It’s odds-and-ends day, which means that today’s column will be devoted to rejected seeds of columns and ramblings that couldn’t be stretched into 850-word screeds. Enjoy! (Or, more accurately: Skim and then turn to the crossword!)

A Day in the Life of my Upstairs Neighbors (A One-Act Play)

Scene: An elephant stampedes across the floor. Heavy Male #1 stirs in bed, then opens his eyes.
Heavy Male #1: Hey, where did that elephant come from?
Heavy Male #2: (Pogo-sticks into the room) Beats me.
Heavy Male #1: Good morning, housemate! Boy, I sure am exhausted from that four-hour sumo wrestler DDR tournament we held late last night.
Heavy Male #2: I’m not surprised you’re tired; I saw you pounding away at that anvil afterwards. You’re such a workhorse!
Heavy Male #1: What can I say? Just doing my job as a part-time smithy.
Heavy Male #2: Hey, catch! (Lobs a cannonball at Heavy Male #1)
Heavy Male #1: Oops! (Cannonball falls to floor) Oh well, maybe tomorrow morning. It’s 6:03 a.m., you know what that means!
Heavy Males #1 and #2: CLOG-DANCING!

We’ll be famous, just you wait

My roommate and I want to have our own cooking show on the Food Network. Our target audience will be college students, and the name of the show will be What’s in the Fridge? In each episode we’ll look through someone’s refrigerator and use seemingly random and possibly expired ingredients to put together a delicious if somewhat questionable meal. Oh, and we’ll do it all in less than 15 minutes. Take that, Rachael Ray!
Sample Menu:

• Wilted romaine salad with ketchup vinaigrette
• Lemon pepper housemate’s chicken
• Tupperware-shaped pasta block with pesto (at least we think it’s pesto)
• Bag of stale potato chips
• We’re not sure, but we scraped most of the fuzz off of it

“Brain Lint”

• According to an article that appeared in The New York Times this past Monday, there are new performance “supplements” (i.e. sugary, caffeine-infused drinks) being marketed to children. Some people are up in arms about this, saying that children shouldn’t be told that they need performance enhancers in order to do well in sports and in school. But I say why stop there? That’s why I’m taking this opportunity to introduce a new line of products called “FetuStrong,” guaranteed to help your fetus outperform every other fetus of his/her/its gestational age. (Warning: side effects include premature birth and incomplete fusing of pharyngeal gill slits.)
• I once read that, in some cultures, silence is the preferred way of dealing with social uncertainty. That’s a pretty jarring fact, given that here in America the preferred way of dealing with social uncertainty is to fill the silence with empty prattle about the weather until one of you comes up with an excuse to leave and/or has a stroke. (“Gosh, it sure is nice out today, and I do believe that I taste aluminum!”) I wonder if this cultural policy makes first dates more or less awkward; perhaps Apache teenagers sit across from one another at restaurants with words spilling from their lips, privately berating themselves for not being able to stanch the conversation.
• I’ve always been easily startled; as a child, I was plagued by the game Perfection, which punishes a lackluster puzzle-solving performance by suddenly jolting and scattering pieces across the house. I also hated the game Operation because the buzzing would scare me. Also, whenever I went to sleep at night, the door to my bedroom had to be a hand’s-width open (I made my father measure it) so that I could hear if any intruders broke into the house. Also, I was terrified that my head would get stuck in the guardrail on my bed, but I was afraid that without the guardrail I would fall out of bed and die (one night I distinctly recall waking my parents up at least five times to ask them to either remove the guardrail or put it back). Also, I slept with my blankets wrapped tightly around my head like a hood, so that no bugs could get inside me. I was a pretty neurotic little kid.
• One evening last year, my housemates and I were whipping up a quick dinner. I had a can of biscuits that I was afraid to open (the anticipation of the can exploding was simply too intense — see previous bullet), so I offered the task up to any of the other people in the kitchen. One housemate accepted, and I handed her the can without further remark. However, when I looked over a minute later, I discovered that she was opening the biscuit can with a can opener. I was flabbergasted. I thought the instructions for opening a biscuit can were part of the collective unconscious, like knowing that little kids don’t like spinach or being able to sing along with that “500 miles” song.

A pleasant dinner conversation takes an unexpected turn

Elise: If you had to sit at the table in Okie’s closest to the windows looking into Ivy Room, would you sit facing Ivy Room or facing Okie’s?
Jim: I think I would sit facing Okies.
Elise: (nodding appreciatively) Why?
Jim: Because I’m not going to be socializing with the people in Ivy Room, so if I sit facing them with my back to Okie’s it will seem like I’m closing myself off to social opportunities. Whereas if I sit facing Okie’s, it says to the world, “I am willing to socialize with you.”
Elise: …Oh.
Jim: Why, what was your reasoning?
Elise: I wouldn’t be able to hear if the people in Ivy Room were making fun of me.
Jim: …That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.