What we achieve too easily we esteem too lightly

And so I return alive and happy from Florida. If you at some point find you have a chance to leave these shores in the depths of face searing cold to visit those southern lands I encourage you to do so. I had particular pleasure in the company of my family (though we went our separate ways before we inevitably fell to each others throats) especially since my father was good enough to pay for most things. Perhaps I’ll have a more complete summery later but for now I’ll only say that Alligators are black not green. Really. You have been living a lie.

Dave and I went to see that new Milla Jovohovoitchitch film Ultraviolet last night and it is more terrible then I can easily convey. I’ll need to recalibrate my crap detection system since now its bar is set all too high. Or low, as the case may be. Indeed, Mrs. Milla's crushingly unexciting "film" is a long, jagged scar across our collective unconscious. It is your hopes and dreams replaced by a dying, weeping child crushed and all at once bereft of breath in your unconsoling - and inconsolable - embrace. It is blood in your stool on the eve of your wedding day. It is an unaccounted-for prosthetic eyeball swimming languidly in your vegetable pad thai. It is happiness itself blotted forever from the cosmos*.

I’ve also been thinking a lot lately and to rid my self of this worrisome habit I’ll now transcribe some of these thoughts to the internet:

-A religion that, without metaphor or simile, worships money and whose greatest sin is poverty. I thought of writing a story set in a land that follows the economics of faith. It wouldn’t be too odious I think but it might require further reading.

-The We Don’t Sell Books bookstore. This is a store I would really like to found but it’s creation would first require the accumulation of vast wealth or a generous grant from the NIA. The concept being I fill a store floor to ceiling with all my favorite books and then try to prevent them from leaving. There would be a register and yes even the occasional sale but only if the purchaser manages to convince me or my employees that they really really deserve their chosen book. Minimum purchase $100.

My haircut is nice, and a good change of pace. I still have the mind of a man with long hair though and I’m constantly adjusting clothes and scarfs around a ponytail that no longer exists. I’ll grow accustomed to it though, maybe by the time I let it grow back out again.

Traveling inspires in me a desire to travel further. We’ll see what develops.

*With appologies to this review of Chairman of the Board.