Thy Cup Hath Been Poisoned

Several items on my mind as I watch a man with a gun pull into a gas station on an overcast day halfway through an anonymous stretch of the Middle of Nowhere*:

• At what point do you have to justify your prioritization of tasks, people, events, dreams, needs, and desires to the bevy of stakeholders who all think they are the majority owner of your life?
• How does one chop a salad while in free-fall?
• Why does everything on television happen in New York or L.A.? And sometimes Miami?
• There are five drunken tigers inside of this box. The box is decreasing in size at a constant rate of 0.38 cm³/s. You have a clothes hanger, $5.72, and the complete Michael Jackson discography. You are also a narcoleptic. What do you do?
• Is the passage of timing really speeding up as I age, or do I just not care as much about how long it's been since I last did [x]?
• To the cloud! Which doesn't exist!

*Isn't firing a gun at a gas station generally considered to be a Bad Idea?

Two Sentences at 2:22am

Straining to see the most distant horizon through the thickest of fogs, you fail to notice the obstacle that will thwart your next step; relentlessly scanning the rugged terrain at your feet for hazards, you fail to notice how far off-course your current trajectory is.

A compass and a means to float above the fog solves both of these problems.

Since No One's Reading This, I Can Rant

...maniacally, using a series of random mathematical equations:

1 + 1 < 3.14159 YOU LYING SACK OF (sin²ϴ + cos²ϴ)!!!

Take your goddamn e^-iπ and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ϕ!!!! Golden ratio my ass.

All of you MORONS who continue to believe that δ²y/δx² = 0 are COMPLETELY λ'd!!! That's right:

λλλλλλλλλλλλλλλλλ

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

The Vampire Blood in My Wine Glass Speaks!

"There are too many bears that have fallen into bottomless pits with trapezoidal openings."

"The wheel upon which are all spinning -- it measures 392.7 meters across, even though Napolean's scientists incorrectly defined the meter as being 1/10,000,000th of the distance between the north pole and the equator, whereas nowadays it is simply defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. Morons."

"I was at peace with my current position in the space-time continuum, but then Locke let Ben move the island and now we're all randomly warping back and forth through time, occasionally suffering from a fatal nosebleed. Ah crap."

"When a child hunts for easter eggs, he or she does not expect the act of finding one to cause his or her basket to explode. Yet this happens all the time. Why?"

"1, 1, 2, 3, 5... Eureka! Awk! Pah-cuck!" (all birds speak chicken)

"You should get contacts because you can't see anything. I recommend a +1.25 for your right eye, and a link of hot italian sausage for your stomach."

"If cows could fly around and devour Billy Corgan, the world would become devoid of music that no one has listened to in over a decade."

"Sports teams playing each other is funny when the combination of the names of the participating teams and the result implies a balance of power that makes no sense in the natural world. For example: Eagles 27, Bears 3. In real life, it would be: Bears 4,398,186, Eagles 4."

"I am the Man in the Iron Mask, and I can shoot fireballs."

On the Rediscovery of the Red Savory

The other day, I found myself standing in the middle of a chessboard, where the following took place:

Knight to C3
Pawn B6 to C6
Rook A1 to A5
Fig Newton J1 to incisor L2

Then the grayfish proclaimed to all through my ear-trumpet:

All hail the great tree of the shrouded everyman
For its diaspora has spread to twelve continents
And is broadcast to the other five in 1080p

Indeed, it was a time of accelerated enlightenment that promised a bounty of further discovery with every passing millisecond, where old habits quickly and silently faded into the teeming switchgrass, and even older ones sunk into the gaping sandtrap behind the 6th green. Jonah's gaze absent-mindedly followed the tangled loops of his shoelaces, as he pondered the fact that his name would never again be mentioned beyond the bounds of this sentence.

Excelsior! We have transcended the anonymity of a misplaced black button floating in a distant cranberry pond.

From within the sarcophagus, I could hear this voice and the footsteps that preceded him: they had become numb from frequent immersion in chilled marmalade. As the voice continue to mutter to itself about the proper aging policies for non-liquid receivables, I wondered how it was that I became suddenly encased in a sarcophagus in the middle of a chessboard. To be sure, King Tut had recently appeared to me in a dream, but his incessant circumlocution on topics that bore no relevance to my rapidly-declining home value prevented me from waking up for 37 days. The sum of 3 and 7 is 10. Knight C3 to D5. As a child, Ancient Egyptian civilization captivated my imagination (often through such vehicles as Choose Your Own Adventure Books and Super Mario Brothers), and I knew that, someday, I would visit. That day was not now; it was last Wednesday.

By the time I had found the crowbar at my feet and pried the sarcophagus open with my elbow (after I had swallowed the crowbar), it had become phosphorescently clear that I had been checkmated by the ham-and-cheese sandwich parked at G5. The hour of ultimate defeat was at hand, for I had failed to obtain the secret 1-UP contained within the Level 5 Warp Zone, and consequently had no lives remaining in reserve. The sandwich lurched forward, sometimes erratically, sometimes delicately, and sometimes in a trumpet-accentuated figure-eight pattern, as the butter-like fabric of space-time melted cleanly and evenly into Jean Valjean's cosmic bowl of lightly-salted popcorn.

