VEGETABLE BRILLIANCE

If the potato could produce its own oil (you know how there's corn oil and peanut oil, but no potato oil? That's what I mean), it would be the perfect vegetable. I could live happily on a potato farm and never leave. Imagine frying up some fries in the oil of the plant they come from. It's a balanced, eternal, self-sustaining cycle! I am the world's most brilliant genetic engineering thinker!

NEW DIAL FORMULA?

Did Dial change the scent on their line of body-wash type soap without telling anybody? I just bought a new bottle of it, and I swear it was the only thing I could smell all morning. This would probably be more of an issue if it smelled bad, huh.

I trust everyone had a good Txgiving! In not-quite celebration, have a Dogblog update and eat what leftovers you haven't already scarfed down or turned into soup.

ORBITAL TOY SATELLITE: FIRE

Child's Play is in gear again this year, people. This means it is completely feasible to such as skip out on your morning nonfat moccacino latte two days in a row and send a sick kid a toy instead. I don't even drink coffee and I managed to do this.

I'm not saying this to feel smug or anything; I'm already a TV star, so I automatically know I'm just intrinsically better than 99% of the population.

SUPER-CELEBRITY STATUS

You can watch the news story in which I appeared last night right here if you're so inclined; I show up near the end.

Now that I have joined the ranks of videogame punditry, I expect Nintendo to send me eight dozen Wii consoles for free more or less immediately.

YOU HAVE FOUR HOURS

Yesterday while running an errand in the mall near my office, I chanced upon a six-console Wii kiosk right near the entrance and got a chance to play a little Zelda: Twilight Princess. I went back there today during my lunch hour, and it was still there (they said they'll be there until January), so I tried out some more games, and everything I played was excellent (tennis, boxing, more Twilight Princess).

While I was there, I was interviewed by a TV news lady for the local ABC affiliate (I think that's channel 7), so I guess turn on the ABC 7 news at 6:00 tonight and see if I look like a doofus or not.

I should go back there tomorrow; if current trends hold, I may meet my future wife.

LITERARY ARCHAEOLOGY

Something caused me to think about this book I read way, way, way back in the day whose title and author are both lost to me. I don't know what to call the intended age range. If you were reading Encyclopedia Brown or The Boxcar Children, it was probably right in there with those. Here's what I remember of it:

- A kid falls through some sort of dimensional gate behind a junky toy store(?)

- Ends up inside a parallel universe where there are a bunch of alive toys

- The toys are engaged in a war with -- I swear to god it was giant seagulls
-- There's a scene that involves a hot air balloon and an attack by the giant seagulls, and I think the kid gets captured at one point

- Some sort of malevolent force in this universe is causing all the toys (and maybe the seagulls) to fall apart and die
-- I think it manifests itself as a gigantic hole in the ground or something

- At the end the kid makes it back to our universe

What is this book called and who wrote it, because I have to know. Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about.

OPINION TUESDAY

This is an opinion I may have voiced before, but I'm still ready to say that Lilo & Stitch is the best 2D animated Disney feature ever made.

I could just say it's my favorite as opposed to the best, but that's not what Opinion Tuesday is all about.

U WANT PROOF MON

I GIB YOU PROOF MON

Here's a link to the picture of the I Voted! sticker they have in San Francisco.

I don't really know why I needed to announce that like a Jamaican stereotype, but that's just the way things happen today.

I LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO

The sticker you get at the polling place when you vote says I Voted! in English, Chinese, and Spanish. Interesting note: Chinese does not seem to have an exclamation point, unless it's somehow built into the characters used to construct this particular idea. I can't read Chinese, people.

SECRET OF THE HOLLOW SKULL

Today I helped celebrate a friend's birthday ultimate-style in the cockpit of a go-cart racer, and I have learned a few things:

- Mario Kart skills translate to real life only in the most marginal of senses

- Go-carts are amazingly maneuverable if you can figure out how they handle

- Your brain can and does have the capacity to rattle inside your skull, or so it may seem

EVENING: SUCCESS

HAIR DISCOVERY?

As you probably know by now, I've been doing the facial hair thing for a while now. Something I've noticed that I'm reasonably certain isn't just my imagination or wholly attributable to the reflection of light: I think there are hairs growing out of my face that aren't black. They seem to be sort of red-brownish. They're thinner, too, than the black ones. Weird, huh? I thought so, too.

OPEN LETTER TO JACK

Proprietor of Jack in the Box:

Never stop having curly fries on your menu.

Thank you.

=j=

(Seriously, they should always have curly fries, forever. Do you guys remember back when Burger King had mozzarella sticks? Wasn't that a magical time in your life?)

TWO THINGS ABOUT DRIVING

1. Pursuant to my last post about the Great Highway, I would like to note that the lights have all been changed back to normal except for the one at Vicente, which is noticeably asynchronous. If you're southbound, you have to speed up to roughly 45mph from the standard "cruising speed" of 35 in order to catch that green light. Someone somewhere is rubbing his hands together with glee, maybe cackling a little.

2. This morning on my drive to work, I witnessed a pine cone fall from a tree and roll a little ways down the side of the road. I don't know why this struck me as portentous. Maybe because I don't think I've ever seen that particular event occur before.