Greetings! How fares the real world? Much the same as usual I'd imagine, but if anything particularly startling or magnificent happens, I'd love to hear about it.

I'll hold off on writing anything about the Wise Man's Fear just a bit longer. I finished it over the course of a weekend and a day, but I'm still in the reflection stage, which happily involves me re-reading the first book in the series.

Sushi was of course delectable this past Monday, as I'm sure it will be in a few days. Of particular note was that the chefs' familiarity with us has risen to prescient levels. This requires a bit of backstory: On the way over we remarked that we would begin the evening with Crazy Monkey and Lion King rolls galore. These require time to fry though, so in the mean time we'd satiate ourselves on succulent salmon sashimi. Having whet our respective whistles we'd then really turn up the heat and dive into several Hawaii rolls. Here's what happened the moment we entered the restaurant and took our sacred places at the bar:
-We were immediately greeted and offered salmon sashimi
-We were asked exactly how many Crazy Monkey and Lion King rolls we would like
-We were assured that a Hawaii roll for each of us was in the works
How extraordinary! Without uttering a single order, asking for a single thing, all our dreams ad been arrayed before us, glistening with deliciousness.

You know what else is fantastic about Sushi Nobu? They leave you the pitcher of water. It's such a simple gesture, but a rare and powerful one. I have no idea why most places refuse to do this; it's infuriating for waiter and customer alike when the latter is parched and the former tires of hauling liquids to and fro all night long.

While I'm complaining, I'd like to direct my wrath in the direction of TED talks. I don't like them. This wouldn't be a problem if multiple people hadn't told me about how great and interesting they are. I've even heard the words, "There should be a class in college where people listen to TED talks." Other people who were in the room for this particular comment agreed; yes that would be great they said, we would learn so much more. Now a few days after hearing this I needed to produce a large amount of pasta sauce (for obvious reasons), and in doing so I of course needed to mince an exceptionally odiferous amount of garlic. This takes a while, so I decided to enlighten myself with the knowledge that TED talks have to provide. I booted up the site, listened to perhaps 5 or so talks while I cooked and came to the following conclusion: the vast majority of them are useless. They speak to the heart and not the the mind. Some contain more glittering generalities than the average campaign speech. Even the supposedly "scientific" talks are meandering sermons devoid of fact and instead filled with flashy images, desperate entreaties and bold claims.

I watched the Princess Bride with sounds friends last night, and so I present to you now it's villain: a man among men, Prince Humperdinck!

Humperdinck is a man whose name, gaudy lavender cloak and pompous upturned chin almost, but don't quite, describe the depth of his pretentiousness. He purports to be the world's greatest hunter, has constructed a Zoo of Death to house beasts worthy of being his prey and has been known to begin sentences, "unless I am wrong, and I am never wrong." Unfortunately the movie version of Humperdinck is quite distinct from the Prince in the novel The Princess Bride, but in any case, he is surely a vile and evil man. He hunts because he enjoys the suffering of this prey, and seeks to ruin the life of the story's heroine, Buttercup. I shan't say more, for any word of mine you read is one you could have been reading in William Goldman's excellent fantasy/historical/mock-parody.