Personal Deep Cleansing

I had my 6-monthly dental visit a few days ago. Every time I go to the dentist is a little bit of a gamble. If I get a certain hygienist performing my cleaning, I am golden--she has a bit of a scrape, sure, as hygienists are wont to do, but she lauds me with effusive praise about my very clean teeth, and mostly uses a light touch. Some of the other hygienists vary in their enthusiasm and can I say sadism?

This trip I had a new-to-me hygienist, and this woman clearly enjoyed her job.

I have had all kinds of dental unpleasantness in the past. From the facial surgeon who decided to pull out all my wisdom teeth, since he was in there for one, and at one point put his foot up on the chair for leverage as he yanked on my tooth, in fact breaking it in half. Good times.

Or when I did not go to the dentist for a good 15 years. That resulted in ROOT PLANING. Holy crap you do not want that. Root planing is when, not satisfied with a visible-tooth scraping, they go under the gums with whirring implements and various metal rasps. Lots of novocain is required.

So this new-to-me hygienist was really nice, although a little talkative. And everything seemed to be going pretty well. Surface level cleaning. Checking gum recession. That kind of thing.

And then she said Oh. You have some tartar back here. This could lead to BONE LOSS.

So she started telling me this story about when she lived in Japan and her friend visited her. Her husband and this woman and another guy went to a crazy restaurant in Shinjuku where a guy in a woven mask throws flour on you or something. And they all got drunk and her friend married the other guy eventually.

It's all a jumble for me because this woman had a metal hook under the gumline between my back molars, trying to pry off a bunch of tartar that I probably have because I eat Cheez-its like it is one of my LinkedIn skills. ("It was through Kaf's dedication to stuffing his mouth full of snack crackers that our company was able to realize a 37% annual growth and broaden our customer base. Although you probably don't want to watch him do it.")

I got a mental image of someone prying gunk off a horse's teeth, as I often do when I am at the dentist. And she was leaning into the pry so much, I was wondering if my tooth wouldn't just implode like a Vegas casino in the early 90s.

And the story of the Shinjuku restaurant with the masked flour man was whirling in my head as every muscle in my body was tensing. I thought of that flour man and started to think of him as some tiny homunculus with a dental pick--to him the size of a spear, so basically the Trilogy of Terror guy--wedged in my molars and leaning with all his might, laughing demoniacally, spraying flour around my mouth.

And she kept talking, but I was completely focused on survival and making auuuuurgh noises at this point. Let me know if this is uncomfortable! She said, with a glint in her eye.

And here is the thing about dental pain. In some way I feel like I deserve those little twinges of pain you get during routine dental work. I think maybe I even kind of like them. They remind you that you are alive, and that you should probably take better care of your teeth. I am not religious, so I take my penance where I can get it.

And I can withstand most of the twinges. But Oh man, this was unpleasant. And I developed a complex series of eye-widening and groaning that tipped this woman off that I was uncomfortable.

This worked out as she said "Well, I have to stop anyway. There is so much blood I can't see what I am doing anymore."

Which, while not usually what you want to hear in any situation, sounded fine to me.


BONUS DENTIST LINKS
Yuckmouth
Cavity Creeps
Colgate ska commercial 

Life Goals

Whoa hey! Did I forget this site again?

Luckily for you I have news. I have decided that, since I am 46 years old, it's time for an affectation. But I'm trying to decide what kind of affectation would really suit me.... would really make my wife and daughter super embarrassed to be seen with me in public. So it can't be your run-of-the-mill hipster mustache or Grizzly Adams style beard (partly because I can't really grow a beard and if I tried it would be, as they say, hella patchy.)

No, this has to be unique.

That's why I think it's time to bring back 1980s Jobbers hats. You know, those baseball hats that had two neck flaps hanging down in the back?

That'll be me, with my Jobbers hat, maybe listening to Aerosmith or Rush or something equally tragic, shirtless in my garage. Drinking a Jolt.

Life goals.

