Ming, I suspect was a librarian.  Flash Gordon was not - I am thinking about packing it all up and becoming a PI in Hawaii . . .  I will need a really cool old car that some client would secretly put a Porsche engine in, out of gratitude for saving their daughter from gangsters. have an office on the ocean, go sea kayaking for ambience when the sun is going down but not  when it is coming up . Occasionally I would have to drive a truck with the secret Porsche engine so the dogs could ride around in the back or front giving us more ambiance.

Perhaps I might just work at a coffee or t-shirt shack instead.

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Spare time . . . what's that? I do the normal, read the New Yorker, advise my book club, facilitate a Chautauqua on the place of the individual as a unique being and continue training for the next Olympics since I didn't quite make the cut this last go around.

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I don't really know where I am from. I was born in Redbank N.J. but we moved to England when I was less than a year old, so never felt any real loyalty to any one state. I was the first person In England  to own "Born to Run" (actually it was my brothers) This seemed a big deal at the time. I remember being very loyal to the United States when I was attending British public schools and then feeling very international when we moved back to New Jersey, now I just feel different . . . actually I smirk a lot.

I find progressive education humorous - to long around academia. I missed most of my sophomore year due to some . . . family issues . . . and had to make up credits and my GPA at the new high school, by taking lots of arts and humanities classes. I applied to all the wrong schools for all the fun reasons and chose the University of Arizona for the sun, fun and the girls (and because Brown, the University of Virginia and CU Boulder had declined my request for admission)  and mainly because I had ridden horses there once at a Dude Ranch in the seventh grade.

I did ultimately reunite with the horse from the dude ranch and relive old times. I went to a wedding there many years later. The groom was from a large Hispanic catholic family an and the bride was from a small (only daughter) Jewish family from back east. On top of that, one of the parents had a drinking problem so there was no alcohol being served. I wound up down at the corral with an elicit beer and asked after old Sandy as the mariachis began to play. Finally this old, rundown horse comes on over, pays his respects and asks me for a beer. Well one thing led to another before you know it old Sandy and I are down at the Circle-K picking up as many 40  0Z's as we can carry (Sandy can carry a lot of beer) before to long it we are back at the wedding causing trouble - turns out the Sandy is a good time party horse.

A good time party horse? - Think fraternity guy who winds up 15 years later as the assistant manager of outdoor products at Sears in a town of less that 2000 that's fairly close to a border - now don't get me wrong I liked the times I spent at the fraternity parties ( even the ones that I got the shit kicked out of me) but in the end- the fraternities were not my cup of tea (that's one of those renaissance man colloquiums that let's you know that I have spent extensive time oversees). Anyway that's a good time party horse.

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I like the philosophy angle, May and I have often talked about raising Seamus as an experiment. The benefits are that he might grow up to be a Renaissance man, or whatever the guy in the third cheesy Highlander movie turned out to be, or at least a very interesting oddity at cocktail parties - This is not necessarily a bad thing -  Sometimes this draws the attention of really attractive women who are trying to prove that they are just everyday folks like the rest of us.  The downside is that I think that there are laws against this kind of thing and we might go to jail. At the very least IF he can afford therapy he might figure it all out, break free from our not even evil but somewhat amusing  shenanigans and enroll himself in something or other anyway, marry a not-so-no nice girl and put us in a really rotten nursing home when we are old and feeble--There is  a lot to think about when you are a parent.

All right so now you know our dirty little  secret--I am raising my son to be the next great  philosopher.  Actually, we are raising two boys, one to be the next great philosopher and one to be able to actually write a haiku on the spot  I start to falter when I can't come up with anything appropriate that rhymes with "Nantucket".

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Summer at the Jersey shore -  I was beach patrol there for three years and still have a lot of fun memories. My first fake I.D. identifies me as a 200 pound Italian named Tony DeRosa. Who was for a time legendary in Long Beach Island, for buying kegs. Not because I was a prolific drinker or particularly wealthy, but because New Jersey used to have paper ID's and my supporting fake university ID looked like all of us and none of us. It made the rounds and had a much better social life than I did. Now as a family we tend to head to CA .

 I would really like for Seamus to grow up near the ocean. Actually I would like to relive my life through my son by sending him to surf camp, etc but that takes us back to the experiments idea and May has her own agenda for living her life through him also. Something to do with being a sensitive, well adjusted, happy and caring individual. Where is the fun in that? If he ever gets a standing ovation for dancing to K.C. and the Sunshine Band it's going to be because of my careful application of self worth. Anyway I will be happy. What more can a father do for his child?

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Again, just about everybody has written about road trips. There is a whole genre of writing. Travelogues involving Indian or BMW motorcycles, Cuba, beer, Tibetan monks. Lonely Planet is lousy (probably in a good way) with Road Trip books. They are written for Arm-Chair road trippers like myself  (the last mountain I climbed consisted of the laundry at the back of my closet.)  People who are pretty sure the next road trip is just around the corner. If only they didn't have to put in an honest 40 of labor, work on the house, play with the kids and probably visit the in-laws (whom I actually like). So we sit down with a beer and read about borrowing a mountain bike in Tibet. . . People often make the mistake of mixing the road trip with sitting at a favored bar drinking a favored beer. You don't want to do that, what you drink helps define where you are - you are on the road not in the bar - Tecate in cans should suffice.

These are proclamations or emails I tend to make/compose near the end of the night after tipping back a few pints.

