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.