That AP English post had been rolling around in my head for the better part of a year and I finally took the time out to bring it to life - better late than never, eh? In due course I will write about the English classes I took in the 11th and 10th grades and perhaps even the 9th grade (that'll be as far back as I go, I promise) - maybe I can roll it all into a single post - but not today.
I've long held that English composition is the most important school subject, even more so than basic arithmetic. If you can write well, the world steps back and says, "Here is a person to be reckoned with." If you can't write well, the world sneers and asks, "Who is this illiterate hack?" You can quote me on this.
Check it out
I am at long last the proud carrier of a San Diego County Library Card! Armed with my passport and a Chase bank statement, I walked over to and into Vista's library and approached the librarian at the front desk and said, "I'd like to apply for a library card"; within a few minutes she had manufactured a card for me, on the spot - there was no waiting therefor to speak of - and now I am wired for checkout.
Vista's library has a decent music CD collection - I know that Alice Cooper's Love It to Death, David Bowie's Aladdin Sane, and The Stooges' Fun House are sitting there in the stacks, for example - and I'm really looking forward to getting into it. I've checked out my first CD, for Christina Aguilera's Lotus: look for a mini-review thereof in a subsequent entry.
Perambulatorily yours
Speaking of walking, I've been doing a lot of that lately. In late March my 88-year-old father dropped a bombshell-of-sorts on me: "I can't drive you to the store any longer." As I don't have a driver's license, I now hike to and from Walmart and to a lesser extent Vons several times a week to keep myself fed - several times because there's a limit to how much stuff I can carry home on a given trip. Lugging heavy bags of groceries around is somewhat hard on me physically, and the situation is exacerbated by Vista's hilly terrain - New Orleans was completely flat in comparison. Maybe it's time for me to get my act together and finally become a motorist, huh?
FYI: Vons has a local grocery delivery service but Walmart doesn't as far as I know.
Blog spam
As of this writing, Google has completely choked off the flow of spam to both of my Blogger blogs. I am thankful for this, although I do find it a bit strange that nothing at all is getting through. It couldn't be that no one is sending me spam anymore, could it?
I've thrown out most of my old blog spam but not all of it as some of those comments hold a certain 'historical resonance' for me and some of them amuse me, for example:
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Careering
At the end of "Have It Our Way", the last Reptile7 Metablog post prior to my departure from New Orleans, I concluded with:
Moving on, I'll tell you about the free résumé critique that the aforementioned QuintCareers.com did for me in our next episode.I never followed through on this, shame on me! In any case, look for me to bring my 'employment story' to the front burner in the not-too-distant future. BTW, although I'm currently not getting any blog spam, I do get a daily stream of employment-related email spam stemming from the submission of my résumé to QuintCareers.com - that's a separate post right there.
Grooveshark
I said I wasn't going to talk about Grooveshark anymore but let me quickly note that http://grooveshark.li/ has been shut down.
The Greater Dog sleeps for the summer
My own marker for the end of spring is not the Memorial Day weekend but rather the disappearance of Sirius in the southwestern sky, which has come to pass. In August you can see the Hunter begin to rise if you're willing to get up just before dawn...
