Random observations

Now when I roast cut up red or yellow potatoes with dribbles of olive oil I sometimes add a cut up sweet potato too - delicious!

for no apparent reason, at grocery stores, things happen in patterns. I will not get any photo cake orders for a week, then get three within an hour all wanting them at the same time.

Everyone also storms the checkout counter in hordes. I'd call itsimple herd behavior if the orders didn't happen the same way.

Also, there are a lot of birthdays out of the blue, then none...

I made a couple of curries with sweet potatoes a couple of weeks ago and thought I was pretty clever. Then ordered the same thing from a Lao take-out restaurant yesterday. Ah, well.

Every woman, when she tries something on in front of a mirror, makes the same pivoting movement on one toe, turning in the knee and bringing the hip around.

OK, so how rude can you get? There's this girl, a big-breasted girl I admit, she's got a black t-shirt on, and on the black t-shirt there are white letters. What do the white letters say, when your eye is caught by them and you read what's to be read? "Have a nice day somewhere else".

What the ****? Hey, it's you who decides to draw my attention to there by wearing a shirt that ******* says something - whats your ******* problem?!

Now I may be a tad sensitive here, because I come past an example of this every single morning when I walk to work. I walk down a small old-town sidestreet, and there's a cute row of houses. Windows on floor level. One girl (for some reason I am absolutely 100% sure it must be a girl) has a row of brightly coloured postcards in her window, about right there where you'd normally have one of those ribbed or tinted glass thingies that you hang halfway up your window to prevent people from looking in. Now these postcards have the picture side turned outside - to us, note. Now perhaps I'm the only friggin' guy who instinctively reads any and every sign, poster and slogan that crosses through my eyesight, but if I walk past there, I automatically see these postcards. Every day. One of 'em is metallic coloured, and in big letters it says: "Can you see it?!"

Now what the ****? If you dont want people to look to or in your window, then you shouldn't hang all kinds of random **** in there, turned towards the passers-by for chrissakes. If you do - itself a pathological symptom of something or other, I'm sure - then who the **** you think you are to then tell people off about looking?

Is it vanity - or is it just mindboggling stupidity? Eh?

Maybe it's neither. Maybe she wanted to give the peeping Toms something besides her to look at! (A little more creative than the "ribbed/tinted glass thingies," too.)

Yeh, but why be all indignant about them ("kan je het zien?" or "can you see it!?" is really quite rude) for looking at something she (he?) herself put up there - facing outwards?

Really, I've been tempted to dump a note in her letterbox going, "lookit ..." - but then I always remember that that would be a crazy thing to do.

Category "random observations":

It must be so different to be a punk now. You see the guy walking down the street, with his mohawk, and you realise that 9 out of 10 times, what he's gonna get from grown-ups passing by is a hint of endearment, a twang of nostalgia or the mindfart of someone going, 'trip out, they're still here!'.

That cant be very satisfying in a, I-dont-give-a **** Punk Rebel sense, can it?

The whole nature of the thing must be different, now ...

Walking down the street, actually looking? I think a lot of people don't. We have a storefront space, with a gallery in the front room. We have, across the front, 15 1/2 foot high windows to the sides of the glass door, plus the glass above that... in other words, all glass. In the window nooks, we put usually spectacular bouquets. This week we have - two concrete "vases" filled with a three to four or more foot "band" of pink and white watsonia flowers over a low layer of ligustrum leaves, and peeking out of the flower layer, shoots of Phormium atropurpurea flowers... that get to six, seven, eight feet high. Very dramatic. Some people come in just to talk about the bouquets, not the art. But most people walk on by without even turning their heads, at all. They aren't decisively ignoring the bouquets, they don't see them.

I don't understand it, I am always looking around.

So, on the <bleep>-note still - what are the sociological connotations and implications of the fact that in Dutch, when we want to characterise the disposition of a certain kind of person, we overwhelmingly call him a "prick" - whereas over in your country, you're morely likely to use the coarse synonym for "anus" - and in England, "prick" has largely made way for the coarse word for the female reproductive organ?

(had to edit that to avoid the "stars" making the post unintelligable ...)

Actually, we use prick a lot too. It has different connatations than a$$hole. A prick is uptight and frequently passive-aggressive in his offensiveness. An asshole is more blatant, more ballsy, more outright arrogant.

An a$$hole might also be funny. A prick is not. Neither, come to think of it, is a dick. A dick is like a prick, but they take pleasure from being the way they are, and they tend to be more direct.

At least, that's the way I see it.

Thoughtful summary, agree with it..

Have thought a lot about it. I'm very particular about my driving, and I don't want to err in the narration.

No one has random observations?




By the time the downstairs neighbors' music makes it through their ceiling / my floor, it sounds like a washing machine.

the underware gnome is after me in his green pantless suit.

Randomly wanting to see osso's store front window!!

My random observation is that phormium atropurpurea flowers drop as the gentle rain upon the floor beneath..

random observation....
the world is a beautiful place through childrens eyes , Hell through an adults.

Who really likes the automatic, electric toliet? Don't you miss the sound of a good, solid flush?

Every morning I hear a sparrow chirping above the roar of the rush-hour traffic. I love that boid. I occasionally talk to it in my head. "Hi boidy," I say, "how's the family?"

(Hi Roberta!)

Meta random observation:

Last night, just before bed, I had what I thought was a scintillating insight. On Kicky's thread about his chest hair going grey, there was some talk about regular head hair doing weird things due to hormones -- blonde, curly and red, etc. I thought, if hormones affect hair, then maybe blondes have a specific hormonal makeup that has something to do with how they are reacted to by men!

Last night, I thought this was a killer observation.

This morning, I was like, that's really dumb.

So my meta random observation is that something about being up late at night gives a level of profundity to things that don't necessarily deserve it. This happens to me all the time, anyway. Hastily scribble something down so I don't lose the thought, then in the morning, look at it, squint, tilt my head, and say "whatever" while tossing it in the garbage.