Interestingly, it's pretty difficult to find any evidence online of those hats even existing. It's as if the entire world just wants to forget. The entire world is looking at me with sad eyes and sort of shaking its head saying "Please, let's not think of those hats. We have been through enough, what with oil spills and childhood diseases and governments being run by actual evil clowns. Don't make us think of them."

The Flicking of the Fleas

I was watching the NFL playoff games last weekend, because I am a virile American. I had no rooting interest in any of the teams, although I preferred two of the four, both of which predictably lost.

I am not going to chime in with my hot takes about why football is terrible, what with the traumatic brain injuries and enforced patriotism and institutionalized racism. Yes. I know. You can tell I follow football to some degree though, since I said "hot takes".

I am a little conflicted about the Jacksonville Jaguars being eliminated from the playoffs though—on one hand, they are historically really terrible and they have a quarterback named Blake Bortles, which sounds more like Bo Jangles than any other player in the NFL, so I really wanted them to win. On the other hand, now that they are eliminated, I don't have to hear the play-by-play guys saying jagWIRES any more, and that can only be good.

I did watch most of the Jacksonville - New England game, and I was very glad to see not one, but two instances of the best play in football. That's right, the Flea Flicker. Each team ran a flea flicker! For those not hip to the jargon, a flea flicker is when the quarterback hands the ball to a running back who fakes as if he is going to run through the line of large gentlemen, whereupon he turns and pitches the ball back to the quarterback, who then throws it to a hopefully wide open receiver.

I mean, check out this video of The Greatest Flea Flickers--the crowd loves the flea flicker. You can't argue with that.

If it were up to me, teams would call flea flickers when they were on the opposing team's 1 yard line.

Also I would be in favor of having a really tiny guy who you could sneak in, maybe in your helmet or your pants, and he could pop out at an opportune moment and sprint with the ball over the goal line. He would be so small that the other team would be terrified, as the ball seemingly moved by itself across the goal line. Of course, there's is a very real possiblity that any tiny guy in this situation would be killed by a gang of extremely large gentlemen, but that is a small price to pay for innovation.

Self-Evident Truth

Some months ago, for reasons that are unclear to me, I signed up for Quora. And every day I get emails with subject lines like "Was Hitler so bad?", "Why is Google not hiring me despite my Mensa membership?", and "Does this flight attendant/barrista think I am the sexiest or merely super sexy?"

And yes, these are terrible and dull questions asked mainly by terrible dullards.

But today, all the dull emails, all the agonizingly dumb questions, were made worthwhile by the pinnacle of interrogative achievement. By someone finally synthesizing a question so central to man's experience on Earth--and perhaps even the stars themselves--that years of wandering lost were erased in a heartbeat as the majesty of the question washed over me:

What is the endless shrimp deal from Red Lobster?

At first, you might dismiss this question as the mutterings of a fool. After all, the very definition of the deal is contained within the name of the deal. Endless. Shrimp.

Endless.

Shrimp.

Repeat it to yourself as a mantra. As proof of your existence. The sound forming, making invisible waves. It should be on Voyager. Or maybe not, since beings from RETICULON 12 might show up with bibs. And those guys can eat some shrimp, I tell you what.

Is there an end to the shrimp? Could there exist a shrimp such that, due to its endlessness, could not perceive its end? Does a shrimp have knowledge of its own mortality or can all shrimp be said to be subjectively endless? The shrimp is you, and your end is unknowable. And therefore you are an endless shrimp.

And beyond these very basic discussion points, consider the batter factor. If shrimp are completely contained in batter, they exist in a quantum state of simultaneous shrimpness and nonshrimpness, and could even be a human finger. And in this ambiguous state have never started shrimpness, so could never truly be said to have a perceivable end.

Have your essays on my desk by Thursday.

Cheezy

CHEEZ-IT tweeted for the first time in a while.

