Room, vacuumed.
Colors, washed.
Whites, in the wash.
Sheets/towels/redsocks/blanket in laundry bag.

Plan of action: put whites+colors in the dryer together. Go to sainsburys with John, procure dinner. Return, fold dryed laundry. Initiate paper workage. Prepare, eat dinner. Continue paper workage. Wash final load of laundry. Continue workage. Dry, fold laundry; return sheets to bed. Don magical red socks. Continue to work on paper, imbued with the power of the magical red socks, triumphing over the perils set before me. Insert self into bed; sleep, victorious.

London is beautiful today, sunny and warm and friendly and alive. The pub ono the corner, the Crown & Anchor, has had a crowd outside of it for the last few hours, a nearby office that let out early to enjoy the nice weather. You notice all kinds of things on days like this, and wonder if they're new or if you simply didn't see them before; people playing football, kids riding on fathers' shoulders, girls wearing low necked shirts and high cut skirts, cars with their tops down. What a wonderful city. I'm going to drink some juice, write a few postcards, and then go meet people at the Blues Bar, and I'm going to leave my jacket in my closet (well, on my floor ... but it's the same idea).

What could be funnier than Pirate Jokes, you ask???

Pirate Pickup Lines!!!!!!!! There was a list of fifteen that I clipped from somewhere, but I'm amending it in the name of decency and humor. Well, okay, just humor.

"I must be huntin' treasure, 'cause I'm diggin' yer chest."
"You're just the lusty wench I've been keeping me eye out for!"
"WOW! I bet we could fit SIXteen men on that chest!"
"So you're the new cabin boy, eh?"
"Do you have the latest copy of Windows XP with cracked product activation?" (software pirates only)
"Yo, ho! Bottle of rum?"
"Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre you free on Saturday?"
and the Number 1 Pirate Pick-Up Line...

"Is there an 'X' on the seat of your pants? Because it appears that there's wond'rous booty buried underneath!"

You know what's horrible?
I am developing callouses and bruises on my elbows, painful ones, from doing nothing but writing at my laptop every moment of the day. Lord a mercy would I like to be done with these goddamn papers.

John has been talking recently about this thing called the Watson Fellowship, which both his school and mine are eligible for, and it has gotten into my brain a bit. It's a $22,000 grant to go do something interesting in the world at large. They mean 'something interesting' as in interesting to you, not purely an interesting for the world thing, which all in all sounds amazing, and improbable, and amazing. They seem to take all kinds of projects - I wonder if I could get a grant to go study the differences in Japanese and Manchurian and Russian aikido, or to trace the trail of Osensei's travels, or something like that. I rather think that a project like that would have a pretty good chance. Or perhaps to walk pilgrimage trails in Europe or Asia: La Camina del Santiago, Canterbury, etc. Huh.

Would this screw up all kinds of other things, like a life with Robin or a job with David? I hate having to think about this future stuff. Good thing I have so much work to focus on in the present.

Earlier today, my Winamp mp3 player played this arrangement of songs, while on shuffle mode:

Canned Heat, "It Hurts Me Too"
Savoy Brown, "It Hurts Me Too"
Barenaked Ladies, "Psycho Killer"
Talking Heads, "Psycho Killer"
Paul Butterfield, "It Hurts Me Too"

It's coming: the Rise of the Machines. Maybe all those computer viruses that we think are so terrible are actually just nobly combatting the ascendance of Skynet. Ever think o that?

Don't worry, I don't actually like the Barenaked Ladies; it's just an interesting cover. And yes, "It Hurts Me Too" (or "When Things Go Wrong") is a good enough song to have the 9 versions of it that I do. Looking for more too. Each band has a very different approach to the song - my favorite might be Canned Heat live, with Eric Burdon on the vocals, but it really depends on my mood. Plus, it's like 9 minutes long. Right now I can't get the Jack Johnson song "Bubble Toes" out of my head. It's really infectious and great, although I have no idea what "her eyes are as big as her bubbley toes" means" Honestly, what?

Ooo! I hear the ice-cream truck!!!!

God I love thunder. We just got to Senate House and are set up in our usual study room on the fourth floor, a double-story room with a balcony of books and huge windows on all sides to let in light from every direction. It’s a nice place to focus and a really interesting room (heraldic devices at intervals on the balcony railing, a huge coat of arms at the head of the chamber), and this is where we tend to work best. Just now, there was a burst of lightening so bright it looked as if we’d all been electrified, a crash of thunder so loud and long that it rattled the books from their shelves, and a gust of wind so fierce that the windows rattled in their panes. Then, silence. No rain, no hail, no wind or booming thunder; no flashing from the clouds, and the sky is gone white as a ghost. I think it was my long-time friends the Storm Gods giving me encouragement for the day’s battle. It will be a day for triumph. Oh, my brothers.

