I was just taking the dog out for a shit and for some reason I remembered hearing that dogs learn best when they are trained using one syllable words, "sit," "lay," "heel," that sort of thing. So I was just wondering, how do Germans ever train their dogs? And do the Chinese have the best trained dogs in the world?

I got an email from Abel last week encouraging me to write more often. He does this from time to time, and I appreciate that he admires my writing. Generally it leads nowhere, as I just don't seem to be able to get the writing together on a consistent basis. However it almost always flicks some switch in my brain and makes me think of things I could write if I were so inclined. So here's a couple of miscellaneous items that have drifted through my mind lately.

I've noticed that when I go to the library I'm always worried about the librarians judging the stuff I check out if it happens to be mildly embarrassing. Not that I'm checking out anything weird or anything, but I check out some pretty random stuff. And today I picked up that William Shatner cd that I keep hearing people talk about, and that's kind of embarrassing for some reason, and also a book on speed reading, which is also mildly embarrassing for some reason. But I'm more apprehensive about having a male librarian check my shit out than a female librarian. Why? I have no fucking idea.

I may be a couple of weeks late to the dance here, but with the death of the Pope and the election of a new Pope (I got passed over yet again) there was a lot of talk about some Catholics wanting the church to change some of it's views, archaic silly things like being against birth control and priests not being allowed to marry. And we all know people who are members of whatever church they belong to, but they don't really follow the rules, but they still believe in the church. And I don't get it. Of course I'm a godless outsider here, but isn't a church basically just a big set of rules? That's religion, right? So how can you believe in a church and be a member of it and support it, but then feel you can pick and choose the rules you want to follow. Isn't that kind of missing the point? If you feel you don't need certain rules, then what's the fucking point of the church? Religion is not for free thinking. If you're in the cult, you gotta drink the Kool Aid. If you don't want to believe in the whole birth control shtick in the Catholic church I don't blame you, because it's fucking stupid. But isn't that part of being a Catholic?

Yesterday at work it was rather slow and we had to do a lot of cleaning. Pulled racks away from the wall, I scrubbed 'em down, and the boss cleaned the floors and walls and baseboards. Real fucking exciting. Yet somehow after I got home last night I was in the mood to scrub some more shit. So after Jenn went to work the graveyard shift, I cruised around the apartment with my headphones on cleaning random shit. The microwave and the outside of the fridge and the stove, but not the sink or the counter. I wiped off both computers and the printer but didn't dust the computer table. Dusted about half the living room and wiped the fingerprints off the inside of the front door. What a strange evening, but I figured if I was in the mood to clean something for once in my life I should probably take advantage of it.

I also came up with what I think is a great idea. We've got a second bedroom in this place that is basically just a pile of junk. Just all this shit stacked in there that we don't use much, but still need. Tools, the middle seats from the minivan (did I mention I drive a minivan now? I can't even remember anymore), a couple of tables, something like eight plastic boxes with the parts of my ginormous fake Christmas tree. So this room is a fucking mess and the space is basically wasted. When I paint I have to do it in here on the kitchen counter, even though I've got a whole room that is used for nothing. Know what I'm saying? Okay, anyway, so I've been trying to figure out how we can store things better in there. Shelves don't seem to be the answer, because like I said, a lot of this shit is big heavy stuff. I think those minivan seats each weigh about eighty pounds. And I'd just really like to have a big desk in there I could paint or do whatever silly thing I come up with on. then last night it occurred to me. I could build a huge table/workbench kind of thing. The width of the room, which is about 9 feet, by about 3 feet wide. We could store all our crap under this table and I'd have a huge work surface to paint/build stuff/whatever. Plus it should be easy enough to take it apart and move it to wherever we move next, which will hopefully be a house with a garage, where the giant table could serve the same purpose. Now last time I had a clever idea it was to build my former giant bed frame, which was nice because we could store all the shit that is now clogging up the 2nd bedroom under it, but was also way too tall (I made Jenn a stool to get up into it) and just basically a fucking mostrosity. A poorly constructed monstrosity, I might add. So I'm going to have to run this idea by Jenn, and she's surely going to think I'm nuts and will likely check into having me lobotomized to prevent my coming up with more hare brained schemes in the future. But I'll let you know how it goes. Or I won't, I really have no idea.