Top 10 Rhetorical Situations

The Crumpets go to grad school...
Rhetorical Situation #1: Graduate teaching assistant orientation week is essentially English boot camp, characterized mostly by hundreds of introductions and awkward juggling acts balancing pizza on knee-caps, keeping drink cups level, craning to decipher chest-emblazoned name tags, all while carrying on stimulating conversation with people lightyears more brilliant than the average juggler, and of course, always commenting on the “rhetorical situation” of the moment.

Rhetorical Situation #2: A new speaker takes the podium and addresses the auditorium of new grad students and slowly, impressionably, begins her dictum: “Now . . . we’re all human beings. And human beings change. From hour to hour. Day to day. Week to week. We all make mistakes. Therefore engaging in intimate relationships with students is strongly discouraged. As is being Facebook friends.” You just thought the sex talks were over. And this is only the opening line.

Rhetorical Situation #3: The hunt for the perfect study carrel is a strenuous process with numerous important factors to consider. Avoiding a horrendous Neyland Stadium monstrosity. Testing draft/air flow and AC alignment. Avoiding proximity to high traffic noise-centers, such as the mockingly cheery dinging elevators. The list goes on. Which is why carrel selection takes nearly a solid hour if done properly with an unflinching checklist.

Rhetorical Situation #4: Why one studies literature . . . to hear one’s graduate studies director say thing such as this: “Always be drunk. If you wake up in the morning and aren’t feeling sufficiently “drunk,” perhaps we should be having a chat. I believe this quote was crafted under the influence of the quotable Charles Baudelaire.

Rhetorical Situation #5: Balancing alcohol intake with coherent academic conversation with superiors was never an issue at dry-campus Berry, which makes these quasi house parties at professors’ homes (with coolers upon coolers of alcohol) an exercise in stoic drunkenness and/or temperance.

Rhetorical Situation: #6: Even leaving an hour before the first class on the first day will not likely allow one a spot in the commuter lots at UT. What’s worse is, once in a parking garage, there is not choice but to keep circling and circling to get out. Twenty minutes later, suspicion confirmed. No spaces available.

Rhetorical Situation #7: This is what happens in workshop tutorials on teaching English 101 after the overview of the grand rhetorical triangle. “Is every situation a rhetorical situation?” “What about living organisms? The rhetoric of trees, for instance.” “Well, trees, if for instance, planted for a certain purpose to create a landscaping effect to communicate a certain ethos, yes. There is a designer with an agenda behind planting trees.” “But trees of themselves. Do trees have rhetoric?”

Rhetorical Situation #8: Scaling back from twenty hours a week to five a week in a writing center with no session reports feels like writing center retirement . . . for now, at least. Unfortunately, I didn’t get dual benefits on my reading load for class.

Rhetorical Situation #9: Another great pearl of admonition. “Don’t hold office hours at night in secluded places, where students may feel uncomfortable meeting with you.” There was general question in our row of critical thinkers if IHOP falls under this description.

Rhetorical Situation #10: I, Jessica Hoover, have an office. Yes. Where I can hold office hours if I so choose. Follow the formaldehyde scent, wade through the rubble of Neyland Stadium under construction, wind down a creepy hallway designated somewhere in the 1940s as “South Stadium Hall,” and there you will find me. So, office hours anyone?

Most Wanted List: Second floor Evans Hall, Berry College

Crump It Up List: “Rock & Roll” and “All Over Now”—Eric Hutchinson, “Break Even”—The Script to my parking garage labyrinths, “The Lady of Shalott" —Loreena McKennitt boost of scholarly lyric, and “I Have Confidence”—Julie Andrews/Maria

(“Crumpets Continued” is a collection that seeks cultural anomaly in the domestic in lieu of the currently unattainable “abroad,” recognizing that every microcosmic drop of the world creates echoes.)

Top 10 Boxes o' Band-Aids

Many a Band-Aid for the NYC pedestrian—34, to be exact.

Box o’ Band-Aids #1: When fellow cross-walkers in Midtown tap one on the shoulder and say, “Miss, um, you’re bleeding,” then point to two gaping heel wounds, it’s time to pop into the local Walgreen equivalent Duane Reed’s, where one will spend most of her time whilst in New York if foolishly having chosen to wear new flats for extensive walking excursions.

