Hiar

Millions of billions of things have come before you! Billions of trillions of things will happen after you.

But you still have eyebrow hairs.

You still have these little follicles on your face to add nuance, to add an ever-so-slight distinction, to the vaporous expressions that leave and enter without announcement as they please.

That detail is staggering! Staggered! I am.

Who cares if you have eyebrow hairs? 

But

There they are.

Or what about a single eyebrow hair? That exists. It's as real as anything else and in the history of you--in the channel of the history of everything--there is that eyebrow hair. 

 It matters. It plays its part as eyebrow hair. The earnestness of an eyebrow hair is tremendous.

Surely, you, eyebrow hair, could float off and on into nothingness or otherness but you remain, steadfastly, and eyebrow hair. 

No one would miss you. No one would notice. But you remain, steadfastly, an eyebrow hair.

We owe it to our eyebrow hairs to know that we matter. To know that the hugeness of existence is made up of eyebrow hairs of all shapes and sizes and colors. 

That's weird! That's very weird to me. It's unsettling even. But, eyebrow hairs are what we've been given so eyebrow hairs are what we will have. 

Eyebrow hairs: the universe furrows its brow at you with silly austerity!

It's raining a lot. I like breathing

Like, a lot.

And I like breathing. If you can enjoy breathing--the act of inhaling and exhaling--you're set. You've got it made. No one can take away your enjoyment of breathing.

 But I guess that's the thing about enjoying stuff. The stuff people can't take away is the stuff you don't want cuz of how lame it is. I want cool things like fire trucks and a 4 Thousand Dollars Bill.

Yeah, breathing doesn't seem so cool anymore, does it?

Nope.

stupid rain.

Beard Poem

Beards! Beards! Beards! Beards! Beards!
Beards to my left. And beards to my right.
Beards by the day. And beards in the night.
Until, a dragon of beards flew over the land,
and snatched all the beards with its be-bearded hands.
Who could have concocted such a dastardly plan?
We were beardless and helpless! Oh man! Oh man!

Beards! Beards! Beards! Beards! Beards!
Our chins were now naked. Our chins were now cold.
There was no way to tell the young from the old.
We needed a beard warrior--with beard strength supreme!
With weapons, pizzazz, and high self-esteem!
The kind of hero who only exists in a dream--
riding a rainbow-colored horse that poops vanilla ice cream.

Beards! Beards! Beards! Beards! Beards!
But then appeared some dude from way far away,
the kind of dude-hero who just might save the day(?)
"Tell us your name, Beard warrior to-be!
Will you bring back our beards? Will you do it for free?
You are shining and strong, and have your college degree!
Tell us your name--it is...Melanie?"

That was the first three stanzas. I think I'll read this at my job. It'll be an ongoing story that mostly revolves around the first rhyming words that pop into my head.

I think rhyming has a real value in forcing you to progress in unexpected ways. I used to be against rhyming because it can sound forced and disingenuous, it can detract from an important emotion or idea you're trying to convey. But if you want to just tell a stupid beard story--then rhyming is a great way to plod-hop about it.

Chacken Skritch

The Final Round!: Giant Thumb Wearing Necktie VS. Alligator Toothbrush!

It's time for the battle to begin!

The Battle Begins!

Two opponents. Thirsting for glory. Blood will flow and a victor will rise from the ashes of losing.

Giant Thumb Wearing Necktie!

Opposably unopposed 

Formally merciless and raised by parents with truncated liberal arts educations and untreated anger issues!

A born killer and the pride of man's desire to reach beyond his grasp.

Alligator Toothbrush!

An alligator head improbably attached to the end of a toothbrush,

"Biting gums and wrecking thumbs", or so says the bumper stick he claims was attached to his after-birth.

Nature's vengeance has a son with a face that only a mother who has given up on not raising a degenerate could pretend to love.

The Battle Begins!

"I am the Giant Thumb Wearing a Necktie!
I will bathe my noodles in your life blood like Ragu!
I will mash you and degrade you and crumple you up.
I will show you heavenly bliss and polite dinner conversation only to make the following rudeness all the more unexpected and devastating!
There is no despair without hope.
There is no peace in the furnace of my soul without the crushing of your butt!"

