Some of you might actually remember me like this, so this could be hard, but you should try it regardless.

Here, I’ll start:

What was my hair’s zipcode in 1999?

At lunch today, my officemates and I huddled around the speakerphone on the back table for a “town hall” meeting teleconference call. Colleagues called in from all over, set their office and cubicle phones to speaker, and proceeded to pay no attention whatsoever.

These folks have got some good microphone pick-ups on their telephones. We heard honking, sirens, closing doors, throat-clearings and a lilting little Irish jig on lute and guitar. This is true. “Break out the Guiness,” one coworker said. If only.

At least one person held a handset up to their head. We know, because he or she breathed into the mouthpiece for the entire 72 minute phone call.

You know those calls in the movies the evil creepy killer makes? Yeah, like that. The accounting department apparently hired a masked guy with a butcher knife. As the big boss talked in New York, we tried to make sense of the platitudes interrupted by gale force winds in the speakerphone.

“Not in every one of our markets, but in most of our markets, we’re facing the challenge of . . . BRCHTHEB . . .”

“Who? Which challenge?” we asked ourselves, our own speakerphone on mute.

“The second piece of it is, now that you understand the market . . . BRSHCHSBR . . .”

“What’s the piece of what now?”

Finally, a half-hour in, somebody somewhere had enough.”Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt, but could everyone remotely put their phones on mute? There’s breathing and there’s music and it’s distracting.”

There was silence on the line except for the Irish folk tune. (What was that guy thinking? “Wait, you mean this Irish jig? Oh, my bad.”) But there was no breathing. We waited and listened . . . no breathing, no breathing . . . Ok, the heavy breather must have got the message. Probably a little embarrassed right now.

“We want plans that are going to stimulate growth, obviously, but the nut of the strategic process is . . . BRCKSHSBRHK . . .”

Since nobody could hear anything anyway, my coworker in Virginia IMed me — “OK, I’m gonna cough . . . ready?”

“John’s gonna cough!” I told my officemates in Minneapolis.

He did, and it was awesome, let me tell you.

As anybody reading this has almost certainly already heard, yesterday saw the largest act of gun violence in modern U.S. history.

Also called the “deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history” (modern or otherwise), Virginia Tech has now joined the ranks of many other America college, high school, and grade school campuses ravaged by mass murder.

There’s nothing really to say about it, surely not on a blog posted for fun by a crowd of non-journalists, but I’m going to briefly go against my better judgment.

The Twin Cities’ Star Tribune ran an online poll, asking readers how attacks like the one at Virginia Tech yesterday could be prevented in the future.

As of 2:30 p.m., the winner, with 45% of the votes, is “Such attacks can’t be prevented.”

But the big surprise for me, however, was that the answer “Adopt stricter gun control laws” was not the winner.

With 573 votes, gun control just barely beat out “Allow trained school staff members to carry guns.”

(That one’s not the best plan in my opinion, although 510 Strib readers disagree–would that be an armed guard outside every classroom? Or just hand out the pistols to the professors and TAs?).

Over 1300 people polled think there’s nothing we can do. Violence, it’s true, probably can’t be prevented. But you’ve got a better chance at stopping gun violence. And yesterday was gun violence.

The American school shooting has become an institution. The most famous arguably, before yesterday, took place in Colombine, CO, but it’s been repeated several times since–get some guns and lots of ammo, suit up, and shoot as many people as you can before blowing yourself away.

It’s a murderous form of suicide, but you can’t do it without a gun. Or a couple of guns, usually. And specifically, handguns. Forgive me for a blunt bit of logic, but how many people can you knife to death before you yourself are overpowered?

For the 45% of Star Tribune poll-ees who voted “Such attacks can’t be prevented,” you’ve got all the more reason to vote for stricter gun control laws. Maybe you can’t stop murderous intent, violent acts, or psychotic behavior. But we are dangerously negligent if we don’t try to make it hard to get your hands on the tools that turn violence into shooting, rampage, and massacre.

I don’t know if I could call it a “date” per se, but he was there, I was there, there were candles on the table and pasta on plates.

Well, to be fair, there were about seven other people and I may not have been sitting the furthest away from him, but it was close. He had come to our school to speak, and as a recent member of the Forum Planning Committee, I snuck in on the pre-lecture dinner reservation. It would be an exaggeration to say that he and I had a conversation that night, but he did ask me once if I was the kind of Indian that wore a diamond on my forehead. And to prove my true appreciation for his writing, I had no sarcastic response for him.

His lecture was great. I remember him doing a bit about story arcs– the conventional arc, exceptions to the conventional arc, and the Kafka story arc, which is basically just straight descent. The rest of it is fuzzy. I remember that the hall was packed because there were students there from colleges in Alabama and Louisiana. There was a guy in the front row who asked Vonnegut what his favorite vegetable was, and Vonnegut started singing and left the stage mid-sentence and mid-song.

Nothing beats Welcome to the Monkey House, which is the first thing of his that I ever read. It’s possible that all the sexy stuff was what got me hooked when I was thirteen, but I’m sure that now that’s been replaced with a serious, mature understanding of his craft and socio-politics.

