“The Adhesive Duck Deficiency”

November 16th, 2009

I’ve not been remiss in noticing that the Sheldon/Penny shipping community has taken an interest in these reviews, and I want to make sure they know that I always appreciate the comments. And, because I’ve been following along with the group, alarm bells went off when this week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory separated Sheldon and Penny from the rest of the group. In some ways, the episode’s opening scenes actually played out like fan fiction, and we were reminded that, as usual, this sort of pairing is when the show is at its best (even if I feel as if the show will never, ever, take this relationship to anything beyond a tenuous mutual tolerance).

However, unfortunately for this episode, something about the storyline never quite lived up to its full potential, and more problematically the other half of the episode was the epitome of half-baked (yeah, I went there). While the Sheldon and Penny storyline was enjoyable in the way that Sheldon stories always are, and Jim Parsons is as hilarious as ever, it lacked (until the end) the heart of their more enjoyable plots. And since the show’s two most interesting characters in terms of creating different dynamics were on their own, this left the rest of the guys to fend for themselves.

And while Sheldon and Penny might be a good combination for the show’s comic potential, nothing can give me back the time spent on the other half of this episode.

By the time Sheldon and Penny got to the end of their storyline, the heart was there: “Soft Kitty” tends to bring out the best in these two to begin with, and playing into the legacy of their past interactions (like when Sheldon was sick and the “Soft Kitty” story was first originated) is a good way to tie everything together, and the scene was legitimately very funny. However, the storyline as a whole felt like a number of scenes that either went too broad (like Sheldon touching her in an inappropriate place while she was naked) or felt laboured (I don’t see why Sheldon wouldn’t have been able to call a taxi considering they had all of the time to wait for it while she was slowly getting dressed, making it just an excuse to put Sheldon behind the wheel). While there’s a lot of comic potential in this pairing, the show didn’t really stretch its boundaries at all when it came to their interactions. I thought the scene in the Hospital waiting room had some fun lines, but to be honest there was something disturbing about Sheldon being so quick to diagnose Penny with various disorders considering the eccentricity of his own behaviour.

There’s a point where Sheldon’s lack of social awareness is fun and clever, like when he writes the cause of the fall as “a lack of adhesive ducks.” There are other moments, though, where he’s legitimately offensive and mean to her, and while I understand that this is part of the character (judging Penny as overly emotional pretty much at all times) I don’t find it particularly humorous. I’m not suggesting that the two need to get along like gangbusters, but there’s something somewhat artificial about the fact that they can only tolerate one another when one of them is deathly ill or hopped up on painkillers. It’s like the running gag with Raj being unable to speak without alcohol: it was a funny gag once, but over time it becomes a hindrance to telling any new stories, as all interactions default to the same basic mode when certain characters are involved. If this was the first time we had seen a Penny/Sheldon story like this, I would have probably enjoyed it more, but it fell into a pattern that sort of took me out of it.

It was still leagues better than the subplot, however, which has is Leonard, Raj and Howard all getting high in the desert waiting for the Leonid Meteor Shower to start (it’s actually starting tonight, hence the storyline). The problem with this storyline is that these three characters together have no actual context of interaction: this was literally just Leonard, Raj and Howard getting stoned, with no underlying character theme or even some sort of hidden motivation. With other characters, these three can on occasion be quite funny, but individually and without anything to work with they’re pretty lifeless. I thought Raj’s bunny empire was moderately clever at points, but the incent storyline from Howard was downright bizarre, especially when they chose it as the main joke of the coda – I wasn’t aware that sleeping with your cousin was laugh out loud hilarious.

I thought that Galecki, Nayyar and Hedberg all did an admirable job with absolutely no material (all had some fun performance beats even if the lines were terrible), but the problem was that it never bothered to actually do anything with the fact that they were high. None of the characters had to interact with someone in a tense situation, no one had to operate some kind of machinery, and as a result there was no comic tension. It was literally like an improv skit about people being high in the desert, first beginning with some light hallucinations before extending into some deep thinking before eventually reverting to the munchies. While I complain about Sheldon and Penny’s storyline being rote in the sense that the show has tread on the same solid ground before, this was the show using the same gags that have been omnipresent in any depiction of being stoned on the face of the planet, and for the show to rely on them almost exclusively with characters who brought very little original to the table was a zero sum game.

