Remember When Restaurant Service in France Was Gruff?

Paris is apparently making an effort to make its restaurant staff more polite.  It reminded me of the trip my wife and I took to Paris last year.  For those of you contemplating a similar trip and who want the inside story from an experienced traveler who was there for nearly five days, here are a few tips for dining in the City of Light:

1.     “Cheval” means horse.

2.     Every member of the waitstaff I met was very polite and spoke fluent English.  I didn’t even try to speak French.  One restaurant even had an American server that was assigned to any American patrons that walked in the door.  She reminded me of one of my classmates from high school.

3.     Despite the pervasive English fluency, if you ask for grog, and you don’t pronounce the “r” with a proper guttural roll, they won’t know what you’re talking about.  Practice in front of a mirror before you leave, maybe while you’re waiting in the airport.

4.     Believe the hype about the croissants.  No matter how lost you get or what other frustrations you meet along the way, the croissants in Paris will take you to another dimension.

5.     There were many cafes but nothing that had what I would count as coffee.  I’m not talking about espresso or some other smidgen of brown liquid shoved into a cup from a dollhouse tea set, but a coffee that can bring me back to life every morning.  The kind of coffee I drink every day before work, and as soon as I get to work, and after lunch so that I don’t pass out at my desk.  They have something called “Cafe Americain” but it must be an inside joke.  There was even a Starbucks across the street from our hotel.  From the length of the line and the price of the coffee and the kilos of cardboard and plastic that clothed each serving, I said to myself, “Well, this must be authentic American coffee!”  But I drank it and I still fell asleep on the train to Versailles.  What the croissants giveth, the coffee taketh away.

And those are my tips for dining in Paris.  Bon appetit!

The Private Universe of Shopping Carts

Did you ever notice how a shopping cart in any place other than a supermarket or a supermarket parking lot looks extremely out of place and even a little disturbing?  I saw one during my morning commute a few weeks ago.  It was so near the road that I almost clipped it.  It was there the next morning.  And the next.  And the next.

The evening commute takes me on a slightly different path that did not go past the shopping cart, and so I only saw the shopping cart in the morning.  I did not the shopping at all until I passed it, and when I did, I would be reminded of all previous encounters.  At first I was disturbed just by the sight of the shopping cart, but after a few days I became disturbed more by the fact that I only thought about the shopping cart when I passed it in the morning, and wouldn’t think about it again until the next encounter the following morning.  It was like the shopping cart and I shared a universe for a few brief seconds and then separated into distinct realities.

Did the shopping cart feel the same way about me?  “Every morning a car with Mark Kaplowitz inside drives by,” the shopping cart says to itself, “but I don’t see the car in the afternoon, and I don’t think about it until the next morning when it passes by again.”  Did the shopping cart find the routine as unsettling as I did?  I began think the shopping cart was looking at me when I passed it.  I began to feel self-conscious during that stretch of road.

Then, a few mornings ago, as I approached the shopping cart spot and started anticipating its presence and steely gaze, I saw that the shopping cart was gone.  Then I saw that it wasn’t gone, but merely pushed over on its side.  Someone must have had the same feeling I had, and finally could no longer stand the stare of the shopping cart.  It must have been dangerous to stop a car in the middle of a road to push over a shopping cart.  Maybe it was done late at night when traffic was light.

Whatever the circumstances, the spell was broken.  I can now think about the shopping cart at any time of the day.  And I do.  I picture it lying there, among the tall grass, enjoying the precious last days of summer.

Remember When Luggage Didn’t Have Wheels?

My friend wanted me to come over to his house because he had invented a time machine and wanted me to try it out.  I asked him if he wanted me to bring over some beer, but he said he had some already in the fridge if I didn’t mind Bud Light.  I did mind, but didn’t tell him, not wanting to hurt his feelings.luggage wheel

The time machine was set up in the garage, made out of a 4-foot jeep that had been given to my friend’s son for his second birthday.  I was inspecting the chassis when my friend, in trying to twist off the top of a bottle of Bud Light, lost control of his arm and knocked me into the time machine.  By momentum I hit some switch and the next thing I knew I was traveling through time in a sequence that was somewhere in between Back to the Future and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

When the traveling stopped I was in front of a giant castle.  The guards at the gate, eyeing my modern dress and assuming I was the prince returning home from college, took me to see the King.

