…birdflew…

-Indifference is liquid. It seeps into your cracks, and freezes and thaws, causing the expansion and contraction of your protective shell.  Over time, the resulting stresses cause chunks to break off, leaving new fissures that expose your molten core to the elements. 

-I thought it was the fog of indifference.

-Indifference is solid – it is a lower-energy state, dense, and difficult to move.  Interest and aversion are liquid, they can change form, but are easy to contain.  Love and hate are gasses, show much more energy, and are much harder to contain.  I guess that would leave all-consuming obsession as plasma – highly charged, with properties that even scientists don’t quite understand.

-All three…You can’t see it, but you can feel it and it leaves you in tears.

-Gas. The state of indifference involves no movement, heat or pressure. However, everything needs to give and let off/ out gases.

-Indifference is all three. It starts out as a very solid idea, like ice.  As you think about indifference, and process it, it changes.  As you think about it more, and the idea dissapates, it melts into a liquid and eventually turns into a gas, as you become indifferent to indifference itself and just don’t care about the idea anymore.

-Well, I’d wager it’s a gas, as one often blows air through their lips when shrugging something off with indifference. Phonetically, this is spelled “pfft.”

-A gas that once it has affected a person turns solid and weighs like a rock on their soul.

Finding these was like one day opening the mailbox to find forwarded postcards from someone else’s trek through my dreams.

Current obsession, addendum to yesterday: Camille Seaman.

The clock is winding down on the exam, class, but I’m not noticing right now because I’m astounded to see photographic evidence of the exact colors and landscape that I didn’t think existed anywhere outside my head.  Use this time to your advantage.

Current obsessions: Subsidence as applied to daily life, dreams of being lost, so many times, (i) tried not to wonder:

I know we’ve spent a lot of time collectively studying Biology lately.  It is in fact an endlessly fascinating topic, especially when we dissect the functions of our biological urges and those of others.

However, we haven’t really been paying attention to the elements, and how they function.  Yes, we’ve had some volatile experiments in the past, as well as certain solutions that just didn’t crystallize no matter how long we left them over the Bunsen burner.   What are our observations?  Can we alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements?

 Class, we’re overdue for a pop quiz in Chemistry.  Please put away your books and take out a #2 pencil. 

1.) What is the half-life of love? 

2.) When does attraction become inert? 

3.) Is the natural state of indifference a liquid, gas or solid?

Goggles are recommended during this test and any lab-work as I cannot guarantee something will not splash in your eye.  Please remember to document all lab-work.  You will need to show all equations and work in your answers.  There are no extra-credit but this will be graded on a curve.

Please answer via email or comments.

This test is timed. 

-The Time Bandit: Somehow I’ve managed to learn how to squeeze extra hours in the normal, human, 24-hour clock. 

-Super G: I have the power to get violently angry about things that only ever happened in my head.

-The Claw (AKA Mrs. William Peterson): I can scratch out someone’s eyes with my nails. The claws can be used for sensual or defensive purposes….or both…(Ed note: The nails and hands in question are truly beautiful, no kidding.)

-The Perfector - I make sure there is no detail overlooked and everything is just so. Sometimes I am my own enemy because an imperfect thought could lead to a mistake. There is no room for error in a perfectly edited life. My Kryptonite is criticism and my best defense is my stubbornness. I highly dislike being referred to as anal retentive, please choose your words wisely. Unwavering persistance is what ultimately leads me to perfection and is my secret weapon.

-Needy McGrabby: The nicest little squid you’ll ever meet and promptly forget.  Finder of snacks, polisher of shoes, whose kindness makes the insecure bolt.

-Directron the Movinator- I stopped overanalyzing things and had to play Tetris to keep my mind occupied.  I found I had an ability for this and a superb sense of direction.  With these two forces, I can use them for good: by helping people move.

-The Clod: Extra-ordinary clumsiness!

-My superhero name is Dylan Schwartz and my superpower is being a Schwartz every day of my life without imploding upon myself.

-Halloween: Every day I am someone else, dressed as someone else, behaving like someone else.  It is the freedom to not be me.

-Not your average sugar and spice… more like Cheetos and Yellow-tail.

-The pure love of God made grossly manifest. Also, smoothies and pasta.

-Guts.

-Strings. All people are musical instruments.

-Blue.

-Klingons.

-Suffocation.

-Olives.  Space smells tangy and pungent which is a little bit scary to me because I love olives.

-There’s no air in space so you can’t smell. Sorry, I’m a dork so I take this literally.

-Burnt snow.

-Meatloaf.

-Fresh snow. Like, a snow-cone before the sugary goodness is added.

-I’m the Second-Guesser.  Actually, I’m not;  she’s my evil twin.  But because we look alike, people mistake us for each other.  She shows up in town, and spreads worry, doubt, general unease and confusion.  I’m constantly trying to stay one step ahead of her and when I can’t, I’m left to right her nefarious wrongs.  We’re locked in an eternal struggle against each other. 

-Radioactive Worry.  I can make my worry grow and grow.  My challenge is to use my powers for good instead, and apply them to make my worries mutate  into something beautiful and positive and possibly glittery.

-The Amazing Non-Sequitur: His lateral thinking ability allows him to connect two completely unrelated thoughts!  Able to leap large gaps in logic with a single noun!  He can derail a train of thought with merely a word! He will trap you within your own confusion!

-Pi Girl: I have the ability to explain math to people who don’t usually get it.

-Jason: While having no known superpowers to speak of, I do posses the uncanny ability to create amazing superpowers for spectacular superheros. My superhero name is comic book artist.

-The Age-Defying Robot: I have the ability to convert exhaustion and English muffins into high octane fuel.

-The Seductress: I make  goals and always reach them.  Although I have every ability to do this on my own, sometimes I have to do a little extra on my part, to convice Fate to put in a good word for me.   

-The Amazing Scheming Duo (Not to be confused with the Amazing Following-Through-Getting-Stuff-Done-Duo): In their ever-changing brainstorm, the Amazing Scheming Duo generates the rumblings of ideas on the horizon.  You will see the most electric flashes of brilliance, but beware: you may find yourself swept away in their flood of enthusiasm for the esoteric and ridiculous.  Approach only when wearing galoshes. (Ed note: Tagline submitted by the editor to the duo for review and approval, and is approved by 50% of the Duo at this time.  Full approval is pending.)

-After six years of graduate school, my superhero power is whatever a human being can possibly do with one professional degree, two graduate degress in unrelated fields, and a bunch of science education and electronic music courses that had nothing to do with his degrees in the first place.  Also I have the uncanny ability to pick advisors that will have deleterious effects on my career and mental stability. 

-The Excellerator: I love to play with Excel because I’m a numbers-dork.  I guess I would say I’m Excel-lent.  (Ed note: The Excellerator was suggested by yours-truly as an option for a name, and he preferred this.)

What is your ordinary, everyday super-power?  What are you doing, every day, that can be quantified, and named?  This isn’t asking what you would do.  We already know you would fly, shoot lasers from your eyes or seduce women without consequence.   The pages of pulp novels  are already filled with these stories.  Yours is as-yet unwritten and unrecognized, because the unsuspecting public most likely doesn’t know you exist.  This question is asking you to out yourself and what you do. 

 So…are you in, or are you out?

Public Square, Cleveland and Edward Burtynsky’s Quarries.

Collapse vs excavation.