what joy

to gallivant around the house with my nephew jasper. to smell the back of his head and smell absolutely nothing -- pure clean. to do the same for his butt and recoil in horror. to hold him in a superman position and fly him around the house, here to save the day.

maps

while flying to canada, i spent an hour or so listening to maps by the yeah yeah yeahs (thanks L). great song. really awesome video. but when you hear a song that much, you start to notice everything. and there is a very strange cymbal beeping sound at time 3:04 that is driving me bonkers. it kind of ruins the song for me.. just a little. i need to figure out why they put it in! here's the song:

Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

instinct

i love the sprint ad with the brooding, suave looking guy who, at the very end, gets a closeup and holds up the samsung phone and says "instinct" with much facial bravado. love it. and here i've captured a shot:

speaking of instincts, last night i debated at the exploratorium on the resolution: "whole genome scanning should be done through doctors" (or something along those lines). i don't have time to delve deep right now (hopefully i'll update this with more one of these days..), but i just wanted to share two things. first, steven pinker's article on the topic, and if you scroll to the end of this colbert repot, you'll see an interview with him which is very funny, but also touches on some of the major issues.

instinct.

the green bookmark

a long time ago, in a country not too far away, there lived a young high school student, circa grade 10. he was just exploring the idea of being close friends with the opposite sex, and he had happened upon a nice girl who seemed to be doing the same thing. they smiled and started talking to each other.

they would share weird little artifacts: strange books, odd objects, funny laughs. and talk on the phone for hours. there was one phone in his household, and his parents would pickup the phone and say "oh hi who are you talking to? i need to use the phone" and he would blush with embarassment (luckily impossible for her to see) and say "give me a minute dad!"

he would ride the bus to school and hope she would be on the same bus. it was a fun, exploratory time. 

at christmas they exchanged gifts. her gift to him was little women by louisa may alcott. inside the book was a simple, green piece of construction paper, fashioned in the shape of a bookmark.

he held the bookmark to his nose and inhaled -- the scent was floral, wonderful, and overpowering. in her letter to him, she noted that she mistakenly dropped a bottle of perfume on the bookmark. such a fantastic mistake to make!

years would pass, and he fell out of touch with his friend. he lost letters, the weird objects, perhaps even little women. but, he still has the bookmark to this day. and just today he sniffed at it, and the scent was gone. but it is still burned into his mind, something he won't forget.