My Personal $20 Million Library

The Pink Professor and I bade a fond farewell today to the billionaire and Garrett Al. They're off on an extended honeymoon, and, frankly, aren't coming back, unless it's someday for a visit. The billionaire has exotic properties around the world, so of course he wants to treat his blushing new hubby well.

Life after a month of a whirlwind is slowing down. Pink was going by the university to try and get back on staff. Then he was going to check things at the bar, the Roadhog Roadhouse, and make sure everything was hunky dory. If it wasn't before, it will be with him there, him being a natural at keeping even a roughneck joint like that running smooth and pleasant.

That left me on my own, at loose ends, till I remembered some of my own responsibilities, including a brand new $20 million personal library on the west side of town! I know it's hard to believe I could forget something like that, but that's how crazy it's been. Also recall, I own a worm bedding company in Alabama, which also slipped my mind, but that sounds totally blah.

The library, though, I'm interested in. I've always had to make do with a few bookshelves around the house. But now, with this huge new facility, I'm rolling in space and shelves and books and all kinds of fun things. And I'm going to take advantage of it for my personal studies! And it won't really be for anyone else either, unless, sometime down the line, I bring in a "visiting scholar" for whatever reason. Maybe for some of my burning questions, like, How do you get to be a "visiting scholar"? I've gone by the nickname "Super Brain" for a long time and I've never visited anywhere.

But I will be "visiting" my own library, three floors, a basement, and stretched out width-wise too, pretty huge. Enough rooms that I can sit in one a day for an entire month and never run out! I have all my old books, probably around a thousand, then I have another thousand or so picked out from the Biggest Book Sale in the State, and from there, I shall build it into the greatest personal library in the world!

And, hey! There's something very "retro" about it that I'm going to do. This is exciting to me. The building will have no internet access. It's going to be like libraries in the old days. Anything I need to look up, I'll have to take the time to find it in a book. Frankly, I'm looking up too much stuff online, because I tend to have lots more questions when the answers are that close, that convenient. But this way, if I don't want to give the full commitment to find out about something, I'll just let it go.

When I'm done with my collection, why would I need the internet? I'm going to have a full set of every encyclopedia that's ever been published! We used to have the 1894 Britannica, and I learned more from those old books than I ever did in school. Except I had to be careful, because they go out of date fairly fast. That's why I need all the newer sets, too, to compare and contrast. But I can see myself maybe coming up with inaccurate information. Like, say, I want to know who's currently president. I can look it up in all the sets, then split the difference. It's Millard Calvin Ulysses S. Hoover John F. Nixon!

Of course the internet's good for one thing, definitely for sure, and that's wasting time. Such as Facebook, Twitter, and sites like that, and, as I well know, you can waste a lot of time writing blogs. I bet I messed around with this blog 60-75 hours this month, all this business with the billionaire, Geritol, Pink, and myself. Imagine, I could've spent that time reading about Siam. Or the Louisiana Purchase when it was the latest thing.

I'm stopping right now and putting my slippers and robe on and I'll be padding around this vast library. Full of echoes till I get it filled. I'm like a lonely Hugh Hefner figure here, except now I have books and shelves instead of bunnies.

Everything I Know I Learned in Motel Lobbies

You know how I'm always working to expand my knowledge, particularly having to do with the human race. It helps me keep my keen edge in understanding, which translates into bigger bucks in my field, the group dynamics racket. More and more I'm getting the recognition I deserve as the "King of Group Dynamics," which, you might easily guess, isn't automatic. You forever have to prove yourself more insightful than the next idiot.

Recently a sociology professor friend of mine -- himself scratching and clawing his way to the top, and hoping to stay there -- told me, "Everything I know I learned in motel lobbies." Of course I knew better than to take that literally. No doubt you can learn a lot in motel lobbies, but it has to be an exaggeration, right? Or did he mean it? He didn't learn anything somewhere else? I had to test it for myself.

So the other day I took up residence on one of the couches in a motel lobby. Right away I learned a thing or two about motel staff and their suspicions. These couches are sat on about five minutes a week, when some weary traveler is arriving to check in or after they've carried their bags back out. No one sits on them for hours at a time. But there I was, holding a newspaper, peering over and around it.

I was focused on their everyday demeanor. Motel staff, in addition to being suspicious, are passive/aggressive to the max. They checked on me a few times, trying to discern why I was there, all the while calling me "Sir" and going through various superficial bowing and scraping. Maybe I owned the whole chain, like on Undercover Boss. They didn't know. Their bowing and scraping would've been sufficient to afford them plausible deniability if they were accused of being rude to a guest.

Getting past that, I took in some people-watching, as I said, wanting to learn about the human race. One of the biggest reasons I didn't major in sociology myself was I'm no fan of scientific rigor; the dean said my admission paper showed I was too anecdotal. Hence this extraneous anecdote about the dean in an article on motel lobbies.

