Pipeline Hits the Road
Just a head's up, Pipeline will be on hiatus until at least October 3. Jane and I are traveling to a beach wedding in Oregon, then on to Seattle, then I'm almost immediately off to Austin, TX for business. I don't have remote posting capabilities, so you'll get nothing and like it!
Admittedly, I do feel guilty for the lack of content in the last week, followed by a week of complete inactivity, so I will regale you with this story:
The other day I was waiting for Linus at his bus stop when I felt something moving around in my pocket. I felt it because I had my hand in my pocket. I wasn't playing pocket pool, I just happened to have my hand in my pocket in a perfectly natural and innocent way. Anyway, I felt something fluttering around my hand while it was in my pocket, almost like a crumpled up paper straw wrapper I was bouncing around, except there was no straw wrapper and my hand was perfectly still.
I pulled my hand out to see what it was, looked down, and saw a bee stuck to my finger. As soon as I saw the bee it stung the fuck out of me. I don't want to sound like a pussy, but it really fucking hurt. I'd been stung once before, on the heel of my foot when I was a kid. I remember that hurt, but nothing like this. It was like somebody stuck a little miniature light sabre into my finger. I screamed and started flapping my hand around and jumping up and down. Linus's bus pulled up while I was doing this. The worst part was the bee didn't have to sting me at all; it was already out of my pocket before it stung me. It could have just flown away to freedom, but no, it decided it would sacrifice its own life to teach me some sort of lesson,which is absurd because it was 100% the bee's fault that it flew into my pocket in the first place.
I take this as prima facie evidence that bees are not smart, no matter what people say about their elaborate dances and advanced communication methods. Being a good dancer doesn't make you smart.
That was a couple days ago, and I was never able to get the stinger out of my finger. It was a tiny little splinter that just got deeper and deeper into my epidermis the harder I tried to extract it. It was so small; how can a little thing like that cause so much immediate and intense pain? It probably didn't even hit a nerve. Why do bees have so much power? And if that's how much a little ordinary bee sting must hurt, I can't imagine how much a giant wasp or hornet sting must hurt, plus you don't even get the satisfaction of knowing they are going to die for what they did to you. And they'll keep stinging you until either they are done stinging you or you die.
On the other hand, getting stung by a bee is no picnic, because now I have part of a bee's ass embedded in my finger. That might be OK if I could pull it out and reuse it as a stinger to smite my enemies at the wedding, but it looks like I'll have to rely on my old standby of talking behind people's backs and rifling through their luggage while they aren't around.
11:32:07 PM 
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