Lessons Learned From a Runny Nose

WARNING: I describe my naked self

Normally, when congested or suffering from a runny nose I let the steam from the shower loosen things up so I can blow and cough it down the drain. I know that's not pleasant sounding but I'm allergic to just about everything so frequently wake up with a bit of something or other in my nose that needs to be expressed. Typically that's all it takes- no allergy medicine or moving to the desert for me- a hot shower then everything is fine.

The morning after the baboso incident I took an extra long hot shower. My nose was still running (not as bad as the day before) and I had a lot of sinus pressure. So I knelt on the floor of the shower and let the steam do its job.

I see myself naked every day; that's no big deal. But kneeling there on the shower floor I got a pretty good look at myself- or, if not a good look, at least a long look from a perspective I normally miss. I'm weird looking.

I have spindly arms and legs ending in hands and feet that are too large for the sticks they're attached to. I'm hairy. My hands are scarred and veiny. I have uneven, three-toned coloring. My elbows and wrists are boney and for not having much fat to speak of, my obliques hang over the sides of my iliac crest and lead to a crease along either side of the front of my pelvis drawing one's perspective to a much too hairy groin.

I never maintained any illusion that my body is one anyone else would want to see, but I guess I just realized I might rank just above Mr. Burns as far as physical attractiveness goes- and he's a cartoon.

I explained this to Cyndi and she tried to tell me she likes my body. I understand that, we're married, we're in love, blah, blah, blah. Nonetheless, mine is not the physique used for marketing colognes and Caribbean vacations. I realize I look better clothed than I do naked but I am willing to address naked me.

So I'm funny looking. Whatever. That's not that a big a deal to me or probably all that interesting to you. The thing is I'm okay with my body- not just with how I look, but being seen, or even being seen naked. I don't mean that I am interested in flaunting my body or imagine that my body is at all beguiling. I mean, I am not the guy afraid of gang showers or worried about comparing myself to other people. I am not talking about running around naked, I completely understand the social mores and rules about nudity. I'm talking about being comfortable in my skin even though I am aware said skin and what comes with it is weird looking. Or maybe... even if not always comfortable, at least I know it's there- scrawny, pimpled, hairy.

It's okay to say this. It's okay to know that underneath all the clothes and in spite of entire industries devoted to diminishing, disguising, or denying our awkward nakedness, it's there. It's implied in the picture; it's a subtext to our dialogues. It's the moment and its feelings when a young man heard his fiancee was pregnant... but not by him. It's the father who failed his young pregnant wife, unable to find them a suitable place to stay. It's the looks and the murmurs and the end you don't see coming. It's ugly and a little disturbing but a part of the big picture.

Maybe that's a stretch, but it's Christmas Eve.

So the lessons are:
Baboso is a funny Spanish name to call someone with a runny nose.
Cyndi is delusional.
Christmas has some ugliness- check it out.

Well You'd Better Go Catch It

I think I embarrassed Jon and Aaron Monday. They came over to help me redo the floor in our front room. Which looks great. Normally, in a situation like that I embarrass myself by shooting a nail into my hand (building a set for Jeremiah) or falling from scaffolding (plastering the Trader Joe's on Mission). This time I embarrassed myself with a runny nose. That doesn't sound so bad, but runny doesn't really describe how much snot was flowing from my face.

I couldn't sniff fast or hard enough to keep the thin watery mucus off my lips, shirt, floor, saw, hands, and pants. Drugs were useless. Blowing my nose didn't help; I couldn't keep up with the flow. Wiping my nose with my sleeves just covered my face with sawdust and tore up my nostrils and lips. I soaked through two t-shirts tied around my face like bandanas.

So for the better part of the day, I was leaving a trail of slime everywhere I went. Jon poured salt on me and he and Aaron finished the last part of the floor pretty much on their own.

They both think I'm basically the greatest guy on earth so it was hard for them to see me in such a weakened state.

That night, I crammed tampons in my nostrils and they quickly filled and expanded- stretching my nose into an engorged purple bulb of clogged pores and chapped flesh. Sad.

Oh and just so I can say I said it: If King Kong isn't the greatest movie ever made, then something else is!

End O' The Year

Postings will be few and far between so we'd better get to what matters- like end of the year lists.

