Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
I'll have a glass of what he's having, but can I have an umbrella in mine?

Well, if this little bit of nowhere is any indication, I'm still alive and ticking. Whether or not my ticking has anything to do with the watch I swallowed yesterday has yet to be seen, though. The past few days have been a blur of bad, good, not-so-good, so-good-it's-bad, goodie-goodie-gosh, oh-shit-that's-bad, and bad-dog-no-biscuit moments all coalescing together to leave me thinking, "Today is a Rum day."

Now while I don't exactly condone getting so drunk that you wake up the next morning handcuffed to a goat and on a cargo ship bound for Sydney, Australia, there are days where I think a little bit of escape from the Wide & Wonderful World O' Stress is good. Today finds me sorely tempted to hook up with a good Irish friend of mine and commiserate the respective past week. Whether or not that happens remains unknown, and the odds are no one else will really know until tomorrow's little bit of nowhere. (And even then, it'll only be evident depending on how much I groan about atoning with hangover from hell.)

Yet amidst all the turmoil and dust that's still waiting to settle, I cannot help but look at my life and its current circumstances, and take stock of it. This has brought me to consider how people look at the things around them based on their worldview.

There are those who look at the proverbial glass of water that life has given them, and say pessimistically, "That glass is half empty!" Others, usually optimists, will say "Hey, it's half full!" The paranoid delusionist would think that the water was contaminated by some secret government agency. Hollywood would spend $120 million to make a movie about the water, and have a lot of special effects added. A Canadian barfly would say, "Oh, I guess we're drinking American beer tonight." Moses would part the water in the glass. A wise and worldly philosopher would argue that we see through the glass darkly, and should not be so quick to draw conclusions about the water. The ventriloquist would drink all the water while his dummy would count backwards from ten. My good Irish friend would stare down at the water and wonder just who the hell had stolen his glass of beer and switched it with the water.

All in all, I can't exactly be thrilled with my current situation, but at the same time I cannot rightfully whine when there are others who have a much more unpleasant life to contend with. I'm suddenly reminded of Dr. Seuss' Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? and I am indeed thankful that I am not some clothes hanger left hanging on a wire in the middle of nowhere, forlorn and forgotten and unloved.

Where am I going with this? I'm not exactly sure, which is pretty much the same answer I have for anyone asking me what's happening in my life right now, and what my plans are for the future. But I promise you I'll think of something.

No guarantees it will make sense, but I'll try...


posted by Phillip at 1:44 PM

 
Tea. A natural gift of love.

After a good night's sleep, even the darkest of yesterdays can be swept aside by the promises of a new day. Today finds the skies blue and sunny, the air warm with only a slight wind, and my breath smelling like tea. Which unto intself is interesting considering how all I had to do to acquire tea-breath was eat chocolate.

Yes indeed, it appears that you can now buy tea-flavoured chocolate.

I can't quite describe the taste, yet it undeniably resembles the taste in my mouth after having a cup of tea, made no less from fresh tea leaves. The product in question is a form of Pocky (an Asian treat consisting of long, thin cookie or bread sticks covered in chocolate) called From Leaf. The manufacturers insist that: "Sunlight and mist turn a young leaf into tea. Tea can turn you into something new. Tea. A natural gift of love."

As far as I can tell, the something new I've turned into is a guy with tea-breath who has not drunk tea at all today. With tea-flavoured chocolate now in existence, tea-flavoured tea can't be far behind....

Today's lesson: tea-flavoured chocolate may just be able to combat that cheap-Parisean-whore's-pet-gerbil smell I get from that Givenchy Pour Homme cologne.
posted by Phillip at 2:04 PM

 
Humanity Would Be Great If It Wasn’t For All The People...

Today’s little bit of nowhere was going to chronicle the misadventures of me vs. a 4 month-old baby’s soiled diapers, which would have involved a lot of remarks along the lines of “Breathe through the nose!” and “What the hell did he eat? This stuff looks like tapioca pudding gone horribly awry!”

However, recent events over the past few days have prompted something along a more serious, if not potentially damning, observation that has sadly vindicated itself once again.

Humanity would be great if it wasn’t for all the people.

It is something that can be said by any person at any given time in their life, at any given place in the world. It can be spoken of friend and family alike. And more often than not it has such destructive power that it can bring down the strong of heart, and bring those already struggling to their grave.

