The difference between math texts and English texts is that one has plot lines, the other has line plots.

One of our lessons exploded. It’s a mess, and now there are little pieces of lesson everywhere.

I got so excited about the redvelvet I forgot to mention the clementines.
Fair enough.
It's just, I've had delicious clementines before. Cream cheese frosting is a much rarer beast.
That's exactly my problem with cream cheese frosting. It's become a very common beast.
I left out the word delicious in that sentence, I realize.

Cheese or font.

The New York Times must have a back supply of crossword puzzles along with obituaries.

We’ll either be twotiming strumpets together, or we’ll be twotiming strumpets, together.

Options open.

Singled (halved?) with a shared attribution. And since it’s been a while since an SI unjustly overlooked: Fire Leonardo DiCaprio, hire Sigmund Freud: Inception gets a NC-17 rating.

Lose leaf.

The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, as given in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is 42.

Stephen Fry, a good friend of Douglas Adams’s, claims the punchline is fascinating, extraordinary, and obvious when thought really hard about.

One day, having just finished writing a play with a hidden joke in base 13, walking down the street, I had a sudden deep thought.

Forty-two.
Tea for two.

The meaning of life is… tea for two.
Something Douglas Adams was passionate about.
Something computers in the book just can’t seem to make right.
Simple, brilliant, clever, fitting, funny, and probably true. It has to be.

“…Just tea for two / And two for tea…”

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do about all these pages we need to edit. By the way, did you hear about Elizabeth Taylor?”
Yeah, read it online earlier today.
“Oh. [pause] So, what are we going to do?”
I think we'll be okay without her. Richard Burton managed.

What do you have to leave for? If it’s a basketball game, there’ll be other ones. But, if it’s a girl… there’ll be other ones.

After it.

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU. Keep the channel open… No artist is pleased… There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

The author cares more about the words than the characters.

Quotes we wished we had last Thursday.

“Me: Green hoodie, blue plaid button-up, purple watch.
You: Kind of look like Academy Award nominee Kristin Scott Thomas?”

Missed connections.

“I’m At Starbucks Anemone.”

Week 907.5: [untitled]
Revised title: The Empress’s New Contest

(The ink is invisible.)

"Many grantors refuse to give permission if one or the other ellipsis is deleted; however, if you wish to avoid having a text page that looks as if it has the measles, you may want to request the deletion of one ellipsis at the time you request permission."

And so on.

We are on an eternal seesaw. Whenever I feel balanced enough to let myself make plans and be happy, you're at your lowest. But we move, and the same ways.

I will buy a dogsitter and plane ticket for you if you need it. But more importantly, I won't think any differently of you if you don't take me up on the offer.

When I say I'm financially independent, it's because I disregard the future. I'm only temporarily. But that may not be a bad thing, in the end.

Chicago is too cold for you to live. But so is DC, just not that kind of cold.

Don't let other people's 2.5-to-3 pages or definitions of fairy tales get in the way of telling your story. It's your story. You're taking the class for you. Write the story that you wanted to write. Otherwise, what's the point. Besides, we've already made that mistake.

If you offered me to run away with you in 2.5-3 months and become a teacher, I'd probably go with. Not to run away though, but because you would be offering me something to run towards.

Going backwards is worse than going nowhere. But going nowhere is worse than going backwards. The secret is that going in circles is worse than both.

Realizing how lucky I am.

The girl sitting opposite me on the bus looks sad. Weary. I'm not telling her to cheer up, nor smile. Maybe I should. I'm not sure how to. Too late. We both disembarked in opposite directions. And I'm home.

“When you come to town you’ll have them coming for miles…”

Like the missing 311 song in a strewn trail of westward breadcrumbs, March 16 is the waypoint along the trajectory of Pi Day, the Ides of March, and St. Patrick’s Day.

“…Come original / You got to come original…”

Apathy is a defense mechanism. Assassins don’t get stabbed; dictators don’t fall on swords; soothsayers fear no coming day.

Celebrating Pi Day with a bundt cake.  (It's an approximation.)

Happy Pi Day Eve! Or, (Pi - 1) Day.

“If the person has a British accent, engage carefully and quickly.”

