Sudden

Not part of the storyline, gasp. I've got something else on my mind today.

Lying awake in bed, thinking about a mouse. Why did you have to choose my kitchen to live in, to poop in, to spread your diseases and chew on my walls? You could have moved somewhere else and lived a longer, happier life. You never really had a chance, did you? Once I saw that shadow out of the corner of my eye this afternoon, your fate was sealed. I set the trap, baited it with peanut butter (I think I might be growing an aversion to peanut butter, scented with the deaths of so many cute little vermin), and waited. Awoken at two in the morning by the sound of death. Snap. Cleaned and reset the trap. Helpless little thing, looks soft (don't touch it, what, do you want Hantavirus?) Wish it had picked some other house to live in. Well, I hope you were a bachelor, Mr. Mouse.

Snap.

Head back downstairs. There's another one. This one was quicker, head in the trap, reaching for that peanutty goodness. Don't forget to wash the peanut smell off of your hands.

Now I just have to worry about when the babies decide their parents aren't coming back with food and head out into my kitchen to forage. Baby mice are not as smart, they'll just wander around, lost, and not even run away from you, they're so hungry they've lost all sense of self-preservation.

Limbo

We're sorry, all of our customer service representatives are busy right now. Your call is important to us. Enjoy our music while you continue to hold.

Yes ma'am, enjoying your music indeed.

Sclerotic

Driving along the freeway as I often do, I have found that traffic seems to clump together. Every quarter mile or so, there will be a little bunch of cars, all tooling along, slowly accumulating cars from behind as the clump moves forward at approximately 85% of the cruising velocity of most cars on the road.

Weaving through traffic (like a madman, probably), you can get out in front of that clump, and then shoot another quarter mile at a normal speed before you find another clump.

The interesting thing is that every single clump, every single time there is an inexplicable backup on the freeway, it is because of a car with a Pennsylvanial license plate doing fifty-five in the far left lane. Is there some sort of extra, hidden, curriculum in the Pennsylvania driver education system? "Do not respect the passing lane! You must Impede Traffic! Do it especially while you go to Delaware to purchase items with no sales taxes! Travel to and from your shopping expeditions in the left lane, slowly!"

I just don't get it.

Singularity

You might not see them at all. They only do business on certain days, and those days follow No Fixed Schedule. It is possible that there is a pattern to when they are there and when they are not, but deciphering that pattern is likely the first challenge they give neophytes who wish to join their ranks. They are the Amish Pretzel Bakers. These people dedicate their lives to the creation of Soft Pretzels; they've given up television and all modern convenience. They have no room for vanity in their Way of the Pretzel, only humility and dedication to the Pretzel.

These people spend years training and learning the Way before they even are allowed out into the world in a sales role. Those who successfully sell The Pretzel for a number of years develop an instinctive knowledge of how to properly make The Pretzel, just by observing those who enjoy it. Once they have learned this, they give up speaking forever, for those who know do not tell, and those who tell do not know. From that moment on, they live in isolation, each day devoted to the creation of The Pretzel.

None of these Amish Pretzel Bakers has ever tasted The Pretzel. No, to do so would be vanity unto blasphemy. But you can taste The Pretzel, and believe me, when they ask you if you want butter on it, you say yes, say yes

Figures

We had just signed the papers, the house was ours. On a related note, it was somewhat anticlimactic. I had expected to have to shake hands or have the lawyer say something like "by the power vested in me...", but I digress. The house was ours, and we were going to have a good shower, dangitall. The showerhead was one of those cheapo heads you can buy for four dollars, and it leaked to boot. So we went out and got a roll of teflon tape and a fancy schmancy showerhead that cost all of twenty-five dollars (we're living it up whole hog now, folks!).

The damn thing still leaks.

So I get out the wrench, and tighten away.

Still leaking.

One last tighten, this time for sure.

I turn the water on, and now the whole showerhead flies off of the pipe and lands in the tub. Oops, looks like I broke the house.

Upon investigation, I find out that the showerhead to pipe interface is (or, more properly, was) mediated by a little piece of threading that attached to the end of the shower pipe. This threading was what was leaking, and now in my zealous overtightening, I have stripped it right off of the end of the pipe.

I had the damn house for less than an hour, and I already broke it. I forgot to keep the receipt, so no returns either. Time to call a plumber, I suppose.

Embiggen

Yesterday, on my way into the bathroom, I bumped into someone. Literally. Neither of us were really looking where we were going, and we kind of bumped into each other. We quickly apologized and went our separate ways, I was going in and he was going out.

Shortly later I realized that the guy I had bumped into was wearing the same sweater I was. Actually, he looked a lot like me. Same haircut, glasses, and sweater. He looked a bit older than me, though. I thought, "Wow, I just bumped into Future Me!"

