Warm Fuzzies (short story)

"You're an idiot."
"No, I'm not."
My brother and I were discussing my participation in No-Shave November.
"Well, you'll look like one in a month," he snapped.
"But I'm not an idiot. I can name the first seven digits of pi."
"You don't even know when the Declaration of Independence was signed."
A beat.
"That's irrelevant. My thirty-day shadow will be beautiful." I stroked my eight-hour shadow.
"Mom will never let you do this. You've got performances this month, you know."
 "I'll figure out a way. Imagine that, Asian Grizzly Adams playing violin onstage."
"Asian Grizzly Adams?"
"Grizzry Adams."
We both laughed.
A beat.
"Shave it!"
"No!"

Sliding

I wonder why people fall down on ice so much.

Then again, I wonder why I always skate it when I'm on ice. Pretend to speed skate. You know.

I connected these two the other day. People fall down on ice because they are essentially unwillingly skating without control. They can't regain their balance, and soon you see an arm fly up, a surprised whoop (most of the time), and the next thing they know they need to replace their hip. Why bother with all this emotional and financial struggle?

I say whenever you hit a patch of ice, skate it! That way, you are already sliding, but at least you are in control of your slide. A fun, controlled slide is much more appealing than a sudden, rambunctious pain not only in your butt, but also in your health insurance.

The same applies to slippery corners when driving. Instead of taking a turn and being surprised by the ditch or a stop sign, drift the corner instead. As long as you know how to regain stability when done drifting, you can be in control of your slide instead of suddenly sliding out of control.

Toilet

Do I have your attention yet?

One of the weirder things I've noticed is the water level of toilets in different households and in different countries. This might be me completely off my rocker, but I think it's interesting while visiting somebody's house, and, only when appropriate and convenient, look at the level of water in the toilet.

There may be something seriously wrong with me.

In a lot of domestic toilets (that's right--domesticated toilets), I've noticed an oval-shaped knob on a pipe leading to the toilet. Such a knob varies the level of water within the toilet--clockwise for less water, counter-clockwise for more. I thought this was interesting in comparison to France.

At the time, I thought it was just an extremely janky coincidence that all the houses I've been to in France have their toilet water level very low. I mean very low in the sense that if you were...well, let me draw it for you:

I say "Michigan" because there may or may not be toilet water level laws in states other than Michigan.

But don't you think that's interesting? The toilet water levels? Are you with me?

Chirp chirp chirp.

Rant

Today, I was nonsensically ranting about various things because it seemed appropriate at the time (alone; driving car; 12:30 am), and I suddenly came across a point-of-view loophole. I said:

"...But you can't blame him such a hell of a lot, can you?...Wait, but who is you? To whom am I taking? I'm talking to my audience. Which is I. So I being you, you am I, and when I say 'you' I am actually talking to I. 'You am crazy.' This makes sense in regard to myself, you being I. So I suppose, for example, saying 'I love you' would be narcissistic, and 'I hate you' would be a warning sign of depression/suicide. 'I killed you' would be purely sucidal. I guess the demographic means a lot to the rhetorical aspect of words. What do you think? Well, you just said what I thought. And vice versa. So there would be no further reason to discuss this with my audience."

And then I pulled into my driveway, went into my bedroom, and rolled to sleep.

Sketch

Doodling on a notebook during class while the teacher was handing back tests, I decided to test my routine-task tenacity. I proceeded to draw a swirly pattern in the same spot until I had nearly worn a hole through the paper. I observed my handiwork afterward:

 Click for full size

I had also decided to draw a proportionally incorrect Treyarch symbol in the opposite corner. For focus' sake, focus on the top-left.

Upon observing the swirly pattern, and looking past the nonchalant integration expression that looks like I had written "Slex" to the unknowing eye (most likely where my initial scribbles derive from. HA!), the figure-eight pattern I had scrawled deeply into my paper could have taken a variety of roles.

