Two Things

Just a few moments ago, from the time that I write this, I was struggling to think what it would be about.  Once again the made-up deadline for the blog no one reads was fast approaching.  I racked my brain to think of a topic.  In honor of Saturday Night Live's season premiere tomorrow I considered doing "Three Things That Happen at Night," or "Three Things That are Made of Paper" for National Comic Book Day yesterday.  For a while the front runner was "Three Things That I Have Done in My Life That Contribute Absolutely Nothing to Humanity," but none of these seemed right.  I realized that all of them had something in common; they were all lists of three things.  I have written many lists of three things between my time at my college newspaper and this blog, but even my biggest fans (yes, even you Miranda, and no one else) may not realize that early in my career I wrote a list of four things.  It was a list of the greatest bromances of all time.  It may have been a regrettable topic, but I long for that experimental spirit that I had in my youth; the kind of creativity that leads to four things instead of three.  Of course, I couldn't just replicate my innovative "four things" structure.  Then it hit me: two things.  I wrote down many of the things around me on scraps of paper and selected two; not three, or even four, but two, of them at random out of a hat, and have compiled a list of those two things here.

Fortunately, one of the things was not Taiwan

• Poker Kit

I got this as a gift from my parents when I was in high school, probably for Christmas.  They gave it to me because I went through a phase when I was really into poker; they didn't randomly encourage me to gamble, which I never did anyway.  I just don't have the confidence for gambling.  Even now, after years of practice, and with the ability to do this:

It's even more impressive if you know that thin, pale fingers and Shakira are only a hindrance.

I still wouldn't put up any amount of real money.  I've played a lot of games with the chips in the kit and given them imaginary values, but I would never play if at the end of the game I would be expected to cash them in.  The kit came with two decks of cards but I don't remember what happened to the other one.  It also came with dice but I don't know what those are for.  Did I mention that I don't gamble?

• Things That Hang From Graduation Cap

I have graduated from high school and college.  Now I am writing a blog post about two things that is going to turn the entire Internet on its freaking head!  The system works!  My research shows that the things that hang from graduation caps are called tassels.  I definitely would have known that if someone said it or something but it slipped my mind and I didn't feel like looking it up before I wrote it down.  It was a very informal process, I didn't know you were going to get so judgey.  Yeesh.  Its not like I majored in remembering things that won't matter after graduation.  I got tired of that during high school.  After both graduations I didn't know what to do with the tassels so I hung them from my ceiling fan.  I had a whole thing planned about how I forgot to bring my tassel to my college graduation and my brother had to go get it but I'm not even going to bother now.  Anyway, the tassels count as one thing so that's two things.  Also, I forgive you.