Today at the office we got an email from a kid asking “What did dinosaurs eat in 1778?” That pretty much made my day. I can’t remember the last time my day was made this damn hard. Once we got an email asking “What is sexual airforce?” and it took about four hours and five people to figure out the kid meant “sexual intercourse.” Sexual Airforce is the greatest band name ever and I HAVE DIBS DO NOT POACH. Anyway back to the first question, I have no idea why it’s 1778. I’m not sure why that year is particularly important. I mean 1776 yeah, but 1778? It was more of the same as 1777. Seriously. According to Wikipedia, in 1778 Captain Cook discovered Hawaii. I love the whole idea of discovering a place where people already live. Can you imagine some dude coming to New York City and being like “HOLY CRAP I JUST DISCOVERED NEW YORK CITY! WE SHOULD NAME IT AFTER ME. LUCKILY MY NAME IS NEW YORK CITY.”

Anyway, I don’t answer emails from kids because everyone agreed that my answers would be inappropriate. But here are some answers I came up with.

What did dinosaurs eat in 1778?
-children who did not study
-god, and then Darwin
-Kashi Good Friends
-astronauts
-peas
-dodos and giant pandas
-kittens
-trans-fats
-Primal Strips brand vegan ‘beef’ jerky
-Santa Claus
-your parents

Anyway I could keep going but I shouldn’t. OK I will.

-loner socks
-the oeuvre of James Patterson
-children named Hudson, Goethe, Amadeus, and Apple
-children named John
-people who have arguments loudly on their bluetooth headset
-refried beans
-David Caruso
-carbs
-the lost city of Atlantis
-philosophy

See? This is why they won’t let me answer kids’ emails. Or go near kids in general.

And in other news, “Dear Architects” has given me another opportunity, this time away from architecture and toward something else in which I have no background and yet still gets my panties in a tweest: Design. I’ll be a contributor for a blog by a company called Emeco, which produces high-end chairs. The kind you see in museums. All very fancy. I’ll post links when it’s up.

OK, maybe not “of all time” since there’s been a lot of time and a lot of annoying people filling up that time. But, I am talking about that certain kind of person that reads a certain type of book in a certain type of place. This started as a discussion at lunch and then it kind of started up again in the comments of my last post, which really had nothing to do with anything except for drunk people, pizza, and being a douchebag. Blogs are good for that. A lot of talking about nothing.

So there’s the person who reads Kant (or even worse Kerouac) in a bar, Hemingway in a cafe, and Doretta saw some dude reading David Foster Wallace in a bar, which is pretty bad. Reading in a bar seems kind of weird to me. At a cafe, yes. At a bar, not so much. In some ways it seems like a thinly veiled attempt to pick up people. Like hey, look how smart I am. I’m reading Aeschylus. LOOK HOW SMART I AM. I AM DOWN WITH THE GREEKS. It’s kind of like walking a puppy to meet girls. Just a low attempt to get attention or put out a certain image. People who write in a bar are bad too. I think public writing is pretty bad. Like somehow on a laptopit’s ok, but once you go analog and write in a notebook or diary while sitting in a bar or cafe you become a major douchebag. Oh man in L.A. it’s like everyone is writing a screenplay. That’s pretty bad. Because you know their screenplays do not have zombies in them so what’s the point of even living. Maybe I will write an open letter about this too.

Anyway, a year ago I was talking to someone at a party and I said I had never read Sebald and he sorta freaked out OH MY GOD YOU’VE NEVER READ SEBALD?!? BUT YOU LIKE HIM, RIGHT? I was like wow. You are annoying. Oh there’s chips and dip over there. I will go over there. Good-bye, annoying person, I am done with you. And then he proceeded to follow me to the chip-and-dip area. I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’VE NEVER READ SEBALD! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? It was a torture. So now I’m patently against Sebald, though I’m sure his books are good but it’s forever stained by douche. Which is a shame. I hear Sebald liked to rock a party. Anyway my co-worker had a similar situation because she hasn’t read Ulysses and some guy freaked out “That’s the problem with today’s youth. You haven’t read Ulysses.” OK I’m pretty sure that the “problem with today’s youth” isn’t the lack of Ulysses. I think it’s more like violent video games or something. I have no idea what “today’s youth” is into anymore other than the same thing today’s adults are into, which is drinking and doing it.

