kicking puppies

Angus is on the phone. I think he’s nervous. I feel evil.

It’s wet and miserable out, but he didn’t know it. He called me as soon as he got up. We’re talking hours of sleep and accident damage. Politics has come up as well, the scotsman uncertainty of poetry and republicanism. It’s been almost two hours. I’m still being referred to as having asked him out on a date. I’m so very in trouble.

Shane apparently last night caught word and referred to me as the “undiscovered country” where he “fell hard when he struck out”. The ice-queen aura made of sweetness and light and asexuality has apparently been re-attached to me through the poets.

punishment like mine

I just looked at a clock I expected to read one in the morning. Instead it reads four. Misery, company, you know the equation. Here. Deal.

Tony Blair opens a new wing to an Edinburgh hospital. After cutting the ribbon, the British prime minister tours a ward, filled with patients who seem to have no obvious injury. He greets a bearded chap, who replies:

“Fair fa’ your honest sonsie face, Great chieftain e’the puddin’ race! Aboon them a’ ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o’a grace. As lang’s my arm.”

Blair — somewhat confused — nods, grins and moves on to the next patient, to ask how he’s getting along. The man shakes his head and mutters:

“Some hae meat, and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.”

Blair turns to a third patient, an older man in a tam, who cries:

“Wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an chase thee, Wi murdering pattle!”

Sweating bullets, Blair turns to the senior doctor accompanying him. “What sort of ward is this?” he whispers. “Are they psychiatric patients?”

“No,” replies the doctor, “It’s the Burns unit.”

this next one as posted by donkey_hokey, which is a strong warning name if I ever saw one

After many adventures in Pointland, Lineland, and Flatland, Ferdinand Feghoot waved goodbye to an equilateral triangle and began his journey home to three-dimensional space. Alas, along the way, his Dimensional Extrapolator failed, and when he stepped outside he found himself, not in his backyard as expected, but in a world occupied only by numbers.

Feghoot explored his surroundings curiously. Across the street, a 3/4ths played soccer with an attractive young 5/8ths, while a stern-looking 16/25ths watched in silence. Other numbers slid around the area, screeching about fractions that had recently been halved and screaming about friends’ plans to exchange common denominators. The cacophony was so deafening that Feghoot had to plug his ears with his index fingers.

In the sudden silence, he noticed the most amazing thing of all: A decimal point rolled down the road, followed first by one three, then another, then another, then another, creating a very long train of .333333333. Indeed, Feghoot realized, the threes continued out to infinity.

Feghoot unplugged his ears, approached the first three, and said, “Greetings! I’m a visitor from another world, and I must say, I find you fascinating. Are repeating decimals such as yourself common here?”

A mouth on the decimal point opened, closed, and opened again. Feghoot thought he heard a distant scratchy cough, but he couldn’t make out any words. Then the decimal point tumbled away down the street, followed by its trail of threes.

“My,” said Feghoot, “but that was very rude.”

The 16/25ths across the street heard him. She shouted, “What more did you expect?”

Feghoot cringed at the noise and plugged his ears again. “I had hoped he would answer my question,” he said.

“But he did!” Her five wobbled in anger. “You just couldn’t hear him, for he doesn’t speak very loudly.”

“Why not? All of the rest of you talk with, ah, rather adequate volume.”

“Of course we do,” she said, “but then everyone knows that fractions speak louder than thirds.”

it’s a ferret day

Today has been an amusing day. I woke up to the ferret, the alarm, the phone, then the phone again, (which was really the last straw), and yet Ethan has the superpowers of a log. He slept through all but the ferret, (which goes to show the creature is just as insistent as I thought), leaving me to my computer for a few interesting hours. His eyes finally crawled open at two, at which point after much muttering and attempting to wake up, we went for breakfast and pie. The pie was a second thought and we ate it by hand in the park. Organic blueberries and Skatia asleep in my lap. When we stepped from my house, I immediately turned back, “No – today I need my camera”. It was crisp, it was ethereal and so real all at once. A mix of golden leaves and blue blue sky. I was organized. I was prepared. I had camera and film within three minutes of stepping in but I found that once I’d snapped in the film, I hadn’t batteries. Such is life. We walked toward trees made of Tim Burton films and Ethan told me simply to enjoy it. Didn’t help much, I wanted to show everyone. “Give it to the people who aren’t here”. The pie almost made up for it. We sat in the park with orange juice and bakery wraps until the sun went away. Two little girls came up to us and the more talkative one asked me the best question that anyone has ever asked me of my ferret. “Is he made of blood and bones?”

Another nicety of the day is something I found on my “friends” page:

Kyle’s doing. He’s adorable. Really. Multiplay is the arcade that Victoria’s family owns that both her and Kyle work at on the weekends. That is not the slogan sadly, but this proves to me once and for all that my photography isn’t half bad. Why would people still be playing with it a month later otherwise?

What will make this day memorable though, even more so than Kyle’s fascination with my breasts, was my moment of utter brilliance earlier tonight.

I asked Angus out.

I think on a date.

By accident.

We were saying hello after the bi-weekly Cafe Du Soliex poetry slam and as he gave me a hug I said to him, “Hello! I’m going to ask you out now. Want to go to a movie?” at which point the dialogue continued inside my head, “wait – you just used the word out. … fuck” as he lit up delighted. Yes, the glorious scotsman Miss Svelt. I am a bad, bad person. I love the man dearly, so I was glad to mayhap rescue myself with a bit of wit, “This isn’t a date thing, is it? I thought only kinky people went on dates”, but I think I’ve sort of tied a knot to hang myself with. Or at least one for his roommate who was rather in love with me. Yeah. I should learn this whole semantics thing a bit better before talking with humans. I’ve written something for his roommate now that I very much need to say sometime. Get up at the mike and speak. I don’t know how well it will go over. I can’t say what I’ve written isn’t tripe, as I simply do not know. I think I’m doing it anyway. Damn the torpedoes because before? Torpedoes were mines, not rockets.