“So son, you are back from that school of yours.  I hope the $30,000 in tuition was worth it.  Financial aid my eye!  Oh well, I see you’ve taken to wearing your pantaloons lower on your hips.”

The King asked me to demonstrate what I learned in falconry class, and I so I took the glove and whistled for the falcon.  But as the giant bird approached I forgot where I was and ran away screaming and waving my arms, and the King knew me for an impostor for which the punishment was death.

“Wait, wait,” I said.  “Don’t I get one last chance, some trial, to save my life?”

“I’m not aware of that procedure.”

“Oh yes,” I said.  “It’s in all the chivalric romances.”

The King looked at his advisor and pantomimed drinking something.  But he nevertheless entertained my suggestion.

“Very well, stranger.  My army is to meet the army of Aethelred the Pithy in three days.  I’ve asked him if we could have the battle here but his daughter apparently has a soccer game earlier that day and all the parents are expected to attend.  So we have to go to his battlefield.  But if my knights wear their armor whilst riding they will be to tired and sweaty to fight.  Solve this dilemma for me, stranger, and I will grant you lands and titles.”

I told them to wrap the armor in sacks, and place the sacks on wooden boards affixed with wheels and a long retractable handle.  Frankly, I don’t know why they didn’t think of it before.  They had wagons and wheel barrows and even their catapults were on wheels.  But sometimes the most hidden solution is the one that’s staring you right in the face.  The King was impressed and upgraded my status from stranger to wizard.

On the morning of the battle, we arrived at the battlefield in high style.  The knights were well rested and not sweaty at all.

“The enemy approacheth!” someone called.  “Don your armor!”

The knights turned to put their armor on, but someone had mixed up the luggage tickets, and it took some time to sort out whose bag of armor was whose, made even more difficult by the enemy knights who were lopping off arms and legs all around us.  Our knights did their best to parry the attack, but armor would have been nice.

“And so,” said King Aethelred to me while I stood in chains before him.  “Tell me again, stranger, why I should let you live?”

I explained to him that I knew of a way to put tops on bottle of ale that could just be twisted off.  He was skeptical but agreed to let me show him.  He ordered one of his subjects to open a bottle of ale for me.  The top was hard to pull off, however, and as the subject pried it free his arm hit me, and I fell back, and the next thing I knew I was back in my own time, lying beside the converted toy car.  I tried to explain to my friend what had happened, but he didn’t believe me, insisting that luggage tickets were not invented until after the Renaissance.

Remember When You Needed a Cell Phone to Record Someone in Public?

The good folks over at Google have invented something truly spectacular—a pair of eyeglasses with a small computer screen mounted on one of the lenses so that the user can have all the advantages of a smartphone without the inconvenience of having to take it out of a pocket and tap a touchscreen.  It is called the Glass.  At last we can search for cat videos while windsurfing.

Photo by tedeytan via flickr
Photo by Ted Eytan via Flickr

As I save my nickels against the expected $1,500 price tag, I note with not a small amount of incredulity that not everyone is looking forward to the Google Glass.  The product is still months away from being released to the general public, but already has been banned from a Seattle bar and the roadways of Virginia, on concerns of privacy and distraction, respectively.

Privacy?  Distraction?

Think about how wonderful it will be when you can photograph someone in a supermarket without having to pretend to make a phone call, putting the silent phone to your ear and turning sideways, estimating where the lens is focusing, faking your end of a conversation (“Yeah, I know…This is now two weeks they don’t have shredded cabbage”), checking if the photograph was too blurry or if you missed the target, and repeating as necessary without blowing your cover.  A person should not have to go through so much work.

With the Google Glass, you can just look at someone and take a photograph.  When you see someone wearing white after Labor Day, your friends won’t have to take your word for it.  When you’ve sculpted your mashed potatoes into a likeness of Karl Marx, you can take a memento without looking weird in front of the other diners.

And why does the media always emphasize the negative aspects of distraction?  Until Google Glass is in stores, if someone is telling you a boring story, you have to pretend to listen by concentrating on the space between their eyebrows or on the way their mouth moves.  When you’ve got Google Glass on your eyes, you can read Moby-Dick and when you laugh at the funny parts, the person will think you’re enjoying their story.

