Maybe someday your turtles can resurrect my Bob, Dot, and Enzo from my attic to help save the universe in some sort of madcap odyssey. The first scene might have to be the Leo and Don sweeping the squirrel turds off the moving boxes, unfortunately.

I'm certain that my "We're turtles when it's not completely impossible because of stupid things like sleep, teachers, or discovering some porn in your friend's dad's office" group overlapped with yours at some point, and I was almost always Mike.

I still have vivid, heart-breaking memories of the moment I realized the turtles were not real and I'd therefore never get to meet (or be) them. It was during like the second song of the "Coming Our Of Their Shells" tour. I think I went with you? Maybe it was Randy. Maybe I somehow just managed to sneak out of the trailer park alone and slip by the Montagne Center's TSA-like iron defense forces.

At least once a week, I get April's theme from the cartoons stuck in my head. I still had a few of my VHS up until the last garage sale I had when I finally decided to purge them all.

I also recall turning to you for consolation when I found out, shortly after I'd moved away, my mom had sold my suitcase o' turtles that had been in the attic. Lesson learned: Kids, when you go away to college, you might trust the 'rents to keep your baby blanket and first teddy bear in mothballs or acetate, but TAKE THE ACTION FIGURES WITH YOU.

Josh's handwriting looks an awful lot like yours.

Most things in this category are now case-by-case for me, based on a sort of Pareto/80-20 rule of opposable digits. If you're still trying to get the picture right and Marty's already being chased out of the mall parking lot by the Libyans, just put the remote down and watch.

Holy Christ, I feel your pain. I've been trying to get ID to help, but they keep sending me boilerplate asking me if I have the plugin enabled.

IP address wildcards, CIDR notation... either of these would be fine.

WTF?

At the risk of overusing the phrase "at the risk of": That's one of the nicest things anybody has said to me in a long time.

That wouldn't be very Christopherlike.

Christopher Hitchens was (and will forever be), beyond a great hero of mine, a very convenient crutch in a world of intelligent, well-meaning, and otherwise pleasant cow-orkers who, upon learning of my atheism, seek to "debate" with me over how untenable such a worldview is. After it becomes apparent that neither side is more open to re-evaluating a truth than the other, I often drop a copy of a Hitch book, essay, or article on their desk (or in their inbox) with a quick note along the lines of "Hey, it was fun, but this should explain why I'm really not interested in continuing this conversation." Most of the time, they will send me a rebuttal such as "I see. I understand how someone such as yourself would be attracted to such a poorly-reasoned argument as Hitchens's, but the evidence clearly indicates that he bases his conclusions more on emotion than fact."

I get a good chuckle at that, refrain from taking the bait, and go on caring a lot less about who approves of my "worldview" than these fine folks do. Hitch just makes it very easy to find an eloquent way to end a discussion, which is much different than trying to win one. I know I didn't change the other guy's mind, and I most likely didn't even make him think twice about his position, but I do feel better having not fallen into the trap of getting upset over it beyond my capacity to hold my own intellectual ground.

And most of them do exactly the same thing for themselves with the writings of William Lane Craig. At the risk of sounding snotty (and feel free to chastise me if I indeed do): (A) Which of those two men is more entertaining to read or listen to? And (B) which name is better known?

My favorite quip so far, from Chuck Klosterman: "If the Red Hot Chili Peppers acoustically covered the 12 worst Primus songs for Starbucks, it would still be (slightly) better than this."

Yep... Especially odd in my dad's case, since he was always VERY fond of the sham/real gag.