When the Temperature Drops

“If that’s all you want, then sure. That’s it. It’s yours. Go for it.” he said, head dropping slightly, silently to the left. His hair dangled over his eyes as if he were one of those water dogs whose eyes you can never really quite see.

“How much is it then?” She looked surprised.

“Well, I can always tell you that. But that’s not really what’s at issue here. I’m talking about possibility here. You can have anything – anything – yet this is all you want. Seems odd to me.” He flopped down onto his hand, elbow stoutly propped on the counter.

She paused a moment, looking at him from a slant. “Yeah, man. That’s pretty much all I want. Can you please tell me how much you require from me… in payment, I mean.”

“Yes, of course. But, you see, I’m trying to tell you something here. I’m trying to impress on you an idea. I’m trying to break through to you here, you see. You can allow yourself to want more than this. You’re not limited to this. You can have it all. You can grab hold of every thread that possibility has to offer – every moment, time, opportunity, event or thing, even wealth -you can grab hold of them and pull till they all come tumbling down. They can all wash over you as if you were a unicorn standing under a waterfall. Do you understand now? Do you get it? Get what I’m saying?” His face was still supported by his hand which was supported by his arm, which was supported by the counter. His eyes still nowhere to be found.

She took a deep breath, realizing that this was turning into a situation that she was being forced to deal with. She really hated having to deal with anything, even when she did so of her own volition – but particularly hated being forced to do so. The vein on her forehead began pulsing visibly as she struggled to keep her frustration in check.. She had rage issues and didn’t want this to turn ugly.

“Look,” she said tersely and slowly through a clenched jaw, “I am here to buy a carton of eggs, 2 stalks of broccoli, a loaf of bread and an eggplant. This is all I came for, all I need and all I want. Okay? So please, tell me what I owe you for these items, let me give that amount to you and then let me be on my way. Agreed?”

“Shit – did you realise that you’re buying all ‘B’ and ‘E’ things?! This happens very rarely, but when it does it is really quite memorable. You came to this grocery store to ‘B’ ‘E’ – to BE! to be and keep on being! Broccoli, Eggs, Bread and Eggplant! Wow! My God. Be! Be! Be!” His zany eyes finally glinted through the curtain of hair.

“Stop it NOW. If you don’t, I’ll have no choice but to either speak to your manager or walk out of her with all these ‘be’-ings for free. Do you understand me? Stop it. Let me pay. Let me leave. It’s as simple as that. Do you realize that there is a line-up of people forming behind me. They all want to pay for their things and get out of here. Just like I do.” Indeed, behind her, a long queue of people had formed, and they were all watching the conversation unfold in either bemused indifference or apprehensive impatience.

He looked up from behind his frivolous fringe at the waiting customers.

“Oh!” he ejaculated, “My God. Yes of course, I’m very sorry. I have this heart condition that makes me become esoteric whenever the temperature drops. It’s hereditary, you see. It was a congenital…”

“Shut up. ring me through.”

“… it was a congenital condition that is actually quite rare, if you can believe it…” he continued obliviously.

She had had enough. She picked up the ‘B’ and ‘E’ things that she had attempted to purchase, put them aggressively in a bag, and walked out of the door as the cashier continued to mumble something about how his family became quite the interesting dinner guests whenever winter came around.

The next customer walked up to the cash cautiously and placed his things on the sticky, black conveyor belt. He looked up at the cashier anxiously. The cashier stopped abruptly, looking at the new customer as if through fresh eyes.  “Oh, hello.” he said pleasantly.

The customer nodded acknowledgement at the greeting.

“Will that be all?” asked the cashier.

“Yes.” replied the customer firmly.

The cashier peered at the customer through his gratuitously cumbersome bangs, and after an awkward moment, said, “Sure. If that’s all you want, of course there’s no problem. It’s yours. Go for it. But I happen to believe that you are more than the sum of these things.” The cashier’s head dangled to the left once more.

The customer groaned loudly, as did everyone else who was caught in this grocer’s queue, like flies in a spider’s web or butter on toast. The people in the lineup clutched their unpurchased goods so tightly in their hands that almost all at once, their knuckles whitened.

It’s been so long

It’s been so long since I’ve updated the old blog that WordPress went ahead and changed everything on me. Now I have no clue what I’m doing anymore and must relearn the whole process. Thanks WordPress. Not that I have much to say, but whatever I scrounge up, I’d like to be confident of my ability to blog it properly.

So i had a dream last night about human chess. Suddenly, everyone had to move like chess pieces. I encountered a man who incessantly lamented the fact that he was no longer upwardly mobile, just diagonally mobile. And I asked: “Yes, but on what squares? The black or the white?”

The knight-moving people seemed to be having the most fun out of everyone.

This dream might have something to do with the fact that I watched the documentary ‘Kasparov Vs. the Machine’ recently. Note to readers: if you have not watched it yet; watch it. If you have watched it; re-watch it. The way Kasparov mutters “stupid machine!!” is priceless, and not to be missed.

And I’ll end this post with an equally brilliant and bizarre video, which I hope you will enjoy.

Two songs to live by

Half Man Half Machine by GLC:

And It’s a Rave Dave:

Visual Stoicism

After struggling through the better half of Diogenes Laertius’ account of the Stoic  Logic and Theory of Knowledge, I decided I should post some of my better attempts at amateur photograohy.