Of course establishments that don’t see these advantages and are so obsessed with antiquated notions like privacy will prohibit people from wearing the Google Glass on the premises.  The inventors will be forced to conceal the Glass in a better place, like in a person’s hair, or in their nostrils where the Glass could be loaded with a Flonase app during allergy season. Workers will wonder why some patrons are always tilting their heads back and scanning the room with their nostrils, and perhaps think it some new neck exercise.

And when new barriers to the Glass arise, such as hair and nostril searches, or people who are bald or who can’t stop sneezing, Google will have no choice but to locate the Glass where it should have been all along—resting up against our eyes like contact lenses.  Everyone will be able to walk around, without any electronics showing, but with a data screen in their field of vision.  Like the Terminator.

To take a photograph you’ll need only scratch the side of your face, and a video will start recording at a mere throat clearing.  Internet searches can be triggered by just asking a rhetorical question, like “What is gluten anyway?”

And as the photographs and videos and data are uploaded, humanity will finally have what it has been working towards since people started making wedge-like shapes in clay tablets thousands of years ago:  One shared brain, under Google, with liberty and justice for all.

Remember When You Didn’t Have to Create a Profile Everywhere You Go?

There is a support group for people who sign up for too many online profiles.  The group meets once a week in the basement of an old church.  I went to last week’s meeting.

The group is led by a woman who at one point held profiles from 157 different websites.  “Each account had a unique password with at least one uppercase letter, one number, and one symbol,” she said to me as she introduced herself.  “This was a great source of pride to me.”  Then one day she couldn’t remember one of the passwords, and she had a nervous breakdown, and had to spend some time in an institution, where she was heavily medicated and had to re-learn how to say her own name without numbers or underscores.  She eventually became rehabilitated enough to go into a group home and now her responsibilities are leading the weekly meetings and refilling the reservoir on the Keurig coffee dispenser.

We sat in a circle and one of the attendees, a young man, began to speak.

“I had a Google account and a Facebook account and a Twitter account.  Then I joined LinkedIn, even though I didn’t have a job, and I had to borrow a coat and tie and pressed shirt from a friend for the profile photo, and because the t-shirt was mine you could still see the dinosaur design through the white shirt I borrowed.

“And then I joined Pinterest even though I had nothing to pin, and Goodreads even though I haven’t read a book in years.  Frankly, I had thought they stopped making books.

“Then there was a site that advertised free music, and a site that counted calories.”  He tapped his abdomen as he says this.  “I had to pick a username and password for all these accounts, and I always picked the same password:  RoseBud.   I thought I was being smart.  Turned out I wasn’t so smart, because it was the same username and password that I use for my online banking, and my identity was stolen.  Luckily, I didn’t have any money.  So I deleted all these accounts and now I’m much happier.  I even tried to buy a book, but I had deleted my Amazon account.”

Next a young woman spoke.  “I was on all those sites and apps that he was on, and more.  Except I used a different username and password for each one.  I was like a secret agent, walking the Earth with a stack of drivers’ licenses, trying to keep track of multiple identities.  I didn’t know who I was.  I created a document in Microsoft Word to keep track of all my usernames and passwords, but then I got worried that a hacker would be able to find the document.  So I encrypted the usernames and passwords with a code of my own making.  But I had to keep the code somewhere, and I was afraid to keep it on my computer.  So I wrote the code with a pen and paper and hid it inside of a box of Cracklin’ Oat Bran.”

Suddenly all the eyes were on me.  It was time to share my story.  But I didn’t know what to say.  I clearly didn’t have a problem.  I was in attendance only because I needed a topic for my blog, a blog that I access with a password that I change every week because I’m worried that someone will hack my account and start posting unfunny blog posts.  These people were the crazy ones.  Not me.  So I finished my cup of coffee and said that I wasn’t ready to talk about myself.  And they smiled, and thanked me, and said to keep coming.

Remember When Smartphone Protectors Weren’t A Cottage Industry?

A few weeks ago I did my patriotic duty and upgraded to an iPhone 5. At a third of an inch shorter and nearly one ounce heavier, my iPhone 4 was like something out of the Middle Ages.

“Do you want to get an iPhone protector, sir?” the salesperson asked me as our dealings were drawing to a close and our teams of lawyers were shaking hands. He waved his hand over a display.

“These go for $38 apiece, but if you buy one now as part of your upgrade, I can probably give one to you for, oh…” he scratched his chin “…how does $30 sound?”