Screenwriting : LA :: Improv : Chicago

“Sometimes I sleep / Sometimes it’s not for days…”

The 77, like the most trusted steeds, knows when not to bear its rider into danger.

“…I’m a cowboy / On a steel horse I ride…”

Saw “The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen”, a delightfully triplicated play. The schizophrenetic emphasis on the number, while not ever explicitly more than a gimmick, amusingly permeates the characters, chorus, and audience. The Seussically rhythmed dialogue adds to the enjoyment of the dark comedy.

Not Brothers & Sisters, but could have been; and in some ways, perhaps better: somewhere between real and idealized, to be ended in 4 years, enjoyable without attachment, and therefore comforting in familiarity.

“I am the only audience member.”
I’m the only actor. It’s hard for both of us.

Half an hour passes very quickly.

Too much light? Pah fah the course.

“I’m good to go…”

Working a Saturday is a good experience, especially for the reminder of how grateful to be for usually having Saturdays off.

“…I can’t sleep / In the wake of Saturday…”

I’m in an episode of Lost. I board the 423 bus. The woman in the seat in front of me has a few pages torn from a massmarket paperback she’s annotating. It’s weird so I take a closer look, but all I can see is that the top one is page 423. It’s 4:23pm. The bus is totally going to crash onto an island.

Flashback candidates.

It’s a Pace bus, too. Clever writers.

"hi team"
"you've been working hard"
"here's some toffee"
"you can go now"

Given a tapas restaurant, find the minimum party size for ordering the menu.

The purpleline’s heated seats are as an apology for the blueline’s traitorous obnoxiousness.

“I refuse to compare people to public transportation. Unless it is in regards to size. Because I have described people as being as big as a bus before.”

The & Company is literal.

Amissum haud immemoratum umquam cordi.

Yay being able to use a Classics degree.
“I hope you get to use it again some time for more than 10 minutes.”
heh I take what I can get. Or, rather: it's lost but not forgotten, forever in my heart.

Hamletmachine fractures a story into its most haunting aspects. The tragedy is madness.

“I was Hamlet: I stood on the coast and spoke with the surf, at my back the ruins of Europe…”

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And if that doesn’t work, just say that your uncle locked your dead dog out of the apartment, and he’s only in town for 2 days.

Humor me for a second.

Food chain of command.

The Eagle is what it is: a mediocre Roman epic movie. The are no characters, no themes, no plot, merely geographic and historical setting; but the film makes no pretenses that it intends any other delivery.

The weekend, like my SI single, starts to end.

Excellently squired.

Like the turtle found on the side of the road, we keep the tangent overnight, then let it go away.

We withhold ourselves until we are ready to do something. But the world is never on the same page as us.
But you can’t blame the world there, only the us.
Oh, I was going to blame the M[].

"Watson is at a disadvantage when it comes to humor, wordplay, irony, and so forth. But then again, so are many humans that I meet, particularly the ones working rental car counters."

The last 7 words turn what could have been satiric wisdom into mediocre stand up, or turn mediocre stand up into ironic commentary on how humanity need not fear the loss of one defining quality.

“Let’s paint the picture of the perfect place…”

Looking in all the wrong places

“…And the grass is getting greener each day…”

On to the next thing.

“…Yeah, we’re going down…”

“All the things she said / Running through my head…”

Running through the streets at 2am, where there is only one direction to go: onwards, one way or the other along the snowbanked trenches of Broadway. Past music spilling from dying bars; past barred cemetery gates; toward the destination, the departure point reached with fresh composure, like evoked lies and poetry. A thaw as the blackclouds gather, 3 thunderstrikes lit the sky, and winter remains the forgotten season.

“…This is not / Enough…”

I can’t plan a return
‘Cross bridge I burn
Away, so here I stay and yearn
To learn to learn to learn.

Some part of me will always go aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah when I send an e-mail.

Telemachus goes to Nestor before he goes to Menelaus

I think the former wouldn't be a problem if we lattered. But because we don't, then it is.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this 4th wall.

“We are two mariners…”

And Moby Dick as an 80s rock musical.

“…And before us grew the angry jaws of a giant whale…”

Something requiring deciding quickly probably isn’t what I wanted to be doing anyhow.