There are names I could give and post here, and with the written word eviscerate them in public before both peers and strangers, but admittedly that would be rather petty of me. So instead I hope my intimations will be enough to satisfy the curious, and provoke the curious to think.

Sometimes I think humanity’s greatest problem is that everyone wants to be right, everyone wants to be infallible, and everyone simply has to have the decisive final word on any matter. Whether or not this is the cause or a mere symptom can be debated amongst those who read and wish to pursue the quandary further.

For me, I believe that our arrogance, as a whole or as individuals, is a symptom. The cause is that in today’s world, very few people know what it means to listen. True communication depends upon listening as much as speaking, and it is no mere “I heard the words you said.”

Listening in its truest form is hearing what was said by someone else, and then taking those words into account with every little nuance and gesture they have made, and then taking stock of how they see the world from their eyes, not yours. We cannot truly listen if we do not try to understand.

The arrogance comes from mistakenly believing that we are the ones who understand and they do not, that before the conversation has come to a close we are right and they are not, and if they cannot see it our way, they are stubborn, insensitive and have wronged us.

We make martyrs of ourselves, and cry foul when we are the ones who are the offenders, and in the end it will come as a great shock to learn that for all our wonderful words, for all our magnificent arguments, we deserve to be crucified. Pride serves only itself, and it is a cruel, abusive master. In the end it will devour the very person who serves to feed it.

Life is filled with people who talk. People who rant. People who scream. Only when we take the time to listen carefully to them can we understand where not only their own insecurities and faults lay, but ours as well. Only by listening can we discern whether or not they are worth listening to further, or if they should be ignored and allowed to wallow in the vengeance that awaits them.

In the end, what you’re reading are only words. You may take some heed, or you may ignore them, or you may take offence at them. At the very least I hope they got you thinking, and ideally daring to face the darkness without yourself.

Are you listening? Or are you merely hearing a buzz in your ears?





posted by Phillip at 7:00 PM

 
Bring me the butt of the blonde bishie elf!!

Well, between watching the ongoing war or watching the ongoing Oscars, I decided to make the constructive choice and opted to watch some of Monty Python: Live At The Hollywood Bowl. I swear, it's at times like these that I'd rather have to worry if the albatross comes with wafers than anything else. Of course, knowing my luck, I'll be unable to get a good sleep tonight, and I'll be tossing and turning and wondering if those wafers were in fact vegetarian-friendly. Not that it would really matter if you eat vegetarian Tofu-wafers with a side order of albatross.

But that's just me ranting.

Today's seen its share of ups, downs, upside-downs, right-side-ups, inside-outs and "Whaaaa?" moments. I can't exactly say I relished every little bit of them, though I have found it very odd in admitting that if Melissa was to have a one-night fling with Heath Ledger, I wouldn't be opposed since Heath does in fact have a cute ass. I'll follow this up by saying it takes a very secure man to admit to this, and I'm sufficiently delusional to believe I'm that secure.

I cannot, however, abide by her insistence that a one-night fling with Legolas Greenleaf (as played by Orlando Bloom in the Lord of the Rings movies) should merit equal approval by me. This has made me stop and think very carefully about why I have this severe disliking for Legolas. Well, movie-Legolas, at any rate.

Is it because he has long blonde hair, and I do not? Possibly. Is it because he can walk on snow, and I'd have to wade hip-deep in it? That's a good reason for me to not like the guy. Is it because he's impossibly bishounen (which is Japanese for "pretty-boy")? Ha! I'm just as sexy in a thong as he would be. Is it because of his pointy ears? Bah, I can have pointy ears too, just point me to the nearest pencil sharpener! Is it because he dresses like a nancy-boy? Well...in all honesty, all Elves in the movies seem to share the same fashion sense (that is: a questionable one) and to quote Guy Pierce in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, "Green is just so not your colour."

So in the end, when you break it all down, I dislike Legolas because the guy looks good in green, and when I try wearing green it just looks like a moss garden exploded all over me.

The moral of today's little bit of nowhere: Heath good, blonde-haired bishie-elf bad.


posted by Phillip at 6:25 PM

 
Matching Bride & Handkerchief...

Fiance.

I've been trying out that word a lot in the past day or two, and discovering that it really sounds and feels different from saying "girlfriend."