I looked over the display. “Do you have any in blue?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Just black, pink, and leopard.”

“I was really hoping to get something in blue.”

“You should stop hoping.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,” I said, and started to sign the reams of paperwork that go with the upgrade.

“Sir, are you really going to leave the store unprotected?” the salesperson asked. “It’s dangerous out there. If something happened to your new phone…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence, but looked down at the ground and faintly shook his head from side to side, pondering the consequences.

I went with the leopard case. It was sleek and thin and was particularly effective against Vervet monkeys. The peace of mind was invaluable…until I saw the protector my sister-in-law had obtained for her iPhone 5. Hers had been custom-made by a company called OtterBox. The protector had three main components to it: an inner shield, a clear covering for the glass face, and a hard plastic outer shell that could withstand being dropped or burned at the stake for heresy.

I have never dropped or scratched a cell phone but the very sight of the OtterBox got me thinking. What if I did drop my iPhone? What if I threw it? Sartre says that we are condemned to be free. With the terrifying freedom to throw my iPhone, how could I go another moment without an OtterBox? I stayed home for a few days with a “family emergency” and safeguarded my iPhone with the cheap protector until the custom-made OtterBox arrived—blue—delivered by an otter that balanced a ball on its nose while I signed the receipt.

As I clicked the hard outer shell closed I felt my worries lift like a morning mist. At last I could safely take my iPhone out into the world, and to celebrate I let my iPhone sit on the edge of a table for half an hour.

That night I had a terrible dream. It was still the Cold War, and the Soviet Union had discovered my iPhone 5 to be part of a secret operation to take photographs of nuclear warheads and put them on Instagram. I watched helpless as my iPhone was crushed under the treads of a Red Army tank. Even the OtterBox could not stop the guts of my iPhone from running blue through the streets of Leningrad. I awoke in a sweat and, after wiping my hand to prevent smudging, held my iPhone close. When would we feel safe?

I located a man in my town who had designed the craft that the space program sent to Mars. He told me all about it while I stood in his trailer. With a home equity loan I commissioned him to build me an iPhone protector that could enter the Earth’s atmosphere at 33,000 miles per hour, slam into the ground somewhere in Russia, and still give me push notifications on Manti Te’o’s draft status. He found an old tank on Craig’s List, cut holes for the headphones and power cord, and painted it blue.

It is a little strange driving around the neighborhood in my blue iPhone protector tank. The kids point and stare and street parking is next to impossible. But at night I sleep the sleep of the innocent knowing that nothing can damage my iPhone 5. I do not care that I cannot touch the screen to make a call. I never got good reception anyway.

Remember When the Toilet Worked, Part I?

I know I haven’t blogged in a while.  I’m working on a book – my first – and just coming up with the right approach has taken up all my writing juice for the past month.  I know what Kristin Lamb would say about that line, but there it is.  I appreciate your patience, and pray that you’ll be even more patient as I experiment a little with these posts.  -MK 

The toilet ran every ten minutes whether the flush handle had been pressed or not.  I could not sleep at night.  I would lie in bed, waiting for that lonely sound of water rushing into the porcelain tank.  When the sound would start again, I would tense up as if startled by gunshot or a wild animal.

To understand what was wrong with my toilet requires some knowledge of toilet physics.  The toilet comes in two large pieces: the bowl and the tank.  Prior familiarity with the bowl is assumed.

The tank has three internal organs: the fill valve, the flush valve, and the flapper.  A pipe from the wall sends water into the tank through the fill valve.  The fill valve stops the water from coming in when the water level in the tank is at a certain level.  That is what is happening after you flush, and you hear the water running, and then it stops suddenly.  The water level in the tank has reached the appropriate level and the fill valve has stopped the water from flowing into the tank.

Attached to the outer side of the tank is the flush handle, colloquially called “the handle,” as in “jiggle the handle.”  And at the base of the tank is a large hole that leads into the bowl.  Under normal conditions, a piece of rubber known as the “flapper” prevents the water in the tank from flowing through that hole into the bowl.  Attached to the flapper is one end of a chain, and the other end of the chain is attached to one end of a long lever that runs parallel to the base of the tank.

