When you see a cat, you can pet it. It might be timid, or possibly even hostile, but the owner won't mind the least bit if you try to pet their cat, or even pick it up (so long as the cat doesn't mind). Cat owners tend to be sane, or at least not insane in the way dog owners sometimes are.

On the other hand, many dog owners apparently object strenuously to people petting their dogs without asking. They'll even claim it's like going up to a strangers' child and hugging him/her.

If this is a seeing eye dog, this makes sense. (Not the child analogy, but the 'no touchy!' rule.) Otherwise, however, these people are insane.

I'm sure there are nutty cat ladies who are the same way about their cats, but I don't think I've ever met one.

Upon waking this morning, I glanced at my watch. '07:15am'. Oh, gevalt! I overslept by more than an HOUR!

So I quickly, got dressed, grabbed a bag of banana and a cereal for breakfast and lunch, and ran out to the bus stop, where I brushed my hair and ate a banana as I waited for the bus.

Where's the bus? Glance my watch: 07:15am. I should call them to say I might be late, but there's no payphone and I haven't a Handy.

Glance my watch: 07:20am. Ah, good, it's supposed to be here in three minutes. Some people from work drive by and shout my name. 'Hey, I could use a ride!' But they're gone. Curses!

Glance my watch: 7:25am. Where's the bus? It's late. Pace. The Night Owl bus shows up. Strange that it's running at 7:30am, but it goes where I need to go, so I board. The clock up front is flashing '1:30'. Ha, I wish. No one there from whom I can borrow a Handy to say I'm going to be late. Just two homeless guys.

Glance at my watch: 7:40am. Wait...for the past six years I've had my watch set to UTC (essentially Greenwich Mean Time). 7:40am in England is 1:40am here. It suddenly dawns on me what a colossal idiot I am.

So I get off the bus and walk thirteen blocks home. I'm not going back to bed and oversleeping for real. At least I went to bed early, so I got half a night's sleep.

Good thing I didn't have a Handy. Would've left some interesting messages.

Person how are the people in antartica not upside down?
Person [States his name because multiple people use the account.]
Luca Consider the definitionof 'down'.
Luca We use a spherical coordinate system.
Person but the people are on the bottom of the earth.
Luca Now consider the definition of 'bottom'.
Luca You've switched frames of reference.
Luca Down is toward the centre of the Earth, not toward the South Pole. Do you consider yourself to be sideways?
Person and why arent we sliding off the earth?
Luca Because there isn't a super-massive black hole just south of the Earth pulling on us but not the Earth.
Luca See, here's the thing: the Earth has mass. zOMG!
Person no. but looking at a globe makes it confusing.
Luca Yeah, if you're from the middle ages.
Person i still dont get it.
Luca How old are you?
Person 16. im just a bit... slow. besides no teacher has ever explained this. they just tell us that the worlds not flat.
Luca You've heard of gravity?
Person nevermind i get it now.
Luca And I was just about to draw you an illustration.
Person yeah. i get it now. since gravijy is from the center of the earth everything works out.
Person awww man. i want to see an illustration. i dont get it anymore
Luca http://lkbm.ecritters.biz/blog/gravity.png
Luca Down is defined as the direction the arrows point.

'What is sauerkraut, anyway? Is it like it's own vegetable?' -- Girl working at the Swiss Chalet. Where they have sauerkraut.

Unfortunately I didn't hear Tom's reaction.

My point--or not really, but I'll make one up just now--is that she could still be smarter and more general-knowledgeable than you or me. Everyone has missing bits of general knowledge, and sauerkraut is hardly the most significant any of us have. Last week I was surprised to discover that American College football isn't played only on Sundays, but also on Saturdays. (Oh, I'm sure I knew that. They kick good TV off for football every day of the week, but I don't really think about football.)

I'm too lazy to go on and on about it.

(Liberty cabbage!)

If I was a contestant on Iron Chef, I'd be in trouble. Firstly because they all speak Japanese. Let's say this is actually Iron Chef America, just so we don't have to worry about that.

More importantly, however, because they'd whip the veil off a vat of live tuna and expect me to prepare a five course meal using them as the central ingredient. In one hour. Without a cookbook.

My strategy would be this: 'Sous chefs GO!' Then I'd watch them do their thing.

My cooking skills are inadequate to be competing on Iron Chef. I don't even have a pair of orange Crocs.

But I would never say 'I can't cook'. The people who say that are saying something far, far more serious. They're saying that if you give them simple, straightforward, unambiguous directions, all the basic tools, and all the ingredients, they cannot bake a cake.

And that's scary. When someone makes such a ridiculous claim, your first thought should probably be 'Can you read?' If you can read and you're not a paraplegic, how can you possibly not be able to bake a cake? The book says '1 cup milk'. How do you mess that up? Grab an empty 7-11 SuperGulp cup and fill it with milk? Or maybe upon seeing the clear, simple instruction to add a cup of milk they proclaim 'No stupid book is going to tell me what to do!' and put in two cups just to show it who's boss.

These are the skills required for cooking:
* Measuring
* Mixing
* Pouring
* Reading simple instructions
* Following simple instructions

I'm going to hazard a guess and say it's the last item that gives them difficulties. This means not just that they can't cook, however. It means they can't drive ('speed limit 35? That means 35km/s, right?'), they can't go shopping ('the label says $3.99, but I'm going to pay $1.27 instead'), they can't do anything. No one is that stupid.¹

You can cook.

¹ I have said this a hundred times and every time I have been wrong. People are so stupid--and wilfully so, in most cases--that no matter how far I lower my expectations, someone will still manage to blow my mind.