When you happen upon a fortune cookie slip in your pants pocket that says “On Thursday, your creativity will soar to new heights” and it’s Wednesday evening, you sprint to your computer to be sure you have something to gnaw on tomorrow.

A few good words, you know, an idea, maybe a story you’re stuck on. What comes to mind to share is this.

So admittedly, I watch some odd things on YouTube. I mean, off kilter is kinda my brand. Have you seen Mrs. Fallout’s videos of her opening survival food? It’s a niche channel where a woman lovingly unwraps decades-old survival food like it’s precious jewelry. Some of the videos are manky, visually disturbing, actually. In one video she opens a can of 70-year-old peaches that are BLACK. I’m like, hon, gloves please.

But here’s a pretty innocuous one featuring cookies and candy. Enjoy!

I came for the food, stayed for the music.

I swear, the main song she uses is “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” and it charmed me so much I listened to it over and over the first time I paid attention to it. (The InkSpots, 1941) TBH, I could do without the recitation in the middle. That’s a little affected for me. Okay, it’s downright embarrassing. Kinda like when someone sings to you in public. Just. Don’t. Unless I’m a drink or two in.

My dad took a test to be a fallout shelter manager back in the day, he liked to tell us kids.

What else, what else?

Oh, right.

I woke up before 3 am again (cold medicine brain) and wrote poetry for five hours. FIVE! I didn’t know you could say so much more in so much less space with poetry. It’s like, what, condensed milk? (That’s a place holder, obviously. Please find me something more apt and email it to me. I’m begging you.)

After lunch, more poetry.  I had no idea I had so much to say. The poems ranged all over the place – some brittle, some feminist, existential angst wriggled in, as ever, and some yearning pieces, and oh yes, one schmaltzy sentimental poem that brought me to tears. Barf.

The title of one is “Shredded Journals for Breakfast.”

Another couplet: (Does this qualify as a couplet? Kinda sounds reductive – they’re not a couple, they’re a couplet. IDK, maybe they haven’t been dating very long?)

You’re not lost.

You’re just in a bunker with a pen and a beat-up radio,

Isn’t the line ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant’?

There’s no other way to tell it, Aunty Em.

Now I’m onto Joel’s song “For the Longest Time,” which has modern day “Barkis is willin’” vibes if I’ve ever heard them.

Just so.