James and I have three rooms in this apartment and two of us. So we are interviewing for a third. For those of you who have heard of Craig's List (www.craigslist.org), it is an exceptionally useful tool for finding nearly anything in any major city. It is a website built around community. So we posted a listing on it seeking a third roommate and got 50 responses in the space of three days.

Before the advent of reality tv, it might have been a far rarer concept to interview someone in the hopes of thoroughly plumbing their personality for all its little cracks and blockages in order to ascertain whether after 5 months you will still be comfortable sharing space with them. Or rather, to do so as a roommate and not a landlord. James and I -- two totally compatible roommates, something we're both terribly happy about -- are hoping to find a third totally compatible roommate, someone who will not skulk about but will want to hang out, someone relatively clean without being anal-retentive, someone who shares our general tastes and worldviews but can bring new interests and concepts into our lives, and obviously someone reliable -- in short, it is most definitely like interviewing someone to be a new friend. Out of these 50 responses, we had 10 "definitely interview thems," 5 bench warmers, about 30 people who just didn't give us enough information to go on, and about 5 definite no's.

If you read this and you can thing of a real whizbanger of a question to peel away a layer of someone's mind (in the next two days -- interviews begin at 5pm pacific time Wed-Thur), do email me! Otherwise, James and I -- two fairly good judges of character in combination -- will have to go on instinct, employment status, and luck.

On a different note: our friend Noah bought a crossword puzzle book that has perhaps some of the CHEAPEST answers to clues ever. For example, a 7 letter word for "irritable" beginning with PE and ending with ISH was not PEEVISH, but PETTISH. Wha?? On a different note, however, I learned a (supposed) synonym for "preen" -- "prink." (Wha??? again.) Of course, the clue was "prink," which meant I had to solve it by getting every other clue in relation to it, double-checking the answers in the back of the book to be sure, and scratching (prinking?) my head in confusion. According to another source, John, another synonym for "preen" is "fard," as in, "Oh, before my date I spent an hour farding in my room." (Ha!!)

It all makes you notice that it is a rather vainglorious and silly thing, the little rituals and ministrations that people partake in just to look nice for other people, and so I suppose the language must reflect that. Huzzah to you, communicators of yore! You've made us look no less stupid and feel no less stupid about trying to look less stupid, but you sure provided fodder to fend off the ubiquitous doldrums of bored Crossword-makers worldwide.