Anyway, my point is this: There is a lot I haven’t read, including Sebald. I did read Ulysses in high school but I think that anything anyone reads in high school doesn’t count unless it was, I dunno, Flowers in the Attic or something. But here’s what I can do: I can factor a polynomial, and I can find a regression line. Can you do that? OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU CAN’T FACTOR A POLYNOMIAL. You must be a total loser.

Two days ago I was walking behind a girl who was carrying my book and I was like DUDE! MY BOOK! Crazy! Then I thought, OK, what now? What should I do? Do I go up to her and say, hey isn’t that the GREATEST BOOK YOU’VE EVER READ? You know a high-school kid told me it was way better than Death of a Salesman. Do you like it? BECAUSE I WROTE IT! ALL BY MYSELF! ALL OF IT! Here, let me sign it. DO YOU WANT TO TAKE A PICTURE WITH ME? I WILL LET YOU TOUCH MY HAND AS LONG AS YOU WASH YOUR HANDS FIRST. Then I thought, OK, that would make me look like a real douchebag. Like the douchiest douchebag ever. Meaning, there would be no douchebag douchier than I. So I just kept walking. I mean only three people have read it so what are the odds of actually seeing someone with it on the street? Anyway it was kind of cool and also weird. Also I thought that if I went up to the girl she’d think I was some kind of stalker. People don’t do that in New York. If some stranger came up to me blabbering douche I’d probably bust out the mace. Which I don’t carry, but you know what I mean.

So on Saturday night a bunch of my friends are hanging on the corner because that is what we do on a Saturday night. And there is this guy with sunglasses on sprawled on the curb in front of a pizza joint. On his back, spread eagle, with a slice of pizza in his hand. The pizza place (which isn’t very good and actually kind of disgusting) closes around 11:30 or midnight and it is 1:00 which means he’s been lying there for an hour or so. So then we think, what if he’s dead. Is he breathing? OK cool he is breathing. Then we think, should we wake his ass up because he might get robbed. So then I think, should I call 311? Does he need help? Or is he just having a good time sleeping there next to the mailbox that all the dogs in my neighborhood like to pee on? He is just lying there with his sunglasses on because it is so bright with all the street lamps. John kind of nudges him with his foot and the guy stirs. He stands up, leans against the mailbox and finishes his slice. Just like that. He stumbles for a bit. And then boom he is ready to party. But I don’t know how he could eat the pizza, the place is really not very good.

One of the steps I took to becoming a “real adult” a few years ago was getting renter’s insurance. I’m not sure why because I’m sitting here looking at my crap and it’s exactly what it is, crap. Total crap. I have crap from IKEA, crap from the Big K, crap from Target which is only slightly less crappy than the crap from Big K because Isaac Mizrahi and Michael Graves put their names on this particular crap so it’s like sanctioned, designer-approved crap, and I even have crap given to me from other people because they were getting rid of crap, and I needed crap. Like oh that is a cool poster! You like it? I think it’s crap. Take it. Oh sweet, dude. More crap for me. You might think, but wait you are a published author, shouldn’t you be living it up? I remember at some reading a girl asked me if I was “living the dream” and all I could think of was this crap apartment full of crap, but now that it’s insured, it’s somehow more valuable. Anyway the only thing of value I have here is my computer. And my love. Allstate doesn’t cover love. I asked them. They said, no we don’t do that, but if your neighbor’s pipe breaks and real crap leaks into your apartment, we’ll cover that.

Anyway, my insurance agent–a man I’ve never met because I signed up over the interwebs–retired and passed my account to a new one. Her name is Anna. Today I received a birthday greeting card from Anna (it’s not my birthday until later) that tells “interesting facts” about what happened the year you were born.

*$2 bill re-introduced as U.S. currency
My aunt and uncle always give me a $2 bill for our New Year’s dinner. They say it’s good luck. But I literally have like a dozen of these from all the New Year’s dinners we’ve done together and I can’t get myself to use it because, hey, it’s a $2 bill and it’s lucky. I don’t see how it’s lucky if it just sits there. It’s money that can’t be used as money, so it’s original purpose has been lost. So then it’ s just a piece of paper. So what I’m saying is that next year they should just write “Two dollars for you! Lucky you!” on a piece of paper and give it to me because it’ll be just as useful.