Later, as I write this, I come to the realization that Future Me couldn't really be Future Me, because Future Me had about eight inches of height on me, and I'm done growing. Oh well.

Understated

Heard on the teevee, "Now that's a nice improvement on the normal Death Spiral you see so much of nowadays." Seriously, man, what could be an improvement on a Death Spiral? Ninja Laser Death Spiral Monkeys? With a kung-fu grip? We thought we were powerful. We thought we could improve on the Death Spiral, but we were wrong. Adding monkeys to the Death Spiral was something that science should never have done. Now we have to live with our Death Spiral monkeys, sitting in on the Pairs Short Program, throwing their feces on the ice. When will science learn? Some things were never meant to be hybridized with monkeys.

Departure

Today, I noticed it. A puddle of water had formed under my coffeepot. At first, I thought it was a spill. I wanted it to be a spill. I needed it to be a spill. I didn't really want to consider the alternative.

After a brief investigation, however, I discovered a fatal flaw in the coffeepot. The water reservoir had just had it. A crack had developed at the bottom, where various planes of plastic came together and were fused to form a waterproof seal. There is nothing to be done for it, I don't want epoxy residue getting into my coffee.

So, ladies and gentlemen, raise a toast to my coffeepot, which has been with me since I started graduate school (it was my first purchase, before I even bought books or anything). Some quick and rough estimates lead me to believe I've brewed about a thousand gallons of coffee in it. That's about one cubic me: a cube that has sides the length of me. So, I guess that the pot has served me well. Time to get a new one.

Reminisce

You think back, recalling all the conversations you've been in today. With whom have you spoken? What did you say? Who else did you wave to as you walked down the hall? Could your fly really have been open that whole time? Wow. Better remember to check more often.

Evolution

We're sitting in a train, the Blue line Metro in Washington. A woman gets on the train, sits and immediately takes off her shoes. Odd. She follows up by taking off her socks, and taking a pair of fancy shoes from her bag. Reshod, she touches up her makeup, switches around her scarf, and heads out into the cold, winter air.

Artery

True story. I'm walking down the road, trying to find that happy medium between the muddy shoulder and getting run over. So one foot is muddy, and the other is four inches higher and on asphalt. The whole time, I keep thinking to myself, "Dangit, dangit, dangit". And then I wonder, why the heck am I using standins for expletives? What the heck is wrong with me, even my internal monologue is PG.

Innocence

We went boldly into our new home, leaving behind the hangers and hangups of old spaces. In particular, we left behind the wire hangers we had accumulated throughout a life of collecting. "Leave them, leave them, leave them. We will get new ones in our new home." Trusting in the ubiquity of wire hangers, we left our hangers in our old space. In our new space, we are exploding with possibilities, but if we want wire hangers, we have to get something dry-cleaned, because they just don't sell wire hangers at the store.

Deprecate

Two years since I've been a serious programmer. In the interim, I've done some toy programming, a little perl grease for the wheels of an otherwise working website for example. But no real programming, no real projects. Such is life when you're writing your dissertation. Anyway, I dusted off my Java IDE today, got the latest version of everything, and was ready to dive in to my latest idea.

I should have looked before I dove in. I nearly broke my neck on all the new stuff. I mean, aspects, annotations, generics, unit testing, oh my. Back when I started my graduate student career I did not understand how my advisor could become so behind the times (she has a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, and shared an office with RMS, surely she'd never let her coding skills slip, right?). But now I understand. I'm going to let myself go. This next generation of my ideas will likely be implemented by someone else, a snot-nosed know it all, I hope. One that will never understand how I could let my skills lapse.

But that's the circle of life. Right up until I eat that know it all for being a little too snide. Then it's more of, say, an ellipse of life.

Traffic

I'm cruising home, along the interstate. We're all moving along at a pretty speedy clip. So I don't have time to deal with what's happening. There's a huge, enormous, beyond words large flock of birds flying over the freeway. It stretches from one edge of my windshield to the other, and goes on for the two or so minutes they're in sight before I drive under them. I want to stop the car, get out and just ogle it. It is beautiful. I don't know what kind of birds they are, they're smaller than, say ducks. But they're beautiful.

The next night, they're there again. And the next. At some point, I stopped noticing them.

Lift

I jumped onto my desk. Just now. Just to prove I still could. It was a standing leap, maybe about three feet. Let's see, it seems like my desktop is just a little below hip-level on me. Not bad, not bad at all.

