Some guy gave me a pamphlet and went on about animal cruelty. All I heard was; "Hey, the circus is in town".

Let's make this quick:

The Muslim cultural center is 2 blocks away from what many call "Ground Zero".

A block in New York is 1/8th of a mile.

Lower Manhattan is wicked small.

New York City has a population Density over 65,000 per square mile.

The cultural center is very close to City Hall.

Muslims who must go to City Hall have limited accommodations for prayer.

If you are against Amendment One of The Bill of Rights then you hate America.

Welcome to the 2010s, the teens or whatever the hell we're calling this collection of ten years. And that's the whole thing, it's not about what we call it; it's that we won't call it and we won't talk about it. We couldn't shut up about the me-me 80s or the go-go 90s. "Well it is the 90s", "with the coming of a new millennium", "turn of the century" and all that.

Who talked about the aughts? Nobody, that's who. We didn't even call those years the aughts. We may starting do so though. It's easier to refer to a previous decade as "the aughts", just not the decade one resides in. We didn't know what to call 2000-2009. For 2000-2001 the new millennium thing got us by but that faded pretty quick. As a society we almost immediately went from referencing our current decade, on a regular basis, to never mentioning it.

In the 90s Newspapers had contests for people to guess/suggest what the new decade would be called. The correct answer would have been "nothing". It was the elephant in the room that will remain for half a score more years. Through a quirk of nomenclature the first 2 decades of the century will have less self-referencing than any other decades in this century. If you don't know somebody's name, you're less likely to speak about them. This becomes even more so if they are one of those without a name, such as 2000-2019.

My main point, with little in the way of supporting facts, is; we won't heavily reference our own time for another 10 years. That has to have some kind of impact on historical perspectives and all that jazz.

Mostly I just want to say, "Happy Arbitrary Time to Start a New Year".

A lots happened in my life, let's see if y'all can keep up.

Here's a picture of the Madison Convention Center, taken a year or so ago. Madison is a nice little town. It thinks it's Portland. It is not.

These are, by far, my two most popular flickr photos. I enjoy taking pictures of white people with dreadlocks. Luckily for me I live just off Alberta Street so there's no shortage of hippies with dreads.