You Are Obvious and Inevitable and Other Strange Things

    There's not much of a theme to this post other than these are strange/unlikely things I've heard or been told lately.

    The other day I was listening to NPR and there was a piece on patents and how it has come to pass that too many of them have been issued for things that turned out to be "obvious and inevitable," e.g., they didn't deserve a patent because they would have come about on their own. And I thought how awful it would be to be told, after having working so hard on something, Your invention was obvious and inevitable. Then I thought about how it would feel to be told, You are obvious and inevitable. Then it got stuck in my brain and I couldn't stop saying it: You are obvious and inevitable. You are obvious and inevitable. You are obv- OK, I'll stop now.

    Oddity number two: I was shopping in a store called Express at the mall, a place where you might hear some fairly trendy radio music or disco-ish tunes (think Scissor Sisters or Gwen Stefani), when this really good song started playing that I recognized. It was none other than Arcade Fire's "No Cars Go." That really struck me as odd--but in a good way, you know? Good for them, I thought, gettin' themselves some mall-store radio play.

    Lastly, I was driving somewhere with my son and he asked me, Mom, you know what one of the best things ever is? I got kind of excited at the prospect of hearing this, because he doesn't always share what he feels about things these days, plus you never know what he's going to come out with. (A classic example would be from when he was in the second grade. While all the other children were writing stories about puppies and baseball, he wrote a book called Tanks and Hydrogen Bombs.) Anyway, he said, That we always have this box of kleenex in the car. I was like, Um, well, OK then. I'm very glad you appreciate that, son. My mother taught me it was important to have kleenex on hand at all times, so I do.

Hot Chip--"What You Find Strange" mp3 off All Killer, No Filler (buy--sorry, apparently this was on their '05 tour EP) 

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