Drumroll please…

From Portugal, 2006:

                        

                                                                                            

                                      

                                                                                        

                                                         

  

This summer:

                                                                                          

                       

                                                          

         

                                                          

Random favourites:

                                                                       

              

                                                      

    

And for good measure, things found in a bathroom, and on a menu:

         

                                                      

Silence of the Limbs

This renders the tail-chase extremely passe…

The Void of Meaning

Yes, it is true: the Moon kept me up ALL NIGHT long. I couldn’t take it anymore. So I turned around in bed and coughed. Did it help? ….no. I don’t get it. I see full moons at LEAST once a month, so why did last night’s ‘old man in the sky’ creep me out so much? Did anyone else feel this? (or am i just crazy me?) In bed, in a very odd delusional state came over me, and I began thinking about the meaning of words.

It started with the seedlings to the poem bellow, and as I thought the lines over and over, the room began to spin as if it was a rabbit hole and my name was Alice. How the hell did we give these random grunts meaning? These sounds, which are so similar to so many other sounds;  that when placed in a specific order create (drumroll please,) MEANING.

I swear I wasn’t high. No, really. I felt like I was 3 again, and thinking about the mechanics of a toaster (it fascinated me to no end… and sort of still does: Yeah Toast!:)

Now, I know that the more literary minded among you will hark back to literary theory: about words breaking from meaning at the philosophical moment of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden (- or some such.) but I’m referring to the ease at which we personally lose track of the meaning of our own words… (oh, shit, it’s starting again) Like when you are deep in a rant and you lose your thought express bus, and then suddenly everything that you were so passionately expressing gets lost in the over-stimulated mental void and promptly disappears. AhhhhhHG…. 

Needless to say, this morning I needed coffee. So I went to a cute little cafe nearby. Not only did I get coffee. I got art. Watch out world, here it comes:

Suddenly words and their meanings (and lack thereof) floated together and reunited in the brown and white foamy universe in my cup. Thank Gawd for Coffee! It’s definitely a sanity saver. (Yeah Coffee!)

Funniest Cat Fight… Ever

After reading whomunculus‘ cat-post, I decided to scratch one out myself. This is the clip that I’ve watched once every six months for the last four years or so, and it still makes me roar- with laughter that is. I just SERIOUSLY wish I could read the subtitles…

I’m Going to Write a Post About Love

haha ha ha, Just kidding.

Ode To Procrastinatory Writer’s Block And It’s Sufferers

          Nothing, absolutely nothing. My mind is a flickering blank screen. A vacuous abyss of non-thought.  I could perhaps say I’m meditating, but I won’t tell such monstrous lies. On the other hand, little snippets of thought flutter past my mind’s eye as I drink coffee and play solitaire. This is the pre-assignment readying ritual that has been developed by students all over the world. We have telepathically shared these varying methods of procrastination, in hopes of forming a tight knit procrastinator’s union on the internet. Unfortunately, the union never came to fruition because no one ever got around to forming it . . .(It would have, could have, should have been a marvel.) This pre-assignment method has also been adopted by the “Writers”, that infamous bunch, and renamed “writer’s block”.

            “Writer’s Block” is an extremely bothersome disease, and scientists have failed to understand its triggers or cures. The only unanimous conclusion they have met is that it most often appears concurrently with the LOTTD disease or with TDT problems (A.K.A. Lots Of Things To Do, and Things Due Tomorrow). After the onset of “writer’s block”, the affected persons take one of two paths, sometimes both: a period of severe inactivity, or misplaced hyper-activity. The first being the catatonic state characteristically accompanied by the flickering of channels on T.V. After the passage of some hours, the victim attempts to resemble productivity by cleaning the entire vicinity and surrounding suburbs. This is quite a disturbing part of the disease. No stone goes unturned or unscrubbed. The victim comes to believe that they could not possibly work in a cluttered, semi cluttered, or even mildly cluttered environment.

            Once the cleaning hysteria is over, the victim convinces her/him-self that they now deserve a good break. This is when the catatonics state resurges, engulfing the victim and chaining them to the sofa, couch or bean bag. The colourful flickering box in the living room takes hold once more, temporarily anaesthetizing the victim’s mind. Once the affected person regains consciousness, a few hours later, they begin to panic. Resolutely and vehemently swearing they will begin NOW. The poor wretch will place him/her-self directly in front of the computer, and proceed to check their e-mail. They reason that something horrific may have happened to Aunty Emm in Kansas and the phones may be down, and the only way their estranged family (that may or may not exist) could reach them would be via e-mail.

            After checking their account, and surfing the web for an hour or two, or three . . . they return to reality. Ashamed, disappointed and infuriated, they decide to take up smoking. After buying the pack and inhaling six cigarettes at once, the afflicted person decides they are NOW ready to write- really. They appear before their writing desk determined as a beaver in a forest, to create the most impressive set of sentences anyone has ever before strung together. Then they stare blankly at the screen and cry bitter salty tears. They consider their available courses of action. After ruling out suicide and deciding that Stephen Hawkings would be much too hard to get a hold of at this time of night, the victim decides to write a piece on procrastinatory writer’s block.

Voila et merci! 

It’s Hard Out Here Teachin’ Chem

I was roaving around Youtube today, and found the absolute funniest video ever. I won’t even try to give you a full rundown, all I can say is that it involves an organic chemistry proffessor and rap. It’s one of those things that you just have to see for yourself:

I wish I had a prof like this in any of my courses!