I loathe grocery shopping

When I was dating, few phrases made me cringe as much as the dreaded We need to talk. Looking back, I didn't hear it all that often, but when I did, I knew that what would insue would likely be a string of events leading to my frustration, confusion and immasculation. Strangely enough, the marital parallel to this has nothing to do with break-ups or strained relationships, yet for me it evokes the same psychological upset. I'm talking about that other dreaded phrase: I need you to pick up a few things at the grocery.

I didn't always fear the grocery store. Before I was married, I looked at the supermarket as a necessary but harmless venue to visit when staples were getting scarce. It served as a seemingly healthier alternative to fastfood, healthier because to a young single guy living on his own healthy food means having to turn on the oven before dinner as opposed to shouting into the clown. During those stretches when I wasn't dating anyone (it seemed like eons,) visiting the grocery store forced me to go somewhere other than home and work where I spent the bulk of my time. I would interact with people at the grocery store. Once I purchased a rose from the floral department and ostensibly left it at the register by accident. When the young and nubile cashier called to me that I had forgotten the flower, I announced, "It's for you," and smiled. As clever as I thought this was, it really never led to anything other than a nervous thank-you, so the next week I left the Don Giovanni mask at home and went back to having her ring up my soft-core men's magazines. What can I say? Just as the grocery had served as a healthy alternative to fastfood, so did eight-and-a-half-by-eleven glossies serve as a healthy alternative to actual dating. But I digress.

In all fairness to my adoring spouse, my distaste for the supermarket really has nothing to do with her. The root of the problem lies in the list, I think, or rather the things on the list and their location in the store. Before marriage, a trip to the grocery store was brief. There was never a list, because for most visits I could count all the things I'd need on one hand of a three-toed sloth. A typical visit would yield . . . well, pretty much what I'm consuming right now while my wife's at work and I'm at home, i.e. red wine and peanut M&Ms. Having grown up in the age of Saturday morning cartoons and MTV, I feasted on junk food, so I can easily locate the candy aisle. Wine is easy to find too. You just head to the neon Budweiser sign and step up a few notches. The whole trip could be completed in a matter of ten minutes.

Now, when I venture into the pandemonium we call Kroger, I usually have a list in tow that outlines with varying degrees of specificity the items I'm expected to bring home. This list isn't composed of just wine, women and peanut M&M's either. It lists things like whole wheat bagels, Inglehoffer™ mustard and two different kinds of shredded cheese. Then there are the non-food items like toilet paper, chapstick ("3 tubes"), and our prescriptions. Now sure, there were times I'd buy toilet paper as a single guy, but chapstick never. And God help me if I needed a prescription! Did I mention this list is front and back?

I used to think parking at the grocery store was a hassle because for some reason I take issue at having to park more than five spaces away from the entrance. I think, at least on a subconsious level, I see the parking lot as a large social paradigm indicative of a hierarchical class structure, and the farther away from the store one parks, the lower down on the chain one is. I used to be one of those people who would circle the lot over and over looking for the right spot. Now that most groceries have stooped to littering their lots with diaper ads disguised as designated spaces for expectant mothers, I'm most often assured a parking spot right up by the handicap loading zone. Why more shoppers don't pooh-pooh the occasional ostracism and looks of disdain I experience and park in these spots I'll never know, but as it stands, most people don't. Fine with me. I'm not apologetic. The most I've ever gotten is a tongue lashing from a woman who -- get this -- WAS PARKED IN THE FIRE LANE! I promptly educated her to the fact that only one of us was breaking the law. Enough said.

Certain items I can quickly and easily locate at the grocery store: produce, cokes, men's magazines, etc. These however account for an extremely small portion of the list I'm clutching concernedly in my hand each time I go. I usually will go in search of these items first, aisle by aisle, taking comfort and feeling self-assured for an ever-so-brief period in knowing where certain things are. Potatoes, milk, cokes, frozen pizzas, orange juice, cashier, exit, trunk. I don't have any problem with those. It's the other things like Chili-O's spice mix, salsa, the three tubes of chapstick. Where these and most other things are in the grocery store is beyond me. I try and match the desired item up with the directional signs hanging in each aisle, but for some reason I don't comprehend. Why is salsa in a different area than ketchup? Isn't salsa just ketchup with a Mexican accent? And the Chili-O's, shouldn't they be next to the soup? They're not. My wife, being the kind-hearted soul that she is, does remind me of certain idiocies in grocer logic. Canellini beans for instance are no closer to baked beans than they are jelly beans. "In the Mexican food aisle," she writes on my list. Sure enough, she's right. The canellini beans are right next to the tortillas, the albondigas and the Our Lady of Guadelupe novenas.

