Tonight, I am going to a Converse store that sells only Converse. It will be a pilgrimage, or a quest - I haven't decided. But either way I shall come back with shoes, which I shall put on my feet.

Last week, my mother showed me a booklet of coupons for school supplies from an office supply store. "Sexy," is what I said to her in response. Every once in a while I like to surprise her, but not by calling from the ER, a police station, or an abandoned building. She thought this exchange was amusing enough to relate to her colleagues at the Passionist Bros. Catholic retreat center where she works.

Yesterday I promised Mister Bones that we would make him new peanut butter dessert cookies and sew the squeaker heart back into his moose. The moose is closely related to his camel-with-two-humps-and-no-head, because apparently in the world of dog toys moose and camels are in the same family, and he'd had it for approximately five minutes before he'd ripped its heart out. Anyway, I had the genius idea of taking a nap from 1045 am to 1145 am, when I was supposed to wake up to continue the process of waterproofing my green messenger bag. Instead, I woke up sometime around 11 pm. This may have had something to do with not sleeping in a few days, but now I have so many things to today - all of yesterdays thing and all of todays things. But I can't find the upholstery thread I need in order to sew together the Moose with no heart, which means that so far this enterprise isn't going well.

The day before yesterday I seized on what little free time my father had to make him go with me to buy Hello Kitty notebooks for school. Remember kids: hunting for Hello Kitty school supplies is always five hundred times more fun with a whiny mexican who pretends he doesn't want to be there but actually does! So now I have five Hello Kitty notebooks which will undoubtedly unsettle some of my classmates and professors while also making my classroom experience exponentially more amusing.

Some of them have pink pages with little apple & Hello Kitty designs in a slightly darker pink. I shall purchase some no nonsense black clicky pens to write on them - the kind I liked to use in Chem, Physics, and Calc. I shall also have to purchase some pen refills for my Hello Kitty pens for use on those days when the combination of Hello Kitty Pen with Hello Kitty notebook is more amusing than the combination of no nonsense black clicky pen with Hello Kitty notebook. Good times. Accompanying this post is a particularly imposing photo of Healy Hall at Georgetown. Hello Kitty school supplies are also amusing in combination with Healy - I would know. Also, for the record - my father was the one who spotted the Hello Kitty washcloths. I didn't even know they were there.

I never want to hear the words "yule ball dress" ever again; if I do, it will be too soon. Also I keep dreaming about blueberry free coffee shops. Apparently this is the form my withdrawal has now taken - it's been two and a half months since I've had coffee, but the start of school is so close I can smell it. 'It' = the coffee, of course.

I might be a little bit exceedingly fascinated by words. Specifically, letters. There is the arranging of letters into words, and the arranging of words into texts, also. I like information and the forms information takes. I like patterns, especially patterns that don't always look like patterns immediately. This explains why half of my day yesterday disappeared into the black hole that is Wordle, and why even now I run the risk of losing the rest of today just by writing about it. My ability to get easily distracted by text also explains why I have a whole new blog design based around a word cloud. It's the product of some work by ee cummings, Allen Ginsberg, Amy Lowell, and whoever is responsible for the Song of Songs.

But, I cannot get distracted today - I must find my C.V.! I know I have one around here somewhere.

A last note on the blog design - this template is actually video game inspired. The header it comes with has little vintage video game characters running around a vintage video game world. The little squares are supposed to be pixels, I suppose, but out of context they look more like tiles to me. The remind me of subway tiles, or tiny little tiles in a specific mosaic that I've forgotten the name and location of. I might actually keep this background for more than a few months. The repeating pattern in the red grid system is rather aesthetically soothing.

