• Andrew: My goals were to continue preparing my liver for a career in journalism and to teach myself Spanish in the first six months of the year. I’m not drinking as much as I wanted to but I did memorize a bunch of Spanish words the other day, so we’re one-for-one. Grandé.
• Tom K: I swore not to drink alone in the state of Michigan. So far I haven’t, which means I am bored most of the time.
• Dayna: I’m back to taking Pilates. Soon my abs will again be rock hard, prompting me to stop strangers on the street and say, “Feel my abs!”
• Bill: I resolved to floss at least once a day. I’ve kept this resolution, though I keep forgetting to brush my tongue.
• Aaron: I’m doing spectacularly! Of course, when your only resolution is “Don’t set any resolutions or unofficial goals because I’m not going to reach them and even if I do, my life will ultimately be unchanged,” it’s not difficult to bat 1.000.
• Mark: Still not pregnant. I’ll try harder.
• Joe: My resolutions to get a job, find a girlfriend, and work on moving to a better apartment are all on hold. But I did finally complete my Muppet action figure collection! My life sucks.
• Toby: Having resolved not to change myself, I plod strongly into 2006 with resolution intact. The unofficial goal of contracting out the Dish Fairy position remains unfulfilled.
• Matthew: I think I am not doing too bad, considering I only really resolved to not let things get worse in my life, and even that was basically bullshit. I mean, even when things were not so good the last six months, I was still getting wasted about four nights a weeks and having sex with pretty good regularity. Now I’m never drunk and completely limp, so I guess maybe I’m not doing so good. Hmmmm.

• Mark: The class of functions computable using nondeterminisitc polylogarithmic space. People left the room. People hate theory.
• Andrew: Underfunded pension liabilities in West Virginia, which I know too much about.
• Kimberly: I’m not sure I have the wits to meet that challenge. I can’t think of anything shocking enough to automatically clear, say, Jeff or Sarah out of a room. I would probably have to relate an extremely sad or tragic story and start sobbing uncontrollably. And even that would almost assuredly be a failure.
• Dayna: When I start talking about what I wrote my theses on in college, a lot of people seem to tune out. Somehow no one knows quite how to contribute to a conversation about the influences of the Arabic occupation of Spain on architecture and poetry. Who knew.
• Sarah: Postmortem photography, especially dead babies.
• Tom K: Who would call the cops if Tom White brought a dead baby into the room? Especially if he was swinging it by the umbilical chord.
• Aaron: Bacon.
• Matthew: No matter what I am talking about, it is so absurd as to be life-altering and entertaining. My silence clears a room faster than anything I could ever say.
• Kelly: It depends on the room, I guess. A kitty will clear the room at home, politics will scatter my coworkers, baseball will fuck me in Ohio, and I’ll leave if the topic becomes creationism vs. evolution.
• Toby: The rooms I’m in don’t really clear out. I’m shushed from time to time, mostly due to my hard-hitting journalism and investigative probing.

• Tom K: Is that like when I dress up as a mailman and Tina dresses up as a lumberjack before we do it?
• Bill: I was doing contracting for the World Food Program and at the same time was selling black-market conflict diamonds that I exploited from the impoverished villagers. Does that count?
• Aaron: Successfully? No. My problem is that I’m far too verbose. I can keep tons of secrets if they are divulged to me without any coaxing, but if I’m trying to get some info, my beans will be spilled and it will be messy. And suddenly I want Chipotle. Wait, you weren’t supposed to know that.
• Matthew: Only against myself. Which, of course, makes no sense.
• Toby: On a few occasions, I’ve told people that I would consider voting for Rudy Giuliani, should he win the Republican nomination. However untrue this statement, it positions me well for a 2010 internal takeover of the Young Republicans National Federation.
• Mark: I once ate dinner and dessert at a friend’s house. I then went home and said that I hadn’t eaten, where I was fed another dinner and a dessert. It was like briefly living a double life, but then again both families knew that I was a fat, selfish kid, so everyone was pretty much on the same page.

• Mark: I have no true thoughts.
• Aaron: “Winsome” isn’t a word, you doody head! [It is. -Ed.]
• Kelly: I don’t think “winsome” is ever a word that can be used to describe anything I do. It’s so far off I don’t even know exactly what it means. From context clues, though? I don’t think “winsome” is ever a word that can be used to describe anything I do.
• Matthew: I am only really charming, or winsome, when I want something from someone. That’s when you know I REALLY want it, because usually when I want something I am just a total bitch until I get it. Seriously, if you think about this, it is really true. I suspect that some of you may never want to speak to me again.
• Bill: I often use naive behavior to cover up my jealousy. If someone has a better job or an interesting story, I work to undermine them with charm, asking them questions and trying to draw out all the negative aspects to deflate the position of superiority I feel they have over me.
• Sarah: Times when I conveyed my true thoughts, and also put my foot in my mouth:

  “I hate vegans. They need to live a little.”
  “People who don’t believe in evolution are idiots; that’s like believing the sun revolves around the earth. I have no more tolerance for them.”

  I said these things in front of a vegan and a creationist, respectively.

• Patrick: My freshman year of college, I had a roommate named Tito. He was 5'1" and loved to get drunk. One night he was carried in by some frat guys around 10:00pm. Tito was so hammered he couldn’t climb into his bed. (If you’re wondering why the little guy got the top bunk, it’s because we discussed it over the phone before we ever met and I didn’t know Tito was so tiny.) Anyway, I let Tito sleep in my bed that night and I slept in his. When I woke up the next morning, Tito was still asleep, so I went to breakfast and had some delicious eggs or something. After breakfast, I returned to my room and noticed a huge stain on my bed, about the size of a manhole cover. Tito walked in and immediately apologized for pissing my bed. He promised to wash everything and switch mattresses. Good deal. Tito took everything — the mattress cover, the fitted sheet, the sheet, the pillowcases, and both blankets — and washed them, then threw all of it into one dryer. Unaware of this, I was surprised when the fire alarm went off. Long story short, Tito accidentally set the laundry room on fire when he overloaded the dryer. Most of my sheets were charred, and the building had to be evacuated.
• Toby: Upon finding that I owed Ohio University about $4,000 in summer tuition for my internship in Washington, my father told me he’d “take care of it.” In the past, this meant getting something straightened out in the university’s records. This time, it meant taking out a $5,000 loan in my name.
• Andrew: I’m telling this because it’s a recent story and fresh in my mind, but it’s admittedly not something that you would deliver to a national assembly of... storytellers.
  When I was in India at the beginning of the month and forgot to leave behind rent money for January, my roommates went into my room looking for a check so that they could pay my rent on time. They found a book of checks and made one out to our landlady, signing my signature as best they could. But the check they wrote wasn’t tied to my primary account. Instead, they had found a check from a recently-opened second account of mine that had no money in it. When they deposited the check, the bank didn’t bounce it. Instead, the bank loaned me about $700 and charged me $150 in insufficient funds fees. They called my work and cell phones repeatedly and asked for permission to transfer funds from my primary account into the new secondary one, but they never got it because I couldn’t be reached. When I returned from my trip, I couldn’t explain to the bank that my roommates had forged my signature, so I mumbled something about using the wrong account accidentally and was stuck with the fine (though they reduced it a bit when I promised not to ever make the mistake again).
• Kelly: No one has ever had enough control for that to be able to happen.
• Anonymous: When I’m depressed and having trouble getting over you, coming over and getting drunk and going down on me doesn’t help. You know who you are… or maybe you don’t — you were really drunk.
• Matthew: I think people are generally afraid to try to fix things for me. Mostly because people assume I will fix their problems, and if they have to fix my problems then my abilities to fix them will be significantly weakened. I guess I don’t really mind so long as they continue to suck me off and pump me full of alcohol. I really treasure my friendships.

• Dayna: I like to think that it is my need to straighten when I park. I have to be in the parking space parallel to the lines on either side, preferably with the car evenly distributed. Passengers should not attempt to disembark until I have pulled out and pulled back into a space at least once.
• Tom K: Sometimes if I didn’t take a shower, and I’m particularly filthy, I’ll sleep on the floor instead of soiling my sheets.
• Bill: I harbor all my resentments forever, and hold them against you whenever I’m drunk.
• Carrie G: When I say “coooke” or “phooooto” like I’m from Wisconsin. People call me on it all the time. Don’t know where it came from. I’ve also evidently acquired an Akron accent — West Akroners say “dayown” rather than “down.”
• Aaron: Isn’t that an oxymoron? “Well, Bryan, I feel compelled to rap my knuckles against any hard surface and whistle the theme to the original Dragnet. For some reason, people keep kicking me in the balls, but I find it charming enough.”
• Matthew: My most charming obsessive tic is the antithesis of whatever tic you have. Seriously, nothing brings me greater pleasure than being obsessive about the opposite of what you — general “you” — are obsessive about, no matter what the impact on me is. Yes, I am a charming asshole.
• Mark: Hitting on my straight friends during Valentine’s Day when their girlfriends are out of town. I have placed eight calls today asking my Ultimate frisbee boy pals if they have any interest in playing some “brokeback playstation” or having a couple of “brokeback beers” with me tonight. No takers. Some have stopped taking my calls.

• Kristin: The majority of my friends are quite conservative. So, all of my ethical standards differ from theirs. For example, I lived with my now-husband for a year and a half before we got married. And we didn’t get married in a church. Those are two big strikes against me.
• Brad: I’m OK with going to a bar, seeing a half-consumed beer or mixed drink on a cleared table, and picking it up and finishing it. I mean, really, the alcohol should kill the germs. They say that in Catholic churches when hundreds of people drink from the same wine glass. I’ve been doing that for years and no problems yet…
• Andrew: I enjoy people who throw off my moral compass, like Ari Gold in Entourage, though I don’t know any real-life people who behave that way.
• Patrick: I disagree with Katie and Matt’s decision to perform acts of genocide on Fridays. While they do not constitute a majority of my friends, they certainly consider themselves in the majority over those who they banish to “camps.”
• Bill: As a moral relativist, my standards for morality exist constantly in flux, based both on the situation and on the boring, general liberalism of my friends. It exists, fades, and grows depending on whether I myself am endangered by a proposition. The laziness of my principles would give Kant a heart attack.
• Mark: When you see a house cat in heat, you should satisfy her. I would want the same done to me.

• Andrew: Come again?
• Dayna: I have no idea what this question means.
• Matthew: As I am very stupid, I do not understand this question. Thusly, my answer is simple: my cock.
• Sarah: I’m not sure I understand this one… if it’s outside the social sphere of life, is it from the social sphere of death?
• Mike Ray: Inserting image-based comments into people’s profiles --> inserting animated GIF comments into people’s profiles… I don’t really understand this question!
• Bill: Disco?
• José: Are you asking me if I have an iPod?
• Mark: Cocktail hour. I routinely treat myself to a cocktail and a tray of snacks. When people come over, they join me. It’s transitioned into my life quite easily. I always find the energy.
• Kimberly: UDF! It’s open late, and they sell yummy milkshakes. I now constantly get calls from people asking me to partake in a trip.
• Toby: It seems that most “social” activity in which I partake is rooted in antisocial or questionable at best. For instance, my idea of a social Saturday afternoon is climbing on top of a lofty perch in a sandwich shop, where I sing cover songs for people eating lunch, most of whom are pretending that I’m not there. My close friends’ idea of “social drinking” involves abbreviated pop songs and shot glasses of light beer, and it prohibits most meaningful conversation. When Bryan and I want to get closer as roommates, we open a bottle of wine and turn on an episode of whichever television series we are currently plowing through on DVD.

• Dayna: Surprisingly robust? Baked potato soup.
  Surprisingly flimsy? Twix’s effect on my appetite.
• Bill: Aged balsamic vinegar tends to be far more robust than I would ever give it credit for. My credit, however, is surprisingly flimsy.
• Kristin: Robust — My grandfather-in-law (is there such a thing?) is quite robust. He rides his bicycle several miles each day. The family is trying to get him to stop because his eyesight is quite poor, and he has run into several parked cars and trees. I hope that he invests in a stationary bike.
• Kimberly: How is it that you manage to go through so many cameras, but your phone continues to be operational?!
• Mike Ray: Robust: My Nokia phone when I drop it.
  Flimsy: This NES clone I just got. If you so much as breath on the thing, then the game freezes.
• Toby: The effect that caffeine still has on me, despite my increasing abuse of its powers, makes me less wary of addiction in other facets of life.
  Bryan’s vegetarianism — facing increased pressure from the right, to which he only occasionally surrendered in past years — has proven the flimsiest lifestyle preference of 2006.
• Anonymous: My boyfriend’s balls. They’re HUGE. It’s like sitting on a pillow.
• Patrick: Let me answer your question with a question: Why are batteries sold in bulletproof packaging and light bulbs in light cardboard tubes?
• Mark: Tin foil … my justifications for using tin foil.

• Mark: Secret diplomatic relations with the Phyro-Salamander people … sanity.
• Kimberly: I look back on high school as my peak of shyness.
• Dayna: I look back on __high school__ as my peak of __bitterness___.
• José: I look back on the 9th grade as the peak of my educational career.
• Bill: I look back on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations as my peak of measuring the level of democratic activism in China.
• Joe: I look back on my urethra as my peak of my erection.

• Toby: I think working at a political consulting firm requires me to “notice” patterns and connections in what is really only a series of random events applied with enough vigor and false sense of authority purposely designed to give people like me the ability to consider them “organized efforts.”
• Aaron: I’ve always been under the impression that phone numbers had some method to their madness. When others see the last four digits of my old Berea home being a paltry, measly 8836, I see a number followed by the exact same number and then I see a number followed by another number that is precisely twice that of the previous. Coincidence?
• Katie: I noticed a lot of totality for a while — threes, three sets of threes, the occasional seven. But recently, 13 has been popping up all over the place. AND Hilary Duff and that guy from Good Charlotte are dating. HA!
• Dayna: When I choose to psychoanalyze my friends, I find all kinds of behavior patterns that could be treated with therapy and perhaps medication. But, generally, they are uninterested in my diagnosis.
• Carrie S: I have friends who have NO IDEA why they feel bored/belittled in relationships. Surely it has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the fact that they exclusively date men who are tall, rich, young, and materialistic. They say, “I’m not shallow; I’m just up-front about what my standards are. Among those men I can choose the one who really loves me.” I am also picky. My standards include “frighteningly intelligent,” “extremely devoted to human rights,” and “constantly erect.” From those I choose one who really loves me.
• Mark: I see the world with the eyes of a newborn child — things are as likely to fall off a table as they are to blink out of existence or fly away at a high velocity, and linear congruential generators do seem like a good source of randomness. All things appear random, and will continue to seem random until the universe contracts to a point and that point cools down to absolute zero.

• Kimberly: I was only 5’8” when I graduated from high school. I broke my sternum at basketball practice. I have four plates in my jaw.
• Krista: “No, thank you, I don’t need a ride… No, not even to get out of the rain… Yes, this is my real hair.”
• Katie: This would be a good one for my mom: She would answer, “Bill Clinton is Christ” or “Fat people are incapable of love.”
• Aaron: My Dad would give me little Dixie cups of beer when I was four or five. And I’d drink them and ask for another. I actually liked the taste, all fizzy and refreshing. I don’t recall feeling any alcoholic effects, either. I think my fresh liver just schooled that alcohol the instant it found some.
• Bill: I always lie. But then you fall into the paradox of my honesty and so you don’t know what to believe and I have totally blown your mind.
• Carrie S: I was recently at an “elegant” New Year’s party where I got really drunk. Long after midnight and well into the seventh course, I said, “Well, we all know that Christianity is a violent homoerotic zombie cult. I mean, look at the way evangelicals flock to pro wrestling.” I went on to explain the gnostic scriptures in “Secret Mark” (google it) and the long tradition of poetry about baby Jesus’ bloody foreskin. Let’s just say it was the wrong time and place.

• Sarah R: Expansive. I love everyone. Except those who wear mukluks. And Uggs. And those people who block the doors on the Metro so you can’t get onto the train. And the loud groups of girls in bars who shriek for no reason. I lied, I hate everyone.
• Tiffany: Lately, I’ve found that I am much more discriminating with my affection, as I dislike a lot of the people I’ve met recently. Maybe it’s just grad school, and a high percentage of the people I interact with are pompous assholes. It’s a distinct possibility.
• Toby: Love comes only hours of grueling interrogation.
  Affection comes more and more with every minute during a standard power hour.
• Bill: I’m so incredibly discriminating, I have no love for anyone. But I feel a great affection for all of you.
• Aaron: For mundane things I’m discriminating to the point of being snotty. Mustard, for example. I eat sandwiches just so I can taste mustard, so long as it’s fancy schmancy stone-ground stuff or honey Dijon. But I think I’d rather eat shit than that typical yellow mustard you find at McDonalds. Beer is another example. I’m quickly becoming that guy that everyone hates at parties because he complains about how crappy the beer selection is. I mean, would it kill the host to offer something with a little more balanced malt character? (Don’t you just want to plant your fist in my face right now?)
• Mark: It expands and then discriminates via probing.

• Dayna: I have a shirt with a picture of a gold glittery bunny rabbit that reads “Won Fun Lei.” I feel that is a very complicated personal statement.
• Tiffany: My awesome acid-washed — literally, sulfuric acid — jeans. They were very fashionable and trendy, albeit unintentionally so. They are so degraded now that they are unwearable.
• Sarah R: My “Reading Is Sexy” shirt. It shows off my rack.
• Mark: I have a pair of tight, polyester pants that scream “I’m shameless” while giving me the hipster “I’m ironically appropriating out-of-style clothing” excuse. Generally, it’s classic “I’m unfashionable, why would you look at me?” paired with “so what my pants are tight? Take a picture, it will last longer!… please?”
  My WWJD underwear with the bullseye on the ass also sends mixed messages, but I think the statement is clear.
• Katie: I have a t-shirt that belonged to my mother when she was in school in Philadelphia that says, “Keep the Block”, referring to a block of local artsy stores and restaurants that were being threatened with closure by the big, mean, expanding school. I’m able to communicate a lot of great stuff about myself when I wear it:
  

  - The phrase “Keep the Block” says, “I’m cool enough to know what this means. Not like you.”
  - Its authentic vintage says, “I’m carrying the torch of the revolutionary spirit that inspired the generation before mine to fight the Man and the status quo to forge a freer society.” Also, “My parents give me a bunch of stuff.”
  - The holes in it say, “I’m a little bit slutty.”

• Carrie S: While in Italy back in 2004, my boyfriend bought me some rather provocative socks. I’ve shown them to some people who have no idea what I mean, but on occasion, while wearing them, I’ve nearly been sexually accosted by those who react to the socks’ peculiar blend of argyle innocence and just-this-side-of-shocking coloration. Then, last year, I asked the boyfriend to bring me back tacky Italian socks. He returned with about eight pairs of the most horrifyingly eye-blinding socks mankind has ever experienced. Two pairs of thigh-high horizontally (red-and-purple and pink-and-lilac) striped ones with white flowers. Several knee-high pairs in clashing-color stripes, each with one sock vertically striped and the other horizontally. One pair of bright orange and brown argyle-turned-sideways (like squares) kneehighs. I wear them all the time. It’s hard to shock NYers, but seriously, every passerby stares, and they often nervously whisper, “I love your socks!” Instead of making me look sexually available, these socks make me look potentially deranged.

• Dayna: On occasion, army recruiting commercials and sappy movies can move me to tears. Which is upsetting.
• Aaron: I find that I get really pissed off at the world as I read political blogs (which I spend about an hour a day doing at work), but when talking to people about politics I’m politically pooped out. So I come across as sensible, moderate, and practical.
• Carrie S: When I saw The Thin Red Line with my mother, I started crying about an hour into it and didn’t stop until three hours after it was over. I was sobbing and sobbing, even rocking back and forth. I couldn’t drive us home. We bought a sixpack and I drank all of it before the tears passed. I saw it again later on DVD, and nothing happened. Does war remind me of dear old mom?

• Carrie S: There was a moment when I realized that, if there is a god, that god is not improved by my making up characteristics for that god — anything I could say or think about said god would be superlative. Therefore, “belief” of any kind would itself be an insult to the god in which one believes. I thought I’d just defined a clever paradox, but instead I became a heretic. Whoops!
• Aaron: After my eighth straight hour of playing World of Warcraft online, it dawned on me that I may not have the control of my daily life that I thought I did. And then a blood clot in my motionless leg broke free and lodged itself in the part of my brain that gives me free will.
• Toby: Remember when I made Mrs. Alito cry? Yeah. Or there was that one time I referred to our client as “The Smithsonian Institute.” SI’s Melanie D___ politely informed me the Institute is really the Institution and the title never — NEVER!! — includes the definite article. Never.
• Kimberly: I may have stayed at a friend’s apartment where we shared a bed so that I didn’t have to sleep on the floor. When I woke up without my shirt on and we had the “We’re still just friends” discussion, I started to think about what had transpired…
• Bill: There is such a line on the taint of many women, and finding out you’ve crossed it is often painful and regularly unfulfilling and generally ends with an embarrassing dismount and a lot of “Whoa!” But no specific time stands out.
• Mark: There is an invisible line between “having quirky interests that yield fabulous dinner conversations” and “knowing so much about raping geese, the opinions of unrepentant necrophiles, where to buy hate group merchandise, and the miscellany occult things that you never fail to intimidate and scare nearly everyone.”

• Bill: In the fact that Molly Ringwald is always bothering me with her poorly developed emotional understanding. I mean, God, Molly, that movie In The Weeds wasn’t so bad; do more independent stuff like that and you get over this whole thing.
• Toby: You know the scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where the parking garage guy steals Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari and takes it on an I-don’t-care-if-we-all-die joy ride? That’s every car ride when your roommate is a automobile stunts expert.
• Krista: People keep telling me to “answer the question, Claire!” No, just kidding. Actually, my life doesn't resemble a teen movie from the 1980s. However, on multiple occasions I have seen a man walking by my house carrying a Sony boombox circa 1985 and blaring old-school hip hop.
• Dayna: My boyfriend’s roommate’s birthday was a couple of days ago, and no one in his family remembered.
• Carrie S: Hatin’ bitches everywhere. Why bitches gotta hate?
• Aaron: I often find myself sitting on the beach, staring at the sunset, mulling melancholy over something that requires gobs of soul searching, when an attractive actress pretending to be an average high schooler ambles by and sits next to me. We have a meaningful, carefully scripted discussion and I come to some grand conclusion about the meaning of my life. And then I hear Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” everywhere.
• Mark: I feel like I should know happiness and have my “Pretty in Pink” boyfriend at the Prom-that-is-Life. I think I deserve this. I think fate and chance have agreed on this issue. I believe all the forces on earth and heaven side with this decision. The subtext suggests it. Multiple script revisions suggest this.
  I am certain, however, that my own personal “Duckie-Andie” ending did not test well with the public and was re-shot. Now my life reads that any vaguely handsome, normal boy will always be chosen over me. My life is like an 80s movie in that I feel very strongly that the satisfying version of my life is sitting on John Hughes’ cutting-room floor.
• Katie:

  - Grouchy-but-loveable coach with a drinking problem: Matthew
  - Protagonist whom no one can recognize when cross-dressing (yes they can): Bryan
  - Attractive popular girl who’s not like all the others because she has a good heart and will abandon her shallow friends to help out our rag-tag bunch and our zany scheme: Karen
  - Running gag involving a silly animal: Patrick and Bella
  - Japanese character: Toby

• Krista: “Yes.”
• Anonymous: Deepthroating.
• Dayna: Following directions at work. I complete tasks as requested, and my managers are delighted with me. My new boss said to me recently, “I love you… Does that make you uncomfortable?”
• Kimberly: People always make fun of me for using “Kimmy” words, but I know they are secretly amused. I caught someone saying “sweave” just the other day. My dad apparently pulled off using “awkwadded” in a meeting without a hitch.
• Tiffany: I think it’s taking the time and effort to do the little things that matter a great deal to people. Spending fifteen minutes chatting with my roommates about our day, answering QotW, ignoring work a little longer to hang out and eat lunch outside with friends.

• Tiffany: I need a ton of sleep to make it through the whole day without dragging and/or going brain-dead. Maybe I spent all of my energy making it through college, and now I’m like the old cordless phone whose battery is shot and has to charge for five hours for, like, thirty minutes of use.
• Dayna: Regular meal times. I hate when people ask me to tell them when I’m hungry, because I almost never am. I really only notice that I should eat when I a) look at a clock, or b) feel like I’m about to pass out.
• Carrie S: They say you need eight hugs a day just to survive. I must have sherpa blood or something, because I can go a full week without even one.
• Krista: More chocolate and mint chocolate chip ice cream. I often go to ice cream shops and try multiple flavors, just to see what they taste like, and then I get mint chocolate chip anyway. I also need more physical activity. This may be due to the fact that I indulge in above-average quantities of sweets on a daily basis, though this has not been proven.
• Bill: Balsa wood and Pop Tarts.

• Bill: My own death.
• Aaron: Toby kicking me in the back of the head from the backseat as I drive, causing me to run into a telephone pole and kill the driver. Everyone else walks away from the accident with minor bruises, but in slow motion, of course.
• Mark: I once watched My Dinner with Andre on “slow.” I do not recommend it.
  Maybe enjoying a nice dessert that fills you up too quickly to eat lots. Like, you want to taste more of that exquisite, dense flourless cake, but you just can’t manage another bite! Having had all of one’s previous bites last a little longer would be a nice option.
• Toby: There are so many things I wouldn’t want to experience in slow motion — presidential elections, fleeting yet expansive senses of dread, my eventual death in a fiery car wreck. For all the pleasant times in my life I’d rather have a “repeat” button, so I could fill all my increasingly ambling hours with a forced sense of accomplishment and direction.

Katie: …Better than nothing? I’ll see if I can be more complete with my answers this evening. I don’t know how you can stand me.

• Tom K: Good question, Bryan. I worked as an actor for a year and a half before jumping ship and moving to Michigan to write about the 18-year-old mayor.
• Dayna: I was days away from selling L. my car, and moments away from punching her in the face. A fateful, irritated exchange resulted in my driving her to CarMax, enraging her further, and skipping town to purchase a fabulous new Prius and sell my fabulous crappy Saturn to CarMax for the same price with half the headaches. L. and I are apparently no longer speaking, but I have a fabulous car!
• Kimberly: What is the point of going through the trouble of getting a Spanish minor if you are afraid of actually speaking Spanish out loud?
• Carrie S: I remember with absolute clarity the moment I realized I had to flush my bottle of Vicodin. I was standing in my junior-year dorm room, staring at the back of my roommate’s head. Her eyes had lingered a little too long on the drawer where I was keeping my precious. She had seen, I think, the tell-tale clear orange-brown of a prescription bottle, and was waiting until I was gone to class to open the drawer. So I didn’t go to class. And she didn’t go to class. I knew she’d steal them, one by one, behind my back, and they were MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE. So I raced to the drawer, grabbed them, and, after a brief, sudden struggle that ended with her on the floor, I tore away to the bathroom, where I flushed them down the toilet. I came back to the room to find her weakly sobbing, eyes closed. I left and went to class.

• Carrie G: Remember the Coffee Klatch? I hated that name. “Klatch” sounds so dirty, like a disease, or a vulgar synonym for female anatomy. Ew.
• Mark: I really hate the word “Mom” and “Ma.” They both seem far too… intimate… for that sort of a relationship. I prefer “Mother,” “Mater,” or “Mommy.” Most often I prefer to avoid the question “Why don’t you refer to her as ‘Mom’ for once?” by indirect addressing, like “Father, will you please ask your little wife-y to pass the delicious potatoes she made?”
• Joe: I will rarely say “that’s right” to someone. Instead I say “that’s correct,” which makes me sound like a douche. I stopped saying it after too many confusing (yet hilarious) moments when giving directions in a car, but nowadays it doesn’t make any sense since I am currently carless.
• Carrie S: I say to myself, “‘Motherfucker’ is a prison word, Carrie.” I keep forgetting that it won’t bring me street cred in my Ph.D. program. Also, I avoid “interesting,” in that boring graduate students say it like five times per sentence. “What I find really interesting about what you’re interested in is the interesting connection between all these interesting ideas about this truly, truly interesting era.”
• Tom K: “Interesting.” That’s such a bullshit word. Like, I could say, “You have cancer.” And the answer could be “Hmm… interesting…” Like, what the fuck does that mean?
• Dayna: I hate the words “moist” and “do-rag” for the obvious reason that they are disgusting words.
• Ian: I HATE when people use NUMBERS in place of WORDS in text messages or instant messages. “Not 2 bad, u?” or “Going 2 the bar” or “4 now.” It is FOUR hits to get to the number “2” and FOUR hits to type out the English word “to,” and only SEVEN hits to type out “too.”

• Kimberly: I managed to sleep soundly as my hotel room was broken into. I continued to sleep as the perp broke glasses in the bathroom as he dug through all of our toiletries. I didn’t even wake up when he came into the room I was sleeping in and dug through all of my roommate’s belongings until he found her wallet and money.
• Joe: Pretty much every girl who’s ever flirted with me. Although they all make a point to let me know several years later, right after I move to a different city, and usually all within a week of each other.