It doesn’t help that I just watched “Chokin and Tokin’,” the episode of Freaks and Geeks which most directly deals with what marijuana can do to you. In that case, the character chooses to take marijuana, and is forced to babysit while under the influence and thus creating some sense of tension within her life. The fact that this was done with cookies makes it a terrible TV trope to begin with, but the fact that all of them got high, leaving no one to react to the fact that they were in fact tripping, made this a fundamental failure of a storyline.

I know that I usually argue that Sheldon and Penny should be paired more option, but this (like “The Vegas Renormalization” before it) suffers as an episode overall because of what’s left behind when those two characters separate from the pack.

Cultural Observations

• Jim Parsons again did get to knock one scene out of the park: his comforting of Penny was honestly terrifying to watch, to the point where I don’t know if I can even go watch it again with cringe-laughing myself to death. Just really creepy and wonderful, and I just wish he’d get an episode full of those moments to submit for the Emmys.
• I thought I was over the “Knock Knock Knock Penny” bit, but I will admit that Penny’s interruption of his attempt to perform the ritual at her bathroom door was quite fun.
• I usually complain about scenes where the rest of the group celebrates Sheldon being absent, so I was a little bit frustrated to see the writers have Sheldon justify such behaviour by admitting that he wants nothing to do with human companionship either. It simplifies their relationship to a dangerous point for me, but it was at least funny so that’s something at least.
• I think Sheldon’s lowest moment in this episode was his racist comments to the Sian Palace, and in fact the whole conversation was problematic: Sheldon’s smart enough to do his own math, and while asking for a quarter of an appetizer selection is anal asking for half of two orders of something is downright ignorant and totally inconsistent.
• I hope Penny’s reading of Wall-E was just the drugs talking, because Wall-E was about 500% more personable than Sheldon from the moment we met him in that movie.

I pass the Dexter Bakery everyday on my way anywhere. I frequent the bakery as  matter of  convenience and a desire to support local small businesses. the truth of the matter is that on most products the bakery is decidedly average at its peak rating.  On the cookie front, I have tried the full range but generally order a maraschino cherry/cocoanut and peanut butter cookie.  I find these the best of the lot which include  oatmeal, chocolate chip, sugar and date filled.

The cookies have several ongoing deficiencies.  First, the cookie dough consistency varies from day to day.  Second, the size of the cookies diameter and thickness change frequently.   The ingredient mix seems to change frequently going back and forth between marginal and acceptable, never reaches above average.  Time in the oven is not tightly controlled. cookies are frequently “well done.”

It seems that the butter substitute used is not high quality.  They may use a low cost nut paste as a substitute

Michigan is know as a cherry producing state. Traverse city dried cherries are readily available and could easily be  use rather then dyed maraschino cherries. 

So, If it wasn’t convenient and a local owned business I would pass it by.

Postcard-perfect days are the rule here in the desert even as Thanksgiving approaches and we round the corner into the winter holidays. It’s sunny and warm nearly every day. I can’t help but miss the traditional trappings of fall just a little bit.

With nary a scarf nor vividly-hued leaf in sight, I’m grateful instead for brisk mornings and chilly evenings. I’ve come to relish the simple act of bundling up in layers for my 7 a.m. hikes and then coming home to warm my hands around a hot cup of coffee. And just last night, it made me happy to throw an extra blanket on the bed and to curl up under the flannel sheets I brought with me but could never imagine needing until now.

As lovely as it is here, the truth is, it’s a subtle kind of beauty. Spectacular, dramatic sunrises and sunsets aside, the color palette is a bit limited. The mountains and rocky terrain that define this valley; the velvety, emerald of the golf courses; and, of course, the cacti and palm trees, are all mostly shades of green and brown.

But the light, the light is the thing. Exquisite and golden and ever changing, it casts a spell of sorts, both enhancing and enchanting as it illuminates.

Je donne plus l’oreille que je ne prends la parole, j’ai l’humanisme économe.

À la croisée des chemins, on se trompe de route afin d’avoir un entretien avec le destin, même si je ne le comprends pas en suivant mon instinct.

Le silence fait partie de mon histoire sans fenêtre sur vous, ni porte de sortie pour vendre une morale donnant un sens à mes actes.

Allez savoir qui je suis derrière mon masque fait de chair et de sang, ce que je sais sur mes commanditaires comme mes victimes et où je vais d’un pas meurtrier tel le temps qui passe.

