Peachy!

I remember turning 21 as a non-event. I went to a bar to see Dave's band Bone and had my first legal drink, some alcopop that caused me to puff out my cheeks in distaste just as my picture was taken. Zack finished it, since my enjoyment was secondary to the milestone of buying it. Beyond legal alcohol, what good is 21 in America?

Of course, we will grant you a biff in the snoot if you vex us.

There is not someone for everyone, but that's far from a curse. It's almost a blessing, to breaststroke through of the dating pool, to be a carbon atom in the social experiment. While one's partner is not precisely fungible, one knows that one needn't be unattached for any longer than it takes to encounter a similarly-minded singleton and find an empty room.

Then there are people who catalyze with only a few others and are otherwise inert.

Dawn rose after noon the day she died. You've known her since kindergarten, when she stole your fire truck during recess and you socked her in the arm. You'd been inseparable since, once she contented herself to take no more than much of your time and the only pain you caused her involved pointed questions.

You watched as she side-stepped the homeless woman begging change on the corner. From across the street, you saw the truck hit her, your arm caught in mid-wave. You rushed to her, but the damage was too severe, too unquestionably fatal. You've heard that quick deaths are supposed to be a comfort because the deceased didn't suffer.

Dawn disagrees. Once you were home again, after answering the questions from the police, once you were back in your apartment with the tension and fear leaking from your eyes, your phone rang. Dawn asked you to swing by the hospital and pick her up. She hung up and didn't answer when you called back. So you went to pick ...

Jamie

One of Melanie's associates - not the sort of person who was a friend, but someone with whom she had partied - turned up dead for reasons unknown. Melanie guesses an overdose. Jinx wondered if it might have been a car accident. I've heard whispers of suicide. This marked the first death of a peer that Melanie has experienced in a while and possibly the closest. It is a situation that cannot help but shake one's certainty ...

The dinosaur doesn't get that I don't want to flirt!

There was a time not long ago when I was, by my own description, an ungodly flirt. At the time, I played it off as innocent, as letting someone know that I did care about them in the most convenient language I had available.

But it wasn't wholly innocent. At that time, I was in a relationship. She had a busy schedule that did not involve me. Even when she was ...

She does it right.

Readings, like poems themselves, should go on only as long as they absolutely must and not a word longer. They always do exceed, though, so I forget what I thought I liked initially, because a most poet's egos have no sense of time or caliber.

I want to like poetry because it is erudite to enjoy it, but I generally do not. If someone says they have a poem they want to share, I have to restrain my eyes from rolling. There is a story - possibly apocryphal - of some Vassarite informing her professor Xenology: Not Garth 06/15/2010

I have no idea who this is supposed to be.

I don't know what to say. There was a time where, if it wasn't fair to say I knew them beyond the superficial, I was at least known by them to some degree. I was their mascot, the brother of their ostensible leader, the one who had clean urine were there to be a need to pass a drug test (this never came up). I was the one who they joked they would corrupt, though they never tried very hard since making me one of them would defeat their fun.

As one of them - Chris, I ...

"Bok?"

"...So the chicken hands the frog a book and says 'bok?'," Dawn finishes, "and the frog says 'Readit.'"

This is, inexplicably, the third joke of our frog theme. From this, we will transition to Maine, Finnish, German, Trotsky, lesbian (at least two of us have queer cred enough to get away with this), and - improbably - Emilio Estevez jokes (What do you call Emilio Estevez after a sex change? Emilio Breastavez). We didn't plan on this, it just evolved because chairs were in a circle and someone laughed.

Artists!

Minimalism resonates through the show, though the Fort Gallery is more sparse than strictly minimal, having been constructed by Huguenots centuries past. The initial crowd for the art opening is only two people, munching on tiny pretzels in the light of one bare bulb. They look uneasy when I wander in, as though three is a crowd. They supply, without preamble, that this is the Minimal Involvement show but neither of them is the artist. This is fine, as my appreciation for minimalist photography is secondary (or quinary) ...

"I miss you, cupcake."

Though it starts with thunder and torrential rain, around noon the clouds part as though God were about to descend, drying the puddles by the time I was to set off for the Cupcake Festival.

While the cupcakes themselves are lackluster and overpriced (so much so that a smattering of scalpers stood in front of the cupcake ticket booth and tried to pawn off their extras), each ostensibly made by the same person using the same recipe and ...

Full of mistrust.

I resent having my Sony Reader stolen from my bag, but am more annoyed that my students were willing to cripple my trust in them to steal something that has no intrinsic value to them. This was not an act of covetousness, none of them were willing to face charges so they could read more (Most of them would gladly face felony charges to never have to read again. Several may one day.). They simply wanted to spite me for daring to come in daily to work with them, something that I gather is rare owing to ...

He could also smoke a pipe very well.

Edwin Hubble, the namesake of the telescope and discoverer of the constant, told people he practiced law in Kentucky when he was actually a high school teacher (though duly certified by the bar). He pretended at Britishness (with the orotund and sometimes unintelligible accent and Inverness cape) for the rest of his life after spending a little time abroad as a Rhodes scholar, to the continual frustrations of his friends and colleagues. He was quick to assure people that he performed near constant acts of heroism, ...

What? I can be literal.

I've applied three times. Once, I got the rejection boilerplate. Once, I was so inflated with tonsillitis that I couldn't accept an interview for a few days, at which point the job belonged to someone else. I very nearly did not apply the third time to be an afterschool English teacher, but saw little harm beyond revising my cover letter.

I get the call in the middle of the day, asking if I could come in immediately or ditch work the following day (I could not, I happened to have an assignment I ...

I like to imagine he is wishing her a happy birthday here.

I interrupt myself, mid-flail, when I see Rachel running out of Cabaloosa followed by Finn, shoving through the dense crowd with a singular purpose. I pursue them without another thought. Outside, Rachel's friend (who I am going to call Sam) is holding her forearms and looking alternately amused and terrified, shooting glances toward the door and a balding, middle-aged man who wants to have "a word" with her.

The story filters out that, during the sole heavy ...

So, am I given to understand that BP hopes to win the hearts and minds of the populous by sponsoring links on StumbleUpon?

NAACP, this is NOT what you should be focusing your energy on.

Abortion stops a beating.

Oh, I support health care reform. I just hate email forwards in the place of original content.

While far from being such a well-known writer, I have been solicited to more than give away my writing for someone else to profit over. I've helped out a couple of friends (which has often been something I've regretted given the hassle it has ended up being), but I applaud standing up to strangers who profit off the labor of others like this.

I hate that you apparently asked this interesting person THREE questions. Could you not think of anything else that might be worth asking?

When my niece was two, she swore she saw God leaning against a wall. I was not aware this was expert testimony.

The Cloverfield monster wants to make a date with me?

According to http://whois.domaintools.com/thisman.org this site was registered to a.natelle@guerillamarketing.it. Nothing fishy about that.

I'm sorry, but I am going to need more proof than someone just *saying* they are gay. You can't make a statement like that without proving it in a series of experiments with rigorous controls.