Box o’ Band-Aids #2: Bartenders really should get more respect for the genuine skill it takes to know multiple names for every drink ever conceived, be able to make every drink ever conceived, AND simultaneously remember all their customers by name. But if one really wants to stump the bartender, find three friends with the same name and open tabs at the same time. Then observe the inner genius of bartending mnemonics when her tab reads one of the following: Jessie. Other Jessie. Amaretto Jessie.

Box o’ Band-Aids #3: On a quest for A.A. Milne’s original Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animals in the “Humanities and Social Sciences Library,” be prepared for the following embarrassment with the information desk clerks.

“Is the ‘Human Social Sciences Library’ the same as. . . this? [Inside the foyer of the New York Public Library. By the lions]
“This is all the Schwarzman Building.”
“Oh, well I’m looking for the Human Social Sciences Building. Where is that?”
(Flabbergasted, sputtering effervescence) “You’re IN it!”
(Still confused) “Oh. Ohhhh. Well, you see, I’m looking for the original Pooh animals.”
“To the right, downstairs all the way, left, and they’re in the Children’s Section.”

Therefore: New York Public Library = Humanities and Social Sciences Library = Schwarzman Building

Box o’ Band-Aids #4: NYC has not quite jumped on the recycle wagon given that every night the streets are lined with full trash bags waiting for trash pick-up in the morning. Walking home late at night amongst moving trash bags is a tad disconcerting.

Box o’ Band-Aids #5: The term “bridge and tunneler” is a disdainful term used to refer to the commuters living in Queens, Brooklyn, or anywhere that is not the smallest of small New York islands, Manhattan.

Box o’ Band-Aids #6: Separating the posh from the plebian is a well-honed skill for the NYC hotel doorman. Cutthroat, too. How do they sleep at night knowing they kicked out book-lovers on a pilgrimage to the Library Hotel, home to rooms with themes coordinating with the Dewey Decimal System?

Box o’ Band-Aids #7: Even after five days, one can never really figure out the mysteries of what has to be the most complicated metro system in the world. When you ask for a free subway map from an always-busy attendant, be prepared to be handed a map the size of a small area rug. Not to mention, the lines are all numbers—as are most of the stops. And for added jollies, one has the choice of taking a “local” vs. “express” train—the local train has more frequent stops. But you wouldn’t exactly know this looking at your area rug, unless you know the secret code of filled-in circles vs. open circles. And may godspeed and force be with you from the transport gods on a weekend with service changes.

Box o’ Band-Aids #8: Apparently Sunday nights around midnight is a popular time to ride the subway. The confusion and excitement about getting a train may or may not cause one to drop a cell phone running to catch a train, look feverishly for all the missing parts amid doors closing, people pointing, and general franticness. As the train speeds away, sure enough, there lays a cell phone battery mingled in the garbage and rodentcide between the tracks. Fortuantely for you, this is New York, where cell phone stores abound, and upon requesting a new compatible battery, the sales clerk acts as if the year-old phone is a lost-to the-ages Egyptian artifact.

Box o’ Band-Aids #9: For whatever reason, every city seems to have one patch of metropolis obstructed with every crane in the city’s construction fleet. These crane swarms are rather frustrating for their general unsightliness. I stand by my assertion that a family of cranes giraffe-ing around a city skyline is . . . an eyesore. Though perhaps exclaiming that sentiment should be used rather sparingly in NYC, as it is highly likely you could be gazing upon the construction site that is the gaping wound of the World Trade Center—a wound that no amount of Band-Aid boxes can heal.

Box o’ Band-Aids #10: New Yorkers have a peculiar method for cross-walking. They walk determinedly in their course, stare down the red “Don’t Walk” hand, and stride out into the white paint a good two feet or so before planting themselves rather decisively nearly a third of the way into the crosswalk to wait for the walk signal. This is a city in which a few steps ahead make all the difference.


Most Wanted List: Flip-flops

New! Crump-It-Up List: (inspired by those inevitable bar sing-alongs) “New York”—Alicia Keys, “Bad Romance”—Gaga, “Livin’ on a Prayer”—Bon Jovi, “Can’t Fight the Moonlight”—LeeAnn Rimes, “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters”—Elton John, and “Imagine”—John Lennon.

Newest cocktails concocted by Jessie Edwards and Jessica Hoover; request them today at your bars and stump your bartender whilst spreading the new cocktail revolution.

