It doesn't work that way! That you think it does must prove to you that the imbalance between us is incalculable! You're talking about a critical -- and elusive -- variable that binds carbon-based lifeforms to one another! You cannot divide it... you cannot subtract it... because it is indefinable on your terms. Unquantifiable. I understand your longing, Modulus... but you will never know the love I have for my family.
- Mark Waid, "Sentient"

"Sentient"
I have this sense of things. It comes from the way somebody greets me. It's informed by an innate ability to read between the lines.

This sense of mine isn?t something I talk about too often, or take too seriously, because playing the oblivious nebbish nubian naysayer is the only way I can get away with half the crap I manage to pull off in the tense social situations I find myself in on a day-to-day basis, but it?s definitely there.

And it?s been jangling with a syncopated disco beat that just won?t quit for the last week.

"Small Stuff, Big Stuff"
I?ve been reading a lot of JLA and Fantastic Four lately, so I?ve been giving a lot of thought to teamwork and family.

I don?t want to be a loner anymore.

"Unthinkable"
I still maintain that there are some things you can?t think your way through. Things that you can?t explain through reason ? like laughter, or faith, or how Ed's ex-wife became the star of Caroline in the City. There are forces beyond our ken that bring us together and rend us apart, and I think that trying to make logical sense of these things is one of the greatest sources of human misery.

That being said, I also still maintain that, like the book says, we?re all guided through life by our heart and our head. One will get you into trouble sometimes, but the other never does.

"5th Wheel"
I know I?ve complained about this in the past, but I think I?ve grown quite comfortable being the Odd Man In. There?s nothing wrong with being the fifth wheel. Everybody can always use a spare tire.

But is it possible I?ve become too comfortable?

"Authoritative Action"
I find freedom a little overwhelming.

Take this blog for example. I?ve been trying to write this entry for about four days now. I started off planning on this analogy about Bugs Bunny, because I?d once heard it said that if Bugs had a mutant power, it?d be the ability to win ? actually, upon reflection, maybe that was something said about Captain America. Anyway, the idea was that Bugs bunny?s funny because no matter what, things work out for him, as opposed to Daffy Duck, who?s only funny when he?s getting screwed over or just bouncing off the walls. So I was going to explain how despite the fact that I've always felt more like a little black duck, lately things have really been working out for me in a little-grey-hare like manner with the exception of one tiny little matter that I?ve got an impending sense of doom about. There were just so many different ways I could have gone about saying it, though, that I couldn?t figure out how.

So in the end, I decided to just do a series of entries titled after Mark Waid?s Fantastic Four stories, because that forced me to say what I wanted to say in a way that the titles would still make some sense. But now I?m kind of bothered that I had to do this. What would my friend Hank the Sociology Tank determine this means about me? Am I just a slave to structure and format? Am I incapable of making up my own rules? Am I compelled to conform? And if I am, does that make me a deficient human being?

I don't think so either.

NEXT:
"Hereafter"