• Mark: The sciences. Occam’s razor causes the sciences to consistently favor the easier answers, those that agree with observation and require the least assumptions. Thus, we are stuck with conventional explanations for illness, over a conspiracy of fire demons, telepathic aliens, and invisible jew bankers.
• Carrie S: “Oh, look at me! I’m bourgeois and unhappy! I think I’ll have a baby! Wah! Oh no, I had a baby and I’m still not happy! Oh no, I’m old and ugly! Wah! Being rich is hard!”

• Mark: Upon hearing a loud noise, I went upstairs to discover my roommate had shot himself in the head. The room was filled with a sickeningly sweet smell and his thick, shimmering, jam-like blood was soaking into the carpet. I immediately called to my roommate to “call the police.”
  On another occasion, I heard a loud noise and upon investigation found my custard tart dish, covered in berries and syrup, had fallen onto the floor. As the thick shimmering dessert soaked into the carpet, I immediately called to my roommate that “nothing had happened, don’t come in” and fell on all fours, gobbling it up with my hands before anyone saw.
• Ian: Bryan tore off his side-view mirror and I got to keep it.
  Bryan smashed up his car and I didn’t get shit from it.
• Tom K: I don’t get this question. Is it like, this one time I did drugs and they were totally awesome and this other time I did drugs and they were totally not awesome? Yes? How do I answer this?

• Tom K: My readership in Hillsdale. I’m serious. I write stories that are sardonically affectionate.
• Dayna: My dear friend Corny. I adore her, but I berate her and call her an idiot on a regular basis due to her life choices. Examples: she has no savings, her husband is in school, she has already refinanced her mortgage, and she gets paid irregularly. She just bought a luxury SUV for $34,000, and put no money down.
• Mark: Does my penis count as a valid answer?
• Carrie S: Right now, I’m the head of my student association, which should mean that I file paperwork and smile. Instead, it means I’m the ego-babysitter of every fucking person on earth. Student #1: “Carrie, I got fired from my teaching job!” Me: “Maybe you’re not a very good teacher.” Student #2: “Carrie, why don’t people ask me to organize events? Is it because everyone hates me?” Me:! “Who am I to say? I guess the proof is in whether people seek you out or not.” Student #3: “Carrie, sometimes I feel really stupid in class.” Me: “Everyone is stupid their first year. Some people grow out of it.” I mean, come on, World, buy some balls.
• Ian: Most of my new associates. If I hate them right off the bat, I generally call them off every shift they work with me and call in one of my favorites. Usually, they quit, at which point I proclaim that I knew they wouldn’t last long. Oops…

• Carrie S: Only worldly evils, not worldly goods, provide any true pleasure. People buy and consume goods, so they never fulfill, but evils are free and limitless and you can get far more satisfaction from them.
• Kristin: Vibrators.
• Mark: Does my penis count as a valid answer?

• Dayna: One time I went to Amsterdam with two friends, E. and J. My trip was paid for by E.’s father, and I was looking forward to it. Three platonic friends off on an adventure! However, the day before we left, E. broke up with her long term boyfriend, and by day two of our trip, she was having sex with J. What. the. fuck.
• Joe: Once, I was invited to a weekend in Vermont with a group of coworkers. Only after we got in the car did I realize that our caravan was full of couples and myself. So in Vermont, I met a cute hammock and slept the weekend away.
• Ian: Oh, Bryan, I know this is only for your own sick pleasure, because you’d NEVER post any REALLY GOOD story on your site, to protect identities.
• Kimberly: I could have felt like a third wheel that time with you and ____, but instead I just decided to make out with you both.

• Carrie G: The Blossom parking department. I don’t have a manager’s title, yet I run the lots for the real manager. I am the eyes and ears of the department, and often put the little punks who work for us in their place when they’re slacking. I’m allowed to yell at people.
• Mark: My straight male friends’ relationships with their girlfriends. They really have no clue how much I am responsible for them getting sex some nights, and not on other nights. Since I am friends with their girlfriends, it’s fairly easy to set up situations or “tests” which I, ahead of time, know my boys will pass or fail. Sometimes they disappoint me. They have never surprised me.

• Mark: My family can have entire arguments hidden inside the subtle pauses of their half-polite, quippy conversation during dinner. An outsider might think they even like each other. I know the truth. I can tell the difference between my mother complimenting my sister’s Christmas cookies and when she is using Christmas cookies as an example of how my sister is an irresponsible mother. I can tell when my brother is simply bored by my sister’s husband, and when he is filled with rage towards him. There are about 12 different intonations each family member uses for any sentence, ranging from dismissive and anecdotal to exhausted and disapproving. I watch them talk to each other about trivial things like some people watch Springer (“She just referred to my sister’s refinished porch as ‘a fine investment,’ obviously a subtle dig at her recent car purchase. Oh-no-she-didn’t!”).
• Joe: I have a soft spot in my heart for ugly dogs. Every time I see one on the street, I want to steal it and snuggle it until the owner comes after me with the cops or a baseball bat.
• Carrie S: At first, I wrote a long thing about air pressure, but really, I’m highly sensitive to the presence/absence of the lovely actress Amelia Heinle* on All My Children. When she was on, my world was whole. When she was not, it was… dark. Let’s just leave it at that.
  * Following a searing, blinding crush that I had on her for two years, since seeing her in The Limey, I met her at a job I had that enabled me to meet many famous people. Everyone else I ignored, but Amelia, I had to speak to. She was incredibly gracious.

• Joe: The other day at the movie theater, someone was kicking the back of my chair, so I called them several names and got thrown out of the theater for yelling during the movie. Actually, I just stared them down; stared until they crumbled like a crumb cake. No, actually, I just glared at them through the corner of my eye until they stopped. Who am I kidding, I didn’t even go to the movies last week.
• Kristin: At Home Depot, my husband and I were at the checkout, and the clerk did not say one word to us. Instead, she continued to complain to her co-worker at the next register over about working the holidays. She had a button on her apron that read “Customer Service Is My Job.” I said to her: “Is customer service really your job? Normally, that involves greeting your customer, focusing on them and thanking them for shopping at your store.” It’s all I’ve got off the top of my head.
• Ian: I generally tell people when they’re rude. For example, a woman was waiting in my line on a busy Saturday, and when she got to my register she slammed her stuff down and blurted, “Gift receipt and gift box!” I stopped doing what I was doing, looked her in the eye, and said, “Not with that attitude, and especially not without a hello.” She stopped, shocked, and then, as if waking out of a shopper craze, apologized for her rudeness, and we got along just fine.
• Katie: Whenever my cockatoo, Bella, squawks like a tortured soul from Hell (instead of talking cutesy gibberish like a pretty bird), I tell her, “I do NOT negotiate with terrorists, birdybird.” Then when she calms down and “makes a nest” out of a sock and nickels, I think, “Aww, she’s just got that tiny little bird brain! Aww.”
• Carrie S: Just Wednesday, I hosted a speaker’s panel at school on ways that literary historians rewrite the past, and what the ethical problems with doing so are. It was neat. We had good food, good speakers, and lots of audience members, all of whom were waiting to attack the expensive cheese and cookies we’d layed out until they finished their conversations. Then this autistic girl in my program appears, yells, “Oh, hey, sorry I missed the talks,” moves all of the food from the spread onto a smaller plate, and starts shoving it into her gullet, while, a propos of nothing, asking one of the speakers if he thinks Othello was “really black, or just Moroccan?” The answer was, “Well, it’s a PLAY. So I guess it’s hard to know.” I ALMOST took her out in the hall to bitch-slap her, but then thought, “I will construct internal peace for she who suffers from being completely crazy and rude and stupid.”
• Aaron:
  “Aaron at a College Job Fair”
  a play in one act by:
  Aaron B_____
  
  [Act I]
  
  [Scene I]
  
  A WOMAN wearing conservative business attire is sitting behind a table. The table is adorned with Boeing paraphernalia. Her MANAGER is standing nearby in a suit. A dapper young lad, AARON, enters stage left.
  AARON: Hi, I’m looking for a summer internship doing software development. Does Boeing have any programs available?
  WOMAN: Yep, we do. Do you have a resume on you?
  AARON: Sure thing.
  WOMAN: Oh, I’m sorry. We’re only hiring people with a GPA above 3.4 and you’ve only got a 3.25.
  AARON: Oh, ok, no problem. Thanks for your time.
  WOMAN: Yeah, we like to hire people that, you know, kinda know what they’re doing…
  AARON: I’m sorry, what was that?
  WOMAN: I said we like to hire people that know what they’re doing.
  AARON: You’ll have to speak up, I’m a trifle deaf in my left ear.
  WOMAN: WE ONLY HIRE PEOPLE THAT KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING!!!
  AARON raises a single eyebrow, plucks his resume from WOMAN’s hand, and strolls away. Several people standing in line also walk away. MANAGER can be heard yelling at WOMAN.
  
  Curtain
  
  [The End]

• Carrie S: That I’m not going to hell but you are. Hee hee!
• Karen: Due to nepotistic connections, I frequently know when someone is getting fired before they do. I get a smug satisfaction from being secretly apprised of inter-office politics, but it does make water cooler conversations very awkward.
• Carrie G: The Browns’ rookie quarterback is an Akron spring ‘04 alum like me, which means I know a couple girls he’s slept with because of his football team status. One memorable quote from a gal is, “Eww… he looks like a potato.”
  Every time I watch a Browns game. Which, strangely enough, is quite frequently.

• Dayna: I am always surprised when my drunken offers to pay for things in the future — generally not for the current drinks — are accepted and pursued to fulfillment. If I offer to pay for your class, surely it ought to be obvious that it is not a genuine offer! Maybe I should learn to keep my mouth shut when I drink…
• Carrie S: I’m a little surprised, frankly, that sex STILL leads to orgasm. I keep thinking, “Surely, something ELSE will happen this time,” but, no.

• Dayna: My friends are ambitious only in their plans to get drunk. Without the dream of beer pong, their motivation fades.
• Joe: None of my friends are ambitious. When I left Cleveland for college, they were all like, “Yeah, we’ll follow you out there!” and they never did. Then I left for New York City, and they were all like, “Dude, we’re right behind you!” and then they stayed in Ohio. I’m looking at you, Ian B____.
• Toby: From his alcohol-dipped job search (underwritten mostly by George W. Taxpayer) and withdrawals from his IBOB account, to his unreasonably generous tab at the bar and pizza purchases, to his generally successful pursuits in breaking Bryan down to giving him things Bryan doesn't want to give him, Matthew is without parallel.
• Katie: I have a friend, Grace, who’s like, “Since it’s Saturday, and I don’t have to work from 7am to 10pm, I better go tend my extensive vegetable garden, then smash up some discarded pottery so I can make some fuckin’ mosaics out of the pieces and follow that up with tutoring kids in English as a second language and reorganizing the basement. Oh yeah, then I guess I’ll start Columbia med school in the fall. You’d think nature would provide some kind of compensation by making me homely… NOPE! I am very good looking in addition to being smart and hard working.” What, did you just assume she was Asian?* Not cool, guys, not cool.
  *She is.

• Carrie G: Never to date a musician. They think they’re sooooo wonderful. It’s usually best to date someone who you’re smarter than. Makes you smile sometimes, instead of being told that you’re ignorant and stupid. ESPECIALLY when you played the bassoon for 8 years and know how to READ MUSIC and THEY DON’T.
• Carrie S: I solemnly swear not to marry until the gays can. At least that’s what I’m telling my neocon/Baptist family if they ask why no wedding bells.
• Toby: I do this every week when I make a personal vow to repsond to the QotW. I usually make it a “solemn” occasion by wondering if this will be the last issue released before the untimely car wreck that takes both Bryan’s life and mine.

• Carrie S: That women are genetically way different from men, as opposed to their being indoctrinated from birth to be way different. Also, everyone thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but my research shows that the world has always been going to hell in a handbasket, according to everyone, at every moment of recorded time.
• Carrie G: That Coventry is a “college-town bar hangout” rather than a trendy “coffee house/artist-vegetarian/high school skip-school” neighborhood.
• Toby: That depositing money with the IBOB actually makes sense, and does not lead to utter financial disaster.
• Karen: Why is everyone suddenly changing their opinion on smoking? If your friends have smoked for six years and you never did, starting now is definitely ill advised.
  That said, smoking is cool and should certainly not be relinquished on a whim.
• Katie: There are young adults, in this country, who will go to bars and put traditional Irish music on the jukebox, listen to it, enjoy it, revel, really get into it and act like that’s an excellent way to have a good time. White people are crazy.
• Aaron: A lot of Americans are under the impression that the scientific method goes as such:
  
  1. Wish that something wasn’t true
  2. Now that thing isn’t true anymore!!
  3. Profit
  An unfortunate casualty of this is evolution, that pesky reason why antibacterial hand soap does more harm than good and pennicilin is about as useful as St. John’s Wort nowadays. It’s apparently also the reason everyone fucks strangers indiscriminately in piles of cocaine and baby parts. Survival of the fittest indeed.

• Katie: I am a fantastic parallel parker, and I look for very tight spaces because I think it’s fun. I have no other usable skills, and am generally unable to wrap my brain around the visuospatial components of a situation, no matter how basic. But when I glide into a teensy parking spot, I step out, authoritatively tap the hood, and give the world a look like, “Yeah, I’m thinking about jackin’ this baby up and givin’ her an oil change when I get back.”
• Kimberly: Until I came down with laryngitis, I was pretty good at singing “Photograph” by Nickelback (well, at least the first two lines).
• Anonymous: After a decade of being sexually active, I have only recently tapped into my inner porn star — with very positive results.
• Carrie G: Yes. I realized how hot my ass looks, after I’m already sick and tired of using my body to attract attention.

• Dayna: At this point in my life, I am less fucked up. And even when I was more fucked up, I was very highly functional.
• Carrie G: More! Especially being a west-side state-school hippie Democrat in the Weatherhead School of Management.
• Joe: I act like I’m more fucked up than those around me, but that’s only so they will let loose and act more fucked up around me. And then I make notes about them in my secret log to use against them in case they ever decide to run for office.
• Kimberly: Everyone goes around broadcasting all of their problems. Yeah, you’ve got ailments, so what? We don’t all want to hear about it! Instead I go around with a huge grin on my face pretending everything is all good, when really I just want to crawl into a ball and cry myself to sleep. I guess that makes me more fucked up.
• Toby: Well, most of the people around me around outspokenly fucked-up; healthily so, even. I’m more like bath-bubble fucked-up — misleadingly shiny, clean, and cute, when in reality I’m just an inflated splotch of soap that tastes really bad once you finally catch it in your mouth.
• Aaron: It depends on what dimension of life you’re referring to. I find that I’m more paranoid than everyone else. Like how my car’s gonna just break down one day and I’m gonna forget to pay some bill and I’m gonna say “Holy cow!” to a Hindu at work and get fired and end up dying of starvation on the streets.

• Karen: I once had to sweet talk a Wal-Mart customer service representative into letting me return a broken printer A) that I had owned for a year, B) for which I had no box, cables or receipt, and C) that they no longer carried. Worked like a charm, though I may be responsible for their stringent new return policy.
• Joe: Any time I’m trying to get laid. Women are so gullible.
• Carrie S: Every time I would like to get it on, I feel the need to hint in a roundabout, sweetly affectionate way at such a thing so my longsuffering boyfriend won’t feel like he’s constantly in danger of molestation. However, he sees through the ruse so quickly that its effectiveness is wearing off.
• Kimberly: I like to make a good first impression, so I made sure to sound extra sweet and sexy on my voicemail. Apparently it sounds more like a “drunk, submissive, Chinese housewife.”
• Dayna: I have random strong opinions about things that other people love (such as my hatred for capri pants and gauchos), and sometimes I have to tone down my revulsion in order to hold a civilized conversation.
• Katie: I had to work with this douchebag political appointee on a project for a while. He was acutely aware that he was practically the only Republican around, and would say things like, “This weekend I ran into some friends — friends from the campaign.” Anyway, for some reason he was really comfortable with me and would tell me how much he hated everybody we worked with, and this was sort of good because it was important to me that the project to go well. I was diplomatic to the maxx. For instance, he got a kick out of making things difficult for other people — things like getting documents, etc. — and said sarcastically that our slogan should be Burger King’s “Have It Your Way, except they’d probably be upset there wasn’t enough vegetarian stuff.” I was like, “They have a BK Veggie.”

• Dayna: Sadly, it is the skills that I learned in elementary school that so impress people today. I am organized and have good handwriting. I listen when my boss tells me to do something. I ask questions when I am not certain. Why did I go to college again?
• Joe: The ability to pretend like you give a shit.
• Carrie S: Being able to wait out unreasonable people. I will eat a little shit, smile kindly, pretend to listen, and then do exactly what I want when the time is right.
• Toby: Being small allows you to:

  - sneak up on unsuspecting pedestrians, and then rush around them before they know what happened;
  - live in small bedrooms and sleep on small loveseats;
  - provide endless humor to recent acquaintances and coworkers by casually referring to yourself as 6'2'';
  - become intoxicated more quickly than your husky friends; and
  - go unnoticed while hiding in someone’s shower or closet, waiting to emerge at a time most unexpected.

• Aaron: The trick is to convey that you are trying really hard to be patient with them. When they’re blabbering on about why they chose to write some code that broke the latest build, just blink a lot, and a bit more slowly than usual. When it’s your turn to point out how their work set the team back several days, speak super articulately in small sentences. Actually, just think about Samuel L. Jackson in the beginning of Pulp Fiction when he’s intimidating those white kids. Then take the performance down a few notches and remember not to shoot anybody.
• Tiffany: We just got this new Korean postdoc in my lab, and my superiority and dominance must be obvious because she’s taken to bringing me food from home. She brought me bread and an orange last week. It’s a little weird, I’m not gonna lie.
• Toby: By becoming the weaker, softer member of my tribe or pack.

• Dayna: I would stay home to read How to Sell Your Car Quickly, Easily, and Legally in Georgia so that You Don’t Have to Punch Your Friend Who Wants to Buy the Car in the Face. Why is it so difficult to find the cold, hard facts about selling a car??
• Toby: Justice on High: The Life and Times of Harriet Miers
  Choose Your Own Adventure: The Night of the Open Bar
  Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Missing DVD Remote Control
• Ian: Oh, I’ll be reading all weekend!
  The Elusive Life of JLight, to explain where the fuck that bitch has been this past year!
  Newton’s Roadmap to Life, because really, how does she do it?
  From Debt to Riches: How the Bank of Bryan Came to Be, ‘cause I just don’t get it.
• Jaclyn: The Life and Times of BBSF & BEERS! What a story that would be! I would say just BBSF, but I would get soooo sick of reading about what you ate that day and how fast you were driving while doing it!
• Aaron: The Bible, King Henry Version (Why does James get all the fun?)
  Sports Almanac 2000-2050
  How To Work In An Industry That Isn’t Past Its Glory Days (any edition)
• Jeff: My nerdery says Harry Potter book 7. Also, Affordable Apartments and Easy, Well-Paying Jobs in NYC for Jeff ______. I would read the shit out of those books.

• Tom K: From time to time I wear a belt buckle with an eagle on it.
• Toby: I pretend I’m a bird and/or use the term “BM” in public, leading people to believe that I’m mentally ill, mentally retarded, or way the fuck ahead of my time.
• Tiffany: My parents always said I was special, but I don’t know.
• Kimberly: I would whip out Excalibur and Freshmen to liven up a situation… but I don’t think I would get the right results. Does that mean I need new friends?

• Tiffany: A PhD. And actually, they’re paying me! Don’t start feeling too jealous, though, I pay in other ways…
• Ian: Starbucks, drinks at the bar, and big discounts on prime clothing! When we ring each other out at work, we laugh, “You got that whole stack for what a commoner would pay for this one shirt! Hahaha!”
• Tom K: I actually get into theatre productions and music shows for free because I have a little card that says “Press Pass” and has my picture on it… Totally worth the negligible pay…
• Toby: I like to think the GW gym is free for me, making me superior to the not-quite-slim dupes I see ambling down L Street toward Bally’s in their workout gear. Then I realize that GW’s tuition is $35,000 a year, and I’m overwhelmed because I will never be out of debt. Just as the dupes will never lose their back fat.
• Aaron: Normally, I refrain from bragging about this, but you literally asked for it, so… First, there’s the free software. Like how my PCs at work are running Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 (spiffy-looking stuff, and that’s all that matters). And then there’s the benefits like free health club membership, free legal consulting (UNLESS I’m suing Microsoft), and free financial consulting. But I didn’t mention the best part. Free, ugly, ill-fitting t-shirts every two weeks at the very least. It’s the hallmark of geekdom, and they are on tap at any worthy tech company.

• Ian: SHOP! That way I can make friends with all of the people working in the stores. True, it is nice to bring along a “real” friend now and then, but shopping is a therapy for me… and don’t most people go to therapy alone?

• Tiffany: Even though I have very little knowledge about the intricacies of most technological things, I don’t understand how the internet took so long to develop. It seems like such a simple idea, but the implementation probably wasn’t…
• Dayna: E-mail. I was e-mailing in sixth grade, but it was a long time before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. Remember back in the day when you had old school e-mail addresses from Prodigy that were pre-assigned alphanumeric combos?
• Ian: When I was a freshman in college, I kept my cell phone in my desk drawer because nobody else had one. By senior year I would freak and run back home if I forgot it.
  Do you remember using CALL BOXES when you arrived at your friends’ dorms?! HA!!

• Aaron: Yet another question tailored just for me! Well, there was the time when Toby put a glass full of lots of different things in front of me, told me it was some Arizona drink and then told me that it was really expensive when I said it tasted like shit. Then I threw up all over his ping pong table.
• Anonymous: Ugh, when _____ said she wasn’t mad at me for sleeping with her ex-BF and wouldn’t tell her mom, and then texted me two days later saying she couldn’t talk to me for awhile and told her mother AND father!
• Toby: One time I made a new friend who said he’d drive me home for the “Indians game. ” I assumed he was just a nice guy who also happened to enjoy Cleveland baseball — like me! I laughed off all of my friends’ suggestions of murder on the PA Turnpike or forced sex at an Ohio rest area.
• Jeff: Somehow entering into a non-mastubating contest with Tom and our idiot friends.

• Dayna: Apparently, my calculator. I feel a little sick when my co-workers borrow things from me at work.
• Jaclyn: A bed! If it’s with Ian, I get stuck in the crack, and if it’s with a straight boy I’m not into, I get felt up all night!

• Ian: Bryan; witty on-again/off-again vegetarian-wannabe heavily indebted alcoholic gaywads.
• Toby: The cover-up of the JFK assassination; my personal relationships.
• Jeff: Summer in South Dakota; high, drunken, three-month orgies. Maybe not orgies, but there was a crap-load of hookin’ up!

• Carrie S: In fall and spring, my blood pressure goes through the roof, I vacillate wildly between starving and nauseous, I laugh maniacally in the face of death and burst into tears at jests, and no one, not one person, can stand me. Every damn time it happens, I think, “This is it. I’m cracking up.” But I survive and go on to ever-more-brilliant feats of derring-do.
• Tiffany: I would say the leaves changing colors and falling off, but that doesn’t really happen in California. I think Stanford imports a couple special trees that shed their leaves when the weather gets down to a chilly 50-60 degrees during that one week in the winter, so that we can have a “fall.”
• Dayna: This morning while driving to work, I thought it was ridiculous to be up and moving when the sun was not. But then I remembered “Spring forward, fall back” and realized that we’ll get to change the clocks at the end of the month! Hurray!
• Kimberly: Stupid bugs. Every fall, they decide to make their way inside when it becomes too cold for them outside. Little do they know that they are not welcome in my house!
• Ian: WHITE PARTY!!!!

• Tom K: Right now, Jeff and I are seeing who can go the longest without whacking it. Which is to say, I’m having all sorts of fantasies, awkward and otherwise.
• Dayna: No, but I do find it awkward when I suddenly realize that I have no respect for certain friends. That makes it awkward when we meet again. They aren’t aware that anything has changed.
• Carrie S: If I know you and have spent any quantity of time in your presence, chances are that I have unwittingly had an x-rated dream about us canoodling somewhere in a well-lit and soft environment. For a long time, this bothered me. I’d see friends and colleagues constantly against the relief of my insatiable libido and stammer while talking to them. At one point, I decided, screw it, enough is enough. I need to let this out. I soon developed a policy of full disclosure. Over breakfast: “Oh, funny thing, Mark. Last night I dreamed you and I tag-teamed Megan in front of the cat. It was really hot.”
• Kimberly: I inadvertently fantasized about a late night rendezvous with Rachel, a girl I played volleyball with last year. Night after night I’d have dreams where she’d take advantage of me, although I didn’t seem to mind.

• Tom K: I write an article for a small paper in Michigan. I frequently use or suggest foul language. My pubilsher seems to think that is unlawful.
• Kimberly: I could make something up, but you wouldn’t believe it anyhow. I’m too chicken to do anything. I use cruise control.

• Sean: I have an extensive knowledge of pro football, but I’ve been really sucking ass at picking winners this year in my weekly pro pick’em. Donovan McNabb’s mother is doing better than I am.
• Carrie S: I am highly aware, via Hobbes and my own empirical observations, of the desperate, filthy, belligerent and selfish state of the human soul. Yet I continue to search for true friendship.

• Carrie S: Cf. fraternity volunteerism, procreation, literary scholarship, pet ownership, journalism, politics, artistic expression, charity benefits, and masturbation.
• Tiffany: This often happens on My Super Sweet 16. We were watching one episode where the girl lets some less popular people come to her party not because she’s nice, but because she wants them to be jealous of her.

• Carrie S: I am hyper-aware of the fear in people’s eyes when I approach them at school. It hinders me because I can’t keep myself from mentioning it to them. As in, “Hey, Mike! Why do you cringe like that whenever you see me? I suppose it’s because you know I want to talk about something other than indie music or celebrity gossip, huh? Sorry about that. Let me pick your brain about something…” I end up looking even MORE like an asshole.
• Tiffany: The lady that I work with in lab is able to summon another member of our group just by thinking about him. All she has to do is think, “I wonder what Evan is doing?” and he magically appears a few minutes later. It’s really quite remarkable. I suppose this helps her, in that she doesn’t have to roam all over the building looking for him.
• Jaclyn: I can read the minds of the people I’m close to! It’s freaky! Sometimes it’s when I’m with them, and other times I have dreams that end up coming true!
• Ian: I have really good senses. My eyes are going downhill, but my sense of smell is extremely strong! Last night Tim came over and I was like, “Have you been drinking?!” And he had been. Then I asked, “When did you smoke tonight?!?” And he had. There’s a reason he calls me a hound dog, and he don’t like it none!

• Ian: The Internet is my only form of communication! AH! You can call my mobile phone, but you’ll only leave me a voicemail I’m unlikely to reply to. I don’t touch the land line. Texts are a close second to the internet, but still, it’s very likely I’ll chuckle at what I read and then flip my phone shut again… forgotten and not replied to. AH!
• Kimberly: From an e-mail about my upcoming high school reunion: “I tried calling Steve, but his parents moved a while ago, and the new residents do not have any forwarding info. I saw his dad about sophomore year and Steve had some troubles adjusting to college life. His dad mentioned something about drugs and dropping out and things like that. So I really have no idea. Has anyone searched Google?”
• Tom K: I always thought I was too cool for the Questions of the Week, but look at me now.

• Jaclyn: That I was a bitch! I was like, “What? You think I’m a bitch? Have you ever met me before? I’m a sweetheart!” Or it could be the time that Heather of __________ accused Ian and I of embezzling money. That was pimp, too!
• Carrie S: I’ve walked in on my students doing impersonations of me, and they’re so bland. They mock my hair or the fact that I talk about rhetoric and William Blake a lot. Come on, people! Let’s get on my hyper-self-consciousness! Or my penchant for drifting off awkwardly in the midst of a potentially hilarious anecdote! What about my provincial accent-less Kansan open vowels? This is good shit here!
• Dayna: People at work are constantly startled if I express a liberal viewpoint or if I curse. They apparently have secretly decided that I am an innocent conservative white girl. I don’t bother to correct them for the most part, because I don’t give a flying fuck what they think.
• Ian: Most of my best friends began as people I hated initially. OH, LIFE, YOU IRONIC BITCH!

• Carrie S: It is possible that I could devote my life to something like organic farming, since the thought of a ripe heirloom tomato makes my knees weak. But I’ve met some of those people, and they’re fucking scary militant wackos.
• Dayna: I could probably be persuaded to devote myself, at least temporarily, to any of several religions, as well as to a number of eating disorders. Religion and eating disorders probably shouldn’t be equated here, but oh well.

• Tom K: Every day, per the above (and constantly mentioned) contest.
• Ian: Thanksgiving is my deadline for moving out — whether is be the Twin Cities, Columbus, NYC, or W. 6th. This holiday season, I will be coming home for the holidays rather than living at home for them. That, and I can delve back into my shopaholism for housewares.
• Carrie S: Ph.D., baby. Orals in the spring, dissertation defense sometime in the year or two afterward. Your asses will all be sending Christmas cards to Dr. McFancypants within the near future.

