I might as well switch to Tumblr at this point.

Braindead. Going through the trying-to-get-novel-published process. Again. I'm reminded of the myth about the female body producing a postpartum hormone that pokes a strategically placed hole in the memory of the experience pertaining to the pain, howling sleeplessness, torn perineum, etc.

So yeah, I don't have much in the way of new content. But since anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, here are a few pictures from around my neighborhood.

I really do wish I could claim to have caught these two grasshoppers in the act of mating (which would finally allow me to begin rebuilding the Beyond Easy brand as your go-to source for the birds and the bees of the bugs), but if you look at them closely you'll notice that there's no thorax-thorax contact. It seems that they're just spooning. (My apologies for the poor resolution; I don't carry around a camera and the one in my phone was built as an afterthought.)

My first guess was that they were cuddling and savoring the afterglow together, but then I read that grasshoppers tend to die immediately after sex--and some light prodding revealed these two to be very much alive. Perhaps they had just been getting to know each other. If you were on a date and you knew that you could only have sex once, with one person, would you be in a such a hurry?

 

A friend of mine who shall remain anonymous (his epithet rhymes with "Rangerous Rave") courageously leaked images from a local gathering of North Jersey high school guidance counselors. He described the experience as being like that scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where Hunter Thompson/Raoul Duke sits undercover at the police convention.

But seriously. Kids getting wasted on sanitizer? Is this actually a thing?

(I was planning on posting a choice selection of Powerpoint slides from the meeting, but the idea seemed less funny the more I thought about it. The presentation is pretty much exactly what you'd expect: "It's 4:20. Do YOU know where your teen is?" "If a teen has the scent of liquor on his or her breath and is acting drunk, then maybe, just maybe, he or she has been consuming alcohol." "Marijuana, sometimes referred to as 'pot,' 'reefer,' 'blunts,' etc...")

On a somewhat related note: if, while going through an old drawer, you happen upon a beaded bracelet that says "TRANCE," it is a given that you have absolutely no recollection of where, when, or how you acquired it.