merovingian_backup

Invert the Invertebrate is not a real game. This is not subject to discussion.

Please discuss below.

"I am tired of people not believing in me," he told me over some fresh cups of honey-mead, "so I got myself a mascot gig at one of those slightly cultish industrial psychology places. That's where the money's at. I'm moving out to New Jersey next week."

If you are in the area, please give a warm greeting to the Mythical Man-Month Moth-Man of Monmouth!

I asked the chef "What's in the salad?"

She examined the salad a little "Yuzu and the rest doesn't matter because once you hear that a salad has yuzu in it, you're either the kind of person who will want it no matter what other fancy ingredients it contains, or you're the kind of person who won't want it no matter what other weird ingredients it contains."

[Poll #2042869]

"Opinions are like onions," the farmer said.

"How so?"

"Well, they start with O and end with -nions," she replied, "And they are a thing that people cultivate and sometimes that make you cry."

"Okay, I guess that's technically accurate, but why are you telling me this?" I replied.

"I thought we were at a things-that-are-like-onions convention," she said, "and as a farmer, I thought I'd give my expert opinion."

Then another farmer walked up. "Opinions are like onions," she said, "Everyone has one and they all stink."

"Um, but that's not even technically accurate."

Then she handed each of us a rotting onion and proceeded around the convention distributing more of them.

Also it turns out we really were at a things-that-are-like-onions convention. I'm hoping they have gimlets at the cocktail bar.

So I was hanging out with a time traveler yesterday (well, "yesterday" -- you know how it is with those folks) and I mentioned the MIT 2005 Time Traveler Convention. And how they only ever needed to have one such convention, since all the time travelers could attend it.

She gave a good-natured laugh and said, "Actually, we already did that in 1893 in Chicago. Sorry."

"How did you avoid wrecking history?" I asked.

She looked a little guilty. "We kind of wrecked history. We weren't supposed to introduce commemorative coins, cream of wheat, cream of what, Pabst Blue Ribbon, pancake mix, Braille printers, electric third rails, zippers, squashed pennies, the Ferris Wheel, dishwashers, phosphorescent lamps, spraypainting, hula dancing, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, switchboards, night football, modern Viking ships, the Parliament of World Religions, or the solar antelope spawnpoint, but we were clumsy with time travel and it kinda happened anyway."

"What about the waffle cone?" I added.

"That was the 1904 World Expo, actually, when we came back to clean up the solar antelope spawnpoint."

"So, what was the future going to be like before we got all that stuff by accident from the Chicago World's Fair?"

She punched me in the arm gently and laughed again. Okay, okay, fair enough.

"My other car is also this same car," the bumper sticker said.

"How does that work?" I asked.

"Oh my gosh, a talking non-sticker!" the bumper sticker replies.

"A poisonous breakfast is the most important meal of your last day," the asp told me with a menacing hiss.

My general rule is Always trust a talking snake, so I'm sure this is legit, but I can't help but to feel skeptical about something there. Maybe it's just that asps aren't native to California?

It was a tower of clear plastic, or clear something like plastic, all in tubes, twisting and turning and intersecting, some ten stories high. The sun caught my eye uncomfortably as I looked up at the tower, but I saw billows, and twisting joints, and smoke or steam from a dozen vents. Inside those tubes were snakes of different sizes and breeds: some dozing in the sun, some coiled around a steaming vent, some crawling about seeking a new place to hide. Thousands of snakes, their movement and stillness forming a sort of machinery of its own.

I asked the inventor, “What the Sam Hill is this thing?”

He cleared his throat and thought a bit before he answered.

“The best thing a person can do in modern America to extend their lifespan is to stop smoking, right?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I said, “I guess.” I mean, technically the best thing you can do is to refrain from jumping off a bridge this instant or something, or maybe to get yourself a new robot body, but I was willing to go with the context of his premise for now.

“The only problem is,” he continued, “it’s not something that non-smokers can do. And if you start smoking again you lose all those benefits. So you can only do it once. This machine is designed to fix that.”

“To allow you to quit smoking multiple times and gain the same life extending benefits each time?”

“That’s the plan.”

“I don’t think statistics work that way,” I told him.

He crossed his arms defensively. “That’s just your opinion.”

“Why snakes?” I asked.

He kept his arms crossed. “Well, there are four kinds of problems in this world: problems you probably can’t solve using snakes, problems you can maybe solve using snakes, problems you can definitely solve using snakes, and problems that you can’t solve without snakes. The quit-once problem is definitely in the fourth category. So here we are.”

I don’t think problems work that way, either.

And neither does Sam Hill.

As you might know, I have been spending the past few months making a concerted effort not to do anything story-worthy. My theory is that a happy life is one devoid of narrative value. I would tell you more about it, but that would ruin it.

But today, I was walking along the embarcadero and saw a person there, head in his hands, wallowing in despair.

"I used to be a font, you know," he said to me when I gave him a concerned look, "Now I'm a person. How did that happen? What does that even mean? I don't know. It's claustrophobic here, being in only a single body rather than a broad swath of text. I had a purpose then, clean and simple; now I'm plagued with a terrifying maze of needs and possibilities."

"What font were you?" I asked him. I was working under the assumption that the traits that the font had would in some way be reflected afterwards into parallel human traits, perhaps to humorous effect.

He told me what font he was, but I didn't recognize it.

"Of course you don't recognize it," he said, "If you did, I would still be out there. As a font. As I should be."

"Were you san serif?" I asked, because that's about the only thing I could think to say.

He just shook his head sadly.

"I would like to go back to being a font," he said, slumping back down again.