One such role is just that, an artsy "Figure-8" pattern over Slex:

The next of which could be an artistic eulogy to the complexity of infinity,

with three inverse log graph sketches in the bottom-left corner and a

sled in the top-right:

Or, it could simply be a crude interpretation of Batman.

"Holy shift, Batman, look at that asymptote on that mother function."

Rhy

Rhythm and Rhyme have the same beginnings.

Maths

Write the indefinite integral of e^x in symbolic notation, as an expression.

What does it look like?

Balm

While examining the contents of a Burt's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm container, A part of the back text caught my eye, exactly as shown:

Not Tested on Animals.

Wait, what? What animal has lips that need lip balm? Unless ducks have dry beaks, but it would be extremely impractical to apply lip balm to ducks. Perhaps cats or dogs need it? Where? What part of their bodies can be dry and crusty? Their booties? Imagine that, dry booties.

In general, what could be a practical use of Burt's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm on an animal?

Cat

If you look past their self-confident composure, cats are really very awkward.

Last year, my friend told me about a quirk one of his cats had: If you stare at the cat, he will start to meow and panic. Upon staring and laughing at his reaction (mmmmmmmmmmmmmrrowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww and a nervous stare), I dismissed this as merely a quirk of one of his cats.

Today, however, I decided to test this reaction for my cat. After catching her attention with a bird-like pose coupled with a large squawking noise, I held the position and looked deeply into her oddly-colored eyes. Sitting down, she stared for a few seconds, but then twitched her head slowly to the right and twisted her ears back, staring wide-eyed into the distance, her tail whipping back and forth. Even a serial killer could tell she was seriously distressed. I held my position.

After a few seconds more, she meowed. It wasn't a "meow" sort of meow, however. It was more of a "mmmmmmm," like an "excuse me, but what the hell are you doing?" type of meow. Eyes still wide, head still turned to the side. More seconds.

Then she popped up, walked away, and licked herself.

Caught her yawning.

Songs

Recently I heard the famous phrase coined by the French philosopher Voltaire,
"Anything too stupid to be said is to be sung."

 

This immediately reminded me of an adage I heard a few years back:
"He who sings prays twice."

Hmm.

Tongue

Put a dry pill on your tongue.

Stick your tongue out. Look into a mirror.

Here's the kicker: Try to make the pill stop moving. I bet you my bear-flavored Pringles that you can't make it stand completely still. I don't know what the deal is with your tongue. It may as well have chronic Restless Leg Syndrome.

Horrible personification and subliminal pill-popping advocating aside, I decided to test my own challenge. I grabbed a <Insert Medication Brand Plug Here> and stuck it on my tongue in the hopes of making it come to rest. After twenty minutes of teary-eyed concentration and inward criticism of my complexion and gabbled comments on my eyelash length and my newfound discovery of the porcelain cow in the open cabinet above the toilet (I'm serious), I gave up--I couldn't do it. I failed.
Why not you? Try it out, see if you can do it. I know of at least one person who can. His name is....Michael Jackson.

Breaths

If you've ever heard an overenthusiastic salesperson speak on a commercial or on the phone, the first thing you should do is acknowledge that they are talking about things you don't want to hear about. The second thing you should do is listen not to their words, but to the spaces between them. This may come from my musical background (I can vividly hear one of my teachers saying "Listen to the space between the music!!"), but when you listen to the spaces, the time it takes for them to take a breath becomes very distinct. Not only that, but you can also hear the breaths they take very well.

Listen to a speech, for example, and hear the breaths the speakers take. Soon, it'll be the only thing you can hear. And if you listen to it enough, it might start to bug you a bit...

Mirrors

While driving one day, I glanced in my rear-view mirror to watch for incoming bears (it is said that Michigan Bears run in an excess of 45 mph--nobody has ever lived to tell the tale), and realized that the road behind me looks entirely different in a rear-view mirror. Flipped, everything seems oddly different. Imagine driving down your mirrored world. I at least would be completely disoriented. Imagine seeing a sign:

Curious. How does one pots?