Fiance has such a strange, new ring to it. There is an undeniable feeling of taking a new step forward in the hopscotch of life. It's uncharted, not entirely unexpected, and will probably prove to be exciting in any event. I have to say that after seeing and reading of so many failures in relationships, marriages and love these days, I'm not without my concern. Yet I'm not without great optimism and hope in what Melissa and I share together lasting until the ends of our days.

Or until I'm old and senile and forget that I have pants, let alone a wife.

It won't be this week that it all happens. It may not be this month. Heck, it may even take a year or so to pass before the actual ceremony occurs. But this is our commitment to each other, and the promise that one day it will happen. I'm thrilled to know that Melissa wants to wear our engagement ring. Likewise she's thrilled that I opted to not tattoo "Melissa" and "Phillip" in big black letters on each of my thighs.

I'm sure that in the future both Melissa and I will ask ourselves, "Just what did I see in you, and why did I agree to this?" There will be all sorts of fun, wanted and unwanted, as we prepare a wedding and adjust to living together. All these adult things are necessary, and can come in due time. I'll be ready to tackle them.

But for the moment, let me bask in this child-like awe and wonder at what it means to have a fiance.


posted by Phillip at 2:08 PM

 
Back to our regularly-scheduled nowhere....

Well, after days of discovering that there is in fact an edge of the world, and that you can bungee-jump off it for only $20 a flying leap, I have returned to my little bit of nowhere to bring you all an important announcement: I'm currently not wearing any boxer shorts. For that matter, neither am I wearing any briefs. This is a rather sad moment for me, since I have 7 pairs of boxer shorts and one pair that have been designated my "emergency" shorts. The emergency boxers are always at the bottom of the stack, and when they become visible (ie., they are now at the top of the stack, namely because they alone are the stack) it means that I must wash my laundry.

Circumstances currently being what they are--unexpected and changing pretty much from one day to the next--I was unable to give my laundry the desperate sacred cleansing it required, and now my emergency boxers have joined their well-worn comrades. So I feel it safe to warn you: as I write this post, I have been forced to go commando. But at least I'm still wearing my pants!

(My girlfriend expresses her disappointment that my loins are still being girded by my pants, but sadly you can't please everyone)

posted by Phillip at 8:12 PM

 
Yesterday found my girlfriend Melissa and I having a rollicking session of afternoon tea and Super Smash Brothers tournament with our friends. I highly recommend combining socialising with seeing Kirby beat the snot out of Bowser, Samus and Zelda. Granted Melissa was Kirby, so perhaps I'm biased in giving that as an example. Sadly though my cute little pixelated ass was handed to me repeatedly whenever I played.

Why is it that when you choose Pikachu and Jigglypuff as your fighters, everyone seems to join forces in mopping you across the playing field?

So, unable to prove my combat skills, I decided to join the ladies as they sat down to cookies and lemon squares, and discussed how to properly cross-dress as males. This unto itself doesn't worry me. Those who know me well enough know that I would not have even blinked. What does, however, worry me is that I had no real advice to give them on how to look (and perhaps even act) like a guy.

So here is my attempt to reassert my 'Y' chromosome.

I am a man of many things. I am a man of action, but not an international man of mystery. I am a man of my word, and with any luck I even know how to spell whatever word that happens to be. I am a gentleman when I need to be, a scholar when I want to be, and a lover most hours of the day (except from the hours of 4-6 in the morning).

Is this enough> Maybe, maybe not. But I will state this: most importantly of all I'm a man who doesn't leave the toilet seat up.


posted by Phillip at 4:00 PM

 
Intense Ironic Action!!!

This morning I discovered that I was in dire need of deli meat for my luncheon sandwich. For that matter if I wished my sandwich-filled dreams to come true, I also needed bread, lettuce, cheese and a tomato. But fortunately, there was mayonnaise a-plenty. As I walked down the street to visit the local grocery store so as to restock my dwindling sandwich supplies, I saw a most curious thing.

There inside the large front windows of a house was a sign that read: Beware of Dog. Right next to that sign was an undisturbed, happily sleeping cat.

To quote Peter Venkman: "Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!"
posted by Phillip at 9:28 AM

 
Dead Chaos Week

Yep, due to a rather malignant and disturbingly powerful virus that is the sinus cold, I've been pretty much out of commission the past few days. Having to share a bed with 4 Shih-tzu puppies hogging most of the space doesn't help to make one feel more comfortable either. While today certainly finds me better than I was on, say, Tuesday, I'm still not up to my usual speed o' things.

