november 26, 2000. Today I tried writing a Cosmic about our experience at Canadian Tire on Saturday. I lifted this concept directly from Sage, who explains it thusly: What are Cosmics? A Cosmic is a fortune cookie, a social commentary, an inside joke, an outside joke, and something indefinable. Most of them are a sentence or two, often incisive, insightful, incendiary, inflammatory, interesting and indescribable. But they're a wonderful mode to write in when you're trying to put your finger on something and are in the right mood. Sort of a Zen version of freewriting. They're kind of like sweet potatoes. Either you really love them, or you really don't. I don't think I'm very good at it, but anyway, here goes. Consider it today's writing experiment. Amoret and the Boy are in the toy aisle of Canadian Tire. "Look sweetie! Bubbles!" the Boy says, as he points to the Powerpuff Girls toys. Amoret squeals with delight and immediately tries to make the toys talk, as advertised on the packaging. After 5 minutes of effort, she finally gets the doll to speak. "I'm hard core!" it purrs in a disturbingly adult voice. "That's terrible!" shouts Amoret. "That doesn't sound like her at all!" "This is a shoddy piece of work," the Boy agrees. They try out the key chains, and find that the voices are more accurate. "Still," grumbles Amoret, "it's just a stupid hunk of plastic. I'm not going to buy something just because is says Powerpuff Girls on it." "No," concurs the Boy, "but I bet you were thinking of buying it for Stacy."