Now that I'm able to work on my laptop within coffee shops, I've decided that they are not exactly optimal for . . . well, work or thought. I can't think here. The idiotic chatter beside me, inane Christmas songs piping through the sound system which the Saint-Saens playing on my CD player is unable to drown out, the visual distractions of people coming and going… how is one to get ANYTHING done! I DID get my wireless connection working, so I CAN surf for porn, which is mindless enough for the coffee shop.

What should you do with a laptop when you want to go to the bathroom? I've often been asked to watch laptop while owners have gone to the bathroom, but that itself strikes me as perhaps more risky than just leaving it unattended. Why should the person sitting in the seat beside you be any more reliable than anyone else in the shop? And besides, you're essentially telling the person that you will be gone for several minutes, defenseless against opportunistic thieves.

This week the refrigerator at work has been especially full. Yesterday I got fed up and started tossing things into the garbage to make room for my (more important) food stuffs. It's mid-December and I found full half-gallon cartons of juice with expiration dates of May 6th! It's a cesspool of germs and bacteria! If it weren't my last week there, I'd be inclined to clean shop, so to speak, but as it is, they're on their own.

[Break of a few days. It's now Sunday, and I'm at the beginning of a two-week vacation. Change of venue: Spot Cafe.]

It's even louder at Spot. Good lord, the volumes in this place are going to make us all sign language users. I remember growing up with my step father, and the unreasonable level of the sound volume on the TV, which he kept at unreasonable levels at all times (and of course the TV was on at all times). It made me furious. Was he totally deaf? It was the beginning of my belief that the decibel levels in the U.S. are on the rise everywhere. I secretly believe this is strongly correlated to lowering intelligence, though it's probably just my personal antipathy for loud sounds. But go to the movie theater and tell me the sound is not too loud. At bars, coffee shops, music halls. In households everywhere the sound is too loud. In cars too. When you buy a stereo system, the sales person boasts of power, wattage. There's been a ratcheting up of sound over the last 20 years. Americans are lazy, loud, and crude. Everything has to be in their face (and ears). They want a direct, unmitigated sensory onslaught. They believe that's a virtue.

The other thing I dislike about Spot is their new coffee cup top design—the Traveler Plus top. Can anyone tell me how to use this stupid thing? It has knobs, slots, indentations, lips and protrusions, yet there doesn't seem to be a hole from which to actually sip the coffee. You can press things down, apparently to open slots, but you'd need a box cutter to actually open it. Well, the top is patented (it says in big capital letters "PATENTED CAUTION CONTENTS HOT"), so apparently the U.S. Patent Office understands the design. God bless them.

I had serious topics to discuss—my poor social skills, my standing in the gay community, the crappy time I had out last night, the way free time gets sucked up into other activities, the way I never seem to actually buckle down into any serious effort, blah blah blah, but I haven't the time right now (or the inclination) to discuss those now. I'm off to see Lord of the Rings.