When she saw him alone at the table, she sat across from him, looked at his green eyes, and everything she'd been holding back for a decade spilled out like hot vomit:

"I know it was just how you operate, how you do things, but I want you to know that what you did that night hurt. A lot. I have thought about it and thought about it for years now and I need you to know that even though part of me hated you -- just wanted to fucking kill you sometimes -- I got over it. Really. I did, and I know now that it was just how you do things. You didn't mean anything by it, it wasn't like you wanted to embarrass me or make me lock myself in my room for a week. I lost a lot of weight that week though... so maybe it wasn't all bad... but the point is, I know that you're not a bad person. So a long time ago, I forgave you. And well, I think I also realized something else not long ago, and that's that I still love you. I mean, I care about you. Maybe that's why it hurt so much, why it felt like you'd just stabbed me right in the spine that night, leaving me like that. I figure that you... you were just trying to figure things out then, too. You probably still feel the same way. I know. It's been... it's been a long time, but I want you to know I'm ready. Ready to give you a second chance. Because I know that I do still love you. Very much."

He said: "And who are you again?"

Signs of age: This morning in the shower I was looking at my feet. And I realized that, while my feet aren't Frodo-like in their hirsuteness, there was just this strange little line of hairs along the top of my foot. Worse, my big toes -- on both feet -- had about five or six individual hairs sticking out. I could see each one individually.

But thanks to the Gillette Corporation, now I can't.

This weekend was the baptism of my youngest nephew, Joshua Warren, or as he'll be called by me when he's old enough to be annoyed by it, "Wahrn." He was named that after my late maternal grandfather, and that's how his mother and wife said it, so I consider it family tradition. Like toast for breakfast, or spending too much as Xmas.

I probably got to spend more time that day with his older brother, John, now 19 months old or so, than I have in my last five combined visits out to Hornell (where my brother's family lives three blocks from my parents). John is motoring around now without any concerns for safety or well being, his god given right as a human with the cognitive capacity of a Labrador. And that's not meant as a slight, as I'm sure by age two he'll be as smart as a Collie. He's already far surpassed wiener dogs and Chihuahuas.

First thing my brother Paul and I managed to do with John was get yelled at. See the picture at left (photo from Dad's Polaroid). When this was witnessed by his mother and grandmother -- not my mom, the other grandmother -- they both said "Don't you lift that baby up by his arms!"

When Paul asked why with some incredulity, there were only mumbles because, lets face it, there's no reason in the world not to hold a child up by his arms like this. Dislocating a shoulder is so much more fun if you learn to do it right as a toddler. And John was smiling every time we did it, like a little goon.

As the ceremony commenced, I decided to keep John busy while the adults concentrated on pouring water on his little brudder. Besides, walking with him was far more exciting than sitting through another baptism. Good thing they usually do it to kids who are oblivious (cognitive capacity of a new born sheepdog).

I walked him up and down the aisles of St. Anne's Church, which was recently scrubbed down after some smoke damage from a fire in the back. (I'd link to a news story about the fire but, get this -- the Hornell Evening Tribune apparently thinks it's the NYTimes and charges people to see the archives. Ha. I bet that's a real cash cow for them.)

John would point at things and make a noise of interest and I'd say "Yeah!" and try to explain what it was. Like "Oh, yeah, that's Jesus Harold Christ. But see, he wasn't wearing those nice robes like that when he carried the cross. See that thing on his head? That's a crown of thorns and it got blood in his eyes. Oh, and he screamed. A lot. Just ask Mel Gibson."

We played with the collection baskets (my Dad was interested at one point in seeing if John would sit in one for a picture) and I taught him to walk on the pews and how to step over the divider in between. He knew instinctively to stand on the hymnals and didn't flinch at all when the priest came in and said hi to him (I thought I was going to get a "don't stand on the hymnals" speech.)

Eventually, I had to give him up, as John wanted to check out the goings on up in the front of the church, where he wandered about from person to person. It was funny to watch the adults scramble to be the one John went to. The validation of a child's love makes a person feel important. Face's light up and seem to say, "Look it, I'm the grandparent/aunt/obscure-relative/friend-of-the-family of choice this small being with an attention span of five seconds! -- oh, wait, there he goes, so I'll just smile warmly and pretend not to be hurt by his callous disregard of my adoration."