Who am I kidding? Long Walk to Forever is still my favorite because it’s a sappy love story.

I haven’t read his last few books, but I am sad that there will be no more.

I’m blogging from Kris and Pulao’s house. It’s the middle of an insane party. All the 12apostrophes bloggers are here. (Apparently the India crowd’s plane was delayed). Things started out tame but it’s getting more interesting. Last I looked, people are in the living room doing gigantic whiskey bongs. Michael is in charge of that. In the red room, people are fighting over the Wii. I gave up because I can’t return a serve or putt. Since I left, the paint on the wall was chipped, at least one person drew blood, and Daniel fell in love.

Let’s see what’s happening in the kitchen… Wow, I really wish the India crowd were here. It’s out of control, and yet, it all feels right. Matt’s arm wrestling for a Netflix certificate. Duodecad is break dancing. Pulao has taken off her shirt and Kris is threatening to take off his pants. The night is still young.

Some of you may already have seen the YouTube video documenting American intellectual prowess, but in case not, it’s worth a view. Watch it and decide if it’s depressing or hilarious….

It’s called Americans Are Not Stupid, with Subtitles. It’s a few minutes long.

This reminds me of a funny story. Or a depressing story. Definitely a related story. Yesterday a member of my family sent a petition to other members of my family (not me). The petition was one of those bogus right-wing scare tactic petitions talking about how the bad “illegals” are trying to steal good, patriotic Americans’ jobs and social security and so on. The petition also claimed Congress recently passed a bill allowing “illegals” to have social security benefits. A false rumor that’s well-worn. The e-mail’s even in Snopes.

Anyway, the petition demands that only U.S. CITIZENS be allowed social security benefits, or any social services. My relative who sent it was born in the United States. Her husband (my brother) and parents-in-law (my parents) were not. They’re all legal residents (who’ve long paid social security taxes), but not citizens. So my relative SIGNED MY BROTHER’S NAME to a petition that demands he lose his social security benefits. Brilliant. Then she forwarded it to his non-citizen parents, suggesting they sign it too. Double brilliant.

I asked her about this later and she told me she forgot that we (including her husband) are all “aliens.” She then pointed out that either way, the petition is how a lot of people feel. Then she said not to worry because no one is referring to us. Apparently, she doesn’t understand what the word “citizen” means.

The upside to this…. Well, ok, there isn’t an upside to this. But in my fantasy resolution, my relative is disqualified from voting. That’s because to become a citizen and voter, you have to take a basic citizenship test and have half a brain. And I figure if you’re an English speaker with half a brain, you know what the word “citizen” means. That’s what you’re taking a test for! So in my fantasy, she fails the test, I make an uncitizen’s arrest, and the feds consider Guantanamo.

Ok, silly fantasy and bad to make jokes about Guantanamo, one of the more depraved entities in modern U.S. history. And of course, if I believe in equal rights for all, I have to allow room for dumb people. This does, however, bring me back to the above video. My relative belongs in it.

Do some of you have relatives who belong in it?

Culled from blogs much cooler than this one, I recently stumbled upon a few (free!) Flash games to while away the hours between getting to work and lunch, and between lunch and quitting time.

Boomshine (http://www.k2xl.com/games/boomshine):

In this game, little colorful dots float aimlessly across the screen at different speeds and rebound off the walls. A mouse-click creates a small, expanding “explosion” that causes any dots it touches to also explode. The goal is to explode increasing numbers of dots, and the only way to do it at higher levels is to start chain reactions across the screen. There may be lots and lots of skill required for this game, but I’ve found that random clicks and watching the pretty colors keeps me entertained and works just as well. Also, turn the music off to hear the cool, chimey sound effects (which make for the cutest explosions ever, Pulao said once while playing).

Sphere (http://www.jigsaw.x0.com/sphere_e/index.html):

A locked-room mystery without the murder. You’re locked in the room, and your goal is to escape. Everything you need is somewhere in there with you. Click your mouse to see a different part of the room, zoom in, affect something in your environment, or pick up and carry an item (or combine your items together). Winning relies a little too heavily on the “Oh!-I-can-click-there?/Didn’t-see-that” factor, but the puzzles are fun and satisfying. When Pulao and I solved it, I was a little sad to leave the room behind. [p.s. when you need to do something else or close the browser, your progress (and items) can be magically saved.]

The Restaurant Game (http://web.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/restaurant):

This isn’t a Flash game, per se, but something cool nonetheless. The goal of the Restaurant Game project, conducted by the MIT Media Lab, is to develop game-engine artificial intelligence that better mimics the behavior of real people. When you play (either as a waitress or a customer) the game learns from what you do, and down the line it will be released as a 1-player game, with game designer credits for all the players. As for the gameplay now, you interact with another person to either buy or serve food, and afterwards rate the other’s intelligence, kindness, etc., and guess their age (and what they eat for breakfast), which is always fun. You know, judging people. [p.s. best time to logon (to guarantee there'll be somebody to play with) is between 7 - 9 p.m. U.S. Eastern time.]