• Carrie S: Power. I never had any interest in power as a child. I didn’t have any, and all the people who had it seemed cruel and evil. But now, as I steadily rise in the ranks of influence and status among my fellow academics, I realize I fucking love being in charge of stuff. Maybe all that anger I had when I was a child was not righteous indignation but actual envy. I am becoming evilly ambitious. The best part is, I can still pretend to be gracious.
• Kimberly: The other day I answered the door and was stunned to be face to face with the man who used to live in the basement. Yeah! He wanted to apologize for scaring me and reassure me that he was not going to rape me or beat me up.
• Ian: Stridex pads are pretty amazing. Yesterday, I got EARPHONES in my box! When I first opened the box, I was all like, “What the fuck…?” but once I reexamined the box, which read “Free ear pods!”, all was clear. Now I’ll look super-sweet while cleaning my face.

• Carrie S: I am awful about this. I ask my fellow graduate student teachers what their approach to teaching is, and if they talk about how stupid college freshmen are or how they base their class on a departmentally-assigned reader, I say, “Oh. Yeah. I guess, well… yeah. That’ll get you through a semester.” And then I have forever determined that they are deeply flawed human beings.
• Ian: I usually make a strong comment and then gauge for reaction. For example:
  Me: “YEAH, the 7/7 attacks… i.e., an attack to get everyone riled up about terrorism when it was time to renew the Patriot Act… WHICH WAS just the other day. But we don’t want to talk about that. YAY PATRIOT ACT!”
  (Lindsey Mazz looks at me oddly)
  Me: “OH GOD don’t tell me you’re a REPUBLICAN?!”

• Ian: The Bush administration.
• Dayna: I could have done with a smaller number of people from high school and college committing suicide/attempting suicide/dying. Now I end up telling stories that end “but now s/he’s dead.” It’s kind of a downer.

• Aaron: I still have lots of SpyTech gear that would be damn useful. Periscopes and binoculars and little fake rocks that beep when you whistle. I’d be all KGB and shit.
• Carrie S: I can identify roughly what decade anything was written or published in by the handwriting or font. If you have a crime already solved, but you don’t know when it was committed, but you happen to have a lot of personal notes from the killer, I’m on the job. If it’s reformatted text, I can tell by the prose style.
• Anonymous: I’m super creative… did you know that? I also have a really big dick… what would you do with those two things?

• Aaron: Matt is awesome and all, but he is bizarro Aaron and I am bizarro Matt.
• Tiffany: My friend Ashley here is quite the opposite of me. She is my extremely grumpy counterpart. As you know, I’m quite bubbly and happy most of the time, so she kind of balances me out. Her life is always un-fun when you talk to her, and all attempts at cheering her up are immediately shot down. She’s really fun to hang out with… seriously.
• Ian: Bryan enjoys staying in for a quiet evening, while I enjoy a night of boomin’ beats at the gay bar… but we both overly enjoy alcohol.
• Carrie S: I recently went out with a really good friend who I hadn’t seen in a long time. She told me she was in love and was describing the date that led to this conclusion. He met her for drinks somewhere very expensive. Then, they had reservations at an extremely trendy restaurant where waiters jumped over each other to serve them lots of food. They recited their life stories and stared into each other’s eyes. Then they did not have sex. They met for breakfast the next day — and, get this — still did not have sex. At every single pause in her narration, I kept trying to think of something to say other than, “How appalling.” I couldn’t come up with anything. I thought only people on television enjoyed dates like this and all the human people like going somewhere nice, joking around, and fucking.

• Jaclyn: I don’t know, probably… I am a bitch, so who knows!
• Carrie S: There was the time Mark expressed interest in a human being with enough musculature to allow for perambulation…
• Ian: How about Bryan’s on-again/off-again vegetarian act? That’s right… ACT.

• Carrie S: Do I ever. I have all kinds of skillz no one accesses. I can flip an omelet in the air while drunk. (Actually, I can only do this if I’m drunk or pretend I’m drunk.) I can name the provenance of almost any beer, chocolate, or coffee by flavor. I can laugh in the face of death. I can also cry at any joke, if the resultant awkwardness has comedic potential.
• Aaron: Nah. I never really offer to help other people, anyway, so it’s all good.

• Anonymous: The music scene, television, and cunnilingus. I used to be really into these three things, but their entertainment value went down, as it were, when I realized just how passive they make me feel.
• Ian: That whole Magic card game thing… yeah, still not part of that.
• Tiffany: Grad school has completely prevented me from keeping up my French. Too much chemistry and no time for second languages. Sometimes I try to talk to myself in French to keep my skills sharp, but it doesn’t really work…
• Dayna: College. I mean, it seems like everyone I know is still in college, in grad school, just graduated, teaching, living where they went to school, or living with people they went to school with — BUT! — days of dorms and exams already seem impossibly separated from my existence.
• Aaron: College ends way too fast, especially at RIT. You define your whole life a certain way for four (ok, five) years. All the friends and classmates, all the driving between home and school while eating Chipotle and listening to Elliott Smith, all the long nights (some good, some bad). Then, immediately after a final exam, you find yourself shuffling across a stage to receive a xeroxed piece of paper, then you pack up, drive home, and never return.
  Heck, I was chucked across the whole country two days after I officially graduated. But school is starting up again right about now. Smug bastards are playing hacky sack in front of the library. The coffee shop is dishing out lattes and mochas. Music is blaring out of dorm rooms. And it’s nothing more than a memory. Here’s to you, college. *Lifts a beer, takes a swig, wipes mouth with sleeve*

• Toby: While others have led a much more rockstar lifestyle (i.e., drinking like you needed alcohol to process air into oxygen), I was cooling off this summer with a pattern of work-then-class-then-sleep-then-repeat-like-it’s-a-fucking-shampoo.
• Joe: Now that I don’t have cable anymore, my daily schedule has changed a lot. I be sure to set aside at least an hour a day to read. Then I kayak across the length of the Hudson, followed by a jaunty bout of polo with my Yale brethren. I also masturbate a lot more.
• Aaron: - Hour 1: Alarm goes off
  - Hour 2: Get out of bed
  - Hour 4: Arrive at work
  - Hour 5: Lunch
  - Hour 7: Back from lunch
  - Hour 8: Darts
  - Hour 9: Back from darts
  - Hour 11: Begin actually working
  - Hour 13: Leave work
  - Hour 14: Arrive home, complain about quantity of work at job, microwave dinner, unless picked up from a drive-thru during Hours 15-20 — that period’s a blur (something involving firecrackers)
  - Hour 21: Walk dog, pray I don’t get mugged
  Drop EVERYTHING for:
  11:00 PM Daily Show
  11:30 PM Daily Show again
  Midnight: Daily Show DVD
  - Hour 25: Hop in bed, read The Economist
  - Hour 26: Go to sleep
  Like the phases of the moon, it takes a month for my schedule to fall in sync with the rest of the world. Ergo, my behavior is also effective at predicting tides.
• Katie: I work with a lady named _____ Dabbs, and she has sort of birdy eyes and a wattle. Every time I see her, I get the mantra, “Dabbs Dabbs Dabbs Dabbs Dabbs Dabbs Dabbs…” stuck in my head for most of the rest of the day. I have also gone swimming quite a bit this summer.
• Carrie S: I’m so so so sorry I missed QOTW last time. I love QOTW. I live for QOTW. I am, however, a creature of obsessive habit — like, on Tuesdays, if I don’t get my New Yorker, I freak out. On Thursdays, if I don’t get laid by my hot boyfriend, I freak out. On Fridays, if I don’t go to a lecture and then get drunk, I freak out. All of this means that summers, when the NYer skips a few weeks, using “double issues” as an excuse, when my boyfriend spends weeks at a time in Europe and Canada, and when the Friday lecture series is on hold, I have to develop a truly low standard of expectation. I can’t get all excited about magazines, sex, lectures, and QOTW because their patterns become all random. So I turn to things I can control for enjoyment, like… uh… sitting in my apartment…

• Tom K: I don’t get this one. Like I killed a hooker and got away with it? Bryan, genius is in the details.
• Brad: Last week, I needed some Sharpie markers for work, so I went to Michaels, The Arts and Crafts Store. And fuck me if the line wasn’t 100 old ladies deep, so I just shoplifted the markers. And you know what? I didn’t get caught or go to hell or anything like that. It also wasn’t thrilling in a Winona Ryder way, but there were no consequences that I know of.
• Aaron: My parents are quick to warn me that I’m in deep trouble for some irresponsible thing I’m doing or not doing (e.g., getting a local driver’s license). But at this point I’m like, “You’re not the boss of me anymore!” and then I go back to spending money on consumer products. Sure enough, not a damn thing happens to me, even with my expired license plates.
• Katie: Christ almighty, I never get what’s coming to me. I have been a giant asshole to most of the people I love, but they keep comin’ back for more! What I have been subjected to is a gamut of misfortune that doesn’t have any apparent connection to my “dirty deeds” per se. Things like: bad teeth, gut-wrenching financial distress, car with no brakes; currently, the shower won’t stop streaming hot water, making my tiny apartment a tiny Swedish spa. Could these be punishments really for my more sordid misdeeds? It’s like I always say: The Lord works in mysterious ways… I am ALWAYS saying that.
• Carrie S: Damn, B. This is all the time. “Don’t have group sex with a good friend! It will mess up your relationship!” “Don’t date a guy who isn’t legally separated! He’ll fuck you over!” “Don’t allow your students to call you by your first name! They’ll never respect you!” “Don’t join the Food Cooperative! You’ll turn into a patchouli-stinking socialist with dreadlocks!” “Don’t take up long-distance running! You’ll ruin your knees!” “Don’t teach eighteenth-century literature to freshmen! They’ll hate you!” “Don’t blog! You’ll never get ahead in academia!” “Don’t move to New York City! You’ll die!” Whatever. I got mad skills in the catastrophe-avoidance game.

• Brad: My wonderful life partner and amazing cat, Piper. After a summer away, our glorious partnership is re-established, although she has gained a few pounds and will be quickly put onto a cat diet so that she can get back to her cute, petite former figure.
• Joe: The nauseating fear of inadequacy. Also herpes.

• Toby: I think children’s television does a good job, but do they have to always be puppets and cartoon animals (oh, and the castrated host of Blue’s Clues)? Why can’t we get some mild sexiness so we can bring our children up right (read: not homosexual)?

• Dayna: A little of both. However, once I have a slightly negative view of something or someone (such as my coworkers or my nemesis the FedEx woman), I can be easily swayed to express extreme views on subjects I’m not really that passionate about.
• Aaron: If any of those two possibilities is true, it’s the latter. The thing is, any indoctrinated thoughts don’t last very long because they are quickly de-indoctrinated by the next guy to come along. Over the past week I’ve considered joining three religions, two political parties, and having a vasectomy. Fortunately, I hate doctors’ offices.
• Katie: Oh, I’m such a cliché: I’ve absorbed a lot from the men in my life, but I’ve generally been an influence on the ladies. For example, I secretly owe a great deal of my musical taste to boys, but I can get girls to pick up on my catchphrases and whatnot. It has always been like that: I think everything my dad says is fucking gold, and I try desperately to make my mom be the opposite of herself. Gotta love Freudian gender roles!

• Toby: Elections can be this way. I love all the hubbub: not sleeping, trying to “indoctrinate” the sort-of-willing with fliers that won’t change their mind, the brain running solely on fryer grease and caffeine. And then the good guys always win! Yay!
• Tiffany: The process of putting together a puzzle is much better than just staring at the final picture. Except the time when my dad bet me $100 that I couldn’t finish the “hardest puzzle in the world” in a month. I had that bitch done in a week, and then the hundred dollars was better than the process of putting it together.
• Katie: My Netflix queue is a finely-tuned obsession. I knew the first time I added a DVD to it that I would enjoy picking out the movies and changing their order around more than actually watching them. I put things in for texture that I’ll probably not sit down and watch. I mean, I didn’t even make it to the buttsex scene in Last Tango in Paris, but I really enjoyed placing it in the queue.

• Anonymous: Anal sex. I know, I know; I used to be all, “Never, never, never. It’s disrespectful and unkind and blah blah blah.” So now I’m a big hypocrite. Sue me.
• Toby: Why am I seeing this question as a direct assault on my sexuality? “Oh no, Toby, we all believe you that you’re straight and that you’ll never engage in gay love as long as gay love includes sex with men…” …but it later did. I’m on to you.

• Toby: As a Cutler Scholar, I actually fucking got involved in campus politics and made some of the rich people say “I wish he wouldn’t…”
  As a responsible, inclusive president of College Democrats, I “drank the Kool-Aid” and supported Howard Dean even though it was so much safer to wear a Clark or Kerry pin and say, “Yes, but electability, my brother.”
  As a college grad, I’ve actively dismissed my field of journalism and have embraced what some would call the opposite world of PR spin and messaging.
  
• Tiffany: I wanted to cut to the end of the race course when we did our half marathon at Christmas, but we stuck it out, and I was really proud after finishing it. …This doesn’t actually answer your question.
• Joe: When I gave up on looking for a real job and settled for a job at the hoodie factory.
• Aaron: Would you believe that I seriously, seriously considered switching majors to become a film student. It started when people at my part-time college job said that I looked like a film major (see Question 5). Suddenly, I thought, “Hey, I like movies. I should be a film major.” Fortunately, I was re-indoctrinated by the argument that film majors are poor and they smell kinda funny.
• Carrie S: I used to have all my chips laid down on becoming a biochemist. I had a guaranteed job, prodigy status, and a record as being one of the best enzyme isolators in the world, all before starting college. Then I spent a few months working in a really sad little lab at CWRU that was so depressing, pathetic, and uncongenial that I got deeply turned off. Plus, I failed chemistry due to my arrogant refusal to learn American-method calculations.

• Brad: Well, not yet, although this past summer the Survivor group (my original group of friends from high school who vote someone out of the group each semester if they don’t keep up appearances) almost voted me out, but then realized that since we’re down to three anyway, it would be kind of pointless.
  I would like to announce we have recently had an open call and added two members to the group, just to keep the numbers up.
• Kimberly: I never even got kicked out of class. Instead, a professor told me that I had to stop talking or he would never do any favors for me again. I think that was more embarrassing than getting kicked out.
• Joe: A few years back, some friends of mine and I went to King’s Island and we rode on the “Olde Time Cars” ride, which consisted of fake olde timey cars on a track that rode at about 1/2 mile per hour around in a circle. So we decided to switch cars a couple times during the ride. After the thrill was over, the attendant said, “You know, you have to stay in the car. Next time, don’t… You know what? Just don’t come back.” And we never did.
• Toby: Once. I believe it was a Medic drug store. A childhood friend and I were falsely accused of stealing baseball cards. We vehemently denied all involvement in the alleged sportscards heist (as we do to this day), and we even opened ourselves to full searches on the premises. The offer was denied and we were forced to leave.
  You never know what it’s like to be wrongfully accused of something until it happens. That’s why I’ll never support the death penalty as long as the system is run by the same people who think I’m a thief.
• Katie: Almost. I was hanging out with Bella* on my shoulder, and she wanted to eat my glasses real bad. I kept putting my finger between her and the shiny, delicious frames, and she got increasingly appalled by my irrationality and selfishness. It turned into a great big fight and she retreated to her cage, where I was sure she planned to shut me out of her life forever. Then I gave her a peanut; once again I was welcome in her home.
  *Bella is the pretty, white cockatoo that recently moved in with us. She says, “Hello!”, “Hhuhllluhllahhlahh!” and “RRRAAHHH!!!” When she raises the crest of feathers on her forehead, it means she is “interested.” She was named by our friend (her previous roommate); if I had named her, she would be called Suki.

• Joe: I like to make creepy sexy eyes at hot blonde hipster girls. Then they pretend not to see me and I fantasize about meeting their parents.
• Katie: I have been walking to and from work, which takes me past the Capitol building ? on Capitol Hill. I’m cruising, then I’m like, “Damn! This bitch is on a HILL!” My recurring awareness of the actual existence of topography in this crazy world of McCulture and fake boobies is totally free and totally rad.

• Tiffany: Ice cream!!! When people are being all shy/anorexic and won’t take a big scoop even though they really want one, I will totally help myself. If you wanted more, you should have taken it. You snooze, you lose, people!
• Anonymous: I recently gave a friend a ride to get an abortion. I’m the best abortion-ride-giver ever. One reason is that I have a car. The other is that I’m crazy supportive without being all, “Oh no! That must be so life-shatteringly AWFUL for you! Bluh bluh bluuuaahh!” I put my fertilized friend at ease by making very light of the situation, promising her a no-baby shower, and giving her a “Kudos on Keeping Your Figure!” card. Our trip to the women’s clinic was more of a fun summer jaunt slash dance party than a trip to the women’s clinic. When she asked if she could have a cigarette in my car, I was like, “Please! Smoke that fucker OUT!”

• Kimberly: I cleaned someone’s house for them and was rewarded with Michelob Ultra, wings and pizza! Later I was given a Superman ice cream cone! It was thoughtful and tasty and I loved every second of it!
• Dayna: Oddly enough, I feel very well compensated for my job. My boss constantly tells me what a great job I’m doing, and she gave me a raise after just four months.
• Katie: Actually, I can break dance. I broke it out one night in college to “Around the World.” Like a whirling fucking dervish. Jaws dropped. Some very cool people started calling me Cool Katie. That beat anything I’ve ever gotten for hard work or smarts or a pure heart or whatever.
• Aaron: I think I deserve my college diploma, thank you very much. An extra year of internships, including Microsoft and IDX London? Ambulance corps volunteering? Student teaching? Research positions? How come it took me this long to figure out I’m this awesome? Life’s practically over at this point!
• Jenn: I won the first place ribbon in the Danish Festival parade in Grand Rapids, MI when I was three years old. I was dressed as a clown, and my grandmother dumped me out of my little red wagon that morning (supposedly by accident), so my face was all scraped up. I was still cute, despite my war wounds, and I won a shiny blue ribbon for all of my pain and suffering.

• Aaron: Berea High School. Not gonna lie: everyone from high school I care about either lives with me or reads this QotW page. It’s not that I hate everyone else, I just don’t want to have awkward nostalgic conversations with them should I happen to meet them at Berea High. In fact, the entire city of Berea has a high probability of running into old schoolyard chums. (Chum… Chum… That’s a cool word.) Screw that.
• Anonymous: 117 lbs. No, that’s really shallow.
  I almost said anal sex. Am I drunk?
  (Wow. Anonymous.)

• Tiffany: I’m very particular about my eggs. I like them fried “over medium-well.” I do NOT like runny eggs where the yolk goes all over your plate, nor do I want my yolk broken and fried to a crisp. I like the happy medium here: cooked just long enough so that the whole yolk is firm and tasty. I’m sure a waiter or two has probably spit on my eggs when I’ve given them that description.
• Katie: There are people who will offer a cup of coffee, with no real intention of serving an acceptable cup of coffee at all. They’ve got some Folgers shit in the freezer, 2% milk, one Dixie Crystals packet from Cracker Barrel, maybe some French Vanilla Coffee Mate.
  Hey. That’s not gonna fly.

• Dayna: I go through phases where I hit people a lot, and they tell me I’m violent. (Sorry about hitting you in the eye, Kim!) Then I feel bad and hit no one, like a good girl.
• Katie: Lately, I’ve been inexplicably pining for a condo in the suburbs, with a mortgage and a long commute and a Target nearby. What is my problem? Why don’t I just start being all Republican and dull and stencil my own wall treatments and buy some fucking prints of sailboats and wrens to hang in my fucking condo in Fairfax next door to a retired veteran who grows orange marigolds in pots shaped like fucking presidents’ heads and bald eagles?

• Jenn: In Puerto Rico, exits are all simply marked “Salida.” No names, no numbers, just exit! It leads to so many adventures! I love it! Except that I don’t speak Spanish at all, so getting back to where I meant to go is a little difficult.

• Aaron: Thank you, Jerry Seinfeld, for raising the bar of TV sitcoms and producing a television show that can be seen on at least five stations in every major city over a decade after the first episodes aired. Why buy the DVDs? I can just flip channels for 12 seconds and find an episode! I am hard pressed to find a bad episode of Seinfeld. God bless you, Jerry.
• Jenn: There was a lady who used to work here named Joyce. She used to drink A LOT while at work. I silently thanked her every day, thinking, “Well, at least we can all live vicariously through her.” Unfortunately, Joyce was fired.
• Katie: Thanks for the herpes, Sarah Lohman! Get tested. …Call me.

• Dayna: Bitterness and tolerance. Interestingly, my mother generally doesn’t like other women if they won’t drink a beer. So, for her, it would be beer drinking.
• Aaron: I passed my boss up in the hall and he said to me, “I saw you walking around outside!” But he wasn’t angry like “Why weren’t you working, you dolt?” He had the same attitude as if he happened to see me walking around in Istanbul, and he was all excited at the crazy coincidence and he had to share the coolness of happenstance with me. I was all like “That dude is my hero” after that.
• Katie: I’m always relieved when someone swears in casual conversation with me at work. It’s like we’re in a clubhouse. We’re rascals!

• Carrie S: I wrote a big thing about how Wonkette’s logo made me think I’d like her more than I do, but then a little voice in my head said, “You liar. Your favorite mascots are those sexy sexy Scrubbing Bubbles.” SC Johnson, a Family Company. Rowr.
• Jaclyn: The Brawny man seems like he could come in handy in and outside the bedroom!
• Kimberly: The Snuggle bear is so cute. He’d make my laundry so soft and it’d smell fresh and clean all the time.
• Mark: I want the Pillsbury Doughboy as a slave, to offer me cookies, cheer me up, and suck me off. Does that count as a friend? I will have to research Rabbi Loeb’s hebrew incantation — maybe I can write the name of god on a slip of paper, shove it in some batter, and make a dough-golem, a little cookie-batter homunculus.
• Matthew: OBVIOUSLY the Hamburger Helper Hand. He must give AMAZING handjobs.

• Carrie S: I am constantly trying to talk my Ph.D.-student peers out of studying for comprehensive and oral exams. I’m all, “It’s fucking gate-keeping to weed out idiots. Are you an idiot?” “Uh… no…” “Then I don’t want to see your ass with a book in your hand all summer. Beer only!”
• Mark: Most people have yet to reveal their better judgment to me.
• Katie: Every morning Charis says she’s not going to have her hearty farmer’s breakfast, because today’s the day she starts dieting and saving money. I’m like, “OK. … You know it’s the most important meal of the day, right?” She informs me, “Girl! You’re a bad influence.” And I’m like, “Baby, don’t be like that!” Then we make out.

• Mark: Negative lamps.
• Carrie S: I avoid conversations where everyone is talking about the universal awesomeness of anything, because, most likely, I’ll have some downer contribution about how that thing is actually not that great and suddenly no one will want to talk to me. Examples: television, thug-rap music, pop music, God, marijuana, classic rock, fashion magazines, gossip magazines, blacking out, iPods, Pride Parade, cars, sports, real estate, babies, Shakespeare, shoes, spas, and California.
• Anonymous: I would really appreciate it if we could steer clear of conversations about free-balling and intimate grooming. Any time those topics come up, Matthew has the ridonkulous habit of telling EVERYBODY that A) I am most certainly NOT wearing underwear, and B) I most certainly DO have a landing strip. The latter is particularly awkward, because, like, I want to say something to “defend” myself… but I do NOT want to talk about my Princess Perfect Pretty Flower and its maintenance in front of complete strangers! So, I can’t exactly confirm or deny these accusations without furthering discussion of my Private Kingdom.

• Mark: Blank. Agreed.
• Toby: Aggressive as a pedestrian. You have to know when to take the big leaps and cross in front of moving, speeding traffic. They won’t hit you. And if they do, it’ll hurt a lot and then it’ll all be over.
• Carrie S: Hedonistic. Before you break out the Andrew WK album, let me explain that I take hedonism extremely seriously. I’m talking about long-term pleasure here. If everything I do is done to increase my personal pleasure both now and throughout my life, I calculate maximum pleasure against avoidance of regret.
  Some people think I’m a serious prude. Other people think I am truly diabolical in my pursuit of the sweets of sin.
• Katie: BLONDE! I’m SO addicted to dying my hair! People are like, “Did you dye your hair?” and I’m like, “YESSSSS!!!”

• Jenn: I am named after a dog. My mother will never directly admit this, but when I was born my aunt had a dog named Jenni, and coincidentally my name is Jennifer… For a while, my mother thought she was going to call me by my middle name (probably until the dog died), but she just couldn’t resist and started calling me Jenni, too.
  Also, I was born on Christmas, and my parents had decided that if I were born on or around Christmas they would change their name plans and call me Joy Noel, but my mom completely forgot about that when she was all drugged up.
• Kimberly: If I was a boy I would have been given my grandfather’s name, Robert. The girl’s name my parents picked out for me was Krista, but then between the time I was supposed to be born and when I was actually born (3 weeks) the neighbors went and named their daughter that.
• Toby: My name was inspired by former Cleveland Indian Toby Harrah. Only later did my parents find out that Toby Harrah’s real name is “Colbert Dale Harrah.” That put a downer on that love train.
• Tffany: As my mom loves the initials TLC, it was imperative that my first name begin with a T. They had considered Tara, but since they were in Georgia at the time, everything had Tara in the title and they soon tired of it. Thus they decided on Tiffany. It was always a nice, classy name before ho’s started spelling it with an “i” and all the strip clubs got names like Tiffany’s Cabaret.

• Mark: My ability to conceal my disgust and control my baser impulses.
• Matthew: Hatred and competition. There cannot be love without at least a tiny bit of hate. And competition and the will to succeed seems to be a common driving force within my circle of friends; something we can all share.
• Kimberly: I often think that some of the volleyball girls wouldn’t talk to me at all if I wasn’t their teammate. Some of them have even admitted that they are/were intimidated by me because I am quiet and quiet people are scary!
• Jenn: There are several people who live in my building. I do not know their names, nor do we really speak with each other, but we always exchange these knowing glances. These moments say to each other, “We’re in this together. We’ll survive living in this shitty building, one way or another.”
• Carrie S: The mortar between my boyfriend and I is the common fantasy that everyone we know has joyless sex and spends countless hours slack-jawed in front of the television. We’re smug.

• Carrie S: From the time I was born until I was three or so, my parents called me “The Judge” because I had a frozen, stern expression of indignation. Then, for about two years, I smiled. By the time I was six, I had retreated into my inner saga of constant disappointment. I would say, if one loves me at all, it must be that my fury is appealing. Like all raging sorts, I have a blissful appreciation of when things go right, which might also be appealing.
• Toby: Some people tell me they hope I stop developing “qualities” and start regressing on the qualities I have. My most lovable qualities are stored neatly on video footage and in my writings of years past.
• Kimberly: Spring 2000, when I literally bought my million dollar smile!
• Katie: When I got out of Ohio, I didn’t look back and started really consuming alcohol. I think that when I was younger, people thought I was timid and really really nice. Someone told me in high school that I should have a name like “Shelby” because I was such a sweetie. I don’t really know what that means. I think that since I left Berea, I’ve become more sarcastic and aggressively amoral. Upgrade!
• Matthew: College was a very formative period in my life. It gave me a forum for both getting to know the ideals that define me and the opportunity to introduce myself to the world around. In college I came to terms with my bitchiness, my drunkenness, my insane drive to succeed, my extreme sensitivity, my love of service to others, my high standards for those around me, my hyper-homosexuality, and my general insanity.
• Mark: N/A

• Carrie S: A really nice tennis forehand. That feels SO good.
• Mark: When my mother drowned an injured mouse by forcing it into a bucket filled with water, using the underside of another equally-sized bucket, it made a desperate clawing at the “roof” of its cage. The top bucket was opaque, so mother judged how long it took to drown the mouse based on the sound of its death-rattle. The mouse’s vigorous, spastic, writhing movements as it clawed at the underside of the top bucket was a dance that my mother’s frightening love had inspired. I was reminded of it as mother drowned a small bird that had fallen out of its nest. The wet, heavy, floppy beating of its wings stopped when it finally drowned. She used different buckets that time, but the sound was similar. Sometimes I throw a vibrator in the toilet and listen until the batteries run out. Reminds me of her.

• Anonymous: One time, while riding home on the train with a girlfriend who had just seen the gynecologist about a sudden nasty series of venereal diseases, instead of comforting her, I said, “Now, this is why we ALWAYS follow ______’s Rule for Casual Sex: Only one partner per month. That way we can easily identify who we have to call when little things like this happen.”
• Tiffany: I stayed in the ocean down in Santa Cruz for like 10 minutes, despite the fact that the water was somewhere around 55 degrees and the waves were HUGE and repeatedly knocked me over and drug me across the ocean floor. The freezing cold water isn’t so bad once your body goes numb and you can’t feel anything anymore.
• Dayna: I flew to Spain to break up with a guy, although the more logical thing may have been to cancel the trip and break up on the phone…
• Katie: I had a couple fights with my mom in middle school about gay marriage, so, I’ve spent my adult life surrounding myself with gay people, working for gay causes, and even being a little gay myself when it felt super hott and trendy. At this point though, my mom’s all for Gay America, so I don’t know why I have to keep this up.

