretty much everybody.

It's an ugly word. There's a reason you won't find it in any good poetry. Or, for that matter, any good writing.

It's a faux-scientific, faux-technical sounding thing.

To "utilize" something means that you're using that thing effectively, typically for a purpose other than what was originally intended. You would use a flashlight to see in the dark, but you would utilize it to knock somebody out. If you say that you're utilizing a flashlight to see in the dark, it tells me that you don't know what flashlights are for. Or, more likely, that you don't know what the word "utilize" is for.

There are cases where "utilize" is appropriate, but they're few. For example, you would utilize your degree in psychology, business administration, art, or English, as there are no known direct applications for them. If you're unsure which is correct, and you probably are, go with "use".

If you're "passionate" about "communicating effectively," then the first thing you need to learn is how to deliver your message as simply as possible. Go read some Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut. Some of the most well known authors in the world, and their styles are so similar that you might think one copied the other. My money's on Vonnegut copying Twain, but that's only because Twain died before Vonnegut was born. Other evidence isn't as conclusive.

Maybe it's academia that does it, but there's a bountiful and plethoric superfluity of sesquipedalianists out there who have recourse to their thesauri in an oscillatory methodology and you already don't know what I'm saying.

In human language, I'm saying that there are tons of people who write with big words, possibly because they think they sound smarter. As with anything, the more complex something is, the more skill you'll need if you hope to avoid biffing it up, and most people are bad writers. You aren't qualified to pilot a 747 just because you can make a paper airplane.

We are a dynamic and flexibly adaptive organization with a focus on continuous process improvement. We embrace and reward resourcefulness, innovation and dynamic thinking.

Stop! Just stop! I've been driven to use exclamation-points. Do you know where the exclamation-point is located on a keyboard?

NEXT TO THE BRINK OF MADNESS. THAT'S WHERE.

Allow me to translate that text into normal human language:

We are constantly finding new ways to suck. We suck so badly that we've gotten really good at climbing out of the pits we dig for ourselves. It's lonely in those pits, and we're looking for someone fun who can do shadow-puppets down there to keep us entertained while we figure out how to climb back out. You must be able to do shadow-puppets of animals, celebrities, and funny violence.

If your shadow-puppets are good, we will hug you and pay you for it. Bonus points if you can figure out how to make shadow-puppets without a source of light. We're convinced it can be done, but we need an out-of-the-box thinker to make this dream a reality. Something on wikipedia called "physics" says we can't have shadows without light. We don't know what box they're living in!!!

We can't wait for you to join our team. When we finally get ourselves out of the last of our pits, we look forward to figuring out what our actual jobs are.

Also, if you're too smart, and if we figure it out, we'll fire you so that our own positions aren't threatened by your ability to do work.

Incredibly, the posting goes on. And on.

And on.

With the exception of one more snippet, I'll spare you the remainder. I just can't stop without this bit. It's up there with the "utilize" problem:

Working collaboratively with Recruiting and Employee Relations teams to ensure smooth processes for candidates

I could write as much about this one sentence as I did about the previous few paragraphs.

I won't. I'm just saying I could.

These morons have such a boner for the hot words of corp-speak that they can't stop. They're out of control. One might even say they're passionate.

"Working collaboratively with Recruiting and Employee Relations teams..."

Can anybody tell me how you could work "with" other teams without collaboration?

It makes as much sense to say:

"Working with with other teams..."

But this observation draws attention away from "Recruiting and Employee Relations teams..."

Exactly how much infrastructure is necessary to hire someone and put him to work? It sounds like I'd need a lawyer, a lobbyist, and a favor to get anything done.

Sigh.

When I got my first contract, I was intimidated. I was very young, surrounded by people who'd been playing adult for decades. I assumed they all knew exactly what they were doing. I eventually found out that, working part-time and alone, I replaced an entire team of other contractors. I got the job done for about 10% of what they were being paid. Before learning this, I thought I was doing terribly - that I was constantly in danger of getting dropped. Instead, my contract got renewed a couple times, and what was supposed to be an eight day job turned into nearly three years. I call it my Gilligan's Island contract. In addition to getting dough and experience, I learned a lot about business from someone who became a sort of mentor. I don't know why he helped me, but he completely changed my life by being one of the few people I've met in business who wasn't totally full of it.

