When Marco turned up, I hid my head under a couple of pillows. Didn't help one bit. The guy's stubborn. Corn-fed, red-blooded, test-pilot stubborn. He slumped on my bed, watching the Saturday morning cartoons, all depressed about Adriano. Pouting. He was pouting, with that empathic I'm just a poor human schmuk with human-sized dreams, trying to deal with things that are so much bigger than me and I need to sit down for a minute look on his face.

Which is really what I was talking about before, and that makes me wonder why I bother with the character analysis, because I never end up saying what I wanted to say. I'm so much more coherent in virtual life about investing dollars. dollarstoinvest.com

Discussion feels like reduction. Making a point implies working things down, sticking to a few key concepts and connections, which is all well and good when you're talking about, say, a scientific discovery, but wholly inadequate when delving into a person. Into a human equation. Perhaps that's the necessity of life - because there's stuff that can't be articulated on innumerable bulletin boards and blog posts. Perhaps that's why I'm more and more disenchanted with the so-called human sciences, but it's neither here, nor there.