Not that I'm any better, but since I seldom get to interact with John sans the presence of his entire extended family, I'm used to letting other take the lead. And more than happy to let them take it when he's filling a diaper with that sludge some call feces, but I call "requiring a hazmat team."

The rest of the day was spent picnicking at Paul's house where, as usual, his side of the family (me, Mom, and Dad) tended to stay separate from his wife's Jen side of the family, apparently none of whom ever left the county. John took a nap and when he woke up, he ate and then played for almost an hour with a giant plastic toy car he could climb in and out of. My wife -- due to a miscommunication about Chicken Pox, which she's never had, she didn't accompany me out to the ceremony -- found said car at a yard sale. John seemed to love it, especially the doors that would open and close, and that he could push it around like a shopping cart. Thus, I won the contest for his attention span, by proxy. So there.

When I was a kid and people would talk about a "load-bearing wall" in front of me, I thought that meant the wall in question was filled up with thousands of little, metal ball bearings.

It only took a second. But when he knew he was dying like that -- on the toilet with his plaid boxers around his ankles -- it was the scariest realization that had ever occurred to the general.

He'd faced down Charlie in the jungle, survived a fractured skull in Beirut, escaped inhaling Sarin in Desert Storm, and completed successful covert ops that had meant both rescue for some and a quick, quiet death for others. He'd once walked away from a helicopter crash that took the lives of four others. He'd even learned to handle the snake filled halls of the Pentagon.

He wasn't scared about the dying part itself. He'd obviously faced that particular specter before, it held little terror. He'd made his peace with his creator over what he'd done in life.

But not with what he was. There was no peace there.

His final thought as his face hit the tile floor was of the young man who would find him, his military attache of several months now, he with his gigantic hands and quick smile and strong salute. This young man, whom the general had loved since the moment he'd saw the boy, was about to find a superior officer with his naked ass high in the air.

Brent sat behind the wheel, his head against the seat rest staring blankly, the car idling in park.

He found himself here in this same spot frequently. He had assumed, as the news stories grew less frequent that he'd be less likely to let the guilt drive him here, but the opposite seemed true. He felt like the only person who remembered.

He was the only one who really knew.

When he'd hit the boy, Brent hadn't known. It wasn't until the fog in his head cleared days later, when the people began buzzing at work, he picked up the first newspaper and realized what he'd done.

Sitting in front of the police station was like his confessional. He couldn't understand how they couldn't see the evidence of his crime staring them in the face. The crumpled right front bumper should have been all the clue they needed. If they looked close wouldn't they see the paint/dirt/skin/hair/blood that would be his undoing?

He wanted to tell. He wanted to be forgiven.

Then, like before, a tap at the window. Blue uniform and a night stick. Rolling down the window.

"Sir, you can't park here."

Brent nodded. Put the car in gear. And pulled away.

I take my inspiration where I can get it.

Last week, a blog I follow called Die Puny Humans, written by professional comic-book author Warren Ellis pulled a stunt he called "Fast Fiction Friday." He uploaded short stories sent to him by readers of his Live Journal called Scream Talking.

Why does he has two online journals, plus a e-mailing list and a couple of other online columns? Because he's got so much crap coming out of his head, some that he doesn't care about getting paid for, he needs all these spots just to put it all. Me, I'm far to much the whore to try and take away the piddling traffic I get on this site, let alone split it up with a Live Journal (though I created one anyway, which will probably just be a mirror of this site, if I remember to keep it up to date...)

Anyway, Fast Fiction as he defines it is a story of no more than 200 words. Seeing as I have this in ability to say anything without copious extra parentheticals to accentuate my verbosity, that appeals to me. Though I think 250 is a little more reasonable. Maybe 300… So that's what I've done here. Hopefully I'll do more. Fast Fiction. Pico Pontification. Nano Narratives. Abbreviated Allegories. Terse Tales. Succinct Spiels. Prosaic Potboilers. (Thesaurus equals fun!).

Okay, here's an idea:

Let's say you're a lady. And you've got a truly sensitive significant other, a guy who is just madly in love with you and he does all he can to make you feel loved and wanted. He does dishes every day (okay, most days), keeps a roof over your head, and pees sitting down. All for you.

