sometimes I like to indulge in flights of fancy on my drive back home from wegman's

 tonight I imagined 'what if I was a hero?'

And what that looked like was I was following an SUV down Ridge St towards the County Office Building and there's a crosswalk by the McDonald's that someone was using and the SUV slowed to a stop in front of the person who was crossing the street BUT I imagined

'what if they hit that person and just kept on driving??'

That's when I went into hero mode. I did not stop and attend to the person who was hit. There's no time for that. The villain is making their escape. I'm the only witness. The person who got hit isn't going anywhere. Other people can attend to them. I have to track this person down.

I lay on my horn. The call of justice you could call it. I'm following this vehicle to the ends of the earth with my horn blaring. WAHHHHHHHH WAHHHHHHH! I'm riding their bumper. I'm flashing my high beams. WAHHHHHHH! WAHHHHHH! No one mows down an innocent pedestrian and gets away with it while I'm around. I'm running red lights. I'm making tight turns. They can't shake me. 

Finally, they pull over. I pull over. I get out of my car. I slam the door. I run up. I pound on their window. I haven't called 911 yet. There's no time.

"HEY! HEY!" I shout.

They know what they did. They say nothing.

"YOU HIT THAT PERSON! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!"

They know what they did. They say nothing.

"I'M CALLING THE POLICE! STAY HERE!"

They know what they did. They say nothing.

And that's how it would happen. 

Ways I could make it cooler would be that I would have some sort of spider car that could shoot car web at other cars and hang them up by a streetlight for the authorities to find.

The other way it could make it cooler is the person who gets hit they do a sick back flip out of the hit and are seemingly okay so I pull up and say, 'get in! let's get em!' and they get in the car with me and we chase em down and then we punch and kick their car a bunch and there's nothing they can do about it because we have the moral high ground.

latin roots

I got in a word argument with my mom today because we were looking at the New York Times spelling bee words from yesterday and one of the words was 'arable' and for whatever reason I was very confident that it was related somehow to the word 'arid' and I believe my exact quote was something like

"look up 'arid' and tell me what it means and see if I'm right" said in a very demanding tone.

And I'll say right now that I was technically wrong but I did uncover this! Stay with me now.

Arable means used or suitable for growing crops and comes from the Latin word 'arare' meaning to plow.

Arid means too dry or barren to support vegetation and comes from the Latin word 'arere' meaning be dry or parched.

So, listen, 'arare' and 'arere' and they are related to ways to describe how suitable land is. That's not nothing. You can't tell me that's not nothing. Changing an 'a' to an 'e'. I think I've stumbled onto something much deeper here. 

Probably, probably some linguists in the comments can back me up on this that if we go back to the Proto-Indo-European roots we might find a point of connection. 

OH MY GOD I JUST LOOKED IT UP I WAS RIGHT!!

I'll give you the links and everything.

Look at the etymology part for arere: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arere

I'll tell you where it goes you don't even have to look it goes to this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aratrum#Latin

Just like I said. Just like I said the Proto-Indo-European word for plough. Same root. They're the same word. I was right. 

This is what my education was FOR. What do you think about that, Mom?!

one thing I think about twelve things

 in this game I'm going to name twelve things and then tell you the one thing I think about all twelve of those things at once

-oranges

-lactose intolerance

-malfeasance

-nations run by doctors

-the whole ocean

-bobcats

-philogyny

-maitre d'

-suspended disbelief

-balloons

-church

-pokemon

And the one thing that I think about all of these things is:

'you can't tell em twice what you already told em thrice'

Well, I hope you had fun here today. I know I did. Remember to check back in again to hear the story of how I had a friend who had a cousin who didn't catch their tongue animal in the womb before they were born and then it ran around the hospital and they tried to catch it but they never found it so now the hospital is haunted by the tongue and it sneaks into people's mouths when they are asleep and when they woke up they say all sorts of stuff they would never normally say like, "I wish I owned a great big plantation." And in their mind they don't want that but the tongue is making them say it.

today I'm gonna explain what I think blood is and where it comes from

 Look kids, I'm an amateur scientist. Just like all the great innovators of history I'm just a guy with some crazy ideas and a lot of confidence. And I'm not gonna tell you that I have all the answers at any given moment. But, there's no telling which answer I don't have. 

