Kafafian spelled backwards is Devil

Since I alerted you, my blog readers, to the horror that dare not be named (Tom Kafafian) people have responded. In fact, Jason wrote an entire blog on his page about the guy. Clearly there is something wrong with Tom, something beyond his writing song lyrics while driving, but I couldn't really quite put my finger on it. Then I was listening to Winamp (I was not in fact listening to Tom Kafafian) and the Tom Kafafian Style Winamp opened and, of course, my web browser pulled up his web site, which is still, as far as I'm concerned, an odd thing for my web browser today. It was then that I noticed that Tom's website loads things--preferences, skins, coolness, Tom's hair, and I thought what the devil is this? Well, I may have been onto something, because when I began to explore Tom's website, I noticed that there was an option simply labelled Street, and it was inside of street that I found this:

Join the TomK Street Team!Do you enjoy listening to great artists? So do tons of other people! Help us spread the TK word to music lovers across the nation by joining the TomkMusic.com Street Team. Simply fill out the form below, and tell us how you found out about Tom. When the time is right, a street team staff member will contact you with information on how you can help spread the word.
Am I Good Enough?Sure you are! If you live near any popular music retail stores, movie theatres, bars, malls, or any place where music lovers go, you're golden! Depending on your location and ambition, we'll send you fliers, buttons, promo cd's, and posters! After you've finished telling people about Tom, simply email the staff member who you're in contact with, and tell them how it went. We'll never stop supplying you with goods if you've got "the drive".

Now, let's get this straight. When the stars are right a street team staff member will come a-lookin' for me and send me off to places where music lovers hang out like stores, theatres, bars, malls, airports, bus stations, Des Moines Iowa. Yes, if you've got "the drive" evinced by your ability to shave your head and play the tamoborine, they (whoever they are) will never stop supplying you with goods...like multiple copies of the book of Krishna which you must sell at $15 a piece to pay for your trip to Yankee stadium where you and a thousand other people will be married in a single ceremony. Ia Ia Shub Niggurath tagn R'lyeh Kafafian fthtagn.

Ups and downs in Noho

I thought for today's blog I might mention a few things about the fair city in which I find myself living. Thus far, all you've heard about is the three or so blocks that really make up downtown, and even there, I've only really talked about the traffic. By the way, Lynn's shop is way down on the right past the second crosswalk. Notice also the lack of lane demarcations.

Actually, before I begin, one more thing about the traffic. Have you ever seen a truck get stuck under one of those train bridges? What, never? Really? Me neither until I moved to Northampton. Now I've seen it happen twice. I've only been here a month, and I've seen it happen twice. Yesterday's really topped it all off. It was one of those trucks carrying an entire modular house on the back. The bridge has an 11' clearance. That was AWESOME!!! And all the Noho players say, "honk!"

So, anyways, a few things about Noho. First of all, it's called Noho. Though, Southampton is not called Soho. This is because Noho, really has that Soho feel. I assume they mean Soho, NY. I'd say its more like a cross between Berkeley and Santa Cruz. A little more homogeneously white, but that's just Massachusetts.

There are little things that I feel are worth mentioning. For instance, there are a whole lot of Goth kids in Noho, and just as in Santa Cruz, they have lot's of money and they're begging. Hobo chic. In any case, the first night we were here, the steps of the Catholic church/cathedral was crawling with neo-hipster vampire types. Since then, I haven't seen them congregate in what is obviously the most gothically inspired architecture in Noho. Now, they hang out in front of Thornes, which is like a four story mall kind of thing. Garden Walk Mall in Chico is the one story version of this.

Because of their proximity to Thornes, Lynn calls these kids Thorne Bushes. I call them Thorne Birds. It's weird to pass these pretentious wannabe undead because they are a mass of pitiful anti-social ideologies but they can't balance this against their needs or their morals. They bum change off you in a constant stream. In fact, I have yet to see a homeless person in Noho who had worse shoes than me, but I digress. The Thorne's crew will chide you loud enough for you to hear if you pass them while smoking, and then one of them will ask you for a cigarette, all of this while they're dressed in black and listening to bands that make themselves to look like zombies. They're clearly trying to be cool in that weird anti-materialism, "I like French Existentialist Novels" sort of way, but they're hanging out in front of a gift shop. There's nothing in Thornes that really suggests intellectual moroseness, except for the book store that charges way too damn much, or the used book store, "Raven Used Books," that has no selection and charges double what they should. I have yet to figure the Thorne kids out, except that they've just had it too damn easy their entire lives and so now can't think of anything to do except hassle me for change so that they don't have to touch their trust fund. Everybody's an anti-materialist until they survive making minimum wage.

