Gudanov: Naturally, my daughter decided that pirates were passe and developed superpowers instead.

RobertH, in Angel:

Funny sidebar: I got the title pretty close from memory just now. I wanted to check if "plrtz grlb" was right, so I typed it into Google. What did it tell me?

Did you mean: plrtz glrb

God bless the Internet.

Amen, Robert! hee.

In Bitches...

Sean:

Man...

I just went to make a tube of Mahatma Nacho Cheese flavored rice, to go with my tuna, and when I poured it into the pot, it was full of nasty black chunks.

It seems I may have had that tube for a while.

Now I need to figure out how to get rid of the nastiness in the pot. Feh.

Trudy:

OK, the fact that it was a tube of rice should have been your first clue that something was very wrong.

The second would be the Indian/Mexican fusion cuisine aspect.

Sean:

What's wrong with the tubes? Lots of rice and soup mixes come in tubes. They're just small bags. What am I supposed to buy a big-ass one pound bag of rice? This stuff is premeasured.

Okay, yeah, the nacho cheese flavor is a little strange, but the Saffron is delish. Feh.

</rice barbarian, apparently>

Trudy:

Oh, ok, I was picturing something terrifyingly squishy.

But I'm going to stick with Mexican/Indian fusion being ass.

Sean:

I got no defense for that.

Jess PMoon:

You know, you try and imagine what bachelor cuisine is like, but you never really come close...

ita (listing search terms that brought people to our happy home):

james marsters his new love interest was a cement block

amych:

It's like BBOC via Babelfish!

Nutty, in Angel:

No amount of Wesley on a stick can make up for my having already gouged my eyes out by then.

Nutty in Angel again (the birthday girl is hot today!)

Skip in S4 sounded like a huge writerly confession: I've pulled so much out of my ass, now my ass is empty! Please forgive me!!

So, apparently, rage makes me funny. Huh. I'll need to remember that, next time I'm at a cocktail party.

David S: Sean, you are going to have to show a greater commitment to vegetables than it wasn't delivered directly to my desk so I can't have any.

Billytea:

While talking about weight, when I got back from Spain I weighed 206 pounds. This morning I tipped the scales at 192. So I've lost a stone! I'm feeling good about that.

TrudyBooth:

Wow, you Australian guys have some big testicles.

billytea. The Testicle Story.

Very well! I see that the time has now come. Gather ye round, boys and girls, for it is time that you heard the testicle story.

Follow me back to a happier, simpler time. The setup for the following events is this: when young, my older brother and I each had one undescended testicle. (I believe these days they are no longer called 'undescended', but rather 'scrotally challenged'. ...Meanwhile, my MS Word spellcheck wants me to change it to 'undecided testicle', possibly not inappropriate.) Now, this isn't a dangerous condition and doesn't have any apparent long-term effects (my older brother at least has already revealed himself – so to speak – to be a fertility god). But it does involve an operation to set things to rights. Thus it was, at the age of seven, that my father came to me and with pride in his voice, said (paraphrasing slightly) "Son, you are now old enough to have both your balls in the same place".

Well, the operation passed uneventfully. (The last time I had been in hospital it was for a tonsillectomy. I awoke from the anaesthetic to find my tonsils on the bedside table, floating in a jar of preserving fluid. I'm so very glad this experience was different.) But it did mean that my brother and I were off school for a week or two. Not, in and of itself, a bad thing; but as the day of our return approached it became apparent that some people might have noticed our absence, and demand an explanation. Thus my older brother asked our mother, "Do I have to tell anyone why I was away? Does anyone else have to know?" My mother, sensitive to the insecurities of primary school aged boys, assured him that he could just say he was off sick and no one need know the details.

It was perhaps unfortunate that they didn't talk to me too. Even at that age, I tended to play my personal feelings a bit closer to my chest (not so much because I'm that concerned about my own privacy, I just don't see why anyone else would be interested). So the first indication my mother had that word might have got out was when the headmistress called her to discuss the impromptu sex ed lesson I'd given my second-grade class during Show and Tell.

Apparently the point at which the teacher (who, BTW, was a nun, I don't know if that's relevant) felt control of the class slipping away from her was when I stated "If you're a boy, you should have two. But if you only have one, then that means you need the same operation I had." Whereupon an entire classroom collectively started rummaging around inside their pants, to determine what was what. Even this probably could've been safely glossed over (and was in any case better than my younger brother running up to a different nun to do a Fonzie impression, with the addition of dropped trousers); but my perfectly reasonable corollary – "But if you're a girl, don't bother looking because you don't have any" – was apparently sufficient to send at least two classmates home in tears. The phone calls to the school from their parents were duly relayed to mine, who assured the principal that the sordid event was unlikely to happen again.

There's this passage in the Bible about Jesus basically giving his parents a bit of backchat about nipping off, and then it reports "his mother treasured all these things in her heart." I occasionally wonder what my mother thinks when she reads that.

Here endeth the testicle story.