Although I usually don’t take too well to poetry, gentle reader, I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” today and found it striking. The syntax, the refrains, the weave of words, the protest against child labor in English mines and factories–all of these things reminded me of why I enjoy English courses. After savoring this poem, I turned to Dickens’ Hard Times, a novel infinitely more engaging than Sense and Sensibility.
Coupled with the drab gray outside, this literature created in me that sweet, tangible melancholy so popular in nineteenth-century England. And so I exited Norris to a campus made primordial with the raw smell of ozone, and then the clouds insisted on drizzling, and dinnertime eventually rolled around. Tim, Esther, and I decided to sup at Cafe Luciano.
At this point, my satisfying melancholy turned to disappointed annoyance. Much of the restaurant–the patrons, the host, and the waiter come to mind–screamed Norshore, and I accordingly expected the food to taste Norshorely good. The cuisine, it turned out, was on par with that of Olive Garden, and I would have gladly chosen the latter for equally good food with 75% less pretension. A word of warning (and possibly of advice): If you ever want to knock someone unconscious, grab some bread from the good Cafe and use it to whack your victim.
On this momentous day, Suite 280 received a shipment of special t-shirts. I’m wearing it now as I write to you, gentle reader, and let me tell you–it’s everything I thought it would be. Gone are the days when I would mail in a gazillion cereal box tops in irrepressible hope, only to find six to eight weeks later some shrinkwrapped refuse on my doorstep. What arrived in my mailbox today, you see, resembled what the Chapman brothers advertised to a “P.”
That “P” belongs to Pom Pom, whom some of you will recognize as Homestar Runner’s main man. This portly alien possesses sex appeal that boggles the mind–and all without a Green Card. Who would’ve thunk it? And the cotton feels special, as if the mysterious Homsar washed it in his sacred drool. And the sheer aura from the shirt screams, “I could defeat you in a knife fight.”
Indeed, it’s made from the best stuff.
Perceptive gentle readers will note that although I didn’t publish anything of value–yeah, repeat after me, something of value–yesterday evening, this post seemingly materialized out of nowhere.
“Why wasn’t there a post?” you ask, eyes a-twinkle with malice.
Two words for you, gentle reader: GODDAMN ELVES.
Since I’m so resourceful, however, I’ve got another three words for you on how I solved this dilemma: we bought time. That’s right; Secondhand Rants now owns time. It was a little rough on the bottom line, but sometimes you’ve got to splurge a little, you know?
And I will spend a little of your time by suggesting that, should you own a Gamecube, you MUST purchase Ikaruga. I plugged this game in yesterday’s post, and it’s simply the best 39.99 I’ve spent in recent memory. This little gem will make your humble abodes alive: alive with women laughing maniacally, philosophy majors curling into fetal position right after expounding on blues and reds, and would-be rhetoricians spewing rhetoric–mere rhetoric, take note–while furiously mashing buttons.