My name is Ms. Taylor.

After many delays (all air travel related - alas for the dearth of other long-range options), I am finally back in Boston and ready to put Issue 1 of the journal to bed. A few short blurbs:

-My sister and I went to see The Incredibles, which was probably my favorite Pixar movie yet. It's clever and energetic, and the characters are surprisingly well developed for a kids' flick. The purported Randian subtext seems overblown; Syndrome's actions are ambiguous in that sense. He is a genius inventor using his gifts to create tons of cool stuff - very John Galt. But he's doing it only as an effort to completely level the playing field and make everyone the same. Hmmm. Perhaps his plot to undermine specialness is poorly thought out and might have benefits in the long run? I look forward to the inevitable sequel. (However, I do reserve some strident criticism for the short feature preceding the film. Entitled "Boundin'" and starring a lumpen jackalope and a marionette-like shorn sheep, it dragged on and on through a terrible faux-Western song to finish with a clumsy and heavy handed message. We had better cowboy narration in The Big Lebowski.)

-I went car shopping and test drove my first car, a Passat. It was very nice, but my grandmother dragged me off to lunch before they could get down to business: a good thing, since we weren't buying that day. The first dealership we went to really irked me. When we were about to leave, the salesman went and fetched his manager to try and forestall our departure. She was about my age, made up like a clown, and called me "sweetie." I do not like being addressed with terms of endearment by age peers or strangers. I also noticed that the TSA employees called me by my first name. An intentional effort to infantilize travelers or just more Southern over-familiarity?