Today is NAMETAG DAY. So greet your friendly fast food server, I guess...

excerpt: Jenny Do & Jenny Don't
In a little house on a little hill in a little subdivision lived a little girl named Jenny Do.


Well, it wasn't really a hill-- just a slight upward slant of the road that made the house look like it was a little higher up than everyone else's. And the little girl's name wasn't exactly 'Jenny Do', either. It was just Jenny, but she thought of herself as Jenny Do because her mother was always telling her things like, "Jenny, do your homework," and "Jenny, do your own bed for a change," and "Jenny, do put your toys away, there's a good girl."


Jenny Do was a good girl, most of the time. But every now and then, there would be days when she would much rather play than do the boring chores her mother asked her to do. So she'd invented the clever trick of pretending not to hear sometimes when her mother was calling her. Instead, she would hum very loudly to herself, or turn the TV volume up very high, or start a very serious conversation with one of her favorite dolls.


On just one such day, as Jenny Do was brushing her teeth in the bathroom, her mother called up to her, "Jenny, do clean off the mirror after you're done brushing!"


Now, what Jenny really wanted to do on that sunny Saturday was to watch some cartoons, spend some of her saved-up allowance at the candy store across the street, and visit Mrs. Magsino, who kept all sorts of small and interesting animals in her front yard just down the block. She certainly didn't want to spend precious minutes cleaning off any silly old mirror.


So she twisted the faucet tap all the way to the right, so that the water would run very strongly, quickly, and noisily; and she brushed her teeth extra-carefully, counting brush strokes out loud to further drown out her mother's voice.


"Hun, hoo, hree," Jenny Do chanted, through a mouthful of toothpaste foam. She kept right on brushing and counting until she finally heard the front door open and then close again.


As soon as she heard her mother's car pull out of the driveway, Jenny Do immediately spat out the foam, rinsed out her mouth, and reached for the comb next to the sink in order to run it through her shower-wet hair.


But when she turned to see herself in the big bathroom mirror, to her great surprise, the face that she found looking back at her was not her own face!


The girl in the mirror did look a lot like Jenny Do, but her skin was all grimy and greasy, as if she never bothered to wash it. Her teeth were all brownish and broken, as if she never bothered to brush them. And unlike Jenny's, her hair was dry, and all snarled and snaky, as if she'd never picked up a comb in her life.


"I'm Jenny Don't," the grimy, greasy, broken-toothed, snaky-haired girl announced, "and I never, ever do what I'm told!" And to Jenny Do's further surprise, the girl jumped right out of the mirror and ran out of the bathroom.

TRIVIA QUIZ
What is a tanka?


answer to Tuesday's question
Obviously, the proper way to eat with chopsticks is to hold one stick between your thumb and index finger, resting the other stick on your middle finger, and using both sticks in coordination to manipulate food in a scooping or pinching motion. However, there are myriad potential pitfalls associated with chopstick eating, including mayoibashi ('hovering' the chopsticks over several dishes while trying to come to a decision) and neburibashi (the unforgiveable act of licking the ends of the chopsticks). And did you know that, when taking food from serving dishes or other people's plates, you're supposed to turn the chopsticks around in order to use the fatter ends that don't go in your mouth? Finally, sticking the chopsticks into food with the ends upright is supposed to bring the worst of luck-- no wonder Ralph keeps stopping me!


Chop-chop champs: Jason, Alex, and Jay. A bonus point to Katrina for her environmentally-conscious response, and unhygienic shared Smartypants for Dean and Ariel.