For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.

The award goes to Molly Ringle, an actual writer who writes actual, non-terrible, novels. Bravo.

Now — one thing I like to do when Mom gives me this kind of god-like control is change her desktop image to a picture of Hillary Clinton, who she loathes with the heat of a billion suns. Sometimes I use Nancy Pelosi, but for maximum impact you’ve got to go with Hillary.

So that was naturally my first order of business, after Mom granted me access and went off to do some paperwork. I also did a little gleeful cackling, and a lot of detailed, Bond-villanesque explaining of my evil plans — to my wife, in this case, who happened to be nearby, ignoring me (as is right and proper when I get into cackling exposition mode).

Anyway — there I was, chortling maniacally, searching Google for just the right Hillary portrait, when the phone rings. It’s Mom. I say: “Hi Mom!” She says: “I can hear you.”

Because I’d forgotten about the “chat” portion of the screensharing-and-chat thing, of course. I’d muted my end of it, but Mom hadn’t. She’d been listening the whole time.

My first impulse was to lie, but that wouldn’t have done me much good — because my cacklings had also drawn her back to her desk, where she’d been watching me look for Hillary pictures. On her computer.

My second impulse was to collapse into more or less uncontrollable laughter, which is what I did. I’m laughing still.

Lapsed Cannibal splits his time between working on his perpetual stillness machine and looking for the end of Pi — where, he is given to understand, there are leprechauns. Sometimes he says the word “gastroenterologist” to himself, over and over again, because he very much enjoys the way it sounds. Occasionally he writes stories. This is one of them.

Or:

Lapsed Cannibal abandoned the sex-and-drug-addled life of a professional kazoo player to become a computer programmer, and has never looked back. He has taught himself to travel through time — but only forward through time, at normal speed. Sometimes he writes stories. This is one of them.

Or:

There is presumably some version of Lapsed Cannibal who enjoys alligator wrestling, blindfolded hand gliding, and small-island-nation-conquering, but this is not that version. This version did once put some uncomfortably spicy hot sauce on a taco, which he ate all of, but he doesn’t like to brag. He’s also written some stories about a bumbling wizard and his familiar, an invisible chair named Door. This is one of those stories.

Or:

Lapsed Cannibal recently became Dictator of English, and in that capacity will soon abolish the words “utilize”, “incentivize”, and “productize”, and then unbanish both split infinitives and sentences that end in prepositions (victims of the pitiless hegemony of Dictator Strunkenwhite). He will also introduce a new pronoun, “glubmar”, to fill the gender-neutral gulf between “him” and “her”. As in: “Hmmm, I wonder if glubmar is a boy or a girl?” He realizes that this is an ungainly pronoun, but he is Dictator, and can do what he wants. This is a story he wrote.

I could also write something accurate about myself, but my god that would be boring.

Update: Ok, I’m going to write something accurate and boring. Sigh.

I spent some time this evening watching iPad promotional videos, and came away seriously impressed with (a) Apple’s technical chops; (b) Apple’s design prowess; and (c) Apple’s hyperbole machine. That last in particular: nobody slings adjectives like Apple slings adjectives. Here’s a little sampling of some of the breathless modifiers one has to sit through to get a demo of this thing:

• Magical
• Stunning
• Unbelievable
• Incredible
• Phenomenal
• Unprecedented
• Extraordinary
• Gorgeous
• Amazing

And more. Much more.

I can’t imagine it’s easy to achieve this level of psychotic overstatement. They must have a small army of hyperbolizers working on it. I picture a roomful of enslaved linguists in the dungeons of 1 Infinite Loop, sitting in a dark windowless room, in two rows, chained to their desks. There’s an iPad suspended from the ceiling at the front of the room. A man stands beside the iPad, legs spread, arms akimbo, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, screaming at the assembled linguists, while an intern bangs steadily on a drum.

And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the kind of a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fact resume that’s based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership.

I’m not sure what question she was answering there, actually, or whether this really qualifies as an answer — or a sentence, for that matter. But it’s marvelous. It made me wonder what it would look like if she interviewed for a job as a software developer.

Interviewer: Can you describe the pros and cons of the Spring framework?

Palin: Yes, of course. Now, some people would say that the “Spring framework” is not a framework at all but perhaps rather an attempt by software bureaucrats to tell hardworking American programmers how they should write their software for example. And you know me I’m just a backwoods Alaska girl and honestly I don’t spend much time listening to the “experts” and the “elites” because sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

Interviewer: [pauses] So you don’t like it?

