I like

I love Hamburger Helper. It’s the perfect embodiment of fake American food. I love fake American food. It comes in a box, with everything I need to make it except the beef and sometimes the milk. And it’s so delicious! The cheese powder tastes like no cheese that actually exists, and much to the chagrin of nearly every friend I’ve eaten with in the past decade, I just adore fake cheese. I love less-fake cheese too… gouda and colby-jack and those little Baby Bel discs with the cow head on them… but I’m completely fine with a nice overprocessed American cheese.

The best Hamburger Helper is their hashbrowns mix. The box comes with crispy hashbrowns laced with onion flakes, and a sauce powder. I don’t know what it is—the salt, preservatives, or delicious mystery chemicals—but when I make it I’m the happiest guy in the world.

I like taking my Segway to work. I’d rather be standing and going at twelve miles an hour than stopped in traffic in a car and then having to park. I don’t really like going fast anyway.

I love smells. I’ve read many times that the sense of smell is a “feminine” sense, but it’s not like I’m the manliest man in the world, so I suppose I can be comfortable with that. The smells that I like don’t mesh very well with what normal people like, especially what women seem to like, but that can be said about so many of my preferences. I can’t stand, for example, scented candles and the mall stores that sell them, and Bath and Body Works. The last time I was with a group of girls who wanted to shop around, I actually had to leave and stand outside because I was getting physically ill being in there. Not a huge fan of most flowers, either.

I do love the smells of bread and cookies. (Who doesn’t?) And, I like the smell of rain. A bit weirder, I like the smell of certain people. Not their perfume or cologne or deodorant or shampoo, but just the person’s smell. If it weren’t incredibly creepy, I would just go around smelling people. There are a lot of things I’d do if it weren’t incredibly creepy, I guess. (Never make the mistake of asking a coworker what cologne they wear; it’s very awkward to tell someone that they smell great only to find out that they don’t wear cologne at all.) Also—and this is going to gross some people out—I enjoy the smell of a popped zit. (See, I warned you.) What is that, white blood cells? I dunno. I like the smell of blood in small quantities, so perhaps that’s why. And gasoline! My mom always used to tell me not to breathe the fumes at the gas station because it would give me brain damage, but gasoline was my favorite smell in all the world. I used to roll down the windows and stick my head out to get a better whiff. I still find it wonderful.

(By the way, I shamelessly stole the idea of talking about smells from a good friend’s blog. I don’t think he reads this, so let’s keep it quiet.)

I like starting programs from the Run command on the Start menu. I still usually start Internet Explorer by pressing Win+R and then typing “iexplore” and pressing Enter.

I like unwrapping things and punching things out of cardboard. Getting a box in the mail is always so exciting, and if it’s a box that contains another box that contains a board game whose pieces need to be punched out of cardboard, I’m in Heaven for ten minutes.

I like the feeling of a fresh haircut, especially when I go home right afterward and shower.

I love fonts. Something about a great typeface is just so absurdly appealing and beautiful. My favorite typeface in all the world is Myriad. It’s Apple’s corporate branding font, and the font used by a kajillion other companies too.

I like big-ass keyboards with a split down the middle, like my Microsoft Natural MultiMedia Keyboard. It pains me to type on this laughable “full-size” tablet keyboard right now.

I like first-person shooter games, especially when I get a sniper rifle or something that shoots cool laser beams. I tried for a long time to convince myself that I didn’t and that I somehow had more sophisticated game tastes, even though I really liked those shareware versions of Wolfenstein and Doom, but when Half-Life came around I just couldn’t deny it anymore. Sneaking around and shooting people in the head is just so intensely satisfying. Kind of like how I was totally, 100% convinced that World of Warcraft would be terrible—something for those idiots who play loser games like EverQuest—and that I’d lose interest within that first trial month. By next month I’ll have put about five hundred bucks into the damned game, and I don’t regret it for a second. (I may be one of those loser-game idiots, but I’m proud to be one!)

I like cats. I’ll never get one of my own because I’m allergic and I don’t want to change the litter box and deal with them peeing everywhere, but I’ll always wish I had one.

That’s probably enough.