Thursday I finish my research. Friday I graduate. Saturday I'll be out of Gainesville. Sunday I drive out of Florida. Monday I leave civilization.
That last part isn't true; I'll be using high-tech synthetic fabrics, refined metalwork, and electronic digital imaging equipment. My hike would be impossible without the support of a large network of farms, mines, factories, trains, trucks, public roadways, public transportation, workers, managers, and others. But still, there is something I'm leaving behind, and it's not just my friends and the people I care about—almost none of whom I will get more than a terse goodbye in the steely Clint Eastwood fashion of rugged individualism and alienated is-anybody-out-there American independence.
I may train my parents to use this site to post pictures and journal excerpts.
Tom! You missed a great entry in The Onion, which could easily have been turned against Josh with hilarious results. Or something.
Catholic Church Condemns Metrosexuality
VATICAN CITY—Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Monday that metrosexuality, the trend of heterosexual men co-opting the aesthetics of homosexual men, is strictly prohibited under Catholic doctrine. "The truly faithful will avoid the temptation to adopt this hip urban lifestyle," Navarro-Valls said. "The devout Catholic must remain on the path toward salvation, no matter how good he'd look in an Armani pullover, and no matter how much he might covet his neighbor's set of Williams-Sonoma lobster forks." Karl Weis, director of the New York-based activist group Freedom From Religion, responded to the ban by stating that "metrosexuality is so 2003."