If you smoke cigarettes and you want to quit (and you should), do something else to take its place. Low-impact exercise is a pretty good thing to do. You will be surprised at how quickly you can do stuff that you were not able to do before. I started walking two miles every morning, but now I am up to five. At fifteen minutes a mile, it is a brisk walk but not too taxing. Another nice thing about walking is that if it is cold outside all you have to do is bundle up. Another nice thing about walking is that you don't need to buy any kind of "work-out" clothes or shoes. I just wear regular clothes and have a nice pair of shoes suitable for walking that I already owned anyway. After my morning walk, I do twenty push-ups and twenty sit-ups. I started at ten apiece, but when that became easy enough I increased each to fifteen. Now I am at twenty. None of this costs me a penny. In the afternoon, I walk to the library to study, and then back. Another three miles.

Start small, and work your way up gradually. Set small but achievable goals. Find something to do that you enjoy, and then have fun with it. I like walking because it is meditative. But maybe you like something more exciting. That's cool. Do what you find is fun. Often what is fun requires zero money out-of-pocket.

"Autumn Leaves" is one of those songs that you play so much when playing jazz that you forget how good of a melody it has. The original French lyrics (translated into English in this clip) make it even better.

What if on a random day you would open up a random door on a random building and walk into this?

After our totally fun and awesome show Saturday night we were talking about Matthew Lesko. He's that free government money guy on TV who wears the question mark-covered suit and gallivants about the National Mall. He has a kind of Schweig Engel ethic and aesthetic. I was thinking that there is a certain kind of advertising where the message boils down to:

I care so very much and so intensely about you purchasing this product because you need it immediately and it is so important for you to purchase it that I will don a ridiculous outfit and behave as if I am mentally disturbed if that is what it takes to get you to purchase it.

There are people who approach courtship this way as well.

Tonight at Off Broadway, the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra accompany F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu with a new and original score. Also performing ... Catholic Guilt and the May Day Orchestra.

Read more about the R&P MPO in the RFT.

I walked today on Spring Street behind St. Mary's High School past a large abandoned apartment complex. Windows broken and boarded up. It appeared as if the complex was some kind of public or subsidized housing. Across the street from the apartment complex is a corner store called "Speedway" or something like that. Liquor, cigarettes, junk food. I began thinking that the only difference between that corner store and a corner drug dealer is a license.