Phenomenal

Last night, in lieu of a birthday bash, my brother took me out and fed me what felt like 5 lb. of sushi (well, no one pointed a gun to my head). I awoke at 4:45 a.m. and still felt the weight in my belly. This is the closest to carrying a fetus i'll know.

At 8:45 i was no better. If i could just expel it all! When my brother and i were kids, our father used to warn us of the dire consequences of constipation (probably in an attempt to urge us to eat vegetables, but i don't remember). "You could get fecal poisoning," he'd say. "Too many days go by, and poo will come out of your mouth!"

There may be some truth in that statement after all. I feel like i'm gonna implode.

If i had a harakiri accident right now, my apartment would be a duotone Pollock painting.

Just now i couldn't recall the English term for 腹切り, and kamikaze came to mind. Six decades later, kamikaze is such a household word that no referencing page is necessary. (Oh and the namesake cocktail ain't bad either.)

I'll bet the concept was shocking at first. Nothing short of mind-boggling, i'm sure. But men all around the globe have been doing it for centuries, and methodology matters not:

Men leave women and children behind, so that more men will leave behind women and children.

Madness? Nah, we're all just being human. This is what we do.