Mulberry Beatle: Cranberry juice, melon liqueur, and amaretto
Gotham Martini: Vodka, Curacao, amaretto, cranberry juice, and a dash of lime juice
Black Hole (prepare in shot glass): Vodka, Curacao, and the tiniest splash of cranberry juice

Many thanks to expert subway navigator local Uppah East Side (yo) tour guide, and HarperCollins’ newest publicist Jessie Edwards for touring me around the concrete jungle!

Top 10 Jack-In-The-Box Tacos

Top 10 Jack-In-The-Box Tacos
The traveling Crumpet Collection goes golden brown in San Diego.

Jack-In-The-Box taco #1: Order tacos in even increments for the two-for-99-cents deal at Jack-In-The-Box—16 should do—for loved ones suffering a three-year hiatus from the Westwardly-prevalent fast-food chain out of reach for most residents of the South. The aunt or uncle who willingly and shamelessly orders 16 tacos at the drive through, while also producing a wallet-full of free taco vouchers distributed at Padres games, is definitely deserving of a taco . . . or two.

JITB taco #2: Upon bodysurfing amid a swarm of young professionals deceivingly resembling lifeguards with their “official” red foam “LIFEGUARD” tubes, one should not be lulled into a false sense of rip tide security. These apparent lifeguards bobbing around aimlessly are merely “junior lifeguards” getting their elementary school feet wet in the life-saving industry.

JITB taco #3: The alcohol beach ban, which prohibits drinking ON the beach, may be circumvented by engaging in “Float-opia” parties at sea. BYOBAR al mar: bring your own booze and raft whilst boozing it up at sea.

JITB taco #4: One may read every informative storyboard about San Diego history in the museum-haven of Balboa Park (if one does this, visit the art museum first, not last, to avoid nodding off in the sterile, immaculate quiet of an art forum) and still remain at a loss for why the international border barely sneaks San Diego in as part of the U.S. There is no geographic difference to suggest a natural topographic border; on a clear day, one can stand atop any high point and see Tijuana, and on a light traffic day for the “5,” the border is a mere 17 minutes away, the traffic alerts report.

JITB taco #5: Seaweed. That horrid marine vegetation of the deep that slinks between toes and snakes around the legs resulting in the bunny hop bodysurf technique, I am happy to say, has been reigned in to an extent thanks to the prodigious advent of the public works occupation of the seaweed-bulldozer. How positively cheery it must be spending one’s entire day at the helm of a beachcombing monster vehicle weaving in between sandcastles and beach towels shoveling vegetative clumps into monstrous heaps left to bake and fester in concentrated gnat-swarms.

JITB taco #6: Sea World, formerly a welcome alternative to the scarring amusement park neighbor Disneyland, home to Space Mountain, has since developed competing amusements of its own with a deceivingly-timed climactic roller coaster and a jolting airlift to the “Arctic.” However, the Busch-run enterprise’s ability to brainwash impressionable minds to seek the marine biologist career whilst revealing the positive environmental impact of beer sales, is, for better or for worse, unchanged.

JITB taco #7: Assembling the entire Swikard family , give or take a photo-shopped absentee or two, in coordinating white shirts and jeans for one photo on the beach is a production rivaling a Broadway production of “The Sound of Music” (complete with exponential generations of von Trapps); however, this particular performance was not near as mono-nationalistic given the range of representative Irish, German, Romanian, and Latino nationalities present and perhaps not near as harmonious given the rolling eyes, the inadvertent inappropriate pelvic placements, the Grim Reaper grins, the far-off gaze toward the enrapturing hotel architecture, if indeed the appearance of rapture at all, captured ever-so-candidly by a photographer whose rumored specialty was photographing wild animals and dogs.

JITB taco #8: A visit to southern California is incomplete without experiencing the sound of an approaching semi-truck dieseling through one’s basement door whilst the computer monitor renders electronic text unstable, reducing it to undulating hieroglyphic squiggles as Grandmother’s 217-plus bell collection rattles and rings, heralding the passing of a 5.7 trifle of an earthquake.

JITB #9: Even after 22 years of sitting in the passenger seat watching San Diego’s ostentatious freeway mileage (being so far at the end of the road, so to speak, border town that it is, to have so much excess freeway) overlap in both tangled and unraveling coils that suddenly terminate in rattlesnake-tailed east counties, one should never trust such passenger “experience” to actually reliably arrive at a destination when that passenger finds herself behind the wheel.