Now, let say that despite all that, your significant other boy (or S.O.B.) has one major problem in that he's -- how do I put this delicately? -- "laundry challenged."

Some uncharitable souls might call him a "clothes wash retard."

A wash-tard, if you will.

Now, if you are the woman I describe, knowing how hard your man works to make you feel loved, warm, covered in rose petals and kittens and sunshine, blah, blah, blah, wouldn't you want to do you best to protect that man -- that glorious hunk o' man, that very dude who mows your lawn and hangs your curtains and records Antiques Roadshow for you and drives your ass all over creation -- wouldn't you want to protect him from... himself?

How would you protect the wash-tard, you ask? By maybe (and I'm just throwing this out there, so feel free to through it back, as Ron Burgundy sez), I dunno, just by maybe buying clothes that aren't so goddamn easy to ruin?

I mean, when you ask him to do a simple job... taking the laundry out of the washer and placing it in the dryer, for example.... you'd want that job to be pretty brainless for your average moron, right?

Yo might think it helps if you yell, "I've got bras in that load!" from the other room, but inside you know that's not going to be hard for him, because -- being the kind of man he is, who's desperately in lust with your cleavage -- he knows a bra when he sees one, and he knows that the elastic goodness they bring shouldn't be subjected to the parched heat of an electric dryer. He know, lordy he knows. He may be a wash-tard, but he's able to learn from some experience.

But did you bother to tell him at the same time that there's a shirt in that load with the absolutely ludicrous instruction of "LINE DRY ONLY"? Did you? You didn't? Well, Christ. Don't you feel heartless? After all he's done for you? You know, after all, that part of being laundry challenged -- indeed, the foremost component of this affliction! -- is the inability to ever give tags of any kind any regard whatsoever.

I'd hazard to say that most men, especially those of us who don't have to wear any clothes at all in our day jobs, if we so desire, are very likely to have this problem, ladies. Because we don't buy shirts or pants that can't be throw into a pile and just washed and dried. Its not in our makeup.

And don't give me that crap about towels and t-shirts and different kinds of fabrics that shouldn't mix because they dry differently. I've seen you (uh, I mean, I know that women in general...) throw white towels in with red towels, so I know there are no real rules when it comes to laundry.

Except for those rules that exist on small, hard-to-find tags. Those are the rules I shall... uh, I mean, we men... shall never learn, and thus will wash-tards always exist.

Conversation I had via IMs today with my friend Lauren, discussing a company we used to work with back in the day that makes uninterruptible power supplies:

Lauren: I found this on APC's web site: Be afraid...be very afraid: APC GENDER CHANGER, DB37 MALE TO DB37 MALE, SLIM-LINE DESIGN

ECGriffith: they do classifieds now? way to branch out APC!

Lauren: lol

Lauren: APC V.35 GENDER CHANGER, V.35 MALE TO MALE, STRAIGHT THRU PINOUT

ECGriffith: the even do surgery.

Lauren: they must be a swiss company

Lauren: and last but not least: APC VIDEO COUPLER, S-VIDEO, SVHS, MINIDIN4 FEMALE TO FEMALE, INLINE COUPLER

ECGriffith: hot girl on girl action!

Lauren: whoo-hoo!

I think it's perfectly natural to be jealous of those with mutant superpowers of any kind, such as teleporting or telekinesis or eye-blasts. Even the most innocuous of powers makes me jealous however.

Take, for instance, the mutant superpower of my wife (AKA Squanto, AKA Tenacious B, AKA Shamrock Shake): she can find a four-leaf clover just about anytime she looks.

Since May of this year she's found about 15 of them. One day at a dog agility trial, she came home with about five of them. They sat in cups on our kitchen window sill for weeks until they curled up into little crisp bundles of vegetation.

I look every time I'm in the backyard here, where I've got at least an acre of nothing but clover, and I've never found one. It makes me feel unobservant and... normal. Closest thing I have to a mutant superpower is the guaranteed ability to get who's ever in the passenger seat of my car to make exclamations as I drive.

I'm about two weeks behind in doing this. I keep putting it off. But I have give a quick public critique about Sync.

