Failure of the Day: Potpourri

No, not the little pouches of dried flower petals that Chris likes so much and places in the shopping cart with a bold and masculine sweep of his arm. I mean here's a list of random crap:

At some point, I decided my neighbors are from Turkey. I don't know if they really are but the language they speak sounds like what I imagine Turkish would sound like and that's really the best I can do.

In the mornings, I wear purple latex gloves that I've cut the fingers out of. It's a dermatology thing.

Part of me feels bad that I have not gone to any war protests, but another part of me is very pragmatic and knows that the protests are not accomplishing a damn thing. That first part of me thinks the second part of me is a lazy, over-rationalizing sell-out.

Are you a patriot if the thing you love is the idea of what your country was supposed to be but has never actually been?

The Turkish people next door have a 5 year old son who I can plainly see (and hear) has ADHD, but they don't seem to be aware of it at all. Unless of course all 5 year old boys generally run around screaming at midnight every night, which is entirely possible since I don't know the first thing about 5 year old boys. Or ADHD.

I like onion-flavored things, but not onions.

My 5 favorite books, in order are:
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)
London Fields (Martin Amis)
The Complete Poems (Anne Sexton)
A Personal Matter (Kenzaburo Oe)
Billy and Girl (Deborah Levy)

Every one of those books was published during my lifetime. What does that say about me? Nothing good, I suspect.

I believe that raisin bagels are anti-Semitic.

I have not spoken to my mother since December 21, 1998.

I am confused about the whole "thumbs up" sign business in middle eastern culture. I saw a whole bunch of reports saying it was derogatory and meant more or less "up yours." But the news is showing all kind of Iraqi men giving two thumbs up and saying "Thank you George Bush!" and junk like that. What's up with that?

I am quitting smoking in exactly 182 days. Somebody better buy Chris a helmet; it's not going to be pretty.

I have never tasted mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, pickles, cherries, pears, or jelly of any kind. I tried a tomato once, when I was 20. Ditto a strawberry, a peach, a plumb, and a kiwi.

For a long time, daylight savings time confused the hell out of me. It was explained to me as a child as a way to get an extra hour of sunlight and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how we got nature to go along with the plan. When I finally figured out that we were basically just tricking ourselves into thinking that we were getting an extra hour of sunlight by messing up the clocks, I felt I had grasped a great a truth about the way the world works.