Today I got my first look at Logan Mathias Shelstad, my soon-to-be-nephew.

Okay, he's not really my nephew, he's the son of one of my oldest and dearest friends, but as far as I am concerned he's family. And he's already the cutest baby in the world.

Let me tell you something about Washington, D.C.: those people know how it is.

I went down for a recruit visit at George Washington University, and D.C. definitely knew how to get my attention. I got to the airport in Maryland only to find out the shuttle to D.C. had just left and wouldn't be around for another 3 hours, and I opted for taking a taxi and sending the receipt to GW for reimbursement. After all, it was their bright notion to have me flown in to bloody Baltimore just to save dough, so they can pay the difference in cab fare. There was quite a backup in the cab line, and I swung into the first open door and kicked my suitcase onto the floor. We were about 100 yards into the airport exit gridlock when I noticed my driver.

This guy was Steve Buscemi’s twin brother coming off a month-long crank binge. Seriously twitchy, but handling the car like a southerner; surprisingly stately, with none of the psychotic merging and creative interpretation of speed limits that you get with a Boston cabbie. Dude looked seriously batty, which made me feel comfortable right away because, in my experience, you rarely have to worry about the overtly crazy. They're letting it all hang out, which leaves them nothing much to be pissed at. Cab Man was drinking something out of a black mug that smelled like Lemon Pledge and left his lips stained purple. I didn't ask. Instead, we talked about politics and the porno he found in his kid's room. Not about the fact that he found porno, but about the porno itself. Like I said, overtly crazy.

The fare came to over $60, which should give you an idea of how long Cab Man and I were bonding, and I tipped him $15 of GW's money (never hurts to tip the twitchy ones). It was surreal to enter a marble-trimmed hotel lobby after chatting up a borderline personality disorder for an hour, but I was dog-tired and I passed the fuck out as soon as I got to my room. I woke up about two hours later and went down to have a drink at the hotel bar, where I used the story of Cab Man to strike up conversation with a narcissistic red head. The red head didn't pan out, but there was a pinball machine and a trio of bored young lawyers to keep me busy for a while and I ended up going to bed at an acceptably atrocious hour.

Seven o’clock in the morning was extremely unpleasant, but I didn’t think it would do for me to show up late for a recruit visit the school was paying me to attend. The day was interesting only to a colossal nerd like myself, and I’ll spare you a detailed recounting of the tours and molecular biology mini-lectures. What was cool was that the grad students took us out for pizza and beers at the local campus watering hole, this preppy pub called the Foggy Bottom, and we ended up getting drunk enough that they had to get me bumped onto a later flight. My return cab ride to the airport was, I shit you not, none other than the Cab Man. He was deeply touched that I had thought to ask for him personally (which I hadn’t, but might have if I hadn’t been so loopy and if I had the slightest idea what his name was), and told me I was headed for great things.

If being nice to cabbies is gonna be my ticket into heaven then I think I can deal with that; there are worse ways to get there.

From time to time we all need some concrete reassurance that our society hasn't reached the ultimate low, and thankfully there is always an utter chump somewhere in the world who is able to limbo under the bar of common sense with room to spare.

In this case, the chump in question is Tennessee native named Terri Carlin, and we should all take a moment to thank her for finding a new low to which we can all sink. Carlin has filed a proposed class action lawsuit in a U.S. District Court, alleging that Janet Jackson's bared boob in the Superbowl Halftime Show caused her and "millions of others" to "suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury."

SERIOUS INJURY?! What, were they juggling flaming torches while watching the halftime show, and the boobie distracted them long enough to miss a catch and start the house on fire? Did her eyes pop out of their sockets to dangle grotesquely onto her chest? Did she gasp so sharply that oxygen actually managed to reach her brain, making her abruptly aware of her own idiocy for the first time?

What I especially like is how inclusive the stupid tend to be; after all, she's not just out to protect her own curtains from mis-juggled torches, she's standing up for millions of idiots around the country. The stupid always seem to want to include the rest of us in their lawsuits, by asserting that they aren't unique in their inability to drink coffee or watch television without suffering serious injury. That's so sweet of them.

So hats off to Mrs. Carlin, for making my day a little brighter with this new-found evidence that I am clearly not the most desperately bored person on the face of the Earth.

Every day I wake up and wish that I had a superpower. This is a constant in my life. The only variation is which superpower I set my hopes on for that particular day.

Today I wished I could read people's minds, and I kept coming up with questions I would want answered about every person I met. Such as:

If you could be any country, past or present, what country would you be?

If you could make the world any shape you wanted, what shape would you pick?

What do you think is the worst smell in the world?

You awake from a dead sleep to discover yourself perched precariously on the rim of a volcano. A possum sits to your immediate left, along with two lions. One of the lions can talk. You are startled by a strange noise. A large red kite is attached to your big toe. Fourteen western gunslingers wait several paces away, prepared to shoot you if you try to move. You have a pick axe in your right hand. What do you do?

The way I see it, there's no reason why I shouldn't get to have a superpower. I can't stand unsated curiosity so this superpower would make me awfully happy.

I found this in a box of old stuff. Not sure what I think about it yet.

The Useless Phrase
Saying "I love you" seems rather ambiguous to me. When you tell someone you love them it can mean any number of things; it can mean "thank you," or "you have been a swell friend," or "I'll miss you, you old so-and-so." As a description of one's state of mind and/or feelings for another person, "I love you" is not especially practical. In fact, "I love you" is really quite prosaic, an essentially useless phrase.

Say, rather, I think of you. When I feel rotten I want to call you and vent, and good things aren't as real until I tell you about them.

Say, instead, I see you. I recognize your walk, your smell, your quirks of speech. I am as familiar with your writing as with my own, and I could pick your hands out of a line up.

I believe you. I trust you when you tell me you will stay with me, and even when we fight I believe you care for me. I allow without fear that you will stand with me and not laugh at my eccentricities (much).

I worry about you. When you are late I think of car accidents and when you don't call I think of violent burglers breaking in on you. I guard your safety as selfishly as I do my own.

I talk with you. I tell you my most appalling secrets because you trust me with yours. I tell you when I have been crying and when I have been scared. I pull no punches, I edit no thoughts, and I do not need to embellish to make myself better. Not to you.

More than anything, I am comfortable with you. You have seen me naked, you have seen me fresh from the shower with all my defenses washed off. You have watched me shave, brush my teeth, put on deodorant. I slouch around in old clothes, I pick food out of my teeth, I launder my unmentionables in front of you. I eat out of the pan, I play computer games, I watch terrible late night television, and I know you will forgive me. I let you see me as I am.

No brief three-word phrase could adequately describe my feelings for you. No clipped arrangement of single syllables could summerize all the ways you know me. But since even a book of my ramblings would not provide sufficient explanation of my feelings, I might as well fall back on those trite, over-used words, and trust that you will understand all the things I am trying to express when I say I love you.