One thing I learned was that nobody knows what they're doing. They just try to get better at hiding it.

Big words, clumsy florid prose, uncritical attachment to stupid ideas that sound good... that's what the corporate world, for the most part, really is.

Rather than blowing money on bullshit positions for teams like "Employee Relations", this is the type of job posting they ought to be putting together (with some honesty thrown in for fun):

Looking for a skeptical critical-thinker who can spot BS, root it out, and destroy it.

Your efforts will probably lead to the firing of half the company. If you're OK with this, drop us a line. You can send us your resume, but the truth is, we don't know what to look for in those things. Generally, we throw away any written with Comic Sans Serif font. The remaining pile is looked over by someone trained to squint and go "Hm..." at intervals that make us think there's a pattern to his thought process. One of your first tasks will be to figure out if we should fire that guy.

We could make up some numbers about goals and whatnot, but it'd only make things harder on us later. There was this one time when we renamed all the columns of our office Fantasy Football League spreadsheet and used it to support a plan for an innovative, collaborative something-or-other, but we got asked some questions about the numbers that almost exposed our fraud. We saved our fannies by assassinating the nosy VP behind that inquisition. Since we already have a ratio of five VPs to each regular employee, nobody noticed his absence, but the body started to stink after a couple weeks. We pinned it on someone's old yogurt in the employee fridge and got the stench under control with 300 strategically placed boxes of baking soda, but we'd rather not go through that again.

So how about it? Come save us from ourselves. We'll give you some money while we take credit for your success. Win-win!

Unfortunately, for reasons that are too numerous to address in this post, skepticism and critical-thinking are not among the skills that are "embraced" and "rewarded" around here. Nor are they "recognized". Most people don't even know what they are.

Back to writing songs and stories and other silliness...

The French got to be very good at perfume because they were very bad at bathing.

Over time, they have become quite skilled at disguising odors with aromas. A quick walk through the city of Paris reveals battles of fetor and fragrance everywhere. On the Metro, a Frenchman keeps his brie warm in his trousers, and in so doing masks the foul smell of those trousers with the delicate, playful bouquet of the beloved cheese. Done well, it is an exacting act of compassion that, like a ballerina, dances from nose to nose, tickling each with a perfume-dipped wand of smelltacular effervescence.

Just like a ballerina.

These people - these French people - even scent Paris's river, the Seine, once a year.

Why do they do it? Because they're French.

That's an odd business, though, perfuming the Seine. Have you seen the Seine? You certainly haven't touched it, as you'd be dead. Like mimes, it's not one of France's more boast-worthy assets. There are some things in the world to which we do not want to draw attention, and the Seine is one of them. Filling it with perfume is just the sort of thing that's going to get people looking at it and thinking about it. "Francois! Look! Soom-eh-one has gone and poot zeh purfyoom een zeh soower!" Scenting the Seine is like dressing a piece of poop in a tuxedo, putting sparklers in its pockets, and taking it on Oprah. You're effectively saying, "Look what I have that you don't want. No, I mean it. LOOK."

One would expect the people of such a lovely smelling country to be happy all the time, smiling at the rosy nose tingles while they join arms and go on strike for the third time in a week to demand larger riviera villas for their government-mandated six weeks of paid vacation each year. I know I would.

But, no - they're not. Despite being viewed by the rest of the world as a shiny, happy, clappy people, the French are actually the largest consumers of antidepressants per-capita of any nation in the world. Maybe even in the whole galaxy. I wonder if aliens get depressed. If they do get depressed, how do they deal with it? Do they talk about what's bothering them? Do they even have mouths? If I saw an alien in my yard, I'd lure it over to me with a candy bar, grab it by the tentacles, take it inside, cook it, and eat it. Alien with a side of alien in alien-sauce. Or I'd sell it on eBay. I dunno. This is one of those I'll-cross-that-bridge-when-I-come-to-it things.

