K2

“…having only learned to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies–my only talent–smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle…” ― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer Prospering includes dancing, and now they’re being provided with rubbery boots made of silicon for some relief from their strenuous exertions. “Dung beetles are the first example of an insect using a mobile, thermal refuge to move across hot soil,” researcher Jochen Smolka, a neuroethologist at Lund University in Sweden, told LiveScience. “Insects, once thought to be at the mercy of environmental temperatures, use sophisticated behavioral strategies to regulate their body temperature[s].” The res...

Cletus is passing by Billy Bob’s hay barn one day when, through a gap in the door, he sees Billy Bob doing a slow and sensual striptease in front of an old John Deere tractor. Buttocks clenched, he performs a slow pirouette, and gently slides off first the right strap of his overalls, followed by the left. He then hunches his shoulders forward and in a classic striptease move, lets his overalls fall down to his hips, revealing a torn and frayed plaid shirt. Then, grabbing both sides of his shirt, he rips it apart to reveal his stained T-shirt underneath. With a final flourish, he tears the T-shirt from his body, and hurls his baseball cap onto a pile of hay. Having seen enough, Cletus rushes in and says, “What the world’re ya doing, Billy Bob?” “Good grief, Cletus, ya scared the bejeebers out of me,” says an obviously embarrassed Billy Bob. “But me’n the wife been havin trouble lately in the bedroom d’partment, and the therapist sugg...

I The dog of faith curled herself around our house, Irreplaceable as the light only October sheds, that desperate month which counts Darkness by its end, going as far as any month Will go to dilute seasons into days. II The dog of hope grew for spring and the rabbits vanished, Disappearing one by one, day by day, Through sunlit cracks in the rose bush, circumventing The rain- and hoof-rutted cow paths, parting seas Of alfalfa and cowslips into pastured abyss. III But love’s a dog that whimper-grunts in her sleep. We heard her clear as light from that old lamp You bought at auction from the neighboring sorrows Of a failed farm. Its light shed differences. In our room – its glow lost nothing between darkness And absence, splintering walls into shadows And trapping moist eyes like stars alert with distance. That Indian summer evening outside our window, Farmland’s proximate darkness Spreading its old throw rug around her, she grew deaf To moonshine and growled a drowsy anthem To runaway d...

From a McSweeney’s story by a person who writes short books about the popular bands of the day: Explanation point?