No, please. Slow down. Take your time. Why should I care that your mission isn’t accomplished until you’ve got photographic evidence of every billboard and neon distraction in the midtown Manhattan area? It’s not like I’ve got anywhere important to get to.

I see you and your friends, who miraculously move at an even more, let’s say deliberate, pace than yourself, have decided to comb the entire width of this particular sidewalk in a horizontal shoulder-to-shoulder formation. I admire that. Perhaps next time you and all your hayseed cousins would actually like to walk hand-in-hand assuring that there is no way I could possibly get by you without stepping into the treacherously hectic street.

That’s just a helpful tip from someone with experience.

By the way, that camera is really nice. Is that genuine cardboard?

Yes, that gentleman asleep under the flower stand is homeless. Yes, his condition is terrible. But he can rest assured that enlightened folks such as yourself know that the best way to help him is to give him some small amount of cash and perhaps even take a picture. During rush hour. Yes, those are track marks between his toes. I’m sorry if his no-refund policy is very stringent.

Go ahead, buy an apple. Just be sure you’ve checked the ripeness of each one in the box as your large family mills around behind you awaiting your ruling.

And don’t worry. I know it can be embarassing when you realize you should’ve turned left four city blocks ago. Feel free to stop short in mid-stride and think about your next step for a while. No one will even notice.

Why should anyone care? This is New York City. We’re all just charming characters in your world. When we scream things like “What the fuck are you doing?” or, “Why won’t you get the fuck outta my way?” or, “Are you fucking autistic?” we’re just trying to emulate the genuine salt-of-the-earth New Yorkers you’ve seen on Law and Order and in Spiderman 2.

We love having you around. Especially if you move slowly due to a maimed leg.

Take Your Time Guy,

The Phil Wells

Plan Ahead 

In time I’ll finish dinner and I’ll cross the floor to dance.

Perhaps tomorrow I can pen another of my rants.

In yet a week we’ll see if I can can muster up the strength

To slink into the theater and review a show at length.

Next month I can imagine some new prince may saunter in,

To find my heart in pieces so rebuilding can begin.

But then next year he’ll leave me and I’ll be alone anew.

I guess for now I’ll draw a bath and give myself a screw.

Heals All Wounds 

For heartbreak no bandage or pill does the trick,

There’s one thing that does, my dear.  A dick.

But An 'A' For Effort 

I tried to stay awake all night and hoped you’d make it home.

I tried to stay awake all night; I slept.

I couldn’t read the letter that you’d written when you’d gone,

I couldn’t read because of how I’d wept.

I see you now in every constellation in the sky,

I steal my skyward glances like a thief.

I tried to be so quiet I could hear your journey home.

I tried to be so quiet, love.  I queefed.

 I work for one of those test prep companies, and for a while there I was responsible for making sure the Scantron tests scanned correctly.  Here is a list of names I have used to fill in the bubbles in that section of these scanned tests.  

• Arsebums McGillicutty
• Magnus Chestblossom
• Rich J Tuckustoots
• Antwon Fornipolio
• AAAA AAAAAAAAAA
• Pirate Astronaut
• Butt Loafbutt
• Cankles Fattitubb
• Wink Fartlepoots
• Tristan Apestump
• Wedge Hangnail
• Grump Angerteets

To celebrate the holiday season, each 2logger will be penning a post freely inspired by the classic song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' for the next 12 days. This will either be amazing or catastrophic. Merry Christmas!

 There is a magic cabinet in the 2log office that sends anything we put in it back in time to the year 1890, whereupon it is received by a Dr. Rex Baxter.  So we sent him a DVD player and some DVD's so he may see what our movies will be like.  Occasionally he wrote letters to the ghost in the cabinet.  Here is one such letter.

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

I was very pleased to have received your latest electrodisc, this time containing a story called "Black Swan."  I enjoy the ballet myself, and take the opportunity to attend whenever the urchins at Carnegie Hall decide they need to afford bread again.  Indeed, I am often called upon to administer shots of paste into the ballerinas' joints to restore their ground cartilage and humors.  Anything to support the arts!  (I charge healthily for the paste).

This movie was about an obsessed ballerina played by a muscular young man named Natalie Portman.  Rather, it is not so much about Nina (the ballerina's name) herself as it was about the obsession and eventual madness that accompanies her life in tights.  She has clearly been driven into this life by her mother, who herself is a failed dancer.

The relationship here is all too familiar to me.  Nina and her mother carry on like cousins and live like gypsies in an apartment insulated with ribbons and shoes.  I am reminded of my own childhood.  My mother, who was the first woman doctor to lift a horse off a governor, so wanted me to take on her career that she became carelessly selfless in assuring my future.  She lined my cradle with pages from the anatomy texts.  Every Christmas I received an animal to dissect.  Once when I pretended to be a police officer she drank laudanum with her coffee and couldn't be revived for hours.