"I am the Alligator Toothbrush!
I am virtuous and lust only for the blood of evil.
However, I am not not hindered by the logical fallacy that those whom I kill are evil because I only kill evil, therefore, if they are killed by me--they are evil.
I may be begging the question but soon you will be begging for mercy!
Any respect I could have for you in battle has been diminished by my low blood sugar!
Death is in sight via the magnifying glass of your pain!"

The Battle Begins!

...and then it would just go on and on forever like that without the battle ever happening...

Jocundid

There are things in life that I should probably pay more attention to.

Twice now I've seen my sister on campus and she's waved at me and I've looked at her and haven't been able to recognize her face. For a moment she looks like a complete stranger. And then I'll think about it for a second, and look again, and recognize her and blurt out, "I didn't recognize you!"

And, I'm not saying that I should pay more attention so I can recognize my sister more easily. That's silly. I should pay more attention to the potential reason I'm not recognizing my little sister. This is important. This is like an important first step to something potentially catastrophic. This is the part of the movie where everything in the protagonist's life heretofore has been normal. But now these little things keep popping up that foretell the terrible occurrence. Or whatever plot device you prefer.

So in attempt to thwart the encroaching threat on my reality, here's a list of reasons I can't recognize my sister in public

-I still don't expect to see her here. She isn't part of my schema of college.

-Every night her face is being invisibly burned by the millipedes that live in the tiny holes behind her ears. And only I can sense the invisible trace they leave as they harvest her dead skin into wads of sinister stupidity

-A part of my brain is being eaten by another part of my brain to create infinite brain

-I never actually looked at my sister's face while growing up and then when I got to college I forced myself to make eye contact with people

-Given the sight is actually caused by the beams of light that is emitted from the retinas, my sister has strategically placed mirrors on her face to reflect that light and distort her image

-my sister got botox? (question mark?)

-My sister has pulled a Paul McCartney and only I can notice the difference

-The masks we wear during our waking hours have come unglued and we can't bear to look at what's underneath

-I'm trapped in a dream and not recognizing my sister is one of those dream things like not being able to read a clock or turn on lights.

-The millipede burning one again. That seems most plausible.

More like, FONDON'T!

I like to tell the kids where I work that I am very sad and alone. And that when I get off work I go home and cry myself to sleep.

They think it's funny.

And I was thinking about how there's something appealing about being okay with being sad. Or even, that it's funny to be plainly and openly sad. Louis C.K. talks about it a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

I'm not saying that people who are actually sad are funny.

But, the idea of crushing sadness and misery raining down from the sky is kinda funny to me. There's something absurd about it.

It's not like you could be afflicted with any other emotion. You can't be stricken with chronic happiness or anger or...surprise. But there's a whole rainbow of sadness that you can feel at any given moment. I don't know.

It'd be cool to switch bodies with someone for a day or eight.

Killing It on All Five Baseboards

Hypotheoreticulateraterthetically,

I was at work yesterday and before the kids can play games in the gym or go outside on the playground, we have homework time. The kids are expected to do their homework quietly or read a book quietly or sit there and be bored...QUIETLY!

And of course, about ten to fifteen percent of them never do that. Either because they have no homework or there really isn't a strong incentive to do any of it. I'm fine with this.

I'm also mostly fine with the fact that they get up a lot and talk to me or talk to other kids or do something weird because they're kids.

But my hypothetical coworker decided to announce this, "Let's try this. I'm going to start a list and if you get up more than two times during homework time or I catch you talking to anyone, you're going on the list and you will sit out during gym time or on the playground."

Now, this question probably wasn't asked during her job interview, but I think it should have been,

"If you had to gain control of a group of children, would you immediately try to implement a Fascist regime that monitors and silently punishes all enemies to the well-being of the after-school program?"

Maybe that's worth asking because it's not the first time I've hypothetically seen it done. Also it doesn't work.

But what was strangest of all was that she asked the kids if they were okay with it. "Does that sound good?"

Uh....no. Who would agree to that? Why are you hypothetically asking that? Don't try  to switch it back to democracy at the end, Il Duce.