*Tom Brokaw became news anchor of the Today Show
Tom Brokaw kicks it. In a cage match between Brokaw and Jennings, Brokaw would gravitas the daylights out of Jennings. But in a contest to see who could abuse the future-in-the-past tense the hardest, Jennings would come out the victor. I really, really, really, really despise future-in-the-past tense. Lately it’s been the hot tense and it has to be stopped. It makes any sentence sound extra douchey: “But Alexei had no way of knowing that he would become the leading expert on ballistic missile physics.” See how many extra WORDS are in that sentence???? Plus it’s like you’re injecting 20/20 hindsight onto your characters. It’s so lame. Young George Washington lead the fledgling milita to victory. He would become the first president of the United States. DOUBLE GROAN.

*Bruce Jenner won the gold medal in the decathlon at the Summer Olympics
Awesome. I like Bruce Jenner, especially when he got all angry and turned green and kicked everyone’s ass. I remember when Bruce Jenner was on Silver Spoons. It was one of those “very special episodes” I think about epilepsy or something.

*Supreme Court ruled death penalty not inherently cruel or unusual.
That’s exactly the kind of fact I want to remember from the year I was born. Yes, the Supreme Court says, the death penalty is not that bad, I mean really. It’s kind of OK.

There’s also a list of “Movies and Music” and an interesting tidbit called “Americans Living Then and Now” which is all typed up in swirly, cursive font to make it look, you know, fancy and festive. Bread cost $0.45 then and $1.49 now. I am pretty sure that bread does NOT cost $1.49 now. My bread costs at least $3, and it’s not like I’m buying some fancy stuff not made from wheat. Anyway the list is confusing and it sounds more like “Americans living Then and Then”. It also sounds like my parents saying “when I was your age, bread cost a nickel!” And now I can say, well actually it cost like, two quarters.

It’s hot and I’m pretty sure something has crawled into my air conditioner and died because when I turn it on it smells like death. OK you’re right, it doesn’t smell like death. It smells like mildew. So that means mildew has crawled into my air conditioner and died. I cleaned the filter, but it still smells like junglefoot. Did I mention it’s hot? No? OK, it’s really hot, did you know that?

Last night there was a tornado in New York City. Or maybe it wasn’t a tornado. The scientists haven’t agreed yet. NY Times says OH YEAH BIG TIME TORNADO LOOK AT BROOKLYN IT IS HOSED. And them some meteorologist says NO CALM DOWN YOU JUST GOT A LOT OF RAIN. 17 INCHES IN AN HOUR TO BE EXACT YOU KNOW OTHER PEOPLE HAVE IT WAY WORSE HAVE YOU SEEN SOUTHEAST ASIA STOP FREAKING OUT. But you know, it’s New York. People like to freak out. That’s why I live here. For the ample opportunities to get my freak out. Anyway, the point is this: I don’t really care. Tornado or not, it wrecked the trains and I had to walk to work, which isn’t bad because I don’t live so far, but I really like the option of taking the train because I like options. Options are what makes us human and not like amoebas. Amoebas have only two options: Do I divide now? Do I divide later? Humans have at least six, maybe seven options. But apparently taking the train was not one of them this morning. So now we’re down to like five options. Which makes us just a hair better than amoebas.

And this architecture thing refuses to go away: Marc, editor over at Pidgin, tells me Abitare, some fancy high-fallutin’ (sp) architecture magazine is going to reprint my piece. I only know that it’s a fancy high-fallutin (yes still sp shut up) architecture magazine because architects tell me that. I’ve never heard of it. Because I’m not an architect. As we have already discussed. Man, I don’t talk about much on this blog anymore do I? Anyway, this means more hate for mail and love letters for me. I’ve been told it’s been translated to Italian, Hungarian, and some strange language where the c has a fancy, little hook. Portuguese? I like languages that have festive letters. Like, I totally want a c with a fancy hook in my name. It’d give me major pirate cred. I’d even settle for an ñ. That’s like an n with a festive hat. Hats are cool. I dig em.

It’s 11:44. I’m about to go eat dinner. Why? Because I was waiting for a friend to finish work. Oh you know where this is going I don’t even have to say it. We’re going to Blue Ribbon because it’s close and open, two things I value in a restaurant at this hour. Sadly it is expensive, but home to the best $12 hummus you’ll ever have.