I have no problem asking a grocery store employee for help, but I've found that different people provide different levels of assistance. I usually seek out someone I've asked before and who's provided me with successful directions in the past. Have you ever noticed that grocery stores more than most other establishments extend the definition of diversity to people with mental disabilities? These people aren't Mensa geniuses, but I've often found they're the most willing to help, and if they can get me to the item I'm looking for, who cares what size bus they rode to school? On my most recent trip, my usual guy (flat face, upward slanting eyes, you get the picture) wasn't there so instead I asked a manager whose mug and bad haircutI recognized from that blown-up photo that greets you near the entrance. My demand was simple enough, I thought. I simply asked him where I might find paper towels. "Paper towels, " the dumpy manager said with a puzzled squint, "should be on the aisle just past the pickles, I think." Great! Thanks, Dickweed. If I don't know where the paper towels are, what makes you think I have the slightest clue where the pickles are? I swear, I think some of those people purposely set out to make me feel stupider than I already do.

Once I've located the correct aisle, I still need to locate the item itself. Furthermore, I then have to decide on a more pressing issue, that is whether I want to purchase the name brand or the more economical store brand. As a rule, I opt for the Kroger brand whenever possible. I don't care that my cookies aren't Keebler or my milk's not Mayfield. After twenty years of drinking only Diet Coke, I decided to switch to Kroger's diet cola. A twelve-pack of the name brand stuff sometimes goes for as much as $4.00, whereas a twelve-pack of the bootleg variety in the not-so-jazzy can costs a mere $2.12. And when it's on sale the price shoots down to $1.95. Having replaced my nicotine addiction with caffeine eight years ago, I go through anywhere between four and six cokes a day. Even at my lowest intake, I save almost $5.00 a week on beverage expenditure. That's $5.00 I can spend on toilet paper, which by the way I don't entrust to Kroger. Why should dancing bears have nicer bathroom tissue than I do?

Once my cart is loaded to the gills after nine or ten trips down the aisles and I've finally found everything on the list, I make my way to the registers. Without fail I usually wind up in the line behind a fellow shopper needing three price checks from the cashier in training who can't locate a barcode on a bag of dog food and doesn't know the produce code for grapes (it's 4022.) Sometimes I do this on purpose because young and dumb cashiers are more likely to accept coupons for items I didn't purchase. A young feckless cashier will happily zap all your coupons in a slapdash fashion without even noting that you're trying to pass off a Desitin coupon when you really bought the Kroger brand diaper cream at half the price. A more seasoned cashier will not only check to make sure you're buying the right brand but also to make sure you're not purchasing the 8-ounce can when your coupon says you have to buy the 12-ounce. Granny's line might move faster, but you pay for that convenience in lack of savings.

As soon as the last bag gets loaded into the trunk, I make a beeline for the house. I can't leave the grocery fast enough. I would even rather drive home on an empty tank than stop and get gas, I'm in such a hurry to get home. If at all possible I try and get the groceries put away before my wife returns. Cheese in the meat drawer; meat in the crisper drawer (I don't know why we organize our fridge this way but we do, and after 6 years of marriage I don't dare change the system now.) Toilet paper goes in the bathroom. Frosted animal crackers (the Nabisco rep had to find them for me) go in the pantry, and pizzas go in the freezer. In just a few minutes all things are put away. Moments later Elaine gets home, checks to make certain things are where they're supposed to be (they are . . . relatively). She rearranges a few things in the pantry, wanders into the bathroom and comes back into the kitchen. Then with a sad look on her face she asks, "You didn't get my chapstick?"

Shit.

Employees need written reminder to flush twice

Someone on the maintenance crew where I work has taken to affixing notices to the stalls in the men's bathroom. For several weeks now each of the two stalls has had a posted sign instructing visitors not to leave any waste or paper in the commode and to flush twice when necessary. Apparently some guys still weren't getting the hint because recently we were greeted with a new sign that reads:

Gentlemen:

Please do not leave paper or waste in the toilets. If necessary, please flush twice to clear the bowl.

