#3 - Biscuits and Gravy

About 300 years ago, in Carter's Grove, VA, Elizabeth Carter was setting the table for dinner when a freak summer storm knocked out the kerosine lamps and caused her to spill a pitcher of sausage gravy all over a tin of fresh baked biscuits. But her husband Robert was a pragmatic, sensible man, and refused to throw out two of his favorite food groups (they are part of the Plantation Food Pentagon, along with Tobacco, Honey Baked Ham, and Malibu Coconut-Flavored Rum). And so the great southern comfort food was born, bringing good cheer and heart disease to millions.

If you happen on occasion to be having breakfast in the company of Richard, mention how much you love biscuits and gravy, or how you discovered them late in life and regret missing out on them your entire childhood. Richard will instantly be able to relate to you, and may follow your story with his own tale of discovering his lost heritage during a trip to the Tidewater area.

#2 - The phrase "the cat is out of the bag"

I love secrets. I love keeping them. I love finding them out. But one thing I love more than secrets is dramatically revealing them when the time is right. Nothing is more awesome than putting on a big show and surprising everyone with a fantastic revelation. When Tony Stark put on a press conference after blowing up his factory in LA, nobody expected anything more than the standard industry/government cover-up story. But Tony walked up on that stage with a huge burlap sack, opened it up in front of the cameras, and a Tabby in a red and gold armored exoskeleton flew out and shot Obadiah Stone square in the dome with a Hellfire missile. Actually that probably would have been slightly less awesome that what really happened, because feline's normally don't speak enough English to say "I AM IRONMAN" the way Robert Downey Jr does. But I digress. If I ever move into a large house with a strict landlord, I will probably let them know that I'm breaking their rules about pets by bringing in a cat in a grocery bag and handing it to them along with the milk and cereal.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like the imagery of cats in bags more than the actual phrase. It's a great figure of speech, and I use it as often as possible. But there is something intrinsically hilarious about a house cat in a pillow case, as I discovered as a child before our cat Lucy started running out of the room every time I walked in.

#1 - Easy-to-use websites

So about two minutes ago I had the brilliant revelation to make a blog based on the likes and dislikes of a very exclusive demographic I belong to. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess. Plus I haven't logged into Xanga in about three years, and I've probably forgotten my password the same way I forgot everything I learned in that Fluid Dynamics course I was taking back then.

But enough chit-chat and reminiscing about college. It took literally 30 seconds to create this blog using my gmail account. That's the way the interweb is supposed to be. My ideas should be able to go from my head to the entire world in 8.2 seconds flat using ultra-fast fiber-optic connections. Seriously. I'm pretty sure Al Gore said something to that effect when he invented it back in 1992. I'm with you, Al. And apparently so is blogspot.