• Dayna: I used to love those “poor little rich girl” stories where the girl finds out she’s a princess and fabulously wealthy and that all those days working for a living were just for character development to show that the girl has a heart of gold and deserves all the wonderful things being held in trust for her. I like to believe that my fabulous trust fund is a secret that will someday be revealed to me by a mysterious long-lost great aunt who just wants to reward me for being me and give me a castle.
• Toby: My roommate alleges to have a significant amount of credit card debt, but the amount has never been divulged to me. I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s a tactic to make me feel more comfortable spending all my money. Whenever it’s time to spend or take out another student loan, we can both just point to his pyramid of debt and say “At least it’s not that…” while I have NO CLUE what “that” really is.
• Matthew: I would have to say the secret of my friend ______’s homosexuality. I’m a firm believer in coming out in your own good time, but TO THIS DAY I can’t understand, what with him knowing that I was gay, why I was left out of the loop for so long. I got over the minor frustration and feeling of hurt quickly, as I do, but if someone else close to me comes out with a secret bombshell like that I think I may have a meltdown and merc them on the spot.

• Carrie S: Same shit as everybody. Jack White, the miracle of television, how tight-fit-to-burst people who’ve had plastic surgery look, glow-in-the-dark shit, Volkswagen ads.
• Dayna: Being an adult. I mean, I bitch and moan about going to work and paying bills and everyone I know still being in school… but secretly I am impressed with MYSELF. I rule.
• Aaron: Linux. Linux distributions are like bread, beer, or wine, in that all varieties have a similar fundamental… thingy (sic)… about them, but subtle differences make for completely unique experiences. I really think that the appeal of open source software is that one can become a connoisseur of the trade. “Man, did you ever try the 2.6.20-4 distro from the Red Had vinyard? That was a good year, man, good year.”
• Anonymous: I’m really impressed with how huge my penis is… compared to some others I’ve seen.
• Toby: Acquiring Hill experience requires a certain level of jadedness. If you’re still bright-eyed and/or bushy-tailed, either there’s something wrong with you or you haven’t been there long enough. So, I hide the fact that something’s wrong with me and spit out “Well, that’s the Hill for ya…” or “Yeah, if the majority ever lets any of this legislation through…” from time to time.
• Katie: I know everybody’s totally over it and blah about it and everything, but I think blogs and people’s websites are SO COOL. I have to remember that it’s OK to post some comments, but not so many that it looks like I have nothing better to do than post comments on other people’s websites all day. And I totally would! They’d be mostly comments like “Haha!” and “I think you’re funny and smart!”
  I am SO LAME!

• Dayna: Ew. My friend Brian was supposed to get married last weekend to a girl he’s been with for three years. In September, he started seeing someone else. In December, he moved to South Carolina where his fiancée lives, and in JANUARY, he called off the wedding. The asshole had been dating someone else for almost five months by the time he got around to telling his bride-to-be. I was less than impressed.
• Katie: Remember when Mel Gibson was just a cute, amusing counterpart to a hard-nosed Danny Glover?
• Ian: Goddamn, remember when Tom Cruise was jack-off material? Now he’s just freaky.
• Aaron: So last fall I started doing some computer vision research at school and I was partnered with a grad student that I THOUGHT was a near doppelganger of myself. Same demeanor, same humor and all that. It turns out that he’s a male chauvinist (“Lisa was pretty upset that I slept with her AND THEN with Megan last night. What a bitch.”) that likes to take credit for other people’s work (mine) and become good buddies with the professor despite not really doing anything. Then he got hired by MS and now we hang out all the time. I’m still waiting for evidence of justice in this world.

• Katie: There are a lot of words and phrases I mean to remember to use all the time, but almost never do. I could really use a little reference book and/or reminder system to assist me with this. The current list includes “gents” and “derision.” I guess there’s nothing stopping me from making my own little list and carrying it around with me… But of course I would rather BUY it!
• Joe: There ought to be a guidebook for what to do in an awkward situation. I’ve gotten so frustrated that I’ve started many a conversation about the awkward moment that has just passed. And let me tell you, that doesn’t help. At all.
• Carrie S: I think there should be more info available for people who want safe, casual sex without malice. Someone should teach the world how to communicate that although a person may not be looking for a “partner,” s/he might want lots of action, but that also doesn’t mean there can’t be conversation about interesting topics. This is very difficult to get across. There should be lots and lots of publicly recognized sexual stereotypes from which one can work. Dan Savage can only do so much.

• Joe: Philadelphia salmon-flavored cream cheese.
• Toby: Psuedo-sexual restraint: We’re easier than the Asians, but not as easy as everybody else.
• Dayna: The Interstate Highway System. It’s a delight! Thank you, Eisenhower!
• Ian: Fast food! Starbucks! Shopping malls! Materialism! YAY!!!!! Aaron: Ever seen Baywatch? One billion viewers worldwide.
  That, and if anybody fucks with us, we can blow up the Earth 2,000 times. Now THAT’S unique!
• Matthew: WE DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU THINK.
• Kimberly: Michigan, Florida, Kentucky… I could go on an on! It’s kind of cool how different all the states are. We are truly a giant melting pot.
• Tiffany: It sounds clichéd, but I like the way that America supports the individuality of its citizens. You can be whatever you want to be, act however you want, and believe whatever you want. You might think that happens in all countries. But for instance, in France you aren’t allowed to wear any outward signs of religion, i.e., Muslims can’t wear the veil… and that’s not cool.
• Carrie S: If you think back to our founding moments, notice that the Declaration of Independence brags about how unanimous it was. Everyone got on the revolution ship right away. Tyranny v. freedom? You know we loves the freedom! But the Constitution was forged over years and years with all kinds of caveats and interpretive gaps. That is to say — we are a people who only understand binaries, even if we know those binaries are stupid constructs. Liberal or conservative. Indy or mainstream. Pepsi or Coke. Chevy or Ford. White or black. Gay or straight. We know these things are fucking stupid, but we’re just that way. We can’t handle complex negotiations without getting confusamafied. And why is this good? Alexis de Tocqueville seemed to think it was so goddamn adorable he tried to import the rigamarole wholesale back to sa maison.
• Katie: - An independent spirit
  - The world’s best TV
  - I hear the new Iraqi Parliament is required to be at least 25% female. We only have to deal with a little under 14%. Uppity bitches…
  - Sincerity
  - Abortion

• Toby: Release, be it cookie- or caffeine-oriented. Hey, I’m just looking for a little lovin’, and if it takes a cookie or a cup of Hennes, that’s just the way it is.
• Matthew: Your complete and utter obedience to whatever the fuck I want. You know it's for the best.
• Ian: That my friends all be fun, fashionable, alcoholics, and Democrats.

• Toby: Today, my boss told me that she was informed that all the letters we sent out should have had a colon instead of a comma after “Dear [Name].” I was like, “No, they shouldn’t!” I think I scared her with how offended I was. She should learn her lesson.
• Joe: Whenever someone tells me that I look MUCH better than I used to. Thanks, I’m glad I’m not ugly as sin anymore, like I was for 20 years.
• Aaron: After a) living with my Dad and b) growing up with Bryan and c) growing up even more with Matt, I’ve developed a pretty thick skin to protect me from all kinds of offensive comments, whether they be directed at me alone or at some demographic of society that I sympathize with.
• Matthew: I’m really never paying any attention to you.
• Katie: I used to keep it real by waiting tables. One evening, another waitress and I were talking to the bouncer about how we were planning to take the LSAT. The other waitress had taken it before, and she mentioned her score. The bouncer was impressed and asked me if I “totally hated her right now.” WHAT, motherfucker??? Everybody thinks I’m stupid!
  ANYWAYS. I scored better. Had to throw that in there. BAM!

• Katie: The onset of summer really does it for me. I revel in all the sun and heat and beauty. The joys of friendship are just more transcendent during the summer. This will be my first summer sans outdoor labor, so I might not be able to get tanner than most black people, as I am accustomed to doing. A woman from my office recently took early retirement due to severe vitamin D deficiency. OMG.
• Carrie S: Sometimes, when I walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, I look at the East River, the Statue of Liberty, the skyscrapers of Manhattan and then back toward my humble home in Brooklyn, and I tear up a little, thinking, “O, America!” and then I’m like, “Hey, somebody left this awesome sweater!”
• Aaron: Just about any Wes Anderson film hits that happy/sad paradox. Crescent moons hanging low in the sky at dusk are also quite breathtaking. I try to take pictures but they’re never quite the same. Nonetheless, even if I just fall over and die right now, I’m forever grateful that I have experienced such things.
• Toby: The fact that you asked this question. It’s like I’m on a retreat with my sorority sisters.

• Tiffany: Nothing comes to mind. I only know of a couple people who have actually hated me (maybe there are more that I’m not aware of) and those people definitely DO NOT have legitimate reasons.
• Aaron: I don’t know about “hated” but plenty of people have been annoyed at me for perfectly legitimate reasons. I’m not naturally annoying; I actually do it on purpose. Ergo, I’m fully aware that their response is legitimate. And yet I continue…
• Toby: My inclination for getting good grades, my scholarship for undergrad. Yeah, that’s reasonable. At least I know these are hateable offenses.
• Carrie S: All reasons to hate me are pretty legitimate. I’m self-righteous, yet crass. I’m over-intellectual, but really crude. I’m a nymphomaniac who moralizes about others’ sexual choices. I’m a vegetarian, yet I shamelessly ordered the goat’s-milk panna cotta last night at dinner (contains gelatin). I am categorically unlovable. I can name names of haters, if you want a list.
• Ian: Offensive but funny. Rude but caring. Cynical but earnest. Vain but self-loathing. Active but lazy. I pick and choose my spots to be what I feel like at any given moment, which I suppose makes me whimsical or something. Either you love me or hate me, but those who hate me usually are motherfuckers.
  I have a saying around the store (which is 80% a joke) that if you work for Limited Brands you love me — my numbers are the best, my merchandising is the best, my training is the best, etc. — but if you don’t, you hate me. Yes, I have a lot of customers that know me by name and love me up, but for the most part I’m the one who has to deal with all the returns, and since I’m a big ol’ bitch that won’t bend any policy and will give a raging customer the number to corporate and walk away before taking their return or making an exception, I’m not ALWAYS a crowd favorite.

• Carrie S: I am incapable of trapping a mouse. How stupid is that? The traps have been out for six months. Almost every day I pull some new Wile E. Coyote shit trying to lure the fucker into my grasp, and it never, never works. He gets the food; I look the fool.
• Toby: Beer drawers, Diet Dr Pepper shelves, Chewy boxes. Oh, and that pesky Republican majority that makes legislating from our side practically pointless.
• Aaron: Look down. Do you see that carpet that you always walk on? Well, it’s gonna need vacuuming until THE DAY YOU DIE! You know that stomach of yours? Well, it’s gonna want food in it FOREVER! And don’t even get me started on tooth care.
• Kimberly: I can’t make my waist and hips appear! I work out all the time and do a bazillion sit-ups, to no avail. I think they are just not there…
• Matthew: Every day I stand in front of the mirror and try to will by stomach into being flat. I talk to my unborn Bud Light baby and tell it that it is unwanted and that it was a mistake and that if it wanted to go to heaven then it would just abort itself and leave my body. It doesn’t respond, so I punch myself really hard and run into the stair railing really fast, but it won’t budge and this only makes me want to puke. I’ll give the little fucker this much: he can really pack in the beer.
• Katie: Making an appearance anywhere before 8:30pm. Make that 9:00pm.
  Me: “I am on my way.”
  B: “Are you lying?”
  Me: “I am getting on the Metro.”
  B: “Are you really getting on the Metro, or are you lying?”
  Me: “I will be getting on the Metro in… 3.5 hours.”
  Matthew: [in the background] “TERRY SCHIAVO! Give me the phone.”

• Katie: Noooo, I do NOT want them to lose everything they’ve achieved just because I haven’t; they’re my FRIENDS!
  And, anyways, my fuckup-riddled life gives me my irresistible je ne sais quoi, and don’t they wish THEY had it? Suckers… Wine helps wash that one down.
• Matthew: I’m very busy and important. YAY unemployment!
• Toby: It’s about time that somebody has it all together. All I see is struggle, pain, frustration and hate coming out of these Questions of the Week. If somebody were to actually get it all together, I think I’d be relieved that somebody’s out enjoying their beer tonight.

Katie: I DIDN’T REALLY THINK THEY WOULD BE POSTED ON MOTHERFUCKIN TIME!!!! WHAT IS THAT???? BLAAHHH!
It makes my Sarah Lohman praise even sweeter: I’m just too good to be bothered THIS week. Huff.

• Sarah: My sudden semi-fame and my sudden crippling debt. I’m just drinking them both off, in easy monthly installments.
• Ian: I’m pretty nonchalant about paying the bills which surround me. I seriously think I have enough physically surrounding my desk to fill an entire wheelbarrow… If I can’t pay it online, and I haven’t been paying it online for the months preceding “the pile-up,” your bill doesn’t exist!
• Matthew: I am oddly nonchalant about anything you can think of, really. Given the circumstances, I should be holed up in my room, refusing to leave and painting the walls with my own feces. What circumstances could bring about my “nonchalant” behavior, you ask? Well, fuck me if I know, ‘cause this bitch never makes any sense. Word.
• Tom K: This question makes me uncomfortable.
• Carrie S: My degree. Everyone else getting a Ph.D. in English is like “HOLYCRAAAAAP! I’ve only got 14 months to prepare for my ORAAAALS! If I don’t get my lists in gear by next week I’ll be SO BEHIND and I’ll NEVER PASS and I’ll NEVER FINISH MY DISSERTATION and I’ll NEVER BE HIRED BY ANYONE!” I’m all, “Chill, baby. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about orals.” They’re right, of course; like one percent of us will get decent jobs. But you know who that one percent includes? Uh-huh. You know.

• Sarah: Bryan says: “I’m exceedingly busy.” Means: “This conversation is boring me, please get off the phone.”
• Tom K: Bryan says he’s sorry for breaking my speaker, but we ALL know he means “I was really drunk and probably don’t even remember that, not to mention there’s no way you’ll ever have surround sound again, you stupid motherfucker. HA HA HA!”
• Carrie S: When a man says all he wants from an intelligent woman is sex, we all know he means he’s wondering if he’s finally fallen in love for the first time and what the children will look like and what a wise and wonderful matriarch she will be. When a man says he only wants to date someone who will finally be nice to him, we all know he means he wants to date someone who will not suspect him of threatening her with axe-murder in her sleep. When a man says he’s really fucked up and emotionally confused but what the hell, let’s see what happens, we all know he means that he’s a good, guilt-free, renewable source of excellent sexual intercourse.
• Aaron: “Fair and Balanced” = “Per MY definition of ‘fair’ and MY definition of ‘balanced,’ which are both heavily skewed to suggest that I am always right and you are always wrong. Besides, we’re paid to be entertaining, not to be correct. Let’s kill poor people.”
• Matthew: The most classic examples that comes to mind are when the DC06 gang and various hangers-on are trying to decide what to do (drink, eat, fuck, etc.). I think it is well known that I will almost always say “I don’t care what we do,” but in fact, I do care very much what we do and will gleefully veto THOUSANDS of your suggestions, effectively filibustering the decision-making process and creating deep resentment. I do it out of love.

• Sarah: Well, I’m still on AOL for dialup, despite possessing a degree in TIME (Technology and Integrated Media Environment). I have my reasons. Also, my laptop was made for Windows 98.
• Carrie S: I’m still trying to spread the Enlightenment, since certain people seem to have rushed past it without taking it into account. How patient can a girl be?
• Matthew: By remaining militantly intolerant and uncompromisingly demanding of all things. Honestly, you’re all weak-ass bitches, and if I didn’t do it the world would fall apart. LOL — people who don’t know me think I’m kidding!
• Aaron: I REFUSE to become a vegetarian! All you hippie vegans with your lettuce can go to hell. I mean, have you ever considered the possibility that the cows LIKE to be enclosed in a tiny pen and injected with growth hormones their entire lives only to be killed and ground up into a thick pasty substance? It’s rather presumptuous of you to suggest otherwise, isn’t it? Yeah, I’ll bet you feel guilty now for jumping to conclusions like that, you rascally liberals. You should feel guilty, too. I hope you’re ashamed of yourselves for imposing your arbitrary morality on other people. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my daily heart attack.
• Tom K: I’m not watching The OC! So F off.

• Carrie S: Honestly, I’m jealous of my boyfriend’s kids. Sure, their mom’s a whore, but they get at least one parent who is really kind to them and thoughtful and fulfills their needs and who they can trust for sincere advice on the kinds of silly issues little kids have. I’m like, what would it have been like to be raised by someone who really loved me? (Sigh… don’t we all pity Carrie now??)
• Matthew: I’m jealous of the superior self within me, and its ability to do and achieve all the things the weaker shell will never do and never achieve. How can someone so shallow be so deep??
• Kimberly: Tamara, that bitch! First off, she got the heck out of here with here with her B.A. and M.S. in five years and managed to secure a good, high-paying job before even graduating. Now, after being away less than a month, she is BUYING A HOUSE! On top of that, she is still dating the same boy she’s been with for two years. Can I maybe have just one of those things?
• Aaron: I have to admit I’m jealous of Bryan’s and Toby’s knowledge of the state of the art of music. I’m all like, “Dude, there’s this awesome band called ‘The Beatles,’” and they’re all like, “I wipe my ass with the zillions of untorn ticket stubs from all the concerts I decided not to go to at the last minute because I got distracted by some blinking light or something.” It gets to where I subtly rub it in their faces if I am ever aware of an artist that they are not. Needless to say, I don’t get the satisfaction very often.
• Tom K: NO! I like suppressing shit.
• Sarah: I have to go back and answer this one in retrospect because I finally figured it out:
  Why are Katie W’s QotW answers so fucking funny every time? NONE of hers get edited out, because she’s always there with the fucking zingers. Godamnit. I don’t even know what Bryan’s talking about half the time.

• Aaron: While this has fortunately subsided, I always got the impression that people were doing the “WAASSSSUUUUUP!” thing at the most stupid, inopportune moment. I mean, there wasn’t even any beer around.
• Carrie S: NYC teens don’t say “funny as hell,” they say “funny-ass hell.” They think it’s funny. But, obviously, it’s not. I’m also one of the only — perhaps the only — student in my department who can do accurate imitations of the professors. Mimesis ain’t just for Aristotle, people!
• Matthew: As I am most likely ignoring you during the delivery, I rarely have this problem.
• Tom K: There’s a girl I work with who will, in an attempt to speak grammatically correct, use the phrase, “This belongs to Tom and I.” She fails to understand the objective form — stupid bitch. It has gotten so bad that she will also, from time to time, say “These swords are Tom and I’s.” What the fuck does that even mean, you Nazi?

• Megan P: Well, S-Lo once told me that my virginity was like a precious, precious stone buried at the bottom of a deep dark lake. That’s turned out to be more accurate than I would have liked.
• Sarah: Every Cleveland bus that reminds me to never, never shake a baby.
• Carrie S: When I was having a nervous breakdown at school last month, a girl from class was asking me about what was going on, and she was really sympathetic, and she uttered these words: “What you really need is to be very, very nice to yourself.” I was all, “Huh?” and she says, “You’re going through something difficult, and you need to find some ways to be nice to yourself.” I have always become hyper-ascetic and stoic when I’m sad, so the advice seemed contradictory to the plan. I decided she was right. It was awesome.

• Megan P: Well, I’m still waiting for someone to take the big V, so I guess 24 years is the longest I’ve ever made me wait for something. Hmm… I detect a pattern.

• Matthew: I’ve never felt this way, so I cannot say for certain. I will take this opportunity to berate you. Do you really need that bag of Peanut M&Ms on the way home?
• Carrie S: The first time I attended a punk-rock benefit show in NYC, I realized, “These are my people. I must move here.” The beer was free, everyone was attractive in a down-to-earth way, and when I dorkily complimented a favorite musician I’d wanted to meet since I was a teen, he grabbed me and kissed me and said, “Where ya been, chickadee?”

• Carrie S: You mean, like a dog to his vomit? I guess… my vomit. I guess. Also, The New York Times. (sigh)
• Megan P: Masturbation?
• Kimberly: Mountain Dew! For some reason, I just really like the taste of it. I think I’d drink Diet Caffeine Free Mountain Dew if it existed and tasted just like the original.
• Aaron: I’m very ambivalent about sleep (in the true meaning of the word, not that “ambivalence means apathy” crap). It goes without saying that I will always “keep going back to” sleep, and I totally love sleeping in, dozing for several hours and all that. But does it really need to take up one third of my ENTIRE LIFE? Heck, wouldn’t it be awesome if we didn’t have to sleep so we could totally beat the shit out of ourselves (cookies and JD for dinner!), die young, and still have lived a rather full life?
• Sarah: I consider the Aveda salon and the Anthropologie boutique to be my girl version of whatever indulgent boy things Ian and Bryan do (like tanning their asses off). Despite the fact that both are out of my price range, the hand massages and personalized dressing rooms are a tantalizing taste of the life that awaits me on the other side of stardom.
• Ian: You can let Sarah know that the manager of the Aveda Salon stopped by my store yesterday afternoon to drop off some items for me as gratitude for lending her my dolly. So HA! Not only do I have my usual “indulgent boy things” but I also have her Aveda!

• Megan P: My non-dates. I go out with boys, it seems like a date, then at the end of the night they start telling me about how cool their girlfriends are or about this other girl they have the hots for. I’m sure it would be entertaining for others.
• Aaron: Fellow QotW correspondents may not believe me or even care, but there is a demographic of society that would probably be willing to kill me if it meant getting to play with the next Windows OS, just as I do daily. And I’m already bored with it! I can’t help but chuckle with satisfaction.
• Ian: Life beyond the bottle. I bring my camera out with me at night just so I can reconstruct my life. “OH! I saw HER!? Guess so, since here’s a picture of us…” But if I had an audience to assist with the reconstructing, it would be most helpful.
• Brian E: My drunken escapades really ought to be marketed better; I feel as though people would pay to see them. “WATCH as Brian stumbles around the city he barely knows! REJOICE as he smothers his friends with hugs and praise! RECOIL WITH HORROR as he drunk dials ex-girlfriend after ex-girlfriend! DODGE AND DUCK as cups, plates and entire wardrobes are thrown at you once Brian returns home! WRESTLE with a man so far gone he won’t remember tomorrow how he bruised himself!”

Carrie S: Sorry it took so long, Bryan! I couldn’t get over the fact that your MySpace orientation is “Not Sure.”

• Ian: My canker sores never tend to go the fuck away. They used to flare up so bad during finals that I would always go to the student health center and have them burnt off. It was the type of health center where you more or less diagnosed yourself, and the senile doctor would prescribe whatever would cure that. But 90% of the time it was the same medication you got last time for something totally different, which is why I found telling him to burn them off the most effective of solutions. Dr. Ian is in!
• Aaron T: Unlike most “healthy” things, bran cereal does not make you feel better.
• Joe: The burning sensation. Yowch! Also, that Die Hard movie.
• Kimberly: I thought that Olestra was determined to be really bad for you. I must have been mistaken, because everywhere I go I run into Ruffles Light potato chips. At first, I was tempted to buy them, because they come in a cheddar and sour cream flavor, but then I saw that the second ingredient on the list was Olestra and I backed the fuck off.

• Carrie S: My friends show their allegiance by honestly telling me what I’ve done wrong and how I’m acting crazy. Otherwise, I float around in the ether of flattery and go nuts.
• Aaron: I mean, would it kill you to pack up, leave your life behind, and move across the country? How hard is that? I don’t ask for much, do I??
• Katie: In these trying times, all I can really count on to be there for me is the Truth Tree. The Tree’s there for me, and I’m there for the Tree. On a fuckin’ swing.

• Megan S: Where do you come up with this shit? I don’t even think I can follow that example enough to understand it.
• Tiffany: Every time I watch a new episode of Alias. Those crazy writers… You think you know what’s going on, who’s alive, and who’s dead, but you DON’T!
• Ian: Would it, perhaps, be demonstrated by my plans for my future? First I was going to stay in Cleveland for a summer and move to NYC in the fall, but then it turned into Cleveland forever… THEN I was going to jet off to NYC in March to live with Smita, but about two weeks later that became moving out to LA to live with Amanda, and while waiting several weeks for confirmation of funding for the West Coast move, I dabbled in the thoughts of staying in Cleveland and becoming in artist, until a week later my sights were set on NYC once again! And the funny thing is, my horoscope keeps up with me!
• Joe: I thought I knew what you were asking in this question. But then I read the reiteration in the second sentence and I understood. But then, after further consideration, I had no fucking clue what was going on.
• Aaron: Driving in any urban environment demands oodles of patience. You’re going to screw up at least four times for each mile you drive, so just accept it and be ready for emergency U-turns. Of course, the delightful part is when something is only accessible to vehicles traveling in one direction. You pass it up, you think in your head, “Oops,” you turn around, you think, “Ha ha! You thought you could outsmart me!” You drive back to the thingie, you find that there’s a big honkin’ concrete barrier in the way. At this point you’re not thinking. You’re swearing. The map next to you would have been useful if you hadn’t just torn it to little shreds and burned it. Suddenly, you start thinking, “What if I starve to death in this car?” You got from home to here via lots of one way streets, which means you can’t go back the way you came. No, you’re officially screwed, now. You pull out your cell phone to call your friends and family. You wish them luck in their life and they — ooh, a Starbucks!!!
• Katie: Sometimes, being friends with Bryan et al requires a certain degree of stealth, as defined by refraining from full disclosure of certain things in certain company. Regularly, I accidentally breach the stealth, and blurt out something I’m not supposed to. Each time I say to myself, “Oh yeah — I see why I should have been stealthy there. I’ll totally remember next time.” The next time I blurt, I’ve said the wrong thing for a slightly or entirely different reason. OK. Every once in awhile, I have the presence of mind to ask, “Is it OK to bring up X or Y?” and I’ll get a response like, “Oh yeah! Of COURSE! DUH!” So it goes: I learn and learn…

• Ian: I would love to hear a conversation between Toby and Bryan regarding something homestead-related. After being close friends with Bryan for years with no dabbling in financial affairs between us and living with Toby for years with lots of it, I think it would be interesting to see how it all works. But, according to the blog, all they talk about is boyholes and the such. How do the bills get paid in DC?!
• Aaron T: When I hear someone’s cell phone ring at a party and it has a fun ring, I am more interested in who it is and what they have to say. Don’t even say you’re not, either.
• Jenn: The two “bosses” at my office are a very interesting pair. She just recently divorced, and he… well, I don’t know what his situation is, but they arrive together each day and go into their office and shut the door. It’s fairly suspicious.
• Katie: I LOVE hearing people at work complain about Bush. They’re the sassy, passive-aggressive Résistance, because they usually don’t mention Bush directly — they talk about policies or guidance issues that they don’t agree with, like Abstinence for Everybody All Day Every Day, Condoms Don’t Protect Like Jesus, and No Mercy for Homos or Prostitutes. But, the bureaucracy’s pretty thick, so they complain with apparently no sense of hope for making a difference underlying their outcries.
  On second thought, I really DON’T LOVE that…
• Carrie S: I would like the ability to STOP eavesdropping on everyone, especially my next-door neighbor whose bathroom window and mine are in an adjacent crawlspace. She masturbates ALL DAY in there, talking to her invisible lovers, saying dorky things like, “You know what? You’re really smart. I don’t know why I just said that. It just came out. No — popped out. Popped out. No — came out. Yeah. It just CAME out.”

• Aaron: I’m very surprised no one has found a way to make a profit off of sex. I mean, hell, everyone seems to love doing it; you’d think that someone would find a way to sell it, or at least videos of it. It just seems like a no-brainer.
• Joe: Exhibit A: Every episode of The Jetsons. C’mon, where’s my robot maid, flying car, moving sidewalks, hairdo generator, levitating collar, outdoor treadmill, elevating apartments, meal-in-a-pill, conveyer belt that gets you ready in the morning, and my alien with Slinkys for legs???
• Dayna: You remember in The Jetsons how George and Judy — or even Rosie if she so chose — could push a button and a meal would magically appear? If that existed in real life, I wouldn’t have to eat microwave popcorn for dinner so often.
• Katie: I’m not sure why I’m still pressing buttons and plugging things in to enjoy my e-mail, internet, music, telecommunication, movies, etc etc. I’m no longer comfortable with these services being bound by actual things. I’m ready for them to be intangible aspects of consciousness and the human condition, like spirits or dreams or neuron fire. Jesus, keyboard, why do I have to touch you?

