A conversation with Lance.

 "Who made you so dorky?"

 "Um . . . God."

We make our own aliens.

"On the eve of the twentieth century, H.G. Wells had imagined a 'War of the Worlds'—a Martian invasion that devastated the earth. In the hundred years that followed, men proved that it was quite possible to wreak comparable havoc without the need for alien intervention. All they had to do was to identify this or that group of their fellow men as the aliens, and then kill them."
—Niall Ferguson

The best comeback ever.

"If a man has reported to you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make any defense to what has been told you, but reply, 'The man did not know the rest of my faults, else he would not have mentioned these only.'"
—Epictetus, the Greek philosopher

Boom. Roasted.

That's quite the image . . .

In 2009, the journalist Matt Taibbi described the financial institution Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Wow. How's that for an image?

I love baby food and I don't care who knows it.

That strange moment when I'm shuffling through blogs and come across this photo:

And I think to myself, "I have a box of these things in my cupboard, and I am not a baby. And I don't have a baby. I eat them myself. On campus. In front of my fellow college students, completely unashamed. I enjoy it very much. I think they're delicious."

I'm not sure if this is a problem. And I'm not sure I care if it is.

Old spice is my new spice.

Over Thanksgiving break, I found man deodorant amongst my sister's belongings.
"Why do you have this?" I asked her.
She said that it was hers, and no, it did not belong to one of her dinky hormonal teenage boy admirers, and no, it was not given to her as some kind of strange symbol of love. Then she told me man deodorant works better than woman deodorant.
"Plus it smells good," she said. "Try it. All of my friends on my volleyball team use man deodorant, too."
I smelled it. It did smell good. I put it on. It did work good.
So yesterday at Smith's, I bought myself a stick of Old Spice deodorant in the Fiji scent, which, according to the sticker, smells like "palm trees, sunshine, and freedom."
I'd say that's a pretty accurate description.
But today is my first day of wearing it and I don't know how I feel about it. I keep being attracted to my own scent, which is weird. But it works like a dream. There's no denying that.
I guess it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I'll smell like a man so I won't sweat like one.