#181

I think back to the December 31, 1999, and laugh at all the fools. People spent a lot of money to fly to New Zealand or Australia or something to be among the first to party in the new year. Big deal. So you party a few hours earlier. I went to the north pole, where all the time zones meet. I got to party twenty four times. So much for all the smarty pants folk in Australia, who weren't eaten by polar bears. I am so hardcore.

#182

When it comes to showing appreciation, I think we are a sick, masochistic society. What is clapping but hitting yourself?

#183

U.S. state quarters are great. Collect all 50! But I wonder what they're going to do in 2008, when the run of state quarters has completed. What will quarters look like then? Will they go back to the eagle, or will they adopt some new design? I've got a great idea about that. The government should hold a reality series, where quarters get voted off each week, and the winner gets a million dollars (In quarters? Or would a coin harem be too risque unless Utah wins?) plus the privilege of being minted exclusively in 2009 and thereafter. The quarters could be rendered with computer animation and have computer animated squabbles over which quarter respects which other quarter and which quarter has a chip on its shoulder and which quarters don't do its share of the work. Each week, the quarters would have challenges like eating nasty food and navigating perilous vending machines in the shortest amounts of time, the winners receiving highly coveted visits from their beloved nickels and dimes. Quarters would have to form alliances to make it to the end. Who wouldn't be game for a more friendly rematch between the North and South? I tell you, this show is a sure-fire hit, and it would make history as the world's first government-sponsored computer animated reality series starring monetary currency. I think. With all the whacked reality series that come out every other day, it's hard to keep track.

#184

I'm down with pirates. I think pirates have it figured out. There's nothing more exciting in life than gangplanks and treasure. But the thing about pirates that most people forget about is that pirates are more consistently like cyborgs than any other romanticized historical people. Being like a cyborg is cool. You got the hooks for hands. You've got the peg legs. There's only one little step left, and that's to replace the hooks and pegs into things like artificially intelligent weed whackers. Ok, so technology was more primitive back in the heyday of pirates, but I have a suggestion for all you pirates out there stuck in the 17th century: replace that eyepatch with a usable part. Obviously your peg-leg is useful. How about a peg-eye? Just wedge a pole in there, and you can smack people around just by nodding. Hollow it out and make a telescope. Headbang and play the drums, while leaving your arms free for other things, like beating up the second mate. Headbutting other people is that much more lethal. Or, hey, replace your eye with a hook instead. Then you can hang from the rigging and leave both hands free to tie knots and knife off invaders. Best eye replacement yet: install a small keg in that eye socket with a bamboo shoot in the bottom you can suck on. Then you've got a mobile dispensation unit for rum for when you're too busy keelhauling prisoners to hang out in the kitchens.

#185

I've got a new idea for when I open my restaurant. It would be awesome to have a restaurant with secret areas and cheat codes. Like, if you order the twelfth item on the menu, and you're the twelfth customer of the day, and it's twelve o'clock, your meal is free! Or, if you order a "cheese and ham" sandwich, instead of a "ham and cheese" sandwich, you get a secret bonus rutabaga. Of course, the moment the restaurant opened, some hardcore lamer loser would somehow have miraculously already figured out all the cheat codes and posted them on his Internet fan site, so the rule could be that every time someone finds a secret, it becomes invalid, and a new secret replaces it. This keeps customers on their toes. I think I'd probably get a lot of people coming in saying things like, "I'll have a hamburger sub with cheese..." and look expectantly at the waitress and perhaps add thoughtfully, "...and I don't need napkins." And the waitress would go, "Aw, so close." And then the guy would come in the next day and order a hamburger sub with cheese and "salt on the side" -- three times -- and, yay, he gets extra meal tax!

#186

Have you ever watched frogs get around? Even the tiniest little frog can just up and blip itself like twenty body lengths ahead, faster than the eye can see. With all the thinking I've been thinking about how we need to speed up personal transportation with flying cars or frictionless walkways, maybe the true answer is already inherent in nature. We need big honkin' legs. I think it would be great: imagine peering down the road at someone coming your way, and you're thinking, gosh, that person looks vaguely familiar, but I can't quite make out wh--WHOOSH!, suddenly, the target of your inspection has made a flying leap to right in front of you and is recalling those boisterous times you shared together in study hall once upon a time. Instant gratification is what I'm talking about. You wonder what's over somewhere, so you up and blip yourself over to see. Takes no time at all. Plus, you can scare the living daylights out of old ladies, and that's a bonus that pretty much makes anything worthwhile.

#187

Skin flakes off. It is a well-known fact that dust is made up primarily of particules of human skin. I assume this is for cross-pollenation. You know, like with flowers? Wind blows bits of a flower into the air, and they hit another flower, and presto, a fruit starts growing off the side of it, and then it falls off and starts growing into a new flower -- hence why I think gas masks are a good idea for preventing unwanted pregnancies. Otherwise you might breathe in someone else's skin, and a baby would grow off a bit of you until it was old enough to fall off and walk around on its own.

#188

Poker is great. I love how you can say, "I had pocket rockets, flopped a set, and got the case on the river," instead of, you know, "I had four aces."

#189

I think everyone in the world is really, really good at exactly one thing. I'd hate to be the guy who's really, really good at self-evaluation.

#190

People actually eat sunflower seeds, much to my puzzlement, but I think I've finally figured out a good reason why one might. Let's say you want to go camping in the wilderness and survive off the land. Well, let's face it. You try that, and you're gonna die. Man has long forgotten how to live off the land. But if you eat some sunflower seeds and a trowelful of soil before you go, the sunflower seeds, which will sprout and grow just about anywhere, will grow up your esophagus and out of your mouth, and then you can pick off the seeds and eat those, too. It's a never-ending supply of food, and all you really have to do for it, other than the initial investment of eating dirt, is spending a few hours each day with your mouth open and upward to let the sunlight in.