I owe, I owe, its off to work I go...

This past weekend I lazed. Actually, that isn't exactly accurate. It suggests that I actively and aggressively engaged in lazing. More to the point I practiced the fine art of being lazy. In the oppressive heat of western Kentucky I laid low. I enjoyed the rigors of horizontal meditation while being bathed in near continuous air conditioning. We all know it is not the heat, it is the humanity.

In between near exhaustive bouts of napping I managed to consume some comfort-pulp-fiction. Now I do understand that there is a new title by William Gibson, Spook Country that is being met with rave reviews. (Why am I not surprised that Frank Paynter knows about the MacGuffin.) But that is not the sort of fiction that floats my boat when I am engaged in the fine art of loafing. Give me Robert B. Parker. Oh yeah.

Reading Parker is like watching television without the commercials and not having to learn how to use the remote.

You have to admit that that is the very depth of decadence. So I reread Cold Service just because I started it while killing time at our local Books-A-Million - one of the few decent places to get a real cup of coffee in this two-bit town. A swing through the new library landed me two more new titles that I hadn't seen - mostly 'cause I don't get out much. Hundred-Dollar Baby has Spenser back in the humanitarian saddle dealing with 'good-girl-gone-bad' April Kyle as she whines and deigns through the high and low life of Boston's upscale back alleys.

Those occupied most of Saturday and Sunday. Then the real work of Labor day began on Monday. A Jesse Stone tale called High Profile. No details to follow 'cause you will just have to read it for yourself. I will say that Parker has done an interesting thing by intertwining some of his more memorable characters into each other's lives.

Love's labors, not lost.

AFCAQTWCA

Any Fool Can Ask Questions the Wise Can't Answer

...and shouldn't have to. We have all had bosses, significant others and or teachers that insisted on asking questions. Questions that were not formulated to be answered but rather for the asking. So that the interrogator can feel empowered.

How often I have heard, "I was just asking..."

Little does it matter that a question asked demands an answer. Seldom is consideration given on the part of the interrogator how disruptive the demand might be.

"I was just asking. Sheeesh, you don't have to be so grumpy."

Little does it matter that a question can be asked without being responsible for the answer. How happy I would be if the interrogator had to pay in some fashion for every rhetorical or self-centered question asked.

The selfish and self-centered formulate questions to gain attention. It takes very little effort to formulate an interrogative sentence. Then when confronted with this antisocial behavior they claim that they were only trying to make conversation. That is like a bank robber suggesting that they are only trying to bolster the local economy by making a mandatory withdraw. I suggest that stealing is stealing.

Anyone have any questions?

Quechup Stains?

Quoth the Head Lemur

Quechup is the Clap of Social Networking. You get it from letting Quechup touch your address book.

Faceless in Kentucky

On the advice of sage council I cut my ties with Facebook. Since then I have felt just a slight tug to find out what my peers are doing. I assume that this 'tug' is the same feeling that keeps others coming back time and again. Undoubtedly it is the same feeling that serves as the adhesive in our larger social orders. I have to wonder if it is the same glue that binds Lemmings as they take their inexorable journey to the edge of the precipice?