Ma mélancolie est assassine et mon tourment est une tombe d’où je ne m’extirperai qu’au dernier souffle.

Mais un doute subsiste lorsque l’on fixe machinalement les cibles mouvantes plutôt que cet horizon bancal plus résigné que fidèle.

Et le planisphère ? Il nous écrase de toute son autopsie, de toutes ses rides guerrières.

Je préfère le paysage aux voyages !

Une ville reste une ville, ces odeurs de peur quand les pas claquent sur le sol en se faisant de plus en plus pressants, le bruit des ruelles orphelines de la lumière du jour, son visage raisonnable pour le tourisme plastique, son charme pour les cartes postales, sans oublier son calme invisible et anonyme.

Ce qui me plaît le plus ce sont les fenêtres, on devine ce qu’elles cachent négligemment, on se protège dans leurs angles morts, pour ne pas être de vu, pour rester méconnu.

J’ai cet instinct de conservation presque animal qui me préserve de ce mauvais goût bien humain pour l’héroïsme de manuel scolaire.

Alors mon nom n’est qu’une anecdote dans le monde des illustres qui cherchent des échos à leur nostalgie dans un regard, dans une guitare.

Une clef fatiguée, une porte à la fois étrangère et familière, un lit d’infortune pour une personne, un cendrier vide et un horizon imparfait me renvoyant à mes respirations inégales.

Peu importe l’endroit, c’est la même chose, sans les mêmes gens…

La limite entre habitude de l’usine humaine et paranoïa des oppressés de service ? Ceux qui en parlent en observant ceux qui sont censés le vivre, ils doivent avoir plus de réponses que de questions.

À force de me demander constamment ce que j’aime, je vais finir par savoir ce que vous pensez.

De retour à la case départ en avançant sur ma piste, le décor habite mes songes éveillés, quitte à y laisser leur mémoire.

J’entends des voix, mais je préfère les mots.

Je pourrais apprendre ta langue, mais tes hésitations en disent long !

Va savoir ce je fais du temps qu’il m’est est arbitrairement imparti puisque la petite mort ne m’attend plus ?

Si l’information c’est le contrôle, nous devons être bien suicidaires!

Le problème des messagers en transit qui rêvent d’être des passagers en stand by, c’est qu’ils oublient que les autres peuvent épouser la solitude.

Dans le doute, on confond mystère et zone d’ombre, mieux vaut ne pas comprendre que de ne pas savoir dans le vaste monde.

Me taire, apparemment, c’est ce que j’ai de mieux à dire.

…

Le temps est aux adieux, nullement aux présentations.

Les choses commencent et se terminent dans un aéroport, là où les hommes viennent de nulle part et vont forcément quelque part pour quelque chose ou quelqu’un !

J’atterris paisiblement, j’arrive tranquillement, je pars sur la pointe des pieds, mais ne peut me résoudre à rester ici. Le mouvement, c’est tout ce qu’il me reste.

Avoir plus de solitude que de questionnement, voilà bien la seule preuve que le silence existe.

Les images défilent à vive allure comme pour mieux satisfaire la boîte à souvenirs.

Je ne prends pas de plaisir particulier dans mon travail. Comme les autres, les plans se suivent mais ne se ressemblent pas, tout est une question d’imagination.

Les hallucinations modernes ne valent pas les pertes de conscience d’antan, quand tout n’était que supposition et illusion.

Je suis parti comme je suis venu, sans un bruit, sans un mot, il ne me reste qu’à choisir entre les limites du contrôle et le contrôle des limites.

Well the only thing different from today than any other regular day was that today was the Winners’ Xmas party at St. Vital Bowl!!

It was alright, considering free pizza, dessert, and a chance to win free prizes.  I sat at Jordan and his girlfriend, and Sheldon and his girlfriend’s table and was kind of a fifth wheel, but meh it was a work party what can you expect.

Anyway we decided to cut in line and get pizza before most everyone else, and since it worked so well we even did it for desert too

Then it was prize time and I got about 20-25 tickets to put in about 12 different silent auction prizes.  Most of them were $10-25 gift certificates for either clothes, food/coffee or movies.  Then there were the two “grand prizes” which each consisted of a 8gig iPod touch and a docking system for it from winners.

I ended up dividing all my tickets into both bags, as equally as possible, hoping that it would increase my chances of winning.

