I’m in Romania, but I still made a weekly sexy. It’s about 5% about piñatas. Most of the things I write are, if you really look at them closely. Here’s a picture of grizzly bears.

I’ve never gambled before, unless you consider the claw machines at Kroger’s gambling. I suppose it is gambling in a very juvenile way. I’m challenging my own ability at subtly directing the feeble iron claw above some stuffed tiger or a St. Lewis Rams ball cap then testing my opinions that said tiger/hat has low enough mass and high enough friction for me to carry the object over the hole and drop it within hand’s reach, then give it to whoever I feel like impressing most at the time. Maybe it isn’t gambling.

I went to a place yesterday called the Zanvoort circus. It was simultaneously excited and disappointing as it had a large casino for adults upstairs and a massive arcade downstairs, yet it failed to have clowns, lions, women with beards, people with extra limbs, acrobats, fire, etc…Obviously, I went downstairs. Gambling seems to be a lot less interesting than kids’ arcade games. If I ran a casino in any part of the world, I would completely do away with backgammon and invest in massive Dance Dance Revolution machines and life action Mortal Kombat rings that actually required some skill and imagination to win.

The arcade was probably one of the better arcades I’ve seen in recent history, having most of the classics such as games like Time Crisis and that basketball game that kids always stole balls from, but also having such technological breakthroughs as this game where you were standing on a large LCD screen and you had to jump on aliens as they came towards you on the screen. It looked awesome, but probably cost far too many tokens for me to actually go out of my way to play. One game specifically, called Win a Bear, fascinated me, being that the prize seemed exclusive. Essentially, it was a giant slot machine, but the handle was a giant bear’s paw, and the goal was to get three buckets of honey, or three bear’s heads in a row. If, in which case, you do succeed, you get a bear. That’s the only description granted.

What could this mean? Obviously I would assume that you get a stuffed bear like the standard teddy bear type, but the game was tucked off into a corner, like the game wasn’t meant to be seen. Either it was a super unpopular game that isn’t worth playing, or the prize is too awesome and such a rarity that the owners of the arcade wanted to keep it hidden because of limited supply. I think this is not unlike the Tom Hank’s film Big, when he does something with some game and he suddenly becomes an adult. I actually don’t know how the plot goes at all, maybe I’m thinking of an Are You Afraid of the Dark episode instead.

If the bear is indeed stuffed, what is in it? Is it cotton filling? What if it’s candy, like it was actually a bear themed piñata? Kids love candy, but kids also get diabetes fairly easy, so this could also answer the reason for what the arcade’s incentives were for shoving such an important game into the corner of the room. What if the bear isn’t stuffed at all? Maybe you actually win a baby black bear that you can raise from its infancy into domestication. This is really how casinos should be set up. Instead of currency, the prizes should actually be things like Rolex watches, or new wheels for your monster truck, or maybe a private air-cropping plane with fertilizer included. This would make bachelor party weekend so much more interesting. Instead of men coming home to their wives saying that they lost 2,000 dollars gambling, they would come home with a year’s supply of Lavender-Vanilla scented decorative candles. Wives love that kind of thing; at least more than debt.

I eat with a fork and knife like a Neanderthal. I always have. When I was a kid, I remember seeing a picture of Mary-Kate Olson eating a steak with a delicateness that I knew I would never be able to achieve, so I just continued to hold my silverware, like I was constantly anxious about a possible escaped convict behind me. I hold the fork in an overhand stabbing position, and I hold the knife in an underhand stabbing position.

Lately, as a 22 year old, I decided that I needed to get my life together and learn how to eat food like a gentleman. A few weeks ago, I was eating my breakfast in an airport in Edinburgh and went face first into a large plate of baked beans on toast and eggs, only to discover a 10 year old girl staring at me, eating a similar meal with a tact that I was clearly lacking. The trick, I’ve noticed, is to hold both the fork and the knife in an underhand stabbing position, but with a loose wrist. It’s not too difficult a task when you are eating simple things such as meatloaf, or fresh salmon, but when eating steak, I’ve noticed that there is a mounting problem of how to hold your wrist with grace, yet with enough brawn to actually slice though the steak, which is after all, the flesh of a bull.

In my imagined ranking system of difficulty levels of eating food with finesse, meatloaf, fresh salmon, and roasted tofu are at around a grade 1. Because of their rectangular shape and their generally supple texture, even for novice practitioners of fine dining techniques, they pose only a minor threat. I suppose, depending on how it’s cooked, meatloaf could be a 2-4. The grading scale is from 0 to 11; 0 being such things like apple juice, milkshakes, and sand; 11 being things like Ice Cubes, other forks and knives, and, you know, bombs, or whatever. Really, the scale is better explained saying that 0 is actually undefined, and 11 symbolically stands for infinite. So, if things like meatloaf and fresh salmon are around a 1-3 or so, then a medium rare steak is around a 4, and a well-done steak, around 6. Uncooked Cauliflower is around a 9. Iceberg lettuce is around an 8. Popsicles on an ordinary dinner plate are around a 9-10. Ice cream is complicated because when it’s a fresh scoop on an average day, it’s around a 6, but as time increases, the grade of difficulty increases until it becomes a liquid, in which case, it is milk, which is undefined. It’s a very intricate system that I just made up right now.

I’d say that I’m around a 5 right now, being able to eat medium steak with relative grace, but eating well-done steak, or baked beans on toast like a primitive man, meaning that I am around the same level, if not less than where Mary-Kate Olsen was when I saw the picture of her as a 13 year old eating steak. She probably had lessons though.