But not about to leave all 3 of you reading this without any sort of rantings or ramblings, I decided to give you something better: abject humiliation at my expense. So I called up a colourful diary entry of mine dating back to mid-December. This is more or less referred to as "The Givenchy Incident", or "Gerbil Pour Hommes." Enjoy!

*****

23rd December, 2002.

The season of Commercialmas is nearing us all, and as I tour the malls and soak up the frenetic shopping spirit that is $-mas, I cannot help but wonder if the world has gone mad. That or else I have somehow drifted back to the shores of sanity in a rubber dingy.

The past few days have found me enduring curious incidents that either confirm the world is in fact going mad, or else someone has been slipping magic mushrooms onto my pizza orders. For example, I have discovered a new thing about my cute little puppy, Shady.

Shady is a Shih-tzu. Shady is cuddly. Shady follows me almost everywhere I go. Shady also appears to be a lesbian. Yes, I'm not sure just how it happened, but apparently I have a lesbian puppy for a pet. How have I discerned this? Well, when your female puppy decides to start humping one of the other female puppies in the house....

You get the picture, people. Please don't make me draw one.

And now, with only two days to go before $-mas day arrives, I have made a unique discovery: 'Givenchy Pour Homme' is a cologne that makes me smell like the woodchips in a hamster cage. my girlfriend & I were doing some Commercialmas shopping for her earlier this morning, and she wanted me to try out some different styles of colognes.

Now thus far Calvin Klein's "Contradiction" seems to work really well on me. But Mel wanted to experiment, and I was open to seeing if there was some other cologne I could use in the future.

The sales lady in The Bay was very helpful when we said we were testing out scents, and proceeded to rather cheerfully bombard me with the tester for Givenchy Pour Homme. Within about 10 seconds I smelled like a Parisean whore. By the time we left The Bay about five minutes later, I smelled like a cheap Parisean whore.

Hours have passed and I have tried to scrub the scent off my arm as best I can, using a facecloth, some soap, and a good dose of Boric acid. I still smell like a pile of woodchips in a gerbil cage.

So I suffer this indignity, but I always try to find the silver lining in every cloud. Namely, if you can still learn something from any experience, even a very unpleasant one, then the experience itself was not a waste. You can find this lesson at the end of all this.

But enough about that.

There has also been a strange if not ironic increase of Spam in my Inbox. Now this unto itself is not a new thing at all; Spam has now been added to that list of inevitable things we all hate but will have to bear, like death and taxes. Yet recently, many kind people have been Emailing me, excitedly sharing with me how I can increase my breast size to at least twice what it currently is. Now I'm pretty secure about my physical appearance, but what scares me is that after seeing all these Emails, I'm starting to wonder if my cleavage is in fact smaller than average.

Though Mel assures me her breast size more than makes up for my bust inadequacies, so I guess it balances out in the grand scheme of things.

No doubt in the near future, $-mas will herald many other strange and ominous events that must be recorded. Until that time, this is me wishing you all a not-so-nonsensical Commercialmas.


Today's lesson: the odour of 'Givenchy Pour Hommes' likens me to a cheap Parisean whore's pet gerbil.


Today's other lesson: parents hate you when you walk down the toy aisle in Walmart, and set off all the "Chicken Dance Elmo" dolls so they're all singing simultaneously, which instantly attracts kids. Honestly, if looks could have killed with that one mother who, thanks to us, suddenly found her 2 year-old son going after a Chicken Dance Elmo like a piranha on a porkchop....
posted by Phillip at 7:57 AM

 
I have discovered the name of my true nemesis in life, and it is: the chocolate cookie.

This vile, dreaded fiend has plagued me for most of my natural life (which does beg the question of how long of an unnatural life I've lived, but that's another rant, I'm sure), and I in my utterly human weakness have rarely been able to come out of battle against the chocolate cookie with my pride intact. I am, sadly, a cookie monster. Just not the blue furry one with a puppeteer's hand shoved up his arse.

