A few random thoughts that have occurred to me of late:

• Whenever I wonder about random things like "Why are commercial toilets shaped differently than residential ones?" I can usually think through an answer on my own ("Probably so they’re easier to clean…") or I can Google up some answers fairly quickly. Just once, I wish the actual answer were something like "This was a decision made by a secret cabal consisting of Freemasons and a murky consortium of international financiers, designed to advance their nefarious goals through control of the world’s toilet bowls." But that’s never the answer.
• You could probably make a killing by bilking gullible, well-intentioned midwesterners with low self esteem out of their hard-earned money by publishing a book of pure sappy pablum and titling it "Chicken Soup for Dummies".
• As an unmarried guy, I’m always creeped out when I spot married couples in a store or on the street who have no qualms about fighting in public. I can understand how women stop caring about having perfect hair after they have a kid, or how a guy could become less meticulous about waxing his car after he turns 30, but at what point do you resign yourself to not being chagrined by the public airing of your insecurities and failings? Maybe it’s because I grew up in an Asian household, but I think there’s a lot to be said for quiet shame and repressing the day-to-day misery of one’s life.
• I’ve been sick the last few days, and in between trying to cough up my entire respiratory system, I’ve been suffering through the usual spate of disgusting cough drops in a vain attempt to keep myself able to breathe. I don’t know why it’s so hard to make something that works to keep your head clear and doesn’t taste repulsive. Note to Halls: squishy centers of unnaturally gooey echinacea extracts are not going to help me keep breathing. I think the next time my nose gets stuffed up, I’m going to try to track down a wasabi cough drop.

Also, please feel free to use that as a great band name. Wasabi Cough Drop!

• I got a mail order catalog from these people, and the title on the front said "Component Paradise". There’s no periodical whose tagline contains the acronyms DLL, VCL, CLX, and OCX that has any business putting the word "paradise" on the cover. Now that I’m a slimy business guy instead of a programming geek, can I please get off of these mailing lists?
• It’s been more than two years since I started wondering how the thong meme spreads, and I still have no answers. I’ve actually asked this question to Cam Marlow, who of course created Blogdex and is a PhD student at MIT, studying "information diffusion, epidemiology, memetics, or social networks". That some fucking serious scientific credibility there. And he didn’t know. I got a shrug of the shoulders. I expect more from the MIT Institute of Technology.

I’m reminded of my curiosity about the spread of thongs because Andrea recently documented some of the unfortunate side effects of this powerful meme, and Meg’s begun a public outreach campaign to prevent these maladies, with some early success in promoting the message via important media outlets. Please, people, tell me how thongs reached the tipping point! It’s important scientific research!