As it turns out both Jordan’s girlfriend AND his own mom both one the two prizes, how rigged is that.

Oh well.

I thought I would experiment with a photographic technique that I had read about while camping in the Utah desert near Canyonlands National Park.  The technique is sometimes called “light painting,” because the photographer (or an assistant) basically “paints” light across the background of the area within the frame with a flashlight or other light source at night, during a long-exposure.  I produced this photograph by having my wife shine a flashlight across the sandstone while the shutter was open for about 30 seconds.

Brian Healy Photography

http://bhealyphoto.zenfolio.com/

Canon 40D, Canon L17-40mm lens, f4.0, 30 seconds

I have now sampled the almost perfect cookie. It’s a two layer creation by Graf’s Pastry on W. Twelve Mile Road in Farmington, MI. The cookie is a two layer creation. The base layer is a heart shaped butter cookie approximately 1/8′ thick.   The top layer is has to parts. A  1/4″ piped band o of marzipan forms the perimeter. The interior is filled with an 1/8′ layer of raspberry preserve. 

The cookie dimensions are precise. All cookies are almost the same size, as compared to many other bakeries where consistent size tend to be missing.

The base butter cookie is crisp with an fresh butter flavor, but not over powering.  The marzipan of course stands on it’s own.  The preserve a just sweet enough.  The over all cookie has a well balanced flavor, not over powered by any of the parts.  

I’m sure it is not a low calorie cookie.   Eating more than one is , if you have them is almost inevitable.  the price is commensurate with the quality- $1.75. It’ s worth every penny.  

Composition:  95
Design & Precision: 95
Taste:  95
Freshness: 100
Price:  $ 1.75
Value 95

Base comparison is to a well known private cult brand in Ann Arbor whose ratings are:

Composition:  60
Design & Precision: 75
Taste:  75
Freshness: 75
Price:  $ 2.00 to $3.00
Value :  60

My husband and I read a Chapter of the Bible each night as part of our devotions.   We are working our way through Psalm.  Psalm is no bedtime tale but it is an enlightening guide to waking up right with God:

 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; Psalm 111:10

Split-faced man invents a new kind of electricity. Turns sparks back into the motion of Esmerelda shivering in the plaza. Holding to her lips an unlit cigarette.

Why build a wall around a city such as this? For the wind to hunch over. For the cats to rub against, purring. Sentient wall bulwarked against desert sky. Split-faced man hesitating upon its ridge.

In the desert Split-faced man walks. Pacing out the boundaries of a city yet unmade. From the city across the desert, a flash as from a tilted mirror. Into the sun.

The city across the desert is unnamed, like the first lover. Its contours human, forgetful. The people who enter the city across the desert do not leave. We in Split=faced man’s cty are of a different breed.

I meet Split-faced man in the city square, beneath an iron tree. The city inorganic. Split-faced man wishes to transfer his burden to me. The bundle is warm and smells like peat.

People tend to recognize that “living in the past” distracts people from finding happiness in their lives. In much the same way, “living in the future” can also distract people from finding happiness in their lives. When we focus on reaching out for things that existed in the past – or that may or may not exist in the future – we risk missing out on beautiful things that surround us right now.  Every life is a journey, and each moment is its own destination. You have already arrived.

Stem with flowers growing out of a desert succulent.

Banana bread to be

There is something innately sensual in cooking. In baking maybe even more so. The colors, the creamy-silky textures, the flavors. Mixing textures: puffy egg-whites, drippy melted butter, grainy sugar; tasting the dough, putting flour in your hair. Checking the temperature in the oven. It’s all a beautiful ritual.

One of the deserts that I like to bake is banana bread. It’s super easy and it tastes great!

Stuff you'll need to make the banana bread

You will need:

3-4 bananas (mashed)
1 cup of sugar
2 cups flour
2 egges
1/2 cup melted butter (nuke it for 30 seconds)
1 pinch of salt
1 teaspoon baking powder

Peel the bananas. Admire: )

How to make it

1. Preheat the oven, grease your tray.
2. Mix the dry things: flour, salt, baking powder.
3. Mix the wet stuff: cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Add mashed bananas.
4. Bake!

See how I had fun below!

Mashup time

Dry stuff - mixed

Sugar and butter - before

Sugar and butter - after

Eggs in

Bananarama. Whoo

Flour inside

Did not have enough time to make the out of oven photo

Feel like baking?