How did the French, masters of odoriferous neutralization, come to be so unhappy? How did they go from having great parties to trying to get the Olympic Committee to recognize nihilism as a sport (one from which they would have been disqualified for use of philosophy-steroids)?

They played with fire.

And they got burned.

The French think they know everything, but they don't. They know neither what number I'm thinking of right now, nor where they made the extreme biffage that landed them in this fine little how-do-you-do.

But I do know: "6" and "Ignorance of the power of odor on the mind and body," respectively.

Smell is a powerful sense. Unlike other senses, such as vision, you can detect odors with it. Try as you might to "see" the dewy soft fragrance of that jar of kim-chee... actually, if it's kim-chee, there's a good chance that the smell is visible, but for all other things, it is not.

The French didn't think about this when they dumped Chanel No. 5 into their river.

When fragrance wafted up from the river and into French people, it didn't go alone. The Seine passes through a few industrial towns and smaller cities before arriving in Paris. Although it is little more than a creek at the source, it's augmented all along the way with the tears of French children whose faces are blackened with the soot of the smoke of the machines in the Perrier factories where they're forced to put bubbles into water purchased by rich people. Do you have any idea of how many bubbles there are in each bottle of Perrier? I lost count once at ten. Over ten bubbles in each bottle, and these kids have to shove each one in by hand. I'm sorry to hit you with this awful truth, but there it is.

The Seine: a river of children's tears. "Seine" is French for "a river of children's tears." "The" is English for "the."

You sad? I'm sad.

In dumping perfume into the Seine, they were dumping perfume into a flood of sadness. They were also, unbeknownst to them and their funny little hats, creating a monster. The perfume bonds to the tears by way of a complex chain of carbon atoms created with a mechloid catalyst enzyme protein emulsifier that breaks down the triple-helix nucleotards at the hydrogenous terminal peptides, forming what we in the field of chemistry call a "buddy" molecule, which is basically two different substances - in this case perfume and tears - making chemical love.

Normally, you couldn't "smell" sadness, but when you have a perfume/tears buddy molecule, your olfactory system is "fooled" and lets everybody in to join the party. The olfactory system bypasses cortical processing and goes straight for the emotional center of the brain. This path allows tears to be processed as olfactory stimuli.

In short, the French have all but made sadness into a nasal spray. All that's missing is the cool bottle that squirts the liquid into your nose. That'd be a cool thing to see in the nasal spray section of your local pharmacy: "Sadness the Nasal Spray... by France."

The point here is that if you aren't paying attention, you can accidentally depress an entire nation with perfume, some child laborers, and a creek.

How could this have been avoided?

I'll tell you how: aromatherapy.

Like string theory, cold fusion, extraction of zero point energy, and Judaism, aromatherapy is a science.

Some people think aromatherapists are just a bunch of hippies peddling wishful thinking in the form of pungent greases, but this is not true! Many aromatherapists are new-agers.

But, be they hippies, or be they not, they all be trained in the SCIENCE of aromatherapy. Like doctors, they have to go to school for almost a month before they're allowed to practice. They learn many things in school such as distinguishing between peppermint/spearmint (harder than you think!!!), and how to say in reference to any oil, "This one cures cancer." In cases where a patient's condition is resistant to aromatherapy therapy, the aromatherapist is trained to distract the patient with a huge bill. "This'll take your mind off that pesky AIDS," they say.

Aromatherapy is all natural. Chemotherapy and antiretroviral drugs are not, and are, therefore, bad. Western medicine is all about chemicals made in laboratories. In being all natural, aromatherapy, unlike those chemicals, never interferes with the progression of a disease. Nature is allowed to continue unabated. As a bonus, people can smell you from two miles away, and assume the existence of a gigantic sage bush in the area. See how that's better? I do. I really do.

All aromatherapists are smart. You'd have to be to be able to not cure diabetes with dandelion oil. Just the other day - this is a true story - I was in my favorite cafe when I met an aromatherapist. She overheard and then interrupted a good conversation I was having with a friend about perfume. Being generous with her time and knowledge, she started talking at me about aromatherapy without asking if I cared. She thought that my interest in fine fragrances somehow translated into an interest in soaking my nipples in a nightshade unguent until they fall off, saving me from ever having to suffer the pain of breastfeeding.

