I have a new office, one entire wall is windows. Floor to ceiling view of the nicest part of the campus. I really lucked out here. I also have a birdfeeder outside my window so I get to watch little birds eating away at bits of seed. Important observations could be made about the eating habits of birds, or the social hierarchy something or other. But I made another observation here. Birds poop a lot. A whole hell of a lot. They aren’t terribly discreet about this, but they are fast so I don’t think most people notice. I have windows and time and I see things.
It would seem that every time a bird lands, it lifts its tail and shits. This is the life of a bird. Land. Shit. Land. Shit.
It strikes me that the thought cycle of a sparrow must be something like, “Hey my wings aren’t moving, let me evacuate my cloaca. Is that Phil messing with that finch? Are my wings moving? Doesn’t matter, I’ll relieve myself anyway. Do I like seeds? If I poop now, the answer will be yes.”
I am quite possibly the most important naturalist of the 21st century.

The other day I was using my favorite Time Warp dis:
“1984 called, they want your dance moves back…”
when my phone rang. It was 2001, they wanted my dis back.

In a rousing game of “Who Would You Rather Sleep With” on the way home from South Dakota, much was determined. In a contest between the Jolly Green Giant, purveyor of fresh and healthy vegetables, or Sam Houston, venerated Texas historical icon (in his giant white statue form, of course), the Green Man won based solely on his assumed politics.
Sam is just too republican for my tastes. Any man who wears a leafy green tunic and gigantic elf shoes has GOT to have political leanings similar to my own.
Park rangers and Vin Diesel seem to be the clear winners for the game, however.

Last night, in an effort to ‘set the mood’ I dug out some candles, set them about the room and lit them. One of the candles was from a Feng Shui gift set we had received some time ago. The candle was labelled “Earth” and I thought “Well, what sets the mood better than the planet we habitate?”.
I lit the candles (including my ‘Sagrado Corazon de Jesus’ candle, because you really can’t go wrong with that one) and waited patiently. Soon I detected a slight funk in the air. Not the good kind of funk that announces an evening of Barry White-frosted love. No, the kind of funk that makes you look suspiciously at the cats. The kind of funk that makes you investigate under the bed. THE KIND OF FUNK that makes you think you should change your underwear, even if they are clean.
I glowered at the cats, looked around the room, and sheepishly considered another shower when I realized what it was. THE EARTH SMELLED. Not the entire planet, but its waxy ambassador in my bedroom. Apparently, when one must consider the properties of Earth that should be distilled and made into a soothing candle, one should look no further than the one spot in the landfill where all cat litter is laid to rest. The essence of Earth is cat pee, my Feng Shui candle told me so.
The worst part, besides trying to maintain the mood in the midst of a feline urine assault is the fact that the candle was thrown out but the noxious odor remains as if to remind me that we all originate from the earth and cats hold supreme power over my little plot.

My book buying/borrowing has finally exceeded my time (and probably my brain’s capacity to maintain a coherent string of thoughts). This is my backlog of books to be read, in the order I found them on the shelves. A ‘*’ denotes a book that I have read previously and have recently purchased to re-read.
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
On Basilisk Station, David Weber
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking, Michael White
What Do you Care What Other People Think, Richard Feynman
Passage, Connie Willis
Night Lamp, Jack Vance
The Crucible of Creation, Conway Morris
We, Yevgeny Zamyatin*
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett*
Damned To Success, Hans Helmut Kurst
Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert
The Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking
My question is, what does this backlog say about me? Are these books indicative of my personality? Do they speak of my likes and dislikes? Are they in this perpetual backlog because I have been resisting reading them, and therefore reveal something more about myself than just a person who seems to have a lot of science and science fiction books?
If you don’t hear from me, you can assume I have drowned in a sea of words.