3:10

John just discovered the Autocorrect addition I put onto his word-processor program. He is writing a paper on the Roman playwright Plautus, but while he was in the bathroom last night I changed his settings so that whenever he typed that name, the computer would change it to “I am a bad person.” I had completely forgotten about it till just now, when John reared up from his work with a “you ass!” He has vowed to change my settings so that Chaucer will become “smelly assface,” and now I’m scared to leave him alone with my machine. What price mischief?

Sir Winston says: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
Why wasn't he ever made a lord? Laurence Olivier was made a lord before he died. Did you know that Lord Olivier shaved his legs? It was a habit picked up from his early days in the theatre, when the practically peniless troops couldn't afford the tights for their productions of Shakespeare, and the players had to shave their legs and paint them in bright colors. Apparently Sir Larry never wanted to kick the habit. Also, he would never talk to anyone unless they called him "Larry." I wonder what people called Churchill? Sir, I guess.

So I’m at the British Museum again to try to keep getting work done. You’ll love this: tonight, apparently, is Viking night! There’s a program called “Young Friends of the Museum” or something, which consists of a bunch of kids from like 4-12, who come in once a month or so and sleep over in the museum, and each time has a different theme where the kids get to do all kinds of things involving the collections and projects and things like that. Tonight is Viking night; they are in the other side of the Great Court building longships, and I’m told that they had a battle earlier, with swords and shields and helmets that they made. Later they will sleep in their Viking-tents. I wish I were 12 again.

...

New info: they will sleep in sleeping bags in tents set up in the Egyptian and Greek galleries, and they witnessed a battle by reinactors with real weapons and armour, and then got to explore the Viking camp that was set up on the museum lawn, where they could try on armour, hear stories, eat food, and all kinds of things. God Dammit, I wish I were 12. That sounds like the coolest thing ever. Oh, and those longships they were building? We're not talking pipe cleaners, we're talking huge wire frames and cardboard slats and big dragon prows and things. God. Dammit. What lucky lucky kids!

Finally making headway on my Dylan paper, thanks largely to advise that Dad gave me last night on the phone. The urge to procrastinate is overwhelming, like a black beast riding my back. Or a monkey. There’s a monkey riding on my back … what does that expression mean? Obviously, it’s a bad sort of monkey. Not like a macaque. Did you know that macaques make snowballs to play with, but the DON’T throw them? It’s truly heart warming. And they’re really cute too. My completely insane freshman-year roommate had a big poster of a baby macaque that he put up on our door. It was one of his better features, having that poster. Holy hell am I ADD like a madman today. I feel like my mind works just like that visual thesaurus program. I think of one thing, and there’s a million balloons that immediately spring off of it, all relevant and interesting and exciting ideas that draw me away from what I was originally thinking about. In a way it’s wonderful; I think of all kinds of neat ideas all the time, and a lot are artistic or useful or innovative. But when I’m trying to get something done, jeeeezus can it be a difficult thing to deal with. Like this post – I was talking about writing, and then made a joke, and then a question about that monkey expression, and then five sentences about monkeys and my freshman-year roommate (who was seriously crazy, like arms-tied-around-the-back crazy. A nice kid though, I hope he gets better. He might, who knows? It wasn’t his fault really - diplomat parents. That’ll do it to anyone.) SPEAKING of ADD. God, I gotta get me some testing done when I get home.

Did you know that Little Eva, who does the song Locomotion, was just the record company exec’s babysitter, and that she made up the song and the dance while she was playing with his kids? He saw it and then, BAM, stardom. It’s one of those inspiring stories.

Back to work.

Things that are great include my sister's subway diary. You should all read it.

Diary, incidentally, is a word I will always check over once I write or type it, as it almost always looks like "dairy" but only occaisionally is.

A poll for my readers and friends: which sounds better to take at Oberlin next semester, Japanese language 1, or Introduction to Silkscreen? I can't tell which will be stupider to miss out on doing. I think that if I can get into the silkscreen course, I should take it. It will make for a more rigerous semester because of the other things I'll have to take around it, but I think it's worth it - I mean, how cool? Anyways, comment and advize me por favor.

"Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room." -Sir Winston
I like monkeys. Particularly Japanese macaques (they and titi monkeys were me and my ex-girlfriend's favorite animals), but most of them do just fine in my book. I think I need to get a dog. Not right now, but once I'm living somewhere on my own.

Otay, bed.

OY, didn't get almost anything good done today. Time is getting tighter, and I'm not getting more productive. I am really stressed about this Bob Dylan paper, partly because I'm utterly intimidated by the material, partly because I'm not sure how to structure my approach to it; ayyyyyy, this will be very difficult I fear, and I think that my product may not be very good. Oh well, plenty of fish in the sea, and plenty of them that I'm supposed to catch before the month is up; I will have to just grin and bear it if this one's undersized.

The most fun thing ever in the world today was after dinner (which was a tremendous and sumptous feast of pasta and meat, with new ingenious ideas from me. simmered some cut up zucchini in olive oil, garlic, and ground pepper, and took them out to put to the side; kneaded paprika, parsley, salt, pepper, and lots of cut up chili peppers into a lot of ground beef; onions and more pepper into the olive oil to change color, adding more chilis at intervals (so the strong flavor gets into each stage of the cooking, and gets refreshed instead of steaming off); added meat, stirred in onions and chilis; added more spices, some Thyme (but not too much - I mean, who has any Thyme to spare these days?), oregano, pinch of basil, more parsley; brown meat with onions and chilis, add zucchini again, pour on base sauce from a jar (I know, lame, but it's cost effective for us); and voila! Pasta Sauce! It was splendid and filling, and all the right kinds of gentle spicy, and we ate like kings.). So after our kingly feast, during cleanup, i had packed all the leftover sauce and pasta into our tupperware, and still had handfulls of pasta leftover that wouldn't fit. So I started throwing them at John. We didn't get into a pasta war, instead, he stood there washing dishes with his head turned to the side and facing me, as I threw piece after piece of curly fuculli at his open mouth, and missed every single time. We must have been at it for a half an hour, first chuckling, then giggling, and finally laughing so hard I damn near had an athsma attack. It must have been sixty pieces of pasta, all missed. I hit him in the eye enough times that he thought I was aiming for it. Pasta got stuck to his neck and the back, the BACK mind you, of his shirt. Pasta on the forehead, in the dishes he was washing, in his collar, in his nose, on the wall behind him, and all all over the floor. And the whole time, John, implacable and unperterbed, letting me have try after failed laughing try, with his mouth gaping wide open. Highsterical.

Advising our pigheaded political leaders, those men dragging us heavily towards doom as surely as a weighted chain will haul a drowning man to the Locker, Sir Winston says: "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

After a decently productive day in the library, we decided to blow off the evening's work and go see Master & Commander at the Prince Charles. Holy hell, what an amazing movie. I hope they make ten sequels.

Of course, Churchill would remind us that all that fine naval tradition is nothing more than "rum, sodomy, and the lash." Well, it was an R rated movie with plenty of rum and the lash - maybe the NC-17 sequel will fulfill the Bulldog's idea more fully.

I'm finally FINALLY done with our good Mr. Chaucer, but am not completely satisfied with my final product. I think that I may try to turn what I did here into the basis of an Honors project at Oberlin, but I'll have to talk to a few profs about it, see if i can get both approval and support. Nice to be finally god damn done though. So now onto my paper on Dylan, which I had thought was going to be the more intense of these two projects, but I gave more time to Chaucer than I was intending to and now my work on Dylan is going to have to suffer for it to keep me on schedule. Sacrifices, sacrifices. Hopefully by Sunday I will have Dylan and Sci-Fi out of the way, and i'l only be a day behind. Senate House opens up again tomorrow, and John and I expect to get there at 10:30 in the morning and work till 9:00 at night, with a lunchbreak. Hopefully I'll be able to step up my productivity once I'm there; it will be a better working environment, and the hours will be long. I've been finding it almost impossible to get anything done once I get home. I can have the best of intentions but there's always some other way I end up using my time; it's become so psychologically defeating that I've given it up altogether and just decided to work when it's worktime and relax when it's not. The long library hours give us a good amount of worktime though, so I think I'll be in good shape.

