141003The wrong time to take a night-time walk on the beach is when you're in the midst of reading Lovecraft stories.Literature Week 1
141004I recently read "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". While I enjoyed the book, it seemed like Verne wrote it in order to have a tax write-off for his encyclopedia.Literature Week 1
141005Sherlock Holmes starting developing his personality quirks and observational powers when he was in school. For example, he never allowed his bed to be made up with sheets; he only wanted a rough and scratchy blanket. This sensitized him to his environment, helping him to sleep lightly and to maintain a sense of what was happening around him while he slept. When word of this idiosyncrasy spread among his schoolmates, Holmes became known as No-Sheet Sherlock.Literature Week 1
141006When I hear the titles I can't help confusing "Anne of Green Gables" with "The House of the Seven Gables". I imagine the book as being about an orphan girl who learns witchcraft in her New England childhood, and uses it to establish herself and exact revenge on her enemies when she eventually settles on Prince Edward Island. I think my version sounds much more interesting than the real versions.Literature Week 1
141007I love "Pride and Prejudice", Jane Austen, "Downton Abbey", "Cold Comfort Farm", and lots of classic English literature. However, I think they could all be improved by the inclusion of Lucha Libre.Literature Week 1
141008The part of Beowolf where Grendel attacks Heorot and kills the Danish warriors is really the story of a guy dealing with noisy neighbors. Grendel takes things into his own hands and is trying to get the neighbors to be quiet, but he ends up killing some of them. Over and over again. Sure, Grendel is frustrated and irrational due to sleep deprivation (from all the noisy parties), but his reactions are rather disproportionate to the problem. Clearly, this is a Stand Your Ground story, and it must really be taking place in Florida.Literature Week 1
141009The early versions of "Winnie the Pooh" had a rather different set of characters. In particular, Pooh and Eor were combined in a single character and he was named "Whiney the Pooh".Literature Week 1
141010I got a stool softener from the store. Despite the product name, I think a little pillow would work better.
141011The Bear Bowl is full of M&Ms. This is always a good thing. However, that nice, big bowl is very deceptive, and it looks like it'll always be full of M&Ms. You can take a handful here, a handful there, a bunch more way over there, and the Bear Bowl never empties. It's a shock when the bear finally peeks through from the bottom, as that means the M&Ms aren't endless but rather are almost gone.
141012I'm going to start referring to the fridge as The Gym. That way, I can tell people I'm going to hit The Gym, and they'll be all impressed at how healthy and virtuous I am, but secretly I'll be having scrummy snacks.
141013My acupuncturist examines my tongue during appointments. I don't know what she's looking for, but she does it every time. I think next time, I'll drink some blue Kool-Aid just before going.
141014I really hate when I'm all alone in the house at night, standing in the kitchen not doing anything, and a cabinet door slowly starts swinging open.
141015Artists have long known of the related sizes and ratios in the human body that can be used to make realistic drawings. These include things such as eyes being an eye-width apart; a person's height being the same as their outstretched arms, fingertip to fingertip; and the face being roughly the height of the hand and fingers. There is one such size that is rather curious, not one I've seen mentioned before. The circumference of the index finger's first joint allows it to fit perfectly in the nostril. This is not the same for the thumb or other fingers; those fit either too loosely or too tightly. This size relation is of very little use to artists, but it makes you wonder why that worked out just so.
141016I recently put on a pair of shoes I hadn't worn in several years. Since spiders and centipedes are malevolent beasties and would naturally infest these shoes, just waiting to bite my tender tootsies, I sat down to shake the offending little monsters out of my shoes. As I was sitting there, shaking away at those shoes, a troublesome thought occurred to me. Shaking those shoes was probably not nearly as likely to dislodge those vindictive wee beasties as it would be to make them really angry that I was shaking them up.
141017It is widely considered to be a good thing to know yourself. This can be difficult to do, though, as there's not necessarily a well-defined way to accomplish this. In one respect, gift money can help you know yourself. Not store-specific gift cards or gift certificates, but money. When given a blob of cash, you're confronted with a palette of choices; generally - desires, toys, needs, essentials; specifically - this particular book, that particular CD, this toy for your child, a week's groceries. Even though they're dependent on a wide range of situations and circumstances, the specific choices made can give you some amount of insight into your self.
