Seriously, though, I spent seven hours of my life staring at that page, and I think my head may have exploded three or four times. An example why:

7D: Basic fruit on salad forks.
Answer: BIFURCATES

Of course, to keep my car happy I occasionally have to pay so it can have some work done. (There’s very little work it hasn’t had done at this point.) What I’m saying is that we spend plenty of time with the car doctor, and we know the car doctor pretty well. (He has a Pomeranian!)

So imagine my surprise when I recently visited my mechanic’s website:

My car is SEXY MODELING for him. One can only imagine what the quid pro quo is.

Books read in 2009
1. The Pigeon Wants a Puppy!, Mo Willems
2. The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!, Mo Willems
3. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon
4. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
5. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
6. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut
7. Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon
8. Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut
9. The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby
10. The Better of McSweeney’s vol. 1
11. Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs and Some Other Things …
12. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #1
13. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008
14. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #3
15. Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country: Kids’ Letters to President Obama
16. Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, Nick Hornby
17. Shakespeare Wrote for Money, Nick Hornby
18. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #15
19. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #16
20. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #18
21. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #19
22. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #14
23. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #17
24. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #20
25. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #21
26. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #22
27. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #23
28. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #4
29. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #24
30. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #25
31. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #27
32. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #32
33. Forty Stories, Donald Barthelme
34. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
35. A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby
36. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
37. Vegan Yum Yum, Lauren Ulm
38. When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro
39. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #26
40. The Children’s Hospital, Chris Adrian
41. When the Nines Roll Over and Other Stories, David Benioff
42. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009
43. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

Music purchased in 2009
1. Sunny Teriyaki Hamburger Breakfast, various artists
2. Nineteen single, Old 97′s
3. The Music of the Sons of Hermann Hall, vol. 1, various artists
4. Distopian Dream Girl 7″, Built to Spill
5. Car 7″, Built to Spill
6. The Nothing to Attract You EP, Old 97′s
7. Center of the Universe 7″, Built to Spill
8. Wasps’ Nests, The 6ths
9. The Stand Ins, Okkervil River
10. It Happened One Night & It Never Happened at All, John Wesley Harding
11. I Don’t Believe You 7″, The Magnetic Fields
12. Strange 7″, Built to Spill
13. Knievel 7″, Scud Mountain Boys
14. All the Umbrellas in London 7″, The Magnetic Fields
15. The Hazards of Love, The Decemberists
16. SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers!, various artists
17. Neighborhood #2 (Laïka) 7″, Arcade Fire
18. The Opposite of Hallelujah 7″, Jens Lekman
19. Hungry Bird, Clem Snide
20. The Rake’s Song 7″, The Decemberists
21. Carpetbaggers 7″, Jenny Lewis
22. After Laughter (Comes Tears)/(At Your Best) You Are Love 7″, Lykke Li/El Perro del Mar
23. Seven Swans vinyl, Sufjan Stevens
24. Live Europaturnén MCMXCVII vinyl, Pavement
25. Someday 7″, The Strokes
26. Wizard of Ahhhs 10″, Black Kids
27. Fort Hood EP, Mike Doughty
28. Writer’s Block, Peter Bjorn and John
29. Outer South, Conor Oberst
30. Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River
31. Your Favorite Music, Clem Snide
32. Rhett Miller, Rhett Miller
33. Veneer, José Gonález
34. Stephen, Stephen 7″, The Apples in Stereo
35. The Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees, The Magnetic Fields
36. Killingsworth, The Minus 5
37. Dark Was the Night, various artists
38. It Feels So Good When I Stop, Joe Pernice
39. Riceboy Sleeps, Jónsi and Alex
40. Face to Face, The Kinks
41. God Help the Girl, God Help the Girl
42. The House of Tomorrow, The Magnetic Fields
43. Got Nuffin, Spoon
44. Wilco (the Album), Wilco
45. Live at the BBC, The Zombies
46. Dynablob 4: Swings and Roundabouts, John Wesley Harding
47. Mermaid Avenue, Billy Bragg and Wilco
48. I’m a Cuckoo, Belle & Sebastian
49. I Thought You Were Sleeping, Matt Pond PA
50. I Don’t Know Who I Am, The Minus 5
51. Step Into My Office, Baby, Belle & Sebastian
52. American Water, Silver Jews
53. The Traveling Wilburys Collection, The Traveling Wilburys
54. Hyacinths and Thistles, The 6ths
55. Bitter Honey, Eef Barzelay
56. Center of the Universe 7″, Built to Spill (not the same as No. 7)
57. Sad Man Happy Man, Mike Doughty
58. There Is No Enemy, Built to Spill
59. The BQE, Sufjan Stevens
60. Repercussion, The dB’s
61. Golden Opportunities Mixtape, Okkervil River
62. Live Sampler, Built to Spill
63. Past Masters, The Beatles
64. Black Sheep Boy Appendix, Okkervil River
65. Wreck Your Life … and Then Some: The Complete Bloodshot Recordings vinyl, Old 97′s
66. Grace Around the World DVD/CD set, Jeff Buckley
67. Phantom Limb 7″, The Shins
68. The Blues Are Still Blue, Belle & Sebastian
69. Funny Little Frog, Belle & Sebastian
70. Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, Rivers Cuomo
71. Chatterbox, Frankel
72. The Nature of Maps, Matt Pond PA
73. Hello Radio: The Songs of They Might Be Giants, various artists

