Community service

Walking home today I passed a box of miscellaneous computer equipment in a cardboard box on the sidewalk. I don't know what any of it is, but it all looks large and clunky and it is all the same beige "computer equipment" hue. There is a sign above the box written in enthusiastic bubble capitals. It reads:

FREE!
YESTERDAY'S TECHNOLOGY TODAY!

The geinus of commerce

Anthropologie has just sent me an email with this breaking news:

SKIRTS!
They're back on the scene and better than ever.


Here's how to wear them.


I'll be honest, I didn't click the how-to link. Frankly, I find skirts remarkably simple to wear. However, I may have an unfair advantage since I've been wearing them all my life. I missed the part, I guess, when they went away. But they must have, right? Since they're back now?


Meanwhile, up on Haight Street the place that used to sell smoothies has closed down. There's a sign up now telling us what's coming next. Apparently, it is to be the city's best smoke shop. Well, thank god. Because you know what Haight Street needs more of? Smoke shops. There is a desperate lack. Oh. And tattoo/piercing joints. Obviously. Delicious juice based beverages? What need have we of those?

Not the same

There have been a great many commercials on the radio of late encouraging us all to play the California lottery. Basically the message is "winning even a little money is better than winning no money, so you really should spend the money you already have and play." They feature little vignettes of people having pampered themselves in some way. They're not millionaires, but they've been able to buy a bunch of shoes, or go on vacation or something.

This morning, I heard a new one from the series. A woman describes how she spent the day doing whatever she wanted to do: watching Italian movies, playing with her dog in the park and then seeing a guitar in a shop window and buying it on impulse. "Why not?" she asks. Then she says something about how living with cancer doesn't mean you should stop living to the fullest or some such. I'm all for that. You have cancer? Embrace your life. Play guitar if you want to.

And yet.

is it not disturbing that "living with cancer" sounds just like "winning the lottery?"

State of mind

The way I feel today I suppose it is unsurprising that, although I drove to work, I just walked home. This means that I just unintentionally left my car at work, which is not so bad since I need to leave there by car tomorrow afternoon to go to school. However, since it is parked in an 8am street cleaning zone, it is less than ideal. Yet, am I going back there to get it now? I am not. Will I get there before 8am to move it in the morning so I don't get a ticket? I will not. Am I therefore just throwing forty bucks out the window? Yes, yes I am. Now leave me alone. I'm very tired and I have to read about 150 pages of The Creation of Patriarchy by tomorrow. (This is also unlikely to happen, but we're not discussing that.)