Guys, I have a great idea for a holiday present, but it’s absolutely got to be a surprise, so women please don’t read this or you’ll spoil it, seriously.

You’ll ruin it, honest, so don’t look.

Really. Please. Don’t peak.

No peaking now.

Just trust me for once and don’t look. Guys only.

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Since the US Navy is going to use Windows 2000 on a carrier, does this meansn Clippy will now be saying things like, “It looks like you’re trying to fend off a torpedo attack! What would you like to do? etc etc”.

• Do you often use the word “stupid” whilst driving, often in combination with other, shorter words?
• Are other people just basically lame, tasteless and disappointing in general?
• Were you smart as a kid, but for some reason your career never took off the way it ought to have, perhaps because of the above reason, although you’re still smarter than most people?
• Do you hang around with people who are dumber than you, or keep to yourself if none are available?
• If aliens were to land, and take over, and install you as supreme ruler, because you would be the obvious choice, would you do things differently?

If you think this is a lame quiz, then you may have a superiority complex.

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She: and the vet said, cats can’t cry.
He: [eyes narrow to slits in reaction to what sounds like an apology for cats.] …

Cat: …
She: and so they have to do other things.
He: [has an image of himself standing next to the tub, pissing onto the bath mat] …
Cat: …
She: [leaves room]
He: [looks at cat] …
Cat: [looks at man] …
He: [looks at cat] …
Cat: [looks at man, then licks own asshole] …

He: [waits for cat to finish, then places it gently on his lap] Kitty. [pets cat affectionately] Little kitty-witty.
Cat: Prrrr.
He: Good little guy at heart, aren’t you. We never thought about that did we. [continues petting cat.]
Cat: Prrrr.
He: Daddy’s little kitty. Good little guy. C’mon. C’mere. Yeah. You like that?
Cat: Prrrr.
He: Prrr. Yeahhhh. [whispers] Listen, you ever cry on the bathmat again, I’ll give you something to fucking cry about, you unnerstand?
Cat: …
He: [scratches cat under chin] Good little kitty.

Cat: Prrr.

Last night, although in this case the last night in question was over ten years ago, since I quit teaching ten years ago (I should throw a party to celebrate ten teaching-free years) after my English class got out I walked to the subway as usual but stopped by the produce stand on the corner; no, wait, the class got out at like nine-thirty at night, so this must have been in the evening before class started, say five-ish or six-ish; it was getting dark, so say sixish – I went into the produce shop on the corner and the bell over the door tinkled and the Kurdish man who ran the place greeted me as he greets all of his customers and I marveled at all the artfully-arranged fruit and the peace and calm the owner radiated calmed me down and I didn’t want to leave. He asked me whether he could help me select something and I asked for him to recommend an apple. Jonagold, he said. They are a big, sweet, juicy greenish apple with a lot of red and yellow. They are a recent sort, a cross between the Jonathan and the Golden delicious. He didn’t mention that last fact, I stumbled across that years later on the Internet, which didn’t even exist, for me, at that time. At that time I was still typing stories on an electric typewriter while staring out the window at the fog covering the hills outside my in-laws’ house.

I bought two. They were crisp, juicy and sweet, with a strong, delicious apple aroma. Excellent for eating fresh, although you would want something sourer for baking a pie. We chatted for a while longer, agreeing on many things, such as the importance of children.

A kid rolled past the office just now on one of those little scooter things. My youngest daughter has one. She likes it a lot. She insists on riding it to the local store when we go shopping. It complicates shopping immensely. Well, not immensely. Slightly. It is a small joy to watch a kid scoot, with a smile on their face, like a dog with its head out the window of a car speeding down the road.

Isn’t the sunrise fine, any time of year?

Last night I was trying to decide whether life on this Earth is heaven or hell. I originally decided heaven, since everything works so well, natural-law-wise. There is nothing one could alter without fucking everything up totally. Like, you need gravity and friction. Even death, since without that, who cares about life?

But then I thought, if it were really heaven, there would be booze trucks. Little white vans with tiny wheels that would drive slowly through your neighborhood with a simple little tune playing on some bell-type instrument. Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle. It wouldn’t be loud, but it would carry and even sitting in your house, waiting for dinner say, you’d be able to hear it. “Uh-oh, dad: Booze Truck!” your children would shout with a smile. And you’d run and jump into your garden clogs and your wife would stick a few bills into the pocket of the jacket you were pulling on as you dashed out the door. You’d catch the booze truck at the corner and the driver would have a friendly greeting on his lips and he’d open the back of the van and you’d stand there, trying to decide, gin or whiskey? Macallan or Oban? Lagavullin or Jamesons?

I would like to add an “archives” function to The Bug blog (link over there at the right) but don’t have the spare mental capacity at the moment to figure out how. Can someone tell me, in an e-mail or in comments to this post, whether it is possible to arrange the entire blog in a way that when you go there, the latest post shows, plus links to the previous/next posts? i.e. make it browsable by clicking a link to previous or next? And/or a link to an archives page, which would be simply a list of titles, which are links? What I don’t want is one big page where all the actual posts are displayed; rather, I want the one-by-one thing. What code do I insert where? Thanks.

Hussein Captured Trying to Masquerade as Times Foreign Correspondent John F. Burns