• Megan: Yeah, anything that mentions a whore. I mean…
• Dayna: Back when I was an angsty teenager, I thought a lot of angsty song lyrics had been written based on my life experience, such as Radiohead’s “Creep” and Garbage’s “Special.”
• Joe: Cookie Monster’s new “Cookies Are a Sometimes Food” campaign hits pretty close to home.
• Katie: There’s this line in “One Call Away” where Chingy goes, “So I zoomed off, lookin’ by and my phone rang btdtdtdtdtdt! [Chingy makes a cell phone sound in the background.]” EVERY TIME it comes on, I go scrambling for my cell phone, and then I’m always like, “Chingy! You get me EVERY TIME!” He’s so crazy!

• Aaron: If the emergency is extinction scale, I’ll probably just drive my car around the block over and over to burn as much fossil fuel as possible, because who would have thought we’d have oil to spare??
• Jenn: As the Capitol was being evacuated, instead of running for safety, I decided to stay in my building, and eat cookies, lots of cookies.
• Katie:

  - “If I pay $450 for a gun, I’m gonna shoot somebody.” -Wanda Sykes
  - Found own Endtime ministry
  - Win sweeping adoration and fear
  - Acquire heroin habit and yellow cake
  - Get down to business

• Katie: This happens a lot. I can’t really see what’s in front of my eyes. I stalk the house screaming, “Where are my glasses?!….Where are my keys?!….Where’s the couch?!?” My parents used to hide my Easter eggs directly in the middle of the living room floor. I couldn’t find them. This is how I live my life.
• Tiffany: Every time I get on the 101 or the 5 around here (Note — all highways in California are referred to as “the ___,” which you fill in with the appropriate number), I feel as though I live in a universe of self-centered, oblivious, retarded people who never took drivers ed.
• Aaron T: We ran the Beer Mile on the quad this year, seeing as how there is still no track at Case. While it was underway, a guy walks up and asks what’s going on. (Since it was midnight after the first reading day before finals, he wasn’t the only one watching.) He looked like a grad student. We told him about it, and asked if he wanted to try. He said no, he’s a Case detective. We were like, “What…?” So he unzipped his fleece and showed us his security uniform, badge, and walkie-talkie. He asked if we were leaving when we were done. Of course we were, right away, officer. He says “OK, you’re not hurting anyone.” He hangs out and watches the rest, and then lets us go. A CASE DETECTIVE!
• Ian: The COKEHEADS! While in college, we dipped into the Cleveland gay club scene once every few months, but now that I’m a regular I’m horrified to discover that all of the other regulars (all of the attractive ones, anyway) know one another because they all meet up in stall #4 for nose candy fun.
• Carrie S: I have been analyzing the paths of the mouse that lives in my kitchen for about six months, learning his ways. He’s extremely resourceful. The mouse trap I bought (also known as the “mouse feeder”) waits for him, but it hasn’t been successful yet.
  1. He likes home cooking more than cheese.
  2. He does not poo or pee on my countertops, which I appreciate.
  3. When I see him and I call his name (“Mousie!”) we make eye contact and then he sheepishly heads into the stove. It’s centering, you know, to have a pet.

• Carrie S: I can’t say her name, but she’s motherfucking annoying and is really stupid, and tries to cover up that stupidity by acting impossibly stupid (using the word “shit” instead of random other words in sentences — linguistically like “smurf”). She encroaches on everyone’s business and is terribly rude in an incredibly awkward way. So everyone in my program assumes she’s actually really nice and smart but has a social disorder so we should pity her. I’m like, fuck that! So I mock her openly, and everyone’s like, “Carrie, why are you so cruel to her?” and I’m like, “BECAUSE HER EXISTENCE MAKES MY DEGREE MEANINGLESS!”
• Ian: Most guys I’m friends with. They don’t PURPOSELY thwart my every innovation, they just admire me so much that they steal EVERY BIT of individuality I have as soon as I develop it, so they always keep me on my toes, running ahead of the pack. Whether it be the way I’m styling my wardrobe, what I’m drinking, or what I’m saying, nothing is sacred. To test this theory, I’ve developed a few stupid sayings. I’d say one for a day, and by the next day they had already woven it into the fabric of their conversation.
  This type of thing doesn’t seem to be so rampant among the female species, probably because they’re not a gay man trying to get into my pants.

• Jenn: Do you mean children? I don’t get near them — they’re always sticky.
• Dayna: I eat lunch in the break room. One of my coworkers recently asked, “How long is a mile? Isn’t it the length of a football field?” with dead seriousness. I almost cried.
• Aaron T: Now that all Case undergrads have to pay $25 for an RTA pass every semester, my friend John _____ (swimmer) came up with the first “Rapid Bar Crawl.” He started at the airport at 2:30 in the afternoon and headed back towards Case, stopping at every stop and asking where the nearest bar is. Duff and I and some others met him two stops before Tower City. We continued through Tower City, but the Rapid didn’t even stop on 30-something-th, and the rest didn’t want to get off at East 55th. But John, Alicia, Duff (all swimmers) and myself got off and asked where the nearest bar was. The first question out of anybody was “What you doin’ here?” We did get someone to lead us to Vince’s Bar and we had a couple of beers. John put the “Thong Song” on the jukebox. Then we went back to the Rapid. We did not stop any closer to Case because I got a call from Doerk (who had just gotten off the Senior Week cruise) and I wanted to head back downtown, so we did. But, man, East 55th…
• Joe: Every other weekend, I dress up as a homeless man and I roam the streets of New York under the guise of being an ordinary bum. Unfortunately, it usually ends up with my business partners pretending not to know me and stealing my money when the weekend is over, while my new allied bums show me how to survive and thrive in their subculture after nicknaming me Pepto. On the other weekends, I roll around naked in a pile of money.

Joe: I am so happy to be taking part in this. It brings a tear of happiness to my figurative eye.

• Ian: Some people believe that high-end personal care items are useless, and the same thing as generic big box store-bought items. HA! Fools! Not until you experience the wonderment contained in my $28 body wash bottle or $75 shave system will you understand the difference.
• Toby: Based on the actions of my roommate and other high-level DC friends, one can only conclude that our system of public transportation is highly inept, perhaps even inferior to that of other metropolitan areas. Au contraire — the Metro gets me where I’m going on time (at least 90 percent of the time) without making me want to vomit or throw myself in front of an arriving train. It receives a 7 on the AWESOME meter, and jumps to 8.7 when taking the underestimation into account.
• Aaron: The Democrats have been pretty useless lately, but I still think they’re awesome. (Ba dum ching!)
• Joe: I carry a plastic spork with me at all times. Honestly, it comes in handy more often than the pen.
• Katie: There are so many free things to be had if you just realize that no, you are not too good to participate in promotional offers. Within two weeks, I won a Diet Cherry Coke from a bottle cap, a CD from the internets, and I stuck the final sticker on my Sub Club card. I plan to redeem my free Diet Cherry Coke and free sub while listening to my new CD, and exclaim, “Finally. I’ve arrived.”

• Ian: Sometimes, while driving behind someone that’s annoying the fuck out of me, I fantasize about smashing the shit out of their car. But then I realize that I’m ALREADY late for work and that would only slow me down further. I also dream of shooting out the tires of morons who still have their BUSH-CHENEY ‘04 stickers on their cars, but then I realize prison ain’t quite my thang.
• Matthew: Going hetero. Worlds would collide and cease to exist. The liberating nature of my homosexuality would be cast aside like the whore that it is, and in its wake those collaterally liberated by my gayness would be left with a crushing sense of emptiness and enslavement to a life of banal normality.
• Tracy: My intentions are always good, however sometimes the tequila shots have an adverse affect, causing visits from Jo Jo the Circus Monkey, The Green Llama and other hallucinogenic characters.
• Toby: In times like this, I cannot bring myself, morally, to fantasize. Freedom, as you know, is not free.
• Katie: I’m charged with registering a bunch of bitches for a conference in Ethiopia. I really want to make them share hotel rooms.
  Create finally consummated love matches, tawdry just-for-tonights, and bitter, unmendable rifts.
  Or, maybe destroy the most high-ranking political appointees’ visas, so when they arrive at Addis Ababa International, they can just turn the fuck around, or get detained, or shot. Fucking Republicans. They don’t know who they’re dealing with.

• Ian: Murphy Brown! Murphy is like my soul-mate… have you ever noticed the similarities? Watch her and you’ll notice — it’s uncanny.
• Tracy: Well it used to be Pidge from Voltron. God, he was sexy. He has kind of been off the radar screen for a while, though… so now I would have to say Vince Vaughn.
• Toby: “Whom the mere sight of”? Fuck it, man. Fuck it.
• Dayna: There was a boy in my high school named Jake who I loved because he was beautiful. I didn’t really think that he was all that cute, but the boy took my breath away. I called him Beautiful Boy until I discovered that everyone in the world except me knew him, and that his name was Jake. Then I almost asked him to prom, even though, to this day, we have never spoken.
• Matthew: The sight of Bryan coming toward me with two pitchers of beer in hand for immediate consumption just takes my breath away.

• Katie: It’s perfectly normal to have undergone two root canals by age 23. It’s probably a sign that more serious problems are very unlikely later in life. Whew!
• Joe: Any time that I drink so much coffee that I think I’m going to erupt like a junior high science project and put some mellow folk rock on the old boom box. My brain takes a vacation without putting me to sleep.
• Aaron: Monopoly? Whosa-whatsit-now? Antitrust? Never heard of it.
• Kimberly: I plan to stay in my fantasy relationship for a while. It gives me such pleasant, happy dreams. I am still free, and I don’t have to deal with all the hassle that having a boyfriend entails. It also gives me some time to have my little bed all to myself.

• Matthew: Obviopo. Seriously, if I don’t get this one, I am gonna fuck up someone’s shit. I own this fucker.
• Tracy: Probably Matt, because in order to shock someone, they usually have to be paying attention to what you are saying/doing, as opposed to pretending that they are paying attention (and not even doing that well).
• Tiffany: I actually consider myself pretty unshockable, mostly thanks to you. People here will say something outrageous, and then apologize to me — I’ve got that sweet and innocent air about me — but I’m like, “That ain’t nothing compared to what I heard in undergrad!”
• Joe: Probably my dad. I’ve come out to him about 20 times and he hasn’t batted an eye.
• Katie: My best friend Kasi. She expects me to make dumb, childish decisions with my life, and her responses are always “Mmm-hmm,” or “Oh, OK.” In turn, I expect nothing less than emotionally abusive relationships and OCD on her end. It would be equally unshocking if one of us had news of fantastic professional success, or a sordid, sultry anecdote involving a stripper pole. We expect the best and the worst from each other.

• Toby: My estimates as to how much time is required for basic functions (e.g., taking a shower, getting dressed, putting on my shoes) are quite off when trying to brief others as to when I’ll be ready to commence with a given plan. My dishonesty here stems mainly from my desire for approval and my hopefulness that I will become amazingly efficient, if only while carrying out the function in question. I apologize for the harm it has caused and the dishonor it has brought my reputation.
• Dayna: When I don’t want to do something, I say I have no money even if I have TONS.
• Aaron: I always exaggerate the amount of “traffic” that I “hit” on my way into work. As though rolling in at 10:30 EVERY DAY is a perpetual fluke that only occurs for Midwesterners.
• Tiffany: When dealing with my students, I have to be extra sweet and/or lie to keep from shouting at them about how dumb and inept they are. I don’t think I’d get very good evaluations if I did that.
• Katie: I say “No Problem” a lot at work. The odds are good that it was or it will be a GIANT FUCKING PROBLEM. Hi. Let me describe my job to you, motherfucker. THAT’S NOT IT.

• Katie: Every time I’m checking out at Trader Joe’s, the cashier strikes up a conversation about how great Trader Joe’s is. We’re all, “It’s great, quality groceries at everyday low prices!” and “This brie costs three times as much at Safeway!” and “Joe’s organic is actually cheaper than Giant’s regular!” The cashiers are a little on the hippy side of retarded, but they’re sweethearts and I always feel good about my purchases as the Trader Joe’s theme song ushers me out the automatic doors.
• Matthew: All of my friends leave a fabulous taste in my mouth, and if they don’t I spit it out in their face.
• Toby: The Hon. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-Ohio) may be the sassiest, smartest, most realistic member of Congress I’ve ever met. Whenever her straight-talkin’ attitude works its way onto C-SPAN, I’m delighted by a refreshing mint sensation that says, “This is how it’s meant to be. This is how it’s meant to be.”

• Katie: I’m working on getting a pool table in exchange for successful consensual intercourse between a college friend and a DC friend.
• Sarah: “SARAH LOHMAN — IS A TWO TIMING BITCH! IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A TWO TIMING BITCH… SHE RIGHT HERE!”

• Dayna: I am convinced that my wrists are getting smaller. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I regularly buy bracelets (metal) that fit. Within a couple of weeks the bracelets are far too big for my wrists. Either the metal is stretching or my wrists are getting smaller. Neither seems plausible…
• Kimberly: I am losing ALL of my friends to cities far far away. I want to get out of Cleveland too, but I have to be here until December. I have no idea what I am going to do with myself all the time. Maybe I’ll put some schnapps in my hot tea and take up knitting…
• Matthew: I can feel myself mellowing. A little bit each day. I’m not happy about it.

• Dayna: Anyone who met me freshman or sophomore year met me at a rather strange time in my life. Everyone I knew was killing themselves or going crazy, and I was going crazy… It was just all-around good times.

• Brad: “Cunt.” While the liberation came at the age of 15, I wasn’t able to say it because my sisters (who are larger than me) would have pummeled me. However, upon realizing the effect this has, I haven’t stopped. Call a woman a cunt and she stops dead in her tracks with shock, giving you enough time to maneuver out of a situation.
• Matthew: The most obvious answer that comes to mind is when Bryan started to openly refer to Toby’s boyhole and the things we’d like to do to it and/or put in it during DAILY (hourly?!) conversation. It’s now gone so far that we have created the International Bank of Toby, which was unrelated to his boyhole, until we surmised that you must insert an object (either Excalibur or your own penis) into his boyhole in order to make a cash withdrawal. I am not so certain that Bryan coined the term “boyhole,” as it may have been me. Hmmm.
• Toby: I stayed away from the word “Jew” as an adjective (or as a noun for that matter) until I befriended Joe Hennes, my resident Jewish friend. And now, I say it all the Jewin’ time.
• Carrie S: I used to have trouble saying that I had an emotionally abusive mother who treated me like shit and ignored my needs, but now that she admits as much, I feel licensed to say so at will.
• Brian E: Not so much a person as a place. While living in Arizona, I had the distinct feeling that I had to get out, to experience new places and cultures. Now that I live in DC, I look back on those idle thoughts from my days at UA and think, what the F? DC is cold and rainy, Arizona is dry and wonderful. DC is green and sometimes cherry blossom-y, Arizona is consistently brown and soothing. DC has liberated me to be able to repeat the phrase “Arizona is God’s gift to the world” about 17 times a day, much to the displeasure of friends who come from obviously inferior places, like everywhere else.
• Katie: It’s a combo: Once, I was trying to get some information from this guy I used to work with, and he “jokingly” says, “Get away from me.” What an ass. On a separate occasion, as a dinner party was winding down, he goes, “I think we’re done here.” Not “We should do this again soon” or “This was nice” — “I think we’re done here.” What an ass. But anyway, those two phrases stuck in my head — just how he said them — and the other day on the Metro at 8:30 in the fucking morning, this lady makes me take off my headphones so she can tell me, “I’ll assume you’re not from around here. There’s no eating or drinking on the Metro. [I had a very secure travel coffee mug which I was using to transport, not to drink, my coffee.] It’s a $50 dollar fine, so…”
  “Get away from me.”
  “Whuh…”
  “We’re done here.”
  SO liberating.

• Brad: In second grade, I had to take the class “chameleon” home for Thanksgiving break. (I was trying desperately to impress the class at this time, because a few weeks earlier I had worn shorts to school when no one else did, and I cried to go home the entire day.) I had to feed this thing mealworms and spray his cage with water. I overdid it, and the mealworms got a bit “ripe” and hatched in his stomach. As I was bringing him into the classroom, a roach-like creature that is an adult mealworm ate its way out of his body, shocking the class and resulting in tears and hatred for me for the rest of my second grade career.
• Dayna: While living with my sister, she left town for a few days, so I bought another dog. According to her (as she hurled a phone at my head), that was a violation of trust.
• Katie: My parents went out of town and left the car at home once when I was 15 or 16. I promptly had a party and got drunk for, like, the first time ever. Popular people who had never talked to me came over and put beer cans all over Grandma’s antiques. At about 3 a.m., I drunk drove ___________ home, who further impaired my driving by covering my eyes and crawling all over the driver’s seat throughout the trip. I scraped up the side of the car when I got back to the garage.
  I did have a good time; I did not have a driver’s license.
• Kimberly: Story of my life! Apparently, I am trusted to be a long-term friend, but somehow that all goes to shit once I decide the friendship cannot possibly turn into a romantic relationship. I am such a bitch (or a slut, depending on who you ask).
• Matthew: People trust me with their deepest darkest secrets. Really, it is quite foolish of them to do this, as it is almost certain that I will divulge these secrets at the most inappropriate time possible, maximizing the shame — Tree of Trust be damned. I believe that people tell me these things because they wish they could tell the world, but don’t have the balls to do so. I have the balls. Bryan is not ____________. Oops!!! Bad balls, bad!
• Carrie S: God put his temple in my care and I am constantly filling it with booze and smoke and cock. Thanks for the rad temple, God!

• Carrie S: I would have LOVED it if when the President choked on that pretzel, it had been on 9/11 and it would have outed him as sitting around eating pretzels while we were under attack instead of when he was still thought of as a harmless stupid naive frat boy.
• Toby: You mean, like when someone at work offers me a wonderful cookie, and it’s not the weekend, so I can’t eat it?
• Katie: When I was little, I got anything I wanted. I could REALLY use that setup NOW and for the REST OF MY LIFE.

• Matthew: Sitting with Sean in a sports bar watching the Browns vs. Steelers, drinking chilled Yukon. I find myself craving pussy just thinking about it.
• Ian: Straight bars are pretty bad. I mean, REALLY straight bars… Panini’s in Berea makes me the most uncomfortable, I think. Like, I’m so uncomfortable that I keep my coat on just in case I need to dash for the door!
• Brad: I work at this camp for terminally ill children, and when I’m there I actually feel guilty about hating the people/children that are there. It’s so weird to feel bad about hating something.
  It’s like a drug, and I go summer after summer.
• Toby: No, but substances have strange effects on me. Consider:
  

  - The Chipotle High: The feeling of absolute satisfaction you get while leaving your preferred Chipotle establishment, sipping your newly-refilled Diet Coke with a real lemon(!) inside.
  - The Coffee Zips: Everything is a little wackier with a little caffeine.
  - The Getting-the-Mail Highs-and-Lows: I’m always so excited to get the mail, then ever so disappointed when none of the mail is for me, and most of it is actually for people who no longer reside in my apartment.

• Carrie S: TRI-FUCKING-NESSA. Stay off the Trinessa, ladies! Six months of nearly punching people in the face, crying every time I walked into my apartment, ranting about EVERYTHING, being clingy and needy and selfish and fat and pimply and bored and frigid… (shudder)
• Katie: Vodka is the only liquor that doesn’t make me sick, buuuut it makes me black out sometimes. It is during these blackouts that I have made my most oft-quoted monologues (apparently). These include a teary description of my close personal relationship with Elliott Smith on the night he died and an affectionate interaction with a hamster whom I assured that, yes, he could “eat my buttons because I’m Jesus.” Hmm.

• Tiffany: Last year when I was baking pumpkin pies in your kitchen while drinking one of your fabulous appletinis, I felt like an alcoholic 1950s housewife. I’m really domestic like back in the fifties, but I can still kick back and party like it’s 1999! A hipper version of Donna Reed, if you will.
• Jenn: Most old people find red hair to be a throwback to some long-past era. The funny part is that they often feel that they can talk about things from “back then” with me and I will automatically understand because I look like some girl they knew at that time.
• Carrie S: I happily embrace Enlightenment values. Every complex idea can be broken down into our sensory perception of it? Yo, I’m on it. Deductive reasoning kicks inductive reasoning’s ass? You bet. People are inherently good and they need a little breathing room to test out their ethical fiber? Word, mothafucka.
• Brian E: I’d like to believe that I’m like a good Pistol Pete throwback jersey. My pale skin hurts the eyes much like the bright yellow of Pistol Pete’s uniform, and I grow on people in the same way that the jersey looks kinda garish at first but is indispensable by the fourth time you wear it.
• Katie: I really like the rationality of etiquette and little rules. I still follow Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers. If the escalator is overstuffed with people who are standing on the left when they should be passing on the left standing on the right, I will NOT be part of the problem by also standing on the left and incrementally perpetuating the retarded foot-traffic jam. I DON’T like to cross the street against the signal. I ALWAYS move to the center of the Metro car. I’m holding the door for bitches ALL the time. Manners exist for a REASON, people, and they help keep me from going insane.
• Toby: I have an overwhelming feeling that I will long be considered a delightful throwback to an era before the Democratic Party fizzled into oblivion. Future interaction:

  Me: “No, but people deserve health care.”
  Crowd of Americans: “Hahahaha.”
  Me: “Guys, I’m serious. And, you know, I think we should give our children access to quality public schooling.”
  Crowd (getting larger): “Oh, look at him. He’s so cute… and short! And just listen to him go!”
  Me: “Is anyone listening?! The government needs to look out for the little guy, not the big corporations.”
  Crowd: “Ooh, he’s getting riled up. You tell ‘em, Truman!”
  Me: “Because the powerful people can take care of itself. And AIDS in Africa… or New York… good God, abstinence-only?! Are you kidding?!”
  Crowd: “It’s like watching a black-and-white movie! (somebody else) Or slap bracelets! (another) Oh, I miss those days… but not Democrats. They hated freedom.”

• Rich: I was at Camp Metigoshe in North Dakota as a counselor-in-training. My best friend Matt and I were there, both 15 at the time. There were two men sitting on the couch next to us, and one of them got up to go to bed. He leaned over and kissed the other guy goodnight. Matt and I looked at each other with that “Did-they-just-kiss-and-are-they-gay?” look. We asked around if they were gay, and everyone said, “No… why?” When we told them what horror we had witnessed, they laughed and said, “No, they’re not gay. They’re just close.”
  We learned that you can show love to your friends without sticking it in them. I immediately became one affectionate motherfucker. Still am.
• Carrie S: Like an epiphany? Every damn day. Recently, it was that I’m not tragically in love with a boyfriend who can’t repay my devotion, but that I’ve been on motherfucking Trinessa for six months. Anyone could mistake it for love.
• Kimberly: I am intimidating. I’m not exactly sure why. I can see why a 5-foot boy would be scared, but 6-foot boys definitely should not be. I am a nice girl inside.
• Matthew: The time I realized that ______ is most assuredly not wearing underwear at any given time. My life has never been the same.
• Dayna: Crystal Pepsi is never coming back.

• Toby: Most stereotypes are fairly accurate. Humans use them to help facilitate organization of knowledge and to quickly recall facts stored away years ago. Like, trees are usually brown with green leaves. Most Mexicans are dirty and like to race cars. Most Frenchies smell bad and hate peanut butter (and, therefore, freedom). Most blacks are welfare moms who are taking all the jobs I’m qualified for and taking away the scholarship that would have gone to me while they sit back on their couch, watching reruns of A Different World and pumping out more taxpayer-funded babies. Most gays like anal sex.
  See — stereotypes are beautiful. Like white, skinny women.
• Kimberly: Girls can do it too! Why do people always assume that I know less than the boy sitting next to me? He’d better watch out, because I could probably kick his ass on an exam and then physically beat him up afterward! Oh… maybe that’s why I’m intimidating.
• Rich: That homos don’t have crushes on all of their male friends. Hoo, boy… I gotta watch my back CONSTANTLY.
• Carrie S: I’m bothered by the whole victim thing. First, all women are victims of male sexual desire. Thanks for the complex, Andrea Dworkin. Then, it was that all women are victims of sexism in the workplace. So helpful for my self-image when seeking preferment. Now, it’s fashionable to see all mothers as woeful victims of ideals of social perfection that they can’t attain. But this doesn’t happen to all mothers. It only happens to bourgeois bitches in their 40s who plan their babies for March birthdays and look forward to motherhood to be a blissful retirement from expectation. (Seriously, all the kids in Park Slope have March and April birthdays. It’s terrifying.) The rest of the world just gets pregnant and deals.
• Katie: Not all women with short haircuts and a slightly aggressive gaits are lesbians. Turns out, this becomes many straight women of a certain age, and my office is teaming with ‘em. And, there’s a lesbian here who’s smokin’ hot. Within the same week, I heard one bulldyke mention her “husband” and the smokin’ hot lesbian mention “the Missus” for the first time. We’re always gasping and chuckling and having afternoon tea because it’s QUITE the comedy of manners around here.
• Ian: How about that Indians are smart?! I think they’re the cheapest, most annoying motherfuckers ever created! When it’s sale time at Express they come out in DROVES! I’m convinced they have a listserv and e-mail each other when there’s a sale, and they fucking stock up on shit! They buy the ugliest, most ill-fitting shit EVER just because it’s on sale! AND, when you buy shit because it’s cheap, you return it. SO, I not only have to put up with their rude annoyances DURING the sale, but their returns after the sale as well. Not to mention their constant questioning year-round about when the next sale is. Booooo.
• Matthew: They’re not all true??

• Jenn: My friend called me to try to tell me about getting engaged. She opened the conversation with “I have some news…” and I didn’t really want to know that she was engaged (because I don’t care for her now-fiancée) so I just kept talking and talking and didn’t let her tell me about it. Finally, at the end of the conversation she went back and was like, “Oh, by the way, we got engaged last night.” Someone who was with me had to remind me to say congratulations.
• Toby: Almost every time I’m in a church of some sort, I feel like everyone knows I’m a heathen and is just waiting for me to do something awful. I feel that people fully expect me to run up and strangle the preacher, before exclaiming, “Satan lives! Satan lives!” and pouring rats’ blood all over the place. Or try to take communion or something.
• Matthew: OMG, so many of these come to mind. Mostly they revolve around all the obscenely stupid people we used to associate with, but have since trimmed off the body of our lean and efficient circle of friends like the social butchers that we are.
• Katie: The Truth Tree Triangle — Matt and Bryan and I have inexplicably decided to be honest with each other — creates more elephants than I could count. God, I love those elephants.
• Carrie S: You mean like someone had an erection? I always miss out on stuff like this. Oh — once I blushed really really hard when I was talking to an old roommate’s cute friend and he mentioned his girlfriend. I turned a violent shade of purple because I was kind of thinking about how cute he was at the moment. No one said a thing. It was too obvious.
• Ian: Do JLight’s tits flopping around in all directions count?
• Brad: So this year at Christmas, we brought my grandma over from the nursing home. (This is the grandma that looks like Ursula the Sea Witch, minus tentacles.) Anyway, the whole family, like 30 of us, are sitting around eating Christmas dinner when my grandma THROWS UP AND CATCHES IT ON HER PLATE. This is my WASP side of the family and no one says anything. My mom helps her (because she’s a nurse or something), but everyone else continues eating and looks away, avoiding eye contact. I look around, shocked that no one else is repulsed and laughing like I am.
  I bring it up all the time, like, “Remember that time…” and they all tell me to stop talking about it. Crazy.

• Jenn: My new pet peeve, about which I’ve become very outspoken, is people using clichés or other common words/phrases, but either saying them incorrectly or using them in an inappropriate context. For instance, my coworker said, “Our audience numbers would increase expotentially.” I am sure that she meant to say “exponentially,” which is still incorrect, but at least spelled and pronounced correctly. I did not correct her on this one for the sake of workplace peace and tranquility.
• Tiffany: I’m cool with the fact that the building I work in is more or less condemned, that my hallway is under massive construction, and that I have to wear a hard hat and safety goggles anytime I leave my office or lab.
• Katie: I’m manic depressive over the peak oil crisis. There’s no consoling me.
  Accordingly, I’ve cooled off on the issue of energy conservation. It’s just too late. Fuck it.
• Ian: I’ve totally chilled out with gender politics, the equal rights shit, and the drive to get a job in my field of degree. I HAVE, however, kicked up the partying, the fashion factor, the business administration part of my life, and my superior knowledge of Roseanne and Murphy Brown. NICK AT NITE MOTHERFUCKING ROCKS! Genius doesn’t punch a time clock!

• Matthew: Hey world, have a beer. I said godDAMN.
• Carrie S: A treadmill. Is that cruel?
• Kimberly: Are we talking about Mother Earth? She should definitely smile a little more and make this place bright and sunshine-y all the time! I’d be fine with her doing a little something about all the pollution and grossness, too. Maybe we could arrange a little garbage pickup as well.
• Brad: Love your body, sure, but realize when you’re a fat pig and need to hide yourself from the rest of the world.
• Brian E: “Put down those Oreos, world, and let’s go for a run!”