Here's a snippet of our conversation:

Her: Peppermint gets into your blood from the skin in ten seconds and cures headaches in as little as six to eight hours.

Me: Really?

Her: Yes.

Can't argue with that!

...or can you?

Me: How?

Her: Because.

Wow! You can't argue with that!

Still, I think I'm smart, so I wanted to try some aromatherapy out on myself. That way, I'd have PROOF of aromatherapy.

I told her about a problem I was having:

Me: I've been feeling tired lately. Do you have anything for making me feel more awaker?

Her: Are you carrying cash?

Me: No, but I can get some.

Her: OK.

[Twenty minutes later]

Me: Sorry - the nearest ATM was farther away than I thought. What's this going to cost?

Her: What do you got?

Me: Forty bucks.

Her: More.

[Twenty minutes later]

Me: Here's another eighty.

[She sighed and took the measly wad of cash]

Her: Here's some ragweed oil and a guano candle.

Me: A what candle?

Her: Guano.

Me: What's guano?

Her: It's something you make candles with.

Me: Are you sure? Because I thought it was-

Her: HEY - who's the aromatherapist?

Me: Uh... you are.

Her: You are, what?

Me: Um. You are, ma'am!

Her: That's better. I almost had to cast a black spell on you that would have made your aromatherapy not work.

Me: Oh, no!

Her: You got lucky. So, to cure your fatigue, go home, smear the ragweed oil on the walls of your bedroom, turn the heat up to ninety, set the guano candle next to the bed, light it, and go to sleep for at least eight hours. When you wake up, you won't be as tired.

Me: Wow! Mercy me! Goddess bless!

Her: Who's the aromatherapist?

Me: YOU is! YOU dah aromatherapist! Yeah, dawgg!

Her: Ha ha. Now get outta here, you little rascal!

I tried the aromatherapy solution that night, and it almost worked. I tried it again the next night, but this time I took a sleeping pill right before bed. I slept for just over eight hours - like the aromatherapist told me to - and felt GREAT the next day.

All thanks to aromatherapy! Feel the magic! Smell the science!

I have now demonstrated that aromatherapy can be proven to exist. If you doubt me in my assertions, you most likely have skipped over a portion of this paper.

So c'mon, everybody - let's say it together:

Why aromatherapy? BECAUSEOTHERAPY!

Ha ha! Have a great day!

Bye!

I never thought I'd write two posts in a row with the word "blood" in the title. Maybe if I were writing a series of posts on The Wondrous World of Blood, but I'm not doing that, and neither are you. Put the pen down. Nobody cares.

Embarrassingly, I don't even know enough about blood to write a series of posts on it. I could prolly crank out one post and turn it into a series by posting one word at a time.

This represents the totality of my knowledge of blood (emphasis on "knowledge" - I've left out assumptions and outright fabrications - the following is 100% fact-inspired):

Blood is a red wet thing that is usually inside your body. Sometimes it gets out because sometimes people makes holes in your body and blood excapes out through them.

Blood is not to be confused with other wet things inside your body. Your lungs, for example, are wet, and they might even also be red. The difference is that, unless you have ebola, only blood will leak out through holes.

In olden times, blood was important because it just was. But in the modern day world, you don't need it as much. With the invention of hospital emergency rooms, you can leak blood all over the place, and, once it gets to be uncomfortable, a medical worker can put more blood into you. It's like when a car is really low on oil. You can keep driving the car for a long, long time, and it will work fine, and there's nothing wrong with it, but if you're a perfectionist you can buy oil that someone will put in your car (but you don't need it). The body is just like that.

There is approximately some blood in your body, plus or minus a little.

Blood is OK to drink. If you want to drink your friends' blood, you should boil it first. And Miss Manners would say that sharing the blood of your friends is polite, but not required.

Some people get "bloody noses," but they don't. It's a magic trick, likely performed with the help of a small concealed pump in the sinus cavity that's attached to a sack of blood stapled to the back of the person's throat. They do this both for attention and to deceive. The worst thing you can do is help these people.

