So, thanks to my hard-charging, head-shaven 'pen testing' teacher, the week has become a death march, starting daily at 6am. Got to hop in the car soon and hope my favorite tunes + lots of nicotine = happy times.

One of the 6 books I've been reading, Svetlana Boym's 'The Future of Nostalgia', while prone to many of the failings of academic books generally (resembles, or more likely is, a thinly masked agglomeration of literature reviews, class papers, journal articles; wit & clever phrases used to mask intellectual laziness, facility, dishonesty, etc.) is still a lot like having a conversation with somebody who shares a lot of my preoccupations, something which doesn't happen very often these days. Like the man says, "It's hard to live in the country, in the present state of things."

Been back at my longstanding analytic of the concept of 'cool', it's a puzzler, no question about it. Consider, keeping in mind that the function of a concept is to slice the world into bits, the myriad senses of "not cool" or "uncool". Something to keep in mind, kids, maybe something to keep away from. Here's the thing- you & me, we're the slimy part on the bottom of a natural sponge, the live part, the part that makes the rest, the part that'll be scraped off and discarded before it's stocked in a market.

Love you folks, keep up the good work.