a general policy i have is never to talk to children as though they are children--rather, i think it is more polite to think of them as adults who happen to be little. perhaps i imagine it, but i usually feel like they like it that i never talk down to them.

what has made me think of this is all the recent talk about mt saint helens. when it blew up in 1980, i was just at the right age to be obsessed with it--you know, little boys, volcanos, these things practically go hand in hand.

i have a very vivid memory of going someplace with my dad, and meeting this guy who must have been fiftyish, who was interested to hear that i was so into volcanos. and he kept telling me things about "mt saint helena" errupting. welcome to the annoying feeling of some guy thinking he is "teaching" me things, while he cannot even get the name of the mountain right. the maddening thing is, for some time after i doubted myself--he's a grown-up, so it must be something i don't understand, some other volcano that happened to blow up around the same time. but deep down i knew he was not to be trusted. come on.

i absolutely hated it when adults did that "lecture" thing, and i would always know when they didn't have a clue. so now, i don't lecture to kids any more than i do anyone else. which might be too much, but hey, at least i try. . .

this is me petting a very small dog.

we're looking for an apartment right now, and i originally wrote a more philosophical paragraph about that, but it sounds rather bloglike in its execution. and we can't be bloglike. so hence, instead, me and princess littlebits.

it's raining mightily today. it's not a busy day, and the rain matches the mood, so i like it.

i stopped into aladdin sweet shop this afternoon, which is a bangladeshi hole-in-the-wall by our place. they are perpetually completely unprepared for any english speaker to come in and ask for anything, and they wait on you by large committee.

i asked for two singharas to eat while i walked to the bus. the guy nodded and gave me three, and wrapped them up in a bag for me. now, he knew how many i asked for. and i paid for the three. all right. sometimes i like this non-straightforward way the world works.

johnny ramone died today. that's really too bad. first joey, then dee dee, now this.

on the fark comments thread:

"This is like...when your grandma dies and your grandpa dies soon after. Except with more guitar."

best band ever. r.i.p.

this is a picture from the donna karan show mia has been working on for the past week. the show was yesterday. i like this picture, because you usually don't get to see all the cameras--you just see the model.

this title is from a tee-shirt i saw today. it was written within the outline of tennessee. i'm afraid it might be one of those urban outfitters shirts, but i'm not too wimpy to admit i liked it. because it's tennessee, duh.

i was walking around someone on the N platform today, and he went to adjust his backpack and elbowed me right in the mouth. like, bloody lip.

when i was in paris, i had a nice catch-all phrase that i could use for many purposes. that phrase was:

je suis une pomme de terre.

which means, of course, i am a potato. generally i used "pomme de terre" to exit situations in which someone was demanding a response from me, but i had no idea what they were talking about. you walk past a guy's store and he yells at you, you say "i'm a potato" and keep walking. a rastafarian demands you share some of his warm beer, you say "i'm a potato" and keep walking. see? i also used it to initiate conversation with a female bartender one time. many uses. et cetera.

i learned this technique from my friend ryan, who also had a phrase in spanish i forget, which basically meant "i am turning into the bathroom." great times.

so i was thrilled to find this. he's so much cooler than me, but we had the same idea.

so tonight i went past my stop on the bus. i was not drunk, and i was not alseep. i just looked up and thought to myself, yep that's my stop, and then the bus pulled away and i thought, hm wonder why i didn't get off.

so i had to get off on steinway street and walk from there. this route took me past the irish rover, which used to be my regular bar a couple years ago. these days i almost always go to 1020, which is on the upper west side by work. but before i was in school and before i had made friends, i always went to the irish rover in astoria.

my favorite atmosphere is perhaps the dark and anonymous background noise of a bar. i can get a lot done in a bar, like reading and studying and things like that. grading papers. whatever. i like the company of a large group of people, but generally i am not with any of these people and none of them are talking to me. they're just around and talking to each other, and i'm sort of in the middle of it.

so back in my first semester of grad school, i was in the irish rover reading one of my favorite books* statistical and thermal physics. this guy is sitting next to me. he's in his forties and has dark hair, and he's watching me in that way that you know he's eventually going to start talking to you. so he says, with a russified accent, that is a good book you are reading (or something). i say yeah, and he asks if he can see my pencil, and i shit you not, he writes me a statistical mechanics question to do. something having to do with counting microstates--basically a math question.

i do it, and he starts talking about growing up in the soviet union, and how he always studied physics, and about the schools there. i am sitting there surprised that this guy in the irish rover asked me a homework question, and he's going past the subject of science and telling me about how placement tests determined what he would be permitted to study. the guy keeps going on and on, and he eventually makes himself upset and he leaves me in a huff, saying excuse me i must go, or something like that. he left a full drink. i barely said anything.

*of course not.

on occasion, my favorite lyrics in songs are the ones i can't make out. there will be an entire coherent song, but also one line that for the life of you you cannot decipher. you'll make up something nonsensical to go there, while knowing that's not it, and this becomes sort of a pearl in the middle of the song. certainly, within it the truth lies. and you'd jump at the chance to know the real words, but when you find out you probably won't like it as much, and it will no longer be one of your favorite songs.

school is beginning, which has little bearing on my life, other than the fact that the elevators will soon be full and will stop at every floor, and so i will start taking the stairs again. despite that being the only tangible effect i will feel, i still like the flavor of a school just about to start. i suspect i will forever find such surroundings welcoming. for an emotional junkie, such is the chance for better tasting the overall feeling of fall, and the perpetual beginning--the time when you didn't know anybody, being at once both frightening and exciting.

you will see a lot of bicycles, and a lot of books, and you will smell food being cooked outside. the sun could always be going down, and you could sit by yourself and watch all the people, because they all seem to know each other and none of them know you, which is fine. you can imagine where they are all from and walk around a bit yourself, and listen to the little intensely personal pieces of conversation only to be found while threading through strangers on a college campus. i once heard, "i don't love him but i decided to sleep with him anyway." who was that?--the girl who said it was beautiful, but she's already gone, and you'll never really know what she was talking about. there are a lot of people, and you realize there are a lot of stories, and a lot of complicated lives.

"work" does not bring this out in people, but school is just vague enough to get people talking, and to get the world moving on only the most ambiguous of schedules. it gets chilly and the wind blows, and i like it.