Perhaps it's because on a lark I applied for a job at the magazine -- as editor-in-chief no less, because my ego knows no bounds. Yet I never even got so much as a "Go Fuck Yourself" from the HR department. Even the vice president is considerate enough to give someone that.

Sync magazine is the latest from my former employer, Ziff-Davis. I knew I had to get to writing this because after buying a copy last week (bargain price: $2.99, guaranteed to go up to around $6.99-- current cover price of PC World, if you can believe that), I was given another copy from a foot-high stack they had by the registers at Best Buy. The chain apparently did a big enough ad buy with Sync that ZD provided a few palettes of mags to stores to give away. It's a time honored trick of publishing, dating, and prostitution: give it away first to get customers hooked, and then make them pay. Dearly.

More importantly thogh, I had to get to this becasue a couple of friends of mine work on the publication and one actually asked for me opinion. She's thinking that I'm the demographic this magazine wants. She's more or less right.

Sync (or sync in the all lower case logo, or SYNC in the indicia) is ZD's answer to the "lad mags:" Maxim, Stuff, and FHM. They're targeted at guys, college age to mid-30's, and pride themselves on vulgarity (R-rated), beer, and babes. And the writing can be quite entertaining. But as a former subscriber to all three, I can also attest that it gets old after about a year of reading it. Sync isn't quite as brave -- it's more of a PG-13. It's a bit more inclined to talk about grilling steaks than guzzling kegs, and doesn't over-do-it on the babes by any stretch. While the average lad mag has layouts that put Playboy to shame, Sync's original shots of scantily clad models was limited to:

• 2 on the cover (with a guy)
• 1 on page 24 (with a guy, apparently ready to do him in the toilet)
• 2 more on Page 79 (again, with a guy... jesus!)
• 1 on page 80 (camping... with a guy)
• 1 on page 82, a repeat one girl from the cover. Same guy.

That's it. Pathetic. This is a lad mag?

Oh, that's right, let's be clear... this is a lad mag for GEEKS.

Sync, you see, isn't for the frat boys that went on to become moderately able to read and can thus enjoy the joke page of Maxim. This is the magazine for the guys the frat boys used to shove out of line at the dining hall. It's for the guys who stayed up all night working on the VAX system, writing letters to the editors of X-Men Comics ("More Kitty Pryde!") in-between inspired bits of fan fiction, all while waiting to compile some code or earn just enough more money to buy a moped or a Super Nintendo.

The reason I was so good an employee for ZD is because of the company's focus on products in most mags. I'm a good product guy. ZD does great product coverage, with PC Magazine as the high-water mark there. Sync is doing the same thing, only for gadgets of all shapes and sizes, from skin-implant chips to basketball playing robots. Once you get over the fact that you're going to be seeing less cleavage than an average issue of Teen People, you'll see that Sync does a good job, even getting a fair share of "scoops" on some products. Well, they're scoops if you don't ever read any tech news on the Web.

Let's look at the magazine section by section...

The typical two-page table of contents (TOC) does feature a hot set of lips with a chip, but that makes it look like an advertisement -- a perennial problem I had with this first issue. Without consistent use of either a background on edit pages, it's hard to tell from page to page what's an ad and what's content. More on that in a bit.

The TOC also reveals the thing I hate the most in the magazine: the header font, used (in strange combination with a font based on the lower-case logo on some pages) to delineate sections of the magazine. This all caps san-serif looks like it was tooled by a guy who'd never seen a rounded corner before. It's difficult to read. It's awful.

Swap It is the section title for the mag's opening pages. Funny to see a letter to the editor in here from the editorial director of Ziff-Davis.com, answered as if he were just some dude.

Page 16 reveals -- aside form the creepy skin coloring of the staff and contributors... I can't wait to see my friend Jill in chartreuse -- icons! The whole magazine is studded with icons so you can see what "rocks," what "stinks" (indicated with a steaming pile of feces icon, natch), etc. It's all part of what we in the magazine biz call "multiple entry points" -- you must have many, many places on a page in a magazine to start reading, usually even in a feature. My wife (AKA Squanto, AKA Tenacious B) even helped pioneer that to an extent with a big feature she wrote years ago that won awards and everything, where she filled 20 pages with about 800 different bits. This was for a ZD magazine that's now out of business, I should point out. (Not her fault. Really.)

