Madison-area schoolteacher Eric Piotrowski revealed last week that he is simply incapable of owning nice objects -- or even keeping his living space intact.

"I don't know," he said in a press conference last Thursday. "I feel like the universe has decided that I should not own a nice travel mug. Or a non-shredded couch. Or a bedroom door that can close." The announcement came one day after Piotrowski had brought in a maintance expert to fit his bedroom door with a new latch. The following day, his dog clawed through the door in a successful effort to gain entry into the bedroom.


"I'd never seen anything like it," Piotrowski said. "There were shards of wood all over the floor, and a hole just big enough for her to squeeze through. I'm plenty furious, but I also have to admire her determination." Piotrowski's dog, Eileen (see file photo at left), had previously been implicated in a number of other household-destruction incidents, including a couch cushion-shredding and a mattress fiasco. It was this precedent that had initiated the replacement latch in the first place.

"I worried that she would have gone in and shredded the mattress again," Piotrowski said. "But it was fine. I guess maybe she wore herself out getting through the door. Or else she just wanted to sit on the bed. I guess that was it, because it's been fine ever since she killed the door."

"I just wish I had known this would happen," he added. "I wouldn't have bothered with the latch and I wouldn't be out $100 or whatever for the door."

Another major setback for Piotrowski's nice-thing-having-ness came last week in the form of a lost travel coffee mug. "I got this really cool travel mug a while back, but a friend of mine borrowed it and lost it. Fine, no sweat. I got another one, but last week I left it behind at a faculty inservice. The gods do not want me to have that thing."

While some experts have suggested the possibility that Piotrowski's dog is an Earth-based canine form of Solaris' Rheya, others insist that all of these disasters have just been an elaborate way for the universe to remind Piotrowski of the essence of non-permanence and the virtue of non-attachment.

At the end of the press conference, Piotrowski thanked all in attendance and scurried away to continue grading his endless stack of essays.

Other

I finally put up some new stuff at Imagenary. Anything to put off the essays.

Thanks to Mark (and Diane sent me this at one point, I think) for the Purple America map. Red states, blue states -- stop seeing the world in black and white, people! (After all, imagine how silly it would be to have red and blue Europe.)

What do I think about the election? Meh. Tell 'em, Noam.

As to fraud, etc. I don’t think it is a major issue, even if true. The election had about the significance of tossing a coin to pick a king. If the coin was slightly biased, that’s unfair, but not the main issue. The much more important point is that the opinions of the majority of the population were excluded from the political arena on major issues. People voted for the imagery concocted by the PR industry. Exit polls reveal that clearly. But to discover whether the imagery is accurate, we have to compare people’s attitudes and beliefs with the actual programs.

So -- down with the king!

418 galleries and they still haven't posted the picture of Diane and me at SorryEverybody.com. Oh well -- the last image on this page is most excellent. And in case you haven't seen them: Apologies Accepted and We're Not Sorry. Ah, dialogue!

Remember crack babies? Well, don't believe the hype.

Crack babies, it turns out, were a media myth, not a medical reality. This is not to say that crack is harmless. . . . But so-called crack babies are by no means ruined. Most fare far better, in fact, than children whose mothers drink heavily while pregnant.

Quite fascinating; this is one I urge you to read all the way through. (Hey, MonkeyFilter is good for something other than TimeWaster™s!)

Look, it's a lion in a bowling alley.

Man, I don't wanna grade essays. Thbpt.

TimeWaster™

Thanks to MonkeyFilter for ComedyButchers, the Sim-City-like series of comedy sketches. Well done, if not the most hilarious thing I've ever seen.

Today I'm listening to: Dub Beautiful!