FACT: 99% of all "mazes" can be solved if you walk to the right every time you have to choose between left and right.
FACT: Halogen floor lamps caused approximately 270 fires and 19 deaths per year.
– FINAL EXITS by Michael Largo
FACT: A group of unicorns is called a blessing.
FACT: Three people die each year testing if a 9V battery works on their tongue.
FACT: Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
FACT: More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
FACT: In 2003, 24 people died from inhaling popcorn fumes.
– FINAL EXITS by Michael Largo
FACT: Total asphyxiations attributed to rice cake eating since 1965: 1,601.
– FINAL EXITS by Michael Largo
FACT: Since 2001, 987 children have been killed while buying ice cream.
– FINAL EXITS by Michael Largo
FACT: Deaths attributed to “loud sounds” since 1970: 34,831.
- FINAL EXITS by Michael Largo
FACT: Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
FACT: Poets have a life span fifteen years below average.
– FINAL EXITS by Michael Largo
FACT: One of the largest carriers of hepatitis B is dinner mints.
If a Clown
The best poem about a clown I have ever read, from the current issue of The New Yorker:
If a Clown
by Stephen Dunn
If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with oversized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there’d be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.
And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn’t know where he was,
a clown without a context?
What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?
If then the clown said to you
that he was on his way to a kid’s
birthday party, his car had broken down,
and he needed a ride, would you give
him one? Or would the connection
between the comic and the appalling,
as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear
that you’d be paralyzed by it?
And if you were the clown, and my friend
hesitated, as he did, would you make
a sad face, and with an enormous finger
wipe away an imaginary tear? How far
would you trust your art? I can tell you
it worked. Most of the guests had gone
when my friend and the clown drove up,
and the family was angry. But the clown
twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird
and gave it to the kid, who smiled,
let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,
the birthday boy, what from then on
would be your relationship with disappointment?
With joy? Whom would you blame or extoll?
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