The End is Near

Jaxney walks into my office with a burning rage in his eyes. He marches across the expanse that exists between my door and my chair and bends at his waist so that his nose touches mine. Our noses slip and slide against each other while Jaxney stares into the depths of my retinas.

Through my heavy prescription glasses, I can't see shit at this distance.

Jaxney growls at me, "You keep putting your closing brackets in the same line as your Return statement. You KNOW that C++ coding standard demands that your closing brackets are placed in their own line!"

Jaxney's breath tells me he ate Spaghetti-Ohs for lunch. His carbon dioxide exhalations moisten my mustache. I hold back the urge to lick his chin.

"It saves space while decoding," I explain to him. Jaxney jumps backward in frustration. He pulls his hair, spins in a circle, and talks to God. Jaxney fondles his forhead, bites his lip, and then points both his index fingers directly at me.

"BUT... IT... IS... CODING... STANDARD!" he delivers. His cheeks pulsate colorfully. I cannot tell if he is about to cry or explode. I decide to diffuse the situation.

I stand up and put my arms around Jaxney and begin to walk him back toward the hallway. I tussle his hair, and coo into his ear. "I tell you what," I say softly. "You go back to your office, and I will continue to code my way, and then we will save space while we decode. How does that sound, young prince?"

Jaxney puts his thumb to his mouth and wanders off toward the restrooms, and everyone lives to see another day.

A Tragedy.

Here is the first banana bread I ever baked. It was perfect. I mixed the ingredients exactly. I baked it for 1 hour and 20 minutes. My house smelled like heaven. It could not have turned out better. And here I set it on my counter to cool, and I took a quick picture to share with my friends and family. I was so proud. This was my first bread! I was about to start loading the picture from my camera when I hear: CRASH!

My dogs had pushed themselves up on the counter where the bread was and flipped the plate to the ground. My kitchen floor is clean, but not THAT clean. There is dog hair in small quantities. There is are broken shards of glass. My bread, only minutes from it's oven womb, was killed.

I tasted a small part of the crust before buring it in the trash. It tasted perfect. It was the finest taste of banana bread my mouth had ever savored. This loaf was meant to be shared with the world, and now it is just another sack of baked fruit and flour and sugar and eggs... gone too young, before it had a chance to impact the world for the better. Banana Bread Loaf, I mourn for thee.