where his civilizations, including our own

I check the thermometer in the window.

"Wow, is it really 80 degrees?" I ask myself.

I glance down to the neighboring yard below and see a nude man sitting on a lawn chair listening to his iPod.

"I guess it is," I conclude.

A real exchange from a language forum:

Person A: As I said elsewhere, there isn't "a bunch of examples for each" sound correspondence because the data set is limited.

Person B: then why are you drawing conclusions from it?

Person A: Because there's enough data to do it.



mmmhm.

I was at the bookstore trying to conlang, and at the table next to me was a woman being tutored in formal logic. It was pretty impossible not to hear their conversation. Apparently this is something you have to do to get into law school. What I got out of it was mostly that formal logic is REALLY stupid. I guess my dream of going to law school is shot.

I'm sure people who know about formal logic will find this laughable, but this is what their conversation sounded like to me:

student: [reading from textbook] "The continents all used to be one mass."
tutor: "So why did the continents used to be one mass?"
"It doesn't say why."
"Yes it does. It says the continents used to be one mass."
"That isn't why."
"Yes it is."
"Hang on, I'm trying to think about this logically." (I'm sure she meant she was trying to think of it SENSIBLY which is why she wasn't getting the answer in the book.)

ET CETERA

While they were talking she also kept taking more and more food and drinks out of her bag and putting them all over the small cafe table, until the tutor was like "...you seriously have to put some of this away." She was all, "No, no, I need it!"

She wanted to mix up some protein powder in water and drink it. The tutor said there were plastic cups, but she refused to use them because apparently drinking out of plastic cups causes endocrine disorders. She knew this because she was a nutritionist. She wanted to put the powder in her giant bottle of water (plastic bottles are okay?), but the tutor found this objectionable because he thought she would never be able to drink it all. Eventually he won and convinced her to drink it out of the plastic cup, but it took like 20 minutes.

The experience was enhanced by the tutor looking and acting like a younger version of Michael Kors.

On the train, two middle-aged businessmen in suits sat down in the seats in front of me. They sat very close to each other -- the trains seats give plenty of room here, more than an airplane, but they were sitting close. The one leaned in and began whispering to the other, covering with his hand. He had an expensive watch. They whispered back and forth for several stations, though with the noise of the train likely no one else could have heard them anyway. They smiled. There was a kid in a hoodie standing up by the door and looking at them dubiously.

The one got up to go, and as he did the other reached for his hand as if to shake, but it was the wrong hand and the wrong angle, and really he just cradled the other man's wrist for a moment. Their hands slipped apart and they smiled secretively again.

*

I had kind of forgotten that I did an entire Harvey Birdman mood theme. I think most of them are really good; there are a few that could probably be improved upon. I'm sure the series wasn't finished when I did it, so I could revisit some.

I certainly find Harvey Birdman wonderful, but I wonder where I found the motivation to complete such a project. My recollection is that most people had mood themes that pertained to their actual fandoms, but for some reason that never appealed to me.

The store where I work is on a very busy commercial drag with a lot of walking traffic. This is very different from my old store, which was right off a freeway exit and most people were coming in by driving.

( There are five homeless people that I see every day on my block. )