Concerts seen in 2009
1. Rhett Miller
2. Jenny Lewis, Heartless Bastards
3. Wilco, Liam Finn
4. Rhett Miller, Salim Nourallah
5. Rhett Miller, The O’s, Salim Nourallah
6. Old 97′s, Rhett Miller, Murry Hammond
7. Old 97′s, Rhett Miller, Murry Hammond
8. Old 97′s, Rhett Miller, Murry Hammond
9. Old 97′s, Rhett Miller, Murry Hammond (yes, four times.)

Sporting events attended in 2009
1. Minnesota Timberwolves 94, Dallas Mavericks 96
2. Milwaukee Brewers 8, St. Louis Cardinals 4
3. Los Angeles Angels 5, Texas Rangers 2
4. New York Red Bulls 1, FC Dallas 2
5. Boston Red Sox 2, Texas Rangers 4
6. Carolina Panthers 7, Dallas Cowboys 21
7. Orlando Magic 110, Dallas Mavericks 105
8. Arizona Cardinals 21, St. Louis Rams 13

Places traveled in 2009
1. St. Louis, Urbana-Champaign
2. Minneapolis
3. St. Louis
4. Yosemite, San Francisco, Napa
5. Washington, D.C.
6. St. Louis

Places not traveled in 2009
1. Iceland

Fried things eaten at State Fair of Texas in 2009
1. butter
2. grilled cheese
3. peaches and cream
4. cheese curds (oof.)
5. honeybun

Courses served at Monarch in 2009
amuse bouche. fried green tomato, chow-chow sauce
1. butternut squash soup, maple powder, elderberry coulis
2. “gnocchi,” oyster mushrooms, radicchio, spinach
3. farro and kasha “risotto,” sorghum molasses, marscapone, crispy poached egg, beets
4. sunchoke and black truffle gratin, parmesan mornay, apple shavings
5. apple mille-feuille, cinnamon ice cream, caramel powder, cinnamon whipped cream, apple-cinnamon pudding

Prizes won in 2009
1. blue LG Xenon cellphone
2. round-trip ticket on Southwest

Prizes not won in 2009
1. chicken hat

Hat tip to Ashlie, who makes the prettiest diptychs and triptychs in the land.

New meme: Here’s a totally random way to make your new random band’s new random album cover. Post one! Go to “Wikipedia.” Hit “random” and the first article you get is the name of your band. Then go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. Then, go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days” and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

But don’t worry, I’m not going to list 25 things about myself.

There were a few well-equipped photogs there, one of whom was the Dallas Observer‘s Patrick Michels. He made a slideshow, which you should look at, but first check out the very best picture of all:

What a good-looking dude!

—

Also, there were about two dozen amateur photogs at the show — roughly two-thirds of the audience took a moment to whip out the iPhone or what-have-you and take a shot. Or ten. Or way more than ten. That always bugs me, but this time I had just read a pretty interesting article at Slate that touched on the phenomenon:

There is something vaguely embarrassing—even narcissistic—about our new era of mass photography. Because we’re always carrying cameras, we’re moved to document every moment of our lives—sometimes to the exclusion of actually experiencing that moment. Take a look at this picture of Barack and Michelle Obama at one of the inaugural balls. Everyone in the audience has a hand up with a cell phone pointed at the stage, but nobody is actually looking at what’s going on. The scene is puzzling: If the guy next to you is taking a picture—one that you can be reasonably sure will end up on a photo-sharing site somewhere—why do you need one, too? But we do this often these days. Win Butler, the lead singer of the band Arcade Fire, once told Terry Gross that he and his band mates have stopped going out into the crowd to perform because nobody pays attention to them—everyone’s got their cell phones and cameras in front of their faces.

Which of course, brings us back to The Kinks. But I was a little off before. I wanted to know why we look for ourselves in pictures, and the lyric is, obviously, “people take pictures of each other.” In both cases the reasoning is the same, sure — to prove that that moment happened, that you were there, that you existed. I just had the wrong verb last time.

All this existing we’re trying to verify, though, what’s it worth if we’re focused more on documenting our lives than actually living them? I mean, we’ve already ruined every future Arcade Fire show, and for a world where THIS counts as reality?

That’s right — a “tortoise bathing facility.” Seriously. It’s the perfect gift for those of you who’ve maybe forgotten to send something to your BFFs Bling and Scooter!