JITB #10: While my dear grandmother has always warned us of the perils of entering her “shrine room,” her own forbidden West Wing of sorts, dutiful granddaughter that I am, I never thought to question what exactly was in the shrine room until this recent visit, when she gravely requested, “Now, I’m going into my shrine room. If I don’t resurface in, oh, about ten minutes, send someone in after me!” During those ten minutes I tried to imagine why my Catholic grandmother would have a room dedicated to a little gold Buddha with Tibetan gongs and such. However the mystique of the shrine room still remains, as in the brief glimpse I got I could not confirm the existence of a little Buddha but for the piles of Christmas wrapping and bows, similar to what Santa’s workshop must look like, minus the elves. Or perhaps instead of elves, there may be Buddhas.


Most Wanted List: sweet (sweeeeeet) tea

To save time in our race against the clock to complete San Diego Nostalgic Must-Eats Bingo, I am appending the checklist here for future expediency and efficiency: Jack-In-The-Box tacos, Lido’s spaghetti and meatballs, Gaetano’s pizza, Rubio’s baja chicken burrito, Santana’s enchilada combo #5, Aunt Sayde’s chilaquiles, Welldeck sandwiches, the entire El Indio smorgasbord, Bon-Bons, Miss Donut’s chocolate covered old fashions, breakfast at Coco’s, frosted animal circus cookies, and the chocolate Shamu cookie indigenous only to Sea World.

Crumpets Continued: Top 10 Black Mercedes

L.A. through the rear view

Mercedes #1: When driving in L.A. one is ever harrowed by the relentless tailgating black Mercedes hovering like a tow car in one’s rear view. Such tailgaters are especially menacing when careening down hills of a certain Beverly persuasion, exceeding 55 mph on oily roads after rain, high on the thrill (assumedly) of chasing a lunchbox-packed economy car with cranking windows and no power locks out of posh neighborhoods, where such plebian automotives apparently don’t belong.

Mercedes #2: One must ignore ominous admonitions such as “NO ACCESS to Hollywood sign” and “NOT A THROUGH STREET” whilst winding up and around the perilously narrow, designed-for-mules-only inches of “road” in the residential areas just beneath the Hollywood sign. Keeping the foot on the gas, deftly dodging monstrous rubbish bins, and whipping around uphill hairpin turns like a resident Mercedes will get one there in one piece for a stellar photo, albeit with shattered nerves.

Mercedes #3: As local angels of the Los are quick to point out, freeways are called “THE 10,” “THE 5,” “THE 110,” never I-10. The “THE” craze even extends to streets, such as Figueroa Street is known as “THE Fig.” However, this system is rather problematic. If one walked up to a handful of people on the street asking, “Where can I find THE One?,” oh the variety of responses one is bound to receive.

Mercedes #4: In light of the United Nations-like ethnic territorial delineation in L.A., which even includes such obscurities as “Little Armenia” and “Little Ethiopia,” the sizeable Jewish population seems to lack a designated neighborhood, resulting in having to trudge past world-famous Pink’s hot dog stand, where a scruffy gentleman holding a baby bunny condemns the 50-deep queue for eating hot dogs stuffed with mixed meats. Bon appetit.

Mercedes #5: After a night out in Hollywood and packing away those olfactory clothes, try explaining to one’s grandmother upon return home why the laundry reeks of a scent none too medicinal.

Mercedes #6: Due to the recent alcohol ban on California beaches, enforcement officers have upgraded the proverbial red Baywatch beach jeep to an entire fleet of patrolling vehicles, leaving Malibu beachgoers sunbathing on lockdown as four-wheelers, tugboats, helicopters, patrol cars, and barges patrol for alcohol, oneth by land, twoeth by sea, and three-eth by sky, in the highly suspect code red terror of the unassuming beach cooler.

Mercedes #7: However, the beach fleet has yet to adequately police public nudity, as some men feel it is acceptable to drop their trousers and slip into swim trunks not quite fast enough to ruin more than one beachgoer’s luncheon respite.

Mercedes #8: Motorbikes should be A-listed in “Lonely Planet’s” ‘Dangers and Annoyances’ section for L.A. travel. However, their deafening arrogance may be eliminated by an opportunistically-timed, accidental fist pump out the car window as they try to slide by in between lanes of traffic, thereby preventing hearing loss and heart attack for everyone within a 10-mile radius.

Mercedes #9: Blaring Alabama’s “Southern Star” with the windows down at midnight on Hollywood Blvd is in every way mortifying and inappropriate. Even “Angels Among Us” would have at least been remotely topical.

