It's The Uncommonly Common People.

I guess being in Seattle is like being a tourist in your own town. I'm not familiar with all the local customs. Take automated cashiers at the grocery store for example. I like many Angelenos am far too precious and grand to actually scan and bag the groceries myself. But there was someone there willing to show me the means to improve my life through dimminished reliance on the service industry. Something about teaching someone how to fish. By the time we got to my selection of seasonal ales, however, it was clear that this new piece of consumer culture driven technology was no time saver. Attempting to bypass the age verification proved too chalenging even for my able "assistant". I was standing there staring at the screen listening to these overlapping artifical voices saying "please scan next item", "thank you", "please enter customer information", "please remove item". They were voices from Orwell, and I honestly believe they were meant to sound that way. I couldn't divine much over the din, but what I could make out sounded a lot like "fear for your child". It was all a little much even for me.

But there have been other things as well. Got my hair did proper. I'm in the middle of an ebay showdown, and have had a couple of thrift store smack downs. Been to the largest REI you have ever; where every garment comes with mounds and mounds of literature, and the store itself is a nature preserve. I'm not really sure about the nature preserve, but it was impressive to say the least. I ate an entire crab by myself just like an inhabitant of Skara Brae might have just with much more fancy equipment, and wih a little better ale. I baked a Tofurky which was a disaster on so many many levels, and like so many others I've been scouring the city for the perfect gift for the perfect carbie.
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RoRo was on 60 Minutes Sunday night. I was in the middle of tending to a doomed tofurky so I missed a great deal of it, but he apparently adamantly denies ever taking steroids, is quite disappointed with the whole World Series announcement debacle, and he revealed that from an early age he has always been obsessed with money. It was quite revealing.
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The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has detected massive amounts of radiation emmanating from a super massive black hole. The jets of raditation appear to be bombarding a neighboring galaxy which is the first time something like this has been observed. I've heard that there may be a super massive black hole in our galaxy, and perhaps all galaxies. The effect on the neighboring galaxy may be severe with a massive influx of x-ray and gamma ray radition. Just another mind-boggling and curious thing that seems to go on all around us as we cary on with our lives blissfully unaware of this, and that, and french toast.