I was thinking...

Hartford, CONN--“It's a case of 'you don't know what you've got till it's gone,' you know?” says Sam Chenoweth, as he continues to stand in his den while I comfortably sit on the abandoned sofa in the corner. Sam often stands while others sit, these days. “You know,” he continues, “when I look back at it, I think, ‘Why couldn’t I have just L’d my F O?’ You know?” I asked him what the ‘F’ stands for, and with minor confusion he said ‘flab’. Chenoweth is one of many who have LMAO’d--where a person laughs so hard their posterior falls off, a phenomenon that emerged over a decade ago. The first known LMAO case is Kristine Hasboro of Spokane, WA. Back in 2004, Hasboro was IM-ing a friend. They were sending each other URL links of things they'd found online, until a particular link was sent to Hasboro that would change the internet landscape, forever: an animation involving dancing badgers. “It's something that I still regret,” says Hasboro’s close ...

    The steps in the dark were a trick to traverse--       I’d been heading downstairs for a while. Upon reaching a spot where some moonlight was perched,    I sought the soft light to negate the night’s guile. Out the window, by chance, was a figure, of sorts;    A small palette of flesh, and a sketchy profile.    It took shape when I saw its stained pearls and white orbs:       A face with a sinister smile.       “I guess I’ll go scare off this reprobate stranger,”          I thought, like an arrogant child.    I stepped with my toes quietly beneath the danger,       And soon quickly paused out the door on the tile.    ‘Til I heard the door creak and shut loudly behind me.       I twisted so sharply, my life lost a mile.       And, there, through the window, in the room I left blindly       ...

What secrets spoken    have gathered in the clouds?    and how long 'til they rain,    giving seeds of shame the pain they need to bloom?

Seven blind children on    a dead man's grave: The first started digging    and the second ran away, The fifth heard and echo    as the seventh crushed the fourth, The third was buried South,   and the sixth burned in the North.

Years went by, much the same as the rest, until, one day, the younger received word that the elder's wife had died. He felt a dust-mite of sorrow, but that was quickly replaced by a tick of high-minded absolution for the elder. The elder, in the eyes of the younger, had wasted the bulk of his life on a blind notion--the stubborn idea that his wife and marriage were truly worth all of that time and energy, only to see them both die. He laughed to himself and almost reveled in the thought that the elder was coming to this same realization. On the day, after the elder's quiet eulogy, sunny rain cried over the floating casket as it was lowered. "You deftly captured your feelings for the wife, my old friend," offered the younger, in the brightest corner of the mortuary. The elder was too broken to be corrective. "That is appreciated," he said, almost to the floor. The silence in the air felt like it was looking for the nearest exit. Suddenly, energy long lost ha...