Mercedes #10: Driving the segment of “THE One,” stretching from Santa Monica through Malibu lives up to every iota of “scenic” as parked cars line both sides of the coastal highway, giving passersby a fascinating study into the people that make this little slice of Monte Carlo a California beach scene. The contemplative surfers lean against their hoods surveying the sea, paying homage to Helios and Poseidon. The narcissistic Ray-Bans teen snaps a photo of himself against a backdrop of parking lot. A naked child, well exceeding the diaper age appropriate for public nudity, bares all to the highway of passing cars. The clunker mini-van spills out a doublewide’s contents of rusty beach chairs, coolers, (TVs?!), tents, buckets, surf boards, and mayonnaise-based potato salad. And many a black Mercedes lurks menacingly, nightmarishly, waiting for sweating, jay-sprinter valets to return them to the twitching toes of the accelerating fiends.

Most Wanted List: Egg-based brownie mix

Peace out, Brussels sprouts. And may it be known that this adventure was made possible in part by Kyler Post and Kelli Stansell of the Academy of Parallel Parking and Offensive Driving Instruction, of which I am a recent graduate.

Golden Saucers: whisking silence

Golden Saucers: whisking silence

On the fuzzy periphery of a weekday afternoon, a phone rings but once a day. It’s mom calling from the driveway who “could use some help” with the groceries. Occasionally a text will jolt the stillness with a zap back to where good friends are studying, interning, teaching, traveling, wedding, birthing, drinking, laughing, fighting, earning, living for . . .

the crystal-tinkling clarity of some unadulterated sound.

Save for the seldom awakening of the grad-gift phone, my sounds these days are frequently cupped silence, filled with the memory of amniotic fluidity. When the sun rays reach into my childhood window and are particularly beckoning with their gentle invitation to join the world, I drive to a cabin once filled with second cousins and aunts and toddlers spilling out every straining window screen to the patio undergrowth of frog racing, fireflying, citronella wafting, and boat motors whining for just 10 more minutes, please, in the water.

The water is calm. My phone has no bars, and I, this time, am silently alone. Floating. Rocking. Irrevocably lulled.

My brain, too, is silent, the disquiet of the neuron map for now stowed away, washed ashore to make way for the expansive emptiness of the 3:00 sky.

Allow a cloud-flood through the retinas, through to the brain. In the sun-washed silence, absence, four tablespoons of softened butter must be what a baby feels when it first surmises the sky.

Let the brain stem keep inching back till the chin passes above the horizon line of trees, toes disappear, no cheating, feel the heavy cranium stretch back, ahh, all the way.

Clouds, the silent movie that speaks with a breath of originality, of change, whisk and scramble with each blink.

In a lull of blinking silence, I rediscovered clouds.

Top 10 OxyContin Pills

This week, I traded my wisdom teeth for OxyContin pills of wisdom.

OxyContin #1: Now maybe oral surgery is on the lower end of “grave” as far as surgeries go, but it seems there really should be some sort of code against anesthetizing people in a tiny fourth-floor business suite.

OxyContin #2: The last thing cringers to all things vein-related want to hear is their surgeon comparing the quest for the perfect IV vein to a fishing expedition. “Hmm. We might have to move upstream to find a good one, but let’s see if we can’t find us a big one here first.”

OxyContin #3: More wise words from the Dr. Wisdom Fisher: “If after the surgery you find when you try to drink water it comes straight through your nose, well, then we’ll know we’ve got something to fix.”

Thanks for testing bodily hydraulics before the patient leaves the building.

OxyContin #4: With oral surgery there is also the risk of damaging a delicate nerve, barely a blip on the X-ray, that runs below the gums through the lower lip. Numbness usually goes away after three hours, but to a patient on emotion-inducing pain meds, those three hours with a numb hippo lip is life-devastating, filled with premonitions of wearing bibs in restaurants and slurping gruel like the Beast.

Be thankful for that little nerve.

OxyContin #5: Nerve damage or no, wisdom tooth extraction requires the surgeon to crank the jaw open so much so that even opening it to fit a spoon in and out requires effort equal to removing the Sword from the Stone. Unfortunately the only way around this utensil challenge is licking applesauce straight from the jar. You can imagine the mess with the added handicap of a numb lip.