End of The Year List #1:
Boy's Names That Are Good for Adults But Seem Weird for a Baby
Carl
Gus
Frank
Gabe
Wolfgang


End of the Year List #2:
Things I Don't Need
My Name in Silver Wire Done While I Wait
A Sprint Cell Phone Plan
Shoe Cleaner
Hand Lotion
To Smell Like a Celebrity

Married?... Married!

I had a reunion of sorts the other day... Monday. That is technically the other day, but when I say that in real life Cyndi says it gives the impression that I mean sometime within the last three days. So specifically I mean Monday. Monday I saw and heard about a number of people that I've known since elementary school. So and So is a tattoo artist in Texas, Who's His Face lives in Los Feliz, stuff like that. Interesting to me is that everyone mentioned and everyone I saw remain unmarried. Not that I would marry any of them, but whether someone seems an attractive mate to me has never seemed to be a requirement for other people's weddings. Plenty of people who, to me, do not seem like they should be married, or should not be able to find someone to marry them are actually married. Weird.

Anyway, of all the people I hear of or have seen from my eighth grade class only 2 have married and one of those two recently divorced. It's a small class to be sure but that still surprises me. Of the thirty-some kids, I know the marital status of 16. Of those 16, 2 married (I'm not counting myself).

I don't know how that compares to any national demographics but I know how it compares to my wife's classmates. They are working on multiple marriages and divorces. She's not here to give me specific numbers as I think about this, but I know from previous conversations that more of her classmates have gotten married and/or divorced and remarried. I went to private Catholic school, she went to private "non-denominational" school. This means I can make the sweeping claim that Evangelicals love marriage more than Catholics do- they love it so much that some Evangelicals want to do it 3 or 4 times before they're 35.

If you don't believe me that's okay. It was, in fact, a joke. Well, the last sentence was anyway. There does seem to be some type of difference though. I would guess religious background accounts for some of it and it would be an interesting thing to research.

Somebody do that. Find out if Evangelicals are more likely than comparable populations of Catholics to marry younger, divorce and or remarry. Or just find out the attitudes of these groups towards marriage and divorce. C'mon this is golden, somebody use it.

But maybe you're not the researching type. Are you the game playing type? A game Cyndi and I play is setting odds and the line with people's marriages. We like to guess how likely couples are to get a divorce and how long it will take. If you wanted a piece of that action, this information could give you a very good edge.

This Was A Sweet Set
Hanging Around The Day- Polyphonic Spree
Regrets- Ben Folds Five
Mercy Mercy Me- Marvin Gaye
Where Is My Mind- The PIxies
Give It Up Turn It Loose- James Brown
Cancer For The Cure- The Eels
Muzzle of Bees- Wilco
Shining Star- Earth, Wind, and Fire
I Wanna Be Your Lover- Prince

I Feel LIke I'm Taking crazy Pills

I don't watch the OC, and barring any unforeseen rendition and its accompanying interrogation I do not plan on watching the OC. So if someone could explain to me what Christmukkah is I might appreciate it. If I understand anything from the commercials, it seems to be a confusing synthesis of the celebrations of the bottomless oil lamps and the baby born in a trough with an anti-gun violence message. That's just the surface though. My guess is- at its heart is the barely veiled contempt the writers have for the audience that watches the excrement that they hate themselves for writing expressed by debasing anything the viewer might value (boy that's an awkward sentence). Is that about right?

Let It Roll- Hieroglyphics

What Are Your Prime Directives?

My dad's a cop. My father in law is a cop. My best friend from elementary school through 9th grade became a cop. I've got family that are cops, family that married cops, divorced cops, and stole cops from their previous spouses. In short. I know cops as people. And as people some of them are great and some of them are jerks. All of them have their personal struggles and some of them have struggles exacerbated by being a cop. Divorce rates- higher among cops. Suicides- higher, domestic violence rates- higher, depression, heart attacks, hypertension, alcoholism, all higher among cops. This doesn't "mean" anything. It might suggest that if it's part of your job that you see the worst of humanity all the time you could possibly go nuts and die young. Cops aren't simply exposed to horrible things; generally they have to see the world as horrible.

