This issue has been harder coming than most of late (which could be interpreted in a negative or positive manner depending upon your viewpoint, semantics, and the situation). What inspired me oddly enough (Oddly enough especially since when I wrote this, I didn't publish anything. Must not have been sufficiently inspiring I guess.) is my normal Saturday reading of the Sunday Chronicle/Examiner. First there was the article about the warehouse people, groups or tribes or whatevers of people living together in warehouses, buildings, or whatever. Some are squatting, some paying rent to absentee landlords. All of which seemed to bring to mind the writing of Bill Gibson. Maybe some of his writing seems to hold a better view of the future than others not so much because he's writing about 100 years from now, nor even 10 years from now, but more likely tomorrow in our neighborhood and probably today or yesterday in someone else's neighborhood. Make sense? My writing was never known to truly make sense, even to the point of being overly ambiguous, so it goes.

Returning to the paper we have the articles about the lack of good saving practices in America whereas in Japan families save 22% of their annual income and live in tiny apartments now. Hm. I'm still thinking about it and still not saving 22% of my income. Although we are probably saving more than most American families.

Then there's the father's day ads for radios that look like old coca cola coolers or the old at-the-table diner juke boxes. You know, you can flip the page listings of songs with the (ohmighod) mechanical page turners at the top of the thing. Sorry I don't want a radio that looks like a coke cooler or a juke box selector. Seems pretty dumb all in all to me. I'm not really sure they're any better than the ugly ties fathers occasionally get. Hm, could I put one of these things on my father's grave sorta nested in the flowers? Stupid radios in the midst of flowers on a grave covered with colored rocks (my grandfather thought the colored rocks were a nice touch, most of the other relatives didn't). What about pink flamingos on a grave? How about those yard deer figurines or the eight foot tall wind mill? Actually we both (my dead father and I) might enjoy the bird feeder on top of the gravestone. Life amongst death, huh? Except he always told me not to say huh.

Oh yeah, my mother and David, the person she married after my father died, did indeed go to China.

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