<p><strong>1 Suffer the little children</strong> <br>Yesterday morning, sitting on my sofa, doing morning things (i.e., reading things online, drinking a hot caffeinated beverage, which yesterday happened to be tea), enjoying the quiet. Suddenly, high-pitched squeals pierce my ears. The woman next door has let her two toddlers loose out front again. They run up and down the sidewalk in front of my house, pushing each other on some wheeled toy and screaming for over two hours. Sometimes the screaming stops, and the older boy yells at a neighbor or passerby, "Hi. What are you doing?" and other such four-year-old questions. This boy never seems to speak in a normal voice. All morning I resist the urge to stand at the door and yell, "Use your inside voice!" or "Why can't you let your little monsters play in the BACK YARD?!" I love kids, but these two little boys work my last nerve, and their parents seem always to put them out front to play.</p>
<p><strong>2 Workers playtime</strong><br>
Yesterday afternoon, just back from the grocery store and glad to find that the squealing little boys are safely and quietly inside, I put away my food, ready to put on some music and make curry sauce (for me, an afternoon-long affair). Before I can get five fabulous cds from the 80s loaded in the changer, I'm assaulted by strains of Mexican oom-pah music; it appears to be issuing from the truck of the roofing workers across the street. Unlucky as I am, this music comes not from a cd but from a Mexican radio station, complete with rumbling ten-minute-long advertisements and rapid-fire Spanish announcing. Joy. The workers continue to amuse themselves in this way until they kick off sometime after five.</p>
<p><strong> 3 Art for the people</strong><br>
Today, all is quiet: No squealing little boys, no rumbling radio ads, just peace and quiet.  I celebrate by listening to the latest album from The Sea and Cake. Season six of <em>The X-Files</em> is on hold for me at the library, so I decide to go pick it up. I make my way downtown and, as I'm about to turn into the street beside the library where I normally park, I notice barricades. There's a stage set up behind the library. There's a sign that says, "Utah Arts Festival." Fuck. The whole block around the library is closed, tents are set up, signs are displayed, there is no way to get parked and go into the library to pick up my Spooky discs. No doubt this will continue through the week and weekend, which means that my hold will expire, and Spooky Part Six will go back to the shelf before I'm able once again to gain access to the library.</p>
<p><strong>With our thoughts we create the world</strong><br>Cultivating good will toward strangers and humanity in general is something I struggle with&mdash;or rather, it's something I think I should struggle with but mostly don't. Mostly I just cave to my misanthropic tendencies. Much of what stokes my misanthropy has to do with unwelcome intrusions into my aural, visual or psychic space&mdash;that's right, not any particular action or wrong, just unself-conscious existence that happens to bleed into my own. So far, self-awareness is as close as I've come to a corrective in this area. I realize that is not much. Even sadder, I realize that this is among several faults (unproductive attitudes/perspectives, really) that I've been saying that about for the past decade or so. Frailty thy name is human. </p>
<p class="note">*With apologies to M. Godard.</p>