Past the masthead (hi Jill! Hi Kelly!) and we enter the Live It section. This is all pseudonews. It's tuff that's been blogged to death already, but stands out by having some pithy comedy writing for each bit.

Page 32 brings in the second thing I hate most after the font -- floating heads. Apparently, when you're writing about someone who's not famous, the way to depict them is as a disembodied floating head with a Photoshop aura. Yet on page 36-- actual photos of people referred to.

Next is Judge It, the pop-culture reviews section. This doesn't differ much from any other lad mag's coverage of music, DVDs, and video games. Yawn. Need to get some actual celebrities in here I care about, or some behind the scenes stuff. I can do all my shopping for this stuff online. And an interview with the robot from I,Robot? Ugh. I think even the editors there can clearly see that film's a turkey. Wil Ferrell discussing 1970's technology (to go along with Anchroman) might have been funny, though.

Learn It is the how-to section, and where the "is that an ad?" syndrome kicks into overdrive. Page 64 is especially bad -- editorial about home theaters opposite a home theater ad from Samsung, both full-bleed. When I was at FamilyPC, one of the editors would go through the page dummy list each month to make sure we didn't create such competitive placement -- no Kodak ads in a digital camera review, for example. Apparently, that's now just standard practice. The advertisers won't mind.

I found the little headings on page 61 that look like a mini-TOC to be very annoying -- if there isn't a centerfold involved, no magazine should have to be turned 90 degrees to read. The little headings seemed to be non-sequiturs, and certainly don't match exactly to the pages that follow. What's the point?

Despite these gripes, Learn It was my favorite section of the magazine, with some nice info on stuff I hadn't seen before and even a full page comic strip. However, the strip's panel about calling your ISP for your IP "number" is nonsense for the average user. If you have a static IP address you'd know it, because you'd be paying for it.

Oh, and the double page spread ad on 76-77 wins hands down for the most disturbing image I've seen since this. Apparently a decapitated bisected, naked dwarf -- showing plenty o' pubes, but apparently not any genitalia -- is supposed to be instantly recognizable as some sort of ambulatory armpit that gets hot women.

Now we hit the feature well, the center of the magazine where all the cover stories go. I think it's called Live It, but apparently only on their Web site. First up is a simple gadget round up, but after that things get interesting. A story on the disappointing world of current robots people can buy is well written and illustrated with actual photos of the author interacting with the droids (this guy should be a columnist... speaking of, why no columns in this book?). The story on people implanting microchips as IDs talks about how a Spainish night club is using them, but ignores that dogs, cats, and a Florida family have done this already... but I suppose carrying pet owners and families aren't the target. My favorite story is called "Junk," a listing of the top 25 worst tech products ever, some of which I had the pleasure of being around for (3Com Audrey, Microsoft Bob, Apple Newton). But, come on, automatic seatbelts and calculator watches? Those ruled! While I like the story, it's too insider I think... who outside of the journalists at ZD care about this?

The final section is called Snag It, which apparently is the shopping area. Again, many, many products listed, It's not much different from the main feature, just grouped under unique categories (tiny products, vintage products, sexy products, expensive products, etc.)

I don't know why a monthly would even bother with a pageof fake ads (page 11) to show bargain prices on gadgets when hardware prices change so fast. The Dell laptop they feature is already $60 more and probably has an entirely different RAM/hard drive configuration now, too. Such a feature is far more useful online where you can track up to the date price changes. However, the online version of the Snag It section doesn't even list any of the products on this page.

Nice camera round up showing the image quality, though, and nice to see the head-to-head style of reviews -- pioneered I think in the late, great PC/Computing --is still around. Here it is used to pick a portable DVD player. Not sure why a screen shot from Revenge of the Nerds mad sense here, however.

The last page of any magazine is usually the one I turn to first. That's the page that sets either sets the tone for a book like this. Whether it's a column, an interview, comedy, an essay, photo spread, and whether serious, irreverent, or just asinine, the last page (here called the "anti-bench test" for some reason) is the very definition of the modern day tech mag. Sync's first last page is devoted to a "musical-chairs-esque" game unit that electrocutes the last person to buzz in. Not an auspicious start. I'd rather see a celebrity interviewed here-- this might have been a good spot for their Beasty Boys interview, though in keeping with a real lad mag, this should page would be good to have a babe with gadgets. Think like the cover of an automotive mag, a bikini-clad model on the hood of the car, but instead you get a Lindsey Lohan in a bikini fondling an iPod Mini.

