we betray that we are mere apprentices

every blank page is both a wound and a doorway

sometimes the absence is more compelling. let's lack something and then feel its presence forever in the empty space where it should be.

One of the uncomfortable tensions of being a university instructor and being on the internet is that students try to explain their use of AI for schoolwork with 'pressures on students have never been higher' but I have access to many decades' worth of syllabi and know for a fact that the standards to which universities hold students have never been lower. Especially after the pandemic, standards for reading, writing, and academic rigour all took a really obvious nosedive. Clearly people feel a lot of pressure - that I do not deny - but it's not because curricula have become harder. They haven't. They've become much easier.

growing up i never understood why people call vegan food bland because a lot of my family is vegan and i like their cooking just fine. but today i had a vegan burger from a fast food place that was using imitation meat and imitation cheese and imitation mayo and yeah it tasted fucking: Bad. an uncanny burger of lies and deceit. a burger with burger envy. like it couldnt embrace the fact it wasnt a real cheeseburger and was thus living a lie to appease its strict burger parents. you want good vegan food you need the stuff thats meant to be meat-free from the ground up. eat a delicious rice and bean bowl with me. take my hand. there is a better world.......

what da hell is a chinook (helicopter) doing out here

and why is it fluttering around above my damn house.