Pictures that Eddie made

My brother, Eddie, made these pictures. He makes pictures for me, and they make my life better and more interesting. He wanted me to share these pictures with you.

I don't know if this one is oriented correctly.


This is a self-portrait. I'm sorry that the quality of this image isn't great, it was made on very large paper, so I couldn't use my scanner.

Roland Metal Art

At the SoWeBo Fest yesterday, I saw Roland Metal Art. These are high-quality affordable hand-made sculptures. When someone jokingly suggested that the sculptures are imported from China, the artist took offense and showed us his scarred hands.

These are sculptures that are designed to be gifts. If you know someone's profession, favorite musical instrument, or preferred sport, you can get them a great gift. I don't want to knock Roland, I think the actual work is excellent, but I think it's funny how people think in categories.


Someone might like fishing, but a sculpture of a person with a fish might not appeal to a fisherman. Looking at a sculpture of a nail-person with a fish is different from fishing, unless you wear waders all the time.


I thought it was funny how there was one sculpture for computer. My grandma thinks that 'computers' is a job; she can't tell the difference between my job and that of a graphic designer, accountant, writer, or tech support worker. I don't think I want a sculpture of a person working on a computer on my desk, as I'm working on my computer. I have monkeys and toys and chocolate and my tea brewing kit on my desk.

I think these are fun sculptures, especially the ones for the OB/G, preacher, proctologist, and bagpipe player. The ones with the dogs getting into antics are super.

Be sure to check out Merlin Mann's podcast episode, The Richard Scarry Book of the Future.

Folding aluminum foil

One time, when I was a kid, my brother, Spencer, and I went over to our neighbor, Matt's house. He was called Matty then. Or Mr Matty-Mo. Matty got out a roll of aluminum foil, and tore off strips an inch wide for each of us. We folded the aluminum foil in half, then in half again, and so on, and we tried to see who could compact their aluminum foil into the smallest ball. Eventually, we were chomping down on the foil with our teeth. When we realized that it was physically impossible to further compact the aluminum foil, we shrugged and went on to the next thing, making paper airplanes or pretending that the floor is lava.

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Crossword puzzle tips

General tips:

• If it ends in a question mark, it's a terrible joke
• If part of the clue is abbreviated, the answer is an abbreviation
• Look for tense and case in the clue; plurals end in 's', past tense ends in 'ed'

Answers to common clues:
First name in jazz: ELLA (FITZGERALD is never an answer)
Dancing Astaire: ADELE, not FRED
Pirate in Peter Pan: SMEE, not Hook
Scotch partner: SODA
La Douce: IRMA
Western treaty grp.: OAS
Full house sign: SRO
Flying Brits: RAF
Anything about a plant or balm: ALOE
Pequod skipper: AHAB

Common crossword puzzle words:

• URDU
• ULNA
• AMEN
• ARC
• APE
• DNA
• ERA
• EEL
• OLEO
• OLIO
• OGRE
• OGLE
• LEER
• GAZE

Auntie

We drove up the dirt road to the farmhouse. It was after midnight. We were greeted by a Saint Bernard, Rufus, who ran up to me, and almost knocked me down. When we got in, Auntie gave me sugar cookies and hot chocolate. I got into my pajamas, the ones with the feet, and went to the bed she'd gotten ready for me. The next morning, I woke up, very late. Auntie had already gone out and gotten eggs and fresh oranges. She made me an omelet with cheese and mushrooms. I thought mushrooms were gross, but I ate the omelet to be polite. I decided that I like mushrooms, after all.

Enjoy the snow

On my way home from classes, I stopped in at Burger King for a veggie burger. I'd had too much iced coffee and had the shakes and was feeling queasy and needed something proteiney.


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The worker at the counter was a woman in her fifties; she was balding and had a slight mustache.

'Can I have a veggie burger?'

She looked up, gazing at a spot hovering in the air two feet above my head. The spot evidently then moved to the left, then the right. She had a big smile that revealed crooked teeth.

'I suppose' she said in a scratchy voice that made it sound like her tongue was stuck to roof of mouth, as if she'd just had a glass of whole milk. 'Cheese?'
'Yes', I said; I saw that the register registered $2.64.

'That'll be $264.' she said. I handed over three dollars. She counted the bills, passing them one at a time from one hand to the other, acting like she was giving me a $261 discount, but it's cool, this happens all the time, and is quite reasonable given my meager means.

'I can pay Canadian, too.' I said.



One time, back when I ate frozen pizza for lunch every day, I was trying to scoot through a trip to Giant on my way to campus. This was before Giant introduced self check-out lanes. My cashier was a man in his forties. He had a mustache. As he handed me my bags and receipt, he said, 'Enjoy the snow!' It was September. I looked at him, baffled. 'The weatherman says that they're expecting less than ten inches of snow today.' he said with complete gravity, as if going out and playing in this snow today was required of me by Hashem.

I went back to that Burger King the next Monday, partly because that cashier was so pleasant and funky. In the future, robots will prepare veggie burgers for us. This is a good thing, this frees people up to do other things. I'm just not sure how I'd cross paths with that Burger King cashier otherwise.

