I'm not bringing you down, am I?

"I'm not bringing you down, am I?
--Marvin the robot, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

I will confess that I have this fear that deep down (or not so deep down) I am a Marvin, especially in my blog. I harbor paranoid thoughts that people become regular readers and then irregular readers (readers who stop reading my blog very often, not readers who have a touch of constipation) because they get turned off by negativity.

Now granted Marvin had the brain the size of a planet and I'm not saying I have the brain the size of a planet...well maybe Pluto now that it has once again achieved near planet status although a dwarf planet. I don't consider myself superior to other people except for most Republicans and right-wing Christians. Oh, and people who shop at Walmart on a regular basis. I also consider myself superior to anyone who would wear a Utilikilt.

On being cool

At the risk of repeating myself, yet again, I've been thinking about being cool. I wrote about it several years ago in a post called "Way Past Cool." And I made it pretty clear that I don't think it is possible to be cool by design. But I have always wanted to be cool.

I grew up in Idaho in a lower-income, working-class family. Neither of my parents had gone to college. We lived in a small rambler build in the early 1950s. I had two brothers. Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, there wasn't a great deal of discretionary income. My father worked in a  hardware company warehouse and my mother juggled a variety of jobs over the years (school lunch cook, house cleaner, convenience store clerk and several years working at a company that produced plywood panels for mobile homes).