I shall wax poetic. Strap yourself down and prepare for the verbal performance of your life!

*ahem*

...Narf...



I have mid-terms this week and a gargantuan essay due that I haven't even started (*innocent cough* I work under pressure best. >.> Yeah...). *pause, sobs*



UPDATE:

One mid-term down and one more to go! I only missed three questions on my first mid-term. Here's to hoping the second will go that well! *cringe, dives under blankets*

...Mommy...

Sir Thomas More was an intriguing and brilliant figure during the English Renaissance. He is, perhaps, most famous for his literary satire Utopia among English Literature enthusiasts today.

Though I vehemently disagree with Sir More's endorcement of the forced labor camp and find his satirical "utopian" society of abolished private ownership improbable and sorely impractical at best, there are some quotes that would be best read and contemplated upon by both the general public and those in government as well. I shall list them below:

"There are a great many noblemen who live idly like drones raising their rents...Such a man can't be put to work with spade and mattock; he will not serve a poor man faithfully for scant wages and sparse diet."

"Living in idleness and luxury, without doing any good to society, no longer satisfies them; they have to do positive evil...Thus one greedy, insatiable glutton, a frightful plague to his native country, may enclose many thousand acres of land within a single hedge."

"Nothing in the world that fortune can bestow is equal in value to a human life. If they say the thief suffers not for the money, but for violation of justice and transgression of laws, then this extreme justice should really be called extreme injury. We ought not to approve of these fierce Manlian edicts that invoke the sword for the smallest violations."

"[Philosophers] are not so ungracious...but that they would gladly [assist kings with their counsels]; in fact, they have already done it in a great many published books, if the rulers would only read their good advice."

"People who have made up their minds to rush headlong down the opposite road are never pleased with the man who calls them back and tells them they are on the wrong course."

Though this work is surely that of a satire, and is easily evidenced by those that have read both Book One and Book Two in its entirety, there are, no doubt, some strong contemplative truths that can be held within it. And, as we have all found, in satire and irony there are often strong lessons between the written lines that bring the reader (or listener) to consider the nature of their society and personal self. I think we could all do with a little more introspection and less war-mongering greed.

I'm waging war on a virus that has decided to lodge itself in my chest. Unfortunately, being allergic to some of the main ingredients in most over-the-counter medications makes this war a bit one-sided.

So, instead, I took the day off work and immersed myself in a book with a quick break to wash the dog. When you realize you can smell your dog and he's asleep in the other room, it's time to bathe him.

There are several steps that must be taken when bathing a dog that is larger than you and barely fits in the bathtub.

Step 1.) Put on some of your oldest shorts and tee with the knowledge that they will be ruined beyond recognition in five seconds.

Step 2.) Sweetly call to the dog after running the bath.

Step 3.) Call louder.

Step 4.) Search the house for your dog. For a large dog, he's amazingly good at hiding when he hears the water running.

Step 5.) Coo to your dog as he crouches, deadweight, on the floor with toes splayed and grasping the carpet as though it really doesn't matter that he doesn't have opposable thumbs.

Step 6.) Grab his collar and begin the difficult process of dragging him to the tub. Continue cooing and try not to cringe as you hear the carpet screeching beneath his claws.

Step 7.) Get behind the dog that is balking and backpedaling away from the edge of the tub. Pray to the gods that your back doesn't break and heave one end into the tub. Grab the other end as the front escapes. Repeat until entire dog is in the bathtub.

Step 8.) Leap into the bathtub and tackle the dog. Forgo the cup of water and turn the shower head on while pinning him down.

Step 9.) Soap him up.

Step 10.) Chase after him through the house after he escapes, soap flying everywhere. Grab a big towel. Hope to contain the mess.

Step 11.) Take an advil, grab an icepack and continue nursing your wounds and cold on the couch while glaring balefully at the dog that is now running up and down the hallway with manic glee.

I need a foot massage, someone to cook me dinner, a good movie, and a cold compress for my neck.

Have you ever been pulling into your driveway and suddenly, as your putting your car in park, your mind goes blank?

You find yourself looking around you while thinking in the most disconnected fashion: "This is my life". You recall the nights spent at your home or out with friends, the material possessions you cherish, the pet that waits for you at this very moment at your front door.

Yet, strangely, it all seems quite distant as you sit there, one leg already swung out of the driver-side door and the other planted firmly on the carpeted floor.

Perhaps it is at that moment that you see your neighbor pulling into their parking spot and climbing the front stairs to reach their door.

Your neighbor is quite purposeful, keys jangling and various bags or books jostled from one hip to another as the door is unlocked. They don't seem to be suffering from your momentary lapse from active reality.

It is in this strange moment, with the world slightly hazy yet startling clear to your eyes and muffled to your ears, that you come to a jolting realization.

This is a realization that you have always logically known and that you always have creep up on you in moments like these at least three times a year. Nonetheless, each time it is always a powerful jolt to your system, a freight train in your chest, a moment that freezes (however briefly) time itself.

You are sentient.

You are not your neighbor, jangling keys and jostling books. You are not your boss with his comb over and bad puns. You are not the annoyed grocery store clerk that hands you the change after you pay for a pack of gum with a twenty.

Whatever thought processes or experiences that define you are lodged behind your eyes, peering out at the world like one would through a window. At this moment you are not one with your body, you can feel yourself inside the flesh, but are not comprised solely of it. You know, inexplicably and without plausible explanation, that you are more than flesh and synapses.

What random process placed you in this body, this life, instead of that person's or that one? How many seemingly random, possibly miraculous occurrences collided to create this amalgam of thoughts and emotions that equal you?

It is a moment of strange, almost translucent clarity. The world is suddenly larger, more expansive, and holds so much more wonder than it did seconds ago.

Snap! And just like a rubber band, everything contracts and you feel normal once again. You shake your head, grin self consciously at your foolishness and climb the stairs to your door. Perhaps you even jangle your keys a bit.

As you step inside your foyer, your pet greeting you enthusiastically, perhaps you sigh a little. Happy to be home, but still strangely offbeat. And as you put your keys away and pet the pooch, a tired thought pops into your head...

"There has got to be more to life than this."

Suffer from my art! Muwhaahahah. *thunder clap*



The beginning of my cute little Gryphon head. I finished it, but didn't scan the full image.



Yes, I know it's sideways. I didn't feel like rotating it prior to uploading it to the gallery. *ahem* I'm a lazy bug tonight. And, yes, it is an incomplete doodle so her little toes and the rest of her body lack proper shading and shaping.



Close-up.

Tada. The end.