Def and don’t think.

You have a very attractive checklist.
“I get told that all the time. Though you may need to tweak it.”
I’ll tweak your checklist.

Entertaining the distraction.

Did I miss a call from you? I was too busy watching a pirated copy of Black Swan with M[] and D[] and B[] and M[] that froze right after the masturbation scene. fml. Luckily, the hilariously, hilariously mistranlasted chinese to english subtitles provided enough comedy to cut any tension.

Our problem isn’t that we overthink, it’s that we underdo.

I love when I simultaneously realize what I like, why I like it, and what I need to not do.
I hate when I accidentally try to go to thingI'msearchingfor.com instead of searching for it.

“Upon the rooftops in dead of night / You'll hear me cry, I'll shake you from your sleep…”

Scaling 4 foot snowdrifts so densely packed in places that my weight is supported, and eventually stagger into a Decemberists’ concert. Story of my life: despite the redline’s best efforts, I shall have fun.

“…For I am a poor and a wretched boy / A chimbley, chimbley sweep…”

I'm thinking of doing something crazy and foolish, like going outside. Nevermind. I'm actually looking up Pacific Northwest Tree Octopi.
Oh, well good. That was going ot be my suggestion, in fact.

I’m thinking of doing something crazy and foolish.

You know, you’re hard to read. You like Paris, and hate French.
I like places and hate people. Oh. haha That was a language, not a substantive.

The problem with a veto is how a 2/3 majority overrides it.

The lesson of Yalta is that there’s always Tehran.
“See you in Berlin, then.”
Meet you halfway.

Youth passes like a clung autumn, left behind when the last day of school is abandoned.
Snow days are forever.

“…School’s out forever…”

“They’re falling down like a domino…”

The problem with debt is temporal: the future is obligated to the past. But unless the debt is for future’s benefit, why should they undertake past’s burden? Rather, future protests, and righteously defaults. But then what is past to do: what motivation for goodwill, if they are merely enacting their replacement?

“…All the kids in the marketplace say…”

Thus passes Machiavelli, done in by a supermajority of past and future.

“…Walk like an Egyptian…”

Saw King’s Speech, the natural progression from My Fair Lady’s satirization of linguistic distinction in social strata: can a speech therapist make royalty sound like royalty? But I can’t help myself from considering outrageous unintended parallels: George son of George, unexpectedly ascending to highest power ahead of his elder brother, thrust into a geopolitical war against a charismatic madman, and crippled by an inability in language usage.

I wasn't sure whether to refer to as a friend or a friend's roommate. It's in between, like, half-a-friend. Like, J[], before we had our bad poetry bonding moment.

The right and wrong way to communicate.

Already pillaged her recycling bin: it’s what she would have wanted.

You got to be careful about falling in love with trash cans.

“I once forgot my bookbag at Olive Garden, but that doesn’t make me the mayor of Italy.”

The many flavors of theta.

“Long time no see / Long time no say…”

Being nice is the gateway to being sneaky.

“…And your capital letters keep me asking for more…”

Every website is at most 6 links from Kevin Bacon’s wiki page.

“The Huey Lewis Show” isn’t just funny, but also therapeutic, when the audience prompt, for a newspaper headline they will never read, is “Chicago Beats Green Bay”.

DC is so not the city to move to if you need a winning football team to stick around.

The Iceberg.

If this makes no sense it’s because I really am running out to buy lettuce.

Submitting a recursive metaentry feels like phoning in a guilty pleasure, but a SI single is a SI single.

DreamMe writes DreamRecLetters for DreamJobs.

Do we blame the chili, or do we blame the bowl? Let’s blame the bowl.

Wait, no, stop. You insist that you can’t reveal who the last 2 were, right after you mention that he visited you and she visited you, and you know I’m clever enough to figure this out, and you think this counts as not telling anyone.
“I’m not saying anything.”
I don’t know anyone who can lie to themself better than you.

Happy birthday, I got you a hint.

It’s almost as good as how instead of directly inviting me to visit, you call me up and complain for an hour about how all your college friends who visit you wind up having sex with your boat or high school friends. Fine, I’ll see when I can come by.
“Wait, no, stop. I have to go build an attic.”