Getting that work done is HARD though. Even when I can stay good and focused, it's really god damn hard to produce good and thorough writing. I can't imagine how in god's name we do it back at Oberlin. Here I will apply myself for a full day's worth of worktime, and get out enough material that I can look at it the next day and see where it doesn't make sense, and correct or edit it. But this takes TIME! And I'm only working on ONE paper! At Oberlin I'll have seven hours of classes and meals and extracurriculars in a day, and I'm still supposed to be reading five hundred pages a week and writing a paper for every hundred of them. Our work, I am beginning to think, must really rather suck. Why do they want us to turn in work that sucks? It's beyond me.

Johnny Toz sent me a brilliant NYTimes article by Michael Chabon, who, if you have not heard of him, I will introduce to you as the most sensetive and gifted American writer since John Steinbeck (Steinbeck who if you don't like him, it's because you were forced to read Of Mice and Men when you were in High School and never read East of Eden, which you should not let wild horses stop you from reading, immediately). It's a wonderful article, please do yourself the favor of reading it.

Apparently it's not 4000 miles to Oberlin, but 3776 (or 3281 nautical miles), according to this "How Far Is It?" site. The confusing thing is that it gives both headings as "north" - is the direction that it's following over the North Pole?

Churchill says: "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."

Holy figs, I'm sitting here typing just now (by which I mean, procrastinating on the internet), and when a car revs it's engine outside I am totally baffled and alarmed by the noise: "what's that noise? where AM I?"

I thought I was in Oberlin. It took me a minute to get my bearings, and then I realized, no I'm 4000 miles away from Oberlin. And I haven't lived in that room for a year.

I had totally mentally relocated myself without even noticing. Blimey.

Oh, how weird. I'm really god damn far away from Oberlin. boo.

I think I really miss it.

Churchill: "We shall not fail or falter, we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job"

Churchill: "It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."

And, lest I forget, our Churchillism for the day:
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."

These are posts I wrote during the day while working on my Chaucer paper. Still.

1:54 PM

We got out a bit late, but not too badly today. Senate House is closed for the Easter Holiday so we’ve been forced to relocate our studies. That’s the name of the UCL library which we normally study at, and incidentally, the building which George Orwell modeled his structures on for 1984, while he wrote the book inside of it. We study in the home of Big Brother, and yes, there are CCTVs everywhere. I feel like they should call them Orwelloviews or something ironic, but they don’t – and they say we don’t understand irony. P’shaw.

So anyway, we’ve had to relocate our studies – and right now I am in the King’s Reading Room of the British Museum, and I feel like a God. The room is a gigantic dome with inside curves of blue and white and gold, huge vaulted windows and a glass disk at the pinnacle. It’s 200 feet high if it’s an inch, and filled with light and space and history. Apparently most of Karl Marx’s important work was written in here, as well as many others’. Place is completely amazing. The desks are padded with blue leather, and equipped with pull-out shelves and book rests, and they’re large enough to actually let you do work. And all around us are books! Thousands upon thousands of books in three tiers, encircling us with the knowledge of an age. The structure was built and donated by George IV (I think it was the IV), and suits a King’s pleasures. And now, surrounded by inspiration and wisdom, I go to write.

9:33 PM

I’m back in the British Museum after going out for dinner and a movie with John and Aikido Mike. This time I’m in the Great Court, which stays open till 11 even though everything else has closed down. The Great Court is, visually, what Rome would have looked like if they had added some steel, glass, and electricity to their architecture. It is an enormous expanse of marble with great pillared doors on each of the four walls, and the Reading Room is in the center, a massive irregular hub made of more marble. An opaque glass ceiling covers everything, a thousand triangular sections of aqua and steel. In each far flung corner sits some large piece of ancient statuary, a Colossal Marble Lion from the Assyrian Empire, a jet black obelisk with Egyptian hieroglyphics down each side, a figure of Tiberius on horseback. It’s amazing in here. You’re at once relaxed by the clean polished stone, cool air and calm lighting, and still totally awed by the scale and weight of the space around you.

It overjoyed me to spot a mouse scurry out of a walkway vent and sneak around under one of the open tables before disappearing with a newly won scrap of bread. If I’m blown away by the size of this place, something as small as that mouse must be positively flummoxed. How does he cope with it? Maybe he just hasn’t seen the Colossal Lion yet.

10:12 PM

Ooh, another one! God, it’s smaller than a tooth from one of the granite Egyptian Pharaoh heads. I couldn’t manage living like that. Still, it’s very clean here, and there are no cats. In fact, I’m sure the Museum staff have no idea that they have mice in here. Well I’m not gonna tell them.

