Write On Your Blog, Not On Your Butt

I’ve taken a few weeks of vacation to sort out my house (henceforth referred to as The Compound), prepare for Wacky Road Trip IV ™, and clear my head. I, with the help of Broken Little Person Sitting On A Tree Limb, have done much furniture shopping. It amazes me how much you can pay for a simple platform to place your ass on.

I sat on Library Mall yesterday, facing up State Street with a view of Madison’s capitol building. When I first walked onto the mall, I came to realize that I was standing on a big, ten foot wide chalk-drawn swastika! My first thought was, ‘This is odd for Madison, and stranger still on campus.’ My second thought was, ‘So, here I am, a guy with a shaved head, standing on a ten foot wide swastika. This can’t look good.’ I removed myself from the swastika and sat down nearby. (I took a closer look later, the swastika was in a circle with a line through it, it was for a rally against hate groups.)

Initially I was drinking coffee and reading Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Rendezvous With Rama’, but then the people watching became too interesting so I put the book down and just gave in to it.

A woman sat to my left, carefully placed some religious pamphlets around her and pulled her guitar out of it’s case. Oh boy, I thought, this could be really, really bad. She strummed and sang and surprisingly she had a high clear voice with which she sang some hymnish tunes. ‘Blessed be the merciful, blessed be the peacemakers, something, something, something, blah, blah, for they will be killed.’ It is unfortunate that my attention wandered to a woman who walked by, whose black shorts declared ‘I HEART NY.’ I considered asking the Hymnster, ‘Uh, I apologize, I was distracted by that woman’s butt-message, which, similar to your song, was a message of love. Could you clarify who exactly is going to be killed?’ But, another guy walked over to the Hymnster and dove right into a theological debate with her.

I proceeded to focus my attention on the heat-dressed women. Saw some hot muslim women; hot because they were wearing head coverings and long sleeves and it was a hot day. They may or may not have been ‘hot’ as my people use this word, but again, they were all covered up, so who can tell? Lot’s of women with Ipods, hardly any men sporting them. Several women were sporting shorts with butt-messages, but like the Ipods, no men with butt-messages that I noted. For whatever record you’re keeping, I’m not going to feel badly about reading something someone has on their body. And I’m not going to feel badly about reading it two or three times. Or however many times it takes!

I enjoyed watching bicyclists race up to the signs stating: ‘No Bicycle Riding on Sidewalk’. Some abided this decree; others stuck it to The Man and slalomed through the brightly painted juice vendors at ridiculous speeds.

A very relaxing morning indeed! I could continue, but you get the idea. I’m on vacation. I’m relaxing and being somewhat productive. Tomorrow I leave on Wacky Road Trip IV ™, so I won’t be posting for at least a week. Two thousand miles of road, three days in Seattle, then two thousand more miles of road. Sweet. Could this vacation be any more relaxing?