Dear My MP3 Player,

I lost you on the bus, I think, or maybe when I was just getting onto the bus. My MP3 player, I assure you that it wasn’t intentional. I had you playing, as I always did, and a song had just ended as I was getting on the bus, so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear music for a moment, but then when I didn’t hear a song start up again, I checked for you and only found the end of the headphone cord. You were gone. Maybe you caught on something as I stepped onto the bus and fell onto the ground. I couldn’t find you on the floor of the bus.

You may have been an old MP3 player that I would often find reason to complain about. You had no option to play randomly and you had to spend three minutes “updating” every time I recharged you. But you were purple, which was cool. And you took a lot of damage, which is a useful skill for anything I own. You served me well for several years and now I miss you.

But that isn’t the main reason for this letter, MP3 Player. The main thing I need to say is that you are an MP3 Player, you can not read letters. Please stop reading this. It is freakin’ me out. Stop it.

Yours ponderously,
Patrick D Ryall

Well, I’m pretty sure I left my copy of Brighton Rock on a bus someplace. It could be worse, I was only a couple pages into it, so I wasn’t all that invested (when I lost my copy of Don Quixote a few years back, I had invested months of reading time into it, so I needed to buy another copy), but I hope that someone finds and reads it. That’s the best result we can hope for at this point.

Haiku!

You ain’t never seen
a truck like this one before.
It has ballistae.

There was this thing in the paper last night about some Austrian priests who wanted to see some changes in the Church and the Pope was all like “Nah”, well fear not Austrian priests. When I am the Pope, I will have your back. Just get me in there, guys.

I have just uploaded the latest chapter of Adventure Dennis. It is worth noting that that rounds out my average to one level for every year since I started making Adventure Dennis. That is, of course, pathetic. I am hoping to actually finish the thing off over the next few months, so maybe I will be able to get that average up to 1.5 a year. Hooray!

Haiku!

In these troubled times,
There will come a unique man.
He will eat a moon.

In other news, I have been reading the Iliad and it is taking me FOREVER. I mean, getting through Don Quixote actually took most of a year, I think, so the two months I have been at the Iliad are paltry in comparison, but for the last year I had been working through about a book a week. It might help if I read at home instead of just at free moments at work and on buses and what not, but I have the Internet at home. Productivity just ain’t gonna happen.

Also, ducks should have a species of fish that helps them out. That would be real teamwork.

That’s all.

Let’s see… Kip and I saw that Across the Universe movie. Not bad. Not much in the way of a plot, really, but maybe all musicals are like that, what do I know?

As I was walking home from the bus stop tonight some guys drove by yelling incoherently. The only thing I made out was “Allahu Akbar!” While I thought it was hilarious, I wondered shortly after if they were trying to be vaguely threatening by acting like “terrorists” or something. How drunk they clearly were really negated anything malicious they were trying to get across.

My ideal situation though would be that they were actually just really drunk and really thought God Was Great and felt like sharing. That would be nice.

In other news, I ate way too much candy today. I would do it again too. Try and stop me.

And finally: Inspirational lyrics to end my pose:

Kick, Punch, Turn,
I got the funky flow,
M-I-X the flour into the bowl.

Peace out.

Since I wrote this up to explain to someone else, I might as well use it here as well. This is the dream from which I am recently awakening:

“Well, I was on a bus. A bus only for superhumans and I was a Skrull who looked human. I, and who ever I was with (a man visually based on Coop from Megas XLR, who was also a Superhero but not a Skrull). We were riding the bus across town while I was trying to put up with the driver who kept complaining about Skrulls and “Coop” tried to keep me calm. I changed my shirt from Orange to Green in the hopes this would keep me noticing I was a Skrull (How that works, I don’t know, but it was the only shape changing I successfully did the whole dream. I did spend much time considering getting off the bus and flying home but I was sure I couldn’t remember how to shapeshift into a bird.)

As the ride continued, the other superhumans kept picking fights with us one at a time and the driver would always slow down to let us throw off those we defeated. He was starting to get to like us and was going to put a good word in for us (With whom? Unknown) until as we cross the bridge that led to our stop I was attacked by two guys and beat them up. The driver revealed that one of those two was his father. I asked how that was possible since they were both younger than him, but he just kicked us off the bus (we were now at our stop anyhow).

It seemed good until the bus driver must have changed his mind and the bus started coming after us. We ran (I tried to turn into a bush to hide, but could not remember how to do so). We saw the driver get off the bus with three men I recognized as Mr. White, Mr. Blue and Mr. Black (each had an AK-47 in their color) and they were chasing us. But Mr. Blue was secretly on our side and helped me beat Mr. White and the driver, then we talked Mr. Black into joining us too. The Four of us returned to the bus and our victory somehow activated our Transformer powers. “Coop” became Optimus Prime and had the voice and everything.

And I… still didn’t know how to transform even though I was now two species of shapechangers.”