The other end of the lever is attached to the handle.  So when you press on the handle, you push one end of the lever down, causing the other end of the lever to rise, in turn pulling up on the chain, that lifts the flapper, and permits gravity to pull the water in the tank down into the toilet bowl.  This is the act of the flushing.

When the handle is released, the flapper is brought back down by the force of gravity, once again sealing off the tank from the bowl.  So the tank begins to fill with water again, and does not stop until the fill valve stops it as explained above.

The flush valve is a vertical tube.  The flapper is affixed to the base of the flush valve in two points, around which it pivots when pulled up by the chain.  The flush valve definitely does something else, but I’m not sure what it is.

The entire premise of the tank rests on the assumption that when the flapper is in the down position, it will not allow any water to leak from the tank into the bowl below it.  For if water is permitted to leak from the tank into the bowl when the flapper is in the down position, the water level will fall, causing water to rush into the tank because the fill valve now thinks that the toilet has been flushed.  And since the fill rate is far greater than the leak rate, the water level will of course rise enough to stop the flow again, until the leaking lowers it again, and on and on into infinity.

For some reason, water was leaking through my flapper even when it was in the down position, causing the infinity cycle just described.  This was why I could not sleep at night.

I bought a shiny new flapper.  A red one.  When I returned home and took the top off the tank, there was the old flapper.  “You’ve had a good run,” I said, and unhooked it from the base of the flush valve and dropped it in the bathroom wastebasket with a great showing of respect.

I hooked the new flapper onto the base of the flush valve.  I could already see the difference.  The new flapper was heavier at its center, and it hung over the hole with greater authority than its predecessor.  And it was red.  My troubles, I believed, were at an end.

But mere moments after tucking myself in to bed I was startled by the sound of the tank filling up.  The new flapper had done nothing to stop the trickle of water into the bowl.  I would have to fight another day.

Remember When Football Was Dangerous?

The head coach watched the film from the previous week’s game and he didn’t like what he saw.

“The defense is soft,” he said to his defensive coordinator, who was standing right next to the head coach.  “Armin, are you paying attention?  Put down that apple fritter a second and watch what I’m watching.”

Armin did as he was told.

“Now look,” the head coach went on, “I know there’s a been a bit of an adjustment for defenses ever since they banned tackling and put tickling, of all things, in its place.  Believe me, I understand.  But we’ve still got a game to play.  And that game requires discipline to win, even if your only defensive weapon is a tickle.  You’ve got to target the opponent’s weak spots, and then go through the tickle.  You’ve got to tell those clowns to target, and follow through.”

Armin had to admit his head coach was right.  He finished his apple fritter and licked his fingers and then washed his hands and went out onto the practice field.

“All right everybody,” Armin said to the defensive players when he arrived at the practice field, “put down your iPads and gather ‘round.  There’s something I need to say to all of you at once, and my iCoach Instant Lecture isn’t working.

“Now look,” Armin continued, “I’ve been looking at the film from last week, and we’ve got to do a better job at tickling the offense.  I mean, this is ridiculous.  You’ve got to do it like this.”

Armin went up to one of his players, and violently shot his hands right into the player’s armpits and tickled him with grim determination.  The player collapsed on the ground, convulsing with laughter, and crying, “Stop…hee, hee…Stop…hee, hee…I can’t take it.”

“Now that’s the way you’re supposed to tickle an opponent,” Armin said.

“But coach, aren’t we doing that?” asked the team’s top pass rusher, one of the best defensive players in the league, and the heart and soul of the team.

“Have you seen the film from last week?” asked Armin.  “You guys aren’t targeting and following through.  You’re just fluttering your fingers around their sides.  You can see their faces – they barely crack a smile.  Last year you led the league in tickles.  Now, just last week, on one play you were right up at the quarterback, and instead of attacking his throwing armpit and maybe forcing a fumble, you kind of just massaged his back and cost us a touchdown.”

The all-pro looked down at his shoes.

“Now, look,” Armin said.  “We’re still in contention for a wild card spot.  So let’s go out there and get ready to throw some serious tickles on Sunday!”

*          *          *

“I’ve got to say, this defense we’re watching has really come back to life from its mid-season tumble,” said the first announcer.

“It’s like this team was last year, when they came within a missed field goal of the Super Bowl,” said the second announcer.  “I don’t know what the coaching staff said to them during practice this week, but it sure fired up this gang.  Just look at defensive coordinator Armin Feldhammer on the sideline there.  Now that is energy.”