Dear Lord was today useless and unproductive. John and I got up MUCH later than we wanted to (not at 9 like we'd planned ... but at 2), and got almost nothing done. It's funny, he and I have developed an essentially siamese-twin existence; I don't think either of us has done anything without the other in days. It's nice now, but might become worrisome. We're becoming symbiotic - but who's the bull rhinoceros and who's the cranes that eat off his back? Who's Spider-Man and who's the evil black costume that enhances his powers; who's the alligator and who's the swamp bird that cleans his teeth!?!?

The agonizing questions of existence.

We've been doing really well though, it's neat having such a good feeling best friend that I am actually spending time with, as opposed to having a best friend who I am millions of miles away from. I don't understand why some folks think that 'best friend' means you can only have 1; that's just dumb. I have a small collection, but I'm usually far removed from them. Some from New Ro, some from Oberlin, some from Becket, some from the dojo, 1 from Philly - but I don't get to spend much time with any of them. Here and now, I got someone who is rocktastic and whom I feel real close with, and we get to see each other all the damn time and do everything together. Pretty damn cool.

I was supposed to be done with my Chaucer paper yesterday, and now it won't happen until tomorrow, and then I start in on the Dylan paper (then Sci-Fi, then Romanticism, Shakespeare, and Chaucer again - wheeeeeeeeeee). It's funny, I'm putting a whole lot into this Chaucer paper. But I think it's really good, too, and I'm realizing that writing convincingly on this particular subject is actually very important to me. I'm seeing now that the topic has been mulling in my mind for the two years since my last Chaucer course - in fact, not being able to solidly form or express my ideas about the Pardoner's Tale back then was one of the major reasons why I became an English major in the first place. It is an aMAZingly complex and personal and post-modern piece of writing, and seeing the perplexing beauty and gravity and sadness of it made me want to read and think about eveything I could, while not being able to peg down the things that were so amazing about it made me want to learn how to write and think critically. So yeah, I guess it's become a pretty important paper for me. But I really need to finish it, and to care less about making it perfect. I can keep revising it next year with Jen's help (she's one of my wonderful Oberlin profs, the one who taught that Chaucer class), but for now I just need to get down what I have to say and get it done. Done is good. Perfected is better, but good will do the trick for me now.

To bed. I have concocted a plan whereby John and I alternate mornings waking the other up with a cup of tea and a knock on the door; we'll sit together and coalesce over our tea, and thereby avoid going back to sleep. We try it out tomorrow, and I lost the coin toss so it's my responsibility to get it done. And that requires sleeping, now.

Before I go, a new addition to my blog: a regular quotation by Winston Churchill. Today's is about language:

"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."

Brilliance. Leave me comments.

PS: Do you find it odd that blogger's spellchecker does not recognize the word "blog?" I do. I sense foul play.

I'm cheating, I posted this on HaikuQueen as well, but it's late and I need my brain sleep.

Haiku Triptych - "Sainsbury's Puzzlebox"

Item: Whole Chicken.
Sale Price: 99p.
Hot damn, I'll take two.

Its rare price too good
to pass up, I am left stuck.
How will I cook it?

A difficult block,
But the gods must be with me:
Spices on sale too!

My friend Laura from Oberlin asked me to write a piece for a fledgling campus mag which she staffs for, called Sheer Mag. I have some issues with the publication itself (sorry L!), but hey, a writing opportunity is a writing opportunity. The theme of this issue is "Mischief," and I think she wanted me to write something racy, but I just wasn't inspired in that direction. All the same, I was still inspired to create and I've posted my product below. It is entitled: "Clawing Your Way to the Top of the Food Chain," but if anyone has any better titles in mind after reading it, then comment to your heart's content. It was the best (I'm not saying good) pun I could think of. Here we go -


I’m sure that there are plenty of good ways to get kicked out of the Giant Eagle in North Olmsted. To be precise, in my three years at Oberlin I have discovered no less than thirty-seven separate activities which will elicit an immediate expulsion from that fine establishment. Now, many a sordid foot has walked many a noble path toward the goal of supermarket turmoil, and these heels of mine have worn their own deep groove in the linoleum corridors of suburban disruption. And yet in all my heists and experiences one prize sits out of reach. From the beige metal shelves of an A&P in Blairstown, NJ, to the endless rows of canned soup, a Warhol streak of wrapped bouillion and aluminum, in a Stop&Shop in Duluth, MN, one goal has ever remained beyond my fingertips. It represents the Holy Grail of supermarket discord; we rioters, merely its hopeful knights errant, ever striving and failing to find a means to attain it.

