cup_o_noodles lycanthrope Cup O'Noodles In the wee hours, the magic mirror hours, when your face contorts and bends in the soft light if you stare yourself down long enough, the pets, the neighbors, the kids, the wife, with their hopes and calendar entries are all fluttering eyes and snores. I've had the news on in the background for years, months, weeks, days, minutes. Plagues and bombings and an elite cabal of weirdos and freaks grinding our bones to powder their wigs. On the TV the talking head solemnly intones "in an unprecedented outrage," and appeals to the innocence of children, prior to describing a very precedented outrage. Caligula appointed his horse to the senate. Could you imagine the memes? If you can think of a nasty manner of brutish torturous spectacle, it's been done to children at some point in history with the approval of the local magistrates or an emperor or a mob. The microwave makes its soothing rotations and drones a modern mantra. My face distorts in the soft reflective glare of the door, my expression is unchanged as the newscaster discusses collateral damage - collateral to rights, collateral to wrongs. While I wait for the bell to sever me from the abstract, I return to reading a forum post about the rise in colorectal cancer and its relation to processed foods and microplastics. Yes, the sodium will kill you and the packaging will outlast the Coliseum, but eat the cup o'noodles anyways. It is too late to return to the savage plain of our ancestors, to the long stretch of days without news from distant lands, honor your own suffering - unheralded as it is, as it will put something in your belly, something warmer than the rattling of toy soldiers and broken dolls and stock tickers. They're going to keep killing each other, or you, or someone. You're going to get colorectal cancer anyways. Eat your cup o'noodles huddled, bathe in sodium, and take what warmth you can from it 260311 what's it to you? who go blather from