Stiff legs greeted me when I awoke this morning...

and there was a strong temptation to just roll over and go back to bed.  But two minutes later I was up, dressed and out the door.

My legs were stiff because I'd been forced to stand for 35 minutes in line at Best Buy yesterday, and because I spent over two hours sitting without moving at a movie screening later in the evening.  But as I walked, the stiffness loosened.  I wanted to walk for just over 30 minutes and I did so.

As I walked, I thought a lot about the name of one of the sushi places on my route.  Shikibu is its name and that happens to be the name of a character that appears in a novel (I may have mentioned this before) about Japan in the time of Kublai Khan.  The name belongs to a baby girl whose mother is from a noble family and she is married to a prince of noble rank, but poor wealth.  It's a good marriage for the families, he has connections to build her family's trade, her family can provide him with the money he needs to maintain a princely lifestyle.

But he mistreats his wife, finally forcing her to move from the capital at Kamakura to a remote palace he owns.  There, she is visited by the warrior monk from her past and they have an affair.  Shikibu is the child of that affair and after she is born with red hair like the monk, the prince smashes the little baby girl to death on a pile of rocks.

This novel's nugget of a plotpoint makes one think of the Missouri Moron, Rep Akin.  Because, like the prince, he likens the abortion of a fetus to a punishment of the child.  But there are several differences.  The baby Shikibu had been born.  There was no question as to whether or not she was "alive" at that moment.  You can argue the ethics of when life begins, but science is clear that a fetus that weighs less than 500 grams cannot survive outside the womb.  And of course there is the fact that Shikibu's mother, Taniko, wasn't raped and wanted her baby.

When men like Akin will volunteer their bodies to host the unwanted fetuses conceived as the result of rape, then they may prattle on about how these "babies" should be saved, and they may feel free to volunteer to save them, one at a time.  Until then, basically they should just shut up.

Now this raises another question.  Does abortion become murder at some point?  At 10 weeks, no.  At 22 weeks, probably not.  24 weeks is a grey area, and much beyond that goes from grey to...well, questionable at best and unjustifiable at worst.  35 weeks, which is an allegation facing two doctors in a Maryland case of late term abortions being labelled as homicides is clearly murder.

I also thought about comparative value this morning.  My running shoes, which I wear daily, ran me about $60.  At the time I wanted to buy two pairs, so I could rest one pair each day, but they only had one pair in my size of the style I wanted.  I plan to pick up another pair in a week or two, now that my old pair I'd been wearing on my hospitalization is finally beyond comfortable wear.  These shoes are a good value, since I wear them for full days, over 180 days per year for more than a year.

I happened to discover that a pair of those CFM pumps in that adult novelty/lingerie/other store window also runs about $60.  They're clearly designed not to be worn in regular daily life, but they obviously serve a useful purpose in the bedroom.  Given the lack of wear they will endure in a lifetime of being worn briefly prior to (and if someone's kinky enough, during) sex, are they a good value?  I'll leave that question to you. 

But I wouldn't pay $200 for a pair of Nike Air Jordans even if it was your money.  Except maybe as an investment in the hope I could sell them for $400 in two or three years.  Otherwise, they do not present good value for the buck.

Celebrity deaths almost always come in threes, and I was wondering who would be next after the deaths of Tony Scott and Phyllis Diller.  I was unaware that on the previous Friday, actor William Windom had died.  A prolific character actor, I knew him best from his guest-starring role on an episode of the original Star Trek series as Commodore Matt Decker.  Decker's ship was attacked by a doomsday machine and all of his crew was killed, and later in the episode he kills himself in an effort to exact revenge.  He was an excellent actor.

Naked photos of a Prince, who isn't a short, very talented musician from Minnesota?  Go figure.