Sure, you like coffee. You buy gourmet beans from the specialty coffee store. You brew your own special blend to the rave reviews of friends and neighbors. You use a coffee-scented perfume or cologne. You snack on coffee beans and take vacations to Columbia just to inspect the trees. But you don’t really love coffee until you have it actually hanging on your walls.

If your walls are suspiciously devoid of any hangable coffee, fret no more! Just visit JustCoffeeArt.com and check out the amazing things these two painters can do with a pot of coffee, an empty canvas and a paintbrush! Yes, they actually use thick coffee as a sort of watercolor paint and they’re able to get different shades using stronger and weaker brews.

Their website tells the story of how Angel Sarkela-Saur and Andy Saur were thinking of a unique project for a coffee shop art show and after some experimenting came up with the idea of actually using coffee as a sort of watercolor. The paintings even smell like coffee when they’re done. There’s tons of great things on their site including art for sale, prints you can buy and lots of video clips of news stories and time-lapse videos of how they create their masterpieces. You’ll need to have Flash installed but it’s worth it.

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Not only am I in a soul-draining dead-end job, but I’m also fat and fairly unattractive. I’d draw you a picture, but I have no artistic talent, either.

This year I decided to do something about it. I made the same New Year’s Resolution I make and keep every year: I resolve to keep next year’s resolution. I’ve never failed, so I feel pretty confident that I can make the run again. However, I also made another New Year’s resolution, which is a little more useful. I resolved to lose weight. I started at about 260 and I’m down to around 252ish in four weeks. Not too bad, huh?

My ultimate goal is to weigh 180 pounds by the end of 2006. That’s “80 pounds in 52 weeks” and that sounds like another unwatchable Ashton Kutcher movie, though I would argue that any movie with Ashton Kutcher is, by definition, unwatchable.

To lose 80 pounds in 52 weeks I need to drop about a pound and a half a week and so far I’m doing pretty well. My problem, as I see it, is that I’m too damn smart for this weight loss thing. I’ve always been a pretty cerebral guy and not at all physically inclined. Even as a child I was the last kid to be picked for any team like baseball or soccer. I mean, the VERY last kid.

“We’ll take the blind kid.”

“What about Tom?”

“You can have him. We’ll take the kid in the wheelchair.”

“We don’t want Tom. We’ll take Jimmy.”

“Jimmy died in a car accident three years ago.”

“Yeah, we’ll take him.”

But now I’m really tired of looking like Lumpy from Leave It To Beaver. I’m tired of getting on ferris wheels and having them just rock back and forth like a pendulum. And I’m tired of being told I’m “as sexy as Jabba The Hutt with none of the personal appeal” (thanks, Mom!)

To really lose weight I’ll need to combine exercise with proper eating. First I need to get myself excited about exercising. The trick, I realize, is to see exercising and losing weight as a cerebral activity. The mind and body have to work together. You see, it’s the body that carries the brain around, much like a snazzy car carries around a pimp.

You aren’t going to be impressed by MacDaddy Snarly McNoodle if he’s scooting around town in a 1985 Yugo, but you’ll be impressed to the hilt if his ride is a decked out, jacked up, chromed-all-over new Cadillac Escalade. Right now my brain is riding in the Yugo. My brain wants to drive the Cadillac.

And proper eating is just as important. If you’re driving an Escalade then you sure as heck don’t want to be putting that “regular” gas into it. If you want that baby to hum you’re going to have to put in the Premium Ultra High Octane stuff. The same is true when you’re fueling your body. We all know Twinkies and deep-fried sticks of butter are low grade gas. Fortunately I’ve been eating a lot of high quality fuel in the form of fruits and vegetables lately. And as a result of this dietary change there have been some pretty funky smells coming out of my exhaust pipe, if you know what I mean. My wife certainly does.

I’ll keep you updated on my progress here because, of course, there is nothing more interesting than reading about someone else losing weight. For now, though, I need to continue putting better fuel in this car of mine and thinking gassy thoughts…

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One of the hundred million things new parents have to do is pick out a name for the baby, preferably before the child reaches his or her 18th birthday, if for no other reason than it is very difficult to register to vote when you are only known as “Baby Smith”.

