I’ve started wearing a watch. I tried to take a picture of it on my cell phone, but it looks like somebody’s tried to take a picture of their watch in a dimly-lit coffee shop and is, as such, pointless to show you.

Anyway, my mother gave it to me because the watch bears my name and my home town engraved on the back – “James C. Hazlett, Wheeling, WV”

My full name is James Hazlett Foreman, and I’m named for the man who used to wear it, my grandfather.

There’s a little clock shop in Wheeling’s market square. It is exactly like the kind of clock shop you’d read about in a Ray Bradbury story, with clocks all over the walls ticking and tocking and marking each hour with a cacophony of brass bells and tinkling chimes. The guys who work there know my mom, because pretty much everybody in Wheeling knows my mom. She had them take a look at my grandfather’s watch. They showed her how to wind it, told her that it wasn’t worth very much, and even offered to replace the crystal. I’m glad she turned them down.

“That watch has timed a lot of contractions,” she said as she handed it to me. “I hope you remember that when you wear it.”

You can have your Rolexes. I’ve already got the most valuable watch in the world.

1) Comments like this one are what make me keep reading Slashdot.

2) Two spoilery bits about the new Indiana Jones movie: an awesome image of the main cast members in mid-action and there are some leaked LEGO sets that give away huge parts of the movie.

3) Classist jealously got you down? Rejoice in images of fancy cars in various states of destruction.

4) The article describes this sculpture as “unflattering,” but I don’t think that’s accurate. It depicts the patron saint of modern housewives, ironically childless herself, as a fertility goddess.

5) This is a link to my little movie, but I don’t link to it to show off but to show everybody what the first comment is. I love it.

6) Oh, and FAIL.

I’ve started wearing a watch. I tried to take a picture of it on my cell phone, but it looks like somebody’s tried to take a picture of their watch in a dimly-lit coffee shop and is, as such, pointless to show you.

Anyway, my mother gave it to me because the watch bears my name and my home town engraved on the back – “James C. Hazlett, Wheeling, WV”

My full name is James Hazlett Foreman, and I’m named for the man who used to wear it, my grandfather.

There’s a little clock shop in Wheeling’s market square. It is exactly like the kind of clock shop you’d read about in a Ray Bradbury story, with clocks all over the walls ticking and tocking and marking each hour with a cacophony of brass bells and tinkling chimes. The guys who work there know my mom, because pretty much everybody in Wheeling knows my mom. She had them take a look at my grandfather’s watch. They showed her how to wind it, told her that it wasn’t worth very much, and even offered to replace the crystal. I’m glad she turned them down.

“That watch has timed a lot of contractions,” she said as she handed it to me. “I hope you remember that when you wear it.”

You can have your Rolexes. I’ve already got the most valuable watch in the world.

I’m putting the feelers out again. I’m starting to date again. I’m starting to realize that people who say “You’re not my type” based on a photograph are probably a) not the kind of people I want to date and b) have issues of their own. I’m one of the lucky ones, though – I hardly ever get that response, and I can always blame the beard. Some people just don’t like facial hair.

Anyway, I thought of three funny things today:

1) When Oakland’s hooting walk signs go off and the stylish, student pedestrians crisscross the intersection, one could describe it as a hipster hoedown.

Ok, I led with the weakest one.

2) It’s embarrassing when you pass a homeless dude and he shakes his change cup at you and you ignore him. It’s even more embarrassing when you pass him again coming the other way, holding a large coffee, and he doesn’t shake his change cup at you.

3) My car smells like a homeless barista has been eating barbecue pork sandwiches in the back seat. I can’t explain it.

And I thought of another thing while I was at the Gallery Crawl:

4) The only thing worse than walking through a crowd and talking to your friend who you think is behind you only to see that somebody else is behind you is to be the friend the first friend thought was behind him and watch your friend start talking to the guy you know isn’t the friend he thinks it is.

Anyway, I bring those things up because I was thinking about people to call to tell them those funny things, only to realize that there really wasn’t anybody. I called Lindsay, because she always tells me when something isn’t as funny as I thought it was, thus making those things more funny than they were before. That was enough.

Still, it would be nice to have somebody on speed dial for those kinds of emergencies.

Also, I just thought of something else else that I thought of a few days ago.

5) Have you ever been to a crowded food court? My building has one on its mezzanine level, and it’s always full to bursting with people. There are also an awful lot of chairs and tables, which creates a very narrow lane through which people (like me) can pass. If you go at the right time, right around 12:30, you can have a grand old time standing behind fat people.

I wonder how many potential dates have seen this blog or this website and decided to discontinue correspondence with me? I wonder how my candid discussion of my foibles and my vulnerabilities might affect future involvements. I don’t like to think of all the opportunities missed, because those folks are missing out. Really, they are. See, the only difference between me and somebody else with anxiety disorder and a tendency toward facial hair is that my shit is visible. I have my hidden depths, but they’re not scary. The stuff that people are surprised to find out about me are pleasant little bursts of enlightenment, not dark mysteries uncovered after a bottle of booze.

I am, as I always have been, me. That’s it.