The camera showed Armin gesturing wildly at the referees.

“Are you kidding me!” shouted Armin.  “You call that a late tickle?  He still had the ball when he got in there!”

Armin threw his headset down on the ground, picked it up, and made sure it was still working.  He wished he hadn’t used so many pronouns, and he was angry at the referees, who were taking this late tickle nonsense too far.  So a study showed that years of tickles caused nerve damage in the armpits.  This was football, for crying out loud.

Overall, though, Armin was in a good mood.  This was going to be a win, thanks mainly to his defense, which had held the other team’s offense to 42 points, a league-wide low for that week.  The tickle tutorial during practice had been worth it.  Armin didn’t like to give his players humiliating lectures.  But sometimes a coach had to make his players see what they could be, rather than what they were.

Remember When You Had Never Heard of a Fiscal Cliff?

To thank you all, who have stuck with me through this, my 150th post, I thought I would tackle a serious topic for a change.  -MK

It was cold in Washington, D.C.  Cars took longer to warm up in the morning and made people late to work.  Heavy coats on backs of chairs at restaurants made it hard to squeeze by.  The cold air made people’s hands very dry.  But for the government, it was business as usual.coupons

“Sir, what are we going to do about the fiscal cliff?” the intern asked the Director.

“Hold on a minute.  I’m moisturizing.  This cold air turns my hands into parchment.”  The Director squeezed some hand moisturizer on the knuckles of either hand, and then rubbed his knuckles together, with the palms of hands facing out.

“This way,” the Director said, “I don’t get that greasy moisturizer on any official documents.  It’s a good thing the Declaration of Independence was signed in July, otherwise there would have been greasy moisturizer stains on it.  Imagine what that would have done to liberty.  Now, what were we talking about?”

“The fiscal cliff, sir.”

“Ah, yes.  I heard something about that while I was in line at Krispy Kreme.  What is it again?  Some kind of landmark?”

“The fiscal cliff is the colloquial term for the set of austerity measures that automatically go into place at the end of the year as part of the debt ceiling compromise of August, 2011, sir.”

“What you just said is all Greek to me.”

“Sir, unless we do something about the federal budget, government programs will be cut and taxes raised, automatically on January 1, without any votes or debate.”

“Oh, so this cliff isn’t a real place?  Like, I can’t get a bumper sticker that says ‘This car drove off the Fiscal Cliff’?”

“No, I don’t believe so, sir.”

“Bummer.  All right, let’s see.  Where can we find money?”  The Director leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling and drummed his fingers on the sides of his neck.  “Money…money…money.  We…need…money.”  He closed his eyes as if he was making a wish before blowing out birthday candles.  Suddenly he opened his eyes and sat up.

“I’ve got it!” he said, and told the intern of his plan.

It took a little while for people to get used to the idea of the government engaging in extreme couponing.  An entire new bureau had to be built and staffed with the most extreme couponers in the country, who had to be lured away from their home communities with laundry detergent and frozen steakums.  Conservatives complained that the framers of the Constitution had never intended the federal government to save money.  Liberals complained that the program was going to take coupons away from teachers and firefighters.

But when the Bureau of Extreme Couponing purchased a fleet of stealth bombers and new toilet seats for every restroom in the Capitol for only $1.37, the people embraced the program with open arms.  Health care costs plummeted from 17% of GDP to less than the price of a Netflix subscription.  Just by checking the Presidential Sofa for loose change, the federal government was able to restart the shuttle program, and procure canned peaches through 2043.

They started televising the purchases at the checkout line.  Millions of viewers would sit on the edge of their seats, holding hands, watching the digits on the price display.  In one episode, the employee at the register called out the names of each public good right before scanning it.

“Highway programs…[beep]…National Park Service…[beep]…Coast Guard—”

“Wait, I have a coupon for that,” the Federal Couponer said.  Dramatic music played while the Couponer rifled through a stack of coupons in a little zippered purse.  The employee looked bored and the shoppers behind looked around for a line that was moving faster.

When the coupon was located, a fanfare was played and the price on the display went from $487 million to zero.  And as if it could not get any better, United States Postal Service pensions were buy-one-get-one that week.

“Sir, the Extreme Couponing program is a success!” the intern said.  “This year we’re going to post a budget surplus along with 17 million tons of spaghetti sauce.”