141018I made a joke about Flathead beavers being the beavers of the western US. It was a dumb joke, but it amused me. Also, it was obscure, and required a little knowledge of some Native Americans from northwestern US and Canada. Thinking about this joke, I realized that a useful thing about learning a really wide range of things is that it greatly expands the weird-ass connections you can make to create jokes. I think this explains something. The Jewish people have long been known for placing a high value on learning and knowledge. They are also known for producing outstanding comedians. I think the ancient Jewish people realized that great learning would produce great comedians, and they therefore threw themselves wholeheartedly into the heights of education.
141019Some children and dogs haven't made the connection that "no" means "stop doing what you're doing" or "you aren't allowed to do that." I think maybe they aren't hearing "no", but are instead hearing "know", and they think they're being told to learn and memorize something.
141020The phrase "Gonna put a cap in your ass" makes me think a thug is going to take a baseball cap and swipe its brim down between someone's butt cheeks like a credit card swiper.
141021When I did something bad as a kid, it wasn't uncommon to get the always-popular "Go to your room young man and think about what you did wrong" punishment. My self-importance would start me off thinking, "Well, clearly what I did wrong was to get caught." Eventually, I'd move on from that and start thinking about what I'd done that had gotten me in trouble. I'd end up replaying the event, and as often as not I'd start enjoying what I'd done and would think about better ways to do it next time. I don't think that was what was intended when I was told to think about what I'd done.
141022I am considering a moral question. When passing the collection plate in church, almost everyone puts in their own offering. It is almost unheard of to give your offering to someone else to drop in the plate for you. This makes me think that maybe the "credit" associated with donating depends on who puts it in the collection plate. I'm wondering how much of the moral offering credit accrues to me on those very rare times that someone gives me their offering to put in the plate. Is it merely a percentage or do I get the whole thing?
141023I'm baffled as to how to apply the adjective in German Shepherd. Did the breed originally come from Germany? Did they herd Germans? Maybe the orderliness with which Germans are stereotyped has its origins in ancient ancestral memories of being herded by large, pointy, growly dogs. Maybe really the name is misspelled and it should be Grrrrman Shepherd.
141024I am intrigued by the glue used in making the Edo Tsumami Kanzashi hairpins. Since the glue is made of smooshed rice, that tells me that rice pudding is basically spiced rice glue.
141025We have some lovely Twinings teas, and each tea bag has a useful instruction on the tea bag tag. "Brew 3-5 minutes." Except it isn't so useful, once you do the math. How do you brew tea for -2 minutes? Do you start timing from 2 minutes before the water finishes boiling? Do you use "air brewing" and start heating the water two minutes after you put the tea bag in the cup? Do you heat the tea bag 2 minutes before heating any water? Is air brewing really effective? I've ended up using these Twinings tea bags as I do other tea bags, but I wonder if I am getting the full flavor experience.
141026The fight-or-flight instinct has long been studied. However, there are some animals (and people) that neither fight nor flee when confronted by danger. Instead, these animals are overwhelmed by the situation, resulting in the "deer in the headlights" condition. So, the reaction instinct should really be referred to as the fight, flight, or lights instinct.
141027When I was a kid, my friends and I had a very simplistic view of death. We thought there were four ways you might die: being killed in a war, being murdered, being in an accident (car accidents, predominately), and dying of "natural causes." Sure there were other ways -- being eaten by a bear, being eaten by a shark, being thrown in a lion's den, being bitten by poisonous snakes or spiders. Maybe that should be five ways to die, with "consumed by wild animal" being the fifth. Anyway, that last one -- natural causes -- was pretty nebulous to us, and we didn't really know what it meant. We all had a vague idea that if you died of natural causes, you'd go to sleep in your bed one night and just wouldn't happen to wake up the next morning. We had no clue what "natural causes" might entail, or that it was anything other than a nice, peaceful, gentle, pain-free death.
141028I've heard that A Game of Thrones was strongly inspired by the Wars of the Roses. Except the Wars of the Roses didn't have dragons and zombies. Gryphons and werewolves, yes, but no dragons or zombies.
141029In the US, baseball metaphors are often used to describe sex. I wonder what sports metaphors for sex are used in countries where baseball isn't popular.
"Things went well with Victoria last night. We had a real sticky wicket."