• Katie: I’m doing my taxes right now at work! No, no — I’m doing my Questions of the Week instead of doing my taxes instead of doing my work. Are those the Feds? Am I fired?
• Kimberly: I used to struggle with combing/brushing my hair. It was pretty long (midway down my back), but I was certain the shampoo would do its job and give me no more tangles. It must not have worked because Mommy chopped off all of my beautiful hair and I looked like a boy…
• Ian: I pretty much let EVERYTHING slide until the last possible minute. This especially applies to credit card bills, cell phone bills, and student loan payments — if that shit ain’t online, I’S FUCKED!
• Dayna: I avoided breaking up with my last boyfriend because I had moved out of state and was hoping it would just work itself out. However, since I waited so long, by the time I got around to breaking up with him, I was mere moments and technicalities away from dating the next boy.
• Toby: Remember my tail?
• Jenn: This is pretty much the story of my college career. However, the most memorable instance of this was when I was in fifth grade (I started procrastinating young), when we were assigned a project that required us to watch the weather on the news each night for five nights. The news was on at the same time as Saved By The Bell (syndicated on WGN), so I decided it was a stupid project and I wasn’t going to do it, so I didn’t. (It’s unclear where my irresponsible parents were at this time.) I came in to school on the day the project was due and I simply hadn’t done it. My teacher was so shocked. I guess that had never happened before, so he made me redo it and I think I got a C. That basically set the tone for the rest of my academic life.
• Rich: I had a project in an undergrad theatre class where I and two others were supposed to write a big paper doing some sort of analysis on… one of the characters in Chekhov’s Three Sisters. I have no idea who it was. Anyway, we had two months to do the project, and it was to culminate in a class-long presentation of the paper. The night before the presentation, we had our first meeting. We met at a cigar bar in Fargo and sat around a poker table, spreading papers everywhere. While we smoked cigars and watched the movie Rounders, which was playing at the bar, we discussed what we might be able to do to look like we did any work. One of my partners pulled out a packet of pages he had downloaded from the internet. He had found a site where some guy in a masters program somewhere had done an analysis very similar to what we were supposed to have done, and we decided to use his entire paper as the basis for ours.
  We stayed up until four or five, finally deciding that there was little more to be done, and we would just have to “go for it.” In the morning, when we met at my apartment, someone suggested that we should dress up for our presentation. So, each of us donned a “costume” of sorts, claiming to each be a different possible interpretation of the character. One of us was in our regular dress, one in a suit, and one in a straw hat and red and white jacket — a vaudevillian interpretation.
  Needless to say, the presentation did not go well. About halfway through, when we had already proven that none of the ideas were our own anyway, we announced that we had plagarized the entire paper. Luckily, the professor liked us a tiny bit. Don’t get me wrong: he was not pleased with the presentation, and our grades reflected such. But he did kind of laugh a little at our honesty, and required us each to read a scene from the play in the style of our respective costumes.
  I got a D. One of many.
• Tom W: One time, a friend of mine was sending out these e-mails to people, asking them to answer silly questions he came up with. I was pretty good about mailing them in for awhile, then I just stopped. About a year later I sent him a new one — can you believe my embarrassment!?

• Dayna: Well, politics. But I love a good fight, so I egg them on.
• Toby: I think the only issue that provokes wildly varying positions from my friends is affirmative action. And that’s because I only befriend racists. Gay-friendly racists.
• Tom W: The age of girls I should date — I say, “Hey, as long as you know long division… we’re cool.”
• Kimberly: Please tell me exactly WTF is wrong with white socks. At least I wear black socks with black pants and/or shoes. So what if I don’t have any “fun” socks? Are little pink frogs ever necessary?
• Carrie S: NYC bars. I happen to think, à la Cleveland, that the very best thing a person can do is pick one decent, comfortable bar where you like the ambiance and staff and where the drinks are affordable and go there all the time, for the rest of your life. My NYC friends, however, think one should go to a different bar every time, and always within the narrow realm of popular-right-now places, regardless of price or service, but also dependent upon a delicate balance of temporal factors including too-crowded/dead, too-female/too-male, too-straight/too-gay, too-loud/too-quiet, etc. A quote of a conversation I recently had: “Hey, let’s go to Piano’s!” I say, trying to be “cool.” Friend: “Ohmigod. Piano’s? What is this, 2003?”
• Ian: Well, my hell-bound friends share different views than myself on guns, birth control, faggotry, and my lord and savior Jesus Christ. BUSH FOR POPE ‘08!!!!

• Dayna: I thought I finally had the nail biting thing under control, until a stressful week led to the disappearance of my delightful talons.
• Carrie S: Well, I thought I had kicked the habit of telling not-funny jokes involving the high likelihood of my own eventual suicide in order to win pity in a pinch, but apparently not.
• Katie: I don’t seem to tackle problems; I just add on. Newly, I have a lot of trouble with crosswalks.
• Ian: I’ve finally tackled the problem of being a shopaholic. Now I know not to fight the urges to buy everything I want, because in the end, it makes everyone happy. And by everyone I mean myself. But a happy Ian means a happy world. Trust me, my bumper sticker says so.

• Ian: I would never utter such a phrase! I am good, pure, innocent, and inoffensive. Yay bland Americana! Who wants interest when you can have generic, unthoughtful seriousness?!?!
• Jenn: I make a lot of really conceited jokes. I always say that I’m kidding (or half-kidding) after them, and I sometimes mean it.
• Carrie S: I got in the really bad habit of saying “motherfucker!” all the time. I tried to stop myself by thinking, “Only people in prison say motherfucker!” but it didn’t help.
• Tiffany: I (along with the rest of the chemistry grad students) tend to talk bad about our students and laugh at how dumb/spoiled/annoying they are. Grading sessions are highly amusing — “Fail a pre-med, save a life!”
• Toby: Our not-so-sensitive remarks about Terri Schiavo have yielded similar statements from me. The only difference is that I blame Bryan and Matt for my insensitivity there. So, it’s more like:
  Toby: “Have you heard about the Terri Schaivo dance?”
  Bryan: “No…” (smiles)
  Toby: (dancing, thinking to himself): “Bryan’s such a bad person.”
• Dayna: I cannot stand the FedEx woman. Mind you, she has never been anything but pleasant — perhaps dangerously pleasant and perky. But I hate her! And I can’t help it!

• Tom W: A lot of my dreams involved being kidnapped and no one noticing.
  You guys are assholes.
• Rich: The only recurring thing that ever happens in my dreams is the ability to glide. Not fly, really… just glide along the ground. It’s like I can take a step that will carry my for an entire block. Only inches off the ground, but I float merrily along. I’m always disappointed to wake up and not actually have that ability.
• Toby: The only dreams that seem to be recurring have been ones where I’ve become an obsessive-compulsive or some other sort of freak. One time, I nearly lost it when I felt compelled to count the number of tiny tiles in a big ballroom floor. Another time I felt that my hand had gotten too big.
• Ian: All of my best merchandising/visual ideas come to me in my sleep. I race to my store the next day to execute the ingenious ideas, and they are as spectacular in person as they were in my dream. Shit, even my coworkers are doing it now! The other day my co-manager came into work telling me how she had dreamed that I merchandised the denim on floating shelves and she was amazed.
• Pete W: As a child, I used to dream that I slept on an infinite bed of breasts.
• Dayna: My dreams are frequently extremely realistic and boring. That is, I dream things and then think that they actually happened, because why would I make that up?
• Kimberly: Cookie Monster! Too bad it’s more of a recurring super-scary nightmare.
• Katie: I haven’t noticed one for a while, but in middle school the recurring theme was sharp objects/weapons. Almost all of my dreams were period pieces where I was fighting for my life, and the sharp object either threatened me or defended me or both. There were the medieval twin princes, one of whom bested me at sword play; the farming tool that my “brother” used to save me from the ancient Romans who wanted to burn me at the stake; the scissors I used to defend myself against three thugs in the desert… The list goes on. I used to think it was weird, but I’m pretty sure all these weapons were just phalluses (yawn). I was a pretty hard-up little kid.
• Carrie S: In all my recent dreams, someone who I think holds pretty neutral or positive feelings about me suddenly turns to me and says, “Jesus, Carrie, this is why everyone hates you.”

• Kimberly: Are you suggesting a first kiss? I sure hope not, because mine was AWFUL! Just awful. Ugh.
• Ian: Friday’s Pizzadillas… OH WAIT, I WOULDN’T FUCKING KNOW SINCE I NEVER GOT A SECOND CHANCE TO EAT THEM!
• Toby: Front Page Corona bucket Thursdays — a now-retired tradition of DC Toby and Bryan. The first time (when it was decided that F.P. Thursdays would be a tradition), we weren’t crowded out or forced to stand in a nook near the kitchen. We also didn’t feel offended by the heterosexuality running rampant in the room.
• Jenn: Christmas. Well, not my VERY first Christmas, because I was being born on that one, but the first year I had presents. There was a pile bigger than I was tall, and I got to open them at my own pace and play with each one. I received a puppy that was battery operated and he barked and did flips. I LOVED it! That was my first and best Christmas gift ever. Since that first year, my family has lost interest entirely in watching me open gifts.
• Katie:

  - Dance Dance Revolution
  - Falling in love

• Tom W: The internet, gangsta rap, the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” lady, and AIDS.
• Kimberly: Slouch socks, tightly rolled pants, slap bracelets, NKOTB, Fraggle Rock, the Smurfs, TGIF.
• Jenn: Slap bracelets, yuppie angst, Dirty Dancing, and Full House.
• Katie: Longing for a time when: quality music, like grunge and intellectual hip hop, topped the charts; The Real World often featured political and sociological discussions among non-retards; gas was motherfuckin’ CHEAP; the president was motherfuckin’ SMART; there was hope. Assimilation into an adult reality of constant anger, intermittently numbed/inflamed by Paris Hilton.
• Toby: Mainly, a disconnect from all revelant matters in society ties our generation together. Fuck Africans with AIDS, I’m eating my Chipotle!
• Pete W: As lame as it sounds, the technological advances of the past 10 to 15 years. The internet has been truly revolutionary — it’s binding us together right now! NERD ALERT!
• Ian:

  - Fiestada (now allegedly being served at a local tavern, which I intend to investigate immediately)
  -Super Mario Bros 3!
  - T.G.I.F. — the ORIGINAL TV lineup, not the knock-off schedule, and not the restaurant
  - Random CD mixes arriving in the mail at odd times throughout the year
  - Growing up (for the most important years of your childhood) during the glorious years of a Democrat president; a time when everything in the world was PERFECT!
  - Knowing everything about strangers via their blogs to the point that you think they’re your real friends
  - Dick’s Bakery chocolate chip cookies
  - Bryan’s ridiculous appletinis
  - Having a multitude of homosexuals in your circle of friends… MULTIPLES!!!

• Carrie S: This may not apply to the younger end of the QotW generation; I’m not sure. But, on a fundamental level, people my age remember a time when spending money on clothes and gadgets was considered vain. We were so sincere, in our threadbare flannel…
• Rich: Fuck off. 1978. Missed it by a year.

• Kimberly: Do people not have mirrors? I mean, seriously. I’m talking about people that could most definitely find just about anything more flattering to do with themselves.
• Ian: I’m reminded how different we all are when I’m hanging out with a guy and he tries to talk about how hot a female passer-by is. I’m reminded that we’re not all so different when I’m hanging out with a guy and he tries to go down on me.
• Toby: One time I was having a pleasant conversation with my friends, and then somebody mentioned my boyhole and I felt violated. But mostly I felt different — very, very different — from them.
• Dayna: Often when I am reading the responses to the Questions of the Week, I am reminded how different people are.
• Tom W: When I hear people say “Hand me the clicker.” Go fuck yourself.
• Katie: FIRST, Charis (my muse at work) and I are chatting about how she found a great deal on diapers. Me, I got some bananas on sale. We’re all just doing what we can to get by in this crazy world of one-thing-after-another, and we can find camaraderie and comfort by sharing our little trials and triumphs. THEN, the creepy janitor “teases” me by saying he thought about me this weekend. Nope! Wrong again. Hell is other people, and I’d like everybody to get away from me right now.

• Kimberly: I learned somehow that I should be mean to my brother. This included:
  1. Making fun of him whenever the opportunity arose
  2. Shoving him up against the wall if he made fun of me
  3. Tripping him when he was LEARNING to walk
• Katie: There’s The Worst Story I Ever Heard, which I won’t recount here, because then everyone will want to unlearn it. I’ll just say it involved sex, Mexico, blindness and insects. I just vomited everywhere.
• Carrie S: Whether various people are circumcised or not.
• Tom W: I would like to unlearn the dialogue to Horny Old Broads.

• Tom W: The best of times was when Bryan was being original with his questions. The worst of times was when he put shit like this question on.
• Rich: “Now” is always the best of times. Junior high was the worst. (Then again, college was pretty fun. So was grad school. Whatever.)
• Jenn: When my little brother was born. I was eight. I asked if we could “give him back.” I thought he was possibly the worst idea my parents had ever had.
• Toby: I distinctly remember having this thought in the summer of ‘02, when Bryan visited DC, drank up a storm (best of times) and proceeded to strip, break a painting easel owned by Matt’s roommate, and ruin the evening for himself and America (worst of times). But that really is the only example of that summer fitting the Dickensian phrase.
• Pete W: When Bryan introduced me to Excalibur.
• Dayna: Junior year of high school was the peak of my bitterness. I was suffering the humiliation of flag line, because I wanted to go to Ireland. I was working at the movie theater. I was fighting the urge to attack my English teacher by openly insulting her during class. However, I was also driving and staying out later. I had money to spend and good group of friends. It was the best of times and the worst of times.
• Katie: DC Summer 2002: My parents “lost”* all of their money. I lived in Huntington — VIRGINIA — yech. But it was totally OK! I interned from 9:00-1:00, worked from 2:00-10:00, partied ‘til 3:00 or 4:00, slept ‘til 6:00, and Metro’d home to shower and change and get back to Freeing the Planet! again by 9:00 — EVERY DAY. I was a MACHINE. I was skinny and tan without even TRYING. Eating mounds of junk food went from being a luxury to a sort of experiment to see if I’d ever gain weight again.** It was so, so hot and the beer was so, so cold, and parties almost always ended up naked.
  * Bush’s fault
  ** I did

Ian: Some of these questions look a tad bit familiar… RECYLCLED Q’s, B?!

• Dayna: No, thank you.
• Jenn: I’m fairly certain that Toby is already our pet.
  Did you remember to feed him today?
• Ian: Tim is a lot like my pet, I suppose. He’s Mexican, so I have nicknamed him “Nacho” (sometimes “Menudo”) and I have him do everything around the store I don’t feel like doing, with the fact that he’s Mexican as my justification. When he misbehaves I threaten to call immigration. Good Nacho.
• Jeff: I thought we all agreed it would be Tainter, didn’t we? He could have a little bed with his name on it, and we could take him for walks in one of those harness things.
• Carrie S: All my life I have felt lucky when I’ve spent time with a friend who makes me feel suddenly funny, suddenly attractive and intelligent. I have amassed quite a few of these now, so I revert back to the first — my high school friend Julie. Sure, I was closer to other people, and I even laughed more with other people, but when I went out with Julie no one could help listening in on our conversations, hitting on us, wanting to be us… Julie, wherever you are, it would be nice to have you around.
• Pete W: My friend _________. He has a nine-inch penis.
• Mark: I think of most of my friends as fiercely independent outdoor cats — they don’t require my help to feed them, or clean them, or take them to bathroom. One day I might get to watch them have babies (in my closet on my coat) and, later, I will gather them up in a box and give them away by the side of the road to nice-looking families.
• Katie: It’s a tough one — Bryan’s silly and snuggly and it’s hard to get mad at him when he humps the guests, but Matthew is a ferociously loyal and effective protector. I’ll just keep them both as a puppy pair.

• Brad: My mom is currently looking into the reflection of the computer screen that glows off of the windows in the sunroom, and she thinks that I don’t notice. How she doesn’t think I suspect her constant spying, I’m not quite sure, considering she asks specific questions pertaining to headlines that I’m reading on news.bbc.co.uk (my favorite website) from the other room while eating dinner. She also likes to read my e-mails if I leave myself logged into something. I will soon be planting webpages such as “Ways to Kill Overbearing Catholic Mothers and Dispose of Bodies” just to see the reaction.
• Tom K: Sarah L_____. Apparently, her BFA project is to make a restaurant/become a stalker.
• Jenn: Probably you.
• Ian: I would say Bryan is most likely to have me under surveillance with his computer wizardry. He tracks which pages you’ve visited through your hits on his blog (which is full of quotes from confidential convos exposed), as well as always updating my computer when he visits. Shit, girl, for all I know every keystroke is tracked by that boy.
• Toby: I think I’m most likely to pull a Richard Nixon and insist that all of my OWN conversations and crazy rants trigger a tape recorder. And, like Nixon, it will be my downfall.
• Mark: My Big Brother paranoia is the only thing that keeps me from feeling totally alone in life.
• Jeff: Whoever it is, they sure are seeing a lot of masturbating.
• Carrie S: My parent are definitely surveilling me at this very moment in crude, slow ways. Par example, mother makes me a big batch of cookies. She doesn’t send them to my house — oh no — that’s her more traditional way of finding out how often I’m home by calling UPS and asking exactly when the attempted deliveries were. This time she sent them to my boyfriend’s house, with his name on the outside of the package, but my name on the inside. This tests two things — Is Robert good enough to me to leave the cookies unopened until I come over? (Of course not. No one is. My mom’s cookies are too good. He and his two young sons are probably eating them for breakfast as I type.) — and When does Carrie go over to his house? (Thursdays. Duh. Damn cookies will be gone by then.) She could just ask me these things, fer chrissakes.
• Katie: As the only child of doting/crazy parents, I imagine myself to be under surveillance by everyone all the time. Life’s a movie starring me. I don’t really want to be in the movie; I just want to be by myself, but I’m never by myself because I’m always being expectantly watched and scrutinized and judged, so I do what I can to be inconspicuous, but it’s not easy to be inconspicuous when everything you do is so perfect/horribly wrong… “Don’t look at me! … Look at me!” …I LOVE YOU, MOM!

• Jenn: I would like to spend a night in a Nine West store, please. That would provide me with ample time to try on every shoe in sight, and then try them all on again. And perhaps even eat one of them. I’ve always wondered about that… Never mind.
• Tom K: Melmac, the planet that ALF came from. ALF’s the shit.
• Toby: I’ve always felt very comfortable in office buildings and cubicles, especially when nobody’s around. I just feel so at home and cozy in the sterile, walled-off surroundings.
• Katie: Do we have a “Toby’s boyhole” response yet? Just curious.
• Mark: Ricky Schroder’s house from Silver Spoons. Technically, it is probably a sound stage. I really don’t think there is any reason to elaborate — don’t you remember the little train, and/or how hot Rick Schroder is?
• Jeff: Central Park, in a tent. ‘Cause that’s where I’m gonna fucking end up anyway. I’m never going to find an apartment in this fucking city.

• Jenn: Not really, but I am SHOCKED by the influence I allow others to have over me, particularly when it comes to food/drinks. I will have in mind exactly what I want to order — I probably will have thought of it hours, even days in advance — but as soon as I hear someone order something else I MUST HAVE what they ordered. I get all flustered and just blurt out whatever they just said, despite all of my careful planning.
• Dayna: In high school, my friend Angie and I were described as “bullies” by another friend, because we have strong personalities and the ability to bend our friends’ desires in line with our own.
• Brad: Because of my gossiping expertise and open attitude towards my love for the practice, I find that others fall under my gossiping intoxication and just can’t hold back from talking about others’ misfortune, as well as judging from afar. For example, when I joined my fraternity, they were against talking about each other. Can you believe it?? Soon after my joining, they couldn’t stop, and now the fraternity is divided into factions that gossip about each other to no end. This, along with the great Adam E____ scandal, is one of my prouder moments in gossip history.
• Ian: By this age I’ve really come to expect it. Now, if people don’t do what I tell or expect them to, I am genuinely offended.
• Jeff: In college (and to a lesser extent today), I wielded the power to change people’s cadence of speech and their vocabularies. It was crazy! People would hang out with me for a few weeks and they all would start talking like me and using phrases that I was using. I never really understood it, but I guess that’s my gift, and my burden.
• Carrie S: I used to create the zeitgeist by a wave of my paw, but no longer. Alas, the magic of pop is gone. OH! The one thing I still have is the ability to change other people’s lipstick color by wearing my own absolutely inappropriate shade of Ruby (by Lola). Ever since I started wearing this decidedly chilly, terrifyingly red (with blue tinge) color, I am seeing it everywhere.
• Katie: People at my work have multiple doctorates from the most elite institutions in the world, and hold the lives of millions of misérbles in their competent, angel-of-mercy hands. So it’s sometimes unnerving how often they come to stupid me for advice. There’s the obvious: how do I fix the margins?, how do I connect the projector?, etc. But I think a lot of them don’t realize how low-level my job is. I was helping this one guy prepare a presentation, and he sits me down and literally says, “Generalized epidemics: whadya got?” !!??!! Sometimes I think they think I know what I’m doing.
• Pete W: Sadly, I’m more surprised by my complete lack of influence over others. People ignore me on a regular basis, although I won’t name names. Granted, I’m usually talking out of my ass, or completely incorrect, or just being stupid, but there is an occassional nugget of truth that slips out, almost always unnoticed. The worth of said nugget is what keeps me going, at least until I have some alcohol in my system, then I just let out all of the bitterness I’ve been storing up since the last time I got drunk. I’m fun…

• Brad: Sarah L_____. While I hardly know her, I find myself obsessed with her and would love to know the forces that created such a being as is Sarah L_____ circa 2004-5. It would help me when I tell people about her and pretend we’re best friends and then they ask more detailed questions about her, and then it is revealed that we’re only mere acquaintances and I’m just a big wannabe Sarah L_____ friend.
• Jeff: Annie _______. No question. Not just because my friends and I assume that she is already dead whenever she is not in our immediate company, but because I just have a feeling that she is currently living that one part in the program where the narrating guy goes, “But how could anyone keep living a lifestyle so full of drugs and sex? Something had to change — and soon.” (Cut to dramatic music, montage, and commercials.) [Does Annie _______ read these questions? I don’t think you should post her name. It seems in poor taste. She may already be dead.]
• Carrie S: My students. One of them, an incredibly intelligent and beautiful British girl, used to come in all bright-eyed and chipper, but recently she’s started to fade. We read Blake’s Proverbs of Hell and I think she took them seriously. Also, this other girl, a conservative Muslim with a headscarf, gobbles up anything we read about sex and obscenity. Loves. it. What’s going on with these girls? Maybe their friends will spill.
• Katie: You know, we’re all part of Toby’s Behind the Music right now, but that’s boring, ‘cause he actually makes music. Let’s see, who’s got a sordid and colorful past that I don’t know too much about and for which a Behind the Music would be both informative and entertaining? I’ll go with IAN! Haven’t seen that bioch in forever, and I know he’s got great made-for-reenactment stories.
• Ian: How about the elusive life of KBWatts? SERIOUSLY, what the fuck has that girl been up to for the past four years?! Well, aside from becoming a mother…
• Toby: I think it’d be interesting for everyone who receives Bryan’s mixes to know how much insanity goes into them. I mean, sure, they all know that you care about what you do, but I’m not sure people really know that you have your summer catalogue mapped out — at the very least, you’ve pitched a concept to yourself — in January.
• Tiffany: This one girl here at Stanford would be perfect, because she has the most DRAMA in her life of anyone that I know. And no, it is not just stuff that happens to her; she creates most of it herself. Some might find her irritating, but the shows that have irritating people can be really fun to watch, because you can just laugh at them the whole time.
  Incidentally, this is an old question.
• Mark: The Noid. His sweet tale of fame-too-soon and loss must be heard.

• Tiffany: This is also an old question! See my response from a couple years ago…
• Jeff: The Citibank Tower, and with it all of my student loans.
• Mark: Andrew Lloyd Weber.
• Ian: I fear saying anything because of the Patriot Act.

• Jenn: Way-too-old-to-look-that-innocent chic.
  Did I make that up? I swear I read it in InStyle.
• Katie: According to Bryan, I have ditsy chic until you talk to me “for, like… 10 minutes.”
• Ian: Mmm, I always found Chic jeans appealing. “You make me feel…” Remember those bitches up in the ‘80’s?! You know you ain’t Chic unless it’s doodled across your ass.

• Brad: One of those fountains — only found at white trash weddings — that spouts vodka and orange juice, to the delight of all crowded into the cheap banquet facility.
• Jenn: A Vanilla Coke fountain. Or perhaps an intravenous Vanilla Coke drip, but that might be gross…
• Jeff: A urinal! I know that Kim has one in her house, but I don’t think we can count her home as “traditional.” I love that shit! Standin’ and pissin’!
• Tiffany: A water slide into my giant bathtub! It would require a rather large bathroom, but just think how much fun that would be! I would be so clean…
• Carrie S: Wood-burning oven. Yay hearth.
• Mark: Hobo camp.
• Pete W: As a child, I confidently felt that the contraptions found in Pee Wee Herman’s house represented the ultimate in home entertainment and excess. However, as MTV’s Cribs has shown me, this idea is completely false…
  Who am I kidding? I have no idea where I’m even going with this.

• Mark: Make no apologies. I was asking for it.
• Dayna: There seem to be a lot of people who think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy anymore!!
• Tom K: I’m not that hairy — I just have dark hair.
• Brad: That I’m a super-flaming homosexual. I like to at least think that I’m not super flaming. I don’t even use the term “boyhole” on a regular basis!
• Jeff: I’m lazy, but I’m not, like, leg-atrophying lazy.
• Katie: I have never dumped _______. He has only ever dumped me.
• Ian: Apparently, EVERYONE I know is operating under the misconception that every time I talk to them I want them to ask me about moving away and getting a “real job.” Mmmm I love being belittled and made out to be a worthless piece of shit since I’m not working in my field of degree! DO IT MORE!!!!
• Tiffany: WTF, B? I’m pretty sure this is an old question, too!

• Tiffany: AND SO IS THIS ONE!!!
• Toby: Right now, I’m with my laundry, which I’m about to fold.
• Ian: Hmm, that’s a good question. I feel naked without a blazer. I wear ties about once before retiring them to my tie DRAWER. I have an obsession with watches. I own about 100 sweaters. I have a primary closet, an auxilary closet, and overflow in the attic. I’m crazy like that.
• Jeff: I’m trying, fucker! Leave me alone!
• Pete W: Call me?

Kimberly: I will do my best to answer these questions, but I am afraid many of them do not pertain to me. Reasons being:

1. I am not gay.
2. I am not a boy and thus I do not have a boyhole.

• Pete W: My boss Mike. He’s a trade attorney, and he’s VERY charming. His mood depends on whether or not his sorry ass is dating anyone (he’s divorced). Just last week he hung up on me after proclaiming “If [the Department of] Commerce doesn’t take this filing tomorrow, you’re going to be looking for a job!” Awww.
• Katie: Blogs look a little like work, so I check them fairly obsessively. (My thought processes have started sort of blogging.) Writing my Questions of the Week responses really looks like work, and I won’t hesitate to say “Um, just a minute” if someone tries to interrupt me. And, of course, I’m reading Ulysses online. Of course.
• Mark: A fantasy relationship with the Hamburgler that reads much like Leopold and Loeb.

• Kimberly: The honest answer is ______. I promise I don’t even want to date him! But, for one reason or another, I constantly want to know more about him. What makes him tick? Why is he so shady all the time? I have a blast hanging out with him and secretly I’m hoping that one of these days he will be so drunk that he’ll tell me what it was about me that he didn’t like.
  What is wrong with me?
• Mark: This guy in my class that wears little colorful biking socks with capri pants. I follow him after class a little bit. I always tried to bump into him, but the only way that would have happened would have been if he has suddenly stopped and started quickly walking backwards. It never happened. It’s hard to get through my week if I don’t get my two doses of that sassy walk and those colorful, vaguely athletic socks. I don’t know what I will do this quarter.
• Katie: I’m heavily addicted to the girl I sit next to at work. I transcribed one of our conversations in an earlier QotW, but that was only a taste. She:
  1. Sends me numerous inspirational Christian chain letters that promise Jesus’ love in addition to wish-granting if I forward the e-mail / the death of my best friend if I do not
  2. Bemoans her post-natal tummy while eating an egg-bacon-cheese croissant (“I think they put two eggs on this. I don’t need two eggs!”) then says, “Maybe I’ll just live on water. I’ve heard of that. People can do that, right?” “For a few weeks. Then you’ll die of starvation. It happens all the time.” “Oh.”
  3. Scours the web for cruise vacations for her honeymoon (assuming the father of her children ever marries her), and upon seeing the exorbitant prices says, “Oh Lordy… Oh!… Oh, Father, help me!”
  …I’m in love.

