Excuse my charisma, chilled lemon spritzer, rocks not neat, this is summer not winter.

1. My ever evolving understanding of masculinity in the American context, as that is where I am based and where I make my observations, has a recurring awareness of restraints and adherence to limits. The continuing designation between the civilized and the savage is refined when the former exercises restraint where the latter does not. Restraint.

2. Summer fail : Neighborhood bar in New Orleans with a booze sponsored event & a broken AC. Definitely won't tell anyone how to run their business but that's not the way to have customers return.

3. Last week, my pride took a hit. I'm well aware of the absence of respect modernity has fostered amongst us. This decline in interpersonal interactions has in part been aided by the expansion of interpersonal communication systems. You can imagine my disgust when an engagement I arranged was essential canceled within 2hrs of the agreed time. I was only made aware of the cancellation because I need to switch venues at the last minute. If there were no need for the change, I would've been standing there holding the bag. It was my best interest to distance myself from that person permanently, and I did.

4. If you ask specific questions, you'll be afforded the answers you seek. That's no pseudo Masonic riddle or saying, its factual.

5. Essence Music Festival is this weekend & I'm doing everything in my power to make sure that I'm far away from this gathering as possible. If I didn't work downtown, I wouldn't be bothered with it at all. I'm packing my lunch from home and doing my best to leave work as soon as we finishing up to avoid traffic. If the heat weren't as life changing as it is, I'd take the streetcar in just to avoid the confusion.

6. Air strikes on Palestine, a warrant for Qaddafi's arrest that is probably a bounty on his head, Iran is flaunting their missle systems, unrest in Rawanda, N. Nigeria, Greece is beyond broke, China owns even more US debt, France miraculously has billions to invest in nuclear power, tuition hikes in Puerto Rico, GOP is seriously selecting the dumbest, incompetent politician in their party as a presidential candidate for 2012, its raining like a banshee outside right now, Wal-Mart heiress is opening a massive museum in Arkansas later this year while her company maintains some of the most repressive & discriminatory practices of any major American employer, Alabama places a bounty on the heads of undocumented workers while GA considers prison labor (slave labor once you look at prison demographics) to save fledgling Agriculture economy, 4 million American homes near foreclosure. If making myself intimately aware of the details behind these headlines is what constitutes being informed, I'm going to need medical grade anti depressant marijuana made available wherever newspapers are sold.

7. You would be amazed where you find empathy in your darkest hours. Absolutely amazed, suspect of people's intentions but amazed nonetheless.

8. A Marine, clearly a younger one, asked me last week how to go about dressing the part and looking his best. More specifically, how could his style emulate my own. My initial thought was to tell him " Die & come back into a middle class family value system with little money. Make a habit of buying clothes with less than $50 twice a year for 15 yrs and then spend the next 6 years working to buy all that you wanted but couldn't afford." Instead, I encouraged the young man to scour Esquire and GQ, paying close attention to the ads and features & use those as a template wherever he did his shopping. He'd develop a sense of personal style once he noticed the pieces to which he was regularly drawn.

9. I see you young mothers out there, giving birth to children because you had a moral dilemma about terminating a pregnancy you couldn't afford. Round of applause for bucking the system & owning your autonomy!! Here's to those dreams you have to raise a family, hope all that suspended potential doesn't lose its potency when you decide to go back to the world of work, putting 50+ hrs into a career and heaven knows how much into being a parent. Salutations to your sperm donor turned partner turned ex-knight-in-shining-armor when you realize that he really didn't want a family, just a reserved space to bury his bone.

10. I owe the day a more complete list of accomplishments in an effort to settle this debt sooner than later, I'm going to chug a 5hr energy drink after work.