Downtown itself, and all of Northampton really, is just plain beautiful. The architecture of the buildings is pretty much exactly what you'd expect, but when you see it in real life you realize just way it is that ranch tract homes should be considered god awful ugly. My house is probably the ugliest I've seen in Northampton. I don't mind. It's the inside of my house that I'm more concerned with and in that capacity Lynn and I have made out like bandits.

Basically Northampton is surrounded by wooded hills. And when I say wooded, I mean the forest primeval. We are surrounded by trees and if you haven't had enough trees just living in Northampton, you need only go to Look Park, which also, I've been told, has bumper boats.

Also, when I say beautiful, realize that I haven't even touched Smith college, which is amazing. There is no other way to say that. I really need to go exploring, but as per usual, I've been too much a homebody. Plus, I really kind of feel guilty about going to art museums and botanical gardens without Lynn. I'm trying to get over that guilt, though. There are, after all, only a limited number of days of sun and such left. Already the temperature is dropping. 68 degrees currently.

Let's see other things about Noho worth knowing. Well, I guess that I painted a kind of picture of the place by saying that there was no Mexican food worth speaking of, but that's an erroneous picture. Noho is actually filled with restaurants. In fact, if the Thorne bushes/birds are having any existential dilemma in Northampton, it is probably related to the stifling number of choices one faces when hungry. Moroccan, Thai, Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, and of course, ice cream. I think they styled the city's restaurant scene after New York. What do you want to eat? Because they have it in Noho (except for Mexican). What's more, their basic understanding of Pizza is quite a bit larger than California's. I've seen slices that would put me away, though quality seems to have quite a bit of range.

Well, that seems good for now. I think I'm going to go downtown to take some pictures. I'll link 'em when I get back.

back side of downtown
Big Catholic Church at the front of Smith College
living downtown 1 and 2 (we do not live downtown)

B is for Brian who ate some bad brie

I realize that this is old hack for some of us, but nonetheless, for your perusal, I give you The Gashlycrumb Tinies, and of course attribute it to Edward Gorey--the oft crazy illustrator of The New Yorker.

Montezuma's Revenge

There are many of you out there who are wondering why it is that though I am apt to discuss politics, miniature painting, guys who smog my car, etc. I have yet to really get into all the great Mexican food that Northampton, and indeed the entire pioneer valley, is famous for. You say, "yes, yes, yes. Sure, you almost died today, but then how is that different than every other day. What I want to know is how are those burritos?"

Or maybe your not asking that obvious question, but still, you should be. So, I will answer. The reason that I have yet to describe the great Mexican food that has graced my gullet here in Massachusetts is simple. There is no great Mexican food. I daresay that there is no Mexican food, sub par or otherwise. This state is nowhere near Mexico.

Now, for those of you who've traveled through this fair nation of ours, you're probably saying that a state's proximity to Mexico bears little or no relation to the Mexican food that it can provide, and I'd agree. There are Mexican restaurants everywhere. I mean seriously people, if American cuisine is anything then it is hamburgers, chicken fingers, pizza, Chinese food, and Mexican food. These things are the staple of our nation's diet. Eat anything else and it is note worthy.

But Massachusetts has no Mexicans. They have Puerto Ricans. That's really not the same. Let me try to explain.

My first trip to downtown Northampton that involved food (and nearly getting run over, but here again, that's every trip to downtown Northampton), happened a few weeks back when I decided that I wanted to try out a little burrito joint. First off all, there was no Carne Asada. There was no Puerco Colorado. No Carnitas, no chile Verde, no option for the chimi chonga upgrade. They had burritos (no enchiladas, no tostadas, not even a frickin' plate of nachos). The burrito, according to the menu, consisted of rice, beans, cheese, and salsa. Do you see something missing?

Okay I'll try this again. Tortilla: bread group. Cheese: dairy. Salsa: vegetable. Beans: meat. Wait a minute. Hold up. Beans=meat. No way. That's just some bullshit the vegetarians cooked up. Meat=meat, not beans, MEAT. The Meat in the burrito was a $1.50 extra. You may also notice that sour cream was not added to the above recipe. I did not see the option to add the sour cream. I'm not sure that they knew that sour cream belongs in Mexican food, which is strange, because EVEN TACO BELL KNOWS THAT!!!

