Perhaps that’s your desire.

Brilliant!

(As an aside, I can’t ignore the obvious phallic connotation—if not denotation—even though Christine insists no such consideration went into the piece.)

It turns out this is one of those exceedingly rare stories that just keeps getting better: Christine’s idea wasn’t Christine’s idea at all; I just dreamt she told me about her project. It’s mine!

I wonder how I’ll get the airlines to give me five thousand kilograms of lost luggage?

A few days ago, I heard some man promoting his book, Shootout: Surviving Fame and Misfortune. (A subsequent Internet search failed to find a single reference to such a volume, but I nevertheless believe that such a publication exists. Somewhere.)

Whatever.

Anyway, here’s the book’s essential idea: “You have to know what to kiss and what to bite.”

That’s at least half the information one needs to succeed in almost any endeavor.

Although the school administraitor has been labeled a voyeur, a prude, a pervert, and worse, she maintains she inspected the students’ bras (or lack of same) and lifted the young women’s skirts because of a “safety issue.” The inept woman claimed that she was just trying to ensure that her charges were wearing “appropriate” underwear for their own protection.

Oops!

It turns out that teenagers these days purportedly engage in an activity colloquially known as “freak dancing.” As the thankless Ms. Wilson explained, “If they [the teenage students] were going to ‘freak,’ at least their bottoms were going to be covered. ‘Freak’ dancing is not a fun thing to watch all night. I’ve had employees who have been ‘freaked’ upon.”

Poor Ms. Wilson. Although I’ve never been “freaked upon,” even I know better than to lift teenage girls’ skirts without an invitation. After all, if that rude tactic didn’t work in the 1970s, why should it work now?

“I can’t believe you wrote such crap!” she said. “Our conversation wasn’t like that at all. Are you trying to get me fired or something?”

She continued in that vein for quite some time.

I tried to explain that I’m not a slave to reality, but I don’t think she heard me. I feel sorry for Rachel; it must be horrible to be trapped within the narrow confines of what passes for the real world.

Hai!

After the brief lesson, she warned me to be very, very careful when using my modest vocabulary. She told me that when she was in Japan, she walked into a barber shop (her first mistake), sat down in the barber’s chair (her second mistake), and asked for a haircut (her third and fourth mistakes). It turns out that although she thought she asked for “a haircut,” she in fact requested “three orgasms” from the barber. The barber managed to keep a straight face, and asked her if she’d also like a shave.

A couple of months later, she discovered that she’d been continually mispronouncing a syllable in the Japanese equivalent of the parting, “See you later.” Instead, she’d been waving, smiling, and saying “Let’s make love.”

Those gaijin, so very inscrutable!

Although I didn’t find any new ways to bamboozle viewers with more photographic chicanery, I did discover a technique researchers use to identify fraudulent photographs: ears!

It turns out that each ear, like each snowflake or fingerprint, is unique. Experts analyze ear quadrants to spot impostors, such as those employed by heads of state. Even people who appear to look exactly alike have different ears.

Recently, Chinese historians have discovered that Chairman Mao always sent a double to sit through interminable Chinese opera performances. After examining all the photographic evidence, it seems that the son of the Shaoshan soil never attended the opera in his life!