Lyric

I have high expectations of my music. I want the words to evoke, invoke, and revoke. I want to be transported to another realm by the poetry involved in good songwriting. That's why I like Ani diFranco. She's got a good voice, but if you listen to what she's saying, it's a whole other level. "I'm going to get my feet wet until I drown", "I used to be a hero ... you are like a phonebooth that I somehow stumbled into". Seriously man, it makes me feel all inadequate that I cannot express myself so cleverly. But that's why I'm not a famous singer.

That and I cannot sing. I have been told that singing with me is great and low pressure, since you don't have to worry about the right notes. But you do have to worry about my made up, in-between notes that are neither sharp nor flat.

Number

I love this time of year. Autumn, Fall, whatever you want to call it. The leaves turn colors, there's a chill in the air that puts me in mind of pumpkins, turkey, mulled cider. This time of year, I'm a sucker for themed foods. Take coffee, for example. Normally I turn my nose up at flavored coffees. Vanilla hazelnut coffee? No thank you. No thank you very much. Stuff tastes like butt. Vanilla hazelnut flavored butt, but butt nonetheless. The problem is they use lousy coffee and then add a crappy flavor to it. No surprise it tastes that way.

Anyway, even I cannot pass up the pumpkin spice flavored coffee this time of year. I buy it in cafes when it's offered, and I just bought a pound of it at the store. I love that pumpkin spice flavor, which is applied to the coffee beans in the form of an oily substance, which causes the beans to glisten in an appealing manner. It also causes the grounds to stick to the side of my grinder in an unappealing manner.

Of course, the coffee still tastes like butt. Pumpkin spice butt, mmmm, Autumn even makes butt taste good.

Ridiculous

fading in, coming out of commmercial. We see a replay of the last few seconds of last week's episode.

"Stop it." There's a voice behind me, recognizable but unexpected. "You're being sophomoric. Both UD and MSU are land-grant schools, it only makes sense that they would be near agriculture. Agriculture smells bad, that's just the way it is."

I don't even need to turn around. "How the hell did you get here?"

We see DARRYL standing behind me, looking serious. He speaks.

"It isn't enough for you to move. You are still the same person you have always been. More to the point, you're still a sophomoric pissant who needs the occasional slapdown in order to stay focused. I mean, so what. You're thirty now, you going to make some big philosophical treatise about how things change but really stay the same. This whole diatribe is trite, but you know what I mean."

And then he hits me in the head with a stick. I think back to my days as an undergrad when things seemed much simpler. Or maybe that was the alcohol. Who knows. Without turning around, I say, "Maybe people do change. I won't be seeing you again." Trudging toward my office.

"You won't see me, but I will be there nonetheless."

He's such an asshole.

Fragrance

It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining through the clouds, the storm seems to have washed the air clean. So, on my drive into work, I roll down my windows and try and enjoy the beauty; after all, I will be in my cinder block office with no windows for the next eight hours or so.

There's some kind of funky smell in the air. It smells like, hmm, what's that smell? Dirty diapers, that's it. The air in Newark smells just like dirty diapers. What the heck? That's not cool. So, getting out of my car, I ask someone else in the parking lot, "do you smell that funky smell?"

"Yes", she replies, "it's the smell of Lancaster county. They have mushroom farms there, and that's what they smell like. When the wind is just right, that smell wafts our way."

So wow. At Michigan State, where I was an undergrad, they had these fields they would manure every so often, you could smell that too. Two universities out of three that I have been associated with have the aura of feces occasionally pervading their space. What a coincidence.

"Stop it." There's a voice behind me, recognizable but unexpected. "You're being sophomoric. Both UD and MSU are land-grant schools, it only makes sense that they would be near agriculture. Agriculture smells bad, that's just the way it is."

I don't even need to turn around. "How the hell did you get here?"

The camera pans out and up, going just from a framing shot of my face to revealing more and more of the parking lot behind me. A figure, standing twenty yards back, is still blurry and indistinct. As he comes into focus, the scene goes dark and is replaced by the words

To be continued...

Jamming

Laser hair removal commercial on the radio. "Well, if I had laser hair, I'd want it removed too. That sounds fairly alarming". Whoop whoop whoop, look out, laser hair on the loose! "chhhchrp ... and today, in Chicago, thirty people were balded when a hair laser went rogue ... chhhchrp". Some day, I will go bald. How will I react? Will I do the comb-over? Will I get a toupee? What about implants? Or will I just let it go. I know a guy with a military-style flat top (he's in the military, fancy that (but he can't fancy things, because of the whole don't fancy don't tell policy)), anyway, this flat top has a hole in the middle. Don't get me wrong, he looks fine, but he clearly isn't doing anything about his impending baldiosity. Did you know that "ericaceous" is a word? True story.