Not to mention your traffic laws. You would be driving as if you were in Hong Kong, or Australia, or Sri Lanka or whatever. Left turns are now right; my neighbors are now on the south side of the street.

However!I f the whole world was flipped to your mirror, it would be constantly changing.

Flipping a world to your mirror makes only west, east, and vice versa; or north, south, and vice versa. Notice the conjunction: "or." This depends on the direction your mirror is facing. Driving south, it would only make east, west. Driving east, it would flip north to south. If I were driving south, my neighbors would still be on the north side of the street. Driving west, however, they would be flipped. Imagine driving south-south-east.

I suppose it's all relative.

Card

I recently saw an advertisement for a $5000 gift card to a supermarket. $5000 on a single card? I would be suspicious if a man bought a television or something extravagantly expensive and paid with a....gift card. I think it would be incredibly awkward.

Drummer

While in Carlsbad, California during my vacation, I stopped at a local café. After perusing the menu for a short while (I settled for a medium-rare bear meat sandwich), I noticed one of the employees looked strikingly like the drummer from Local Natives, Matt Frazier. There was only one problem, though.

She was a girl.

I was pretty sure the waiter(ess) was a woman, but her face very closely resembled that of Matt's. Replace her curled hair with a medium-length sweeped cut and you'll have not only a slightly repulsive girl, but a girl that looks like Matt Frazier.

Since I didn't have a cell phone or a camera handy, I never had the chance to take a picture of her. Besides, that would also be exceedingly creepy and unethical. However, I can give you a picture of Frazier for a frame of reference:

 

I have also massively failed to mention that she has neither facial hair nor large biceps.

After debating the gender of the waitress even more, I elected that I was simply off my rocker. I devoured my delectable bear meat, spent a little time calculating the tip, and splashed around in the ocean for the remainder of the day. Life went on.

Conveyors (AKA finally, some fresh content)

Returning from my trip to California for the New Year (where I've been away for a week, explaining my hiatus), I disembarked from the plane and moseyed down to the baggage claim. Being 2 in the morning, my mind wasn't that sharp, but I did manage to make out a sign on the baggage conveyor:

DANGER

DO NOT

WALK ON CONVEYOR

WILL RESULT IN BODILY INJURY

What bothered me the most were the last few words: "WILL RESULT IN BODILY INJURY." Is this to say that walking on the conveyor guarantees an injury? After being confused about the direction modern ergonomics is going, I then remembered that it is two o'clock in the morning, and I should be tired. With this in mind, I stumbled into the car going home and slept peacefully.

Meatloaf

Two posts about food in a row is entirely coincidental.

Meatloaf would have to be my favorite food in the world (in coincidentally stark contrast to Lasagna), next to cantaloupe. The polygamous marriage of meat, bread, eggs, and onions—four of my favorite foods—pleases the mouth, the soul, and sometimes the moustache-line, if you ever get a little too hasty in your eatings…which I have on many an occasion. To indulge yourself in meatloaf is to indulge the mind. After the last few morsels have dropped into your stomach, your body and mind are at Nirvana. You are in a complacent trance, and there is nothing you can do about it.

As I write this, I am eating a very large amount of meatloaf, with a small potato on the side. The crunchiness of the onions! The smoothness of the bread infused with meat! The gratuitous amounts of ketchup splattered among the tiny meat-crevasses! The potato! How could one not be pleased with such a beautiful treat? Imagine the labor involved with making such a wondrous food item—it is paid double in the meat of your labor.

As I sing praises for meatloaf, however, many a child is resenting their parents’ efforts by refusing to eat meatloaf; opting for something else instead, such as lasagna; or (god forbid!) discretely wrapping meatloaf in a napkin and throwing it away. Their taste buds have yet to discover the true joy that is meatloaf. One day in their adolescence they will understand my plight.

Now, as my meatloaf is gone from plate to stomach, and I am gnawing away at a tepid potato, my body and mind….are in Nirvana. There is nothing that can stop me…except for a bear.

Noooooooo