You can't get cherry soda

Conversation overheard at the 7-Eleven counter. The customer asked, ``Do you have football cards?'' Yes, they have. (I think she said football cards. I don't know what that would be, but it doesn't matter.) ``What's the smallest you have?'' Fifteen dollars. (This might have been fifty dollars.) ``I'd like one, then, please.'' (The cashier looks.) I'm sorry, we don't have any. ``Not in any amount?'' No, I'm sorry. ``All right, then I won't get one.''

I'm glad people can be so reasonable.

I'd gone to the West Mall, which is actually on the west side of the island, to see a movie. (I got a free Cars collectible drink cup out of the deal, too.) The mall was having a two-day blood drive; if I'd known about it I would have been glad to donate, but since I didn't know I didn't bring my passport and they insist on that. To encourage blood donors they also had outside the mall an ongoing concert with local singers playing enthusiastically to crowds made up of surplus blood drive workers and about an equal number of people sitting in the chairs; and, at some point (before I got in) a small soccer tournament on a field about the size of a tennis court.

Also while I was standing around and drinking a root beer, someone wearing a blood drive organizer's T-shirt came up to an elderly Chinese man who was just standing around, and gave him a copy of Her World magazine showing off a woman in a bikini. He accepted this gift with reasonable grace, although I thought he looked about as confused by this gift as I would.

Trivia: The Times of London paid £1000 for Lee DeForest radio equipment to get wireless radio reports from the Russo-Japanese War. Source: Signor Marconi's Magic Box, Gavin Weightman.

Currently Reading: Michael Faraday: A Biography, L Pearce Williams. A young scientist considers the relationship between perception and reality: Whilst standing at the door of a gentleman's house and waiting until my knock should be answered, I thrust my head through some iron railing that separated the doorway from another and then I began to consider on which side of the rail I was. In my mind I affirmed that the side possessing my head was my station for there was my perception, my senses. I had just sufficient time to ascertain this when the door opened and my nose began bleeding by the contact of the rail and such matter as that quickly put flight to my rude metaphysics. Nobody ever said philosophy was safe.