"I was hoping for a hat trick, but when I went for some high-sticking all I got was an icing call."
"I would have had a golden set last night if it wasn't for Billy's dead rubber."
"My Manitoba tuck went so well that I shot my rock and scored an eight-ender."
"I tried to get her in a hook, but she grabbed my camán and went straight for the block."
141030Given all the zombie activity in New Orleans, "YOLO in NOLA" is not just inane but also inaccurate.
141031Horror movies are practical demonstrations of Darwin's "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest".
November, 2014
141101One of the brilliant survival strategies you see in horror movies is summed up in the statement, "Let's split up!" Haven't these doofs heard the old adage, "Divide and conquer"? It's like they're hoping to be picked off one by one. No wonder the survival rate in horror movies is so low.
141102Many people get excited when they see the first robin of spring. I get excited when I see the first junco of winter.
141103All the best holidays are associated with candy. Sometimes I invent special holidays just for this. "Happy 17th Tuesday, have some chocolate!" "It's Fudge Friday, time to celebrate!" "Summer's End, here are your honey dates!"
141104There are lots of types of lies -- white lies and fibs and half-truths and statistics and whoppers and falsehoods. I think menu descriptions are their own special class of lies. Maybe they should be called gravy lies or arugula lies. (This thought brought to you in honor of Election Day.)
141105People on holiday get souvenirs in order to preserve the memories of their vacations. Perpetual souvenirs, like rocks or herpes or knives, are life-long souvenirs and last forever. Ephemeral souvenirs, like t-shirts or hermit crabs or hats, eventually wear out and don't last forever. Ephemeral souvenirs are better than perpetual souvenirs because they do wear out, and when they're worn out that means it's time to return for another visit to the place they were commemmorating.
141106Fingers think of thumbs as the Loyal Opposition.
141107The holes in Swiss cheese are the result of bacteria consuming lactic acid, which leads to a release of CO2 gas. This means that the holes in Swiss cheese are created by bacteria farts.
141108Don't smugly announce on Facebook that you've had a bunch of new thoughts. Your helpful friends will then suggest that a few more would be a good idea.
141109Musicians say "Christmas is coming" with the same sense of foreboding as Starks say "Winter is coming".
141110We've got a really powerful kitchen mixer, with lots of settings. "Beating Eggs" is a pretty low setting, somewhere around 2 or 3. I haven't read the instruction manual, but I think "Dead Horses" is around 15 or 20.
141111As part of his job as god of thunder, Thor is also the god of melodramatic foreshadowing.
141112Mixatonic University is the school for bartenders who work at the pubs frequented by Great Old Ones, Elder Gods, Outer Gods, and Great Ones.
141113My parents-in-law have super-advanced toilets made by Daelim Trading Company. These toilets have all sorts of controls and adjustments and sprays and such. I don't really understand all the intricacies of those contraptions. Also, I've always been a little frightened of those toilets, but I didn't know why. I have realized the source of my fear. I think the company name has been triggering a subconscious memory of that old movie, "Daelim For Murder".
141114Houses have load-bearing structures which support and strengthen the house. In people, souls can act as grudge-bearing structures, but this only serves to weaken and wither the soul and the person as a whole.
141115Performers feed off the energy of an audience. The more energy and connection that an audience has with a performer, the better the performance tends to be. This energy and connection boost the performer and feeds back to generating more energy from the audience. This makes performers psychic vampires, of a sort.
141116I have some pants with big holes in them, such that they really shouldn't be worn out in public. They are so indecent that one might even say that they are profane. My pants without holes are neither indecent nor profane, but are unblemished. This means my holey pants are profane and my un-holey pants are sacred.
141117Only the Daring Little Chickadee will come to table with the Squirrel of Banquets.
141118Tea is a binding force of the universe. It makes order from chaos and calms the havoc and mayhem that threaten to overwhelm. The simplicity of leaves steeped in hot water stills the storm and draws the forces of nature into tranquility.
141119Elephants are Great Old Ones. They are the wingless, monotentacular children of Cthulhu.
141120In simple arithmetic, you are taught to carry numbers from one column to another. If you can carry something, then it must have mass. Therefore, numbers must be physical entities and must have weight as well as mass. By Einstein's mass-energy equivalence formula (E=mc2), the mass of a number can be calculated by m=E⁄c2. This means that a number's mass depends on the amount of energy contained within the number. I wonder how much numbers weigh and how much energy each contains. Are a number's weight and energy a standard amount, the same amongst all numbers, or does a number's weight and energy relate to its value? Something tells me I've answered my own questions here.
