Deep in the mists of time, when I was taking Calculus I, I was wishing I could be a creature with a solid-state brain, instead of my faulty chemical thinking mechanism. As you might expect, I continued along this line of thought, to wish evolution had taken a sharp turn in the early Cambrian period, and made my ancestors' bones out of aluminum, or even titanium (both common in soils the world over). And why not communicate in radio, instead of sound? With error-checking of message packets? Oh well, that's what you get when you're descended from annelids and echinoderms.

In this self-portrait, note the briefcase and cigarette, my trademarks in 1988. I quit smoking 4 years later after hacking up blood a few times during repeated bouts of bronchitis. Like the Soviet-era poster said,

НЕ КУРИТЬЕ! (DO NOT SMOKE!)