What I finally got out of these people was a Beef burrito (remember folks, that even frozen burritos are divided by sauces). Beef.
"Would you like the chicken or the beef?"
Carne Asada.
"Is that...Is that beef?"

So a beef burrito ($8, by the way). The meat had not been cooked in any kind of sauce. Forget that technicality. The damn thing was about as long as my hand. And you know how sometimes Mexican food can sometimes be hot. Well, this food was really hot. In fact, it was burnt. There was no spice to it whatsoever. It wasn't as bland as cottage cheese, but maybe cottage cheese with a little pepper...And did I already mention that it was burnt. It was not a burrito. Calling it a burrito was an insult to burritos everywhere. It was some meat, cheese, beans and salsa inside a tortilla. I never would have thought that there was a difference, but believe me, there is.

Later, Lynn and I decided to try out another Mexican restaurant, a place called Cha Chas. For those of you who have had microwavable burritos, or seen a microwavable burrito, consult that memory for scale. The damn thing was about the size of my fist. What's more, they had Thai peanut burritos, which admittedly might be good if you were surrounded by carnitas and you wanted a little break from verdes and colorados, but when there isn't any Mexican food anywhere and someone hands you a burrito that has thai peanut sauce in it, this can only be interpreted as a sick joke.

Of course, I did feel a sort of amusement at the number of people who were eating at Cha Chas. Sitting around, talking, believing that they are eating mexican food. I did not burst their bubble. Again, Taco Bell is more authentic.

So, tonight we decided to escape Northampton. Lynn finally had a day off and so we headed all over the place with the serious desire to get some Mexican food in my belly. I want a Chili Relleno so bad I could kill, not to mention beef enchiladas and diablo shrimp. Oh god!

So, we stopped in at this little place called Mi Casa in Easthampton, which a number of people had said would have decent Mexican food.

Quick rundown of their menu: Chili (okay, a little iffy), fried green plantains (ummm, is that Mexican), fried yellow plantains (what's up with all the frickin bannanas), jalapino (wait for it...) poppers, burrito (meat a $1 extra, chicken or beef), and something I got which I will call "pot roast"--which I guess must be a traditional Mexican dish that our country adopted so long ago, that now it seems American. But I assure....

Oh who the hell am I fooling? Pot roast isn't Mexican. Bannanas aren't Mexican. Jalapinos are things you put in the salsa. What, did the ancient Mayans stuff them with cream cheese and fry them. Was that the dish of kings or something? No. No. No. Lynn got a burrito. They didn't steam the tortilla. THEY DIDN'T STEAM THE TORTILLA. Moreover, when presented Lynn was actually given two burritos because, "the tortillas aren't big enough." Yeah, no shit, huh? Maybe that's why they lay the tortillas side by side then pile the ingredients and then fold. I'm not saying my pot roast wasn't good, but the chili beans and rice that accompanied the pot roast...well, the beans lacked onion, and the rice lacked tomato, something that even Rice A Roni gets right.

Look at this. The lady gets a ham sandwich in a Mexican restaurant and she doesn't suspect that something is wrong. She doesn't know. She has no idea. What are they going to serve next, Spaghetti?

I would kill for a Chevy's even.

We only have one hope left. We've heard that there may be Mexican food in Amherst, but there's no telling. I mean, how the hell would the people who suggest the restaraunts know if the place is any good. "Yeah, real authentic...Especially the chowder."

My point is this. If you are thinking about opening a Mexican restaurant may I suggest a location. If you open it in California, or Nevada, or Ohio, or even Wyoming, you will only be one of the many choices that your customer base has for their fine Mexican dining. But if you open a restaurant in Massachusetts you will be unique and will have no competition whatsoever. Just a thought. Oh, and one more thing, you will already have a customer. So, if your reading this, help a brother out, and if your name is also Roberta Johanson, send carnitas. This is an emergency.

how to paint and all that

Perhaps you've noticed a few minor changes, here and there, to my blog. Well, good. I decided to trick out what I could do. I can now write a blog from anywhere, I have a search function, and of course, a much needed quote from The Crying of Lot 49, from which book this blog gets its name. The last thing I was thinking of doing was putting up a home page that included some of my poetry including the poem Monstro. Hopefully, that link will work. In any case, I realized suddenly, once I found my poetry, that I have 131 pages of the stuff. Now not all of it's good, but still, some of it is. Will see though on the webpage and poetry mix. That stuff, looking back over it, is pretty personel in a lot of cases.

