I love Texas. I love Discounts.
     I feel that every time you get a discount, you've stolen a little something back from Death. No, I feel that every time I get a discount, I've stolen a little something back. Mark Griffin, American poet & musician, wrote a wonderfully evil piece about a woman who achieves this effect through fast driving. She feels that the ticking of yellow lines past her car is like the ticking of grains of sand in a hourglass. This way of thinking, it turns out for her, is backwards and she dies, perhaps before her time, but really before she might otherwise have died. He doesn't examine it closely, because the piece is a work of genius. He doesn't have to examine it. The point is made to his satisfaction and the rest of the world be damned.
     Texas is wonderful today. When I left work for a break and a constitutional, it was 95 degrees in the shade with a hot breeze barely lifting its weak little head out of the blacktop. The sky was mostly cloudless and threatened to turn into a Proper Texas Summer, here at the end of a gracefully mild one. I ducked into a store for a moment to browse, and stayed for nearly fifteen minutes. When I stepped out, the day was still hot, but a cool wind had picked up, probably here to avenge its sad little brother smothered by the heat, and the sky had clouded beautifully. Black clouds were collecting under the sun and the temperature had dropped five degrees. If you don't like the weather, stop and bug a shopkeep for a few minutes.
     I love Discounts. I love Texas.