Nina seems so virginal and pure in this movie that her every encounter with the seedy characters in her profession is an affront.  She recedes like a snail when touched.  She shivers at eye contact.  Indeed her frailty begins to unhinge her and eventually it becomes difficult to sort out what is real and what is being projected into the world by her mind.  The movie seems to be trying to confuse us on purpose for the sake of aesthetic effect.  It's much like the Hayes presidency in that way (if you'll forgive my cajoling!!).

I did not care for the lesbianism in this film, Cabinet Ghost.  This Natalie Portman gentleman ought to be ashamed making light of women afflicted with that mysterious parasite (lesbianism is caused by a head-worm called the gay).  

In the end, Black Swan is an apt study of perfectionism and control versus passion and loss of self.  I, for one, am familiar with the feeling of becoming one with a studied art.  There are times during surgery when I lose all sense of place.  I become the arteries which I am burning.  I am one with the brain I have brined.  Sometimes I look up from the corpse I have made and find that I am the only one smiling.  It is on these days that I can go home knowing that I am lucky to have found my true calling.  By reflecting the story of Swan Lake, Black Swan cleverly captures its themes by doing more than just telling us about them.  It becomes them.  Black Swan is madness at times.  It is a battle against itself.  I dare say it beats a night out throwing potatoes at the stage urchins.

This film passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

December 26, 1890

On February 17, 1865 General William Tecumseh Sherman burned Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, to the ground. People like to criticize Sherman for his scorched earth practices during the Civil War, but these naysayers are missing the big picture. When we hear that General Sherman burned a Confederate city to the ground, we picture this bearded man leading his Union troops around with torches and pick-axes. But that's historically inaccurate.

The truth is, General William Tecumseh Sherman acted alone.

General Sherman marched into Columbia, alone, around 5:30 AM on that fateful morning.  Sherman's spirits were high as he had just recently destroyed the city of Atlanta completely, which was a deciding factor in the re-election of Abraham Lincoln. Sherman's siege began with a fury of stones heaved at the city's capitol building. By stones, of course, I mean 2-ton boulders. Flaming boulders. Within minutes city hall was smashed into a pile of craggy debris and smoldering splinters. Mayoral aides and men in top hats were reported to have run around screaming through southern accents and flailing their arms about over their heads like excited Muppets.

At this time, around 6:15, a Confederate platoon led by General Suhh Beauregawd confronted Sherman outside the municipal slave stables. After roughly twenty minutes of fierce combat,Sherman had not only burned all his opponents to the ground, but he'd also salted and peed upon the earth where his fallen enemies lay so that future Confederate troops had no hope of springing up in the future.

Sherman took a break at this point for an authentic Dixie Brunch at Anil's Famous Waffle House. Sherman reportedly left a poor tip for his southern waitress before he razed the restaurant beyond recognition. The smell of burned syrup lingered over the city and its surrounding environs for weeks after that afternoon.

Over the next several hours, well into the twinkling twilight, Sherman dismantled all buildings, public parks, hitching posts, mailboxes, park fountains, police constables, mint juleps, floral gardens, hymens-of-age, and horses' faces within the city limits. Living witnesses, most of them terribly maimed, would say that Sherman was a frenzy of activity that day. It was reckoned that the General had rested very well the previous night and had lots of focus and an extra dose of "va-va-voom" with which to drive the chaos.

By the time Sherman had finished, Columbia, South Carolina was more crater than arable land. It is said that Sherman conceived 22 illegitimate children that day, and that most of the mothers had actually consented to the act because they were just so impressed. One of those children grew up to be Rutherford B Hayes.

Before you deride Sherman's March and how despicable his policy of total war was, remember that you are discrediting an act of superhuman ferocity. Sherman may have gone a little too far, but the fact that he was able to do it alone almost makes it more awesome than disgraceful.

Almost.

Q:  Hey Phil, why don't you use the sponge in the office kitchen's sink to wash your mug?

 Paul, the psychic octopus who famously predicted all the World Cup winners whenever that last World Cup was (what?  this year?  sweet christ this has been a long year!), has died.  Yes, he saw it coming.

Luckily for you, I've got some tips to keep on living in a world where a psychic octopus will no longer predict the outcomes of high-profile soccer matches.

