statistics of strangeness

The following pie chart appeared in a recent statistical report and reflects what words have been searched for to find this page.

Don't ask me, mang.

laptop + stray skin cells = bioelectronic device

Two orders of business.

1.
On a steel bench with leg crossed in the downtown campus, a man and woman exited their car and made their way to the sidewalk. As the man stepped up on the curb he turned to me and, keeping his stride, projected a gruff, arguably confrontational, question. "What's tuition a quarter at 'Mosey' these days?" Unsure of the best way to condense the explanation that I was not of exceptional privilege, but planning to be haunted by banks for decades after graduation, I said, "Quite a bit," in the most neutral tone I could produce. He stared after me, but was swiveled away by the woman taking his arm. A sum didn't seem like what he was after, though maybe I'm cynical. His question and kinesics were posed in a way that he just wanted me to 'think about that.' In hindsight, I could have replied, "Worth every penny!" Someone could have taken a snapshot of my teeth and put it on one of those pamphlets recruiters bring to high schools. Just superimpose a girl sitting next to me, and print it.

2.
One thing 'Mosey' has instilled is the experimenter's itch. I had a rash of it while using Microsoft's Hotmail web client. I asked myself if advertisements remained constant against various ages of users. Being 24, it seemed natural they would choose to sell screen space for my age group to Internet dating sites. In the 'Personal' subcatagory of my account's configuration, I changed the year of my birth to 1940. Returning to the 'Home' screen I was greeted by health and fitness guru, Dr. Phil... Interesting. At this point I was sure I could create a study caliber for a page on the main site. I needed more data. This time, I changed the year of my birth to 1990. Legos, Pokemon, I thought. "You need a parent's permission to continue." I had locked myself out of my account. The client was unfazed by frantic back-button clicking. Using a friend's (who now, as far as Microsoft's .NET is concerned, was at one time my legal guardian) account and my own debit card, I restored my account and corrected my birth year to 1978. I was then again greeted by Dr. Phil. The hypothesis was incorrect. Learned something about giving false information over the Internet, though.