I've been acting like a douchey college guy lately. For one thing, I like Bob Marley now.

I meet a lot of people around here who are always smiling and never laughing. Those guys make me nervous. It's not a grin, or a smirk, or a leer. It isn't smug, or sheepish, or wry, or conspiratorial. It isn't anything. It's like a mask, like their faces are just shaped like that. I imagine them standing over a corpse, holding a smoking pistol, smiling like that.

So that's over the top. They're mostly just quiet math kids, harmless and humorless. But still, it's unnerving. When I say something funny, you laugh, dammit.

I got asked on a date this week, which was a first for me, as far as I can remember. It was fascinating to see the struggle from the outside. Not that she had a particularly hard time, but she phrased it very carefully, so as not to be misunderstood: "...was wondering if you would like to go with me to the such and such, as-my-date."

Of course, I would love to accompany you to the such and such on Friday at 7 pm as-your-date. I have never been conscious of being someone's date. She bought the tickets, she's going to pick me up and everything; I don't have to think about it at all until it happens. It's fantastic. More girls should ask me out.

I've got a couple date ideas now, but I haven't had opportunity to try them out. Submitted for your approval:

1. I liked the idea of a girl making up her story, so I think I want to build a date around that. We ask each other all those boring first-date questions, but we make up the answers. I think I could learn more about a girl from her fantasies than her reality. But it's a high-stakes game; there's the possibility that even her fantasies are boring, and then what can you do? Answer:

2. Stealth Kite. Buy a kite from the store, tear off the sail, and replace it with cellophane. Then you use some kind of thick, dark yarn instead of the line it comes with; the idea being that when you fly it, it looks like the string just goes up into the sky, not connected to anything. I'm not sure how hard it would be to make; maybe I should try it on my own first.

Alternately, you could buy those little thin glow sticks and tape them to the skeleton of the kite, and fly it at night. I wonder if they'd be bright enough.