This and that

I saw the young red tail hawk on this branch as I was driving out of the canyon this morning. His sibling confidently and gracefully flew away to the security of the air currents. This one stood and let me capture  his or her magnificence. They are really maturing quickly. I jumped out of the van and snapped off some shots as he or she was only about 12' from where I was standing. A truck drove by and scared the young raptor off. Probably the closest I have ever been, we were both too dumb to know better.

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I see where LinkedIn had its big IPO yesterday and went crazy. All the investors are afraid that they are going to miss out on the next Google. I predict the thing is a massive flop. It will take the big MySpace dive. I made the mistake of signing up once and now I get pestered with messages to hook up on this professional's network. What the hell does it really do and what purpose does the peer network have other than to annoy you? Or force you to let associates know that you don't really want to be their friend. I do not miss Facebook a bit, except for my communications with Jeff from Omaha, of course, but a lot of our greatest material is now lost in the ether.

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We are supposed to have brunch with Tracy and Stanley, my new cousin, on sunday at Miltons. She said that in the event of rapture traffic will be really light. I read yesterday that some enterprising people are already renting out their pet sitting services to those christians who think that they will be ascending saturday night and are worried about the animals getting fed.

oops...

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The blog readership is growing dramatically for some reason. I am being picked up by a lot of aggregation sites and featured for some unknown reason. Welcome, all.

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I was reading the other day about the danger of planking. Planking as far as I can deduce, is laying prostrate in a supine position, occasionally on top of a car or similar moving object. Also something we do in Pilates. Who knew that laying down would be such a hit? There is also now balling, flexting, sphering, teapotting and various other deviant forms of expression fads arising, at least according to the Urban Dictionary. Oh, those kids today.

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I also learned about gauging from one of my peers who follows such trends. Gauging is the process of stretching your piercings so that you get those long stretchy earlobes like in National Geographic. Common gauging movements are from 8g to 6g, 2g to 0g and 1/2"g to 5/8"g. Gauging too fast can cause tearing or a "blowout."

The winner of the gauging competition gets to live with an eskimo family for a year, the culture that first celebrated the daft look. I remember watching the eskimo olympics as a kid. They would walk around with more and more weight hanging on their ears until the unfortunate lobe finally tore off. Very hip indeed.

The next thing?