Gross.

If I told you I was going to run around hugging and kissing people regardless of gender and age like a sexually ambiguous madwoman, poke and sit on old people, wave my butt in the air to really obnoxious music, and sneak up on small children, would it be socially acceptable?

No. It would not be socially acceptable.
But a furry costume makes all of it okay.

Last week the university mascot came up to my family at a basketball game. It cocked its head to the side and gave my brother a high five. Without warning, it then launched itself into a flying leap toward our laps. Startled, my cousins and I grabbed handfuls of its furry legs to keep it from slamming its Sasquatch-esque body into the hardwood floor. Resisting our efforts, God's gift to cougarkind slowly rolled off onto the floor. "Um, you're falling," my young cousin said into its ear, the awkwardness of talking to a giant cougar as if it were a rational human being compounded by the fact that she was clutching its inner left thigh. It kissed my male cousin. Then it kissed me. Actually, it put its gargantuan head on my shoulder and pointed to his disproportionate cheek, triggering the overwhelming "kiss reflex," which has gotten me into the same kind of trouble at dance parties. I kissed it. Then gagged.


Why is this okay?
(pics courtesy of Google ImageSearch)

In other news, I was walking on campus today between the Marb and the Wilk, skimming the newspaper's cover story on why it is so notoriously impossible to pass Chem 105 and feeling rather happy with myself because I got an A, when I heard a sudden explosion next to me. My first reaction, of course, was to duck and cover like a cracked-out Vietnam vet, but it was raining (man, you never factor in the weather when you think about these kinds of things) and I guess my subconscious didn't want to get wet, so I did this kind of freeze/jerk/twitch-in-the-air thing. I hope it made the day of some depressed academe gazing out of a window in the Kennedy Center after writing yet another paper on how humans are instinctual animals and what we perceive as rationality is merely illusion. Anyway, me and the engineer kid who was walking behind me ran over to the nearest bike rack, where the noise came from, and it turns out that some poor sap's bike tire randomly exploded as I walked past. A fluke? I think not. It was like that scene in The Sandlot where Benny smacks the guts out of the baseball.
Something is going to happen. It has to be an omen. A good one.