Palin: It’s not a question of liking or to not liking, Charlie, it’s a question of standing up for what’s right. Can I call you Charlie?

Interviewer: My name’s Phil.

Palin: Great! Imagine, Charlie, that you were getting ready to sit down in your own home or perhaps in your own yard in your own neighborhood wearing your own pajamas and you wanted to make code with your computer. The kind of thing that average moms and dads who love their kids and America do every day. Right?

Interviewer: I’m not sure.

Palin: Now imagine that you’re typing away at your codes and then suddenly some government bureaucrat swoops in and says stop Charlie! Stop, darn it! Because you’re not perhaps typing it the way that the “hive mind” wants you to type it. You’re typing it in a way that’s individual to yourself and that just doesn’t sit well with the socialists and the communists and the media elites. How would that make you feel?

Interviewer: I’m in the yard? In my pajamas?

Palin: In your own pajamas that you bought with the labors of your hard earning. And now this guy who never probably even shot anything with his own hands perhaps wants you to write it his way. The “spring” way, whatever the heck that is. [laughs]

Interviewer: So you’ve never used it before?

Palin: Chad, whenever I hear the work “framework”, you know what I see? I see a crowd of hardworking American men and women slaving away their whole lives stuck like dead butterflies on a communist scaffolding working for the State. I see welfare mothers with fifteen babies snorting coke that they bought with our money, Chad. I see the whole nation bent under the burden of socialized healthcare while Mexicans pour over the border and take jobs away from good American workers. And for what?

Interviewer: I’m not sure.

Palin: For the Spring framework, Chuck. When I had my son, Spork, me and my husband Todd looked each other in the eyes and we said to each other: “Never again. Never will we let the tyranny of French monarchy scar the shores of this great land.” Our men and women are overseas fighting for our freedom against the forces of Hitler or perhaps some Hitler-like entities while in our own country ACORN workers are free to go into our schools and hand out pamphlets about how to do abortions and Nancy Pelosi wants to nationalize Christianity and illegal immigration and what are we going to do about it? I’ll tell you what, Chris. We need to stand up and be the Americans that our founding forefathers and foremothers and little founding forebabies wanted us to be. By turning our back on the Sling framework, Chuck! But standing up for what we believe in and for what’s good and right and then for example traditional values which.

Interviewer: [pauses] It’s the Spring framework.

Palin: Exactly. Now, you can do whatever you want. You can use the Sling framework or the Euro framework or the Lenin framework or whatever you want! This is America. But if you do then the will of the people will rise up and crush you like a bug and that’s what makes America great.

Interviewer: Well, Ms Palin. It’s been very nice talking to you.

A secret admirer will soon send you a sign of affection, in the seething form of the worm god Rlim Shaikorth, who will eat your soul.

Love conquers all — if by “love” you mean Othuyeg, the Doom-Walker, whose great tentacled eye will carve a bloody path through the ranks of the weak and leave in its wake the mangled remains of the damned.

The voices you hear in your head are real. Their owners will soon be coming for you.

In the end there are four things that last: faith, hope love, and the Dark Silent One Zushakon, who will eviscerate the first three things and consign their steaming viscera to the infinite void.

The one you love is closer than you think. You have just eaten him.

When I complained, the owner suggested I try adding in bed to the end of them. That didn’t help at all. I finally stopped going when the eyeballs in the hot and sour eyeball soup started looking at me.

Twitter without Merlin Mann would be a sadder place.

Now, what can you do with 18 buttons, 52 commands, and a joystick? The answer is anything you like. The ability to assign application functions to both clicks and double-clicks, combined with the ability to use the joystick as an analog joystick or as the equivalent of 4,8, or 16 additional mouse buttons, significantly expands your options beyond the mere addition of more buttons.

The thing that all the haters aren’t considering is that an 18-button mouse gives you 262144 potential click combinations — enough to assign a click for pretty much any action, or series of actions, imaginable.

Say you wanted to launch a browser, navigate to your third favorite celebrity gossip site, compose a pre-emptive tweet about the indiscretions of Starlet X, and start a little game of solitaire. With the OpenOfficeMouse, it’s simple! Just click buttons 1 and 3 and 5 and 9 and 10 and 13 and 17 while rotating your joystick -36 degrees off its central axis. Just be careful not to click button 12 as well, because that would shut down your computer. Or possibly alphabetize the icons on your desktop. It’s unclear.

