standard thursday update, no exceptions here

A few items plucked from the fertile fields of my brain:

One thing: It's very, very hard to worry about anything at all when you're listening to Archer Prewitt's latest album. Peak oil, the fact that "nukyular" has become an accepted variant of "nuclear," the horrible spectre of my next assignment in rural New Brunswick: who cares? Archer Prewitt is telling me that "we can go the way of the sun". Whatever that means.

And another thing: Last week I found a human bone fragment and a cat skull in a field of frozen soy. The cat skull was fairly recent, no more than a year old, but the piece of bone had been there for a good thirty five years, slowly pushing its way up through the soil until it broke the surface sometime before winter hardened the ground. The fragment was about two inches long and curved like a clavicle, with the slight green tinge that comes from exposure to air. I placed it on a pile of airplane wreckage and left it for the coroners.

Not to mention: A slightly blunted razorblade from this morning reached down into the afternoon and ruined my day. Now in the afternoon I can't reach back up to the morning and throw the razorblade away before it gave me this shite shave, with little patches of fuzz left on my neck that weren't visible or tactile then, but damn if they aren't apparent to eyeball and forefinger now. I have a thick and dark beard lying in wait beneath my skin, and it hates razors more than anything, eager to dull their edges if possible, happy to lay at odd angles and elude the blade. If you ever wonder why I go around with a constant coat of stubble on my jaw, it is for the simple fact that my beard is more persistent than I am.