did one of your ancestors invent miller high life? you know i love that stuff…
it's pretty unlikely; the name "miller" only showed up on my dad's side of the family when my great-grandfather emigrated here and changed his name to avoid anti-polish discrimination. i'm guessing miller high life goes back further than that. so unless it was invented in poland or china or japan and randomly named "miller," the odds are slim that any of my ancestors had much to do with it.
then again, i don't know chinese– maybe "miller" translates into "beer that will appeal to an american named brian" in mandarin or something.

how awesome would it be if apple actually started making their macs out of…well…real apples?
i dunno– sounds sticky. and there's a real concern about structural integrity, there. to get any strength, apple would probably have to use a powersauce bar-type compound made of apple cores and chinese newspapers, like on the simpsons. otherwise we'd start seeing imacs that look like those shrunken apple heads we used to make when we were kids. although, the concept of edible computer components has some merit; sometimes i'm hungry but too busy to get up and hit the vending machine, so it'd be nice to munch on, say, the f13 and del keys to tide me over until lunch. maybe the "\" key, too– i almost never use that thing anyway.

how many times, on average, do you go to the bathroom a day?
on average? i really don't know– six? seven? i don't keep track. it varies wildly from day to day, ranging from maybe two to over fifteen.
see, i have this really screwed-up thirst reflex; basically i never get thirsty. when i go out to eat with people, they often look at me funny when i order dinner and nothing to drink. i have to keep reminding myself to drink stuff, because otherwise i can go for days without any serious fluid intake and then i get really dehydrated. it's pretty gross. so in busy or high-stress situations, i tend to forget to drink anything, so my bathroom frequency drops way off… like, when katie and i got back from london last weekend, once we got home i realized i hadn't gone to the bathroom in over nine hours. that's pretty normal if you're asleep, but i had been awake the whole time. so that day was probably a three or a four.
on the other hand, since i never feel thirsty, when i am forcing myself to drink, i don't always know when my body's had enough. that, coupled with other factors like sleeplessness and boredom, can send the bathroom frequency through the roof. metaphorically speaking, of course.
really, the only times i feel thirsty are when i've been eating a massive quantity of salt (it has to be a lot), or when i've been skating for a couple of hours and sweating like a mofo. after i go skating i can usually down half a gallon of gatorade in about three minutes without trying.
that concludes this segment of too much information theater.

if you had a million dollars…how much of that would be spent on (vegan) doughnuts?
what, all at once? these days i pretty much eat at most one vegan doughnut a week– sunday morning, with a hot cup of joe and the funnies. (no, I don't eat the funnies. smartass.) since i probably couldn't eat more than maybe two or three a day and they have a limited shelf life, it'd be a waste to get more than a couple hundred of them.
so if i had a million dollars, i'd probably set up some sort of doughnut trust fund that would pay for my weekly doughnut in accrued interest and release the necessary funds maybe once a month so i could go pick up the goods four at a time. that seems like the most financially prudent strategy.
being a millionaire wouldn't change me– most likely i'd remain a one-vegan-doughnut-a-week man. except i'd probably quit my job, and offer people money to bark like a dog in public. man, that slays me.

tell me about that bagel buzzsaw again, man.
the best chain of bagel shops around these parts is finagle-a-bagel, and they've got
the bagel construction process down to a science. this morning i stopped in to order a classic hummus on a sesame bagel, toasted, with lettuce, tomato, and cucumber to go. tThe counter guy rings it all up, takes my money, and gives me a numbered receipt. he then grabs a sesame bagel with a pair of tongs and tosses it onto a moving conveyer belt.
here's where things get crazy. the belt carries the bagel toward a spinning buzzsaw, which slices the thing in half and sends it flying out the other side into a bin where the sandwich makers are waiting. [footage – quicktime required] they then toast the pre-sliced bagel, assemble the sandwich, bag it up, and call my number. the whole shebang is a modern marvel of efficiency, but that buzzsaw– that's the coolest thing on the planet.
of course, i used to work in a bagel shop myself, and back in my day, we didn't have new-fangled mass-production devices to facilitate the bagel assembly process. i, in fact, am trained in the delicate art of slicing a bagel perfectly in half using nothing but my hands and a big knife– without drawing any blood or losing a finger. with the advent of those wooden bagel-holding-slicer things (and now the buzzsaw), it's almost a lost art… sort of like long division. someday i hope to pass this ancient bagel-slicing lore onto my children.

if you could switch places with any popular actress for a day, who would it be and what would you do?
"popular actress"? i hope you don't mean "actress on 'popular,'" 'cause i don't watch that show. and am i just trading places with her, like when fred stayed home with pebbles and wilma went off to work for mr. slate, or are we actually swapping minds like in freaky friday? the details are important, here.
your mind would be inhabiting her body. you would literally be her for the day.
i'm going to pretend i'm not married for a second here and say i'd become alyson hannigan (you know, Willow from "buffy," michelle the band camp girl from american pie, etc.). i'd spend the day dumping that guy who plays wesley on "angel" and then feverishly planting subliminal messages in all her (my?) stuff to call that jack guy in boston because he seems like a pretty cool fella. then i'd switch back to me and wait for the phone to ring. foolproof, i tell you.

if it's just a "let's trade places for a day" gig, well, maybe i'd trade with Sarah Michelle Gellar so at least I could spend a day on the "buffy" set making goo-goo eyes at alyson between takes. no, wait– better yet, i'd trade with the actress who plays tara, willow's lesbian lover, because then maybe i'd get to smooch her, too. while we're dreaming, i'd also like a pony.

what are three things about married life that we should all know before we enter into that unholy pact?
well, i've only got two and a half weeks' worth of experience upon which to draw, here, but here goes:

1) it's surprisingly difficult to get used to using the phrase "my wife" instead of "my girlfriend" or "my fiance." It just feels wrong.
try it. weird, isn't it?

2) it's no panacea for the constant hassle of being asked "when are you two getting married?" because it just turns into "when are you two having kids?"

3) it's not an institution to be entered into lightly, so regardless of any possible moral objections to "living in sin," i recommend that people live together for a while first just to make absolutely sure that they're compatible and that they can live with each other's idiosyncrasies. eleven years worked for us. your mileage may vary.

[jack does a (week)daily apple news soap opera called as the apple turns, which actually has a warning about spewing chocolate milk onto your monitor. he's rarely seen by the public, so he provided this mugshot for visual aid. jack spends just about as much time in front of a computer on a daily basis as i do. this is neither an criticism or a compliment.]