Plan B: I crash asleep early and hopefully stave off whatever I’m coming down with.

Back from escortry, with a SI single.

"I'd like to write a crossword with you.
Oh, wow. I don't know what to say. I mean, yes, of course, but shouldn't we discuss marriage first?

Packing, in the non-firearms sense of the word.

In the words of Genesis 1, calling it a day.

“There goes another night…”

Multiplication is hard.

“…Through these hard times…”

The closest thing to cat food is scones.

Dogs are funny. Neither you nor I would willingly, let alone enthusiastically, eat salmon, garlic, and bananas together.

“You know I’ve got to be more than this…”

Reason is in twilight: advantage and interest have reached their paradoxical limits. There is no incentive for optimality. Society cannot self-sustain, not constructed within a a set of negative loopholes. And so rationality goes the way of faith; statistics and economics and psychology become alchemy and astrology and parapsychology.

“…The more you think, the less you act this way…”

Fake it till you make it.

“…The fake sound of progress…”

Another SI single, which will hopefully allow a replacement hat delivered for my delivered Inker trophy! I do regret how in the interest of readability, I did forgo AABCC phrasing: “Obama pledges in the State of the Union that there will be a State of the Union pledge that we will put an American on Mars by the end of the decade by the end of the decade”.

<horrified> You just cut the cat!

Objectwork.

“There’s a 50% chance I’m getting a kitty. What should I name it?”
I have to suggest Schrodinger.

One part ancient grammar lesson, one part backhand, one part validation of paranoia.

I’m wingmanning her.
“Aren’t you wingmanning him?”
She’s in the accusative, he’s in the dative, and the girl he’s talking is in the genitive.

Looks like this year I’m resolving to have more interesting gchat away messages.

If there were a random guy (I'm envisioning Cash Cab style, only without the staging) who'd ask random folk who their rep was, for a $X prize- people would remember, just in case, wouldn't they?
“To create public awareness. We should ask some questions about breast cancer.”
That's why more Americans don't know their government representatives. It's not a practical trivia question. There's no incentive to know it.

Probably would be more upset at the lack of free trivia if I weren’t just bankrolled for the rest of the month.

It seems like purple will be the in color this year, per the Pearson Publishing & Modeling Agency.

“CCSS K.L.1
Lavender is evil”

This year I resolve to have more interesting solutions to the New York Times crossword.

Is it okay if I get a New Yorker Cartoon calendar?
Sure. They make great notepads in coming years.

“What’s a groupon?”

Too Much? Not enough.

“Are you J[]?”
“Yes?”
”You were great in Pillowman.”

“Embrace the past and you can live for now…”

A kiss.
A party.
A touch of fun.
A SI double (including a win!)
A brunch.
A nap.
A performance of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.

And all with friends old and new, here and far, good and amazing.
2011 and I are going to get along just fine, I think.

“…We are the voices / This is a New Year…”

“Wide-eyed, grinning in the darkened room…”
Every night as I go to sleep I realize what I need to do.
“…Coming in the morning in the afternoon / Forgetting…”
Every morning I’ve forgotten it.
“…Fully dead already but forever young…”
If I could change anything it would be their inability to change.
“…There's some things that I'm regretting…”
Don’t berate yourself. That was the best mere thought ever had.
“…A gypsy told my fortune then I told her hers…”
I like that about you. Most people get ethically elitist.
“…You'll be looking for your lover in the midnight sun / And you'll perish for your lover when the frost has begun…”
I have a philosophical objection to dichotomy.
“…Why love one thing and not the other…”
You have to like the person you are or be the person you want.
“…I am destroyer / I am lover…”

The poor Cyclops, intention never known, who has no control over whether he is perceived to be blinking or winking.

I don’t think we understood each other or ourselves.

Alcoholics are like pessimists, except instead of always having a half-empty glass, they always have an empty glass.

“…Alcohol, I still drink to your health…”

That's why I'm asking: I'd never do something like that without your okay, or at least your meh.

It's more a thought than a potential action.

Another SI single, from comparing too easy to pick on Washington institutions: the Redskins and the Democrats.