This is where we are as a culture. CHEEZ-IT tweets. And don't get me wrong. I had to actually follow CHEEZ-IT on twitter to get notified of this crucial news. And I may or may not have envisioned an anthropomorphic CHEEZ-IT hunched over a tiny keyboard, groaning its demands to an uncaring world. Through its CHEEZ-IT mouth. Isn't that what the little hole in the CHEEZ-IT is? God I hope so, because the alternative is unpleasant.

Maybe they have an articulated foot-mouth that is housed within their CHEEZ-IT body. Or teeth.

What if CHEEZ-ITs had teeth?

A Few Things

1. While walking to school this morning, I had The Talk with my daughter. You know, the one about refraction of light, the light spectrum in general, and the non-visible band. She took it pretty well. Although I wonder if there's a name for the momentary panic you feel when you realize you may not actually be right about things you are telling your 8 year old.
2. I listen to podcasts quite a bit. While I'm driving. While I'm vacuuming or doing the dishes. It's a good way to act like a sullen teen for a while, effectively muting the plaintive cries of your family. And of course, along with 8,000 ads for Blue Apron, Casper Mattresses, and Stamps.com, there are lots and lots of ads for other podcasts. And so many of them are "HELLO WE WILL TELL YOU WHAT IS COOL NOW". It's exhausting. All these people telling you what is cool. They are the new Wacky Morning Shows. And then back to the Casper Mattresses ads. 
3. Speaking of podcasts, I was listening to This American Life on my drive home the other day and holy hell it was depressing. This particular episode focused on a guy in Japan who had set up a phone box in his front yard to conduct (probably) one-sided conversations with his dead wife. And after the Tsunami disaster, people would come by and speak to their dead relatives on this phone. The episode featured translated audio of people just wailing in existential anguish. And here I am sniffling, driving in the rain, possibly going to crash into a Mitsubishi Lancer because I can't see through my tears. And then I will be dead and my family will have to go to Japan, which is expensive, to talk to me on a phone in this guy's front yard. Thanks Ira Glass. Thanks a lot.

DID YOU KNOW STRANGER THINGS 2 IS ON NETFLIX?!

Huh? Did you? Did you? Would you like to be reminded STRANGER THINGS 2 IS ON NETFLIX on every device you own? YES YOU WANT THAT. You want your Internet of Things connected thermostat to tell you STRANGER THINGS 2 IS ON NETFLIX, first as a whisper, but gradually building to an alarming shriek STRANGER THINGS 2 IS ON NETFLIX YOU IDIOT GO WATCH IT NOW.

Every 10 steps your fitbit should scream STRANGER THINGS 2 IS ON NETFLIX just after it delivers a shock through the subcutaneous electrodes in your temples, reminding you that you are flabby as hell.

I know! I know Stranger Things 2 is on Netflix! I really liked the first one, OK? It had D&D jokes and that is pretty much good enough for me. I am a demographic--I know! Leave me the hell alone!

BEASTMASTER 2 IS ON NETFLIX!

CORPSETHUMB

We use HipChat at work, which is sadly not as hip as Slack. Although it is made by Atlassian, and they are an Australian company, and marsupials are pretty hip (except the very unhip echidna--get it together, echidna). If you want to appear edgy and kicky and down with the kids, you can use these curious image things called emojis in your chats to your coworkers. Weird, I know, but stay with me here.

If I start to type "(thumb..." I am presented with 3 type-ahead choices: (thumbsup), (thumbsdown), and one more--can you guess what it is? (thumbsideways)? (polydactalthumbsup)? No! It's (corpsethumb)! Corpse thumb? Why is that an emoji? Not to mention that the Corpsethumb is only available in the up position! If I was a corpse, I feel secure in saying it would be a thumbs-down situation. Or really more of a thumb-hanging-limp-and-lifeless situation really.

Why not a (handofglory) emoji that would render the receiver catatonic so you can sneak out for a well deserved drink or two until they recover and start sending you more annoying messages to prove that they are actually working and not screwing around looking at pictures of cats.

And if there is not a black metal band called corpsethumb, there really should be.