141121Saying, "The customer is always right!" proves just how wrong a customer can be.
141122Sometimes I wish I could be the one to fulfill the Golden Rule for some people.
(By doing to them as they do to others.)
141123"Brose before hoes!" shows that Scottish farmers always eat a good breakfast before starting work.Food Week 03
141124In its simplified form, a common part of a meal is lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cheese, and a flavorful sauce. While you might be thinking this is describing a salad, this is really describing common additions to hamburgers. This goes to show that hamburgers are tricking people into eating salad.Food Week 03
141125Why doesn't anyone eat egg salad as a dish in and of itself? They do it with tuna salad. They do it with potato salad. They do it with shrimp salad. They do it with ham salad. But never egg salad. It's almost as if the existence of egg salad is only valid and good if it has been surrounded by a couple pieces of bread.Food Week 03
141126Whole-wheat white is the carob of the bread world.Food Week 03
141127I've heard lots of people talk about "empty carbohydrates" and that always bothers me. Carbohydrates are delicious and packed with flavor! If your carbohydrates are empty, bland, or flavorless, then you need to work harder on preparing them. Butter, cheese, and jelly can be used to make your empty carbohydrates more flavorful and exciting.Food Week 03
141128A fruit salad is an excuse to have dessert with dinner and then a second, even better, dessert later. Why does the mid-meal dessert have to be of lesser quality than the post-meal dessert? Why shouldn't the two desserts be equally as tasty? I could easily trade the fruit salad for a chocolate salad. An ice cream salad or a cookie salad would go rather nicely with a steak or a chicken casserole. With a little imagination, there are so many better options than a mere fruit salad.Food Week 03
141129Why do people always look so unhappy when they're in the grocery store? Grocery stores should be happy places -- there's food everywhere. Wonderful, delicious, lovely food! Ice cream and strawberries and tuna and liver and cookies and peppers and donuts and peanut butter and chips and carrots and cheese and apples and cucumbers and sausages. So many foods to suit so many tastes to make so many people happy, yet so many people look so sad. They should be floating around on little clouds of gastronomic bliss. People should have some cookies and fudge to cheer themselves up before starting in a grocery store.Food Week 03
141130Words We Need 4: These words should be well-defined and in widespread use: congratululations, yipple, spinkle, bohemoth, nowwo, squinox, meither, farticle, wobbie, har-de-har-harbinger
December, 2014
141201If you ever find yourself in the Middle Ages and your cellphone runs out of power, just find a knight. Knights always have powerful chargers.
141202When I was a kid, I learned the "Judge not, lest ye be judged" proverb in Sunday School. I don't think we ever got into the deeper meanings of that precept, so I was left with a child's interpretation. This caused me great trouble, as my young mind couldn't reconcile the saying with the thought of a justice system. How could judges be good Christians and actually be judges? My childhood naiveté must have been a source of great entertainment for my parents.
141203Hemiola sounds like a soft drink for vampires. It would even come with a ready-made slogan. "Don't B Negative, grab a warm Hemiola and have A Positive day!"
141204We sometimes get a bonkers squirrel at the feeders. All the other squirrels are placidly shovelling seed down their gobs, but the bonkers squirrel is zooming hither and yon, bouncing off trees, wrestling sticks, rolling in the dirt. After a while, the bonkers squirrel has settled down and is calmly eating seed. And there's usually another squirrel that's joined the group. It's long been a mystery what's going on with these bonkers squirrels, but I've figured it all out. I think the frenetic squirrel is in the process of squirrular mitosis. He's zooming and bouncing and wrestling and rolling because he's in the process of splitting into two squirrels. That's where the additional squirrel comes from.
141205I would like to make a Viking movie. When the Viking longships approach shore for a raid, I'd use "Sleigh Ride" for the soundtrack music. I'd have it played by a Norwegian death metal band and I'd call my arrangement "Slay Ride".
141206The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 25 was broadcast a few weeks ago. Super Bowl 49 will be played in about two months. That means that the Simpsons is over half as old as the Super Bowl.
