Gould Effect

It is 96 degrees and humid...and it's cloudy, the sun isn't even out.

I'm in the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Brooklyn...it's kind of like a Victrola or
Bauhaus type of place. It is air-conditioned with free wireless, and
therefore, it looks like a refugee camp scene from War of the Worlds. There
are people just sitting on the ground, hugging their laptops. Nobody dares get
up to use the bathroom or they will lose their spot. People enter, but nobody
leaves, so it overflows now like a bathtub. I'm in the back, and I estimate it
will take me a half hour to get out of here without stepping on anybody.

Here's a new one I hadn't seen yet....lots of people are sharing their iTunes
library on the network. I'm listening to Tribe Called Quest (Scenario) from
somebody in this room named jameson mccalum, who I will probably never meet.

My Sidekick has developed a great tic - it keeps turning itself off and on
spontaneously. Four times in a row in the cab, then it chilled out for a few
hours, now just every five minutes. So for now, I'm purely Internet.