Upside Downside #1

Item: Tea
Upside: Restorative
Downside: Staining
Item: Nudity
Upside: Cheap
Downside: Cold
Item: Red Wine
Upside: Merry-making
Downside: Hangover-inducing
Item: Masturbation
Upside: Relieving
Downside: Habit-forming
Item: Self-pity
Upside: Comforting
Downside: Pathetic
Item: "Yer ma"
Upside: Versatile
Downside: Yer ma
Item: Fear
Upside: Preventative
Downside: Entropic
Item: Cleavage
Upside: Captivating
Downside: Deluding
Item: Patriotism
Upside: Selflessness
Downside: Chauvinism
Item: Religion
Upside: Fundamentals
Downside: Fundamentalism
Item: Advertising
Upside: Cost-defraying
Downside: Pornographic
Item: Girlfriend
Upside: Life-affirming
Downside: Lolcats

Blue Sky

Spin around, baby. Spin around.
I'll lift you from the dewy ground.
Spin your dress, the air is free.
I'll watch it fall about your knees.

This is a meadow, but you're not a flower.
Nor some Rapunzel in a tower.
Your lips are not a destination.
No, your future is an open invitation.

Spin around me, baby. My electron.
Butterfly about your proton.
Later we'll think of climbing the hill.
Take my hand and slow to still
- just for a moment, baby, slow to still.

Pants

It is with some regret that I must own up to being behind last month's great pants theft. But in a way, I can't help feeling that the end justifies the means. Let me explain.

For the past two weeks - as each individual's stock of pants ran low - we have all been forced to band together, and share our pants with our neighbours. Young and old, male and female, rich and poor, have been united in common need of pants. And have been generous with what little pants they had.

All around us, we see examples of this generosity, as people struggle to hoike up or down the ill-fitting pants given them by their neighbours. On television, the first annual Pantsathon saw celebrities giving up their spare pants for those in greater need, and a number of television documentaries followed the trials of those who tried to do without pants completely. Their ingenuity and perserverance served as a reminder of the indomitable human spirit.

And in an age when social networks are maintained by telecommunication, when the only communities we engage in are online, the pants issue brings it home to us all that in our hour of greatest need, only those geographically close to us can really help - when the problem is as real, as human, as quotidien, as being out of pants.

It also reminds of the uselessness of a single pant. And in the end, isn't that what separates us from the animals?