come from far afield.

On the way to the range today, Partner (Easily the smartest person I know) and I are humming the Burl Ives song I tortured you all with last week.

“Great. Two functional brain cells working and they have this damned song caught in a loop”

“Actually,” I said, “I think all the other shit is still there. All those hooky bubblegum songs. All that crazy shit they tried to pump into our heads in high school. I think the loudest one just cows the others”

“Like the lobster who got the rubberband off his claw” he responds.

And in a flash I’m taken back, almost twenty years, to a double date we were on (I think. he thinks it was just us boys). We sat in the waiting area with a couple women whose locks we fully intended to pick later that selfsame evening, and watched as a rather large lobster who had managed to slip the rubberband off one claw had cowed the other lobsters in the tank- it sat in the middle, king of it’s domain, while the other lobs kept to the ends and corners of the tank lest they lose extremities.

yes, I thought, that’s a goddamned powerful metaphor for not only the way your brain catches a thought, or an earworm, but also how one person slips the rubberband off his claw and tries to take over the show.

I specifically asked for that lobster, and I ate his ass.

You may think your a big shit now, but sooner or later, something bigger is gonna come along and eat your ass, and their digestive system will turn you into shit.

I have actual hope for this country now.