Hunters of the Nile by  Ellie Moonwater

Lyrical Press

Every era has its hunters…and its prey.

Callie never thought her life could get any weirder or more frightening than when she’s kidnapped and thrust the role of fox in a deadly hound hunt. A subsequent fall tumbles her through time and into the arms of an Egyptian warrior.

At first convinced she’s landed among re-enactors, Callie discovers some things are exactly what they seem. A captive, Callie finds out reality holds passion, romance and more surprises than she ever imagined.

I found Hunters of the Niles to be a different type of time-travel story. It was not so heavy on the hero or his life with the heroine but more on her adaptation to her new time period.

Callistia   works in the stables but I don’t think she was really happy with what she was doing. Yes, she loved the horses, especially Romeney, but I don’t think she liked dealing with people. Even when she readied the horses for Mr. Inskip’s riding lessons for the children; she did not seem to be happy. I did like how Steve O’Sullivan drugged her and chased her as if she were the fox in the hunt. The terror Callie felt as she ran had my heart beating faster. Everything was exciting up to when Callie was captured. Then I felt that the story veered off course some. I liked how she adapted to Egypt, interacted with Miu and even Horem but the story never developed into a heated romance.

Horem was the lucky one who caught Callie when he was hunting with Zef in the desert. He seems to be the type of man that I would like to find me if I were lost in time. Unfortunately, Horem leaves Callie in his mother’s care for two months. I learned a lot about Miu as her character was pretty well developed but Horem was just there, then not, then back again. He seemed to have feelings for Callie, renamed her Nefer, and calls her wife of his heart.

Zef reminded me of Steve O’Sullivan in that he was the “bad guy” who wants Callie. He gives me hope for a sequel where I can learn more about the character of Horem and his feelings for his Nefer.

I thought Hunters of the Nile was a good story showing how a character can adapt to a new time period. I look forward to Ms. Moonwater’s next trip into time-travel.

I should begin by stating that I am not a stoner, drug addict, alcoholic, or regular substance-abuser of any sort.  But I will  openly admit that there is a time and place for everything, and on New Year’s Eve in the middle of a Mexican desert, the time and place called for a very special drink: peyote tea.

Peyote cactus grows abundantly in the wild deserts south of Monterrey.  Locals have been brewing it as a tea for hundreds of years, using it for medicinal, spiritual, and recreational reasons.  Thanks to the increasing popularity of nearby rock climbing, peyote often finds its way into the hands of those unfamiliar with its hallucinogenic potential. When I found myself in a canyon on New Year’s Eve, I decided to pop my peyote cherry and see if the hype was worth it.

The day was like every other day that we were spending at El Potrero Chico, one of the most coveted climbing areas in the world.  We woke up early, flicked the gigantic spiders off of our tents, and scarfed a bean burrito that would sustain eight hours of rock climbing bliss. On our hike out of the canyon at sundown, one of the local climbers invited us to join him for New Year’s festivities, and to meet him at his truck in a couple of hours. I was traveling with two born-and-raised New Yorkers who were feeling homesick for Times Square mayhem, so we agreed to anything that sounded like a decent New Year’s replacement.

As we neared base camp, we heard the distinctive hoots and hollers of drunken Mexicans, and decided to find the source.  We turned a corner, and my friend was pummeled by a flopping body that has just been forcefully ejected from a nearby bull-riding machine.  Yep, that’s correct: Right there, in the middle of a nowhere desert road, a bull-riding machine had been wheeled in from four hours away, to fulfill a New Year’s tradition of tequila and simulated bull riding. We had no idea what we were getting into!

Still weighed down with climbing gear, we continued walking to base camp, showered and ate some avocados, and found the truck we had earlier been invited to.  Apparently we were not the only ones invited.  The entire bed of the truck was packed full of dixie cups holding peyote tea, and people were lining up to pay!  When in Rome… ?   My innocent eighteen-year-old self asked for “the weakest kind”, and for that, I received a quite opaque liquid in a floral paper cup. My two New Yorker friends and I began to sip and walk back to bull-riding.

It should be noted that this bull-riding machine was not an average behemoth found in an American square-dancing bar.  This was a wooden block attached to a series of ropes, hanging from a wooden pole.  Four of the ropes went into the hands of four teenage boys willing to give anyone a severe challenge.