Monthly Jerk

I once bought my friend Chimmychanga a subscription to the Jerky of the Month Club. I think it was about 8 years ago. And I still hear from The Jerky People regularly. I kind of like it. Tell me of your dried meats.

Look, it's jerky. Jerky is fantastic and beyond reproach. But I don't want to get jerky in the mail. I generally don't want any food in the mail. I mean who knows what Harry and David did with those pears before they got to me? Butt stuff? Maybe. I know you put that one pear in gold foil, Harry and David, but you are not fooling me.

I have been known to devour jerky, and my quest for the perfect jerky is still told of in song and legend, when I and my merry band of peckish minions bravely traveled forth from Camelot on a years-long adventure that I think was about trying to capture virility. I don't know. I took a lot of lit theory classes in college.

The whole "of the month club" idea seems like like it has not been fully explored. How about a Pants of the Month Club where they send you unflattering pants that you have to wear every single day of the month in which they are received? That would be part of the club--a team of guys surveilling you and meting out punishment if you didn't wear the pants one day. I don't know what the punishment would be.

I can't think of everything.

I look like a frankenstein

I just thought everyone should know that I look like a frankenstein.

What happened was that I knocked heads with a coworker while playing basketball the other day. The top of his head hit me just under the eyebrow. That sounds a little passive-voice though. It's not like his head detached and zoomed into my eye like the last desperate gasp of Voltron, or like the Hellboy story Heads where a bunch of disembodied heads chase him around. No, this was your garden-variety head-to-head collision. I was playing TENACIOUS DEFENSE (or at least I think I was--I am not really very good at basketball) and went for a steal just as he turned his head. He made a sound like "Waaaaaah!" and staggered off. I made more of an "uhhhhhhhhh!" sound and ran off the other way, my hand pressed to my eye as blood spouted, making a pleasing blood puddle that no doubt frightened innocent children who would show up to the court later that day.

When you get an injury while playing a sport with your coworkers, you will have some percentage of them who insist that it is fine, some that say you have to go to the ER, and some who just kind of check out of the situation or look vaguely nauseated by the whole thing. Several of my coworkers ran for first-aid kits, thrust tissues at me, and one even insisted I wrap a huge gauze bandage around my head like a Civil War casualty, which seemed both anachronistic and a little much. Eventually I drove my self over to the Urgent Care where I got six stitches in my eyebrow area plus one "internal stitch" (which makes me queasy just thinking about it.)

So, like I said, I look like a frankenstein now. Six stitches in the eyebrow and a big, swollen black eye that makes me look like I'm going through a Bowie phase and felt like having one sultry smoky eye for a while.

If you are familiar with my head-injury work, you will will recall such exciting moments as "forehead lacerated by another soccer player's teeth", "knocked unconscious by ski", and a spectacular top-of-the-head bump on the Berliner Dom stairs.

Truly, an idiot for all seasons.

A List of Ideas

I feel like I used to have a lot of great ideas. When I look at my notes now, I am not impressed.

In no particular order:

1. Last Supper replica with characters from Popeye replacing all the disciples.
2. A tiny drone that cuts your hair/gets your hair caught in its propellers.
3. Bananas, but smaller.
4. Sentient cling wrap (or cling wrap that is willing to admit it has always been sentient.)
5. New monster that has all the best qualities of Dracula and Toilet Duck.

---UPDATE! Apparently I was not the only visionary:

Some Great Reward

I have a vague notion that I should not participate in rewards clubs at stores. They will get my information! They will harvest me and sell me! I will become a cog in a meaningless machine--well, more of a cog than I already am. I will be only my data, my likes and dislikes. My shoe size and proclivities. My preference for romaine over iceberg. And my open contempt for savoy cabbage.

So I don't participate in any rewards clubs--although now that I think about it, that is not true. I have a card thing for Petco, because that is Where the Pets Go, and surely a place of pets means me no harm and would never rise up against us. Oh and BevMo, because I enjoy receiving a 5% off coupon once a year that I have never once remembered to use (and 5% doesn't even cover the tax!) So apart from those two--no clubs!