“Excellent,” the Director said.  “But you look troubled.”

“Well, sir, I just don’t understand how it works.  The money that we’re saving, that’s great, really great.  But, I mean, where are these coupons coming from?”

The Director wrinkled his brow, and stared out the window, and rested his chin on his hand, and considered the question that was his awesome responsibility to answer for the good of the nation.  Suddenly his eyes gleamed and he snapped back to face the intern.

“Manifest destiny,” the Director said, and then picked up the phone to order a pasta lunch for the third time that week.

Remember Twinkies?

The archaeologists were done for the day.  It was getting dark and Happy Hour at the Drunken Pick Axe lasted just until 7:00 p.m., after which time the drinks were served only in plastic cups, a prospect most of the dig team found unrefined.  The young graduate student, formally named Byron Russelbeard III, but who had somehow earned the nickname Spacecake, was putting away the tools when he noticed a little yellow object protruding from the inner wall of the large hole in the ground.

He stuck his head up out of the hole and waved for the others to come over, but they responded with pantomimed drinking motions, and kept walking away.

Spacecake turned back to the object.  Proper procedure would have been to note its size, color, and position in the log book and then cover it up with a paper towel.  But his laptop had already started downloading the latest version of iTunes, and paper had been extinct for many years.

And Spacecake was curious.  The yellow object was wrapped in a clear plastic shell that was malleable to the touch, and Spacecake was induced with a sudden desire to eat it.

“That’s crazy,” he said to himself, but still the object called to him.  Inside of a minute Spacecake had dug out the object and placed it in his pocket and was walking away with a nonchalant whistle he had seen someone do in a movie.

Spacecake returned to his room and took the object out of his pocket and examined it with his penlight.  He turned on his pocket recorder.

“Oblong object,” he spoke into the recorder, “about six inches long, a continuous height of two inches, and a continuous width of slightly less than two inches.  Appears to be made of a yellow cake-like substance and wrapped in thin transparent plastic…late 20th or early 21st Century.”  He examined the object’s underside.  “Ventral surface shows three white dots, regularly spaced lengthwise.”  He looked closer.  “The white substance is creamy.  I want to eat it.”

He snapped off the recorder.  What was the last thing he had said?  That he wanted to eat it?  He replayed the recording.  Yes, he had said he wanted to eat the object.

“But that’s crazy,” he said.  “I mean, it’s an artifact, buried under earth for many—”

There was a noise outside.  Kind of like a scratching, like someone—or something—was trying to find a way inside.  Spacecake dropped the recorder on his bed and covered up the object.  He opened the door and looked outside.

“Hello?” he said into the darkness.  “Who’s there?”  He could hear his heart pounding and he was sweating.  He shut the door slowly.

“Probably just the wind,” Spacecake said aloud, and laughed nervously.  He ran his hand through his hair and exhaled.

He uncovered the object.  The yellow cake—he was convinced now that it was cake—glowed under the small light and Spacecake was again filled with a desire to eat it.  That would be a serious breach of archaeological ethics.  For years he had studied and worked to get this chance to be on the most elite team of Apatosaurus diggers in the world.  Taking the object out of the hole was bad enough.  To unwrap it would throw all that hard work away.

Spacecake unwrapped the object, peeled back the plastic, and took a bite.  Oh ecstasy!  He had never tasted anything like it.  It was pure sweetness with no nutritional value.  It was the most wonderful thing he had ever tasted.  His mind was so overwhelmed by the explosion of taste that he did not hear the door open and the footsteps coming up behind him and the blunt object hitting him over the head.  As all went black, Spacecake was still moving the yellow cake and white cream around his mouth and savoring the taste.

 *          *          *

“Whatever it was, it was quick and painless,” the detective said, staring at Spacecake’s lifeless body lying on the floor.  “Look at that smile on his face.”

“But the configuration of his hand…it looks like he had been holding something when…when it happened,” the program director said.

“Maybe that was what his killer was after.”

“But what could it be?”

“I guess we’ll never know,” the detective said.

The program director nodded, took one last look at what had once been his most promising graduate student, and walked towards the door.  The detective held the door open, and then shut it gently behind them, leaving the body completely alone…save for the small, unnoticed, pocket-sized recorder laying on the bed.