Cookies, especially chocolate ones, are my Achilles Heel. They turn me into a compulsive muncher, a voracious demon-beast who must gorge himself on all the hapless little cookie-villagers, tossing one after the other into my gaping and insaciable maw. Case in point: after going months without any contact with cookies, yesterday I bought myself a 700g pack of cookies as a treat. This means I had roughly 50-something cookies whispering horrid temptations into my ears all afternoon. Two hours later, I only had to contend with about 20 cookies whispering horrid temptations into my ears. A typical battle of the wills tends to go like this:

Chocolate cookie: "Go ahead...eat me and all of my 24 friends. You know you want to."

Me: "Forsooth, I must not permit this collapse of conscience to prevail!"

Chocolate cookie: "But you love chocolate! Don't you love me?"

Me: "Verily, I doth protest my love to you, ere it brings me down to hate and loathing of my very self!"

Chocolate cookie: "Why are you ranting in such a horrid Shakespearean-Tolkienesque prose?"

Me: [shrug] "Dramatic emphasis?"

Chocolate cookie: "Your fancy words will be of no use."

Me: "Never! I shall triumph this time!"

Chocolate cookie: "Did I mention I have cream in my centre?"

Me: ^-^ "Ooooh, yummy! Munchmunchmunchmunchmunch!!"


Villany, thy name is chocolate cookie.
posted by Phillip at 6:59 AM

 
Today finds me officially amused.

It also finds me $200 richer than I was yesterday, and with one less pair of socks thanks to a quartet of Shih-tzu puppies who mistook those socks for chewtoys. This does admittedly bring my now not-so-numerous sock population to a near endangered level. Socks for me always seem to be in a near-constant threat of extinction, even if 4 Shih-tzu puppies are not around to help wipe out the species. It boggles me whenever I try to comprehend how two days ago I had 7 healthy pairs of socks, and today I now have only 2 pairs.

Did they migrate to Florida? Did they spontaneously combust? Are those unscrupulous sock gnomes to blame for this?

The world may never know.

Back to my amusement, it all came out of a peculiar urge a few days ago to start watching the Indiana Jones movies. Ah, the classics of my childhood! I could spend the next twenty-six-and-a-half paragraphs gushing about what makes Indy's film adventures so great, but then you could just as easily surf an online film review site. And they get paid to gush about Indy for twenty-six-and-a-half paragraphs. My logic: if you're reading a review I wrote which is that long, I should be seeing some sort of financial return. Unless I'm that obsessed and have clippings of Harrison Ford glued onto photos with me in them. In which case, you all should probably back out of this little bit of nowhere, bearing in mind I can in fact smell fear.

This afternoon was spent watching "The Temple of Doom", and in the opening act we see Indy running afoul of some ne'er-do-wells, and after making a few comments with his fists, Indy discreetly leaves the night club through the nearest third-storey window. Now I'm sure someone else has noticed this before. I'm more than willing to bet that this in-joke was first noticed in the theatres years ago. But I only just noticed it now, so humour me, okay?

Given how the Indy movies are a collaboration of actor Harrison Ford, director Steven Spielberg, and writer/producer George Lucas, it seems only fitting that someone slips in a Star Wars reference somewhere. In "Temple of Doom", it's that Shanghai night club. Of all the names it could have been, they chose to call it:

Obi-Wan.

Yes indeed, I am officially amused.
posted by Phillip at 4:55 PM

 
For a moment, the word of the day could very well have been: "AAAAARRRRGGGHH!!!" (Give or take an exclamation point, of course)

This was brought on by an inherent lack of mayonnaise for my sandwich at lunchtime, which unto itself was a problem since the deli meat in question was chicken. And not just any sort of generic chicken deli meat, but black forest chicken meat. I'm not entirely sure what breeds of flightless poultry live in the forest wilds of east Europe (as the term "black forest" would tend to imply), but they go very well with mayonnaise. Upon discovering the mayonnaise and lack thereof, I went through the usual stages of panic:

1. Curiousity. ("That's funny, I could have sworn it was here on the top shelf.")

2. Consternation. ("Dammit, this is no longer funny. Where is it?")

3. Denial. ("There must still be mayonnaise here. I couldn't have finished the jar that fast!")

4. Withdrawal. ("Can't...breathe...without mayonnaise...on sandwich!")

5. Fear. ("Did someone steal my mayonnaise?!")

6. Even more fear. ("They could still be in the house! My mustard could be next!")

7. Self-preservation. ("Well, better the mustard than me.")

8. And finally, calm logic. ("I swear I'll hunt down the bastard responsible, and give him a lesson in tantric yoga with this 2x4!!")