I got pulled over the other day for avoiding an accident. There is a section of road south of our house that is notoriously dangerous. There are pretty bad accidents at least twice a month on this 1/4 mile stretch of highway- commuters enter and exit freeways here, competing with local big box shopping traffic for too few lanes, avoiding SUV driving/call making do-it-your-selfers and my-truck's-a-piece-anyway-so-who-cares-if-you-hit-me contractors, merging with local traffic that has no other north-south route to use to get to North Glendora, all driving on a road with poorly engineered traffic flow devices... Where was I? Oh- So I'm driving south bound when a white Ford mini-van coming from the west (so pointing east) makes a right turn in front of me. And rather than just slamming on the brakes and crashing into the van, I get off the gas and swerve to minimize the collision with the van and any car that might hit me from behind. (I really do think these things through. My dad didn't get too into passing good moral advice onto his kids but he really drilled active driving into my head. We would actually practice emergency driving drills in parking lots. I know exactly when to brake and turn to go from reverse, turn 180 degrees and accelerate forward, I know how to get a car out of a slide, spin, or fish tail- with that I also know how to put a car into a fish tail, spin, or power slide. That's weird... But also pretty great- Thanks, dad.) I accelerate straight for a bit then pull back into my lane. So anyway, I avoided an accident but looked a little crazy doing it.

So a cop saw all this- or at least part of this. He pulled me over. Being in Glendora, and me being in brown skin, half of Glendora PD also joined in the adventure (in the minute or so it took me to explain what happened, three other cops showed up). He asked me what was going on- I asked if he saw what happened. He hadn't seen the van, he said he only saw me driving crazy. I said it wasn't crazy to avoid an accident. He went back to the other cops then came back and asked for my driver's license, registration and insurance info. (It's interesting that it wasn't the first thing he asked for- maybe he was new). Then he went back for another discussion with his colleagues and to run my info. After the conference they decided I wasn't going to get a ticket. I didn't not get a ticket because he believed my explanation; I didn't get a ticket because my dad's a cop. I didn't tell him that, my driver's license did. If my driver's license had kept quiet, I probably would have gotten a ticket for an unsafe lane change that, in my estimation, wasn't unsafe. I would've been angry and taken it without dinner or a kiss. Oh well- everyone a cop pulls over has an excuse. Everyone is unbelievable. When it's your job to protect stupid people from stupider people you notice people being stupid and perhaps start to think people are only capable of being stupid. (One of my father in law's favorite expressions is, in fact, "stupid people"). Replace stupid with evil and that's a pretty miserable way to see the world.

So...

I know cops have dangerous jobs, but so do crab fishers. Cops face different dangers. The dangers they face don't only come from people shooting at you but from knowing that people want to shoot you, from having to see the stupid things people do, from seeing only the stupid things people do, from needing to see only that so you can do your job, from building calluses on your soul so you can get by. Similar things happen to people in the military and their families. Similar things happen to everybody. There are things we do that go against the grain of our being human...

Hmmm... I just lost interest in this. I was thinking of things that we do that go against that grain- well not what we do per se- but how we do them. I thought I wanted to write about what our "grain" is but now it's not that interesting to me. Or... I guess I'm interested but it seems like too much work.... Like I can't address it responsibly considering how lazy I feel right now. That's weird.

I'm gonna make a quesadilla.

All The Turkey's Gone
Better Git Hit in Your Soul- Charles Mingus
La La Love You- The Pixies
All Day and All of the Night- The Kinks
Army- Ben Folds Five
As Ugly As I Seem- The White Stripes
Sweet Talkin' Woman- ELO
Happy Jack- The Who
How I Could Just Kill A Man- Rage Against the Machine
Blue Orchid- The White Stripes
Run- Air
The National Anthem- Radiohead
My Love- Paul Mc Cartney
Murray- Pete Yorn
Raindrop- Tripping Daisy

The War on Christmas: Do Your Part

I buy great Christmas presents for Cyndi. It's not that I spend a lot of money- I just know what she wants. Without hints and without prompting, I know what to get her. I get her things she would get for herself. As great as I am, sometimes it turns out to be a problem. Cyndi does get things for herself- at Christmas; we've had to set rules so that she not buy anything for herself starting in September until her bierthday in January. It's rough.


Two Years Ago: With incredible forethought, in August I bought Cyndi a set of covered soup bowls that she had wanted. She wanted them so much she bought them for herself in November. Ha ha ha hah ha.

Last Year: I was searching ebay for a set of collectible wine glasses that matched her holiday water glasses and it turns out Cyndi and I were bidding against each other for the same item. Ha hahah ha ha hahahahahhhhh.

