Sometimes I think I’m reading The Onion and then I look up and it’s a normal news source. I still am not sure if I believe this “Love Bomb,” but my friend Jennie sent it along to me and I couldn’t stop laughing. It also made me wonder, why not made a bomb that just made everyone Love each other and stop fighting. Like an Ecstasy bomb or something.

So I wake up unusually early on my welcomed, not to mention out of the ordinary, day off, it’s 7am and I can’t seem to go back to sleep. Finally I realize it’s because it is pouring rain and I can hear the sloshing of cars driving by and roll of thunder in the distance. Argh. Unless it clears up in the next few hours, I don’t think this hike is going to happen.

You see, I had decided that I would stay this extra day in Prairie du Chien so I could hike up to view the Effigy Mounds. I’d been talking a lot about them to my co-worker and he decided to stay the weekend so he could do some of the hikes. I had already planned on leaving Thursday night to head up to St. Paul, but since I may never be back in this area again I thought I would spend today hiking and then drive up to St. Paul tonight. Alas, it’s a veritable downpour out there.

But since I was up, I went out to have some of the not-so-bad breakfast for an Americinn. I grabbed some eggs, made a little waffle, and a glass of milk then plopped myself down in front of the TV in the lobby only to have “Good Morning America” inform me that today is a sad day. John Ritter and Johnny Cash died.

Now Cash was 71 and I’m not as surprised to hear this, especially since his wife passed away earlier this year, but Ritter? Good ol’ John? Jack Tripper? He was only 54! And I loved him! You may think my love for him is all because of Three’s Company, but it’s not. That’s where it started, but as time went by he earned my respect with some of the characters chose to play. In “Sling Blade” he played a gay store manager and on Felicity {I watched one episode of that show} he seemed to play some ones alcoholic father? Of course, those who knew me in my early college years know we loved to make fun of the Monday Night Movies and “The Colony” was one of our favorites where John Ritter moves his family into a private neighborhood that ends up being like a commune they can’t escape from. Then of course was the time he played the police chief in “Bride of Chucky.” But I think I loved him most of all when he decided to play a robot on Buffy who dates her mother and turns evil.

Not to overshadow Johnny Cash of course who has wowed us with his renditions of favorites such as “Rusty Cage” and “Hurt.” It sort of tickles me to think Cash and Ritter spent the morning taking that walk towards who knows where and maybe they bumped into each other and discovered they really like each other. I can see this being the making of a great “Monday Night Movie” already.

I finished my usual cover to cover reading of The New Yorker on the plane today so when I got to Cincinnati I wanted a new magazine. I picked up the Discover magazine and decided I really dig it. There was an article in it called “Physical Chemistry” where a scientist continues his studies to see if pheromones have any effect on how we react to each other. It was quite fascinating.

Compounds released in the urine or body odor of male mice, for example, can signal dominance and spark aggression between males and prompt reproductively dormant females to start cycling. The scent of a strange male mouse will cause pregnant females to abort their fetuses.

Isn’t that crazy? The other quote I like seems to hit closer to home though. When speaking of how pheromones of female silk moths attract males they say, “Attracts is perhaps too coy a word; [it] pretty much strips a male moth of free will.” Hmmm…that sounds like how it works for humans too.

For those of you who attended Western Washington University (especially Kris) you might have met a remarkable woman named Kelly Jackson. She was a suitemate of mine in the Fairhaven dorms; both a beautiful woman with a pure soul and the best giggle I’ve ever heard. Since she was an artist, I used to hang around her room and tell her boring stories of Monterey (my high school years gone by) just so I could have an excuse to be around her and watch her work. She was brilliant. Probably still is. The loser that I am, I lost touch.

The point? She had an amazing story behind her. She was an orphaned Vietnamese baby that was being taken to France to be rescued and adopted along with a lot of other children, but the plane crashed and only half survived. For some reason she was taken to San Francisco where she was adopted by a Renton couple. So ended the story when we were in college.

Now the story has a new ending. Or a beginning, I should say. Here is an article the Seattle Times did up in April about her. For all you romantics (Brenda, I’m talking to you) read this. They should write a book or make a movie or maybe just keep it for themselves.