Sour Power! Do you guys remember this stuff?!?!? Sugar, salt, and the right amount of flavored Kool Aid mix. Fill in Ziploc Bag and dip Sour Power until your money runs dry! We sold this shit for 5th grade Business Fair! I think we made $75!!! I'm going to go make some now!!

Mmmmm, that's good Sour Power. I definitely got gloriously sick many a time as a 12 yr old entrepreneur gorging myself on this stuff. Surprising they even let us sell it. Sour Power is not sanitary; everything you touch gets a saliva-salty-sugary-Kool aid touchup.

In 6th grade one day Calbano and I went to a discount store that no longer exists on Buttercup Creek Blvd. We bought $12 worth of gumball packs, each containing 5 gumballs the size you get out of a machine for a quarter. Each pack was 20 cents. 60 packs. The cashier lady asked us what we planned on doing with so much gum.

"We're going to sell it and make a profit!"
"You know that is illegal right?"
"No, how can that be illegal?"

The lady proceeded to expound on economic principles that we ultimately rejected. Calbano had an oversized army jacket equipped with a plethora of pockets. We sold every last one of those packs for $1 each. We had repeat customers. The bottom of his jacket hovered 4 inches over his Airwalks. You could just barely make out the Jncos. We walked away from that enterprise with $60, $30 each. It was a good week.

On South 1st street, not far from Town Lake, quite obscure and nearly escaping identification, lies G & S Lounge. A very homey place run by a hispanic guy named Jimmy who lets his two dogs roam all night, the dive bar is a far cry from the usual scene at 6th. It's fully equipped with the grandest array of antiquated arcade machines, pool tables, and backdoor patio tables for smoke and easy discourse. And the amenities don't stop there. Free popcorn and freezer-chilled mugs compliment the widest selection of imports and domestics one could hope for. The place has found a warm spot in my heart.

After an extended hiatus from running due to none other than the aforementioned biking incident, I have resumed. And it is great; I do love to run. Especially in the rain.

to go see the Dark Knight.

I'm jealous of people of the future. Why? They will have better sex. The further into the future the people, the better sex they are going to have. Outrageous! Unfortunate! True!

Anything that makes sexual intercourse more enjoyable will never be selected against. Surely this is the reason why sex is enjoyable in the first place, as a (fantastic) incentive to procreate. Therefore, it is likely to assume that sex is becoming more and more pleasureable. Hence the envy of those future nymphos and satyrs.

On the other hand, sex must have been less pleasureable for our ancestors. Weird. Like there was only a vague interest to bone. Maybe they half-assed it.

Our second to last day we punted the river Thames. That is, we enjoyed an outing of punting, that is, pushed a pole against the river bottom to propel the punt, that is, a shallow boat having a flat bottom and square ends. Healthy relaxation on a simple water-going vessel wine accompanied. Throw in rare Oxford sunshine. Terrific. The trip all in all was, to quote, epic.

Several hours of flight, little sleep, screaming babies, bacon and egg breakfast tacos. 3 of those blow, 1 reigns.

Arrived with thoughts of sleep but was met with James, Rick, and Jake inspired fossil hunting and a trip southward with James to pick up his $740 92 Corolla.

A couple days ago we returned from an amazing roadtrip through Scotland. Truly a special place. The landscape is covered with green and livestock everywhere you look. And the coast is never far. We stopped at St. Andrews and the Dunnottar Castle, which both overlook the North Sea, and both among the most beautiful places we've seen. Our last day we spent at Loch Ness driving along the lake and viewing some waterfalls and old bridges. All recommended.

It is silly to attach undue significance to words. The most notable example is cussing, cursing, cuss words, curse words. These words often carry the sense that they should not be uttered, for their own sake, regardless of circumstance. This is stupid. Today people are increasingly using them for emphasis, as an adverb. "It is so fucking hot out" expresses the same sentiment as "It is really really hot out," and arguably better. Some will retort that these words have connotations that involve something socially taboo. That pretentious dynamic is waning, happily so.

The heart of the matter is that it is the tone and attitude in which one expresses that is important, not which specific word or phoneme is uttered. In the movie Three Men and a Baby one of the dads is found reading a murder recap in the news to the infant, and one of the other dads asks him why he's doing that. He replies in the same tone in which he is reading, "It isn't the story itself that matters, it is how you read it."

Two days ago we cavorted around London and it was enjoyable. We strolled on the Thames, so much larger there than here in Oxford, and in the modern Tate museum. Then we passed out heavily on the return bus. The previous night of heavy drinking prolly contributed to heavily passing out. Yesterday, America Day, we got drunk and listened to hits of the 90s. Then we played ping pong at the park. Inebriation lends oneself to exponential prospect of injury, as both Tony and I have sustained serious such injuries on our feet, mine resulting from a ghastly bike wreck. It is likely that I will never wear sandals on a bicycle again. We've also been playing Scrabble which is a terrific game.

Yesterday we watched the Russian bear, Marat Safin, defeat the Spaniard Feliciano Lopez in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. It was a great experience and we were lucky to get into the queue early enough to get into Court No. 1. There was a spectrum of people there, ranging from the ultimate affluent to people who just wanted to get drunk at a big party. It reminded me a lot of the Kentucky Derby and I imagine other sporting events like major golf championships are similar. The pound wrecks havoc on the wallet.