This Year: Knowing that for a happy Christmas she's better off not buying herself things before Christmas she was shopping for something for a friend of hers under my ebay account and somehow, accidentally, clicked "buy now" on one of my watched items. HA HAAHAHA HAHA HAA HAAA HAA AAAARRRRGHH AHAH AA.

You're Not Dying, You Just Can't Think of Anything Good to Do

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- Former President Gerald Ford, suffering from "a horrible cold," was in the hospital today for what his chief of staff called routine medical tests.

LA Times

I thought Gerald Ford was already dead.

You know who else has a cold? Me. You know who's not going to the doctor for any kind of tests? Me again. But then I'm not 92. And maybe my cold isn't all that horrible.

Symptoms: Sore throat, headache, sneezing, burning eyes, nothing-due induced ennui.

I don't get sick very often but when I do it is almost always in synch with the end of a school term. Like female housemates synchronizing their cycles, my immune system lays down arms when I turn in my last paper. So here I am, dying, briefly playing host to whatever microbial invader needs a place to stay. I'm not doing anything with me right now so why not?

I enjoy the not doing anything for a time and I enjoy the academic cycle in which the nothing comes and goes. But it is usually a transition I have to push through. Not because I I don't have anything to do but because I need to remember that the nothing there is to do is worth doing.

So another semester is right around the corner, Here's what's on tap for me come January: Hermeneutics, Exegesis, and Preaching from the 1st to 5th c., Knowledge and Culture, Peace Studies Seminar, Survey of Islamic Theology, Philosophy, and Mysticism.
That's right, fool- I'm straight-up rollin' wit da' suzixteen units.

There Certainly Is an "I" in iTunes
I Can't Get No Satisfaction- Devo
I've Been Tired- The Pixies
I've Got a Feeling- The Beetles
She Watch Channel Zero!?- Public Enemy

There Is No Spoon... Except That There Is and You Are Living as if The Spoon Absolutely Matters

I am struggling to finish a paper this morning. When I was looking at schools, I wanted to be in a Theological Ethics program. That's a very specific program that's not offered too many places. Typically programs are divided into Theology or Ethics because the Modern academic understanding is that the two are separate. This isn't simply the result of academic specialization, it's also a result of the Modern view that reason alone stands apart from the world and is somehow able to determine or reflect what is, let alone what ought to be done- or what is universally good. It's why we say something like, "C'mon be reasonable..." when someone doesn't see or do things our way. We imagine that there is some kind of universal reason that will convince somebody leaving only 4 oz. (that's about 100 ml, CityFrog) of milk in the refrigerator is wrong. (That's not the whole of the case- but it's something most of us can probably relate to).

So, briefly, Theological Ethics understands that there are systems in which reason functions according to specific parameters. It examines the specific commitments and knowledge that are those parameters and how those are lived. I didn't get into the school that offers the best Theological Ethics program in the world, go figure. The school I am at has a Theology, Ethics, and Culture program. I am not in that program- I'm in the Philosophy of Religion/Theology program. I originally applied to the "TEC" program but after meeting with the faculty we decided I would be better suited to the "PR/T" program. Here's why:

The TEC program does account for the theological and cultural influences on ethics. That's good. However, it imagines that you can freely deconstruct and recreate ethical systems however you see fit simply by replacing parts here and there. If you see a problem and want a specific outcome, create a system that leads to it. I guess you can do that, but it doesn't seem very effective. That's not so good. To me, that is very similar (different and better, but still similar) to separating Theology and Ethics. Here's why:

People are very committed to their systems- even if they aren't aware that they are part of it. You can't just take apart someone's system because you don't like what it's doing, build up another one, and try to force it on them. No one will buy it- or few people will buy it, but then they're not a part of that system. If I want a result from you that your system doesn't "allow," my creating another system external to you and trying to make you fit it is just as unlikely to work as my appealing to an all powerful external reason and saying, "Hey, you, reason dictates that you shouldn't leave less milk than someone will use in the refrigerator." The other person will say, "That's stupid and unreasonable. Reason dictates I shouldn't waste milk by pouring more than I need." Will they then accept it if I say, "Here, dummy, try this system that will convince you to not leave dribbles of milk in the refrigerator."?

