Early autumn

I think one of my primary personality components is passivity. Given a choice of doing something or doing nothing, my initial response is almost always to do nothing. It's more than inertia alone can account for. My preferred position usually consists of waiting and watching. It's almost ridiculous sometimes. I'll bet that when I'm aggressive, it comes out as passive-aggression.

Actually that's not true. I'm told that when I'm angry or annoyed, it's almost impossible for me to hide it. I know that this is especially true when I don't like someone. I'm told that my transparency on these occasions puts the finest glass to shame. My father is like this too. I'm not sure I ever noticed it myself, but he told me about it. My mother is not like this at all. She is one of the most politic people I know, or have even heard of. I think it's more civility than dishonesty. This may explain why she's more of a people-person than either me or my father, although she's definitely more introverted than average.

The weather today was miraculous. Bright blue skies, big fluffy clouds, sun but not too bright, pleasant gusts of wind. And the temperature, oh, the temperature! I felt so close to fall I could almost taste it.

I love fall. I love Halloween and Thanksgiving, and the start of school. (I love all the new students. Girls a little bit more, but also the boys.) I love apples and apple orchards, and I positively adore pumpkins and pumpkin patches and pumpkin pie. (I only like apple pie, but I love pumpkin pie.)

In the book Idlewild by Nick Sagan, there's a character who has his own little pocket reality, where he is called Halloween and lives in a creepy castle and commands a household staff of ghosts and vampires and monsters. This fun little Halloween world plays little role in the main story of the book, and has no presence at all in the two sequels, except that the character continues to go by the name Halloween. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't took taken with the book on first reading, but the second time through I really liked, and then plowed through its sequels. It's a very interesting story of how humanity comes back from the brink of extinction. And of course, Nick Sagan is the son of Carl Sagan, who was a great proponent of space exploration, a wonderful writer, and professor at Cornell.

I've been rewatching a lot of The West Wing lately. I feel like there was something funny or important or poignant that I wanted to say about this, but for the life of me I can't remember what. So instead I'll just point out that it, or at least the first four seasons of it, are brilliant and amazing. (The later seasons may also be brilliant and amazing, but I haven't really seen them, so I can't say for sure.)

I saw a great note written on a Wendy's French fries container.

Please note the adorable but totally irrelevant mathematical symbols on the left. So I guess what they're working with is their classic burger, which has buns, some number of beef patties, and toppings. The toppings, unless I'm wrong, are cheese (American), lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise. Since 256 is 2 raised to the eighth power, and I've only listed 7 toppings, I suppose they must have included bacon. I thought bacon was only available on particular burgers, none of which, to my knowledge, include those 7 other toppings. But what do I know?

I just started rereading an amazing comic book. It was a limited series called Secret Identity, written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated by Stuart Immonen. Busiek is a major heavy hitter in comic book land. He wrote Astro City and Marvels, both of which are incredible, although I think Kingdom Come kicked Marvels' butt. Off the top of my head all I know that Immonen has drawn is many issues of Superman and some issues of X-Men, but he's one of my favorite comic book artists.

The story is basically set in our world as it is, where a Kansas couple by the name of Kent have a son with dark hair and blue eyes who they, in poor humor, named Clark. Every birthday and Christmas, his relatives and friends shower him with Superman-themed gifts, which he accepts with a smile and later quietly adds to the growing pile in his closet. Then, one otherwise perfectly normal day, he suddenly develops super-powers. Superman super-powers. It sounds funny or maybe silly, but it is a brilliant and somber and fascinating story, with absolutely gorgeous illustration. I originally bought and read it in four installments, but I think now you can get it as one collected book.

Although it's been quite some time since I first read it, and so far I have only reread the first ten pages or so, I recommend it most heartily. It is just lovely.

I think that's all for now.