The Hat Doubted

Chicago Cubs -- 2007 N.L. Central Champions

The Other Mammal

I suspect there is a mammal living in my apartment other than me. I suspect this because while writing at my computer, out of the corner of my eye I saw a fist-sized streak cross the kitchen and disappear beneath the radiator. I do not think that it was a fist-sized roach, although that would be equally horrible. It seemed to come from the hallway, and I sleep in that direction.

I have seen mice in other apartments, but they tend to grow no bigger than a golf-ball, and being nearly blind, they tend to follow the walls. This streak crossed the center of the room. It could have been a small rat, but rats are bold, and why would it run so fast when not presented with any kind of threat? No reason. Unless it was super-intelligent.

I fear that while I am sitting here typing I will feel something furry against my bare foot. Just a little brush at first, like a dust-bunny, and then when I look down...aaah, not a bunny at all! Aaah, those diseased teeth! That hairless tail!

So I have been telling myself that I hallucinated, although hallucinating rodents may be worse than having them. You can't kill a hallucination with a heavy book. I've tried.

I rationalize: if there is something in my apartment, it should be more afraid of me than I of it. After all, I intend to kill it. But what if it intends to kill me? If I were a rat and saw a hairless biped a hundred times my size, I would certainly sprint across the room just as the hateful human lifted the pasta pot from the stove.
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Sentences

If you write enough sentences, by math, some of them will be good. If you write one sentence, it is unlikely to be good. With two sentences, you're twice as likely to write a good sentence. With three sentences, you've increased your odds again. Four sentences? Or five, man, you must be getting close to a good sentence. What is a good sentence?

Basic Journalism (the anatomy of a joke)*

Who?

I.

What?

Make you laugh -- by offering a set-up in a linguistic frame around a situation, which forces your mind into a specific way of seeing the world. Then comes the punchline, which utilizes a different frame that makes you realize the way you had been understanding the meaning of the set-up was wrong.

When?

In the moment when your mind is trying to reconcile competing ways of seeing the world.

Where?

In the deep electrochemical recesses of your brain.

Why?

Because I want to get laid.

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*I stole most of this post's content from this post at Philosopher's Playground.

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Night in Sproutland

I love to sleep. It is rare that I can fall asleep, owing to the repressed memories and the bedbugs (which, despite rumor, do not actually grow large enough to move the mattress), but I love my dreams, especially when my French girlfriend becomes the head of a religious cult that uses televisions as their primary means of indoctrination. I love to hear her say "indoctrination" with that accent. I can barely bear deciding between what is right and what is said en francais, so I decide to wake up. Then I decide against it. But this disrupts the plot continuity, so I get stuck with being naked in high school, again.

Seeking

After placing my latest personal ad in the Lake Forest Lake Forester, I got to thinking how long a long walk on the beach should be. My first instinct was to say that both walkers should walk until they both collapse on top of each other. But I think the right answer is until the weaker party collapses, setting up a helpless/helpful dynamic with a body of water right there.

The problem is that there are too many psychotic killers out there. No Lake Forest curiosity seeker would ever agree to my Stroll to Exhaustion second date or even the Stroll to Mutual Exhaustion, which can end up football fields apart, so I have learned to fake exhaustion by inducing real symptoms.

I guess even one psychotic killer is too many, but if there were only one, we'd know by the beeping ankle bracelet which room of your house he's in. Unless he never got caught -- he can't watch the CSI series without feeling revolted by the oversimplifying montage. We would end up calling his murders Knife Disease or BTK syndrome. It would be presumed to result from overconsumption of Genetically Modified Organisms and/or sex before marriage.

I am not a psychotic killer, although I would be a competitive one. I wonder if there are psychotic killer standings, or even a season. Just kidding. I don't even take medication. That is, I take no medication, not that I don't take my medication. There is no "my medication" except for the beautiful pill of life. That pill's side effects are loud distortions that screw with my inner ear, and so I strip down to my aluminum foil hat and eat anything with a crunch. Am I the only one who puts iron filings in my salsa?

Basic Journalism

Who?

Laborers.

What?

Labored.

When?

Now and since the beginning of history.

Where?

Where there were things to be done.

Why?

To produce tangible results, a basic and timeless satisfaction.

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Would you rather

Read a blog that had

• Downloadable blues songs
  
• Sex appeal
• Inventive punctuation

Or had

• Lewd descriptions of prison sex
• More lewd descriptions of prison sex
• Conventional punctuation

?