Randy Pausch, who was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, passed away 07.25.2008. About five million people have watched his YouTube video of his “last lecture” titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. He is giving this lecture after he has been told by the best doctors that he only has 3-6 months to live due to pancreatic cancer. His words are an inspiration. The lecture is about 1 hour and 15 minutes, but it’s worth your time.

My beau emailed me a New York Times Article - Lessons in Love, by Way of Economics. The author, Ben Stein, applies to rules of Economics to love and comes up with some important lessons - “Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce goods and services. What could be scarcer or more precious than love? It is rare, hard to come by and often fragile.”

I received this link with the message: “Love is the most precious thing in the world. I love you. Ergo, you are the most precious thing in my world. =)” I am a rich woman.

Nothing is scarier than a clown. Except for maybe more than one clown, or multiple naked clowns, or many scantilly-clad with a Bazooka, or… you get the point.

Fear of clowns/mimes is a real phobia. Coulrophobia has origins in the Greek language, where kolon or kolobathristes means limb. This relates to the Greek term for those who used stilts, i.e., clowns and circus performers. People afraid of clowns are called coulrophobes.

I am a coulrophobe. My fear is not so debiliating that I would fear for my life if I were in the same room with a clown. I would just feel uncomfortable. But there are people out there who can never dream of going to a circus or a child’s  birthday bash (with a clown, of course). Watch this clip on YouTube of a woman going through therapy for her coulrophobia.

The cause of fear is usually some traumatic experience in childhood. My personal traumatic experience would be watching Stephen King’s IT. I challenge you to look at a picture of Pennywise and tell me that’s not scary.

Didn’t think so. (I was cringing the whole time I was posting that picture.) A scary movie can leave quite an impression, especially on a young, fragile mind. I know adults who won’t go swimming in the ocean because of the Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.

Speaking of flicks, the longly anticipated The Dark Knight is opening tomorrow and I have tickets to the midnight show. If you haven’t seen the trailer, put down everything and watch it now. And yes, there is a scary clown in it. I’ll try my best not to close my eyes or turn away when the Joker appears on screen, but I’m not making any promises.

I asked myself, “What is it about clowns that are so scary?” For me, it’s all about the painted face. A clown cannot be trusted. A clown has something to hide. The painted-on exaggerated facial expressions are there to mask evil.

I’d like to leave you with an article from MTV - ‘Dark Knight’ Dogma: Everything We Need To Know We Can Learn From Batman which is a list of 20 life lessons that can be learned from Batman. I’d like to call your attention to lesson number 2: Never trust a man who smiles all the time. He is either trying to sell you something or trying to kill you.