Gold Day. Formerly A Day. Day 29.

Today the muses have left me behind and have gone on to dip their wingtips into the souls of others. I must craft nothing but the leftovers of my day into a bitter stew called simply:

My Grievances with the World and Other Musings

(Except if you read closely above these aren't really musings because the muses have abandoned me. Enter, grievance number 1.)

Grievance number 2. Birds that walk. I don't mean ostriches. I mean birds that have the ability to soar and dive and ride the wind like untethered Valkyries, yet choose to walk slowly like old men shopping in a deli.

Grievance number 3. Still birds. This time birds that have access to the broad expanse of the Everglades, or the Atlantic Ocean where Florida dips her peninsular toes (I almost had a tragic misspelling there. I caught it.) Instead I see birds that spend vast amounts of time in puddles filled with motor oil and the runoff of every pastel shaded green fertilized yard of South Florida.

Grievance number 4. Free will. It annoys me greatly that I have it and yet for some reason I still show up at work every day when surely there must be other options. Free will is a taunting mistress.

Grievance number 5. Fourth period AP Government and Politics. I remembered to collect all of the homework today except from fourth period. It was only mentioned by one person as she exited the class. "I suppose you aren't going to collect the homework today?" No. Everyone is gone. I'm sure I'd be put on some sort of list if I drove to all of your houses and demanded the homework while I waited in my car and honked the horn until it was produced. Fourth period is a disappointment to me and probably also to others.

Grievance number 6. Kids who don't return from lunch during split classes. I assume it's because one lunch is not enough and like some gluttonous hobbit you stay for a second lunch to cram extra slices of school pizza and roast quails, and pickled kippers down your gullets like some sort of horror scene painted by Hieronymus Bosch. Look it up if you're curious.

Grievance number 7. The uncomfortable feeling that somewhere someone is drawing an unflattering picture of you.

Grievance number 8. Walmart. It's not cheaper. It makes you feel cheaper when you are there, however It is a cheapness of the spirit. It is as if one sold his soul and only got to learn how to play the harmonica, or an ocarina. For a day. And then never became famous.

Grievance number 9. The Americas ever only domesticated two types of animals. Turkeys and llamas. Everything else we know of as domesticated were domesticated in the old world of Asia, Africa or Europe. This is America. I should be able to come home to a pasture of full of grizzly bears and a coop full of eagles, both of them waiting for the nightly hand out of salmon nuggets. I would keep an eagle on each shoulder and ride a bear majestically to work and leave it tied up in the teachers parking lot until it was time to leave. Instead I have to drive a car.

Grievance number 10. Oranges. I have no way of describing the color of an orange unless it's unripe. Otherwise I just sound repetitive or redundant.

Fin