August 4 1998, Tuesday

As I waited impatiently for the correct bank person to get around to me, I sat in one of those folksy waiting areas common to banks and dental offices. Across from me were two little girls dressed identically, though they were obviously not identical twins. A neck-brace-wearing adult, who looked to be their grandmother, walked back and forth between the two little girls and an even older woman, a great grandmother perhaps, who was dealing with her IRA account. It crossed my mind that there are probably some pathetic lonely people who contrive bank business (unnecessary withdrawals and deposits on a frequent basis) just to interact with bank personnel. I felt sorry for such people even though to me they were just hypothetical constructs in my head.

The Dart functioned flawlessly both going to and coming from Staunton. I noticed the temperature gauge on the dashboard fluctuates a lot more under the new gasket paradigm.

I

  did a lot of mindless work on the dam, I guess so I'll have a fond memory of it after I leave (and I can see how much it has deteriorated whenever I next return). Scooping up sand, gravel and stones also served to clean my fingernails and hands, still dirty from working on my Dodge Dart. In the picture above you can see a part of the dam with a conventional shovel (for scale). In the background are the barn and chicken coop.

S

ome email came confirming that I was featured as the cover story on the latest issue of the C-ville Weekly, Charlottesville's free arts and entertainment tabloid, which came out today. I was featured for these musings, of course. That was the reason Jen Fariello was taking pictures of me a few weeks ago. Interestingly, C-ville never bothered to interview me; I guess they gleaned what they needed from within my site.

What's more, there was lots of national news focused on Charlottesville today. On ABC's World News Tonight there were excerpts of random people interviews conducted on the Downtown Mall concerning two babies "switched at birth" at the university hospital. While, according to ABC, this story is "the buzz" today in Charlottesville and probably overshadowing discussion of the C-ville cover article, perhaps an ABC reporter thumbed through a copy of the C-ville and began incubating an idea for a future scoop. As an unabashed self-promoter, I'm given to thinking these things.

But, similar to Scott's feelings as expressed via email last night, it's also intensely embarrassing.

And Wacky Jen admitted today by email that her recent crush on me was the result of something I once said about the Carolina Parakeet.

T

o read this guy, I shouldn't have linked to Mr. Cut While Shaving. Was it really so bad as all that? One thing I really hate is when opportunistic blow-hards define everything touching a taboo subject as also being tainted with taboo. Such people aren't self-righteous enough with just the taboo issues, they have to prove how upstanding they are by drafting the border of the taboo subject field much farther out than it's usually defined. At least Mr. Cut While Shaving admits his feelings without acting on them. That, it would seem to me, is a positive thing. Bottling up sexual desires does no one any good whatsoever.

I surf the web a lot these days, and it doesn't take long before my Windows 95 taskbar is chock full of little Netscape icons. But they're all just those stupid Geocities pop-ups. Something needs to be done; this is no less than pollution of my desktop. Surely there's a utility that could be written to automatically kill off these evil spawns of Satan.