OxyContin #6: You know you have some high commodity pain prescriptions after the pharmacist tries to give you “Marissa Hoover’s” measly antibiotics and your demand for your identity and its rightful narcotics creates a Spanish Inquisition into who the true Jessica Hoover is and why she needs five narcotics prescriptions from the neighborhood Walgreen’s. Foul play afoot, Marissa Hoover. I’m on to you.

OxyContin #7: And you can’t trust anybody. Your mother, for your safety and addiction prevention, will purposely “hide” the pill bottles while she is gone for the day, leaving you high and, well, not high, but dry, and in pain.

OxyContin #8: When a mid-day storm blows through causing a tree to fall in one’s backyard, thereby uprooting two smaller trees, which smash the dog fence and a good portion of the roof, all just one branch shy of an OxyContin-induced slumberer, good luck (one) waking up and (two) convincing your family you really aren’t hallucinating . . . this time.

OxyContin #9: Don’t social network while under the influence. While you may not have the strength to sit at a desk and use a computer, here’s when the “convenience” of the mobile web on your phone betrays you.

OxyContin #10: Bed-ridden and comatose on pain meds is hardly an excuse for lack of cardiac exercise. The old ticker gets plenty of cardio pumping from heart-racing recurring nightmares of being trapped in a mahogany mansion hiding for your life from Cyclops sea creatures in basement wardrobes while, with the strike of each hour, a new army of villains, in progressive historical time periods, flood the spiraling staircases raging war curses while they hunt you. It’s like playing “Jumanji” amid clash of “Narnia” (all 7) and “Night at the Museum” (1 & 2) in every battle for Middle Earth.

Missed item this week: A right mind?

Peace out Brussels sprouts.

Top 10 Bird Droppings

Bird Dropping #1: You know the fates and birds are aligned together to malign suburban walking attempts when one is pooped upon whilst strolling to the ballpark.

Bird Dropping #2: Always, always, always greet people you know, regardless of the likelihood of them remembering you from six years ago. The minute you don't, you will see them haunting the grocery store crosswalk the next day, and you are faced with the exact same previous day’s awkward (lack of) interaction precedent.

Bird Dropping #3: Upon returning home, get used to "Hey [insert name of younger high school sibling here]." Or, "So you're the younger one, right?" Or, "Have you thought about colleges yet?"

Bird Dropping #4: How long does it take a college student to shake off the 3 a.m. bed time? At least a month and still counting.

Bird Dropping #5: From the other end of the clock, how long is it permissible for a college graduate to repeatedly sleep in until noon? Two weeks ago, wasting an entire half of a day was detestable, so I enacted a calibration plan, shaving off 30 minutes of sleep each week. We’re to 10:30 a.m. at Week 4.

Bird Dropping #6: Buildings change. Businesses go in and out of existence. Yes. But when is it ever OK for a private warehouse aquarium to morph into a pool and spa?

Bird Dropping #7: If anyone is ever in doubt of Knoxville’s literacy rate, go to McKay’s Used Books any hour of any day and ponder literacy whilst circling the parking lot for eons waiting for a spot. Then go inside to meet Knoxville’s finest local literates.

Bird Dropping #8: Thanks to thunderstorms that pop up out of literally nowhere, one’s afternoon walks quite frequently turn into afternoon sprints with the added inconvenience of emitting convincing “oh my house is just around the corner” pants to strangers who offer rides home.

Bird Dropping #9: When one is lucky enough to get through an entire walk thunder-free, lo and behold pick up the pace when the ice cream truck and its freaky clown music creeps along behind you or heads you off at the crossroads. So this is what it feels like being on the run from the child snatcher in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

Bird Dropping #10: After finally having re-arranged one's room in every geometric configuration possible, the realization sets in that a) social life has significantly declined, and b) furthering individual exploration and independence has also declined. Both of which exist because of c) lack of travel and general adventure. Therefore, d) The Stagnated Self Crisis Cycle (Theorem S^2 = C^2):
--Frustration: A quick facebook perusal reveals there are more people than fingers on your hand who are doing way more interesting things with their summers than you are.
--Aggression: Rant to the dog in self pity and bitterness about a boring existence.
--Frenetic Angst: Feverishly map out possible excursions for every continent, including Antarctica.
--Repression: Cool down with sorting four years’ worth of computer files.

We haven’t quite achieved the “Acceptance” phase yet.


‘Most Missed’ this week: Rome Wal-Mart entertainment

Peace out Brussels sprouts.