unencumbered

how to say 'i love you' in a hopelessly romantic schoolyard crush way: 'as i gazed upon you from afar... blah blah blah... i fell truly, madly, deeply... blah blah blah... enamoured by your beauty... blah blah blah... like the petals of the lily/the pedals of my bike... cannot live without you... something something... dream about watching you sleep... blah blah blah blah blah i love you blah blah blah blah blah...'

how to say 'i love you' just like in the movies: 'you complete me.'

how to say 'i love you' so that she'll marry you: sparkle, sparkle.

how to say 'i love you' in a fraternal/sororal way: 'you're like a brother/sister to me, but not, like, actual brother/sister, but the way black people mean it. i just think it's more meaningful that way.'

how to say 'i love you' in a cousinly way: 'yor so purdy, hyuck.'

how to say 'i love you' in a platonic way: 'i love you (platonically).'

mild disenchantment

Alex: "Male lions are the only cats to have these and they turn darker as they grow older."
Ken: "What are... whiskers?"

National Guard Fighter Jet Strafes School

Click title.

i'm sure we've all thought about doing something destructive to a school at one point or another, usually coinciding with evaluation oppurtunities. accidental as this incident may be, it was a bit surprising. you have to be a supremely incompentent pilot to strafe a school, even at night. there are several telltale signs that you are no longer flying over a firing range and instead deep in suburbia. rows of light standards, for example. frankly i would've expected more from the largest, most well equipped military power in the world, if it weren't for the ample evidence of US fighter pilot incompetency in Afghanistan.

Also:
Man Tries to Convert Lions

...okay. that's FREAKIN' AWESOME!

pseudo-sonnet of sand

drag a stick through the grains,
trace a pattern in the sand.
a deft twist, a looping whorl,
it all makes sense in the sand.

what if, what if, we could eat
all of this? all this sand?
it's perfect, don't you see?
loaves and cakes all made of sand.

crunchy and healthy it would be
if people could digest sand.
it'll pass on through your duodenum
and scrub you clean, it would, this sand.

squeeze it out in dollops or coils,
looks the same coming out, just like sand.
but covered in mucus and other good stuff
giving it the appearance of stickier sand.

mold it, shape it, roll yourself a ball.
with it you can make a castle of sand.
crenellations and merlons galore!
maybe even a portcullis of sand.

drag a stick 'round yon castle.
dig a deep moat in the sand.
that which was dug out be the food
for widows and kids yearning for sand.

subjugate your sphincter

"Civilization rests on two things," said Hitzig; "the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?"
"Fermentation is undoubtedly science," said Gyllenborg; "but voluntary inhibition must be psychology, and if anybody suggests that psychology is a science I shall scream."
"No, no; you are on my ground now," said Stromwell; "inhibition of defecation is in essence a theological matter, and unquestionably one of the effects of the Fall of Man. And that, as everybody now recognizes, means the dawn of personal consciousness, the separation of the individual from the tribe, or mass. Animals have no such power of inhibition, as every stage manager who has to get a horse on and off stage without a mishap will assure you. Animals know themselves but dimly - even more dimly than we, the masters of the world. When Man ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge he became aware of himself as something other than a portion of his surroundings, and he dropped his last, carefree turd, as he, with wandering steps and slow, from Eden took his solitary way. After that he had, literally, to mind his step, not to speak of his Ps and Qs."

- Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels (1981)