Juxtapose

So I spent the weekend over Handzel's in Maine. We just chilled, mostly, spending the precious few hours that we had when she wasn't working (she worked from 3-11PM) just talking about everything. We discussed the newly-developed courtship of C and P (YESTHEYSOOOARECOURTING), the value of buying American-made cars, music, God, and the curious lives of dead lobsters. Working in a kitchen of a posh hotel and being a student of culinary arts as she is, Handzel is privy to a great number of lobster experiences. Did you know that if you stab two lobsters through the head with a knife so that they're dead so you can get the tails off of them to cook, and then you put the tow lobsters in a box together, they'll fight, even after their untimely demise? Or, did you know that if you chop the tail off of a lobster, the nerve impulses make the tails swish away by themselves on the cutting board for a while? Or, did you know that their claws still snap at you for a minute after you chop them off? OR, ORRRR, did you know that, because its veins have no valves, if you turn a lobster upside down and stroke its belly, it goes unconscious? I mean, man, after that conversation I was so ready to invest in a couple of lobsters.

While Handzel was at work, I attempted to while away the lonely hours by reading. I tried reading Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, but due to lack of sleep, the letters started swimming in front of my eyes and I ended up taking a nap. After that, I still had a good four hours to go, so I went upstairs and used a curious thing called "dialup," on a mysterious contraption called a Mac. In honorarium of Handzel's beloved eMac, the parting of which from me was very sweet and not-so-sorrowful, I leave you with this ancient poem I composed in order to verbalize, of the Mac, my deep internal conflict between physical aesthetics and user enjoyment.

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"Ode To Handzel's eMac"

Curse you, O One-Button'd Mowse!
For the cyuteness of Thyne clycks coulde n'er
Soothe the savage needes of myne fyngyres.
Myne ryght hand is become exceedyngly bor'd.

Be Thou Smalle? Compacte?
Yet Thou art sadly rounded and not squar'd,
Myne favour'd cyubycal shapyng of form mowst brylliynt:
The shapyng of cheese and sugare cubes.

'Ere I cannot fynde Thyne copye and payste,
Therefor do I hope Thyne modeme not to dysconnecte.
Thou art shyny and whyte and cleane,
Yet Thou art not myne fyrst luve.