Existing In BFE

Why I Stopped Journaling Sometime over a decade ago I decided to open a Blogger account and start a website that would let my family know what was going on with me, they in Florida and Iraq, and me in Illinois.  It was an innocuous collection of thoughts and photos - insanely shallow and forgettable.  Motorcycle ride pics, garage party pics, maybe some silly text that would let my family, and a growing number of friends see what I was up to.  It grew through the years to a kind of formal daily ritual complete with editorial essays, and frothy pronouncements ranging from housecleaning tips to world events.   This last November or thereabouts I stopped, except for a few comments - let's call them cadaverous twitches.  For the past year I focused, rightly or wrongly on an election I deemed essential to our future.  I guess after all these years I finally found my flag-waving patriotism.   It seemed all the more important, to me anyway, to u...

Patience and Fortitude There is a particular time, near midnight on Christmas Eve, when all people, at least those who are not accustomed to seeing hallucinatory visions, go inside and spend time with their loved ones, or ones they pretend to love. A small number of those familiar with things that can’t happen, but do, and things others consider monsters and frightening remain. A still smaller number find themselves outside a marble building in Manhattan, and two of that small number are friendly monsters themselves. “Pat, you awake?” grumbles one. “How many times do I have to tell you I hate being called Pat?” “What kind of name is ‘Patience,’ anyway? For a guy, for a lion.” “Do I call you Fort? No, I respectfully call you Fortitude. Fortitude the Asshole.” Fortitude growled quietly as he stretched out in a most feline way. “Let’s not fight. We get one night a year, where we can smell the... hey, does the air smell funny to you?” Patience stuck his leonine nose into the air and inhal...

Christmas Eve It was not the way he thought he’d spend Christmas Eve when he moved to this place four years ago. A tiny village, with one store and a gas station, both of them closed on this holiday.  He really wanted a cigarette. It wasn’t like he was addicted, but holidays brought him the craving for nicotine the way they brought out hungers for food and drink for others.  He looked in the bucket where people, standing in the cold, had flicked their butts some hours ago.  Empty. The gas station owner was a clean freak. Of course she’d empty the butt bucket before she closed for the holiday. Pathetic. He was considering stealing a half-smoked cigarette butt because he needed a hit of nicotine. Maybe at the grocery store. He started walking. Something moved, in the shadows. He stopped. Two streetlights in the whole village, and neither of them shined in the alley where he saw the movement. He began walking again. He saw the shadow again in the alley between the post offic...

You can check out this article on Wiki, but the item in question are called pyrometric cones.  They are used in pottery and placed in a kiln to determine the correct heating.  I don't know who the potter was or how this got placed in a coffee can of sea shells but the mystery has been solved.  The things you learn from the good readers on Metafilter.       Pyrometric cone - Wikipedia