The side-question that's interesting is what we find interesting. A lot of my favorite stories focus on what is special, seems charmed with intrigue, and what seems banal and dreary.
   Joyce's Araby. A Neil Jordan movie called The Miracle, which features a young gifted musician who only cares about getting paid, while his less gifted father will play for any excuse.
My wife read a story last week in which a baby is born black. Not racially black, just black. The doctor had warned her that the baby might look blue at first, but then it was black. People in the story tried to make sense of it, with a presumed black father, and so on. So I told my wife I thought it was about what's normal, how things become "normal" to us, and how it ties in to our sense of identity. But my wife had wanted me to explain why the baby was black. Sigh.

A close friend of mine is a Yeti, and she worries that if she "comes out" people will soon lose interest in her. She's not very cute, or particularly talented, she says (though actually she's very attractive, just not in a conventional way, and is a great storyteller, with a terrific sense of humour) and so she feels her reputation for elusive mystery is her main asset. I think she's selling herself short.

I want to try Kendall's bit. Ahem. The pineapple is neither a pine, nor an apple. It's a baked potato, smothered in three kinds of cheese, with sour cream, chives, and brocolli.