And goddamn it, that should be more than enough for anybody.

It’s not my fault that I’m awesome.

I am hesitant to spoil the series, but I will do so in order to more fully be able to speak about it. Beware those spoilers, because they’re going to be big ones.

Lyra is a young, preadolescent girl. Her soul exists outside her body. It has a will and a mind and a name of its own, but it’s still her soul. It can take on the shape of any animal, and it can talk.

Everybody in her world has one of these animal companions, called a daemon. Childrens’ daemons have no set shape, and can change form at will. Adults’ daemons have a set animal shape that in some way illustrates or reflects the owner’s personality. It is considered unspeakably taboo to touch another person’s daemon. This becomes obvious later in the series.

Kids and daemons alike have no idea when or how their daemons will pick a shape and stay with it – Lyra and her daemon, Pan, just assume that he’ll pick one when he feels like it.

But very late in the very last book, we learn how and why and when a daemon picks its final form – it is touched by the owner’s first lover. This is why it’s taboo to touch another person’s daemon, because the act of doing so is highly sexual in nature. Instead of shaking hands with a man you meet, it would be like sticking your fingers in his mouth.

This is the central point around which the book pivots, and there are hints to this throughout, finally coming to fruition when the main character, Lyra, fulfills her destiny and becomes a second Eve – bringing about the “fall” by having sex and falling in love. Through this, she saves the mutliverse.

But not quite. To really save the whole universe and the free will of humans and the creativity and sentience of our entire species on every world and in every universe, she and her first and greatest love can never be together. They get a few days together, but that’s all – they have to split up and live in separate universes, never again able to communicate.

His Dark Materials is about growing up. Growing up is about falling in love, but it’s also about having your heart broken. Being an adult is simultaneously reveling in the bright brilliance of life’s greatest joys while accepting that every one of them is finite, and that things end. Life and death, joy and sadness, all that stuff.

I’ve read a lot of books about growing up and coming of age, and I’ve even written a few stories about it, but few writers have captured it as well as Pullman has.

I’m not just saying that because he’s an atheist, either, or because he’s written an atheist answer to The Chronicles of Narnia. He’s also written a literate answer to The Chronicles of Narnia, and an educated one, and a clever one.

I’m putting the feelers out again. I’m starting to date again. I’m starting to realize that people who say “You’re not my type” based on a photograph are probably a) not the kind of people I want to date and b) have issues of their own. I’m one of the lucky ones, though – I hardly ever get that response, and I can always blame the beard. Some people just don’t like facial hair.

Anyway, I thought of three funny things today:

1) When Oakland’s hooting walk signs go off and the stylish, student pedestrians crisscross the intersection, one could describe it as a hipster hoedown.

Ok, I led with the weakest one.

2) It’s embarrassing when you pass a homeless dude and he shakes his change cup at you and you ignore him. It’s even more embarrassing when you pass him again coming the other way, holding a large coffee, and he doesn’t shake his change cup at you.

3) My car smells like a homeless barista has been eating barbecue pork sandwiches in the back seat. I can’t explain it.

And I thought of another thing while I was at the Gallery Crawl:

4) The only thing worse than walking through a crowd and talking to your friend who you think is behind you only to see that somebody else is behind you is to be the friend the first friend thought was behind him and watch your friend start talking to the guy you know isn’t the friend he thinks it is.

Anyway, I bring those things up because I was thinking about people to call to tell them those funny things, only to realize that there really wasn’t anybody. I called Lindsay, because she always tells me when something isn’t as funny as I thought it was, thus making those things more funny than they were before. That was enough.

Still, it would be nice to have somebody on speed dial for those kinds of emergencies.

Also, I just thought of something else else that I thought of a few days ago.

5) Have you ever been to a crowded food court? My building has one on its mezzanine level, and it’s always full to bursting with people. There are also an awful lot of chairs and tables, which creates a very narrow lane through which people (like me) can pass. If you go at the right time, right around 12:30, you can have a grand old time standing behind fat people.

I wonder how many potential dates have seen this blog or this website and decided to discontinue correspondence with me? I wonder how my candid discussion of my foibles and my vulnerabilities might affect future involvements. I don’t like to think of all the opportunities missed, because those folks are missing out. Really, they are. See, the only difference between me and somebody else with anxiety disorder and a tendency toward facial hair is that my shit is visible. I have my hidden depths, but they’re not scary. The stuff that people are surprised to find out about me are pleasant little bursts of enlightenment, not dark mysteries uncovered after a bottle of booze.

I am, as I always have been, me. That’s it.

And goddamn it, that should be more than enough for anybody.

It’s not my fault that I’m awesome.

I am not the intended recipient of this sign’s message.

I guess the reaction you’re supposed to have is “Oh, snap! That’s true! I like trees. I should make sure that more trees don’t die, so I’ll use fewer towels to clean my hands!”

My reaction is: “I can use as many of these as I want! Trees are a renewable resource! In fact, I think I’m going to use triple what I normally would, now that this handy sign has reminded me that trees are infinitely replaceable!”

As an aside: do you know who plants the most trees, on an annual basis?

The forest industry!