Going Inkless

"What are we having for dinner?" he asks. "I hadn't planned anything. Who are we feeding?" "It's just us tonight." "Oh, we should be able to throw something together from what we have lying around. There's leftovers from earlier in the week and some canned stuff..." "Hmm. I'm kinda hungry now. Do you want to order a pizza or go out?" "That would be OK, I guess." "OK, pizza or restaurant?" "What do you feel like?" "I asked you. What do you want?" "I don't know. What do you feel like having?" "I don't know. You want Italian or Chinese or something else?" "Anything is fine." "Fine? Not great? What do you really want?" "Seriously, anything is fine. It's all good." "But what do you want? Something has to be better than the rest. Pick a restaurant." >sigh "Well, I guess we'll want to go somepl...

I went to the zoo with Lord Byron once. I was standing there, looking through the glass to see polar bears swimming under water when I suddenly realized he was next to me, entranced as much by the window as the world it looked in on. He marvelled a while at the powerful beasts, familiar in many ways but at the same time so different from the old black bear he had kept as a pet. Lost in thought, the poet seemed to contemplate the two sides of the bear: one, serene, free and natural; the other, caged and dangerous. A soft sigh was the only hint of his melancholy before the wonder of it all overtook him again. My companion had seen zoos before. He had kept quite a menagerie himself at different stages of his life, even travelling with a small flock of geese in his carriage for a time. But this modern zoo was so unlike the zoos of his time. There were no bars, no small cramped cages. The animals here were well-tended, given room to roam, and had the companionship of others of the...