I’ve received word from my father that Bart has died. Bart is the cockatiel that has been our family pet since a time that none of us can remember. This is him:

We don’t know exactly how old the little guy was, but I expect he was near twenty, possibly just above it. Bart did not have a very exciting life, but that is okay, he hated excitement. Bart was ever terrified of everything around him. The poor guy did not like anything close and would hiss at anything that he didn’t know that got too near (and often things he did know, too). And if anything close to him moved too quickly, it was just straight up panic time! For a bird, he was not a flyer. He almost never ventured further than his own cage (walking on the outside of the cage was his idea of getting out). What did he like? He liked chewing on plastic, being sprayed with water, and chirping. He is my favorite cockatiel.

Thanks for being around, little guy.

Here’s dem Phone Guys for this week:

That’s all I gots.

Here’s a story:

Theodore Blintler didn’t even know he was being followed by robots. Sure, he heard a strange buzzing now and then, or the sound of clinking metal, but he had pretty bad eyesight, so he never noticed the seven robots that were about ten feet behind him everywhere he went. Theodore Blintler worked in a horse raincoat factory as a horse raincoat designer. Theodore had designed the most popular, best-selling horse raincoat of the last three decades. Theodoe was kind of famous in the horse raincoat industry. This is why the robots were following him. The owners of a failing cow raincoat factory had somehow come up with the money to build seven robots and had them follow Theodore Blintler around, hoping to copy his success for themselves. This all came to a head one day when Theodore was eating a terrible, terrible lunch in a diner across the street from the horse raincoat factory. The robots had been leaning against the door, pressing their ears against it, straining to hear any animal raincoat-related mutterings Theordore might emit, when the door collapsed inward and all seven of the robots tumbled into the diner with a crash. Theodore, startled by the noise, choked on a bit of burnt egg and died. The robots were embarassed and the cow raincoat factory went out of business. Nobody would ever know, but Theodore had been planning a shooting spree at his office with intent to kill dozens. Unfortunately, one of the people Theodore would have killed was a serial murderer who went on to kill dozens of other people. One of the victims of the serial killer had been building a bomb that he planned to blow up a school. The moral? Someone get some raincoats for the cows!

Anyway, there’s a story. Memorize it and tell it to your children.

In other news, I got an A-minus on a History essay and an A on a English essay this week. That is pretty different from the kind of marks I was getting at my previous attempt at school. This proves that procrastination is not gonna hurt me because, man, I been procratinatin’ all the live-long day with these essays. And now I don’t have to stop procrastinatin’! Hooray!