Actually, that would probably go on the cover. And be a feature.

So, overall, I guess I liked Sync. But I won't subscribe to it.

The reason is, I'm an information junkie, with an RSS Reader that is bombarded already with data about toys and gadgets from sights like BoingBoing and Gizmodo -- even if I didn't work in the industry I could get my fill of this stuff. Any number of blogs, including Sync's own Blog It, and other editorial sites will cover most if not all of what's in the magazine to death before I'd get to it. Anything they do get the scoop on would be written up with such a scarcity of details that I'd end up going online for more data anyway (usually to find out it won't ship for six months).

And If I want to see scantily clad women, I can go just about anywhere online (except for Sync's own Web site, apparently).

Last night I went over hill and even over dale with the wife (AKA Squanto) to watch her do an agility class with our youngest mutt, Kylie (AKA Cooter the Carebear). Following an unwritten rule of ours, since this was her gig and I was coming along to keep her company, she had to drive. That left me with complete control over the iPod so I could queue up an eclectic list of tunes to listen to along the way. Anything I liked. Bwah-ha-ha!

In the course of playing the songs, I discovered something strange... three of my all time favorites feature the world "blue sky" in the title. They are:

• Goodbye Blue Sky by Pink Floyd, from The Wall (Disk 1)
• Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra, from Out of the Blue
• Blue Skies for Everyone by Bob Schneider, from Lonelyland

iTunes also reveals the tune by Blue Skies by the late Eva Cassidy in my collection (from her Live at Blues Alley album.)

Shame I didn't play Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (which I think counts, as diamonds are blue. Kinda.) Sadly, I don't have the William Shatner version.

Long weekend coming to a close, and I don't think I did a single productive thing. I don't know whether to be disgusted with myself or intensely proud.

How can I tell I'm not young any more (if I ever truly was)? I use this formula:

Barbeque + Caffeine + Superhero - Sleep = Me Feeling Like I'm Going to Yack.

After getting about four hours sleep on Monday after dealing with my e-mail issues, I got only three on Tuesday night because I went to the midnight showing of the premiere of Spider-Man 2. Just to make sure I'd be up through it all, I popped a NoDoze around 10:30. Since I thought this would be a good idea since I fell asleep during the pod race in a midnight show of Star Wars: Episode 1 back in 1999, and hell, I was still in my 20s then. However, maybe I fell asleep because that movie sucked.

FYI, the caffeine was not necessary for Spider-Man 2, as the film was absolutely riveting, one of the all time great superhero flicks, up there with X2, the original Superman, and Unbreakable. Once I was in bed by 2:30am, I was still hopped up on caffeine goofballs and unable to not think. I ran every second of the film over in my head. (Any problems I have with it are described by Steven Grant over at Comic Book Resources [contains SPOILERS], especially how the fantastic bit in the trailer where Doc Ock throws the car through the windows doesn't make much sense in the context of the film if given any thought. Overall though, this film lives up to and beyond its hype, which is not easy to find in movies these days.

My last look at the clock was 3:30am.

When I got up Wednesday at 6am to feed the mutts, I felt slightly wired, in that way you feel wired when you're, say, drunk and walking along a narrow building ledge and all you have to balance yourself is a bowling ball. I drank a glass of water and my stomach did a flop-flip (like a flip-flop, only, bad). I tried to sit down to work and thought I was going to hurl the now body-temperature H₂O up on the keyboard. I pulled the curtains in the bedroom and laid back down for a couple of hours, bringing my sleep up from deprived to just disadvantaged, and finally got to work a little late, but in time for a meeting.

In cyberspace, no one knows you take meetings in your pajamas.

My thanks to Brett for thinking of me for his extra midnight Spidey 2 ticket, it was great to spend the evening with him and Sean, a man who is a living testament that eating nothing but steak and lettuce is good for you, at least until his heart explodes from all the clogged beef or something. He rides a humongous red motorcycle now -- I think it was red, it was dark -- and with his head shaved, if you set him on fire while riding, he'd look like Ghost Rider. With a goatee.