Clue: Museum Caper removes the elegantly simple gameplay of the original but adds a necessary component for mystery, trading the element of whodunit for the thrill of perpetration. Clue players may as well be third person inspectors far removed from the incident. Clue: Museum Caper players must identify with their pawns.

Things have changed.
Foremost, I have settled in a place where I am content with my past and present. For that I have obtained some new things, prominent among which is a netbook, the ubiquitous Bleem. Which, being ideal for my daily commutes, allows new opportunities for communicating just when I have so much I want to relate. So, appropriately enough, it is time to proceed with what I have begun.

You know how they always say, never trust wikipedia, but you do, because, I mean, really, okay, it's true theoretically that something could be wrong, but, c'mon, it's wikipedia? And, I mean, if there were an inaccuracy, you'd expect it to be something really esoteric and not immediately verifiable, by, say, a 7th grader with a budget of $2.25?
“Wikipedia teaches me things. But I can't ever let anyone know. I have to pretend I found the facts in a peer-reviewed journal.”
Now wikipedia has taught you the greatest lesson of all.

Something wiki this way comes.

FML, S&R ed.: MLIA

Fishing for compliments, but just the remarks are biting.

“You never say hi any more.”
Works both ways. The Commutative Property of Saying Hi to People in the Office

Every single time I sneak back to my past, my wit is found. Back from STL, with a third-place SI!

“That rainbow looks symbolic.”
<5 minutes later> The Senate just repealed DADT.

Two Watchers were killed. Whodunit?

As Cinder, oldest and wisest of the Fae, I found Oberon was distracted, Titania flighty, and the soulless Vampyrs everywhere. Puck was causing mischief with Arthur, and by the time I had an eye on him, Watcher #3 was killed. I tasked Puck and his sister Nineve with protecting the other Watchers, keeping the latter safe, the former [mostly] out of trouble, and working together we secured one of the weapons: a wand. Then a Vampyr keeled over: but a few minutes later he was up and about again. Still, since too many knew about the wand, I secretly entrusted it to the Fae assassin, Bounty, with orders to use it only by command of myself or Lord Oberon, who was the only other I told. Unfortunately, I then discovered the reason for Oberon’s distraction: a preoccupation over a vendetta with Merlin over his harassment of Nineve. It was a risk, but I took the wand back for myself, not sure if Oberon’s judgment would be unbiased enough.

Investigations indicated that the Court held a murderer. A Watcher’s spell cleared Morganna. A Vampyress tried to manipulate me against Guinevere, but it was clear she was innocent. I cornered Arthur alone in a back hallway, and brandishing the wand, compelled him to tell me what he knew; it was clear the lad was rash, but no murderer. With time almost up, and for Oberon’s sake- I returned the wand to Bounty, and unleashed her on the last possibilitiy: Merlin.

My crime was hardly concealable: even if the manner of Bounty weren’t known and Oberon’s motive not public knowledge, the Vampyress, Arthur, and the Watchers all knew that I had murder weapon, and my alibi wouldn’t stand up. So be it.

The Inquisitor revealed the truth. I had killed Merlin. Merlin had killed one of the Watchers- but only one, the third victim. For Merlin had deduced that that Watcher had gone rogue, and in fact the murderer of the first 2 slain Watchers!

The best present is being present.
The best thank you note is an available couch.

Facebook e-mail accounts: for those people who like the convenience and features of normal e-mail, but wished Mark Zuckerberg could read it over their shoulder.

I’m like-button phobic.

"What Holds the Heart" offers a challenge: are its lapses due to acting, directing, writing, producing, or which combination thereof? This perplexing question often is more captivating that the actual performance. But as much could be said about those flaws, that was not why the play was seen: quality is not the only quality.

And yet there a few scenes where what transpires on stage, especially despite the obstacles, lets something transcendent slip through, moments when the audience can feel their breath held.

“Blah, blah, blah…”

A 25 year old acting like a 17 year old acting like a 25 year old; half a joke (about nonstandardized spelling?), half an operatic tragedy. The entire nation one day will wake up and stumble slowly home, shamefully realizing that they did Ke$ha.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUGS