I can't believe you haven't finished a crossword, J-Cop.

Not even a Monday New York Times/Los Angeles Times puzzle?
I worked on 8 Saturday puzzles today (out of a 200-puzzle book), didn't finish all of them though. I didn't know a guy called ARENDT wrote a book called "The Origins of Totalitariansm". I didn't know that organism bodies were called SOMAS (but really should have learned that one in school). I didn't know a GOURD was once used as a percussion instrument, that Baja cuisine is called CAL MEX (though I've heard of Tex-Mex), or that an MX MISSILE was referred to by Ronald Reagan as the "Peacekeeper".
But that's what I like about these hard puzzles-- I can learn from them!

There was one puzzle I really wish I was timing myself on, because I may have finished it in record time for a Saturday (6-7 minutes, by my estimations)
Americans really need to be better educated anyway. Period. I read a lot about how stupid Americans are compared to the rest of the developed world, and try not to be one of these stupid people, something tells me that the average American can't get through a Saturday NYT puzzle, and by the looks of it there may actually be some who can't even finish Monday. Maybe if more of us knew that PYONGYANG was the capital of the "Hermit Kingdom" we wouldn't be the laughingstock of the world so much.

I recently befriended Jeff Chen, puzzle constructor and webmaster of XWordInfo, by pointing out in an e-mail a few mistakes in his database, so now he's giving me free membership for a year