141207I dream of building an addition on our house in the shape of an equilateral parallelogram because I've always wanted a rhombus room.
141208I'm still wondering why some teabags sink and some teabags float. I previously speculated that if a floating teabag weighs the same as a duck, then that teabag is a witch and must be burned. That doesn't account for floating teabags that don't weigh the same as a duck. Being wise in the ways of science, I started wondering about what other things sometimes sink and sometimes float. Goldfish. Live goldfish sink down and stay under water; dead goldfish float to the top of the water. This must mean that floating teabags that don't weigh the same as a duck are really dead goldfish and must be flushed down the toilet.
141209Most mugs have a design that's visible to the right-handed drinker. The right-handed drinker can quietly appreciate that they're the World's Greatest Dad or the World's Most Loveable Grandma; remember the lovely beach they visited last year; be amused by a cheerful chipmunk chattering at a cross cardinal. Righties get a quiet reassurance without the appearance of braggadocio. Lefties don't have it so good. Our mugs have the picture pointing out at other people, so we end up looking pathetic, braggy, and pushy. "Look, you! I am the World's Greatest Dad!" "No, I really really really am the World's Most Loveable Grandma! See my mug? It proves it!" "I went to this beautiful beach last year and you didn't. Sucker." "Look at these cute animals! If you had a loving heart, you'd find this adorable and want one too." Even mug-makers hate left-handed people.
141210It's a bad idea to insult a chemist because no matter what you say, they'll always have a ready retort.
141211For some reason, football players are frequently used as spokesmen in Public Service Announcements. Football players are known for great strength and a talent in bashing people, not necessarily for having a talent in public speaking. I saw a PSA and the football spokesplayer finished with a message that reminded me of contentious D&D sessions. His heartwarming message could only serve to draw together an argumentative rabble of player characters into a cohesive team. Perhaps he wasn't speaking clearly enough, but it sounded like he said, "Together we can take a troll."
141212At choir practice, we sang "Do You Hear What I Hear?" As we sung it, I was thinking about the words and it reminded me of a scene from a great piece of literature. All the song's questions made me think of the riddle scene between Bilbo and Gollum in "The Hobbit."
Said the hobbit to the Gollum foul,
What is in my pocket?
Tight within my fist, Gollum foul,
What is in my pocket?
A ring, a ring, hidden in my pants
With an evil dark as the night
With an evil dark as the night
141213In conversational use, "surely" seems to be the opposite of "certainly".
141214This time of year always has me singing a song that mixes up several secular seasonal songs. However, they aren't from the same season, and one of them isn't even for a particular season. I don't know how I conflated these lyrics, but this song has stuck with me for a long time.
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,
Hoppin' down the Bunny Trail,
Hippity hoppin' Santa's on his sleigh!
blah blah blah don't know these lines
When you say Bud you've said it all!
141215In movies and shows with dinosaurs, it's become a cliche for the bad guys to be eaten by the dinosaurs. You'd think that people would get tired of this, but they never will. It's such a satisfying comeuppance for the villains that people would be disappointed if they didn't get the delightful bit of saurian justice.
141216Lord Vetinari, Tywin Lannister, Mr. Tulkinghorn, the Phantom of the Opera -- Charles Dance has played some excellent roles. I would love to see him play Santa.
141217The internet told me that Wiccans worship satin. Some of the Wiccans I know like satin quite a bit, but some of them are more fond of silk or cotton or wool. While some do revel in satin's comfort, I think it's overstating it a bit to say that they actually worship satin.
141218I went to see the Joffrey Ballet and it was better than I was expecting. It was a quality dance performance, but I was expecting to see a bunch of annoying, arrogant teenagers prancing around being nasty and vicious to other people.
141219When I was a kid and I was summoned to the principal's office, I always had the same queasy feeling and the same questions. "What did I do? What do they want? What do they know? What have they found out? Am I in big trouble this time?" I have the same queasy feelings every time I go to the dentist or the doctor. The questions are slightly different, but pretty much the same. "What have I been doing? What are they going to find? What are the blood tests going to show? Am I in big trouble this time?"
141220In college, I sang in a madrigals group. This was my introduction to that music, as I hadn't previously heard most of those songs at all. This was brand new music and it was really interesting. Since it was so new to me, one of the cool things about it was that, as far as I knew, in every song I was singing the melody.