Please do not leave the seat or floor wet. This is unsanitary and inconsiderate to others who use the facilities.

Thank you.

The maintenance lady, whose written English is apparently much better than her spoken English, didn't bother to take the old sign down before posting this new one. The two are just scotch taped to the wall side by side, both in large Times New Roman letters. If it had been me, I would have taped one to the inside of the stall door and one above the tank. That way regardless of the reason for one's visit, a person could still read the notice. That's just me.

I don't frequent the stalls unless someone is already at the urinal, so I can't vouch for their day-to-day cleanliness. However of the few times I have ventured into one, I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. As a rule, I don't have lengthy restroom visits at the workplace so I might not know if the seat was wet, and because I don't have lengthy restroom visits at the workplace, I probably wouldn't care if the seat were wet. Some things you just let ride. As for a wet floor, sure it's gross but how wet can it be? A drop here and there? It's not like people are stepping knee-deep in the stuff. Step over it. Then again, if our maintenance lady is having to get on her hands and knees to unstop a backed up toilet, maybe any amount of alien bodily fluid is too much to be face to face with. Anyway, my point is that I've yet to walk into the bathroom and found that it didn't meet my expectations. Are these signs really merited? Are the men in this building really so haphazard when it comes to elimination that they need to be reminded of what you'd think is just general common sense?

I discretely removed one of the signs from the bathroom for the sole purposes of bringing it back to my cube and copying it verbatim into my blog. Holding up the sign, I then flagged down a female coworker on her way back from the bathroom to ask her if the ladies' room also contained such explicit directives. She looked at me shamedly. "Do you mean to tell me you put your hands all over that paper with everybody else's fecal germs on it?" After she wiped the look of disgust off her face she went on to inform me that indeed the women too were subject to these gentle reminders, only theirs included additional warnings not to throw feminine products into the commode. I've seen similar signs in some unisex bathrooms. Again, do women really do that? Try and flush tampons down the toilet? Even the industrial flush has its limits.

Since I now have the one sign at my desk, I have a good mind to doctor it up or rewrite it altogether before posting it back in the stall. Maybe I could incorporate a little Charmin-inspired jingle of my own. Hey there, bear, you're not done yet. You better wipe that seat. Don't leave it wet. Hmm, is that a double entendre I see? Part of me wants to come up with something off beat and put it up there like PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING THE COPIER PAPER AS TOILET TISSUE or maybe PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE YOUR EMPLOYEE EVALUATION IN THE COMMODE. Or what about this: وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب ?

Come to think of it, maybe I should leave well enough alone. I like to think I enjoy a fairly wholesome reputation at work, and a stunt like that might jeopardize the image. Who knows how much havoc I've already caused just by taking down the one sign? Will the night watchman still know to flush twice if necessary? Besides, my coworkers have enough to worry about without having to put up with my shit.

Helium balloons -- gotta love 'em

This morning at work I walked into the break room to find the ceiling covered with helium balloons of assorted colors. I had been summoned there for a one-hour presentation on something that bore absolutely no relevance to my job duties, so instead of paying attention to the presenter I stared up at the balloons. Since childhood I've always liked balloons, helium balloons especially. There's something about the bright colors and squeaky sounds I think, or maybe it's the association with parties that makes me like them. Balloon animals intrigue me to a degree, but plain old round balloons are my balloon of choice. I prefer the rubbery ones over the metallic Mylar balloons. Call me a simpleton, but a bright red inflated balloon just makes me smile.

For Valentine's Day, members of some fund-raising committee walked around soliciting us to purchase a helium-filled heart shaped Mylar balloon for a fellow coworker. I declined, but someone apparently thought enough of me to cough up the dollar. I came to work that day and found the balloon in my cube. It was on a red ribbon weighted down by a gum-filled sucker. I kept the balloon all of Valentine's Day and then took it home to let it go and watch it float up into the clouds. Almost a week later, our building is still filled with these balloons, though now many of them are partially deflated and sad. While I like bright new balloons, wilting balloons are just depressing like dying flowers or a sad clown. I want to run down the rows of cubicles with scissors and snip the ribbons that hold the balloons hostage. I would gather the ribbons in my hand and lead the balloons outside. I work right by the interstate and I can just picture the looks on hundreds of people's faces as they watch red heart-shaped balloons float up into the air over I-85. Think of the diversion to Atlanta traffic this would create and how many smiles it would evoke!