One amazing thing about blood is that, despite being wet, it can go from a wet to a not-wet state if left outside the body long enough. This is a waste of blood. If you find yourself near a puddle of your own blood, you should, as quickly as possible, scoop it up and try to push it back in to the hole whence it came. I know I said earlier that you don't need blood, but blood research has changed since I wrote that paragraph, and it turns out that you do need it. Whatever plans you've drawn up for a revolutionary weight-loss program based on what I said before ought to be scrapped before you kill a bunch of people and get me sued.

The reason you need blood is that it carries your Life Force. According to the esteemed theoretical-psychophysicist Brian Greene, Quantum Yarn N-Theory Mechanics posits the existence of a particle called a "spiriton" that constitutes part of your soul. If you lose too many spiritons, you lose part of your soul. This loss makes it harder for you to join Dr. Greene's colleague - the disembodied energy essence of L. Ron Hubbard that's currently parked in a higher plane of existence in the center of the super-massive black hole at the heart of our galaxy - in the afterlife. For this reason, you must NEVER allow medical staff to take blood samples unless - and I stress this - they agree to put it back in later.

Be safe and plug all your holes. Insufficient spiritons == no L. Ron Hubbard for you.

Now you know everything there is to know about blood.

What I have to say about blood today is going to turn the world of the arachnidial sciences on its ear. Also, if you're anything like my friend Felix, you're going to whimper and beg for the sweet, blissful refuge of ignorance - to forget that you ever learned what I am about to learn at you. By then, the damage will have been done. You'll be frelled, and you're just going to have to deal with it.

But that's for later on.

The first item on the Agenda of Blood isn't the groundbreaking revelation I have planned, but something more pedestrian.

My testosterone level, lady and gentlemen, is closer to normal. Things are going back to normal. Normal is on its merry, normal little way. It's not back up to its normal levels, but I've been assured by people who get paid a lot to say such things that everything's going to be normal Real Soon Now.

Let us pray.

Join hands.

Our Father Who Art in Heaven

Hallowed be Thy name

Please make me a man again

Thanks a lot,

Rory

Amen

P.S.

Make that Amen a double

I feel better already.

You wouldn't guess this about me, but I attended chapel twice a week for six years, and I've said the Lord's Prayer, knees on pew, hundreds of times. Despite being an atheist - and I was at the time as well - I loved going to chapel. I actually miss it.

Just a little trivia for you.

This, right here, is the worst segue I've ever written.

The homeless. Brilliant tax-cheating entrepreneurs or casualties of a system that works pretty well for most people but can't be easily adjusted to accommodate the needs of the few square pegs left out of the round hole of society?

Doesn't matter. Nobody cares.

What's important is that I seen a homeless in my favorite cafe. He comes in often, spending money he's acquired unlawfully, denying Uncle Sam his fair share of the booty.

He buys half a cup of coffee, pocketing the rest of his easily-earned cash to spend on drugs later in the day. It's all he cares about, the homeless. He couldn't be like me and get stressful jobs, pay taxes, and only spend a small portion of income on drugs. No - he has to feed on the teat of Liberty, pausing only to mix his cocaine with a little baking soda and water in a spoon, heat the spoon with his lighter, let the resulting goop cool until it's a coagulated chip of a glass-like substance, remove the chip from the spoon, and go to town with it on the crack pipe, holding in the vapor until he achieves the characteristic rush and high that makes this particular recreation so appealing to so many people.

I believe that's how crack works. There's no way to know for sure.

It's just a guess.

Before heading off to hit the crack pipe, he must prepare his coffee.

I happened to have been standing near the cream/sugar/honey/etc. station the other day when he walked up.

I have a few OCD-like tendencies, and they come and go in intensity, but this guy clearly has serious Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder activity going on.

I watched as he selected a quantity of drink lids, lifted them from the pile, and threw them in the trash.

Next, he pulled napkins from the two napkin dispensers, one after the other, until, satisfied, he threw them in the trash to keep the lids company.

Then it was the sugar. Also, the "sugar".

He grabbed the blue packets, the white packets, the pink packets, and the yellow packets, wadded them up, and, you guessed it, threw it all in the trash.

There was a break of a few seconds before he went at it again, starting the process over, seeking balance between the condiments in and out of the trash.

