My First Friday Spies

It comes in bright colors, with all the sharp edges rounded off and no bits I could break off and choke on.

1. What five things should you never buy used?
Food, drinks, and drugs, obviously. People who say that used underwear, swimsuits, socks, and the like have no uses are simply insufficiently imaginative. Sure, you'd never want to use those things as intended, but who says we've got to follow the rules like that? Fourth, then, never buy used anything you could get new for free. Fifth, cursed magical artifacts. This will almost invariably shift the curse to you, the new purchaser. Not good.

2. Sony BMG just ended a payola investigation by settling with New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer. So let's engage in some reverse payola: What song or artist would you pay to never have to hear again, and how much would it be worth to you?
I would gladly exchange the change strewn across my dash (in excess of two dollars and seventeen cents!) for the right to snap in two the Bright Eyes CD my brother puts in my car stereo.

3. In honor of the new Bad News Bears: Did you ever play little league, or other organized youth sports?
I played little kid soccer like everyone else, running around, eating orange slices and drinking Capri Sun. I played little league baseball too. I mostly stood in the outfield staring at the sky and chewing absentmindedly on the leather of my glove. My parents tried to discourage this with chili powder and bitter apple spray, two tastes I came to appreciate.

4. What was your biggest fashion faux pas?
One Halloween, I went to high school dressed as a Heaven's Gate cultist. That was, in retrospect, a bit tasteless.

5. In honor of all our readers who took the Bar Exam this week: What was the hardest test you ever took?
The final exam in Philosophy 160B: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. This was the first class I ever took where I maxed out intellectually. I realized that no matter how much I studied or how hard I tried, I would simply never be smart enough to understand what the hell was going on in this class. I left the final an hour early because I'd run out of questions that I could understand.