• Carrie S: Oh my God. Wow. Do you mean semen? Or something more alchemical and insane? Semen, though, the list goes on and on.
• Pete W: I can think of too many extremely inappropriate instances, but since I already get called a “slut” by my boyfriend on a regular basis (which may or may not be true), I’m going to be mums on this one. I will, however, briefly summarize. In no particular order:
  1. College library
  2. High school locker room
  3. College cafeteria restroom
  4. Crowded hotel room
  5. Science class
  6. In someone’s ear and nostril
  7. Church
• Anonymous: This would have to be my freshman year, when I spilt the life-starting fluids of another on my boyfriend’s bed. So what, ______, so what?!?! Well, they weren’t my boyfriend’s… AW SHIT!!!
• Katie: Eventually, alcohol is life-starting, n’est ce pas? I spill that everywhere. The most inappropriate/appropriate place being my mouth… MMMM.
• Mark: Given the circumstances of my own conception, I assume “life-starting fluids” means a mixture of aqua velvet, Cheeto-dust, and a bottle of white zinfandel. This was most recently spilled during Thanksgiving ‘02, but in no way was it inappropriate.

• Dayna: My cousin had an experience like this. She and her boyfriend were having that talk where he would say, “Would you still love me if I had no legs?” and she would say, “Of course.” And he’d say, “Would you still love me if I had Tourette’s Syndrome?” And she would say, “Of course.” Then they started fooling around and as it began to reach the point of no return, he stopped and yelled, “Monkey fuck ass bitch!” After a pause, he explained, “That’s what it would be like if I had Tourette’s.” Needless to say, the fun stopped there.
• Anonymous: That’s easy. My first college boyfriend liked to practice saying weird stuff while we were fooling around. Like, I was giving him a blowjob and he groans and says, “Who’s your daddy?” It was so funny we couldn’t go on for like ten minutes. Then there was last week when something about 20 inches long was shoved up my ass without my consent during sex. But that, however, didn’t stop a thing.
• Ian: He had to make it all romantic when all I wanted was a good fuck session. FUCK THAT!
• Anonymous: I have always been the one who be-fouled and caused the breaking of coitus. Calling out my then-boyfriend’s dad’s name during a blowjob sticks out in my head. He didn’t see the humor.
• Katie: I don’t have any good stories, so I’ll tell you one from my friend’s awesome slut archives: She was in this sick, wrong relationship with a prick Republican-fascist, on-again/off-again throughout college. They really hated each other, but they hated themselves enough to make the sex worthwhile, I suppose. One time, he pounced toward her wearing nothing but a Ronald Reagan mask. Hot! I think they still had sex, but she did make him take off the mask. I think. (Incidentally, he was seen two years later trying to make out with a man at his fraternity house, but continues to seriously date a tan, anorexic debutante.)

• Pete W: I generally am a “live and let live while I judge you” type of guy, but if you approach a group of strangers at a crowded bar on, say, St. Patrick’s Day, insist on ordering their drinks “because [you] get them free,” and then fail to get the bartender’s attention for over thirty minutes, you need to be “let go.”
• Kimberly: Like a straight, sober, leggy girl in a gay bar? Let her LIVE!

• Anonymous: My, my, Bryan, you is springtime frisky! It’s going to be all “anonymous” this week, huh? Well, there was the 20-inch toy shoved up my ass a few days ago, but it was less a turn-on for me and more for the partner. And I bought this crazy red red red lipstick and it’s fun to suck cock with it on.
• Kimberly: Mmmm… meatless ground beef with taco seasoning.
• Katie: I watched Donnie Darko and Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut back to back to see which one I liked more, and Donnie Darko/Jake Gyllenhall turned me on (I know, I know — he turns Bryan on too). It’s not that I’ve never been turned on by guys who are in high school, but it had been awhile… weeks, at least.
• Pete W: As I was walking back to Chateau Brandywine in the lovely, plush Van Ness neighborhood in upper Northwest, a group of high school girls ran by (probably a softball or lacrosse team) and I was shocked at my inability to do anything but stare and feel inexplicably aroused. These girls were probably 14, and I wanted to do very bad things to them (not in the “forced entry” sense, but more in the “deflowering” sense). Needless to say, I felt very dirty — Law & Order: SVU dirty — so I immediately went home and showered as tears of disgust and fear streamed out of my eyes.

• Megan: If I were a lesbian I think I would want to marry Ellen DeGeneres. I love her and think she would make my life fun, not to mention that she’s loaded. I think I might want a destination wedding, perhaps Hawaii. We would wear flip-flops and whatever else we wanted — blue for all I care — and we could be drinking mai-tais during the service because I would probably have to be drunk in order to marry Ellen.
• Carrie S: So Charlize Theron and I stare lovingly into each other’s eyes, tearing up in our Oscar-ready vintage Valentino wedding gowns… She cries a little; I kiss away her tears. Finally, she says, we can be together! The crowd goes wild as we pounce upon on another.
• Ian: I’m going to be wed in the park. There’s a great park in Rochester, New York. A beautiful summer day. Black tuxes, white shirts, white ties. White roses everywhere. Black and white photos. White gold band rings. It will be clean and beautiful.
• Pete W: “Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?”
• Katie: The perfect gay wedding would gloriously and seamlessly incorporate all our favorite homostereotypes: buttless-chapped bridesmaids, raving figure skater waiters, drag queen center pieces on E, a lesbian folk band… no, make that lipstick lesbian fetishist punk band, and sweat on everything. It would have all the homophobe critics saying “See? I told you so” — but only at first. Eventually, they’d all be masturbating furiously at church potlucks. Now that’s what I call sanctity.
• Mark: The procession in a white-wedding seems to bride-centric. We would instead begin with a fox hunt. My friends and I would mount horses and allow enraged dogs to hunt down my lover. After being cornered and caught, his wounds will be dressed quickly and he will be brought into the chapel forcibly, while the band plays Psychic TV’s “The Orchids.” We will make our own vows. His will be a tequila body shot. Mine will be an original piece of taxidermy. When the priest requests for us each to respond “I do,” he will instead shout “Never!” and I will shout “I could never marry this cocksucker!” Our families will burst into tears. I will put my lover into my death bag, throw it over my shoulder, and run with him into the night.

• Pete W: Yes, but mainly because I will not be attending the Backstreet Boys concert on March 30 at the 9:30 Club. Unfortunately, I won’t be experiencing the sensational moves, routines, hand gestures and harmonies of A.J., Nick, Brian, Kevin and Howie. To commemorate the occasion, I will exclusively listen to BSB on that day, and if that doesn’t create even more Madness, then I must already be really crazy. [Editor’s note: Pete was able to attend the concert after all.]
• Mark: I went to a shoe sale. The prices were so low, I believe the owner to have been crazy. I bought a pair of Steve Maddens. The price tag is still on them. Sometimes I look at them and think I am mad for tagging them at such a low price. Then I recall that I was the customer and not the salesman. So, no — I keep remembering that I am not Mad, just in time.
• Kimberly: Lube, fellatio, Excalibur, fornication, life-starting fluids, minorities, spilling seed… What the hell is going on?!?

• Anonymous: Jesus. I’d say we know what DJ B’s March Madness is. Sure. I can name at least five or six different abodes in which the owner was not aware of seed-spilling. How about an old boyfriend’s grandma’s backyard? Does that count?
• Pete W: This summer, one of my best friends from Philly came to visit, and I told him he could have sex in my roommate’s bed while my roommate was at his girlfriend’s. It’s OK though, because this particular roommate is a terrible roommate. This is one night after I sent that same friend home with one of my co-workers. P.I.M.P.
• Tiffany: Jeezy Petes!
• Mark: Every time I have caused someone to spill their seed, they have known. Should I be having sex with more naive people, or incapacitated individuals? I guess I just don’t know what fun is.

• Ian: I tried that about, mmm… four years ago, and you [Matthew] still were trying to act STR8! Reference the pics.

• Dayna: Matthew. Who is this character?
• Carrie S: Is it Matthew? Or can it be Bryan being under the bad influences of?
• Ian: Refer to #10. Pics from a KSully98 party.
• Kimberly: My first guess was Tiffany, but on second thought, could it be The Matthew?
• Katie: Well, the questions are just throbbing and oozing with hot jizz. I’ll guess… Matthew’s cock!
• Tiffany: OH! Now I get it. See, I hit reply and started typing my responses without actually reading over all of the questions. Usually, I’m not caught off-guard by any of your sexual references, etc., but this week it was EVERY question! Now I understand completely. These questions must have been authored by Mr. Matthew.

• Matthew: I’ve learned that one Lean Cuisine meal will not make you skinny. That Toby’s boy-hole is not open for business. And that, if left unsupervised, Tracy will attempt to hump anything in sight. And that Bryan is probably carrying Excalibur with him at all times.
• Brian E: I have realized that the old maxim, “Worry is like a rocking chair — it’s something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere” isn’t as true as I thought. Worrying actually does get me somewhere, mainly it gets me to a place I like to call “Stresslandia,” where I’m totally annoying and unapproachable. I think a revised version of the old saying should be something like “Worrying, it’s like being in a college fraternity — you may think it’s OK, but everyone else thinks you’re a jerk.”
• Carrie S: I always thought that my greatest strengths were personal and that my career would always be barely limping along. But I’ve been offered three new, better-paying jobs for the fall, a position as head of a group I have always admired, and my students are learning more than they ever have. But any potential friends on the horizon seem to want to hang out with me from a sense of duty. Like, “Well, someone should spend time with the little retarded girl.”
• Ian: 2005 has taught me that time flies. HOLY FUCK, “That’s SO ‘90s!” isn’t too much of a joke anymore, seeing as it’s been HALF A DECADE! How am I here? How am I doing this? Where’d all those people go?!

• Matthew: I’m going to ignore the fact that you are a retard, and know not even the most BASIC information about the line of succession of the American presidency, and answer your question. I believe Bryan would make an excellent temporary president. His firm grasp of logistics… minus a few* retarded moments… would make good in a crisis. Also, because Bryan being the president really means ME being the president. Everyone knows the first homo prez is going to be assassinated — might as well be him — and after this happens, a national flood of good feeling for homos will sweep the country and thusly I will be elected and serve seven terms.
  *many
• Brian E: Beyonce. I mean, honestly, has anyone brought America together more than her? I didn’t think so.
• Mark: Those animatronic presidents in Florida could be made use of. As long as the controls were still given to the religious right and the oil corporations, little would change. If a terrorist also targets those, maybe throw a wig on one of the Pirates of the Caribbean, or that hippo from the Swiss Family Robinson ride.
• Kimberly: Hilary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. Yeah! That’s right! Democrat and Republican and WOMEN!
• Carrie S: I think Bill Clinton has been a good man to count on in an emergency. As a widower, he’ll have to choose a bride from some nongovernmental source to rule as his queen. That’s all I’m saying.
• Ian: Bill Clinton would have to resume his position as EL PRESIDANTE! Despite his recent health issues, he is the most recent and most beloved former president. He can bring our country back. John Edwards can step in as VP just ‘cause he’s kinda got the Clinton thing goin’ on — could you imagine those two southern boys in the White House TOGETHER?! If we were replacing my BF Rummy I would consider Theresa Heinz Kerry just ‘cause she’s a bad-ass. Anderson Cooper as Press Secretary, and throw in a lil’ OBAMA for good luck. COULD YOU MOTHERFUCKING IMAGINE?!?!?!?!!? Oh boy.

• Brian E: Anything relating to University of Arizona basketball; the film Field of Dreams. I suppose that being in graduate school would connote that I’m an expert on more than that. I am in fact not.
• Mark: Hm… if you need ways to attack voting machines, I am rapidly becoming an expert.
  I’m well versed in Canadian children’s programming, as always (Today’s Special, Degrassi, etc).
  Three friends have also praised me for my handjob advice.
  I see it all as one seamless body of knowledge, really.
• Carrie S: I’m very good with the history and nature of literary movements, from ancient to current. I know vegetables and grains — how to choose, store, prepare, blend, and cook. I’m a good source for basic info about chocolate, wine, and cheese, but not expert stuff. (White burgundies are the hippest thing right now. For a second, it was going to be veltliner gruener, but then, nope. White burgundies, especially 2001s and 2002s. Also: I predicted the rise of Callebaut and Scharffen Berger chocolate over Valrhona four years ago, and here we are. Also: four years ago — who said semi-hard Spanish cheeses were going to rule the earth? Oh yeah. That was me.) I keep my ear to the ground about the rise and fall of kinky sex-acts, and about historical-imitation clothing. (Now, Edwardian, baby.)
• Matthew: Excluding computers and — I’ll give you this one — music, there really isn’t anything I am not a rock-solid source of advice on. Hate me if you will, but you know it’s true. You may be smarter than me and constantly ask yourself, “How does he do it?!?!?!,” but I do produce. Can I get an amen?
• Aaron: Do you need to adaptively segment foreground from background in digital video? I’m your man! And I work for cheap, too. I’ll be waiting for your phone calls. (Sadly, that’s the least obscure thing I’m good at.)

• Sarah: My American Government teacher in high school told this story of this guy who was interviewing for a job over lunch, and ordered chicken and rice, and started pouring salt onto his rice before he even tasted it. The guy who was interviewing him didn’t give him the job because the guy made an assumption that the rice wouldn’t be salty enough and didn’t even taste it. Even though it’s a pretty stupid story when you think about it, it’s always haunted me… and I guess I always taste my rice first before putting salt on it?
• Carrie S: If you call someone and say, “What are you doing tonight?” and they say, “I’m doing [something planned]” or “Nothing — wanna go out??” then this person is likely awesome, game, fun, and likes you. If they say, “I don’t know. Probably going to watch a movie, stay in, kinda tired…” then this person either secretly hates you or is never going to go out with you.
• Ian: Looks CAN deceive, but fashion doesn’t lie.
  I’m not talking the overall outfit, I’m talking the overall styling/combinations/etc. By looking at Bryan I can tell that he is pulled together, but his tszujing is about a year behind and his colors more muted. This would tell me that Bryan is a friendly homo that knows his shit, but is more quiet and plays on the safe side. Likewise, if a former roommate of mine was wearing his carpenter jeans and an old sweater that looks like it’s from six years ago, I would conclude that he’s a tad more on the cost-effective side, and that he finds content more compelling than cover. WARNING: my rules apply to fashion and fashion only. Many a-time, I’ll base my initial assessment on looks (teeth, skin tone, etc.) and often the individual turns out to be a REPUBLICAN! Ugh. So, observing one’s clothes is a much better determiner of one’s confidence, innovation, and crazy-fun.

• Matthew: I think I’ve got this one down.
  1. “Pink Elephants And Lemonade” — my signature well wishes for a good day
  2. “Birds and Bubbles” — my second signature well wishes for a good day
  3. “Why aren’t you sucking my cock?” — my introductory statement when meeting new people
  4. Perhaps none of these are aphorisms, but who cares?
• Brian E: I’ve condescendingly been calling people “Boss,” “Chief,” and “Coach” recently. I’ve gotten to the point when I don’t even realize I’m doing it. I need to stop.
• Carrie S: “Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires!” It’s Blake, not me, but it’s a good one. Baby-killing always catches people off-guard. (Did I mention I’m having a hard time making friends?)
• Dayna: While discussing children suffering from poor parenting, my co-worker Janet mentioned a 5-year-old walking down the street alone at night “like he got a car and a job.” That’s my favorite.
• Aaron: I expand on “Crazy like a fox!” by substituting any word or phrase I desire for “crazy.” Hungry like a fox, washing my face like a fox — the possibilities for being irritating are ENDLESS.
• Mark: “If you put peanut butter on it, something’s gonna lick it off.”

• Ian: Ethos=Cock
  Enough said.
  Oh fuck, now I sound like Matthew.
• Matthew: My boyfriend’s ass and cock are a pretty good start. But that’s over and done with in 30 minutes and I do need something more to get me out of bed. For me, I truly focus on how I can make things better for other people. Be these people in Africa or homo-DC, I believe that happiness can be achieved daily and that doing for others is a surefire way to succeed. Now, you may be thinking, “But Matt, you’re an asshole?” Well, that may be true. That may be true, indeed.
• Toby: I think my ethos is a granola bar. That can’t be right, can it?
• Megan S: On Thursdays I get out of bed so I can make eyes at my Art History TA, who is beautiful, and strangely his last name is Spicer.
• Jaclyn: It definitely has to be that the sooner I’m up today, the sooner the day is over, and I can get my drink on to forget all the horrible events of the day!
• Carrie S: That was me, wasn’t, it, Bryan? I’m obsessed with ethos. My ethos involves encouraging myself and others to think critically about everything, but to develop myths that are useful for reducing suffering and increasing personal happiness and the happiness of others. So it’s kind of a meta-ethos.
• Katie: Frankly, this is something I struggle with. My driving force is the validity of the rule of law — if everyone gets the same just laws and freedoms to operate under, ideas, culture and society will flow and flourish. Ahh. But honestly, that’s so stupid. People with money and power are always doing things that are SO illegal. You can try to stop them or slow them down or reason with them, but there’s nothing you can do in any real sense… But I can always get out of bed to take a shower ‘cause otherwise my hair won’t look nice.
• Sarah: It seems to me that every mammal has the same ethos: “If I do this, and do it well, maybe someone will want to have sex with me.”

• Katie: Aladdin wins handily. It was a simpler time: People poked fun at Arabs for having camels and granting wishes, and not as much for looking suspicious and being detained without trial. Robin Williams makes a great funny Arab.
• Carrie S: Lion King, without question. It’s sublime, campy, and dramatic all at once. Yay. The others have campy and dramatic, but no real sublimity.
• Brad: I won’t deny that I had a crush on Ariel from The Little Mermaid. She was wonderful, emotional, and my grandma looks just like Ursula the Sea Witch (minus tentacles). How this connects, I don’t know, but my grandma lived in Arizona and we didn’t see her a lot, so I guess it was my way of visiting. Anyway, I watched the movie a lot and fell in love. Of course, this was when I was young and didn’t think that it would be hard to have sex with a half-fish girl with hot sea shells holding back her voluptuous sea breasts.
  I also wished that I looked like Aladdin and tried styling my hair like his with lots of gel and a blow dryer.
• Ian: LITTLE MERMAID! I still remember the day we watched it in second grade… Damn, those sea creatures knew how to sing!! Lion King bores me and it signals the beginning of the decline of the glory days of animated Disney. It may actually be the last one I saw, since that shit just don’t excite me like it used to! NOT TO MENTION the subtext in these movies in regards to gender and ethnicity which I am now OVERLY-aware of… damn media studies classes. PLUS, it’s got fabulous music AND JTT.

• Matthew: I would definitely have to say visiting squatter camps in South Africa where hundreds of thousands of people live in shacks and still manage to walk around with the biggest smiles (shockingly white and straight teeth — I began to suspect a conspiracy) that you have ever seen. Makes you kinda feel like a piece of shit for taking an hour to get ready using 36 wholly unnecessary products, no?
• Kimberly: I was somehow not completely prepared for the introduction of Freshmen and Excalibur.
• Toby: Well, I went to France once, but on a more interesting note, I used to think that puddles were a portal into an alternate universe — perhaps one where I was in the Beatles.
• Carrie S: Living in my neighborhood is like living in a world in which I am always an outsider. The people who live here are wealthy self-congratulating liberals who live and die by the New York Times Magazine (“Us Weekly” for wealthy people), having babies when that was the hip liberal thing to do, overparenting (and feeling guilty about it now that it’s not hip for liberals to overparent anymore), giving up their jobs, hating their spouses, glaring at single young people with death in their eyes, planning spa trips like pilgrimages to a temple, getting their hair colored and recolored — It’s like living in a motherfucking New Yorker cartoon. “Does this dress make me look Republican?”
• Ian: Oh fuck, Brooklyn! I lived in THE HEIGHTS, but I had to go deep into Brooklyn on two occasions and I did NOT like what I saw. On the Fourth of July I went out with this girl I kinda sorta knew through people, and it was by far one of the most fucked up nights of my life. No cabs would come to Brooklyn because everyone was trying to get home from the fireworks, so we went to the streets with our hard lemonades and ended up tapping on a car’s window that “looked kinda like a taxi.” We had $5 to our name, so we paid the driver $5 to take us to Williamsburg, which was supposed to be all cool and hip and the next big neighborhood in NYC. Well, it wasn’t. We peed on the street, met up with some people, and ended up at a BYOB roof party on top of some warehouse. The roof was fucking HUGE and SO MANY PEOPLE were there. There were people cooking out, people smoking pot… you name it, this place had it! Then we went bar-hopping, hit on a few guys, stopped at some 24-hour place to get money from an ATM, and I vaguely remember going into this Asian restaurant just to swing on a swing over a fountain pool. Around 3am we decided to go back to THE HEIGHTS, but came to the horrible conclusion that there are no subways that run north-south, so we either had to ride into Manhattan and transfer, or ride into Brooklyn and transfer. Well, it was late, we were on substances, and approximated that the ride east into Brooklyn and down into the Heights looked shorter on the map. Not a good idea. These subway stops were so horrendous (keep in mind that it was summer, so underground was about 7000 degrees), so filthy and so FULL OF FAMILIES!!! There were kids that looked like they were two years old sitting around in these dingy, dark, dirty subway stations at 4 a.m.! Once we transferred to our last train, girl passed out on me, and I got to stay awake to make sure nothing happened to us. Fuck that. That is one world I never want to visit again.

• Matthew: I find emotional depth in Toby’s boy-hole.
• Ian: I find emotional depth in merchandizing. FUCK OFF!
• Katie: My new thing is mortality. I see everyone in the world as really fragile and on the brink of death. When I walk down a crowded street, sometimes I want to start sobbing and screaming, “You’re going to die! Aren’t you afraid?!” It’s hilarious.
• Brad: I have no depth, really. I’m good at pretending sometimes, but I don’t get into movies or books or music like my friends do. I try to listen to their indie music and get all emotional about it, but really, I’m just pretending that I care and that it “really touched me.” I secretly think that everyone does this.

• Brad: “My Super Sweet Sixteen” being watched by everyone I know = everyone wants to be a princess. Even bona fide heterosexual males are obsessed with the show.
• Katie: Hacking Paris’ Blackberry = the encroachment on and tarnishing of great American royalty by common ugly people.
• Jaclyn: This may be too real to answer the question, but there’s all this controversy in the big NR about having a Planned Parenthood put in. They think it will be encouraging casual sex by offering condoms, morning after pills, and abortions. Don’t these God-lovers know that their kids are the ones I’m screwing around with every night?!
• Carrie S: I really despise movies in which a crazy guy who needs psychological help falls in love with a quirky gal who saves him from his psychosis. Obviously, the screenwriter has always felt a little left out of things or something, so he recasts himself as a total wack-job, and his new girlfriend is recast as the eternally forgiving hole-the-same-size-as-his-dick. Think Punch-Drunk Love. Otherwise, a fine movie, but the first time he imagines she’s cheating on him, he’ll kill her. Same with Garden State — a guy who gets off psychotropic meds for the first time in 15 years doesn’t need to spend any time alone or deciding what he wants? Of course not; Natalie Portman’s going to hump his brains out — who needs professional advice? It’s a myth that makes dangerous bad people think that the right lover can save them.

• Kyle: I was told, while attempting to start a fire, to keep trying to get a spark with flint… Only later did I find out that the wood was COVERED in lighter fluid.
• Brad: Get a cat! It’ll be company for you so you won’t be so lonely living alone — yeah, good advice, but now I’m one of those cat people who is obsessed, dresses their cat in costumes for Halloween, and spends ridiculous amounts of money on this animal and would rather die than spend time apart. I’ve actually turned down hookups because I feel bad that my kitten would have to spend a night alone in my bed without me.
• Carrie S: Lots of it from my mother. “Be mysterious or he won’t like you!” “Wear smelly lotions!” “Don’t call him; make him call you! He’s the man!” “You can’t give a man what he wants if you want him to stick around.” I’d be Sandra Dee or something, I guess. I also would never get laid. Who benefits from that? Please!
• Jaclyn: One of my friends told me recently to date my friend Ken because it would be fun and he’s hot. She also said I shouldn’t worry that he has nothing. Ugh! I hate people that base relationships on love!

• Tiffany: I’m actually learning undergraduate o-chem all over again because I failed my o-chem entrance exam. I must say that this time around things have been remarkably better. I am approaching the subject as though it were logical, useful and interesting, and the professor is doing the same. It’s a beautiful little relationship. We’ll see how this new opinion holds up after my second exam on Tuesday.
• Toby: United States history, World War II to the present. Without fail, every history class I’ve taken prior to grad school has compromised this era. I always thought that, because the teacher knows how much time is allotted in a given school year, that he or she wouldn’t “run out of time” on one-fourth of our nation’s history. We usually covered the entire 1950s by saying, “And then Dwight Eisenhower, who led NATO in Europe during World War II, became president. But then, JFK emerged with his ‘New Frontier’…” My thoughts were always, “So, I guess things were pretty laid back… Korea, huh?”
  

• Anonymous: Masturbation. I started when I was like three, and then quit between the ages of eight and 11. When it came back, though, I sure was glad.
• Toby: No, I keep everything I want from that era very accessible in the memory, and all that I don’t want very tucked away by my selective memory. Why would anyone rediscover any of that? Look what happened to Michael Jackson when people started looking back — rediscovering childhood hurts us all.
• Ian: A few nights ago Lindsey and I dug through my childhood section of my attic where I found my old comic books (the ones I made), my kick-ass action figures, and SEGA!!!! We spent the night playing Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. It’s still a draw to get people to come play with me: “We can play Sega…” It’s phenomenal!
• Dayna: One of my aunts always lived with a friend. When the friend moved out, they were no longer friends. This pattern continued until it finally occurred to me that my aunt’s “friends” were her girlfriends and we were just not discussing lesbianism. Now she and her “friend” Callie have a house together and have lived together for several years, but we still do not call her my aunt’s girlfriend. Yay for repression!
• Katie: Sometimes I wear a t-shirt from a tennis camp I went to when I was five. I’ve developed quite a bit since then. It makes me look like a SLUT!

• Matthew: Drinking, fucking and smoking… gosh.
• Carrie S: I drink four quarts of water in one sitting. It’s awesome.
• Ian: Buying something usually does it for me… Yay materialistic society! BUY YOUR PAIN AWAY!!!!
• Dayna: Diet Coke + Vegetarian Chipotle Burrito = Happy Dayna
• Kyle: Since I’m not a drunk like either of my brothers, I almost never do (compared to them).
• Katie:
  1. Coffee
  2. Sour Apple Extra SugarFree Gum
  3. Tea tree oil and lavender astringent facial pads
  4. Shirk all responsibilities

• Ian: Visceral… sounds like “vaginal”… and I try to have NOTHING to do with THAT sort of thing.
• Kimberly: I would say that painting and doing crafts is a visceral experience for me. I think I’m pretty good at it, but I try to keep the hobby on the DL and not let other people know when something is of my own creation (or that I do crafty things in general).
• Carrie S: Everything is visceral. Mmmmm… Reading, cooking, thinking, sex, anger, happiness, drinking, friendship — it’s all gut.

• Carrie S: I have been working on the previously-alluded-to bland insincere smile and I can’t fucking turn it off, even when I actually want to convey real pleasure. Imagine the complications. “Was that good for you, honey?” “Ah yes,” bland smile, “quite delightful. Thank you! I enjoyed that so very much.”
• Toby: Thursday is one big ball of danger for Toby. I eat too little (in the name of the Wait for the Weekend Diet) and drink like it’s the weekend. Last night, I actually got sick off of four beers. I think I’ve found the “You’ll die of a heart attack” of my Atkins.
• Ian: Dangerous precedent would be massive drinking. Now, I know what you’re saying: “Ian, you’ve been massive drinking for YEARS now, so what the fuck makes this new?!” Well, B, I’m glad you’ve asked. In Athens, I still had to walk home — up hills, through brick streets — and stop at one of the countless late-night-eats locales. In NYC there was the subway. WELL, now there’s nothing to stop me. POWER HOUR before a night of countless discounted drinks from my favorite bartends at Bounce?! NO PROBLEM! My favorite bartend knows the order of my drinks in a night, what garnishes I want, and when I want a Dr Pepper to “sober up for the drive home.” Dangerous precedent = being so comfortable in a bar because you know the DJ, the doorman, the manager, and bartends by name. I wake up on Friday mornings wondering what the hell I did the night before.
• Katie: The girl I sit next to at work just had a baby and she’s trying to lose weight. She asks me for advice on this all the time. She’s younger than me, and a little impressionable. It’s gotten to the point where she pretty much thinks I’m a medical doctor. But, my dieting methods aren’t exactly the healthiest; I don’t have any moral hang-ups when it comes to dieting shortcuts and abuses.
  Example:

  Girl: “What I really want is a tummy tuck, but don’t people say that’s not safe?”
  Me: “Well, there’s risk with any type of surgery, but I think they’ve pretty much got tummy tucks down pat.”
  Girl: “Do you think I should try diet and exercise first? Because I haven’t tried those yet.” (direct quotation)
  Me: “Maybe. But if they let you finance the tuck, I say go for it. I would.”

