First order of business. Peter today pointed out some additions to the English lexicon that I've been meaning to mention for a while. It is a set of at least three of them, perhaps more. The three I have in mind might be written pointizz, thingizz and factizz. You can hear them in sentences such as "You know the thingizz is that you fight over the batter, and you know, the sugar shock afterwards" (Tom Cruise on baking cookies). Of course Language Log and others have beaten me to this by miles and even managed to get into debates about analyses of it, so I won't go on any longer.

Second order of business. I have in my possession a Timberland gift card worth $100, that I have no earthly use for. It can be used at any Timberland store in the United States or Puerto Rico. I'm willing to give it up for as little as $85. That's like Free Money! If you're interested but are not near a Timberland store I could even acquire some goods for you from the one here, and send them. But I think for that service I'd have to waive the discount.

Third order of business. A week or so ago I walked through Isham Park on the way to work and spotted a juvenile raptor of some sort, probably a hawk. It was eagerly hunting the squirrels and crows there, though without much success. It wasn't quite fast enough to swoop down on the squirrels without them zigging or zagging away. It didn't do a great job of hiding its intentions for them either. A few times it went for the crows, flying right into them as they went between trees. The crows seemed at most annoyed by this.

The other day the view from the lab window at work reminded me of Magritte's "The Empire of Light." The apparent cause was a mostly cloudy sky with a sizable gap around where the sun was setting.

Yesterday I saw the bright side of the apocalypse. I'm always sad when I think, yeah, the times I'm living in are alright, but I'll bet the future is going to be cooler, even if flying cars continue to be a mirage for a while. And yeah, current technology is pretty cool, but then pretty soon it'll be old hat, and within my lifetime it'll already be quaint and antique. I find myself increasingly feeling like a technology defeatist: whenever a particular good or service is expensive or difficult, rather than considering it precious or a cutting-edge challenge, I just think it would be nice to fast-forward to the time when this costs a negligible amount or takes 2 minutes.

But if the end is near, then not only do you have the honor of seeing it, but that means things won't actually get any cooler after you die, you get to see the zenith. To me that's pretty nice. Of course you also have the privilege of knowing that no one else got to see more than you did, that no one can dishonor you after you go, and other related narcissistic advantages. So maybe this is why people continue to engage in the seemingly high-risk, no-reward game of eschatology. They're just hoping for the best.

* * *

When I was young my dad would always try to get me to go outside and play by saying "there aren't going to be too many more days like this you know!", meaning such nice days this season. I always found this strange since, barring early death, to me there was a practically infinite number of these days remaining. Who cares if I experience them this season or next? My feelings on this have since changed, but only because I dislike winter so much that every time it's unseasonably warm, I feel like I've gained a point in an ongoing war. And I do relish engaging in some activities (mostly walking around) while it's warm that would become miserable trudges in the cold.

* * *

My company is about to move uptown a bit, and our new neighborhood of Riverdale/Kingsbridge (depending on how honest you want to be or how fancy you want to make it seem) is full of interesting characters. The other day four of us were on our way to lunch and a man walking the other way suddenly stopped in front of us and exclaimed "You guys are in step! That's good! I like that!" before continuing on.

But by far the most reliable source of amusement is the clientele of the OTB right next door. Tonight while we all inspected the results of our own paint job (of the floor), an overweight man with a cigarette hanging from his mouth opened our door and stuck his head in with a grin. He then pretended to be a robot by sticking his arms out and trying to walk into the door, while saying "BEEP BEEP BEEP." Coworker Steve interpreted the act as an impression of a character from Battlestar Galactica.

I've always been an appreciator of the Wiki concept, but I've never had the urge to actually contribute to them. Not until now. An entry at Wikipedia called List of self-referential songs misquotes one of the most important songs in my life, "El Scorcho": in place of

How stupid is it/I can't talk about it/I gotta sing about it/and make a record of/(my heart)

they have:

How stupid is it/I can't talk about it/I gotta sing about it/and make a record up

One might argue that the bigger issue is that these lyrics do not make the song self-referential, because they only refer to some record made by the author which may or may not be El Scorcho or Pinkerton. But personally the mistranscription bothers me a lot more. And yet, will I correct it? More likely I will weigh the options awhile before forgetting about it completely, and someone else will do it (at least that's what I'll tell myself while weighing).

The rest of the list is interesting, but it's also enormous because they chose to include every instance of "this song"* or variants of "so I wrote a song about it, called [title of this song]." This is good for a reference work, but not for an article which has any aim other than convincing you that this idea has been driven into the ground 12 times over.

Although many find it "cheap" or otherwise undesirable, I think self-reference is probably the key to intelligence and perhaps to the whole universe in some way. If this site were really about anything, self-reference is surely one of the things it would be about. And I do try to incorporate it into my songs. But I promise not to do so in any ways such as the aforementioned, that have been done sooo many times before.

*Not including, of course, instances in which "this" refers to a different, more local antecedent, such as "There's a song called [other title]/and this song is um...good." I think that list would be a lot shorter and equally interesting to me; if anyone can find any examples that belong on it, please let me know.