I absolutely hate the word “snacky” in all of its manifestations. It’s not the fault of the word itself. It’s the fact that someone I used to know—someone a little too trendy, a little bit annoying—used to use it all the time. She especially loved to refer to people as “snacky”. It was a pretentious grad-school trendoid thing, as far as I can tell, being as politically incorrect as she could be—for sometimes, snacky was merely a mark of approbation, but sometimes I got the sense it was a purely anthropophagous sexual term. In any case, it always struck me …

This Friday, Dan asks: What are the 5 scariest moments in your life, the moments when you were most filled with fear? You’d think that, for a guy who got into horror novels and movies at a young age, I’d have a lot of answers for this one. In fact, I’m scrambling for five of them. Let’s see. In no particular order: The night before my 16th birthday, I had convinced my parents to let me rent the video of The Exorcist for the sleepover I had with my friends, and I’d recently read that the film was based on …

The devious Adam asks: You lucked out – you found a lamp with an extremely generous genie. 100 wishes, and all for you! What are the last five wishes you make? Okay, 100 wishes is just too many. You’re bound to screw up. Could you undo #23? Yeah, wait, I don’t want that car after all, though… wait, could you give it to my parents? They use cars. Scratch the spaceship, now that the galaxy’s been colonized and all… No, wait, wait, I want #23 back. Okay? Uh, wait, can I start over again? Seriously though, given a hundred wishes, …

This week, Dan asks: What 5 events or things would you like to see in your lifetime but are skeptical that you will? In my lifetime, I’d love to see a controllable form of nanotechnology developed that could be used for general purposes. Unfortunately, I think this will take at least several hundred years, and more likely a few thousand. But it’s be nice to see. I’d love to see massive reforms to what “free market” means, where the legal incentives for being a good business proprietor—and the disincentives not to be a bad one—were delivered down through the ranks …

Friday Five time again, and this week Rob asks: one for the navel gazers. five times you’ve looked in the mirror and thought ‘who the bloody hell are you?’ Oh, my , oh my. It happens after every haircut, but the biggest one was when I got my shoulder-length hair cut the summer I graduated from high school. I really didn’t recognize myself. Once, when I was sort of involved with a woman who was much younger than me, and just too young. Literary trope though it might be, I actually did look in the mirror and ask who I …