There is Nothing to do in Winchester

I'm fairly depressed today, although I wasn't when I woke up and I probably won't be this evening. Partly, this is because I am on my period, or rather on the week-long break in my cycle of birth control pills, which I find depressing because, really, it's more like a monthly miscarriage - a miscarriage of nothing, of a child that I fooled my body into thinking existed. If that's not good and depressing, I don't know what is. I mention all of this not as a screed against birth control, which I think is pretty great stuff; mostly it's an illustration of how my thinking gets dark because I'm addicted to estrogen, and am in withdrawal.

I am trying to drink a lot of soymilk during these weeks to compensate with psedoestrogens. This works about as well as methadone vs. heroin, which is to say sort-of. The "sort-of" is particularly hard on Ciro, who bears the brunt of groundless and paranoid accusations that he is planning to leave me, as he should, because I am a miserable person who does nothing but spread misery, and anyway, how could I possibly believe that he would ever make a single decision based on emotion rather than logic, or would respect and value our cultural differences? I also spend a lot of energy imagining that I am under personal attack when he says things like "I'm going to check my e-mail now." Or "I know people who don't like Johnny Cash." Or "It is time for me to leave for work."

I cleverly made all of this worse by spending about half an hour looking at pictures of ghost towns.

Furthermore, it is grey and ugly outside.

On the upside, Ciro and I founded a band this morning - a band with no songs so far, and no members but us - a band that will likely never rehearse, perform, or record. As you can see, this band is already following a proud tradition, and I am excited to be a part of it.

It's Only A Day Away

From context, I know that "bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun" means it is so certain that you could bet every dollar on it, all the way down to the last dollar in the stack.

However, reacting to the phrase alone, I take it to mean the opposite: bet your ugliest dollar, the dollar you value least, because chances are, you're not getting it back.

Ciro argues that both interpretations are wrong, and instead it means "bet your bottom dollar, but in order to get to it, spend the rest of the dollars, thus bringing the power of the free market into effect."

Ciro is of course correct: if we want more sunshine, we have to act as responsible consumers and drive up demand and prices, thus attracting enterprising new sunshine contractors.



Originally, I mistyped "consumers" as "confumers," which I didn't notice until Ciro complimented me on the Shakespearian flavor of my text. I went back and corrected it for readability, but I already miss it. I like the idea of confumers agressively purchasing pre-packaged ire.