You can deconstruct, and build, and have competing systems if you'd like, but it seems like art and crafts. There is something to it- I'm not saying it's worthless, but it's not always what people are going to use- at least it's not what I'm going to use.

So, if you are committed to one system and you think it needs tweaking- you need to find the elements within that system that may allow for some tweaking. If you break the rules, you're not in the system, but you can push the boundaries and test the flexibility of a system so that it remains intact (if it is worth keeping intact).

To take the imagery too far: If a system is producing an unwanted result, it may be that result is an inevitability of that system. Or it could be that the system is being misused. Or parts of the system are not used as they should be. Still another option is that the system may be functioning exactly as it should be but incidental to its use is an unwanted byproduct or negative externality. Or a system might function great but has the potential to function even better.

One has to discover if the system intends the result or if the result is unintended but necessary to the system or the result of misuse or malfunction or if it's going well how it can go even better. If bad things are an intended result then it may be necessary to chuck the system. If it is one of the other options then the problem may be remedied or improved. If you want a car to stop leaking oil, or backfiring, or get better gas mileage, or not run on hyrdrocarbons, or go faster, or have a smoother ride, there are things you can do to it while still keeping it a car. If you want a car to fly you to the moon though, you are no longer dealing with a car.

I know this might sound very existential and post-modern. Deal with it. (If you're paying attention- you'll notice that something external to these systems is necessarily implied. You just don't know what it is- but that's one of the reasons Christmas matters.)

I want to know my system- so I am in the PR/T program. I am not too interested in building new systems out of parts I find lying around the academic workshop. That's why I am not in the TEC program. I did however decide to take the TEC "flagship" class but now find myself reluctant to color in their lines. My bad.

But now that I got this out of my system (wink), I suppose I'll finish my paper.

iTunes Can Only Play What I Put Into Its Library
I Got a Girl- Tripping Daisy
My Love- Paul McCartney
Company In My Back- Wilco
Blue 'N' Boogie- Dizzy Gillespie
Mr. Tambourine Man- Bob Dylan
Maggie's Farm- Bob Dylan
Here Comes Your Man- The Pixies
Stepping Into Tomorrow- Madlib
No Surprises- Radiohead
Flower- The Eels

We Wish You a Sexy Christmas cont'd

Zales

The War on Christmas: Family Day

"This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day."

AP Wire

Note: I changed the link on this. It's still an AP wire story but goes through CNN instead of the LA Times.

Nolite Timere

Did you know that the last Western human rights group in Iraq outside of the Green Zone is a Christian organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams? Did you know that CPT members were recently kidnapped by a heretofore unknown terrorist group? Did you know that in response to this Rush Limbaugh said, "I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.?" You can read a transcript and hear an audio clip of him actually saying that here.

He says liberals fear faith. Although he's a bit of a clown, he may have something there. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to a lot of issues. And I have to admit, reading about the faith of these people all over the world on these Christian Peacemaking Teams in places like Iraq, Colombia, Burundi, and Hebron- I do have a sense of fear about it. But likely not in the way Rush thinks I might.

Christmas=Sex

I'm a crank. I'm not a humbug- I love Christmas. I'm a crank. I am a crank because I have little patience for our Christmas nonsense. The song Silent Night?- it's great. The Song Silent Night used to sell Pampers?- that's horrible.

So as a crank I am watching TV and notice that at this time of year, Christmas is used in commercials that typically use the idea of sex to sell their products. While during the rest of the year the formula usually is: Buy this you will be sexy and probably get to have sex- but you have to buy this first, now the formula is: it is Christmas time and you will have a good Christmas if you buy this. Instead of saying we make sex possible, they are saying we make good Christmas possible. So Christmas is as masturbatory a fantasy as beer commercials and so far these are some of the products/companies that show this best. That is, these are the commercials I first noticed wish me a Sexy Christmas:
Victoria's Secret
Gillette
De Beers (the diamond people)
Kay Jewelers

While right now I'm only counting it if Christmas is explicitly mentioned as a selling point and replaces or parallels sexual content or suggestiveness, I think the idea of Christmas easily replaces any cultural fantasy as seen in commercials. Instead of putting any difficult production work into a commercial- just show the product and play a Christmas song. Dancing babies with leak-free diapers: replaced with Christmas. Family togetherness and intimacy because of cell phones: replaced with Christmas. I want to see how this can be used for daytime TV products like injury attorneys and career colleges.

