All these things right here.

Assuming that being really funny and being really smart are mutually exclusive characteristics, which would you prefer someone to have?

If you pick funny, the person need not be dumb. Just not terribly engaging intellectually. If you pick smart, the person isn't without a sense of humor. Just incapable of really cracking you up.
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Does anyone remember that time Ilona took a car full of people to like Pennsylvania or Maryland or something and then told them that they couldn't go indoors anywhere for at least 24 hours?

That's hard to do. I guess they just played around outside but still...24 hours is a long time when you can't even go into a 7-11.
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I like the way it sounds when someone says, "_______tickles me." Them saying that tickles me. It makes me think of the underside of knees and fitted dresses that flare at the waist and potholders decorated with bumblebees and lemongrass and rootbeer floats. ______________________________________

I had a dream a while back that I was going to see a movie with some people and Lauren and Matt were there. Lauren pushed me down a very steep hill and kept saying that I was so fat I looked pregnant. I didn't really want to go to a movie with her after that but it was a dream that featured me being very committed to my end goal. Stupid dreams.

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FOUND magazine is having a holiday special. You can get all 5 issues of the magazine for $20 plus $5 shipping. It's really a pretty sweet deal, especially since you don't have to track down a store that sells the magazines. So I placed an order. You can also get issues #2 and #3 of Dirty FOUND for $16. As in, $16 for the both of them. That's not bad. But I didn't really have another $20 to spend on reading scraps from other people's lives. (Dirty FOUND #1 is out of print but they're doing a reprint in the near future.)

I know some people get into the PostSecret books but I can't get down with that. They're too contrived. The idea is that people mail in a homemade postcard with a secret on it. It's a fine concept that apparently originated at D.C.'s Artomatic a few years ago. (I went to Artomatic last year and I wasn't that impressed. Some stuff was interesting but a lot of it was crap. Think of it as the vanity press for painters and sculptors.) Anyway, PostSecret is the weaksauce version of FOUND and came out a few years after FOUND placed its foot firmly in the doorway of exploiting other people's lives.

FOUND is predicated on the idea that you're not meant see what you're seeing. These are personal notes and pictures and scraps that are not addressed to you. Their intended audience is very specific and the message is tailored to that audience. Consequently, what you get is a very sincere sliver of someone's personal narrative.

PostSecret, on the other hand, is deliberate. People choose what secret they'll reveal and how they'll visually represent the tone of that secret through their homemade postcard. And while you can argue against it, I think the things in PostSecret are far more likely to be fabricated by the people sending them in. For all these reasons, I don't see PostSecret as an accurate representation of the private or internal life of the human animal.

Really, the difference between these two publications is like the difference between a diary and a blog. (However, this should not discourage you from reading my blog, which is clearly a high-class publication that's fully represenative of my inner monologue.)_______________________________________

My oldest brother works as a mechanical engineer for Poland Spring in Maine. When my family went up there in September for his wedding, some of us toured the plant he works in. It was cool. Sort of like being on an episode of Discovery Channel's How It's Made.

When you go into the plant, you have to wear safety glasses, a hairnet, earplugs, and an apron sort of thing over your shoes. It's a very clean place and they seem to have a firm handle on what they need to do to keep everyone safe.

A few weeks ago and he was telling me about a routine safety inspection that was done at his plant. One of the safety inspectors freaked out when he saw a man that wasn't wearing earplugs. He wrote it down and explained to whoever was in charge that it was a very serious safety concern because the machines are quite loud and could damage the man's hearing. But the thing is, that guy is deaf. Literally. That's why he doesn't care about wearing earplugs.

In retrospect, that story isn't so funny.