My understanding is that the manufacturers of this device will soon announce a bevy of new products, including:

1. The OpenOfficeKeyboard, which does away with the tedium of shift- and control-key combinations by providing a dedicated key for every possible OpenOffice function. This doesn’t just mean separate keys for big O and little o and umlaut ö, but a separate key for things like Copy and Paste and Insert Date and Select Font as well. The keyboard goes into production as soon as a large enough blimp hanger can be located to build a prototype in.
2. The OpenOfficeUSBKey, 432 terabytes of storage convenience, right at your fingertips! As long as your fingertips are manipulating a crane powerful enough to lift it, of course. Comes with its own trailer, which you can conveniently hitch to the back of your car in the event that you wish to transport it to a different location¹.
3. The OpenOfficeMonitor, which is actually a series of connected monitors, each dedicated to a single window! No more tedious opening and dragging and minimizing². With the OOMonitor, all your windows are there, all the time. And, in the unlikely event that you actually want to close one, you can simply snap off the associated monitor/window module and put it under your desk. The default configuration comes with 6 separate monitor/window modules, and it’s super-easy to snap on additional ones, as your multi-tasking needs dictate.

I’ve found the recent, Apple-inspired trends toward smallness and simplicity deeply disturbing. It’s wonderful to see a company doing something about it.

Frank stopped whimpering, and his terrified gaze turned uncertain.

“End me?” he said.

“That’s right. End you!“

“You mean kill me?”

“Well … yeah.”

“Oh.”

There was an awkward pause.

“You know. End your life.”

“No, I get it. It’s just a little …”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Histrionic, maybe? Precious? Hackneyed? Something.”

Chainsaw Timmy turned off his chainsaw. He seemed dejected. “Yeah. I’m not really sure. It sounded good on paper.”

“Maybe you could just say you’re going to kill me. Simple. To the point.”

“Right, no, I hear you. It’s just that telling people I’m going to kill them all the time gets monotonous. I wanted to spice things up a bit.”

“Yeah.” Frank thought for a moment. “How about ‘terminate’?”

“I will TERMINATE you!” said Chainsaw Timmy, then shook his head. “It’s a little antiseptic, don’t you think? I might as well say I’m going to homicide you. Does that instill terror? I don’t think that instills terror.”

“No, you’re right.”

“Really, I want to say my piece, as quickly and simply as possible, and then get right to murdering you.”

“Well, how about that? I will murder you!”

“Eh,” said Chainsaw Timmy, fingering the tines of his chainsaw. “I don’t know. Murder, kill … it’s all very accurate, I suppose, but I want this moment to be memorable. There’s a time and a place for prosaic statements of fact, but, honestly, I don’t think this is one of them.”

Frank’s eyes widened, and a slow smile crept over his face. “What if you lead with the verb?”

“What?”

“Yeah, and make it imperative. Make it an order. You know what I mean?”

Chainsaw Timmy narrowed his eyes. “I think so. But give me an example.”

“Die!” said Frank. “Die … you!“

“Huh. Not bad. Not bad at all.” Chainsaw Timmy mused. “But I’m not sure about the ‘you’.”

“You need a noun there, though. You have to personalize it.”

“No, right, I’m not disagreeing. But ‘you’ is just lame.” Chainsaw Timmy thought about it. “How about ‘motherfucker’?”

“Well, I don’t think there’s any need to curse.”

“No, but listen. Die motherfucker!“

“Whoah. Yeah, that’s good. That’s very good.”

“Die motherfucker!” said Chainsaw Timmy, trying it out. “DIE motherfucker! Die motherFUCKER!“

“I like the middle one. I think putting the emphasis on the impending death is the right move here.”

“Right, right. Ok. I think we have our winner.” Chainsaw Timmy started up his chainsaw. “You ready?”

This wasn’t a new revelation, of course. My body and and I have had several conversations along these lines over the past couple of months. They usually go something like this:

Anyway. I think I’m finally realizing that something has to change, because I went to the supermarket on Saturday, and, instead of blowing by produce on my way to starch & sugar, stopped and picked up several severely unappetizing-looking items — spinach and pears and carrots and the like. And, more than that, I went home and made a good-faith effort to actually eat them. This may not sound like progress to normal people, but it’s a minor revolution for me.

But we’ll see. I’m already experiencing taquito withdrawal.