[Scene: A typical set for an old-style kiddie show along the lines of Romper Room. There are three large cameras from that period, and appropriately cheery decorations. A few dozen children are seated on carpet squares in the audience section. As the theme music fades, a young woman steps in from off-camera and addresses the children.]

ETOILE: Hello, boys and girls! My name is E-tool, and I’m verrrry stupid. Would you like to hear just how stupid I am?

KIDS [enthusiastically]: Yeah!

ETOILE: I’m so stupid, I erased the master boot record on my computer at work!

[The children stare at her silently.]

ETOILE: You see, kids, that’s one thing you never want to do. It really messes everything up? That wasn’t too smart of me, was it?

KIDS: No!

ETOILE: It sure wasn’t. But I bet you think I did it accidentally, right? Well, it wasn’t an accident! It wasn’t on purpose either, but I figured I knew what I was doing. After all, I was a helpdesk tech at my last job for more than a year! So why do you think I erased that master boot record, kids?

[The children shout out various responses ("you thought it would work," "a friend told you to," etc.) all at the same time.]

ETOILE: Those are all good guesses, kids, but nobody got it right! The actual reason is because I was so sure I knew what I was doing, I figured I must be right. But I was really very stupid. Some helpdesk tech I am!

[She laughs at herself and the children join in. Our camera pulls back, the closing theme music starts, and the credits begin to roll.]

I had seen Cecil B. Demented with some friends in New York when it came out, but my girlfriend wasn’t with me. We rented it last night, and while we were watching I kept thinking “damn, Fidget looks really familiar.” After the movie ended, I went to the Internet Movie Database to read up on it. I found the name of the actor who played Fidget and realized I knew him from my first-semester acting class at Western Maryland College. Holy shit! How did Eric end up in a John Waters movie?! I remember our teacher (she wasn’t a professor, I think her title was “assistant lecturer”) had told us Eric had gone to a call for extras - she wouldn’t stop gushing about how great that was. But to go from there to a supporting role in a nationally released movie? I thought it must be a different person, but IMDb linked to his website, where I found a mention of the magazine WMC produces for alumni. There was also a mention of a skateboarding magazine, and I very clearly remember Eric skateboarding around campus. So if college acting classes were counted, I could have a Kevin Bacon number of 4.

Last night we had a bit of an adventure. Around 9 or 10pm, we heard some noises coming from the kitchen and two of our cats came racing upstairs with their tails all puffed up. The disturbance turned out to be a white cat with blue eyes and a collar with tags. It didn’t remember having come in through the cat door, so it tore around the house in terror and jumped up onto a shelf full of delicate items, breaking a plaster doll. We left the front door standing open, hoping it would run out, and we finally decided it had. At about midnight, there were more loud noises from downstairs, and my girlfriend went down to investigate. She thought she’d be chasing away a raccoon, but no - it was the white kitty. It raced up the stairs and hid under our bed, where I was lying awake hoping that if I didn’t move I could go back to sleep - I figured it was one of our cats under the bed. But my girlfriend came back up and reported the visitor was the white cat, and so we prodded and poked at it in hopes of getting it to leave - but all that did was get it to growl at us. We tried sitting still for a bit, hoping it would slink out - but of course it didn’t. My girlfriend finally had the idea to use a squirt bottle, so I crawled down between the bed and the wall and shot at it so it would leave from the other side, nearer the door. It finally ran out from under the bed, but got confused by the mirror on our closet door and tried running up to that and pawing at it before spotting my girlfriend in the mirror and going back under the bed. So I sprayed it again with the water and it finally ran out of the room. The front door was standing open, but by the time we got downstairs the cat was nowhere in sight - we decided it must have left and went to bed. It didn’t show up again, so presumably it was gone. But after this was all over, I lay in bed wondering about the cat. I’d never seen it before, so it could have been somebody’s indoor cat that accidentally got out…that might explain its confusion, maybe. Or maybe it was a cat that wandered too far from home? I can’t help wondering what happened to it, and if it’s okay. Usually the animals we have to get out of the house are wild birds and rodents the cats bring in, not other people’s pets.

I’ve been saving up some things in the ‘Thoughts’ memo on my Palm Pilot.

• Sometimes drivers are intimidated by buses and let them pass or merge. But if it’s rush hour, they think “no way am I letting that big bus ahead of me.”
  
• I see a lot of people during my commute. Sometimes I want to get up and say “is anybody else here gay?” I’d have to say “else” so they didn’t think I was some religious fanatic out to save them. (Nobody would think I was trying to beat up fags - I don’t look like I could beat anybody up.)
  
• What do you do when you see someone on the street begging for money? I see one guy almost daily, sitting on the same steps and muttering about spare change in a gravelly voice as he rattles a cup. Today I also saw a woman - maybe in her 50s or 60s, though the street might have aged her - holding a sign saying that the was homeless, her husband died, and she sleeps on the streets. The sign asked for change for “bp. medication, clothing, food” and she had a blank look on her face. I wanted to help, but felt so powerless.
  
• Sometimes I think of life in terms of the lives of famous people. I barely missed being alive at the same time as John Lennon. I’m not sure if my girlfriend was alive at the same time as Martin Luther King Jr. I have a couple of friends who were alive when John F. Kennedy was killed.