141221Once again, I forgot to ask my dentist's dental hygienist an important question. How long is the grace period between when the hygienist cleans your teeth and when you have to start brushing them again?
141222I've heard that Apple and other companies are working on their software so that predictive typing in text messaging is more accurate. As a fan of auto-correct errors, I hope that either improved predictive typing includes a prediction quality setting or that predictive nutsacks bale in THORS sugar tarts.
141223Everyone's childhood self wondered about Harold Angel and exactly how he fit into the Christmas story. There were a couple things from other carols that I never quite understood. Jingle Bells has the line, "Bells on bobtails ring". When I was a kid, I always conflated bobtails with bobcats. Silent Night has the line "'Round yon virgin, mother and child". My weird little brain mashed that together and thought a "roundyon" was some sort of onion, and so the song was talking about onion virgins. Bobcats, onions, and onion virgins -- I was baffled as to how these things related to Christmas.
141224In "Twas the Night Before Christmas", there's the line "And Mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap," That's the only mention of the clothes worn by the narrator and Mama; and their apparel has no apparent relevance to the poem. Why mention their clothes at all then, unless it's to give a subtle indication of something significant. If that was all they were wearing, just what were Mama and Papa doing when St. Nicholas happened along and interrupted them?
141225It's well known that you have to clean the lint out of a dryer after drying the clothes. If not, you risk a house fire or other unspecified tragedies. It has never before been clear why dryer lint might be poised to do these terrible things, but I have at last figured it out. Clumps of dryer lint are the ghosts of the clothes that have just been dried. Not only are they the ghosts of clothes, but they are the vengeful ghosts of clothes. Lint ghosts are angry to have been torn asunder from their corporeal clothes. If left to their own devices lint ghosts will set fire to your house, trip you as you climb the stairs, and hide your car keys. You must remove the dryer lint from the dryer lest the lint ghosts remain free to haunt and bedevil you.
141226People complain about stores being open on Christmas day. Some have said that it's a troubling sign of the lack of respect the modern world has for the true meaning of Christmas. At the end of "A Christmas Carol", written in 1843, Scrooge sends a boy to a shop to buy the huge goose hanging in the shop window. There's no indication that there's anything unusual about the boy being able to buy the goose on Christmas day, or that there might be any trouble getting the shopkeeper to open the store. This indicates that the "modern" problem of shops being open on Christmas day isn't quite so modern as some would have us believe.
141227I've scoured satellite maps of the Arctic looking for Santa's workshop, but it just can't be found. I'm starting to think that maybe Santa's workshop is a myth. At the North Pole, that is. I think he's really got his workshop hidden away somewhere else, and the North Pole story is just a clever misdirection that is only coming to light with modern technology. My current theory connects Santa's workshop with the visionary writing of H.P. Lovecraft. I think the story "At the Mountains of Madness" is actually the tale of William Dyer's visit to Santa's workshop hidden in the mountains of Antarctica. This would make Santa's elves be the "Elder Things" that built the city that Dyer found in the mountains.
141228It was fascinating to watch a Yule Log being constructed tonight. The chocolate cake laid out, thin and spongy. The peanut butter filling, rich and earthy, binding the cake together as it was rolled into a log. The exquisite fudge icing gooped onto the whole log, then artistically shaped to model both tree bark and branch stumps. The Yule Log as a whole is a culinary work of art. I was struck by how much it resembles a giant Ho Ho. With the older festive holiday confection linking to the modern product, the delicious hybridization should be called the Yule Ho.
141229A few days ago, my family got together to celebrate Christmas. I have a punning clan.
141230I recently had cause to consider ounces and pounds. A pound is a basic unit of weight that is easily knowable, like an atom, even if the details are not precisely known. Tom says a thing is five pounds and you know roughly how heavy it is. An ounce, on the other hand, is much more nebulous than the good, reliable pound; you know an ounce is there, but you don't know much about it or quite trust it -- much like a sub-atomic particle. Walter says something is five ounces, and you haven't a clue how heavy it actually is. I bet this is all utter nonsense to people involved in the drug trade.
141231There are some people who say, "You can't make this stuff up" after telling a story that is entirely believable, fairly unremarkable, and maybe mildly amusing. I used to be insulted by that tag line. Now, I just take it as an admission that they have a very limited imagination.