I have a new favourite word: zyzzyva. Not that I don't think the other two are cool... they are! But zyzzyva, it's the last word in the whole damn language. Here's what my dictionary has to say about it:

zyz-zy-va n. Any of various tropical American weevils of the genus Zyzzyva, often destructive to plants. [NLat. Zyzzyva, genus name, prob < Zyzza, former genus of leafhoppers.]

So there you have it. Zyzzyva.

So the clock in my room is seven minutes fast. This may not really seem that freakishly strange, until you think about it. I set the clock to the correct time long ago. I never changed the time on the clock. One day, it was spontaneously seven minutes fast. You see? It just doesn't add up.

Craig had two theories on this: the first is that my bedside table was abducted by aliens. This theory was terribly inadequate.

The other theory, however, was that the whole section of the room that the clock lives in got sucked to another dimension outside the normal time stream for seven minutes, and then got put back the instant it left. "Well, that's all well and good," says I, "except that my watch was on the table right next to the clock and it's showing the correct time." So we determined that it must have been just the clock that got sucked to this other dimension. That's right. Just the clock.

Whenever I update this site, I find myself wondering... Does anyone ever actually come here?

Invariably, the answer I receive is "No, of course no one comes here, you twit. What the hell were you thinking?" So, I suppose it's really an exercise in futility. But it's a fun sort of futility, and it lets me practice my l33t web site skillz.

You might wonder why it's called "the swizzlestick"... Because it certainly doesn't look like a swizzlestick. I'm afraid the only excuse I have is that I think it's a really neat word. It might be my favourite word, but I'm not sure. It's either swizzlestick or phlegm. I can't decide.

And, yes, that's actually my handwriting on the title.