for
9/2/2000
Ladies and gentlemen, the sheer number of topics I could write on and the depth with which I could do it at this a time are unparalleled. No, actually they're not.
You see, I have plenty of ideas, but none can be given the honor of taking up a whole Space Toast Page. Why? Maybe I'm slipping. Maybe I'm choked with emotion. Maybe it's just bloody hot in this room, and I haven't any other place to access the internet yet. Okay, the last one. And the fourth.
I feel that if you all knew what the ideas were, you'd agree with me. Which, of course, is why I'm going to list them.
First of all, say what you will, but Pooh is a clever bastard. I'm referring, of course, to the incident in which he ate all the honey that was supposed to be given to Piglet, and managed to come up with the idea, on the spot, of simply presenting the empty recepticle as a Useful Pot (capitals required), into which Piglet could put useful or useless things. This, frankly, is the kind of covering of one's own ass that we (probably) should(n't) be teaching our kids. I can't speak, of course, about the original Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne, but I'm sure his bear was quite good at covering its own ass too.
This last one is basically just an excuse to prominently use the line "say what you will, but Pooh is a clever bastard" in any context. Certainly not the stuff of a feature-length essay, nor even the writing under the cap of a Nantucket Nectar bottle. Tom and Tom, I'm pushing on.
Has anyone noticed that, lately, monks haven't been acting very monkish? In my understanding, a monk is a religious devotee who is obligated to ignore the rest of the world and do only religious things. Why, then, have the monks of New Skete written a popular book on the Art of Raising a Puppy (capitals gratuitous)...?
...cutting a book deal seemingly to keep ahead of their chart-topping rivals, those swingin' Benedictine Monks? I suppose if you have a "rock & roll" Pope--as John Paul II's globe-trotting has caused him to be monickered--you sort of have to expect these things.
Obviously just an excuse to type "monkish" (monkish monkish monkish!) and a rolling barrel to nowhere, with only two monk-xamples to paint from. Moving on.
Yes, I'm settled into my single room at college, although I didn't get a chair, and my classes begin on Thursday. Since work, the play and a wonderful young lady have pretty much taken up all the summer time in which I might have gotten bored or breathed, it hasn't fully sunken in that I'm back yet. Hopefully, Boston will leech into my bones by the time I go home again. Until then, I'm not complaining.
Too diary-style, no matter what I do with the idea. Not essay-like, and not all that interesting to read, except maybe by my "die hard"-category of fans, in which there are two. One of them was mentioned in the paragraph anyway, so it's best I non-sequitur along. In short, chicken popsicles.
I had a tough decision to make while packing. Tougher even than the mini-fridge question (I brought that). This was choosing whether or not to bring my teddy bear. His name is PZ--no acronym, merely the coolest combination of letters I could think of at some young age. We have been through a lot together, and he shows the scars better than I. Somehow, the accusing look he gave me out of his one good eye (the other having been baked opaque white by prolonged proximity to a wood stove at age whatever) was too much; I had to ask myself an important question: Am I too mature to bring a teddy bear to college?
It was a tough question. I was thinking almost exclusively in terms of what people might think about me, trying to make my decision that way--but to look on that piece of loose thread that is his mouth was to be told, silently, what I already knew. It was a question of people I wouldn't like if they didn't like my bear, as far as those people need to be concerned. But for me it was more. It was a question of needing a hug sometimes, and a question of the loyalty that stretches well past when "animate" and "innanimate" meant anything to friendship. PZ knew what I already did in the best parts of me. "Am I too mature to bring a teddy bear to college?" (I brought him.)
That's more like it. Good night, good toasting, and hold your bear tight....
"Even longer," said Pooh.
Touch the Toast