A horrible thing about peyote tea is that is doesn’t taste horrible.  I’ve forced many medicinal herbal tinctures and teas down my throat before, and had certainly consumed worse.  The other horrible thing about peyote tea is that it was my first experience with a hallucinogen, and I had absolutely no clue what I was doing.  And I was surrounded by a couple hundred tequila-guzzling, guitar-wailing, competitive bull-riding Mexicans. And in the middle of this lively New Year’s Eve chaos, I was consistently finding a dixie cup of peyote in one hand, and a dixie cup of tequila in the other.

Oh, and did I mention that it was my first time drinking hard liquor, too? Before I was too drunk, my feisty competitive spirit insisted on taking a turn with the bull.  The few women there cheered me on for being the only woman willing to try.  The young muscles that controlled the ropes started out easy on me, as if I didn’t know how to keep my balance walking on the sidewalk.  “Venga! Venga! Andele!” I kept saying! I was making a bull-riding record for the night! And when I finally got tossed off into the sand, what did I get as a prize?  More peyote!

Yikes.

I was quickly learning what it was like to be inhibited by drugs and alcohol.  At the same time.   For the first time.  In a foreign country.  In the middle of the desert.  My friends and I backed away from the scene when we started to notice our limbs were growing new toes and fingers and when others’ faces began to grow cat-like whiskers.  The moon was bright and the weather clear, so we slowly stumbled back into the canyon, laughing and trying to make sense of it all. At the end of our walk, we came across two fire-dancers with huge torches!  I had enough peyote in my system to make this even more beautiful.  The colors of the desert swirled with the stupendous flames, and we followed them like rats to the Piper, up a steep hill and into a sandstone cave.

By this time, it was well past midnight, and after a rather trying hike to the cave, substances were beginning to wear off and genuine conversation and laughter was beginning again.  Residual effects still caused me to try and play with fingers gently emerging from my elbow and forearm, but I was certainly coherent enough to be in awe of the beauty that surrounded me in this cave. Sandstone formations everywhere, stacking from all directions, and silhouettes glowed warmly from torches that marked the corners of this natural castle.  Smiles all around, with hilarious Spanglish conversations that told personal peyote stories.  A couple people tuning their guitars signaled the group to the edge of the cave entrance, where we watched New Year’s Eve fireworks starting to erupt from distant downtown Monterrey.   A gentle hush of whoops and hoots and music comforted the desert air, and the cool breezes refreshed my skin and combed my hair.  I was punch-drunk in love with everything around me: humanity, desert landscapes, and homemade mechanical bulls.  I knew that it was a night I would never forget.

We live in an odd archaeological strata, compressed between the recycled refuse foundation of the past and the weight of tomorrow’s promise. We fill the space with wasted time and discarded artifacts, both reclaimed eventually and completely by the earth. Wearing the hand-me-down habits and thrift store reading glasses of our fathers we seed the layers with creations not wholly of our own, more on loan from the future than present, the bones and ruins of the morrow.

Someday, some perfect combination of time, common sense, and nature will wipe this town away and leave little more than the smudged and fading fingerprint of man in the ash and dust. The desert will reclaim her own, swelling up over the rim of the badlands, creeping around the butte before leaping the river and rolling on up to the foothills. The forest blanket we have toiled to toss across the landscape will be wiped away by raging fire, allowing the land to be at last what it will and save for unrusting iron and undying plastic we will be forgotten.

At least i would prefer to imagine that as the nobler end we may achieve, better than the sprawling and more likely alternative of an endless conurban amoeba stretching from the low brown mountains in the east to the purple white-capped peaks in the west, trapped from further growth by the stone walls on either side, wheezing in its own smog and choking upon its own filth. Everywhere can be the next California if we try hard enough, care little enough.

Take a look at mass media, we have begun to romanticize the first scenario lately, the post-apocalyptic replacing the megalopolis in our silver screen paper back imaginations. Perhaps because we feel it absolves us in certain ways, of our own present actions particularly and more generally of not being responsible for the second scenario. In the megalopolis the remnants of our lives will be but more garbage to deal with while in the post-apocalyptic they might be, if found, of immense interest and curiosity to the finder, lending an air of historical importance to our long halted existence.

Truth is…
doesn’t matter.

Either way we are but simple trilobite impressions in the earth defined best in relation to the accompanying layer we have left unrotting in the local landfill. We are gone and dead and skulls and dust. Wickedness or beauty, we are all but chaff in the winds of time.