Yesterday morning I was walking on Fifth Avenue and Manhattan, and I saw Anderson Cooper from CNN walking his dog. Common sense dictates that I should have introduced myself as a journalism student (even though I'm more into newspaper or magazine writing) and told him that I'm a fan of his show (even though I usually watch Seinfeld when Anderson Cooper 360 is on and his show is not particularly different from Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC or even CNN's own Newsnight with Aaron Brown).

At the very least I should have said "Good morning, Mr. Cooper" or "Yo, Coop! Wassup?" to see how he would react. Maybe he would mention me on his program. Or maybe he would invite me to the live taping (boy is that an oxymoron) of 360 at 7 PM, when I would actually be able to attend since I'm usually out of the office by 6 PM. But instead I just looked at him make a 90-degree turn onto East 39th Street, dog in tow, and I proceeded further south on my way to work in the Fashion District. I looked at the pedestrians around me, and no one appeared out of the ordinary. Was I the only one who recognized Coop?

I'm getting more and more ticked off at the U.S. Supreme Court. All I wanted to do was infringe on copyrights, impose my beliefs on others and keep the government from taking my land. Thanks to Rehnquist and Co., these basic civil rights have now been taken away from me. I was thinking about how some say that displaying the Ten Commandments on state property is a violation of the separation of church and state, but do those people read the Constitution? The First Amendment states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

This blog almost committed suicide by attempting to discuss religion and politics. I'll stop here.

Thanks to cable news, I know more about what is happening in Aruba, where one American teenage girl is missing and most likely dead, than I do about Iraq, where more than 1,700 American soldiers have died over the past 2 years and 3 months.

Today it was wicked hot. I went to the JCC to exercise, but there was almost no one there. In the evening I saw "Batman Begins" with Dan. It was a pretty good movie considering I usually don't enjoy such movies. Gotham sure looks a lot like Chicago, and in some shots you could clearly discern the Chicago River, the drawbridges and Marina City towers. I think he actually raced the Batmobile down State Street, and later down what might have been the Kennedy Expressway. At least the moviemakers were creative in coming up with a really dingy elevated monorail that's about twice or three times higher off the ground than the El, with tracks in different directions running on different levels. Gotham's slum at times appears like Wrigleyville and at other times like Kowloon. I personally would like to have seen Katie Holmes be a little more physical, but mostly all she did was talk or act all drugged-out. All in all, a fine piece of work, though part of the beginning, which appears to take place in Tibet, was pretty boring and reminded me too much of the Last Samurai, which I have already seen. And how could Schindler end up the bad guy?

I decided to create a blog today. Wait, no I didn't. What happened was I went to my friend's blog (bethieisfab.blogspot.com) and wanted to comment on a post, but blogspot did not let me do this without first getting an account. Seeing how I really wanted to post a comment, I went ahead and created an account. Short story shorter, they gave me a blog and here I am. I am pretty certain no one will read this, so it's probably pointless even having one, but I figure it's probably a good way for me to track what I'm doing and thinking at different times in my life (assuming I actually keep up with shit). Of course, I might as well just keep a diary (but writing by hand is so tedious) or type it into Microsoft Word. What if my hard drive crashes? At least this blog will always be there for me.

I might as well talk about my life now. Today I was awakened at 7 AM by the sound of a crying baby. This is a little out of the ordinary, since in our apartment (12C) it's just my mom and I, but the walls in my circa-1969 building are so thin that I sometimes hear what's going on in 12B. It's Saturday and I was trying to get some rest and relaxation (I wake up on weekdays at 6:30 to get to work in NYC) but the baby kept crying. I got up, grabbed my blanket and pillow, and headed over to the couch in the living room, which shares a wall with 12D.

Around 9 or 10, I finally woke up, took a bath, ate breakfast, and mom and I drove to the bank to make some deposits and withdrawals. Then we drove over to the Italian deli on High Ridge Road, where my mom bought cheap eggs. She said they were cheaper there than in the supermarkets. It's a good 3 miles up High Ridge and I wondered whether we really saved money on the eggs when you consider the extra gas, but my mom assured me that she had calculated the savings and indeed, money was being saved. On the way, we passed by several McMansions that got me angry, and I told my mom how this was the latest unfortunate phenomenon in real estate.

After that we stopped by the library so my mom could pick up a book by the name of The Virgin's Lover, and then we headed over to ShopRite to do our grocery shopping. My mom kept asking me if I wanted anything specific to eat, but I am so indifferent to just about everything that I kept shrugging my shoulders. But then we got up to the yogurt aisle and I got excited, because there are these yogurts that come with the nuts that you can put in the yogurt. Well, I grabbed 3 of those, even though they're like 99 cents each, and my mom seemed content that it made me happy. Later in the day, grandma and I went to the beach, where she sat on the shaded bench reading her book and I lay on the sand and did a little swimming. The water was pretty warm once you get used to it but there were some small waves, so I stayed close to shore and did not swim to the bouey like I usually do. There was the usual seaweed and occasional floating trash, but that didn't bother me too much. What bothers me most is the salt in the water, which gets into your eyes and makes your hands all sticky. It's probably even worse in the ocean, since ours is an estuary.

Today I was looking over last year's Amtrak schedule for the train between Springfield, MA to Washington, DC and comparing it with the 2005 timetable. I told my mom how it was encouraging to see how some of the trains are taking a little faster today to get to their destinations than they did a year ago, but I don't think she cared that much. "Don't you ever want to look at train schedules from different years and see if anything changes?" I axed her. If I ever did want to go (quickly) between Springfield and DC, I would drive down to Bradley Airport in Windsor Locks, CT and hop on a plane. My mom and I estimated that it would take at least two hours less than the train (including arriving at airport an hour in advance and waiting for luggage), but the advantages over the train are greatly enhanced if one arrives in Ronald Reagan Airport, which has a Metro station and is close to downtown DC. We agreed that if one ever needed to get from NYC to DC in a hurry, taking Amtrak is probably better than flying.

Since one of my interests is demographics, I was really looking forward to the US Census Bureau releasing the populating estimates as of July 1, 2004 for places (cities, towns, villages, etc.) across the U.S. I remember last year they did it around June 24 or June 25, but this year it seems to be taking a little longer. First, I searched Census on Yahoo! News, since this release always appears on AP Wire, something along the lines of "Suburb of Phoenix is Fastest Growing City over 100,000". I got an interesting story from The Arizona Republic about Surprise, Ariz. It's just northwest of Phoenix. In 2000, the Feds counted 32,000 people there, but now town officials there are saying by the end of 2005, there will be 96,000 living there. So the city tripled its population in about 5 1/2 years. I think that's a pretty awesome fact, though with it brings sprawl, pollution, isolation, lengthy commutes and further residential encroachment on the desert. Phoenix is starting to get more high-density housing in its downtown, but for the nation's sixth-largest city, it seems to be way underdeveloped. As of now, it's the nation's largest city without any form of rail, but they're building a long light-rail line right now, so there is more urbanity ahead. In 2010, it will probably pass Philly as the fifth-largest city. It's also the largest state capital, though I'm pretty sure Boston and Atlanta have larger metro areas.