But the real reason I eschew these clubs is to disappoint cashiers.

Look, I know the poor cashiers are forced to ask me to sign up for the club. They get a bonus or something.

"Are you a club member? No?! Would you like to join?"
"No."
"No? It only takes a minute!" they say as they get the sign-up form ready.
But I am wise to them. No, I say. I will not join your club.

One hardware store in particular, I always make a point to go to the same cashier, because he asks me so plaintively, every single time. And I always say no. In fact, last time, he even responded with "Well, I am just asking, sir," as if I had wounded him to the quick.

It is also great to waver about signing up for a club when there are people behind you in line, possibly holding ice cream or other frozen confectioneries. Only take a minute, you say? Great! I will just stand here writing my name and address incredibly slowly while these people's ice cream melts. The people behind you in line in this situation are within their rights to murder you in cold blood and kick your body around the town square or other local landmark.

four-foot tall rastafarian-themed banana

I felt that my daughter just hadn't spent enough time around carnies in her young life, so to remedy that situation, we took her to a carnival this weekend. The type of carnival that springs up in a parking lot this time of year. Possibly I had forgotten this, but it turns out carnivals are incredibly expensive. This one had tickets for a dollar each, and one ride on the ferris wheel was five tickets. That means it was 15 dollars for my wife, daughter, and me to ride the ferris wheel for maybe 4 minutes. While you can't put a price on not knowing exactly how safe you and your family are, that still seemed a little steep. Even the midway games, with their aggressive barkers, were three to five tickets a go.

Note that I did not try any of the games, much as that seemed to rankle the barkers. And I somehow convinced my wife that even though the four-foot-tall rastafarian-themed stuffed banana was charming hanging there in the booth, it might lose its charm in three and a half weeks when we exiled it to the garage to gather dust and possibly be savaged by raccoons. Besides, it seemed a little racist.

But I tried to see it through my daughter's eyes. Not the four-foot tall rastafarian-themed stuffed banana, but the carnival itself. Was a carnival still a place of magic and wonder? Were Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway hiding from Mr. Dark somewhere? The Magic Mirror Maze was now a three-dollar fun house that she popped out of in about thirty seconds.

I guess when Adventure Time is on demand and Mario Kart beckons on the 3DS, the carnival is not what it used to be.

The Crushing Weight of the Truth

I participate in a trivia league. It's fairly well-known. You participate in a match each day of the season--answering questions and ascribing points to each answer, competing against another nerdo like you, in a a series of ranked divisions. Like English soccer leagues, there are promotion and relegation between divisions.

While this is truly a great way of making matches competitive, it also brings home in no uncertain terms, just how dumb you are. And I am plenty dumb. The divisions are ranked from A to E. I am currently in D. I briefly soared as high as C, when the wax abruptly melted from my wings and I plummeted Icarus-like into D, where I have remained--not quite the worst, but close.

This trivia league can bring you moments of elation, when--in a very unlikely pull--you remember what a Scalene triangle is. But it can also bring on very weighty bouts of self-loathing. Just the other day I failed to correctly answer this question:

A 2017 animated film subtitled The Lost Village is a reboot not connected to two previous films from this decade that also feature what characters?

The answer is, of course, The Smurfs.

Now, I watched hours and hours of The Smurfs when I was a kid, and played Smurf Adventure on the ColecoVision more than anyone really should have, and yet I couldn't get the lost VILLAGE hint. Although to be fair, I consider the new Smurf films to be out of continuity, and the fact that they completely ignore the Gargamel/Smurfette dichotomy recognized globally by Smurf Scholars means they cannot be considered canon.

I said Minions. Minions?! What the hell is wrong with me.

Owl Dream

Last night I had a dream that there was an owl in the house. If you're like me, you probably have a couple of thoughts when you hear that someone dreamed about an owl.

