My dentist keeps sending me postcards reminding me to make an appointment to get my teeth serviced. The images on the front are cartoons, weird ones. They feature dentist-oriented humor. They're all drawn by the same artist and feature things like, oh, a gingerbread man in a dentist chair, with a guy next to him wearing the blue scrubs and the mirror on his head saying "You've got Gingervitis". This is, okay, mildly amusing, but less so than the fact that there even IS a series of comics specifically intended to amuse dentists. True, though, comics are so easy to create that there are ones specifically for pretty much anything one can think of. It's just that dentistry does not strike me as a particularly chucklesome subject. Gum disease. Root Canal. Ho ho, very funny. Ha ha, it is to laugh.

Also in the mail today, I've got a bunch of near-useless crap going on. Here's my health care provider telling me exactly how they protect my privacy. No wait, that's my car insurance provider. Damn right you better protect my privacy. That insurance is the most expensive thing I've got running right now. It's got an oppressive financial presence, like being on probation just for being young and previously uninsured. I have to pay all this money just to be allowed on the road. If I actually USE my insurance, my future payments skyrocket. All I can do is sit tight and hope nothing bad happens, and eventually my payments will lessen. Though, if I could get health insurance which was as all-inclusive as comprehensive car insurance, I probably would. I wonder if death would count as a manufacturer defect.

In the freezer, I still have a package of chicken-shaped VEAT. It's the ultimate meat substitute! In its uncarved form in the box, it is formed into the shape of a real chicken breast! It has no bones, though, and the bottom is pretty much flat, so it's really more like a weird chicken-part-shaped sandcastle formed of soy protein. Like a beef-shaped meatloaf, I guess. Beef, though, always seems to come in excitingly random lumps, whereas chicken pretty much always looks like parts of a dismembered bird. Anyway, it's kind of scary but still amusing so I'm leaving it in the freezer and going back to the couch where I will think about anything except soy protein.

The scene out here on the couch is pretty grim, let me tell you. One pair of ripped black slacks, one oven mitt (green)... wait. These slacks are perfectly okay. What are they doing on the couch? Attempting to avoid work?!?! Hmm. Several books seem to live on the couch, too: _Code_Complete_ (Steve McConnell), _Snow_Crash_ (Neal Stephenson), and the _Bangai-O_instruction_manual_, (CRAVE entertainment). These are the books I read while I'm eating or waiting for food to cook. They all have the property of being easily resumable. That is, I can pick them up and start at any given page and still be educated, entertained, or instructed.

Also on the couch is my big fat ass, which I'm going to do something about pretty soon. My pants (aforementioned slacks) still fit normally, but I noticed that I couldn't see my hipbone while sitting, prompting me to consider some sort of regular exercise. My current options include skateboarding, biking, and Kung-Fu. Skateboarding is hard to do by myself. I feel weird and self-conscious going back and forth on my own across whatever empty parking structure is nearby. Biking would be fun. I haven't had a bike since I was in school, partially because my little brother kept getting them stolen. As an adult, I have bazillions o' bikes available to me. It's staggering. In this sort of situation (overabundance of choice), I tend to latch onto one particular type of thing early on and stay with it throughout whatever research I do on the subject. In this case, the first bike which seems to satisfy all my requirements seems to be a... well, it looks like a Bee. That kind of biking requires all sorts of funny clothes, though, like those extra-tight pants you can't wear underwear with. Anyhow: last option; Kung-Fu. It's cool, and Kris already does it, and having a partner to do this exercise with will greatly enhance my enjoyment of it as well as the likelihood I will actually do it regularly.

middd rev. d I was showing off my ring modulator and sidstation to Kris and the demo got out of hand. (2.65M mp3)