Best Article Title Ever

"Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts" - today's NY Times. Also in the Times: a fruit that temporarily rewires your tastebuds.

Today someone gave me a 5-cent euro piece instead of 1p, which is three times as much! Wow!

Ciro's Birthday Proper

The first time I met Ciro, I already knew a lot about him, substantial parts of it untrue - which I knew, only I wasn't sure which parts. This was about six years ago. I'd been hearing about Ciro for maybe the six months previous. He was normally the bad guy of these stories, but I thought he sounded pretty great anyway. To meet him, I had to lay down a series of ultimatums.

Patrick, of course, was the first (and much later, the last) obstacle, because for the first year I knew him, he refused to introduce me to any of his friends, out of a general fear that we'd all like each other more than we liked him and stop hanging out with him. This turned out to be true - again much later, and as a consequence of his later behavior rather than our simple meeting - but at the time I thought it was absurd and threatened to take matters into my own hands, particularly because I had the sense he was telling other people I was his girlfriend when I wasn't (he was) and wanted to pop that bubble as soon as possible. (Something that becomes clear throughout this story is that Patrick lies a lot. Sorry about that. I'm not trying to bury a hatchet, or anything; I'd much rather spend the time talking about how great Ciro is. Unfortunately, it's integral to the chain of events.)

My threat lead to a trip to the cinema with me, Val, Patrick, and Patrick's old friends Tom and Chad. (The movie, I believe, was Harry Potter.) Patrick made no efforts to foster conversation between us, and tried to sit himself, Val, and me in a different row from Tom and Chad. However, Tom leapt into the breach as a dazzling conversationalist, and I insisted on sitting with the two of them. Chad I didn't like so much.

Patrick sensed that change was in the wind, and our conversations for the next month were chiefly about his great adventures with The Richardson Boys. (My name, not his.) A name kept coming up - someone who was not a friend, someone who was the great betrayer. Ciro.

Thing is, it always sounded to me in these stories like Ciro was being reasonable. He seemed to be making the same decisions I would want someone to make. Also, his name was Ciro, and my name was Romie, and everyone else was named things like Ben and Chris. The paralells were obvious.

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