First, alien abduction. That's just a given. You dream about an owl, that means you had a bunch of jerks from Alpha Centauri messing with you all night and you wake up thinking about an owl because it's a cover memory they left you with instead of letting you remember all their cool space stuff.

Second, I am totally going to die. While that is provably true, I don't think the owl in my dream meant me any harm. Owls, of course, call your name right before you die, which is another owl thing, besides pooping mouse bones and licking tootsie pops. This phenomenon has been well documented in Scooby Doo episodes, so must be true.

But as I get further away from the owl dream, I wonder if the owl wasn't actually the charming Bubo the owl from Clash of the Titans, whom anyone would be pleased to have in their dream, what with the chirping and mechanical head rotation and all.

Also, in the dream I shooed the owl out our back door, and later I saw it hanging out with some blackbirds, although it was unclear whether they were bird friends. Maybe they were networking, although I did not see any finger foods or coffee. And at another point in the dream there was a cat, like a lynx or a bobcat or something. It was basically Wild Kingdom in my dream is what I'm saying.

I hope we all learned a little something here.

The Merge

I am a dad, so I think about certain things a lot. Elvis Costello. Cargo shorts. And merging.

Merging is fraught with peril, as we all know. You're counting on someone to do the right thing, to uphold the social contract. And yet, so often, some filthy youngster breaks that contract--the very thread that holds our fragile society together--and fucks it up for everyone.

But I want to tell you, this morning I had a merge so pleasant, so perfect, that it restored my faith in humans as a species.

All the ingredients were there for disaster: a UPS truck. A minivan with butterfly stickers on the back window. An Uber. You were merging from the right, minivan with butterfly stickers, and I admit it--I doubted you. I was sure that at some point during the merge you would hit the brakes for no apparent reason, or panic and bail out into another lane, screwing everything up. And you, Uber guy--you were inexplicably not on your phone, and did not make alarming feints or attempt to outlast the minivan in a battle of wills.

No! Everyone performed their roles beautifully, and we slid zipperlike into the lane with such nonchalance that I could have sworn I heard--just for a second--a heavenly choir. singing our praises.

And I thought maybe I could stay in this moment forever, appreciating its perfection. But in the end I still had to go to work, and some troglodyte cut me off at the next light.

Better Off

A couple of weeks ago, I went skiing for the first time in a while. Let's be generous here and say 28 years. The last time I had been before that, I was about 16 years old, and I managed to knock myself unconscious and had to be pulled down the mountain on one of those little ski-patrol sleds with a severe concussion. It was not like the movie Hot Dog: The Movie at all. More like that movie Awakenings which I am pretty sure is about Robin Williams annoying coma patients until they break out of their fugue state to tell him to shut up. Too soon? Maybe.

I figured it was time to take my daughter skiing, since she is seven and hopefully still able to zoom down the slopes with zero regard for her own personal safety, as I was wont to do when I was seven. Hopefully she will not follow the same arc that led me to potential brain damage, but I don't want to enforce my world view on her.  So we drove up to a cheapo ski place to enjoy the crazy amount of snow we have gotten here in California this year. Predictably, my daughter was not that interested in skiing, but did follow through with a half-hour lesson and could probably be enticed into further slaloming if it involves candy and/or extra video games.

I spent the first couple of hours at the ski place playing with her and her friend, hurling them around on innertubes, and watching them take lessons, while my wife and our friends were off humiliating themselves on the slopes in their own ski lessons. 

Then it was time for me to join in the EXTREME ACTION of radical downhill! That's what the green circle and nearly-flat slope mean, right?

And surprisingly it all came back to me pretty well. The balance and skiing part I mean, not the traumatic memories of a ski popping off and hitting me under the chin, so I lay prone and lifeless in the snow for an unknown period of time, although those did come back to me as well. I didn't fall off the chair lift--in fact I didn't even fall down once, though as I mentioned the slope I was on was pretty close to flat, so nothing much would have happened anyway.

