Drunken Pumpkin

“We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants,” the letter said.

The above is excerpted from an article that can be found at MSNBC.MSN.com

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.

I remember the first time I met Jeff. We were in some college class I generally try to block out of my mind, as the instructor contrived to make mythology boring. How the hell do you make dragons and sea monsters and trips into hell boring? I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t do it, but this lady had a knack.

Anyway, she was at the front of a giant lecture hall talking about the Greek conception of original man or some such nonsense, but illustrating it with two little Amish ragdolls. Seriously.

It was about this time that the room started to get a little bit dark. I noticed that my fellow students now all had glowing pumpkins instead of heads, and our professor had also acquired a gourd for a melon. It was during this revelation about the true nature of being that I saw I was destined for Greatness. (I mean, how can you eat that many pumpkins and not put on some pounds?) But violent, and slightly cannibalistic, fantasies aside, that’s when I met Jeff.

You see, it turns out that I was talking out loud through the bulk of the professor’s lecture, thus distracting nearly everyone around me. In retrospect it’s a bit of a shock that the professor didn’t hear me. Or maybe that was why she was giving me such dirty looks as she made her little Amish ragdolls perform a function they were never meant for. I mean, the Amish would be really upset if they knew their likenesses were in a college classroom. Plus the sexual connotations were a little creepy.

We ended up doing group work in that class, and Jeff got saddled with the crazy talking guy and some Hispanic chick. Now that I think about it, he was probably only worried about the crazy guy. The first thing I asked was if either of them noticed the professor looked a little like a pumpkin. And if they noticed that she often slurred a little like she was drunk. Like some kind of Alcoholic Jack-o-lantern. And thus a seed was planted.

To be continued…