Absolutely fascinating.

What he was doing made perfect sense to him. In his world, this is how it had to go down.

This, right here, rivals the worst segue I've ever written (see above). It might even be worse, as I'm repeating the basic structure of the last, making it stupid and unoriginal.

One of the many blood tests I've had this month came back with glucose levels in the red. They weren't yet diabetic, but they were well outside the normal range.

Since blood sugar is one of the few things I can monitor on my own, I bought a little glucose monitor thing. Of ten tests I've performed with it, only one was abnormal, but it was abnormal to the point of being borderline diabetic (yes - it had been at least two hours since my previous meal).

You don't care, though. I'm sure you'd help if you could, but aside from sending me tons of money, there's nothing for you to do.

What you care about is my great, grand, interspecies experiment.

It was 2:00 AM. I'd just gotten home and was feeling a little off. Decided to check my blood sugar to see if there was any possible connection (it was high, but I think it was just a coincidence).

When I went to check it, there was a spider sitting on my bottle of test strips. I picked up the canister and shook the little guy off. He (or she - whatever) fell to the counter and remained still. He was probably starving, as I don't remember my test strip bottle being a rich hunting ground for hungry spiders.

I did the test and reached for a paper towel to wipe off the blood. That was when I had my idea.

I tore off a strip of paper towel and squeezed a few drops of blood onto the end of it. I lowered the bloody end of the strip to the counter, about six inches from the spider. It didn't care.

I slowly moved the strip closer and closer. When it was a couple inches away, something happened inside the critter's head. It ran on its little spider legs toward the paper towel. It stopped when it was in the middle of the big red blotch, and it stayed there for a little while, sucking on the paper towel.

It eventually lost interest and walked away slowly. I don't think it was able to get much blood out of the towel, though it certainly tried.

As Felix observed, "They[spiders] would hurt us if they could."

Yes, Felix.

They would.

Looking back, I don't know what's creepier: that the spider tried to kill and eat my blood, or that I, alone in my kitchen in the middle of the night, was trying to feed my blood to a spider.

I'm sure da Vinci did stuff like this. The only difference between him and me is that he would have had a good reason for it, would have drawn it, and then spent the rest of the night designing, fabricating, and testing a flying machine that was powered by blood.

It's not fair to compare us, though, because I can't draw, and he's dead. Apples and oranges, as they say.

Brilliant, really good looking apples, and dead, show-off oranges.

Hear me, people. I give now to you a list.

To you.

Just for you.

It is this list:

- Galileo Galilei

- Isaac Newton

- Rene Descartes

- Oscar Wilde

- Carl Sagan

I could go on.

I won't.

I could.

I shan't.

What is the significance of this list?

I have been ill. For two weeks, I was suicidally depressed. As soon as the depression lifted last week, my body fell apart, and I spent nearly thirty hours in hospitals or under the care of my personal doctors. Once those problems were brought under control, one more problems was discovered.

The men on this list had also been ill. Some of them chronically; others acutely, but with unusual conditions.

I don't like saying it, but I think I've had significantly more health problems for a guy my age than most others in modern fancypants developed nations.

That's where the list comes in.

It is not unusual for we men of genius to fall ill with greater frequency than the common man. Some of the greatest minds the universe has ever known were trapped inside bodies unsuitable to sustain them.

When you have a brain like Newton's, Wilde's, or mine, you learn that its needs are greater than the needs of the kind of brain you're likely to find in, say, your own head.

Its caloric requirements are astronomical. I estimate that my body's total needs come to ten-thousand calories a day. That's the minimum for uninterrupted basic functioning. To get the most out of my brain, that'd have to be bumped up to fifteen-thousand or more. Anything less, and my health is in a decaying orbit, coming closer to disaster every moment, and closer to burning up during re-entry.

This presents the genius with a couple problems.

The first is that we were not given mouths, stomachs, and appetites to keep up with our brains.

The second is that, thanklessly carrying the burden of advancing society, we don't take many breaks, and certainly not to eat. It's better now than it was in the past, as we have food that can be unwrapped and consumed with as few as one hand, but it takes time to v