Walking down the street with your elderly mom is like walking your new born puppy. Everyone smiles your way as if you are doing something really great.

Was Ozzy right to confront burglar?

BBC: I mean is this even a debatable question? Ozzy is a rocker, a ROCKER… Of course he has a right to go after the burglar and I hope at least writes a song about it.

Today, at the doctors office, I was sitting in an uncomfortable chair, engrossed in some two year old issue of Family Circle, when a man walks into the waiting room, holding what looked to me like nothing short of a portable plastic beer cooler. Though Family Circle was truly fascinating, I put it down immediately as I was simply struck by this man with the heavy coat and beer cooler. Being it was a doctors office after all, I was excited by the potential disruption he might bring to the otherwise dire predictability of a suburban doctor’s office. But within moments, I was greatly dissapointed to find out there was not such prospect of disruption as I soon discovered he was only carrying his newbord kid in a plastic car seat. But within mere seconds again, I was struck again, thinking “how strange than an middle aged American man was taking his kid by himself to the doctors office.” I mean I know it is the 21st century and all, but it is rare to be in a doctors office and have the male side of the couple be with the kids, especially alone. But his other female half finally walked in, and the momentary lapse out of normality vanished… Not only no drunk man, but it was typical hetreonormativity in La Grange, as usual.

But I did not take this event in stride, for I thought to myself: given the endless market for consumer goods in our great society, why not make a baby seat a two-in-one gizmo –> a baby car seat and beer cooler in one? I mean the plastic is insulating and there is aready a good sizeable dip to stash the beer. All you would need is a nice fitting, snug top and vualla –> a good to go beer storage unit that moreover keeps your beer *as safe as your baby* while you are driving the precious goods to your family outing or fishing trip with the guys.

Given the article I was reading in Family Circle (on husbands playing second fiddle to the newborn and thus feeling loathsome and jealous), it seemd to me that this fine invention of mine was not only nifty, but could perhaps make a worthwhile, positive psychological contribution to the treacherous state that becomes marriage when a newborn kid hits the scene? Thus this is a tool that is pragmatic in more ways than one…

Today while I was at the gym, sitting in the sauna, enjoying full on the intense artificial heat, a pack of young teenage girls entered chatting with unbridled excitment that is typical of 15 year old, middle class American girls. I think they were a little freaked out by my nudity as I heard them whispering outside of the sauna before entering about whether they should enter because of…. Ya, well, they got over thier uncomfortable reaction to the human physique and then revealed other peculiar life situtations that “freaked” them out. So of course being it was Tuesday, they talked about their busy weekend plans that lay ahead of them such as the “Packers/Bears” game coming up.

One of them mentioned she was going to go shopping and everyone reacted “oh cool” and one girl asked “are you going alone?” and without any hesitation the other girl gasped with an “oh no way, shopping alone is freaky. I did it once and it freaked me out.” And the other 2 girls nodded in total agreement.. They could identify with such freakitude.

This freaky posture I have to say I found fascinating. Already a creatue of great freakiness to them (by myself and with no clothes), I did not feel like freaking them out more by asking them why they thought it was so freaky to shop alone but I have to admit that at that moment, that is all I wanted to know. Why did it feel freaky for them to shop alone? Was it lonely? Did it feel wrong? Was it just less fun? Was it simply because they felt like they look like a loser? Anyway, I knew that in a few years, they would get over their revulsion to naked bodies and like many American women, feel completely at east shopping whether alone, online, with a group, with thier kids, or in their sleep…

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”
Chinese Proverb.

So I am sort of fed up with the lack of information on traveling and eating and living cheaply in Puerto Rico. I have thus decided to start a webpage with information on traveling cheaply in Puerto Rico . It is about the simplest page it can be and right now I am posting what is an utter draft but hopefully in a few weeks time it will at least be filled with no graphics but good information for the budget traveler or visitor.

Insomniacs rule the night. I wonder if insomniacs as a result blog more? I am definitely more blog-prone both reading and writing when I find myself up late at night while the rest of the house slumbers… Sick of email, chatting, and reading, blogging is the perfect way to wind down.

I also just finished what was my second collaborative writing project. Given voice, style, and particular academic likes and dislikes, it is tough and tough in that sort of leathery, resistant way. You butt heads a lot, there is the struggle of having to explain yourself over and… over again, there is the need to melt divergent desires. But through enough beatings, the toughness is tenderized, and in such a way that even if the piece of writing has a ways to go, your thoughts about a subject reach a new smoothness and clarity. Yes, your thoughts are tenderized in a way that makes them easier to work with. So while I feel a bit worn from the experience, I would do it all over again.

I am in the process (or really some friends as this process has been pure hell) of migrating all my MT files to another server (free!!!) so I was not able to post until that was done. It has yet to be finalized so I thought I would post on the DGI conference etc. But first let me make sure this works for sure…

Matrix Reloaded Reviwed. I concur.

Holy Moses. Check out this bibliography on all online papers on space and place. Crazy good.