Back to Box

On the way to work today, I saw a woman carrying a box. It was a plain brown cardboard box - a cube.

I like that. It seems that boxes are becoming commercialised in this day and age. A logoless box is a thing of the past. Amazon and FedEx are now box kings. You give the average 13-year-old a plain, brown, corrugated cardboard box, and their brains will shut down. They won't understand. They'll look for the logo. They'll stare at you and jabber incoherently. You'll have to put them out of their misery, won't you? Yes, you will. A single bullet. Right between the eyes.

(Probably best to use some kind of gun to propel the bullet. It's difficult to generate the sufficient fatal velocity by just throwing it. Even if you're really strong.)

Cubed boxes are also rare. Too old-fashioned. "Get with the program, teach!", someone might have said once, "cubes are for squares, mofo!". All packages are now cuboid, or in some cases dodecahedral.

[Incidentally, I'd be interested in building a Dodecatherdral. I suspect that the less progressive factions in the church might be opposed to such an unorthodox shape - reflecting an undesirable emphasis on multiplicity of meaning. There isn't more than one side to the story, as far as they're concerned.]

So, to see a plain, cubed cardboard box was a real treat. It also had the address written on it in Japanese symbols, which added to the appeal. I wonder what was inside?

I know what you're thinking: "here we go again - Paul's going to offer up a wacky list of weird possibilities *yawn*".

Well, you are wrong. Firstly because you can't be thinking '*yawn*'. A yawn is a physical action, not a mental one. It is a function of the mouth and lungs.

And for you to have the temerity - the sheer gall - to claim that a yawn can be enacted as some kind of inner-process of the mind, makes me question your ability to reason as a rational being. There are no mental yawns! The very idea is preposterous!

The second reason you are wrong is....

No, I'm sorry. I just can't get past the whole yawn thing.

Even if your thoughts contained similar sentiments to those that are commonly associated with the need to yawn (boredom, familiarity, etc), to make the jump to the anatomical process of yawning itself - it's insanity. What are you doing with your life?! Why are you making these outragious claims?!

Your upbringing?

Give me a break. Show me the parent to encourages this kind of mumbo-jumbo, and I'll show you vomit. My vomit. Right in your face, you son of a bitch! (Or daughter).

Whew. I'm sorry. I'll try and compose myself.

The second reason you're wrong, is I'm not going to offer up a list of wacky box-contents options. I'm not.

I don't know what was in there. To make guesses would be facetious at best.

All I will say, is I'm almost certain that it did NOT contain a human head. And I think everyone will agree with that.

It definitely (probably) wasn't a human head. A Japanese head. A message from the Yakuza. It wasn't that.

It wasn't.

It almost certainly wasn't.

...

I know what you're thinking:

"*shrug*"

Don't get me fucking started.