Anyway, I promised some commentary on painting, and damn it, I mean to give it. The question on some of your minds might be something like how do you do that. Well, first of all you have to something about painting miniatures. The really hard part is not generally the thing that impresses people. In fact, those little tricks are often ways of getting around real work.

The real work is in shading the miniature. Why? Well, if you don't paint, you may have the idea that red paint thins out to pink, or reddish orange, or something like that. Actually, it doesn't. Red thins out to thin red. That means that when...say you're painting a miniature's leg red and you want to highlight the knee area, you cannot simply expect the red to thin out at the knee, thus creating the highlight effect. As a matter of fact, because the miniature is only an inch and half tall, it is actually necessary to exagerate shadow to get it right for if the miniature was actually a six foot tall soldier from the future.

The problem is this, it would be easy enough to just take a more vibrant of the color that you're painting in (reddish orange for red, for instance), but if you just paint the highlight onto the miniature it doesn't look right. It looks....well...just painted on. That means that you have to blend.

Blending is done when you take the paint, while it is still wet, and you mix a very very very small ammount of the lighter color into the highlighted area. In effect, you are mixing right on the miniature. Paint can be kept wet for longer by adding a retardent, like glycerine (which sells in drug stores for about two dollars). Highlighting can then be done this way. The problem isn't highlighting though, or at the very least it isn't just highlighting. Don't get me wrong, highlighting is a royal pain in the butt, requiring you to have some intuition about how long paint will dry and how much to add--add too much and there's really nothing you can do to take paint away. The real problem is shading. Shading is done exactly like highlighting except its done in the recesses of the miniature--say, between the fingers on a glove or on the divited areas of breathing tubes. Shading is a pain because, not only do you have to deal with the pressures of highlighting, but now you have to do it in tight spaces on the miniature. The grills of face masks, the underskirting of armor, etc..

Keep in mind something else about paint. Put too much on the brush and it will glop. Put too little on and it will fade, and just as with drawing, you really don't want to paint a straight line in more than one brush stroke, else that line will look bulging or crooked. Easy mistakes on little miniatures are magnified. That means you have to mix your paint with a little water, but not enough to make it runny.

In any case, having said all this, you might realize that one of the most difficult things to paint is something like pants. The highlights are too subtle, the shadows come too quick for you to really make them look like a natural progression from light to dark. The bunching up of pants on a harlaquin, for instance, takes place in about a milimeters space.

So, how can you get around all that? Assuming, of course, that you wanted to get around all of that. Well, what I for a miniature like a harlaquin, is I highlight and shadow the lighter of two colors that I will be using. That is, if his pants are going to be checkerboard of blue and black, I highlight and shadow the blue. I'm not even sure this is necessary. The trick is to cover up all that work you're not doing with checkerboards, which look a hell of a lot harder than they actually are to paint. Simply paint out the criss cross in black, start at the bottom coloring in each square, and when necessary square off mistakes. Keep in mind, black covers any mistake you make in any color, but only some colors will cover black. You're best friend here is white. Fix in white, and then paint the fix red.

I'll give more tips later, but here's one last one. One of the easiest way to achieve shadow and highlight is to skip the glycerine altogether. Paint the area the highlight color and then make incredibly watered down versions of the color to "wash" the area with. The darker colors will stain the area, though not so much that the highlights will not come through, and if you are good with diminishing ammounts of pain will relegate the dark colors to only the deep recesses. In any case, that's kind of how it's done.

Hold me closer tiny dancer

Way too much time on my hands. I will supply a longer run down tonight, but for now, here's another one of my fabulous paint jobs. Tune in later to find out just how I do what I do, or if you're really good, to laugh at my minor paint jobs. Hey, it beats spray paint.




By the way, this is a harlequin trouper. At some point, I do believe Games Workshop called them war dancers. Harlequins are a nearly unique army in that they include, amongst their ranks, women. It can sometimes be hard to tell with space elves just what sex they are, however, this one seems to have breasts. On other miniatures it is rather obvious, whereas this one just seems to be androgenous. Regardless, enjoy.

Not Richard Cheese, but close enough

So, lately I've been at my computer a lot. And for no reason, whatsoever, I have been attempting to look at every option that my programs have available to them. I think this all started when Jason told me that the new version of Winamp had video stations and that they had something called Ween TV, and well... hell yes, I want to watch a station that does nothing but play Ween videos. Finally.