1. Keep drinking.
2. Tell everyone you know that your pet seahorse is the reincarnation of Paul because HE JUST MIGHT BE.  Have him predict bowling champions.
3. Avoid the ocean, which is now dangerously unpredictable.
4. Attend soccer matches, which are now enjoyably unpredictable.
5. Honor Paul, then move on.  He would have wanted it that way.  Or he would've wanted algae.  Whatever it is that octopuses want.
6. Keep drinking.

In the end, don't stop drinking.  Drink like the fish that will one day usurp Paul, as he probably would have eventually predicted.

 My wife and I live with an old Southern know-it-all, and our hamster died last night.

The Southern gentleman's name is Colonel Hindsight and he just knows everything about everything.  When we first brought Colossus, our hamster, home, we had already fallen in love with him.  He was the most alert little guy in the cage at the store and he had bigger ears than any of his brothers.  He really was adorable.  "Don't muss with him a too much, suh.  He'll surely go into shock!" admonished the Colonel, but we weren't mussing him that much.  We handled him gently because he really was small and seemed so precious and fragile.  

That first night Colossus explored his cage with the standard hamster precociousness and curiosity.  The cage, by the way, had a crack in its plastic base, but it was already 9:00 pm and we didn't want to return it.  Here we had this hamster in a little cardboard box and a broken cage and we had to think quick.  "Take it back and demand a refund, suh!  That cage cost real money!"  The Colonel had a point, but we couldn't have even got another cage at that hour, right?  Sometimes even the Colonel misses the finer details.  We fixed the crack with some packing tape.

Well, by the second night Colossus wouldn't leave his nest.  He needed to acclimate, we told each other, while the Colonel nagged at us to make sure the little guy was eating and taking water.  Of course he was!

The third night came and Colossus still hadn't left his little bed of fluff.  "Don't even touch him!  Leave him be!" the Colonel said, having changed his mind.  But something was wrong.  It took awhile to rouse Colossus and when we did he shook and walked with a wobble.  "It's a stroke!  It's an ear infection!  Take him to a vet!"  But we Googled his symptoms and it looked like hibernation.

Hibernation is great for a 400 pound bear, but not for a 4-oz hamster who doesn't know to wake up occasionally and eat and drink.  Hamsters generally don't survive hibernation.  It happens to them like hypothermia happens to people.  "This room is too drafty!  You should be keeping him in an aquarium, not a wire cage!"  Colonel Hindsight is an expert when it comes to keeping small pets.

We laid poor little Colossus on a warm compress and laid a towel over him.  The warmth was good for him and he sprang back to life a few times, but each time with a little less vigor.  We focused on him for probably 2 hours (the Colonel estimates it was probably more like a half hour) before we decided to bring the heating pad setup over to the TV to watch an episode of The Wire.  "Irresponisble yanks!  You should be showering love upon this poor creature in his time of need!  You could be doing more!" the Colonel yelled.  We think he's more of a Deadwood guy.

Colossus was getting weaker and weaker and eventually he went limp and wouldn't blink but he was still breathing in fits.  "Make your peace with him now," the Colonel said solemnly, but we kept rubbing his back and reheating the pad, hoping for a miracle.  After 20 minutes of rubbing Colossus's back through the towel he squeaked and we perked up.  He squeaked again and we talked back to him, baby-talking and chuckling.  He took some water from a straw, the first drink he'd had in probably two days, and then the life just left his body.  

"Y'all shoulda got a dog," the Colonel said.  Colonel Hindsight can be a real son of a bitch sometimes.

The following poems by Dorothy Parker were recently recovered from the base of a potted plant found in her second-to-last apartment in Paris.  They have never been published.

My Loves In The Brine

I have seen the sailing ships drift all the way to sea

And cried as each revolting one stole all my love from me.

I've heard the cannons over there send death above the waves

And shudder now to listen to the hulls as each one caves.

The trenches and the sandy floor are nothing now but plots

Where, buried, silent, all my loves doze evermore in cots.

I weep, I weep until the next returning fleet comes into port,

And each new sailor bones me till I'm festering with warts.

Advice For Daughters

Don't let drunk men come on to you,

But dab it with seltzer in case that they do.

Ode To A Poor Diet

He wasn't judged by how he'd treat me

Or how his locks fell to his shoulder

When he left in May.

He'd simply naught to say

And anyway he'd gotten older,

And, what's worst, he'd never eat me.

A Lady Accessorizes

I fear it's true I'll never own

The niceties of social wives.

Instead, still spinning here alone,

I'll hole my socks and dull my knives.

I will want for china vases,

I will crave a silken fan.

Flying solo, as the case is,

I'll not ride a fine sedan.

No crested bird in gilded cage

Will sing its pitchy melody.

But tell their husbands I'm worth their wage:

Vases, fans, sedans, a cage;

Those things fit inside of me.