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So I had this potato, and I figured I should explain why I had it, considering that it was, well, just a baked potato, which I happened to be cradling lovingly in my hands as I walked in the door...


Anyway, I'll start at the beginning. I went to the cafeteria for the first time this semester tonight with the Rutledge crowd. I got too much food, per usual, hence was running late to copy edit, per usual, so I got this bright idea—I could take my baked potato with me to keep my hands warm while walking and then eat it upon arriving at the offices. I'd heard of such things being done in the old days, with parents putting hot potatoes in their kids' pockets to take to school with 'em on cold days, etc., so I figured it was worth a shot.


So I took the potato along on my walk through the cold to the offices and it did indeed work as expected, keeping my hands toasty warm. When I got there, I figured I should explain off the bat why I had a potato, and I was rather excited that the thing had kept my hands warm, so I exclaimed, "Potatoes are awesome!" and told them how the potato had kept my hands warm on the journey over. I figured that was self-explanatory, but apparently not. My jaded audience of staffers proceeded to mock me at intervals, telling me I must be "on something" for being excited about a potato.


After awhile I took a bite out of the potato, and when no one seemed to notice that I proceeded to eat about half of the potato like an apple, taking big bites. When I was about two-thirds of the way done and had set the potato down on the photo scanner next to me, the copy editor from Ohio (as opposed to the distinguished senator from Ohio, which is what I think she aspires to be) suddenly exclaimed something to the effect of, "Did you eat that potato?" At this point I was rather annoyed at her constant chatter about boyfriends and ski trips and hot tubs, not to mention her ribbing me about the potato, so I simply said, "No shit." At that point, she got rather flustered, stammering some explanation about her question as I patiently explained that yes, I was eating a potato and no, I didn't have any sour cream or salt or butter or crap, I was just eating a potato, plain and simple.


It was fun to see her so flustered—they never expect emotion, you see, and I'm always purposefully emotionless around them. They don't seem to understand the idea of real passion about things very well, so I don't tell them about things I care about very often. What's great is that if I were more self-possessed and/or sadistic, I probably could've gone on to mock the chick pretty harshly at that point, throwing in something about her favorite state, Ohio (she once wrote an entire essay detailing why Ohio is so great, then made the editor add it to one of the production-night emails to make the staff aware of the "contributions" Ohio has made to this country). As it was, though, she left pretty soon after that and is probably a bit wary of me now, which is fine with me.

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Edit: Awesome things I found searching for my own name:


1. The Daily Illini at the University of Illinois reprinted the file-sharing article I wrote that made it to No. 2 last year on the wire service.


2. Someone credited me with coining the word "tragesty" here at Langmaker, most likely as a result of my posting here on metaplasm...Unfortunately, someone got my definition of tragesty in Urban Dictionary deleted, or I'd really be in business...*sigh*

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Photoshop image to make: dozens of tiny flutter ponies attacking someone...nibbling their arm to the bone. Or perhaps spidery G3s creeping over someone while they're asleep. Ah...innocently violent ponies. Those are the best kind.


9:56 pm, February 03, 2004 :: the jablog years

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