Two useful items I received as Christmas gifts, new underpants and a book about paleoanthropology. I really need to bone up on my knowledge of human evolution, and this book, The Origin of Modern Humans by Roger Lewin, should be a nice overview. I've forgotten everything I learned in high school (not just on this subject -- everything), and the information's all changed since then anyway. I would certainly like to know how we evolved from wee arboreals clutching fruit to slackjawed couch sloths clutching microwaved pizza bagels, since clearly that's such a breathtaking leap forward. I also love reading about scientific scandals, like the Piltdown Hoax. Even though it fooled a lot of the scientific establishment at the time, nowadays Piltdown Man would be hard-pressed to get a spot in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, on the midway between the funny visors boutique and Skee-Ball. As a kid I always imagined being accidentally locked inside the Natural History Museum overnight and having to sleep in an eerie diorama with the Neanderthal family, wondering if I'd have the heart to tell them they were extinct. I sometimes think of a tribe of Homo Sapiens running into a group of Neanderthals and openly roaring with laughter. Poor Neanderthals, not even provided the dignity of silent mockery.

I also got these new underpants. This was certainly a relief, as a few of my current ones are about ready for retirement, i.e. thrown in the garbage to be fished out later by lurking neighborhood fetishists. One pair I have is practically in tatters, they look like they've been ravaged by wild animals, no longer underpants so much as simply an ambitious waistband. Or like a belt with delusions of grandeur or a whimsical fringe made of shredded cotton ribbons. I could've worn this in that Neanderthal display and fit right in. The new ones are boxer briefs, which have been my preferred style for years. As a kid I wore briefs, my mother would simply buy them from Sears for me, I wouldn't even be present, which was fine with me since I found buying underwear a personally uncomfortable experience until maybe two years ago. But after a certain age you no longer want your mother to buy your underwear. There's something mortifying about the idea of one's mother holding up two different styles for comparison, squinting at them shamelessly in front of other customers, speculating about which pair would offer her son the scrotal support he requires.