Anyway let's get into it. So if you're dehydrated your blood volume goes down. I'm pretty sure I heard that once. Don't drink water, you have less blood. This would imply that blood is water. Now, here's something else that's even more gonna make you go crazy, I heard tell somewheres else that sweat is filtered blood. And sweat is salty water. So it's like we got water coming in and water going out and at some point it's blood and then it's not. And then only draculas can drink blood and we regular nathans aren't allowed. 

If you're anything like me all these different contradictory facts are tying your noggin up in knots and making you ferociously angry. But don't worry. I have the answers that will make everything make sense.

bones?

I think it's bones. I think the water gets to the bones and makes em wet. And then you got little guys working in the bones factory and they say, "hey boss says we gotta make this water into blood by 5!" And they get to it man. I think bones have the technology.

Call it a gunch but I think the blood is coming out of the bones. That's why you need milk. Gunch is gut hunch by the way. Milk makes the bones strong so they can pump out more blood. 

Maybe you're saying to yourself, Andy if that's true then why do skeletons in media not leak blood wherever they go. To which I'd say, in the real world the sun doesn't actually wear sunglasses. Maybe all the artists of the world are too afraid of how cool and accurate that would look if animated skeletons were oozing blood. I think that would look great and would help teach the kids. 

Anyway thank you for learning with me and stay tuned for next time when I'll explain how your tongue is actually a little animal that you catch in your mouth while you're in the womb and one time I knew this kid who had a cousin who didn't catch their tongue in time and then they were born and the tongue escaped and was running around the hospital. And that kid's name was Eh-Oh.

she was a captain and the sea made her blood boil

 Her ship was rusty. It was an iron ship with wooden nails holding planks of iron together. They all laughed and sneered and said, "by the great Poseidon, that vessel'll never float or our names aren't collectively Bob Seager." She boarded her boat for the first time to shove off and with her back turned to the jeering crowd she said in a low voice, "all your words are stupid and bad."

To the amazement of all who were present, her ship did float. It floated too well, in fact. A craft whose construction defied all sense floated so well that it hovered several inches above the water, not touching it at all. "Curse this wretched sea," she sneered. And to be a walking, sailing oddity and to tire of oddities and to wonder when the oddities will cease is to sail the great blue ocean and hope to find the spot where it dries up.

Water water everywhere, come again another day. If you don't, I don't care. I'll pull down your underwear.

 He sat down at his chair. His chair at his desk. His desk at its place in the study. The study in the upstairs of the house. The house on the plot of land. The plot of land on the street. The street in the town. The town in the county. The county on the desk. The desk in repose. The pose on the model. The model on the stage. The stage at the convention. The convention in the arena. The arena in the parking lot. The parking lot placed perilously atop a precipitous perch. The perch above the ocean. The ocean in the bucket. The bucket in the shed. The shed in the alley. The alley incomplete. The pleated pants in the closet. The closet in a blade of grass. The blade of grass for the bug. The bug in the rug. The rug on the floor. The floor of the house that Jack built. The house on the hill. The hill in the sky. The sky belonging entirely to itself. The self in the mind. The mind in the body. The body in the circus. The circus in the circus. The circus in the heart. The heart in the man. The man in the mirror. The mirror in the vestibule. The vestibule in the trailer. The trailer in the ditch. The ditch in the gully. The gully in the valley. The valley in the bog. The bog in the state park. The state park in Alaska. Alaska in the night. The night in aurora borealis.

Aurora Borealis.

At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?

yes 

 It was a sunny afternoon. Far too sunny and far too afternoon. Every moment kept bleeding into the next and it was impossible to stand still and find a single reference point a single reference point a single reference point and be located in space and time like a crow like crows on the roofs of buildings watching and ca-cawing and cataloging the goings-ons of the down belows

below

below

below

below

Matthew Values is circling and encircling an agreed upon area to find its weight and worth in his steps is a silent appraisal that estimates the breadth and depth of terms. Movement is tracking the movement the tracking is movement. Circle and a square. Bridge the divide. The gap between what it is and what it is not. An irrational infinity apart.

He felt a sort of only coffee way that an empty pit in his stomach couldn't ------- but it --------- and even then he knew what he didn't. It would have to be decided and added up in the end. Sum totaled. The sun totaled. The sun toad was under the road. The son told the sun toad under the road that some mode would erode the old. It was like trying to hold water in a bucket but the bucket was spaghetti and the water was spaghetti and it was like holding spaghetti that was very very very difficult to hold.