There it sits, calling to you from the back of the store. Always watched, always monitored by the mustached men behind the fish counter, their white coats spattered with pink from the day’s filleting. Your eyes find it easily, a murky brick of a dark and uneasy color, foreboding and incongruous amongst the shining sterile surfaces surrounding it. Blue-black and massive, with a slash of rocky orange at its heart. There, in the bottom of the tank, can you see them moving? They’re still alive you know. They’ve probably been in there for months – maybe years. Press your nose up to the glass, get a good long look. For there they sit, those jewels in the fluorescent crown of supermarkana, those armored warriors of the long-ago ocean bed: lobsters.

You see, lobsters have never made it as a successful part of anyone’s supermarket schemes. For one thing, a successful crustaceous operation is one which requires obvious planning, and most good shenanigans spring from spontaneity. For another, it just seems like a great deal of work, and frankly this can be some easy business. There is plenty of mayhem for a gifted fiend to create without resorting to drastic measures. I once got kicked out of a Bread&Circus in Northampton, MA for having nothing more than a simple Renaissance-style duel with a friend and a small selection of display lipsticks (which I won, five long stripes to his three). There’s shopping cart races for the unimaginative, shopping cart and french-bread jousting for the more bold, and blindfolded shopping cart Tank Commander with kiwi fruit for the truly daring. A small-size George Foreman grill, the Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine (mine is named The Duke), can plug in and provide a handy means of sampling wares from the meat aisle, but do remember to bring your own spices. Many a vegetable-aisle vandal will experiment with eating different food in different quantities – I find that an assortment of olives, grapes, string beans and carrots will be both yummy and unmistakably incriminating, both of which are good qualities in that sort of endeavor. Apples or pears, while obvious, are bland and a waste of valuable time. Pizzazz is important, remember! And of course, there are condiment wars.
But lobsters – oh the possibilities!

There are, of course, several terrible things one could do to them. Two words: Immersion. Boiler. Cruel in a way, but also potentially amazing – think of all those lobsters cooking at once in that tank, and the bewilderment of the fishmongers behind the counter! And hey, maybe they’d start giving out the cooked lobster for free since they couldn’t sell them anymore. For the psychologically optimistic, and malicious, there’s the idea of continuously melting butter in a pan in front of the tank, right where all the lobsters can see it. Then of course there’s the lobsters’ natural environment to keep in mind – what happens when we introduce one of their natural predators to the tank? Like this eel!!!

Of course, that wouldn’t be a fair fight – the lobsters all have their claws bound with rubber bands. If there were only a way to get those bands off, what an arena of fun we could dive (figuratively) into. Imagine pouring a bucket of live crabs in with the lobsters. Boy what a fight! Or giving them some fish to attack. Big ones, or scary ones like blowfish. Oh, the possibilities. Bread&Circuses indeed.

Yet there’s another angle to consider – revenge. Here you are in the supermarket, a decadent palace of frozen dinners and second-rate children’s toys, and marked for death in the tank before you are the once-proud warriors of a noble species. Woe, the loss of pride and glory! Woe, the humiliation! Yet you can help these lobsters reclaim their honor! These rubber manacled kings of the underwater deep, brought low from their former grandeur – you can right the ancient wrongs! We, friends, can deliver the lobsters unto their long-awaited revenge!

A lobster sits on the checkout counter, humiliated and doomed, and watches his executioner reach into her purse for her credit card. Yet what’s this? She screams and stumbles back, tearing her hand out of the bag and shrieking in pain. A lobster was in the bag, and now digs into her fleshy paw with all the strength of his great ocean-toughened claws. Children wail from their inescapable safety-seats in carts, where they find lobsters suddenly dropped in beside them. Unable to get out, their castles have become their crypts! Men from the butchers’ counter tear their faces in terror as the armored monsters skitter towards them across countertops and cutting boards, pinching like demons. A boy in the cereal aisle takes a box down from the shelf; but it explodes in his hands as a massive, pinching lobster leaps out from his hiding place to gorge his warrior’s fury.

The supermarkets will be in upheaval. Chaos: women screaming, clerks fainting, lettuce heads rolling across the aisles like tumbleweed. And across all of it, the lobsters. Glorious in their vengeful savagery, still they are caught in an inexorable chain of defeat. See them struggle on the slippery linoleum now that their passion has abated; some lie still, pulped by fallen canned-goods or crushed under stiff heels of heavy shoes. Yet their brief moment of glory is your moment of triumph. Supermarket bedlam, with lobsters. It’ll be beautiful.