Well, anyways, I figured as long as I was enjoying Winamp, I might as well enjoy it with as many skins as possible. I'm up to 58 now. My favorite is Turner Classic, but then I'm into the retro skins. I just set my Winamp to choose a different skin every time it plays a song. Yes, I realize that this is a colossal waste of time, but whatever.

The point of all this is that I discovered a skin, dedicated to Tom Kafafian. Who the hell is Tom Kafafian? I don't know. The best part about this skin is that when it opens, it also opens an explorer window for Tom's website. How pathetic is that? So, now if I love my winamp going on random, as I am want to do, I will inevitably come back to find that my computer is trying to suggest new music for me to listen to. No thanks, any more cheese and I don't think I'd be Atkins Friendly.

Gallery

Well, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 Eldar, and so every now and again I like to paint one or two of them. Actually, the eldar are my most painted army. I must have gotten a bur up my butt at some point. Anyways, this is known as a Fire Dragon Exarch:



Aint he cool. I painted him yesterday (I blogged while the paint was drying).

Ahem.... Discuss

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/emperors_apprentice

Last blog of the day, I swear, and then I'll shut up

Last thing, seriously.

It would seem that some of my friends have followed the Monstro's suit and are now on the blog as well. Wilkommen, meine herzliche Freunden. Es ist gut, ja?

So visit, explore, comment:
http://www.happystevensons.blogspot.com
http://artdelavramblog.blogspot.com/
and of course, that which came before me, for those who haven't yet checked it out:
www.motormouth.com/blog
That's it, I'm done. I have to do laundery. Good night, Bob.

...Constructing and is constructed by...by and by

Okay, this is that blog that you've all been waiting for. You want me, the anti-comp champion to comment on the composition/rhetoric program at UMass Amherst. I know you do. You want me to make a pointed discussion of how these people have their heads in the clouds and how their concerns never address the practicality of teaching writing. You want me to bash social constructionism, post colonialism, post modernism, and all that good stuff. You know that you want me to, just admit it.

But I can't.

Truth be told, my long standing opinion of composition studies was that it invited a certain type of person into its fold. A sort of glass jawed, soft under bellied, fascist liberal--the type of person for whom political correctness is the very cornerstone of our society without which we would all resort back to a position of feces throwing apes--the type of person who tells you that all of your beliefs are simply products of your environment as if anyone who holds themselves to certain tenuous ideas as...oh, I don't know...morality, spirituality, a sense of belonging have all simply been brainwashed into holding such conditions as important--the type of person who spits on the idea of greatness and suggests that we accept all things from Shakespeare to this blog here as having equal claim to genius; that the very idea of genius is simply a product of our society, and that if tables were turned, if the cultural conditions were different....blah, blah, blah.

God, I hate those people.

Well, anyways, that was Chico. Amherst is pretty much different. In Chico, I was asked to teach Foucalt to freshman. In Amherst, a reason given for a standard set of reading amongst the hundred or so teachers of Freshman English was, and I quote, "to prevent teachers from going crazy and trying to give Derrida to freshman." Do you see the difference, pun intended?

In Chico, I was expected to ingest huge theoretical concepts which I was then to repeat back to prove that I had learned what it was to be a good teacher. Actual classroom experiences were frowned upon. An example of advice for teaching at Chico would be something like this: "we must realize that the students, as much as we wish they wouldn't, will write from the context of a contact zone between the academic world they hope to inhabit, and whose rules they have yet to internalize, the academy itself, which often thrives by marginalizing the students otherness in relation to itself, the authority of the teacher, which despite your best intentions you will embody, and their many contexts which construct them outside of class. We have to, after all, realize that our students have an existence outside of school and, so do not always exist as students qua students. Also, our students come from a variety of cultural backgrounds which inform them as to their role within the university."

Try to use that as a guideline for what you should do in your class. I mean, just try to think of a situation where what I've just written actually has some effect on what you, as a teacher, are actually going to do.

Now back to Amherst. While it was clear that our supervisors knew this type of rhetorical solipsism, they did not employ it. They were constantly using real examples: this is what you're going to do, because this is what we do--not, this is what we're going to do, though we know that it might violate some of our student's expectations of the cultural contexts of the academy, and though we understand that we are, in many ways, stepping into the teacher/student relation which deviates from the student centered learning model to which we hope to aspire.

