I once emailed Mentos via the customer service link on their website to ask what one should call a singular candy – A mento? A mentos? Here’s the reply, which I found archived in email:
Dear Andrea,
Sitting in the middle of the waiting room, gathering my things to leave, I heard a woman up at the counter say to her little boy, “Do you want to go say goodbye to the fish?” (referring to the large aquarium behind me). The boy said, “No, I’m scared,” and I shot one of those “aw, isn’t-that-cute” glances to the people around me. Then I got up, and just as I was going through the door to the stairway, I heard the boy say, “Okay, I’ll say goodbye to the fish now”, and I realized what he’d been afraid of: me.
I got in a car accident today.
In the car wash.
Apparently the old man in front of me jumped the track, so that his car wasn’t moving, and I was awoken from my car-wash hypnosis (does anyone outgrow the appreciation of car-wash sensory overload?) by the sound of my car gently rear-ending his.
All the lights in the wash suddenly went to red, the brushes stopped spinning, and a line started forming behind me. Since a massive brush had stopped right outside my door, I could only watch the expression on the face of the attendant as he surveyed the damage on the front of my car. I rolled down the window and he said, “Did you have a license plate on the front of your car?” “Did I?” I replied. He then produced a folded piece of metal from underneath my car. “Is this it?”
The attendant said it was the old man’s fault and instructed me to pull over and sort it out with him like we would in a normal accident. After folding the license back into shape, I realized the only damage was to the bracket that holds it on, so I asked the old man for $10 to buy a new one. That’s when the old man decided to give me some attitude and asked, “Why were you following me so close?”
(In an automatic car wash.)
I answered his question as politely as I could, and I got my $10.
I asked for help cubing some purple potatoes and carrots for a stew. Tim: “Oh look! It’s Andre Agassi colors!!”
Interlife crisis (noun) a period of dramatic self-doubt felt by some individuals in the middle period of their internet use, as a result of growing confusion and/or disconnect between their presence online and their presence offline and the difficulties of maintaining both. Sometimes, a crisis can be triggered by transitions experienced in these years, such as the death of one or more past blogs or online projects, the obsolescence of profiles on once-popular social media platforms, or a change in employment that affects the amount of time a person spends in front of a computer. The result may be a desire to make insignificant changes in core aspects of day-to-day life or situation, such as reworking their privacy settings or quitting Facebook altogether, attempting to make their own custom blog/CMS, or just starting a damned Tumblr.  These changes, however, are often accompanied by significant emotional turmoil.
Andrea: “I dreamed last night I was shopping with Judith Butler, and she kept recommending pants that were just awful.â€
a photo gallery, with obligatory sunset (actually sunrise) photo
Some men go their whole lives without ever living in a well-lit bathroom, or having to clean one, never realizing how much piss actually splashes up onto the rim of the toilet – and past that, onto the floor – when they pee.
As I stood up to leave, I suggested to my hand surgeon that the large framed picture I’d stared at every time I’d waited in the diagnosis/examination room – a picture of a climber clinging to a rock face high in the mountains, the only picture in a room where patients sit and wait to be told when (or if) we will be able to do things like tie our own shoes again, let alone climb rocks – might be better placed in the therapy room.