Editor's note: This is my normal cutoff length for a post, so I'm going long. If you haven't got time to read the whole thing, I advise that you only read the second half. It's more on-topic than the above.

My learnings in the motel lobby:

-- People live forever in the motel. I've been here for hours and there hasn't been one fatality. But the pool's still empty.

-- About 2/3 of the men here are with women not their wives. I have nothing to base this on except my nature is even more suspicious than that of the motel staff. There's no doubt in my mind that adultery's been rampant ever since they got rid of the paper registry book. But can infidelity be that high? Of course it can, if my hunch is right.

-- All types of men are here. Big men, little, long hair, short hair, greasers, regular guys, professional men, amateurs. But all the women are clean-looking and nice, indicating hanky panky, married couples tending to resemble one another.

-- People take full advantage of free continental breakfasts. But they're quite patient when they're waiting for the waffle griddle. At an early hour feeding frenzies just aren't cool. I know around 2 p.m. the same creatures will be red hot with road rage, which might be why the griddles aren't out afternoons.

-- People multitask. I've seen several guys walk by carrying four or five suitcases. Their own, and likely their illicit girlfriend's.

-- The average motel guest seems to plan well. With four suitcases, that's a no-brainer. That said, some marketing genius put in a vending machine for toothpaste at $4 an ounce tube. I haven't seen anyone using it, so I'd say it's losing money. I say sell it for a buck and make it up on volume.

-- I'm really noticing that motel staff over-thank and over-Sir and over-Ma'am the guests. They really are worried about Undercover Boss! Come on, staff, we're not convinced you're such extremely nice people. We know you're punching holes in the wall as soon as we leave. Then charging our card.

-- The Number 1 thing motels are suspicious of is non-guests sneaking in the pool. Probably mostly driven by insurance and liability issues. Then because they'd have to stay working long after their shift if someone drowned. From the inquests I've been part of, they're usually quite lengthy.

-- As an aside, I've learned that if you wear a light blue smock under your shirt, then switch, you can meet guests in the hall as they're departing and ask them to leave the door open for cleaning. Then you can shower and sleep for three or four hours before the actual cleaning folks get here.

-- Some guy just drowned, quite the commotion, a great time for me to sneak out of this room unseen.

And so I proved it true. I didn't know anything before. Like my friend, literally everything I know I learned in motel lobbies.

I'll Never Be Ignorant Again

It's been a while now, back in January, that I wrote what I thought was a scientific post on clouds, "The Mystery of Clouds." You'd really think that'd be so long ago no one would care. But I get more mail on that post than all the others combined. As it turns out, science people are very protective of their domain, and apparently I don't measure up to their lofty standards.

Frankly, I wasn't expecting any backlash whatsoever. Because I figured my opinions are as good as anyone else's. Which, OK, looking back on it, I can agree that there can be a stark difference between scientific fact and personal opinion. Just like there's a difference between intelligence and stupidity.

All that said, the backlash looks to be way out of proportion to the offense. Wasn't what I said half in jest anyway? I don't have a clear memory of it, but it seems like it. I said I wasn't sure what held clouds up or how they operated. So I gave my opinion that it had to do with being lighter than air. But heavier than the air above them. As they gain weight they become fog. As they lose weight they leave the atmosphere. I wrote something about wires holding them up too. Which isn't true, but that's the part I was joking about.

To those who wrote in and left comments: It might interest you to know that I deleted all your comments. If you can't keep it clean, then I'm sorry, you're outta here! It turns out those who believe in science are the world's biggest pottymouths. Probably because they believe in science, they're able to harness technology faster than everyone else, thereby allowing them to accomplish so much more, fitting in more activities, etc., like looking at porn, and so they pick up a more extensive vocabulary. Of the four-letter variety!

It was hurtful to be called ignorant, along with all the more colorful ways of saying it. But just to clarify one particular comment, assuming I'm supposed to take your insult literally, no, my head is not so far up my ass that I have to see the sun shine through my mouth. Would that even be scientifically possible? Come on, we must be scientifically reasonable and consistent, don't we, huh? Excuse me?

Still, my Grandma always told me I needed to pick my battles. She also gave me a bunch of good information on psychologically minimizing the various situations of life, such as looking for one fatuous argument against me, then being able to dismiss the whole thing, like the guy above saying my head was up my ass. It's impossible. Something I like to do, heh heh, giving away my most intimate secrets, is when I get in a fight I know I can't handle I just walk away. My way of picking battles is never to actually pick one! You see, Grandma lived in a world that didn't have the internet. She never knew an anonymous battle.Or the scurrilous creatures we now have to communicate with on a daily basis.

But I have my self respect to deal with. And if I made certain claims, ignorantly as it turns out, about clouds, then I want to do better next time. So that's my resolution! I'll never be ignorant again! From now on, before I ever say anything even remotely scientific, I will look it up online or in a book. You'll never catch me saying anything stupid ... ever again!