to the left - to the left - everything you own in a box to the left... everything? really? i think not EVERYthing he owns is in that box.

until yestereve i had never heard the name "ronnie james dio". no, really. never. and today i have heard it like a bazillion times everywhere from the local morning news on teevee to all things considered on npr to the running message board on the wild & wooly webernet. yestermorn, the name ronnie james dio would not have rung a bell in my head and now it eructates a clanging cacaphony. ronnie james, ronnie james, wherefore art thou famous ronnie james? ronnie james dio was a singer whose apparent claim to fame is that he ringo'd ozzie ozbourne's place as the lead singer of black sabbath. rjd was in the news here recently b/c he died yesterday of stomach cancer at age 67.

i am confident there are a plethorae of pasttimes about which i know nothing. nada. zip. zilch. zero. i know a wee bit about a few things. i am a little grey cat in a square box on a striped chair in a room with two windows. i don't follow heavy metal, much less black sabbath, although i have heard of black sabbath and i have heard of ozzy ozbourne and i like that "momma i'm coming home" song and "crazy train" is a classic. but i'd never heard of ronnie james dio and i am fairly certain my life was no less rich for not knowing who he was.

the social mind, our collective intelligence, binds us together through shared experience from which we glean shared allusions. shakespeare to the simpsons, physics to let's-get-physical - it's all there in our giant brain. it's what makes us turn to each other and grin several times a day. well, it's what makes my old man & i turn to each other and grin several times a day. we do share one brain. wait. what? to continue - i haven't read all of shakespeare's works and i've never seen an episode of the simpsons. i did take a physics class in high school and i have heard of jazzercise. so i am getting maybe... what... 15% of the collective cultural allusions, on a bad day. on a good day i am getting only 10%.

ba-dum-CHING!