Picking a name is a little trickier and more important than you first think. You want your child to be successful and confident in the world. You want your child to take charge of life and be able to face others and make good first impressions. It is for this reason that very few children are named “Roscoe” anymore.

Now, before I start getting email and nasty comments from hundreds of people named Roscoe (as if someone named Roscoe could use a computer!) I want to assure you that I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the name Roscoe if you never want your child to be anymore than a truck mechanic or run a roadside barbecue pit in Kentucky. And with a name like that you can easily save money on clothing because you know there are plenty of bowling shirts and overalls at your local Goodwill that already have the name “Roscoe” stitched right on them. I mean, are there any astronauts named Roscoe? How many nobel prize winners have been named Roscoe? I’m too lazy to actually check this, but I’m pretty sure the number is right around zero, give or take a few.

So how do you go about picking a baby name?

The big trend in naming babies these days is picking a common name and then giving it some sort of “alternative” spelling which breaks most of the common sense rules of the English language. For example, one of the trendiest new boys name is “Dylan” but that’s a very traditional spelling. Modern parents would likely use one of these alternatives:

• Dillon
• Dillan
• Dylin
• Dillllllen
• Dil8an (the 8 is silent)
• Roscoe

If you really want to be on the cutting edge of baby-naming (and, really, who doesn’t?) then you’ll make up some sort of name using the parts of various other popular names. For example, the top ten very popular girl names right now are: Emily, Emma, Hannah, Madison, Olivia, Grace, Elizabeth, Abigail, Samantha and Alexis. A truly progressive parent would come up with one of these variations:

• Emmadison
• Grolivia
• Abixis
• Elizabigailexisamanthannah
• Samadison
• Roscoe

If you’re still having a hard time picking out your baby’s name, you’re not alone. There are, however, a lot of different ways to go about it.

Lots of people turn to books to suggest names for their babies and it’s pretty evident who these parents are when we have little Zeus and Jeronin digging with shovels in the sandbox while Lucritia and Saranese are playing jacks on the sidewalk.

If books aren’t your thing then maybe you should turn on the television for a few hours and simply write down every name you hear and think if any of those sound good to you or not. Being selective is the key here. No matter how pretty your daughter is she probably won’t be named prom queen if she’s named “Larry King” or “Spongebob”.

Lastly, you could always look back into your own family history and name your baby after a particularly important relative. If you don’t have any particularly important relatives, then aim to name your child after a particularly old and rich relative. Hey, it never hurts.

Now that you’ve finally picked out a baby name you can relax, right? Wrong! Far from it!

This is your first chance of many to screw with people’s minds. You’re going to be a parent soon and your mind-screwing ability is going to have to be pretty top-notch. Do you think it’s going to be easy to get a three-year old to go to bed on time every night? Heck, no! You’re going to have to tell all sorts of fantastic stories about monsters coming to get him or killer robots enslaving the world if he doesn’t get to bed at a decent hour.

Really, one can argue that most of child-raising is based on the idea of tricking the little buggers into doing what you want them to do. So get used to pulling this sort of stunt. You’re going to be a parent. It’s your duty now.

You see, the last thing you want to do is pick out these great baby names and then tell you friends and family because they’ll immediately make comments like “Oh, are you sure about that?” and “Oh… that’s…. interesting…” and “Oh, dear God!!” And then you’ll be forced to listen to hours and hours of stories about why the name you like for your baby is all wrong and why you should really name the baby “Dillynn”.

No, what you need to do is now spend some time picking out the worse possible names you can possible think of and beginning telling people that those names are what you’re going to give your child. For example, let’s say you found the perfect baby name. You should keep the name to yourself and tell everyone you know that you’re going to name him “Englebert Horatio” with a straight face. You’ll earn extra credibility if you buy a few bibs with “Englebert” stitched on them. Tell your parents how you’re planning on calling him “Eggy” when he’s young.

This way when your baby is born you can surprise your friends and relatives with a the real name and make them all sigh a huge, collective sigh of relief (except for aunt Jane who alread purchased a silver baby rattle with the initials “EH” engraved on it).

This will especially please the person you named your new baby after - your old rich uncle Roscoe.

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