In the end, someone had just left the mayonnaise out on the counter, and I in my blind panic and homicidal notions had simply failed to notice its innocuous presence. So all was well, and the potential "AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!" day was averted.

Now some of you may be scratching your heads right now and asking yourselves, "Why not just go with the mustard then?" Well, black forest chicken is not spicy, and as such I have found that its taste is better complimented by mayonnaise. That's just me, so don't sic a 'Mustard Is Better!' crusade on me, okay?

As a footnote, the rest of the day has come and gone without another "ARGH!" moment, so I am quite content. I have also learned a valuable lesson about putting away your condiments after you're done using them. I feel sufficiently enlightened and enthralled that I shall sleep much easier tonight, and I hope all of you out there do too.
posted by Phillip at 5:20 PM

 
This morning I sat down to have breakfast at the not-so-breakfasty hour of 11am. This unto itself is neither a mind-boggling nor ground-breaking concept, as I'm fairly certain that somewhere in the world, right at this very instant, someone is eating breakfast when it is in fact closer to lunch. This of course presumes that one has lunch around the noon o'clock mark, and that said lunch does not consist solely of a pack of Skittles.

Back to breakfast, though. As I removed a bowl from the cupboard, I was given pause to reflect on yesterday's bit of nowhere. I had tried something satisfyingly different then by adding chocolate milk to my Special K. And being a slave to recent trends of all shapes and sizes (the current shape being a dodecahedron), I thought to myself: "Hey, I could have sworn I was wearing pants."

But that's another story.

I then thought to myself: "I liked yesterday's slight change of pace. What can I do today to make it even more interesting?" So I stared first at my bowl, then at my box of Special K cereal, then at my carton of chocolate milk. And after a moment I came to a decision. Instead of having a bowl of Special K with chocolate milk, I'd just eliminate the proverbial middle man, and go with a bowl of chocolate milk.

Currently I can feel the sucrose flowing through my system, much like how hypochondriacs claim to be able to feel a virus spreading from one part of their body to the rest. I'm sure to be wired for the next few hours. Likewise I'm also sure that no good can come of this. But what's important is that I tried something new today. At least that's the theory, anyways.
posted by Phillip at 7:27 AM

 
The philosopher Thoreau once said, "Simplify, Simplify."

I readily and heartily agree with this.

Sadly, though, simplifying anything--an issue, a life, a problem--does not make some things any easier to solve or change.
posted by Phillip at 6:22 PM

 
This morning I dared to be different and try something radically new. Well, it wasn't exactly radical when compared to, say, nude bungee-jumping into a large pool of lime-green jello, and it wasn't exactly new, as I'm sure there have been others (most probably between the ages of 4-10) to try this stunt before. And it wasn't much of a daring thing, either, since it was was borne more out of necessity than sheer recklessness.

Just to be different, I had my morning's bowl of Special K with chocolate milk. Mainly because we ran out of regular white milk, and I felt it a great injustice to go through the effort of pouring the cereal into my bowl, only to have to pour it back into its box. That just seems insulting somehow to the Special K, as if I suddenly decided I was too good for it. So, I decided that I might as well try the chocolate milk on my cereal instead.

All I can really say is that it had the effect of a hit of expresso, and I'm very wide awake, thank you very much, and hey let's go ride our bikes! However, I'm suddenly wondering how wired kids are who pour chocolate milk on their cereal and then add 2-3 spoonfuls of sugar. Do their classmates realize that the strange roaring noise they hear isn't in fact some distant ocean but their friend's blood-sugar levels hitting hitherto undiscovered heights? Do their teachers wonder how they managed to get sneaker treads on the ceiling? Does the class gerbil even care?

The world may never know.

posted by Phillip at 6:41 AM

 
It seems appropriate, given the intent of this record of the strange little surreal things in life, that we begin with an observation a friend of mine once made:

History is not alwys penned by the victor. Look at Khublai Khan and the Mongols: because they had no indigenous script (layman's terms - they were all illiterate), they commissioned the recently-conquered Uygurs to invent a Mongol script. This became known as Phags-pa, and was used to write the history of the Mongols. The moral of this entry: history isn't always written by the victors. History is often by those we spare.
posted by Phillip at 2:40 PM