My brain today is just in a place where it might as well be cutting school, smoking cigarettes and threatening the attending kids in the parking lot.

I haven’t been the same since the bells tolled high noon and we took the new girl to lunch. I had a tasty (and pricey) burger on the man’s dime. From that appropriately lengthed luncheon, which clocked a deuce of hours, through the afternnon, into the evening and on and on at home, I’ve needed coartoon toothpicks to pry the lids open.

Can’t even count the times I’ve done the whole heavy lids, falling head to neck snap “I’m awake,” maneuver while even trying to write this shit. Truth be told, though, I find reading my bullshit to be a fine sleep aid, so why not writing it?

Rather than fight it, I’m giving up. Maybe tomorrow or the weekend, I can keep my peepers alert enough to get past two three paragraphs.

Bit of a anxiety attack today. The mentor dude willing to provide me some first-class, double, no, maked that quadruple ‘A, ‘ mentoring is back from Europe and wanted to see what kind of writing I had done.

A fistful of crappy pages were surrendered. (Imagine this place with slightly more point and a whole lot less of the fucking profanity. I probably could’a’ doubled my output if I jammed the swears in the right way.)

He was gracious and great and talked to me like a real regular person, not the halfwit that I, in fact, am. I love it when people don’t seem to suspect the retardation thing.

I’m gonna be heeding pretty much everything he said and trying for some structure and build up to get the stories to hang onto it. One thing is maybe taking a look at spending some time letting folks know who I am and how I got here and all. You know, some kind of, I was born a wee baby and then shit happened and now I’m a me. But, interesting.

Imagine that. Me. Writing. Interesting. I’ll see what I can do.

One very quick note from today is that if I’m shaking your hand, and you and your family are worth not just millions but billions of American US currency dollar bills, no sweater vests, OK?

I met someone from the rarefied space of high-net worth individuals or Colbert Platinum, and he was dressed like Richie Rich or the young Ricky Schroder of Silver Spoons days. All I’m asking is if you can buy and sell me and my whole entire family for generations, don’t dress like one of the rich assholes from Caddyshack.

The second quick note from the day gets filed under what is done can’t be undone and freaks me the fuck out.

The helpful ex-prof guy at work who’s been away and told me to do some writing while he was gone is briefly back. I dropped off my paltrey offerings of prose, aka total crap, for his perusing. He’s planning to give me some feedback tomorrow afternoon.

I suspect he might just weep inconsolably, unable to find the words, “Jesus Christ, you talentless, delusional fuck, why did you put me through that?”

Talentless, uninteresting and delusional I may be, but I did surprise myself. Once I got the bullshit formatted, I had 43 pages spread over 2.5 or so chapters. Chapters with catchy names like “Fire” and “Funeral.”

The thing I think sucks to the core of writing is that totally horrible feeling of “Why am I putting myself through this?” Is there any other activity that makes you want to vomit with self-doubt so frequently?

We’re stationed in Bodega Bay, CA for the weekend. Tomorrow it will be the start of M.’s duathlon — biking and running. For the biking, it’s 51 miles, for the running, it’s 16. For me, it’s pausing to wonder if my partner is insane.

We’re staying where they filmed part of Hitchcock’s The Birds. There are a lot of them here, and they are menacing, what with the singing of the song birds and the whatever gulls do.

I’m uploading some pictures here. Including the circling buzzards. Oh, wait, I mean California condors.

Yeah, Bob said I couldn’t write about him. But, I got them issues with Bob. Bob and his non-firework ways.

Actually, Bob isn’t alone in not giving a rat’s ass for fireworks in this the Bay Area. I blame the fog and the risk of quick-spreading grass fires. The local news is reporting at least one fire right now.

I caught the tail end of some OK ‘works for an area where a 15-minute display with maybe four colors is considered exceptional. Fucking ‘tards.

I came home from Americana, softball drills and eating a shitload of things burnt over an outdoor fire and watched the Boston Esplanade show on cable. Truth is you don’t miss the fireworks in your own backyard until you move 3,000 miles from that yard.

I can forgive Bob his lack of fireworks enthusiasm which aided and abetted the barely seeing the tail end of some (and that involved running alongside a parking structure to get to a view beyond the roof of it). However, I am not sure I can forgive him for taking this shot with my own fucking camera.

Click my hideousness to see a gallery of our happy holiday. Boom.

Gotta get throught the breakfast M. prepared. Well, prepared in the sense of “toasted,” which ain’t exactly cooking.

I’m shivering with the anticipation of small-town kitsch in an upscale community. There’s a parade for the kiddies to decorate their bikes and trikes and wagons and all and head down the main street, which unfortunately in this cliched image is not actually called Main Street.

Witnessing this event will answer a question I haven’t been wondering, welll until now midway through this question, do munchkins still use crepe paper or have cheesy decorations evolved?

The best ever kid parade of my childhood didn’t involve the traditional yards of red, white and blue streamers. Nope, in my nostalgia, the source, no doubt, of my digging July 4th, was the Scituate parade.

Instead of patriotic colors, we wee ones dressed in Halloween costumes and marched through town. It was better than Halloween, though, since everyone was on summer vacation so you had some time to do it up right without schools and your parents’ jobs and shit getting in the way.

The highlight was turning the same corner, year after fucking year, the exact same row of ocean-facing cottages. There the judges would sit, and some local civic group handed each and every kiddie a small box of candy and a Kennedy half dollar.

Alas, a Google search indicates Scituate has no celebrations any more. Must have been the bonfires on the beach that killed it.

Today, though, maybe I’ll run into the douche supreme with four children today. Tell me if I’m an asshole busybody or a good fucking sport.

Last night, we rode our bikes over to a diner-type place with outdoor tables. Our quiet little dinner, and everyone else’s on the patio, was interrupted with the entrance of two parents and their four, blonde-ringleted moppets.

The boy, as every boy seems to now, clomped in on those wheeled sneakers, and he and two sisters wove there grimy little selves through the tables oblivious to other folks’ personal space. They settled at the table next to us. Oh, joy. They then continued talking in their outside voices.

The baby, it just kind of whined, howled and whinged unabatedly and inconsolably, even when they moved it from high chair to an inappropriately unstable regular chair tottering on the brick patio.

Somewhere during the meal, one of the little girls knocked her milkshake glass to the bricks, where it shattered with globs of frozen cream and broken glass. The parents left it there.

As the meal progressed the largest shard of glass migrated to directly below where the approximately 9-year-old girl’s foot barely shod in flip flop swung. Other shards and a lot of splinters had rolled over to just under the lummox of a dad’s flip flops. At one point, he swung his foot around grinding glass and milk into the stone.

They seemed so fucking oblivious that as we left, I pointed out that all of the glass was under their feet.

(I assumed they knew it was there because of the loud shattering noise when the glass hit the ground, but I didn’t know if they realized where all the glass had landed. It’s not like most 9-year-olds have the focus and memory to remind themselves to be careful about an accident that happened 45 minutes earlier. I imagined the girl jumping off her chair directly onto a bleeding gash wound.)

The man of the family, he didn’t look up at me, he didn’t thank me. Nope. He said, “Yeah, we know.”

Feebly, as you inevitably feel when your expected social contract is unmet, I tried to clarify. “Oh, I figured you knew, but I wasn’t sure if you could see where the glass landed, it’s right under your feet.”

“Yeah. It’s fine. We know.”

The mother-type chimed in, “Sometimes it’s just easier to leave it until we’re done.”

I rode my bike away hoping that dad sliced his toes upon exiting.

I also sympathized with the two Mexican dudes bussing and waiting the tables, who would now have to contend with smeared, ground glass and congealed milkshake among the french fries and napkins the kids were dropping as they ate.

Fuckers.

Yeah, it’s a nice bit of technology. I spent the last couple of days, letting a variety of curious folks at all levels of technology skills play around with it. Pretty much, it’s a compelling hunk of metal, glass and circuitry.

I think the ease of pressing brightly colored icons and the fun of sliding shit around on a virtual plane is just damn interesting. People want to touch it.

And, for the grumpy ass naysayers who are looking for the petition to change the world or the “blogosphere folks” who are labeling early adopters as callous, shallow, soulless, etc., get over your fucking selves. You got your deals, I got mine. Difference is, I’m not calling your values into question.

For the record, I give to charity and political organizations, work in a non-profit job that strives to make a difference, making a not-for-profit wage, tip pretty well at restaurants, read extensively and otherwise try not to be a fucking asshole. I don’t become an instant hypocrite by shopping.

I honestly believe all phone companies suck, and it’s all just a variety of suckitude. I’m not boycotting all products with obvious flaws, because I know everything has fucking glaring flaws. It’s a globalized and corrupt planet. You got to pick battles that might work, and so far product boycott has meant only someone else coming into the game.

One man’s Chinese sweatshop is another’s job to feed the family for another week. More importantly, no one yet knows the market impact of Apple entering the realm of AT&T. Jobs is notoriously secretive. The iPhone is locked today, like every other halfway decent phone I have purchased by the way, no one can see tomorrow.

After talking with an economist, a political scientist and the founder of a hot, “web 2.0” music site, I’m sleeping alright with my choice in technology.

Sad day yesterday, well Monday, I guess. You know rainy days and Mondays always get me down. And, it doesn’t rain so much here, so I focus my depression on Mondays.

Scooter Libby’s sentence was commuted, and Beverly Sills passed from the bounds of earth.

On the Scoot-man, all I can say is what the fuck and what kind of brass balls does GW have. Seriously, he’s like, “Fuck you, I’m in the home stretch, I can do whatever the fuck I want. Surge this.” If he doesn’t go down in history as the worst president ever, then as a country, a people, we have completely lost our collective soul.

For Beverly, I essentially tag two vaguish memories in my life. My ritual after school for many, many, many years was the afternoon talk shows they used to have. They were on TV. TV had like three channels that came in well on VHF, which I don’t fucking know what it means anymore.

Another cluster of shows were on UHF, again, no clue to what that abbreviates or acronyms. Those shows were usually repeats or local shows, and there were old movies, like creature doublefeatures and whatnot.

But, my addiction was shit like Dinah! and Mike Douglas and Merv. Come to think of it, that might very well be where I first saw the whole stand-up comedy thang.

Bevery Sills was a guest on those type of shows and was the antithesis of your basic opera diva cliche.

In that same vague reverie of seeing Beverly, I imagine Pat watching, as well. In the certainty of uncertain memory, I think there was enforced silence when she was first profiled on 60 Minutes some time in the mid-70s. Maybe. Kinda sorta. I could be making shit up.

Pat did like the local kid story. The Brooklyn girl who could sing her heart out. Or Arthur Ashe coming out of segregated neighborhoods to play a previously white-washed game.

The exception that proved that rule, I think was Barbra. Pat had no love for La Streisand, no matter the roots to riches story she might have lived.

It might have been the nose. Or maybe the schoolteacher in Pat just couldn’t abide the missing ‘A’ in her first name.

But, an earthy, down-to-earth, regular gal who could sing at the Met, that was a woman to admire. She was a real American. RIP, Bev.

Finally, enough of the story. Here’s my quick review. It’s not sheer perfection, a blissful moment of part orgasm and part heroin. Nope. It’s a pocket computer. A very fun to use, colorful device that makes calls and checks emails whilst playing music, displaying photos and way improving on tiny web browsing.

Here is my ultimate acid test. I take to gadgets with or without reading the manual and have used every kind of interface yet made. If I can figure it out, it ain’t no thing, since I generally have the patience.

M., though, hates that kind of shit. He’s impatient with phones and computers and like millions of others, he just wants stuff to make sense and to work. He has about 10 numbers stored in his cell and uses exactly none of the possible functions on his came with the service phone. On his last phone, he HATED the camera function, because he was forever taking accidental shots of his leg or the ground and couldn’t figure out which button he was clearly hitting whenever he took it from his pocket.

I handle all of the tech support around the house, including setting him up on his iPod Nano when he first gave it a whirl.

Combine all that kind of not giving a fuck aggravation at cell phones with his contact-lens wearing for distance that pretty much eliminates his reading anything small held in his hand, and you have a control group to judge the icon iPhone.

He could use all of the features quickly and totally dug it. When his contract is done, he very well might take the leap.

Maybe it’s not as extreme, but there is a similarity to the first time I went from command-line computing to using a mouse and a graphical user interface. Once you worked out the hand-eye coordination, going back to the command line seemed wrongly horse and buggy.