Once when I was a third grader at Lawrenceville Elementary, every student was given a helium-filled balloon to which we were to attach a hand-written note giving our first name and the name of our teacher. Whoever found the note was asked to write back announcing that they had recovered the balloon. We all let our balloons go roughly at the same time. I held on to mine for a brief moment longer so I could more easily distinguish it from the hundreds of other balloons and follow its path into the sky. For the next couple weeks, students walked by a bulletin board in the front hall to see if someone had responded to their particular note. Someone wrote from as far away as South Carolina. My note never got a response, and I sometimes pictured my balloon coming down in a field or in the middle of the woods.

At the meeting today, if we asked the presenter a question we were awarded with a stress ball or some other office bawble to either display in our cubes or, in my case, discretely discard into the trash when no one was looking. Afterward when the crowd was filing out I grabbed the ribbon of one of the balloons. I'm sure these weren't meant for the taking, but no one was going to miss one. I marched it to my cube and tore off a sheet from my notepad and wrote Dear Recipient, Kindly email me at cocktailswithkevin@hotmail.com letting me know you found this note. Thanks, Kevin. I promptly took it outside, let it go, and watched it sail over the milieu of motorists wondering if I'd ever get a response.

Hints and tips for naming a baby

Somewhere in the midst of crib buying, nursery painting and gimmie-gimmie gift registering a more pertinent decision has to be made when expecting a baby, namely what to call the kid. My wife, Elaine, and I know from vicarious experience that this name game can be the source of indecision, frustration and sometimes even chastisement from well-meaning friends and family. A name follows a person through life. Pick the wrong name and you subject your kid to a childhood of finger pointing and playground ridicule. A good choice in names paves the way for memorable introductions and positive first impressions. This being our first, naming a kid is new territory for us. Nevertheless, there are some things we've learned in the process.

People are finicky about names for newborns. I'm no exception. Most know from having been an elementary schooler that a kid with an overly common name will have to go by his first name and last initial in school. I know from having taught elementary schoolers that while the teachers may say to the class "Johnny A" and "Johnny S", what they say to other teachers is "Johnny with the constant cold" and "Johnny with the crazy mom." Johnny's designated identifiers are seldom positive, so unless he's the only Johnny in the class, his commonly sweet name gets amended with a not so sweet characteristic. My rule of thumb is that if the name appears on the Top Ten Baby Names list, it’s out. Regardless of how nice a name Aidan and Dylon might be, I don’t want my child to be one of three Aidans or Dylons in class. We’re also expecting a daughter, so that makes Aidan or Dylon even less likely, but you get the point.

Naming a girl Dylon illustrates another point however. While we laugh at the lyrics to Johnny Cash’s “Boy Named Sue”, sadly there are people who in fact do such cruel things to their children. Let’s face it: when a girl is named Lynn, Leslie, Ariel, Dominique or Madison, she has a name that at worst might be looked at as androgynously trendy. When a boy has one of these names, he has a girl’s name. Remember the playground ridiculers mentioned earlier? He’s their first mark. Worse yet, classmates might rename the game Smear the Queer to Smear Leslie. Girls are generally not bound by the same restrictions, but many sources suggest giving Madison and Dakota girlish middle names just to clarify gender, if in fact they’re girls. If they’re not, well . . .they’re boys who have girls names. See above.

As a language geek, somebody who thinks in fricatives and plosives, I have other qualifications in a name. My last name begins with a B for instance, so I won’t want my daughter’s first name to end with a B. Granted, there aren’t many girls’ names that end in B (Deb is the only one that comes to mind), but Deb Black poses pronunciation problems. Will people hear Deb Black? Or Dehh Black or will they hear Deb Lack?

I also check for anagrams of new babies' names. An anagram is what you get when you rearrange the letters of a word or words. LATES is an anagram of STEAL for instance. My sister- and brother-in-law were at one time considering naming their baby an anagram of FETAL GREMLINS. They opted instead for an anagram of MELTING AFRICAN. My wife and I are considering one of THEREZ BILLY CLAMBAKE. Were we to have been expecting a boy, his anagram would have been BROADMINDED CLAW KICK. I'm not gifted enough to come up with these on my own. Instead I rely on wordsmith.org's anagram server. Even still, this is probably one of my eccentricities better characterized as a disorder.