The ouzo effect

In my writing from my trip to Turkey, I marvel at rakı and its mysterious properies (see here and here):

Rakı is Turkey's national liquor, made from distilled fermented grapes and flavored with anise. (Greeks call it ouzo, and Iranians call it arak.) Rakı is drunk diluted. It is clear, but, because of magic, turns cloudy when water is added. Once, I was served rakı in a bar, and I added water, but it was already diluted, so the Turks I was with were able to tell that I'm sort of a poseur sometimes. Turks are very good sports when foreigners mess up their customs.

My friend, Zach, just called to tell me of the ouzo effect. In short, there is an oil in anise (which is used to flavor rakı) that is strongly hydrophobic and causes formation of microdrops. It is soluble in ethanol, and so raki is strong enough to keep the oil in solution, but if the ethanol concentration is lowered (by diluting with water) the drops form and make the rakı become milky.

Mike the Jehovah's Witness

Mike was probably my best friend at my high school. We had a lot of classes together, but we got most bored in government class.

Mike had a little watch that didn't have a band; instead, it Velcroed to the inside of his binder. We'd start class each day by Mike placing the Mafia watch in the pencil tray, as we sang, 'Mafia Mafia Mafia'.

We drew pictures. We drew pictures of Mr Miller, our health teacher, patronizing Lazy Joe's Used Food Store. One time, Sra Stevens, our Spanish teacher, was gone and we had a sub. The sub passed around an attendance sheet. We signed our names, but added names for some people who were technically not in our class, like Amanda Hugginkiss and Mike Rotch and Lazy Joe. Sra Stevens teased us about this when she got back. 'Who is Lazy Joe?' Mike and I mumbled something about Lazy Joe's Used Food Store. Sra Stevens was disgusted. Brian said, 'Yeah, you know Lazy Joe's Used Food Store, it's in Aberdeen, out on Paradise Avenue.'

One time, Mr Miller had a substitute, and Mike was taking his class at that point. The substitute was lax and let the students go through Mr Millers cabinets. The sub had a very fine beard. Some of the students found vaseline and rubber gloves. After that, I would say, 'Hey, Mike, I hear that Mr Miller's breaking out his vaseline and rubber gloves.' 'I bet he's going to grease down the floor. Wheeeeee!'

Mike and I rode the bus together. That was scary. Our bus driver, Miss Doris, would stretch her fingers when the bus was stopped, in such a way that we presumed that her hands had arthritis. We were sure that eventually her hands would fall apart and the steering wheel would slip and the bus would careen into a ravine.

Richard rode the bus, too. One time, he sprayed me with Victoria's new perfume. Sometimes he threatened me with violence.

Mike tells me that, the year after I quit high school, they were riding the bus to school, and Richard was throwing trash out the window for no reason. Trash! Like a disposable water bottle and paper towels. Miss Doris' bus was stopped next to another bus at a stoplight, and the driver of the other bus rolled down his window, and told Miss Doris that someone on her bus was throwing trash out the window. Miss Doris yelled, 'RRRRRICHARD!'.

Mike and I went to the tech high school; this school was populated primarily by losers, so when I say that we ate at the loser table in the cafeteria, this means that we were the losers that lost out on even being losers. I would buy the school lunch once a week. One time, I got macaroni and cheese. I scooped a hole in the macaroni, poured in ketchup at the condiment station, then covered the hole over with more macaroni. When I returned to the loser table, I stabbed the macaroni and my friends were amused to see it bleed.

Mike the youth leader

Mike was a funny youth leader. Most youth leaders fit into at least one of three categories.

1. Seminary graduates who haven't gotten jobs as pastors, and are trying to use the job as a stepping stone


2. Parents who want their kids to be able to hang out with other kids, but not unchaperoned. I've been to youth group meetings where there were more parents than kids.


3. Burned out druggies who became Christians. These are the best youth leaders, because they tell stories about drugs and promiscuity and living under a bridge; these stories always end with, 'But that was before I was a Christian.'.

Mike didn't have a crazy troubled past that I can recall; he had been married, but divorced, he no kids. He just cared about teenagers. He was middle aged, and didn't have a beard. He kept talking about how he'd been at a Newsboys concert before they made it big.

He was our youth leader when the hip contemporary church was still young, so there were about five kids in youth group. Four of us were well-behaved kids of well-behaved church people, but the fifth kid, on any given week, was some kid from a tough home life who Mike had befriended, because this kid needed a grown-up friend who was stable.

We ate a lot of Doritos and ice cream, and we drank a lot of Mountain Dew. Somehow, I'd always get to sleep on time. I don't know why I'm so much more sensitive to caffeine now than I was when I was 14.

After a couple of years at the hip contemporary church, Mike moved to a house in the middle of the woods in Virginia. He was able to hunt on his new property.

Jus chillin

I think my high school government teacher, Mr Milanoski, is a libertarian. At least, his teaching led me to libertarianism.

One time, we had an exercise about the government's involvement in our lives. Mr Milanoski told us to write down everything that we did on one day, and then to figure out how each thing we did was connected to the government. For example, watching TV was affected by the FCC, or eating a snack was affected by the FDA. Mr Milanoski asked us if anyone did anything that didn't have to do with the government.

Riley said he had something.

'What?' asked Mr Milanoski.

'Yesterday afternoon, I was jus chillin.'

'Were you doing anything?'

'No, jus chillin.'

'Were you watching TV?'

'No, I was jus chillin.'

'Were you inside? Was the air conditioning on?'

'Jus chillin.'