Random musings

• Having made two visits to Kinko's yesterday, I'm thinking maybe I should buy myself a fax machine and go into business. The place was jumping with would be faxers who evidently had no problem waiting in line forever to pay for their faxes while three Kinko's employees dicked around in the back and ignored the customers; the one person at the cash desk was busy helping a guy with a complicated print order.
  
  It cost me $2 to receive a two-page fax and $5 to send a three-page, long-distance fax ($2 for the first page, $1 for the rest. That's a heck of a mark up. Plus, I wouldn't be busy mucking about with printing orders and keeping people waiting. Just the fax, as it were. And cake. Faxes and cake. Sounds like a winning combination.
  
  
• If I ever become rich and successful, I'm gonna hire one person to monitor my refrigerator. He'd be on hand with a sponge to wipe up after my son spills cranberry juice so it doens't get to be a sticky mess. He'd also keep track of the covered dishes with two tablespoons of last night's sidedish in them and throw them out before they grow fur. And under his guidance, the refrigerator would be neat and orderly. I would always be able to find the parsley before it becomes blocked by one of the above-named sidedishes, thus saving me an additional trip to the store to buy another batch and rescuing me from the horror of finding a baggy full of liquified herb three weeks later.
  
  
• As I drove around listening to the coverage of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia yesterday, I was reminded of a story my mother tells. My father is an alumnus and consequently is always being called upon to give. One day, my mother picked up the phone and, upon being told that it was Columbia calling for a donation, said: "Get rid of Edward Said and we'll consider it."