Reading Is Ephemeral

In American middle-class society, there's a list of things that are valued in the abstract and ignored in practice. Let's call them Institutional Hypocrises. Most of these totems are foisted off on children, including religion, the environment, and good nutrition. Adults avoid their churches, pollute, and eat chee-tos. Children are expected to go to Sunday School, take part in ecological cleanups, and eat "right".

To this list we should probably now add literacy. My library employee friends locally tell me that the library is now a Blockbuster mostly. People check out videos like crazy, and the books gather dust, except for the childrens books which are constantly in demand.

So now that I am a man, I suppose I should put away childish things and stop honoring my God, stop recycling, eat more chocolate pudding and less bran, and watch "Elimidate" instead of re-reading Joyce. I'm such an immature disaster.

Who's down with BFD?

Next door to the coffee house is a strip mall. In the strip mall are a couple of decent places to eat, a tanning parlor, the usual frozen yogurt place, and in the last year or so a wireless phone shop. This place is run by some fast young good-looking types and they have a promotionally flagged Humvee with the company's name on it, etc. They hang out in the Napa Valley's sports bar a lot.

A couple of the waiters at the Napa discovered that the wireless bro-guys had made a rather strange promotional item for their store. An item that pretty much sums up "bling bling". So, of course, it was acquired. So, of course, I got a shot of one of the waiters wearing it.

( That's just sick, Chris. )

O CANADA

My Kanadian Kommute in Southern California today:

1) On the radio, Dan Aykroyd screaming "I love my COUNTRY! I love my FLAG!" at some shindig in Toronto.

2) A car in front of me on the freeway with a bumper sticker that was made to look like a strip of film, with the Canadian flag crossed out and "GOT WORK?" on it. Someone is pissed about all that filming up north.

3) I was cut off by a guy in a big silver Mercedes SL 500... with Québec plates.