• Dayna: I have a tendency to adopt the personality of Jackie O. (played by Parker Posey) in The House of Yes or Corey (played by Liv Tyler) in Empire Records (only when I launch into “It’s not gonna be fine! Nothing’s ever fine! I’ll show you fine! I’ll show you perfect!”).
• Toby: I often hear the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme when I’m walking around town, but that’s another answer for another QotW.
• Tiffany: Ever since I had this crazy Russian professor for my kinetics class last quarter, I regularly break into a Russian accent without even noticing. In order to keep our sanity while doing his homework assignments, we all started speaking with Russian accents to make fun of him, and now WE CAN’T STOP!
• Katie: When I was reading The Stranger, I would often speak in brief, paratactic sentences, making me cryptic and full of subtle nuance, but bereft of meaning.
• Carrie S: I always sound like an 18th-century politician. I use the same rhetorical figures, the same cultural tropes. It isn’t quite as effective as it used to be. My advisor and I call ourselves “Whigs,” for God’s sake.

• Ian: I remember Bryan by the SIDE-VIEW MIRROR on my shelf. WHAT THE FUCK!?
• Tiffany: I have a little bundle of nails from one of the people I was in a play with. I played a masochist and I volunteered to be crucified, and I really wanted it to be done with nails. So she gave me some as a little end-of-the-show present.

• Katie: I’m trying to decide how candid to be here. No, my private prison will remain my own little happy/miserable place.
• Ian: EXPRESS. I love the brand, I love fashion, I love my associates. BUT it’s not what I went to school for, it’s not paying well enough right now (despite the crazy-high salaries that store managers make), and it’s not respected as a career. But I love it. I love making my store beautiful (oooh yeah 60 hours in a week!), making unique wardrobes for customers, and all that shit. But it sucks. Know what I mean?!
• Toby: I tried to make it this week without a reference to my burrowed heterosexual hole in my world of homosexuals, but this question requires me to drop that tactic.
  My prison is a world of Matt and Bryan being mean to each other and then kissing and making up. My prison is one of strange buzzing sounds haunting my dreams. My prison is student loans being funneled directly to alcohol, my roommate, and alcohol for my roommate. My prison is an IKEA apartment in the middle of a neighborhood that steers left (gay) of center. But this prison, like Shawshank was for Brooks, is all I know, and if you release me now, I’ll hang myself by morning.
• Mark: In high school, a mime put me in a box. A few years later, another mime tried to get me out and failed, wordlessly and pathetically. I, myself, have not yet tried to escape.

• Mark: Condoms. Fire Extinguishers. Carbon monoxide monitors. Prescription medication. Other various party supplies.
• Carrie S: No skimping ever on chocolate, cheese, wine, or beer. I do not require any of these things to be extraordinarily expensive, but if anyone other than my mother serves me fuckin’ Yellow Tail, I am leaving.

• Ian: Go to TACO BELL!
  Watch MURPHY BROWN!
  Move to NYC!
• Aaron: Anything involving Hoegaarden and a frisbee would probably make me cream my pants right about now.

• Megan S: I used to complain about my back injury, but now that it doesn’t hurt anymore I look at all of the benefits it has gotten me — I was able to move off campus as a sophomore, I could choose any parking lot on campus, I do not have to lift a thing at work…
• Toby: I found myself complaining yesterday about my “long sprint” from Dupont to school. But really it was to explain how cool I am that I live in Dupont. Everyone was jealous and wanted to sit by me after that.
• Katie: What I secretly love is the uncanny way that spills and other tiny disasters follow in my wake. I’m otherwise so full of grace and poise that I think I wouldn’t be approachable without occasional I Love Lucy-style antics. I’m human too.

• Dayna: Kim had her jaw broken, and I find that to be an extreme personal change. But then again, I didn’t know her beforehand.
• Aaron: That would have to be when Bryan shunned his wardrobe of Nike shirts for more exquisite tastes. Buttons, collars, layers, cuffs… it was quite the spectacle.
• Katie: Toby seems to become a new man every couple of years. Before I met him, he looked totally different. His hair was a completely different texture than it is now. How did he do that? Now, he’s all having a beard sometimes, having long hair, then short hair, then a goatee, then really long hair, then clean shaven, then short hair again. He’s like Cher.
• Kimberly: I wore boys’ clothes in high school and refused to put on anything that was tight, pink, low cut, or revealing in any way. I elected to undergo maxillofacial reconstruction in May 2000 and, lo and behold, I arrived at Case in the fall girl-ified!
• Ian: Can we talk about the elimination of bangs again here?! Oh, we always talk about that.
  Remember when Newton was a big bitch?! Now she’s SO FUN ALL THE TIME! Alright, with the exception of MIGRAINE ALERT… but that’s a given.
• Carrie S: I have had a constant series of at least 10 girlfriends since age 10 who have, suddenly and without warning, done a 180 and totally shit on me. They decide they no longer care about me or my happiness, and often go to great lengths to destroy any happiness I might find. I am stupid enough to keep thinking of new friends, “This one will last!” and I have been right just enough times that I can’t completely give up hope. But it always starts when I reject one of them for sex.

• Dayna: My dog. Jack is awesome and always good for a laugh. (“Crazy old Maurice — always good for a laugh!” (Beauty and the Beast))
• Carrie S: My library. And a never-empty beer that makes me increasingly euphoric but not so drunk that I can’t read or be witty.
• Toby: Mustard. I’m always wanting more, and different situations call for different mustards. Bryan’s opened my eyes to the dijonnaise, but I’d prefer to carry one standard dijon (the type the yellow French use), one spicy deli and one of the wonderful Stadium Mustards (NOT Ballpark…) I feel sometimes that what I really need is a mustard belt, but its practicality, its tendency to stain, and the unlikelihood of it matching anything I’m wearing keeps that idea on the shelf.
• Katie: Mood music. I would like musical accompaniment that reflects the mood I’m really in. My natural facial expression is torpid/pissed off. (I know this because strangers tell me “Cheer up” and “It’s not that bad, is it, baby?” ALL the time. Then I have to sort of half-laugh awkwardly and look at the ground and hate everybody.)
• Ian: Does a new shirt all fresh in its packaging make you hard like it does me?! And the smell… oh, the smell of a new shirt is phenom.

• Aaron: All of my dilemmas are humorous. Like that time a bird flew into my open car window while I was driving and hit me in the chest, making a sound like kicking a beach ball.
• Toby: These days it seems that I’m the only one who makes it a rule to keep my utterances of “vulva” or discussions about big, steel, phallic pleasure devices to a minimum while in public.
• Katie:
  1. Leave a locale without a trace and lore about you will soon follow.
     When I took a year off school, there were tall tales at college in KY and at home in OH. I’m startled whenever anyone knows my name, let alone fake information about my life.
     
  2. Always have a double life — at least.
     My circles of friends almost never overlap.
  3. Name your youngest daughter after yourself, or fuck up a six-generation tradition.
     3a: Cause confusion wherever you go because your first name is Jennie — not Jennifer — but you go by Katie — which is short for Cathryne, not Katherine (yes, Cathryne is your middle name, but so is Blaine) — and your name is identical to two other women in your family.
     AAAGGHH!
• Ian: The rule of my life is that EVERYTHING, and therefore EVERYONE, is CONNECTED! It’s fucked up. It may take six years (like [former and current store manager] Stephen), but it will all come back! WATCH THE FUCK OUT!!!

• Jeffrey: It was warm and spring-like these last few days… just like the fuckin’ weatherman said! That guy’s never right!
• Kimberly: 54 degrees — Shit! I wore a tank top and no jacket. You think I’m kidding?
• Matthew: The shameless and scandalous hyper-sexuality of Bryan, as demonstrated by his use of Excalibur IN HIS CAR.
• Toby: A week of clean, efficient, on-time Metro riding! After three full weeks of constant delays, lengthy transfers and a wafting urine smell, my faith has been restored in the Greatest American Metropolitan Enclosed Rail! I’ve thus dubbed it GAMER.
  UPDATE: As I was returning to finish the QotW, I just now found a penny from 1919 in my pocket. For a second, I looked at how worn down it is and was reminded of how many people touched it, of how valuable it was back then (relative to the current value of a penny), of how magical our capitalist system really is. Then, I realized how gross it all is and how much I hate the penny.
• Carrie S: I taught sections from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (the “Voice of the Devil” section and the “Proverbs of Hell”) in my Intro to Lit class yesterday. I expected a lot of freaked-out faces, but I watched the whole class, one by one, completely mentally restructure their personal metaphysics and ethical codes. One student said, afterward, that he had to sit down — that reading it scared him, in a good way, to his core. Another student said reading it caused her to resolve to have sex with anyone she wants. I feel like I’ve done good in the world now. I can die.
• Ian: That crafty MTV Networks surprised me by posting a job opening that I’m actually qualified for at the network I want to work at! And my horoscope has been following my life QUITE well. Friday morning while waiting in line for my drink at Starbucks I read that my boss would let me down that day, and — yay for horoscopes — my district manager did let me down! YAY! So now I know what’s up.
• Mark: The brown stain on my pants turned out to just be a melted toblerone when I tasted it. Yay, me!

• Katie: During my senior year of college, I was known for making very, very strong vodka drinks, and depending on my level of party-hardiness, I might be called “Katie Light” or “Katie Full Body.” Also, since I took a year off of school to have Kayla (she has started using complete sentences now), I was WAY older than everyone else, and I got the nickname “Cool Aunt Katie.”
  Among my extended family on my mother’s side, I am known for having worked NOT for the nation’s largest gay and lesbian civil rights group, but simply for A civil rights group.
  Among my Berea-mothers circle of friends, I am known for having a 2-year-old child.
• Toby: I used to be the super-political guy in some circles. I used to be the jock-esque guy in some circles. I used to be the open-mic performer/songwriter in some circles. I used to be the closeted homosexual in some circles. Now, I’m either all or nothing. It would seem that my efforts at self-promotion have reduced me to the “political, non-jock guy-with-a-CD-out who is probably gay and not admitting it” to everyone.
• Jeffrey: I’m totally a big cry-baby. Movies, books, plays, that cotton commercial (“The touch, the feel of cotton — the fabric of our lives…”). I shared this with a group of friends/acquaintances (drunkenly) last Friday, and I think they were a little puzzled as to how to react.
• Sarah: Please see attached. [Photo of Sarah putting her whole fist in her mouth.]
• Mark: I know the content of most bestiality FAQs and can recite passages casually over dinner with compassion and sympathy, stripping them of all shock value. “Never penetrate your goose lover. Nothing compares to seeing him slowly die over the span of a week, helpless, just because our bigoted society will not disseminate this crucial information. Never penetrate your goose lover.”

• Katie: Bryan has served as quite a resource. For the moment, he has a snappy little car and he ALWAYS wants to drive. He has an incredible apartment that NO one could really afford — ever. He likes to give away lots and lots of drinks. He (usually) keeps me stocked with a new mix CD for any mood. And of late, he is conveniently located in the DC metro area — right off the Red Line, no less!
• Matthew: Honestly, I’d have to say Bryan… only because he basically does whatever I want, with few transgressions to the contrary. He has shitty food, but keeps booze stocked up and provides me with delicious Coke to feed my habit. Most of the time he drives me where I want to go, but occasionally he denies me transport and I then wish a plague on him.
• Ian: Newton always arrives at work with a free Starbucks delight (bakery in the mornings), always allows me to sample from customer’s drinks and sometimes the bakery case, entertains me at work, provides me with someone to go “round for round” with at the bar, loves the same shots as me, is my only DD friend left, brings me lunch at home when she gets off of an early-morning shift, and always will have a baggie of some drug to cure what ails ya!
• Carrie S: My friendship with Mark provides me with knowledge sets that I would otherwise have no access to, like snuff porn, music by completely insane people, the color of the fabric of the universe, etc. He’s not just a genius — he’s the genius of all the undiscovered crannies of knowledge.
• Megan P: The best friend benefits were certainly all the folks in Cleveland who would make out with me at the drop of a hat. And Sarah Lohman, who would order people to make out with me. Love that gal.
• Jeffrey: I’m hoping that one of my poor-ass art friends hits it big, so I can hitch my wagon to their star and ride to riches. Either that, or we’ll all be living in a studio apartment in New York City, eating Raman noodles and doing degrading things for money.

• Ian: Spending hours upon hours waiting outside of fitting rooms while my sisters and mom shopped throughout my childhood / being a big ol’ retail faggot.
• Kimberly: Thirsty Dog Hoppus Maximus / beer. It tasted so damn bad that all the beer I’ve had since tasted good! Now, I’m drinking beer, red wine, and pretty much anything you put in front of me!
• Dayna: Baby food… solid food. It allowed me to practice chewing before I actually needed to use my teeth.
• Matthew: _______’s cock / _______’s cock
• Mark: For me, watching Moulin Rouge was kind of like training wheels for suppressing my gag reflex (useful for sex) and suppressing my disdain for the majority of my peers (also useful for sex).

• Ian:

  - Sleeve-rolling in high school
  - Button-down shirts when everyone else was wearing tees
  - White strips
  - Tanning
  - Shopping at non-Aero, -AE, -A&F, -etc. stores… ya know, a lil’ more sophisticated
  - Crate&Barrel is mine.
  - RED! Please reference QotW of the past for details.
  - Jap-mobiles
  - The espresso bar (reference Café Au Ian)
  - Kelly Clarkson (I don’t know about in DC, but this bitch is EVERYWHERE in Cleveland… including megamixed on the dance floor)
  - Long Islands
  - Bailey’s
  - Steve Madden
  - Argyle

• Matthew: Living in the District, being antisocial and importing old friends in place of making new ones, and my unilateral control over designing your apartment (read: life) according to my own vision.
• Toby: On deck: The Wait-for-the-Weekend Diet (devised mostly by Bryan, with some tweaking by me). It’s like South Beach, but not stupid. And it has that oh-so-wonderful release!
• Jeffrey: Vanilla Coke! I was drinking that shit at T.G.I. Friday’s back in ‘96! Sometimes I would get it with cherry and vanilla for an “Olde-Fashioned Dr Pepper.”
• Kimberly: Pink on boys!
  Tostitos Gold chips dipped in Dannon Plain Lowfat Yogurt will be a huge success!
• Mark: Hungarian boy bands. Ill-fitting sweaters. The sushi-isn’t-cool platform. The fabulousness of Peter Chung’s lusty animation, based on Liquid TV shorts. Oh, I also wore those glasses way before Harry Potter or Timothy Hunter. Maybe these arent things to be proud of…
  I am sitting on parodic gay porn, the next big entertainment scene. Also, I anticipate that Russian drag star Verka Serduchka will learn at least three sentences in English and take North America by storm.
• Katie:

  - Wanda Sykes
  - Honey-based facial products

• Carrie S: God, everything. The problem is, if I name them, it’s too embarrassing because all the things I liked when they were tiny and cool became too enormously huge to be cool any longer. I was like the first fan of Ben Folds Five outside North Carolina, the first fan of Semisonic (a good band that was truly ruined by having a mediocre song become a hit) outside Minnesota, Bright Eyes — whom Mark and I dug way before Conor Oberst became an uberidol, Amy’s food products — back in the DAY, vegetarianism, low carb before Atkins, and babies, which I was into before that whole Jesus thing.
  Now, without a single doubt in my mind, I predict everyone is going to get on the 18th-century bandwagon. I.e., no more Victorian nostalgic images, no more talking about the Brontes and Dickens and Thackeray — It’s all about really long novels, open sexuality, hoop skirts, exposed cleavage, nattily-dressed dudes (see this coming? yes?), social manipulation, and the return of political philosophy. Blogging is the new pamphlet! Botox is the new fake mole! Tim DeLaughter is the new William Blake! David Foster Wallace is the new Henry Fielding!

• Ian: I feel as though the threat is directed at me. Boooo threats!
• Dayna: I curse all the time. Even when I don’t mean to. I am not at all family-friendly, despite my inoffensive appearance.
• Mark: Casually looking at the time. I can’t do it without the person I’m talking to assuming I’m making grand gestures that the conversation has gone on for too long. Can’t I know the time? Damn, people are self-conscious… and boring.
• Carrie S: I am a major asshole. I cultivated my gut-response thing when I lived in Williamsburg and was trying to fit in my saying “bitch” under my breath whenever some ho cuts me off with her cart in the grocery store. I also used to (read: still do) make fun of stupid people in my Ph.D. classes who don’t seem to think it’s wrong to be totally ignorant of anything that happened before 1890. I am working on it. Instead of furrowing my brow at idiots, I’m working on a bland, insincere, unencouraging smile.

• Matthew: That you really do things I want because you know that I’m always right and not because you are “handling” me so that I am pacified.
• Toby: My whole career is centered around the sham that is liberal politics. Who even knows if any of this shit works?! It’s fun, though, because we’re morally superior.
• Jeffrey: I will not masturbate more than thrice today!

• Megan S: Looking at pictures of you and trying to replicate your charisma.
• Matthew: I immediately transport myself and those targeted for sexing to “The Happy Place.”
• Sarah: Bath and Body Works Vanilla Sugar — vanilla is allegedly a male aphrodesiac. Rigid yet?
• Katie: I can’t seem to turn the turbo-charge off! Ha!
• Ian: There ain’t nothin’ a quick trip to Bev the Barber and the tanning bed won’t fix! Add a lil’ bling and you’re GOOD TO GO!
• Mark: A head wound. Gaping head wounds are the new black lab!

• Carrie S: Ruining their lives. That is intentionally plural.
  At least six or seven people have gone into an emotional tailspin and blamed me for being the catalyst. It’s not that I’m so super, but I have an ethos, and people sans ethoi get really freaked out around me.
• Ian: Justin “Gucci” tried to blame me for him crashing his car into a pole. Oh, he fucked it up reeeeal good. After a long afternoon of hauling wood, my mom paid us… BY CHECK. It was about 4:50pm and the bank closed at 5pm, so we hopped in the car to race there. He argued that if I hadn’t pressured him into getting to the bank quickly, he wouldn’t have driven like a moron. Please. If anything, I did him a favor — it was a Ford.
• Katie: My daughter’s existence.
• Jeffrey: One of the first times I ever got drunk on whisky, I returned to my mom’s house early the next day (a Sunday), reeking of booze and probably still drunk. My mother asked in a shocked whisper, “(sniff) Oh my gosh, what smells like alcohol in here?” and with a sidelong glance, I indicated my then-13-year-old sister, who was watching TV.

• Anonymous: Dolly Parton’s Mission Chapel Memories album . . . Tennessee and titties . . . Fall 2003, the feeling of being lonely, overfucked, underloved, drinking too much, eating too little, and loving coming home to the industrial park at dawn.
• Matthew: “God of Wine” / death and sadness / sweetness and light at the memory of less complex times when we were all together.
• Toby: Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” // their glory days in high school when everything was right with the world (which I’d say is the typical misinterpretation of the song) // not ever wanting to be these people.
• Anonymous: The “Pokéman” ending theme reminds most people of lame WB programming, whereas (Pavlov-dog-like) I expect a rushed blow job before “The New Batman Adventures” begins. Recurrent secret liaisons with a Batman-obsessed roommate are fun.

• Mark: All of them! I just LOVE PEOPLE! I want to be JUST LIKE THEM!
• Carrie S: I am a total prude about infidelity. The thought of someone getting it on with more than one person at a time makes my stomach turn, mostly because I keep thinking, “If she got pregnant or a horrible disease, she would NOT KNOW WHERE IT CAME FROM.” Oddly enough, I’m less afraid of pregnancy and disease than I am of having to confront two guys and be like, “One of you is a daddy!” Also — I think incest is gross. Sorry.
• Anonymous: I am very conventional when it comes to sex & drugs. For being a 22-year-old, all I’m really good at sexually is blowjobs, and all I’ve tried in marijuana. I’m SO INEXPERIENCED! Fuck, Officer Law did a good job of shaping me.
• Megan S: I am pretty conventional at work. I work in an office with 12 women over the age of 40. I try to keep my inappropriateness to a minimum, because not only is the Assistant Executive Director divorced, she is also socially inept and from Alaska.
• Jeff: I’m a rebel all the time! Especially in the whole “young, able-bodied people should go to work every day in order to support themselves, and not leech off the state government’s unemployment benefits” kinda way. Woo hoo!

• Carrie S: I am constantly hatching secret plans. Most of them are to lie in really minor ways to people until they truly begin to appreciate my sincerity.
• Matthew: My secret plans are so deviant and fabulous that they rarely stay secret for long. I can’t recall any, but I think that is because most people would consider MULTIPLE things I do OPENLY on a DAILY basis to be things others might keep to themselves as secret plans, i.e., fucking more than one person a day, drinking sambuca and spitting it out at school children, answering my phone with “Hey slut” EVERY TIME, so that eventually all of my friends will believe they are sluts and willingly allow me to pimp them out, etc. etc.
• Toby: Back in the summer on the O’Neill for Supreme Court campaign, I devised a plan to set a trap and nail that evil Justice O’Donnell in his own diluted message. In the end, however, we decided that my plan was unwarranted and a little batty.
• Sarah: My secret plans almost always involve getting other people to make out, which work out great because people loooove making out! Make sure to give the parties involved just enough alcohol to grease the wheels, but not too much! That would go against rule number four in Sarah Lohman’s Rules for Sexual Delight.
• Ian: My last MAJOR secret plan was to hijack my Baron’s balcony at OU Homecoming ‘04. After attending a Fridays Live party thrown in my honor, Douglas and I ventured uptown to get our HOT DIGGITY DOG (“DAWG”), which the children have been abstaining from since my absence. After loading up on Ketchup Galore I typed in my code and flew up the stairs to the wonderment that is my old balcony. I was all yellin’ to people off of it like the olden days, including one Boyer, who we left behind. “I WANT TO COME UP!” she yelled, but we bored easily and were back down to the street before she was out of HDD’s line. Suckaaaaaaaaa!
• Tracy: I was semi-stalking a guy at my apartment’s shuttle stop on my day off with a friend. Once he arrived, I parked the car at the side of the road and went to the stop to take the shuttle that he was on. He sat next to me and we chatted all the way to my apartment, but then he left and there were no numbers exchanged. To make matters worse, when I got back to my car, I had a parking ticket. The moral of the story, kids: stalking does not pay… and bad stalking, in fact, can cost you 40 bucks.
• Aaron: Please, Bryan. I can’t even hatch public plans. Remember who had to do all the planning for social events all through high school and much of college? As for me, I plan to go to the grocery store and I fail, so secret plans aren’t really on my to-do list.

• Toby: One day, I was at the grocery store, and I discovered that Progresso soups were on sale. “BUY ONE GET ONE,” the yellow tag screamed! And, with a lump in my throat and a skip in my heartbeat, I found myself surrounded by delicious varieties, begging me to pick them up, check out their nutritional values, and place them ever so gently into my cart. A week later, I realize that not only have I eaten nothing but Progresso all week, but I’ve simultaneously quadrupled my recommended intake of sodium. Yay!
• Karen: During senior year of high school I’d never heard of Case. Then, my friend Phil gave me the screen name for this random guy I had met at a convention (yes… a Latin convention…) and I decided to IM him. We chatted for a few weeks, and he eventually convinced me that I should apply to Case as a backup since (a) it was free to apply and (b) it would be free to attend (back in the good old days of automatic scholarships). So, I applied, and then through a long drawn-out course of events that ended with me standing at the post office at midnight on April 30, 2000 deciding whether or not I could justify going $120,000 in debt, I ended up at Case! Which, of course, led to me meeting DJ Bryan.
• Brian E: The trivial decision I made some seven months ago to leave the warm comforts of Arizona for the cruel, edgy heart of America that is DC allowed me some fantastic opportunities. How, for example, would I have been introduced to Squatter Bryan had he not been sleeping on the couch of the house I moved into? How would I have known him from across the country, having never met him? Such crazy questions, but truly we can all agree that sometimes the most insignificant of decisions (packing up your life and moving across the country) can have monumental outcomes (meeting Squatter Bryan).
• Anonymous: I think the only reason I’m still with my boyfriend of 10 months is that, on the night we met, while making out for like half an hour, when he offered to come home with me — one I have never turned down if I liked someone — I remembered that my room was really embarrassingly messy and said no. So instead of conceptualizing him as one in a string of shallow, brief erotic encounters, I waited until the second date to sleep with him. Now that’s love.
• Kimberly: I went to visit Matt in Williamsport -> Gennaro started hating me -> Matt is now my boyfriend.

• Anonymous: Over the years, I have routinely hidden my dad’s gay porn so my mom won’t find it. It’s a tradition of mine and my brother’s.
• Anonymous: Does passing the pipe around the dinner table every major holiday count?
• Karen: My best friend’s family has this tradition that, when going to the beach, you always have to try to pay for the other car’s toll (it’s 15 cents). Obviously, this started by simply racing to the toll booth, cutting the other car off in line, and insisting that you’ll pay for their toll. However, over the years, we developed more intense methods of accomplishing the objective, including lying in a ditch on the side of the road and throwing a dime and a nickel through their window. When I was nine.
• Jeff: The Depends Party that we threw, while just a one-time occurrence, really elicits some powerful reactions from people (split almost 50/50 between “awe/delight” and “horror/disbelief”).
• Sarah: Two words: Drink All Day Day.
• Aaron: The ambulance corps has this rite of passage thing they do. The event itself isn’t all that shocking — it basically involves tying you to the stretcher and leaving you propped upside down outside against a wall. Oh, and sometimes sexual paraphernalia is involved. But the POINT is that these are the people that race you to the hospital when you get hurt.
• Anonymous: One time I paid a friend to perform oral sex on me while I drove around a subdivision. He later quadrupled his rate and I wasn’t able to afford any more sessions.
• Tiffany: Well I don’t really have one… sorry, I’m boring. But I’ve heard of this CRAZY tradition among the undergrads at Stanford called “Full Moon on the Quad.” This is where all of the freshmen and seniors meet on the quad during the first full moon of fall quarter, and all of the seniors find freshmen and they just make out all night. Can you believe it?!
• Kimberly: Spin the Bottle at Bounce with four gay guys.

• Toby: “Blow all your student loan money on questionably education-related items and services”
• Matthew: “Fuck Toby’s boy-hole”
• Ian: “Move back to Ohio”
  Seriously, B! Shitty weather, tons of white trash, AND we’re a red state!!!!!
• Anonymous*: “Bust a nut in my hole.”
  *You would be shocked.
• Katie:
  1. Stop wearing trucker hats
  2. Put a metro stop in Georgetown
  3. Replace my Zack Morris phone with a shiny little flip phone
  4. Get in the studio and put out a new album*
  5. Stop being on the Atkins Diet
  6. Make out
     *2Pac only

• Carrie S: You mean really violent masochism, like drinking Coke? Or minor masochism, like getting tied up and spanked?
• Tracy: I frequently accept job offers and then decline them a week before I am supposed to start my new job. I have done this three times in the past nine months. Fun for me… and always a good time for everyone else involved.
• Megan S: I apparently like to be sick all the time! In the last six weeks, I had a sinus infection and then got strep and then got the damn plague that is going around Case. In the middle of there somewhere I also had my wisdom teeth out and saw an endocrinologist for the hot flashes I have been having.
• Nicole: When I walk back from school at night, I hold my pepper spray in my pocket with my right hand. Anyway, you might not think this is self-destructive, BUT for some reason my pepper spray leaks just a tiny bit. I always forget this by the time I get home, so more often than not I rub my eyes or blow my nose or something and I end up in immense pain.
• Ian: Does having a major attitude count? Once, Newton was helping a customer and as I was walking by she was like, “What do you think about this combo?” Her customer had put himself in a bright orange 1MX shirt with a pair of kickin’ black with blue and maroon pinstripe Producer Pants. “It’s… interesting… ” I managed to get out as I walked on. “He just rolled his eyes!” the boy’s father exclaimed.
• Mark: I have a thing for walking the streets at 3am wearing nothing but black, with just my cell phone and no ID. For some reason, I have a fantasy of being in a hit-and-run, having to call the hospital myself, and spending three months there as an amnesiac John Doe.

• Katie: “Hard worker” is usually a euphemism for “Stupid,” “Sweet girl” is usually a euphemism for “Boring,” and “Katie” is usually a euphemism for “Whore.” Well, maybe the last one’s OK.
• Toby: Naive. I’m not sure anyone can say this word without being a condescending asshole. And that makes me go :(
• Karen: “Oh my god, she has such ugly shoes!”
• Jeff: “Isn’t he the guy that Maury Povich had to cut out of his house because he couldn’t move under his own power anymore?” Just kidding — I hope to God that someone says this about me one day!

• Toby: So, when a highway sign just outside of Erie, PA, reads:

  90 WEST
  CLEVELAND
  2 MILES

  … how am I supposed to know that this means I’m not two miles from my hometown? These are the subtleties with which our Interstate system works in order to keep me always on my toes.
• Ian: EVERYBODY IN CLEVELAND IS A COKEHEAD! When we were young and innocent we were clueless as to the ways of the Bounce nightlife… BUT, now that we're regulars we know who deals it, who snorts it, and who to avoid. And it’s all done in the women’s room!!!! Man, it’s OOC! OUT OF CONTROL!
• Evan: A lot of girls find me attractive.