08.26.03 davis


i'd forgotten about the way california smells. hyde street in the city had flowering trees, and we were close enough to the wharf and north beach to catch breezes of ocean air and italian food. san francisco has nothing on davis, of course - quasi-rural as it is, i'm getting notes of orchards, mown alfalfa, mom's terrifyingly healthy garden, and some very promising thunderheads - but it's a nice thing to remember after months away. oddly, the moving-out-forever snifflies began when i got final whiffs of our corner store (windex, firewood, produce) and the laundromat.


my evil uncle-landlord did me the favor of obliterating what i remembered of the apartment itself. perpetual construction is still going strong, and he propped all of the doors to our place wide open (vile dung weasel) - there was a half-inch of sawdust and particulate crap on everything i own. he also painted the building, an ugly but stately grey lady, coral and baby-shit-brown. sometimes i wish rich people had good taste, or tastes similar to mine, so that i could vicariously enjoy the cool stuff they can afford. at other times my uncle really pleases me, for all the dough in the world doesn't get him much more than c. 1985 cocaine magnate furniture and a silo of smooth jazz. rock on, buddy.


'marriage ruins a beautiful mind'?
In a paper for the Journal of Research in Personality, Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, declared that evolutionary psychology explains why male scientists, at least, lose steam as they age. Scientists achieve great things, he argued, because, like rams butting heads on the African veldt, they're attempting to woo mates and ensure their genetic heritage. Once they marry, their drive to achieve declines.
implausible and deeply amusing - two great tastes that taste great together.

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