And so it came to pass that, at some point in time -- or perhaps never -- I was unexpectedly quashed from existence by a common lunchbox item. But at that meaningless point where the left-hand and right-hand limits of my consciousness diverged to opposite infinities, it could be summarily stated by an unidentified, omniscient third-person narrator that I felt more like myself than anyone else ever did or ever will.

Speaking Words of Wisdom

When you buy a book, most likely because you intend to read it, make sure that you remember that it is on your shelf after you place it there.

If you take a minute to look around, you will realize that most of the things in the universe are larger than you. Therefore, whenever you find yourself in doubt, assume that you are not fat.

Any musical composition can be enhanced by the addition of crash cymbals, tubular bells, and lightly-tapped bongo drums.

Every day presents a multitude of opportunities, and the most fruitful -- and challenging -- will often catch you by surprise. Be sure to enter up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right B, A, Start before taking them on.

If your state government allows it, keep your first set of license plates.

Avoid Scylla and Charybdis at all costs.

If you have an entrepreneurial mind, try to find a commercially-viable way to build a scale model of Crater Lake from a flooded football stadium. Optimize your business model to minimize operating costs and accidental drownings, and refer to the image at left when determining the correct placement of Wizard Island. The use of papier-mâché as a building material is not recommended, unless you are trying to decorate your habitat with gasoline-filled piñatas.

Most larger mammals are funnier on rocket-skates, especially grizzley bears.

3:23am

Bose makes an excellent set of earbuds shaped like jet engines that deliver premium-quality sound directly into your ear canal with the acoustics of a home theater surround system. The only problem is that the buds are constantly falling out of your ears, even if you're completely motionless. That sort of inhibits your listening experience.

Some limoncello on the rocks would be just smashing right now. Apparently it's not too hard to make.

This is indented
and italicized
text
broken up into
several lines
like a poem perhaps...

Does it sound different
in your head
when you read it?

It does for me
and the voice is softer
more ethereal
androgynous
like a stoned fifth grader

this->must_be_getting_annoying();

so I'll
STOP

Here's a stack of watermelons exploding in slow motion, set to a version of the 1812 Overture that has been transposed down a couple of keys for some reason:

Why do I still have this lava lamp from high school that I never use? Maybe I should plug it in before I go to bed. Then, when I wake up in the middle of the night bathed in purple and yellow (wasn't there some weird banana-grape chewing gum back in the 80s? I'm sure it was gross), I'll be quite confused and disoriented. Except that the sun is going to rise in a couple of hours, so that will kinda ruin the effect. Oh well, let's see what happens.

Today's Random Depictions of Jesus

Admit it. Somewhere, in the stale recesses of your mind, you knew all along that Jesus of Nazareth packed one hell of a hadouken:



Maybe you didn't know that Jesus was also very skilled in the art of the short sword, but that shouldn't surprise anyone who's familiar with this t-shirt:



Okay, so you didn't play Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. Neither did I, so I found this one more interesting:



No? Hmmm... okay, how about:



This one even has a backstory:

The Attack of the 500-foot Jesus will begin on a Tuesday, not far from the Independence, Missouri bus stop you normally pass on your way to work. At approximately six seconds past six minutes past six hours into the day (that's 06:06:06, derived from the number of the beast), 500-foot Jesus will rise from the depths of a nearby underground train station, cracking the ground as He rises up. He will carry two train carriages all the way to downtown Kansas City; the carraiges[sic] which will then be thrown into the two tallest buildings in the vicinity.

So there you go.

Stuff You Think About When You Don't Sleep Enough

Whenever you play an especially memorable movie character, you are forevermore chained to that character's identity. Lawrence Fishburne will always be Morpheus. Hugo Weaving will always be Agent Smith. In the immortal words of my friend the Hornett:

"Welcome to Rivendell...	... Mr. Anderson."

I was therefore very disappointed when I saw 21 this past weekend and witnessed Lawrence Fishburne beat the hell out of Jim Sturgess without making him choose between the red pill and the blue pill.

When milk is in short supply, or you find yourself in such an environment where milk will quickly spoil (i.e. there is no refrigerator), you can still make decent espresso drinks with Swiss Miss... but you'll still need an espresso machine.

I have no idea how to throw a football. For most American-born-and-raised males of the species, this skill is second nature. Unfortunately for me, I can't help myself from trying to throw it like a baseball, usually with disastrous results for the would-be receiver.

Sometimes you just want to pole-vault over a sleeping elephant.

The sounds and gestures that baseball umpires make to indicate a strikeout used to be so much funnier. Will there ever be a revival? One can only hope. Until then, I guess this will have to do.