vague generalities, general vagaries, pointed specifics, specific points

Things I came close to almost breaking today:

- a bottle of gamay beaujolais (unpurchased at that time)

- the Audi logo on the back of Alex's car (this was never really in danger)

- my damn skull, thanks to the low-hanging aspects of the basement ceiling (invariably rock-hard and occasionally sharp)

- at least four hearts (believe it, baby)

*

I was at the bank to open an empty checking account. There were a few people there, and some had kids with them. One particular set of these kids, a girl and a boy, were I think writing a song in the middle of the lobby. The girl was slightly older - let's put her at just-turned-7, and the boy at a late 5 or so. She's clearly the leader, here.

Anyway, they're making up this song. It's primarily the girl singing a verse, and the boy singing it back to her, and her brightly nodding with approval and moving on.

To my everlasting chagrin, I can't remember the whole thing, but the part of it that I can went something like this:

"The dog called us so we walked over to him but we couldn't understand what he was saying, ruff ruff." That was part of a verse.

This is, I believe, the chorus. "Please stop calling us, please stop calling us, please stop calling us for an hour or two. Please stop calling us, please stop calling us, please stop calling us, so we can have something else to do."

Frankly, that looks like it could be one of the less incomprehensible Radiohead songs to me. I can't tell you how disappointed I was when their (grand?)mother shushed them and told them that the bank is like the library where you have to whisper, which is a blatant lie, but it would probably have been an improper usurpation of (grand?)parental power to point that out to the young musicians.

*

Thanks to grainy wee-hour reruns on WB17, I've now watched more episodes of "Sex and the City" than I care to admit (which still, I hasten to add, isn't many, but that's not really the point). This can be ascribed primarily to two factors: "there's nothing else on" - which, as many of us know, can be an extremely powerful motivator - and the positive word of a fairly wide spectrum of people whose opinions are generally to be respected.

Anyway, I guess the most likely explanation is that I just don't get it, 'cause it ain't rising above the level of "moderately pleasant diversion" for me, and if that were true for everyone else then it wouldn't really justify the hype. I will say this, however: Sarah Jessica Parker is unfairly maligned as hideous slightly too often. She's not. She's even attractive on certain occasions, when her hair is properly restrained so it isn't hissing and turning innocent bystanders to stone.