Everything In its Place

I don't know why this is making the rounds again, but this quote showed itself recently. It's from some time ago but in case there are any Christians who think Ann Coulter should inform their political thinking, maybe they should reconsider.
COULTER: God says, "Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours."
FENN: Terrific. We're Americans, so we should consume as much of the earth's resources...
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: ... as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.

from the Fox show Hannity & Colmes

If that seems out of context, she says the same thing in one of her columns.

I am not saying there's no place for debate. But that's not what this is- is it? This is theater. What she says is about as meaningful as this:

"When Randy Orton came to the ring to open Friday Night SmackDown, he thought he was on top of the world. However, he quickly found out that a trip to the south was in his future."

What?

Saying stuff like this, I expect her to come walking into an arena, managed by Vince McMahon, through fog and a lazer show to The Beautiful People.

What she says should not be confused for the thoughtful conservatism that exists, nor should her statements ever be seen as anything resembling facts or truth. She's distracting theater. That's her job. She's a caricature.

I know people take her seriously though. Not everyone who buys an Ann Coulter book does so ironically. I guess her disciples would be the backyard wrestlers of political discourse. That's too bad but not as troubling as the caricatures of Christian culture that people take seriously. I go to a school where, for one reason or another, students often have horrible misconceptions about what Christianity is. Sometimes their ideas are representative of some types of Christianity, other times they're just unfair narrow misrepresentations constructed as a foil to rationalize whatever belief their trying to cling to. And that's in the School of Religion. In other departments there is often an incredible bias against religion in general. That's one drawback. Another is, even if someone has an unrealistic, unfair picture of what it is to be a Christian, someone somewhere very probably holds that view. The "God Hates Fags" guy is real (maybe?), Paul Crouch is real. For some people that is as good as it gets. Hating fags is someone's truth. TBN is someone's truth. That's rough.

But then again. I am someone's cartoon. I am the "That's all there is?" other for someone else. I am someone else's clumsy groping at truth- then again, often I am my own clumsy groping.

No resolution here. Oh well.


Red Rain- The White Stripes
Happiness Is a Warm Gun- The Beatles
I Like Food- The Descendants
Mike Mills- Air
Psycho Killer- Talking Heads
Vertigo- U2
Piper- Phish
Adagio for Strings- Barber
Stepping Into Tomorrow- Madlib

A Christmas Miracle

"Three people, including a firefighter collecting donated presents for children, were wounded Sunday when gunfire erupted between rival motorcycle gangs gathered for a Christmas toy drive at a Riverside County saloon, authorities said."

LA Times

Oh that holiday magic. It's the time of year when we only have to believe in the goodness of humanity and there it is- hearts reaching out to each other, strangers helping strangers. We forget all about our petty differences and join together as a human family.
It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

To a young lady with red hair, waiting for her drink across from me by the door in a Starbucks:

I'm not checking you out- I am not wearing my glasses
so can't tell if you're someone I should wave to.
You're not.

This Is What We Do In Bible Study and After

That there is something rather than nothing
is really something.
Noting nothing is much more stable than anything.

Last night Russ reminded me-
Until nearly 10 years ago the study of insects in flight could account for only about a third or half of the lift necessary to support their weight.

Bumblebees and the Scientific Method
by Sheenagh Pugh

A scientist, a man of parts,
(some of which worked in fits and starts),
by using certain apparatus
proved bees could not be aviators.
There was no doubt, declared our hero,
the fundamental laws of aero-
nautics, -dynamics and whatever
must soon convince the unbeliever
that bees were built to such a model,
they scarcely could do more than waddle.
The ratio of their body weight
to wing-span, he could demonstrate,
precluded take-off, much less flight.
Colleagues allowed his sums were right:
Professors, Fellows, Doctors, Tutors,
sweating away at their computers,
confirmed our mans results in toto,
and grudgingly agreed to go to
honour his triumph at a party
(nobody really love a smarty).
While all acclaimed his theories,
nobody thought to tell the bees,
who, never having been to college,
nor stayed abreast of modern knowledge,
kept up a stunning imitation
of wing-powered aerial navigation.

Last night Cyndi reminded me-
Between Jessica Simpson and Nick Lache, Jessica Simpson is by far the better looking of the two.

Lady Pigs
by Solomon

As a ring of gold in a swine's snout
A beautiful woman who lacks discretion