Regarding the internet, there are several sources for baby names online that parents of yesteryear didn' have access to. It's easy to pull up the popular names, ethnic names, historical names and trendy names. The net is chocked full of people who enjoy nothing more than sharing their choices of names and asking for others' input on names. Often they come up with such jewels as Brayden, Makynzi, Karsyn, Kamaria and Jayln. Half the names these people throw out sound like characters in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. It's enough to make you puke!

Worth checking out though is the baby namer on oxygen.com. Not only will it tell you how high a name ranks in popularity, but it will also give drawbacks or what they call "teaser names" for a name. Gotta love these. Teasers for my name include Kevout, Seven, Kevie Wevie, Revvin' Kevin, Schmevin and Heavy Kevvy. This site is most enlightening. If you're a family member or friend, you can rest assured you will now never hear me call any of you Care Bear, Krusten, Droolia, Mattitude, Kyley Wyote or Philip the gas tank.

Preferences for naming babies vary from person to person. For every rule, there's a kindhearted soul out there whose name doesn't follow that rule. Before I step on too many more peoples' toes, let me just say that while I don't want my kid to have one of the top ten baby names, I've known some wonderful Emilies and Ashleys; there's a nice woman named Kevin who works at my voting poll; Bob Barker and Jeb Bush both could probably care less about the multiple bilabial plosives in their names; and though I've never met Orangello and Lorangelo, I'm sure they're great guys. As for teasing names, kids are going to tease regardless of someone's name. That being said, I'm giving MELTING AFRICAN'S mom fair warning. When I see her at the shower, I'm gonna shout Queenie, Queenie Caroline, Washed Her Hair in Turpentine. That one's just too good to pass up.

I want to pull out my cowlick

Burning inside me is a strong desire to pull out my cowlick. Looking at me, you probably wouldn't even be able to tell I have a cowlick, but I know it's there. Oh yes, it's there. It stands out ever so slightly, leaning defiantly at an abnormal angle against the other well behaved good little hairs. Like a weed in a rose garden it grows seemingly out of sheer spite, mocking the gardener/groomer who debates whether to prune around it or pull it out entirely. I had hoped one of the benefits of chemotherapeutic baldness would be that the cowlick would not grow back. Apparently weedkiller can wipe out both plants and cancer, but not unruly tufts of hair.

There is a scientific name for this. It's called trichotillomania (pronounced puhl' ing owt yoor hehr''). I'm not generally one for psychoanalytic labeling, much less self-imposing such labels, but this is one I can't readily deny. According to healthAtoZ.com (by the way, I strongly encourage you to obtain all pertinent health information from the innerweb) trichotillomania is thrown into a category called impulse control disorders along with things like kleptomania and pyromania. Wow! I feel like I ran a red light and have been thrown in with the serial murderers. I've just pulled out a few wayward hairs and I'm on the same level with thieves and firebugs?

I first acquired this habit when I was nine at which point I gradually pulled out enough hairs to create a bald spot on the top of my head about the size of a half-dollar. My teacher was disgusted by this and referred me to the school counselor because of it. I don't know that she and I were able to reach any remarkable discoveries. The appeal of pulling out my hair soon waned and it grew back. I can't recall why I did this. Some theorize that pulling out one's hair is associated with stress, but how much stress can a nine-year-old really have? Though, come to think of it, there were those times when I had to wait an entire week for the exciting conclusion of Diff'rent Strokes.

Some twenty years later I revisited pulling out my hair, only this time the target was my cowlick. I wanted to believe this was merely for purposes of beautification, but since later attempts to shave out the cowlick with an electric razor just didn't yield the same gratification as wincing and pulling, I can only assume that there is some psychotic reason I do this. Whether shaven or pulled out, extracting my cowlick really resulted in little if any esthetic improvement. Because it was shorter than the rest of my hair, it just stuck out even worse as it grew back. My hairdresser would admonish me each visit saying, "It's gonna grow back the same way." She was right.

Further evidence that this is a neurotic behavior and not just a harmless pastime is found in Dr. Steven Phillipson's paper Hair Pulling a.k.a. Trichotillomania: a simple habit or a complex diagnosis? You see, prior to pulling out hair, I spend several minutes trying to separate out the individual hairs that constitute my cowlick. Sometimes I stare in a mirror and determine that what I think of as my cowlick is actually two cowlicks, one small and one big, seperated one from the other by a few strands of hair that actually go where they're supposed to. At times I'll wrap them around my finger and just pull -- not pull them out, mind you. Just pull. I didn't think much of it until I read this in the good doctor's paper:

Prior to hair pulling, most persons engage in a self-stroking behavior otherwise known as the "grooming" response (i.e.,hair twirling, eyebrow caressing, pubic hair tweaking, etc.) This repetitive action sets the stage for finding the specific hair or clump of hairs that become the target for the future pull.