At Amherst, they asked questions like: "what will you do when you have an 18 year old girl, one of your students, in front of you crying because you won't raise her grade? Will you be able to stand by your policy in that situation?" In short, the training centered around real world classroom experiences that we are likely to find ourselves in, and not the Foucaldian Panoptic model of relations inside the academy.

I'd like to add that no part of teacher training at Chico state ever actually helped me with anything that ever happened in my classrooms, and as such, when I finally taught composition at Butte, I was pretty much making it up as I went along. But here at Amherst, I'd say I've learned how to teach composition in such a way as that I can now look back at my past mistakes and see what it is that I was doing wrong. It's this retrospection that you have to have in order to improve, and it was this very thing that was lacking at Chico. We never looked back, rather we looked into various texts designed to teach teachers to teach teachers. They had very little to do with teaching students.

So, what's the same? Well, I still have to swallow my tongue when the subject of "good writing" comes up. The party line there hasn't changed whatsoever; it is still that there is no such thing as "good writing" but rather "good writing inside of a context." That will always chafe me, because I am a literature student, and the study of literature rests on the basis that some writing is good and some is not. That very delineation makes up 90% of literature arguments.

At Amherst, however, this refusal to argue quality is downplayed. At Chico, half of what we were expected to teach was this lack of a definition of "good writing." At Amherst, we've moved on. "Okay, so it's hard to define what good writing is. Fine. Are there things that we know successful writers do, and can we teach our students to do those things?" So, I'm teaching proofreading, and how to make a habit of writing in a journal, and how to do generative writing, as opposed to, say, how to identify cultural contexts which remodel and redefine one's identity as a student.

It still amazes me how people trying to free you from the brainwashing you have received since your birth from the culture in which you live, say the same things over and over and over and over like a water torture. "Yes, you're right. I do think less of illiterate people because of what society tells me to think. Now, which bank should me and Patti Hearst knock over?" I'm glad to say that I am no longer in that business. I was never very good at in the first place.

The mystery deepens/how to post a comment

So, anyway, Jason, writes me an e-mail denying his involvement with herr Bob. I, for one, believe him. Believe you me, if Jason was the Sagat, he would lay claim to the title. Moreover, he would have been funnier. I should of known. I'm slipping.

Regardless, Jason tried to post a comment to my blog and met with an incredible ammount of difficulty. I have heard the same thing from Hooknoobie who told me as well that if you don't have a blog account, blogger.com snubs you as if you just farted in its car, say on a trip to Disney Land or something like that. I mean it's that rude. It tells you, "oh sure, I'll just post your comment," and then it just doesn't. You know, in this day and age, with computers already so difficult to deal with, you just don't need one telling you that it will do the thing that seems simple, and then have it just NOT do it, for no reason other than pure spite. That's ridiculous--though it does have an official term: You can't get ye' flask syndrome (Erik that one's for you). So, I went on to my blog and checked this elitism out.

Here's what I did. I tried to post a comment to my web page without using my blogger.com id. Well, the thing is it didn't seem to work. That is, my blog did not change much. But then, the next day, it posted. So, there you go.

But back to Bob for a moment. Bob did not, in fact, do this. He instead opened up a blogger.com id, and then commented on my blog. In fact, what seems interesting is that Bob got a blogger.com id simply to post his comments on my blog. What does that mean?

Well, it means that Bob thought enough of my little blog here to go to all of that trouble--which is very complimentary. Thanks Bob. As Jason pointed out to me at one point, there are certain trepidations about posting a comment, not the least of which is when you get the mass e-mail from me and you realize that you only know about a third of the names of my friends. At that point, you may think that by posting a comment you may be overstepping your bounds. You may feel that the other people reading the blog don't want to hear your commentary, after all you don't know them. At least that's the way Jason felt--that commenting on my blog was akin to saying I know Monstro well enough to add my voice to his babble, and with that, the angst that somebody else will say, "nah unh, I know Monstro better than you." I figure if Jason, who was the best man at my wedding feels that way, chances are that others feel that way too.

Truth be told though, I really like it when people comment on my blog. It's good to here from them. That, and commentary makes this more like a conversation, rather than me just talking to myself. So, I invite you all to comment away. Do so anonymously if you'd like. The commentary should eventually post even if blogger.com is slower with non-members.

Also, if you've stumbled upon this blog, and you don't know me, well...feel free to comment too. This is after all a relatively open forum. And so to you Bob, I say this: I'm sorry if I was rude to you, I thought you were Jason. And welcome to what is my relatively low impact life.