Today it was actually not-hot here. It rained all night and part of the morning, and the temperature was below 90 ˚F well into the afternoon. Unfortunately, I didn't realize until too late. Another consequence of the rain: Mister Bones just knew in his doggy heart of hearts that today was the one day when he would stay awake! This is in contrast to every other day of the year, when he happily sleeps the morning and afternoon away, dead to the world. But not today: he would go outside, frolic, run about, play with his found ball collection, pay visits to all the people in the neighbourhood he knows that we don't know, and just generally be social and active. Of course, he could do none of these things because there was mud outside. I think the aversion to mud may have something to do with toes - more on this later. Instead, he was forced to sing mournful whale songs all day, fling himself around while sighing heavily, and refuse to be comforted. He never feels inclined to activity on days when it doesn't rain, naturally.

The Op-Ed is published on CNN.

In this Op-Ed, McCain talks about Obama a lot. He writes about Obama much more than he writes about himself, actually, and after a while my eyes got tired of looking at the words 'Senator Obama'. I didn't know that could happen.

The other thing that struck me, and My-Unnamed-Compatriot, was that this piece is rather grammatically incorrect. It isn't just rather grammatically incorrect for something submitted to a newspaper, something submitted to a newspaper by a high profile person, or something submitted to a newspaper by a high profile person who has a staff who ought to make sure that things are grammatically correct. Oh no, it is grammatically incorrect in general. As if to add insult to injury, the parts which aren't grammatically incorrect have tortured syntax.

Are these the communication skills we want representing our country? What about face to face meetings that have real consequences? If this is what McCain gives us when he's had a chance to proof read it and run it by (or have it written by) a staff, I have no hope for his extemporaneous communication skills.

You know, it occurs to me that I don't have a staff. My-Unnamed-Compatriot doesn't have a staff either. We write papers where our sentences spring from our brains fully formed, able to be parsed, and grammatically correct. We do this on the first try, no less! Proof reading and revision is for style, not syntax. Given his age, I suspect that at some point McCain attended a school where grammar was taught as its own subject. I can't speak for My-Unnamed-Compatriot on this point, but I know that none of my schools did this. We were left to absorb what we could through osmosis.

He uses quotes a lot. McCain puts things in quotes even when they are only one or two words; this is very thirteen year old girl. This is the kind of thing you're supposed to grow out of in junior high.

I wouldn't submit this for a writing assignment in a 0-- level elective class.

My-Unnamed-Compatriot: "He sounds like Dr. Evil. He's totally becoming Dr. Evil! Every day he looks more like him."

The refusal to resubmit is childish. Especially, it is unfair to people who are interested in an articulated piece about his perspective on Iraq, including why said perspective doesn't involve timetables.

During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be "very dangerous."

Again with the unnecessary quotes! I am forced to conclude that those are either scare quotes, or no one working for McCain can figure out a way to restate 'very dangerous' so as to avoid plagiarism. My-Unnamed-Compatriot has this to offer: "total improper use of a colon - that's horrible."

My-Unnamed-Compatriot, again: "Oh my god and the last paragraph is so ridiculous ... barely a conclusion."

I couldn't have put that better. McCain seems to have really odd ideas about winning and losing in the context of war, and the significance of each. This is insultingly and dangerously superficial at best.

More on the last paragraph by My-Unnamed-Compatriot: The last paragraph is a "last fluttering gasp - grasping at all these scary words."

This is Box Monster just before it rose again.


However - Mister Bones was keeping watch, and set about conquering it!


More conquering!


Permanently vanquished!


Still vanquished!


As if it weren't enough that Box Monster could rise again at will until permanently vanquished, Box Monster seems to have evolved enough to procreate. This smaller blue box is apparently the Spawn Of Box Monster!


Mister Bones can multitask! Here, he holds down the carcass of Box Monster while combating the Spawn Of Box Monster.

She moves about six inches every five minutes. Every time I look into the hallway she is sitting in a different spot; it's sort of like watching someone walk towards you with a slow strobe light on. Later I plan to post The Rules of Portland and The Rules of Toes. But first I have to begin the process of making cookies with a recipe recently highlighted in the NYTimes.

Just because I want everyone to be clear on this, I know that Torchwood has the hugest plot holes ever. They aren't so much plot holes as they are gaping maws of DOOM. This, in addition to the general overwrought silliness, is why I think the show is funny and keep watching it.