And I realized I forgot how much I enjoyed it--the skiing part, not the unconsciousness part. I could give the unconsciousness thing a miss, honestly.

Various Weird Things

I've always liked the supernatural. And when things get really terrible, these things become very appealing to me. I'm not talking about those jerks who go wandering around old mental hospitals at night with sweet night vision gear--no I'm talking about happy enclaves of believers like on the Fortean Times forums. I can easily lose several hours in the It Happened to Me forum, reading about such mysteries as a handwritten note that appeared to be in the poster's handwriting... Could it be that some people have very similar handwriting? While that is arguably possible, it is much more likely that someone has invented a time machine and the poster availed himself of said time machine, just to travel back in time and mess with his own head.

Also somewhat unsettling: Paranormal Date. Unclear whether it is possible to date an actual paranormal entity, and I did not go so far as to sign up and find out. While it might sound nice to step out with the ghastly spectral apparition of a Civil War widow who forever haunts the site of the battlefield where her beloved Obediah gave his life, wailing eternally for release from this hell, maybe just try hanging out in the produce section of your local supermarket and meeting a nice living person instead. Not that I'm telling you how to live your life. If you want to date a poltergeist, that is just fine and I support you. But don't think you are bringing it home for the holidays. Not under my roof.

Bonus weird link: I present you with a headline that is either fantastically good news or really terrible news, depending where you are: Testicle Eating Fish May Be Migrating.

Fruit Dystopia

Look, I am not saying genetic engineering is a great idea. I'm not not saying it either--I wouldn't be adverse to a few extra appendages or mystifying superpowers. Of course not.

What I am saying is that there are 21 seeds in this honey tangerine. Twenty-one! It's demonic.

I would be willing to settle for 4, maybe 5 seeds in this delectable citrus treat. 10 is the absolute maximum. But twenty-one?!

Let's get to work, Monsanto.

Tales of Adventure

Did you think I was gone again? I know, I have disappeared for years at a time in the past, and you wondered Where did he go, this gentle superman? Was he ever here at all--was he in fact just a fever dream I had one day because I ate something unspeakable from the back of the fridge?

But not this time. I return to you after mere weeks away, with tales of adventure.

What happened was I went to London for about ten days. This involves flying on airplanes. And, excitingly, I flew into London on the day of a crazy windstorm, so our plane got to circle Heathrow several times, dipping and rising sickeningly as the winds whipped about us. Very close to reaching-for-the-bag. (and on the return trip, the flight attendant confirmed that there was much barfing on that particular flight.)

Most of my time in London was spent visiting relatives, which was mighty fine. I am of the first generation in my family to be born in America, so pretty much all the family is in England, and I see them only rarely when I can make it over.

And because I traveled only with my two sisters, who returned to California before I did, I got a rare few days of walking around London alone. Well, alone if you don't count the thousands of tourists also walking around. And because I was alone, I could pick anywhere I liked.

I went to Highgate Cemetery, where (among many others) Douglas Adams, Karl Marx, and Malcolm MacLaren are buried. I went to Shepherd's Bush kind of by accident and failed to find Mick Jones's old squat (and got into a QPR-supporters-only pub where I managed not to get beat up.) I went and saw T2 Trainspotting in Leicester Square and told drunken British types to shut up during the film.

Also while I was in England, I managed to get on British radio. I listen to a podcast called Mystery Hour, in which delightfully English people call in with random questions and other delightfully British people call in with answers. And the delightfully British host calls people "prunes" when he feels like disparaging the quality of their questions. My seven year old daughter finds this hilarious.

So I called in with a somewhat dull question (about Scrabble)--but this was only a pretext to get the host to call me a prune, so my daughter could hear the podcast. And to my surprise, not only did I get on the program, but the host did indeed call me a prune.

I played the podcast for my daughter when I returned, and while she agreed I was a prune of the highest order, she also said I was "the best dad" for doing it, and moments like that are pretty good.

If you are interested in hearing my terrible voice, you can get the podcast for free here. It's the March 2nd episode.