In the town of Boulder City, Nevada there is a man named Filiberto who told me parts of the saddest story I've never heard.

He was working at the A&W on I-93. I was there with my step-mother and her nephew who was visiting from Switzerland and who had never had root beer in his life. I mentioned this latter curiosity to the man behind the counter because he (the man) had a friendly and thoughtful air to him, and I enjoy making conversation with strangers when I know there is a built-in and clearly defined end to our interaction. My step-mother elaborated on the reason (Switzerland apparently having neither root beer nor the concept of putting ice cream in sodas), and the man said something about Switzerland having provinces that related to its neighboring countries, and asked in which the person in question lived.

"Germany."

To which the man took a single beat before replying in German.

Impressed, my step-mother asked him if he had been to Switzerland, to which the man said No, he hadn't, but that he had lived in England for a while, and gotten a degree in languages in college. He spoke with a quiet, intelligent, matter-of-fact voice that was completely without conceit, but not without that certain tinge of resignation-turned-acceptance that can only come from many years of making due with a reality that seems like it should belong to someone other than yourself, but from which you can't seem to escape.

Realizing, perhaps, that this last sentence tasted out of place as it was coming out, he then glanced back toward the kitchen while saying even more quietly,

"But that was before my life—[beat]—fell apart."

I immediately wanted to read an entire book about him. We sat down and ate, and I learned his name from the receipt.

When we got up to leave, my step-mother asked something unmemorable about his time in Europe, which prompted another conversation of equal parts over-shares and dead-panned sadness. He exhaled the entire time he said, as if coming to terms with it for the first time, that he should never have left. He said that he was studying theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He said that he was the first person in his family to go to college, and that his father cheered louder than he had ever heard him on graduation day, but that he would probably come back from the grave to kick his son's ass all over the restaurant for working here at age 61. And that when you get to be the age that he is now, "the Grim Reaper takes on a very concrete shape; becomes a very real presence."

I shook his hand before walking away, wanting only to live in a universe with fewer sad stories and more people able to tell them well.

Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.... Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

— Christopher Hitchens, "The New Commandments"

It's 75° and sunny right now. Seriously?

Update:

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Huh. It's been a minute since I used that, so I forgot that it doesn't append the text I sent along with the image. Also, I couldn't tell from my phone, but the "Fried" part of the "Fried Twinkie" and "Fried Oreo" is totally impossible to read from the photo. Awesome job all around, Ryan.

I used to confuse "further" and "farther," and, apparently, I did it quite often. In one of my stories, I'd confused them yet again, and in the margins, he'd written, simply, "I hate you."

--Sue Dickman (from McSweeney's Memories of David Foster Wallace)

I've been a bit of a mess, and through a series of events this morning have ended up glued to that McSweeney's page for hours, reading and crying to myself.

In the middle of this confusing emotional state, that quote made me laugh out loud, and heartily, and I wanted to have somewhere to put it.

I've been doing kind of a ridiculous amount of flying this past year. I'm learning the ins and outs of all sorts of airports; I've got access to all manner of special lobbies; I know which airline uses which safety video on which aircraft type (and which regions switch up snack offerings); I've seen the radical inconsistencies of many various TSA checkpoints and immigration officers....

But I'd never flown without a boarding pass until this morning.

Most of our flying is done on United (and partners US Air and Air Canada), then Southwest. This morning was American, and when I was checking in last night, the site offered me the option of sending my boarding pass to my phone.

I'm flying alone (meeting Zach in Miami—he's coming from Calgary) and arriving earlier than is strictly necessary, so I was stoked to experiment. I considered printing a physical copy for a backup, but it took about two seconds to decide that was no fun.

So I gave them my phone's text/email address (number@messaging.sprintpcs.com), pressed go and waited. I got a text with a secure url to visit and a sentence of instructions that had been truncated for length. I have no idea where it was going, and part two never followed.

The website (on the computer while checking in) offered no links or instructions about this send to phone option, so I shrugged and assumed I'd figure it out. I was mentally preparing all sorts of arguments with the people invariably unfamiliar with the process.

I also figured I'd go all in and tell them I'd lost my ID while I was at it, but at the last minute decided it was more prudent to only push my luck with one new experiment at a time (read: chickened out).

Turns out it was super painless.

The first TSA person guarding the escalator to security (I know), was not really sure what to make of it, but waved me on with a shrug. She wasn't checking anyone's IDs, just verifying a boarding pass, so I wasn't expecting too much fight from her.

The agent checking IDs at security and scribbling on the boarding

If you have the opportunity to fly Spirit Air, I suggest you take a pass.

Seriously?

"What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it's making us small."

I have a plan for posting a little more, and maybe rejoining the human race somewhat. We'll see how that goes.

With an additional 41 minutes of awesome, apparently.

Don't mind if I do....