Deep in Hilary’s lizard brain was an abacus that wanted to account for the movement of each and every fuckwad since the beginning of time. 

I tried to pick up a container of veggies at B&N and it burst into a giant cloud of broccoli.  So I edged away from the exploding container and moved forward with the line while 3 colleagues from the English Department picked broccoli florets off of themselves. 

Do you know who’s on my nerves today?  White people. 

It’s like, OK: The corner of our block is a local crack spot.  We have neighbors living in hazardous, underground converted apartments due to the fear of deportation.  I know one woman with mental health problems whose kids have probably never seen the inside of a school.   

And you’re going to strengthen our block by building a community garden?  Do you ever notice that the "community" you’re trying to strengthen consists exclusively of other white people from Southwest Detroit’s petit burgeois? 

I don’t know.  It’s just too puppies and unicorns for me. 

I’m going to think of this as a blog for Molly and Sarah, the only people who read it. So I say unto you, Molly and Sarah, don’t waste your money on the new Ben Harper CD.  

I’m coming around to the shocking realization that some people do not like me.  Take, for example, my friend — let’s call her Mizmar — take, for example, Mizmar’s boyfriend.  I can seriously ooze Mr Sparkle out of my pores and it’s lost on him.  But what kind of person doesn’t like Mr Sparkle? 

Hilary put her sandal-feet on the desk and thought back , and back and back into the great Northwestern blackout, until she crossed the moor at night her teeth chattering in fear of imaginary monsters, until John Paul II was alive and they circled the great Dombrowski fieldhouse under clouds of steam that were rising off the ice. 

Hilary slouched over a half eaten mint.  Uncompressed tarball typed away over the hum of the space heater and perl, as always, was touching her own feet and then touching other stuff (usually Hilary’s stuff).  It was all deceptively mundane.

 Ew, said Hilary.  Stop that.    

Her mind drifted back to a moment earlier in the day when Hilary could not believe that she had volunteered to do this, to the abstract idea of a vow of fearlessness and then back to commenting on some drafts for the grad class. 

I’m not sure I’m ready to comment on or evaluate grad student writing, Hilary wondered aloud.  But in her mind she was secretly chanting: 

WTF, Ward?  WTF?  WTF? WTF?

Firefox crashed and it was over. And then the music stopped.  The mint on Hilary’s desk was the hue of a new born cloud covering mountains of papers. 

I’m stranded in an airport due to a canceled flight, and currently pushing a decapitated muffin on Perl, who keeps shoving the muffin back across the table with a cross facial expression. 

I’m sorry, but no one needs their own nation state in the middle of Sri Lanka.  If Hindus don’t like being the minority in a Buddhist country, they should drive like 3 miles north, to India, where there are approximately 800 million Hindus.