Henry M. loves dnL. He loves it so very much that when he learned the product was going to be discontinued, he bought all the remaining stock in his town’s supermarkets and stored it in a cupboard, where his camping equipment used to be (and a dead bird, which upset Henry M., as it was still alive when he last took out his camping gear a year or two previous).

The bird in question:

As an aside, did you know dead birds don’t really smell?

Dead birds dry up quickly, and stay remarkably intact when kept in a cool and dry cupboard in a house kept aggressively free from flies (Henry M. told passionate stories about his legal war against insects).

Every month, Henry M. would treat himself to one of the bottles of dnL.

This is not our Henry M:

It’s a different Henry M. instead. To get back on the subject of cupboards, Henry M. once hid inside his dnL storage cupboard. It was a retreat for him, a place of escape and control and feeling at home. Much like so:

Henry M. had depleted 2 crates of dnL by the time he hid in the cupboard, according to his rule of one bottle per month plus a fair share of them due to a losing streak of self-discipline vs. addiction. With those 2 crates gone, he could fold himself into the space now available to him in the cupboard, and hid there for what he described as “half the freakin’ day”, in near complete darkness. In the cupboard Henry considered his wealth of dnL. He considered the comfort of the cupboard, and he considered that he should really learn to control himself (but wasn’t it made alright, he asked me, because of the expiration dates and the danger of the flavour changing afterwards? He better deplete them before that happens, right? I didn’t know what to tell him.)

Henry M. really enjoyed that sojourn into cupboardness. He talked about it at length with me, the only person he seemed to consider a friend. And apparently he did go back into the cupboard, and apparently when he wanted to get out again… he couldn’t. He had been able to fold himself into the cupboard, but seems to have found great difficulty in unfolding himself. This is where I come in. I received a text message:

A fair enough request, except that Henry lives in the United States whereas I live in England. We do now and we did then. This I considered a reasonable obstacle to helping Henry out, so I declined, implicitely, by never showing up.

This is his house in Vancouver, WA (not to be confused with Vancouver, BC in Canada):

He’s in the house with the basketball court out back. Might actually still be in the cupboard. Would that be possible? I never did hear of him again. Let me give Henry a call. Or actually, international rates are pretty steep.

A chronicling of passionate admiration, spiders, and goats.

First there was the very amusing exchange of short emails between Spider Guy and a library lady:

http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html

This struck a chord with me. It struck several chords. It struck a fair bunch of chords, but in a harmonious fashion.

I then sent a loving message of admiration, explaining how I wanted this man’s babies. He replied magnanimously, accepting my proposal and promising a bright future of owning a monkey and starting a goat farm together. My next reply was longer and more stalkerish, to which Spider Guy did not reply. This, understandably, to my great disappointment. I might include excerpts of some of these emails at a later stadium. Don’t rush me! Maybe you should empty your fridge!!

After almost two weeks of silence (in which I had a mildly exciting holiday, thank you) I realised I had been abandoned, that there would be no babies or marriage or goats or monkeys. My sorrow was great and I ate many a tasteless biscuit while lamenting my fate.

Taking pity on me, a colleague suggested therapy through Hitler spoof, to express my emotions by somehow bringing spiders and lost love into a scene from the film Der Untergang (The Downfall). Here be the result:

Googling “The elephant thought”:

The elephant thought that, from an elephantine view, there were basic flaws in the whole plan.

The elephant thought how much more efficient that would make him and so he asked the farmer to give him the stick.

The elephant thought that it required “Balls” to say such a thing.

The elephant thought: “There must be water there;” and climbed the mountain.

Everybody tried to run away and the elephant thought he was in danger.

but the Elephant thought this was inappropriate

The elephant thought about it for a minute and decided what the heck.

and for a moment the Elephant thought his friend the Spinning Wheel had come out to the barn to play.

One day the elephants were eating in a field when Elvis the Elephant thought of a funny joke. “Mouse!” he yelled.

Now, by repeatedly listening to the glorification of the cruelty the elephant thought that cruelty alone was the virtue.

The elephant thought, “Now what is a little monkey going to do for me?”

It appears there are quite a few sentient elephants on the web.

Searching, unrelated, for “dancing whale” on YouTube:

Monkey Dust Tap / Ballroom Dancing Whale

Some actual articles on elephantine intelligence:

Elephant intelligence: Why elephants might be as smart as humans. @ Associated Content

Elephantine intelligence @ The Nature Institue

Elephant intelligence @ Wikipedia

Original research sources can be found in the References section of the Wikipedia article.