mostro city

I took My Guy to the City Museum and, boy, are my arms tired. No, I did not carry him. No, it is not from having to literally drag him.

The City Museum is a departure from your average museum where you walk around and look at things. Occasionally with someone along to explan why you should be impressed with what you are seeing. The City Museum is more of a deranged human-sized maze. Or as My Guy called it, "A lawsuit waiting to happen."

Rather than gawking and talking, you will find yourself walking, scooting, climbing, crawling, slipping, and sliding. They have some pretty impressive slides, at that. Some of which end with a padded wall to bounce your feet against to stop you. The best part was MonstroCity which was an elaborate outdoor installation made of recycled industrial parts, like whole airplanes.

It is not for the claustrophic, nor for those afraid of heights, nor is it for a person afraid of the dark. Besides that, hey, the kids love it. The adults do too. Wear shoes with traction and clothes that you can roll around in. Pants are a good idea. Knee pads too. Maybe a helmet for those of us unskilled at watching our heads. Be warned, at some point during all of this you will probably break a sweat.

They also have the World Aquarium. It's an aquarium that also has some mammals, reptiles and bug. The star of the show is an albino two headed snake. One head is the lead, but both heads feed.

Next time you are in St. Louis, you should check it out.

Wonders of the World

There's a group of folks who want to put together a new list of seven wonders of the world. It has been narrowed to 21 possible candidates. From here it is open to a global on-line vote. The winners will be announced January 1st 2007.

coming around again

I have seen it in myself, I have seen it in my friends, I have even seen it in the likes of the famous and brilliant. Sometimes we repeat ourselves. We crack the same joke, we tell the same story, we confide the same deep dark secret, or make the same comment, often in the exact same words.

Perhaps it is that we run out of material after a while. Perhaps we like to revisit our classics, our personal greatest hits. Perhaps there are things weighing and preying on the mind. They get turned over, poked, and prodded. Not altering in shape or quality, they linger.

And those around us allow yet another retelling with a polite smile and some recreated version of their earlier response or respond with a brisk interruption to inform us of our redundancy of information. I don't know which response is better. One involves a polite deceit a blending of artifice and consideration. The other involves stopping your train of thought. It could pull the rug out from under you. It is a matter of what aspect of the interaction is more important: the content of the information being relayed or the tenor and color of the interchange.

At a given moment what matters more the word or the sound of the word?

I think of a passaage from a story about lovers parted and reunited and how the girl confides that she makes a point of laughing at all the same stupid jokes that he tells over and over as loud as she can. Because it is a comfort to hear it again. Because she is glad to have that back in her life. From happiness at being again with the one she loves.

"I know nothing says the same, but if you're willing to play the game, it's coming around again."
-Carly Simon