• Do we have a place to stay? If not we  pitch the tent, not spending to much time on looking around for a GOOD spot - synchronicity applies - if the trip is righteous  the best spot  will appear as needed so that we can sidle right on in. Most likely we will arrive Friday at darkish. Thursday is normally to early and Saturday to late. We will need somebody that KNOWE'S  to get us into the VIP cocktail reception -  5:00'sh would be good. . .
   
• What about worthy traveling companions - What kind of vicious world is it when you don't have a dime to your name and the only kind of REASSURING e-mail you can get is from some rotten, sick bastards who just want to have fun probably at your expense while you are trying to put sole to the asphalt.  If it was me I would teach us all a  lesson by PLANNING on arriving in Flagstaff abandoning your (a) car at my place and RIGHTFULLY sitting down in Rick's car with a notebook a good pen and a cheap beer and saying "the early snows will come late, we best get a move on if we want to be there for anything of worth."

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Needs context though, so here goes . . . not yet . . . it will be in the next paragraph somewhere. There might be hope also or maybe sorrow. I don't know yet. I do know that there will be flatulence. Not necessarily the wicked wit or Adam Sandlerish flatulence. I covered  WHY NOT above, but there will be the word flatulence.

• What do I do for fun?  I don't seem to have a lot of time for activities other than work or Seamus/Raoul related things, although I talk about them a lot. Mountain Biking, Road tripping, festivals, etc.  Work's tough right now. The profession is changing pretty drastically, we spend a lot of time justifying ourselves (mainly for the mortgage payments) worrying about this takes up a lot of time and energy.  The one problem with worrying is that it  tends to become your hobby as well as your work.  I do read quite a bit.  although at times my efforts are pretty pathetic.  I gravitate to everyman people who are highlighted by their ability to read and think and entertain - I look for stimulating intellectual discussions, but mostly lately it's mostly middle aged people who want to talk about NPR . . . all the time . . . NPR . . . the cult of. 
• I've read a lot of  books, including those Oprah type books, I've waded through almost every kind of story there is - I have not achieved greatness at this, but I have had fun.  Lots of crap (which is not always a bad thing)  but  I've also managed to squeeze in some decent and occasionally great ones.  Any suggestions for a good read would be appreciated.  I pretty much read anything.  Once I like an author I get addicted.  When I was in 9th grade I went through my Beat generation phaze etc.  then the Brautigan  phase then the Bowden phase, then the McGuane phase, then the Chatwin phase, then the . . ..  Right now I'm reading Don't Know Much About the Bible.  It's actually quite interesting and very entertaining.  I'm "unclaimed" when it comes to religion for the most part I'm just reading the book to be able to justify my distrust of organized religion.  but, that's a whole separate topic. At least if you belong to the church of one, when you are alone eating Taco Bell, there's nobody there to share in the flatulence.

DONE!

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There is nothing wrong with having an opinion of yourself. We all have one, just as we have opinions of others, except that they are not as important to us. What's another word for it? Ego,  (back to Psychology 101 Freshman year in Tucson)  Not to be confused with "Sense of Self" which I think is the ID. I could be way of base here. As I am a librarian let me check.

• Ego: the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that serves as the organized conscious mediator between the person and reality especially by functioning both in the perception of and adaptation to reality
   
• ID: the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that is completely unconscious and is the source of psychic energy derived from instinctual needs and drives -- compare

That was actually a trick, because it let me use the phrase "As I am a librarian let me check" . . . I don't think of my self as a librarian. My sense of self places my appreciation of my character or personality at odds with what I know or suspect  librarians to be  -  I am always quick to tell a story about how I became a librarian . . . it was an accident, I was digging ditches during the day and bartending at night, I wanted to get away from the party scene (mostly the weird drugs). While I was a party man, a likely lad at my core I depended upon books, I craved intellectual stimulation. I knew some librarians who were pretty cool, and after getting back from a road trip to Seattle, I applied to the U of A library school and they flatly told me I would never get into the program, Always up to prove the MAN wrong I applied, persevered and . . . blah, blah. It's all part of my opinion of myself. The fact is I have paid the bills for 10 years being a librarian. So like it or not I am one * albeit one who at his core feels that he is not.

And while I generally distance myself from the population of librarians there are some interesting ones out there on the fringe. They for the most, do not place the idea of being a librarian at there core either. An aside - there are some  attractive librarians, many of whom are very interesting people. Most are a lot smarter than me although we seem to get along. I am off the idea of sense of self here. so this goes into a new musing  What motivates people to gravitate towards fields like "Library Science".

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Misleading, I am not interested in 95 % of the people who define themselves as librarians. It is the ones whose sense of identity prevents them from classifying themselves as librarians that interest me. Okay I used the word "classify" which all the librarians are zeroing in on as an indication that I am a librarian. I already admitted that I am a librarian, I reserve the right to take the best or at least most useful traits, terms and ideologies from this profession. It is MY due, payback for all of the times I carried the conversation, picked up the paycheck, drank to much at conferences and danced the funky chicken. Anyway what motivates a person to become a librarian? I would  be interested in getting the REAL story from librarians that I find interesting. The story that comes out while you are sitting in a dark bar somewhere, when you are cracking a beer as the water from a moving river swirls around your ankles, or you are sitting on a patio somewhere trying to avoid the party goers inside.

Take a risk . . . How I became a librarian . . .

Anyway I digress, there are interesting people out there who are currently librarians, So I will stop here and just link to the Goliard response of a fairly humorous editorial on Library Science. In doing this I hope to also give a plug to the Goliard, which indicates that are sense of self is not tied to how we pay the bills.

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