Yikes! I fit the profile to a T. Like I said, I'm really not into psycho-self-labeling or psycho-anyone-else-labeling for that matter. I'm constantly sickened by people touting their recent diagnoses of OCD, ADD or LMNOP, but even I have to admit there may be something to this. I wonder if the manifestation of the disorder lets up when the Moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars? In the meantime, I'll have to explore Trich.org and see what I can learn. With any luck I'll find a group of caring and cultish people in front of whom I can someday stand up and proudly announce, "My name is Kevin, and I'm a trichotillomaniac."

Search for interesting blogs yields few results

I recently have begun dedicating a portion of my work day to checking out other people's blogs. This is because until recently I suffered from blogroll envy. You know that sidebar on people's sites where they list the blogs of roughly a quarter of the world's population? Though many people out there have on their sites links to umptine million other bloggers, I only link to a select few. So with the assumption that there must be a slew of enjoyable blogs out there I'm not sharing, and worse yet not reading, I set out on a mission to find them and use them to extend my list of likable blogs.

I started with two local people whose stuff I find funny and witty. Between the two of them they had roughly sixty other blogs listed as affiliates. I clicked them, one by one, to uncover what I expected would be more funny witticisms. Baloney! What I found was a cyber string of blase drivel. Not all drivel was alike of course. Some was political drivel, some sophomoric drivel, and some was just plain vulgar drivel. How sad. What began as a novel way to express one's views via the internet has now become a breeding ground for boring drones, conspiracy theorists, and illiterate nitwits. It reminds me of the cyberfodder people used to send through their email. Remember the Neimann Marcus cookie recipe and all that fill-this-out-and-send-it-to-seventy-friends crap? That's what this is like.

I didn't keep score of the blogs I ran across in my fruitless search, but here's the breakdown. Lots of people write about nothing but their own dull lives. In and of itself, that's not bad. Most all of our lives are dull and reading about someone else's dull life can help satiate some voyeuristic tendencies. But people, when you're writing something you want someone else to read, jazz it up a little. We're not expecting illiteration and double entendres, but why not throw in some sentence variance and maybe the occasional adverb? A guy can only read so many blogs that read IwenttoworkmybossisajerkIneedanewjob before drowning in a puddle of his own drool. I've found more intriguing reading in the Yellow Pages.

Another thing you see a lot of is the political soapbox blog. Much of the stuff found on these blogs is simply rehashed versions of what you hear on talk radio. Each time I stumble across such a site, I have to fight the urge to leave a comment asking if the author has formulated any political opinions of his own. I swear I think most of these people just regurgitatie the same angry poli-rants posted by everyone in their sidebar of supposed noteworthy blogs. The political soapbox blog generally falls into one of two categories, either Bush sucks -- pass it on or Bush rocks -- pass it on. It's like a second-grade game of Telephone.

You know what else you see a lot of in blogdom? Profanity. I'm not offended by it, and sometimes it truly adds to the story. I pride myself on being quite the potty mouth at times, but posting locker room talk just so you can say you put naughty words on the innerwed is just plain stupid. Worse yet is that most of the profane parlance is from people trying to be funny. Vulgarity gets courtesy laughs at best. Most often it just detracts from what you're trying to say. Then again, some use it because they have nothing to say.

My conclusion is that many people are simply whoring out their blogs in the hopes that the affiliated blogger will return the favor resulting in both bloggers getting more hits and thus a slightly more inflated ego. It's like some huge mutual masturbatory cyber aggrandizement. Obviously I'm grateful to anyone who links to my blog, visits my blog, or leaves a comment. After all, I write my blog to advance my plan for world domination share something that people might enjoy reading or possibly rouse a response, but I'm not going to link to someone's blog if I find it overly dull, There are of course some blogs I find worthwhile. My proposed readings are limited to a sibling, a friend, a few locals, a few nonlocals and an admitted schizoid. The one thing these people all have in common is that they write stuff I truly enjoy reading.

If you've got a blog worth reading, I want to know about it.