“Richard, I’m sorry for…” Listen, I am in college. I understand the occasional “spontaneous” rant about life, the occasional casual insult, and other occasional minor inconveniences that are caused by other people. To be entirely honest, I am one of the most patient people that I know. I don’t really know why I am, but it is the way that things are. It could be due to the fact that one of my parents was (is) a child psychologist, and having a good ear comes with the territory. All of that aside, there is a point where a little bit of complaining turns into venting existentialism that is borderline nihilistic. For whatever reason, certain individuals that I have come to be friends with have taken to this kind of venting quite often. This kind of venting seems to occur at times when these individuals are not in the best… state of mind. In the morning, I can usually expect a… sobering apology. This is generally in the form of an octopus that had been hand made out of yarn. In a political science class, one might hear of the concept of a proportional response. To be entirely honest, I don’t think an octopus has much of anything to do with an apology, but I have accumulated quite a collection of these unassuming balls of yarn. In general, I write about some lesson that I have learned, or I like to tell a story with some sort of punch line. I don’t know what the point of this was, other than the need that I felt to justify the line of octopi that has been steadily growing on my bookshelf.

-“I got hit with an octopus in Detroit one time. It was the most gross thing I’ve ever had happen. I got it right in the back of the neck; all of the juice was coming down. It was awful.”- Pat Burns…I don’t actually know who this is, but I thought the quote was entertaining enough to warrant writing it down.