Burnt by a Tuft of Fire

Immediately after [human catastrophe], the [human] villains were identified. They received the usual treatment of a villain: lots of press, some roundtable discussions, some new hardcovers. "Inside the mind of [villain]" by [human expert]. If their CV is lengthy, we'll pay the intern a bit more to buff up all the graphics. Maybe we'll do a special edition. Maybe [partisan pundit] will weigh in. Maybe [unrelated subject's radio talk show host] comments, and maybe [I] will shake [my] head. [Local news co-anchor, male] shakes head at [local news co-anchor, female]: "What a shame." [Homemaker] [temporarily completes homemaker task], forming an expert knowledge base of what they heard, which comes in handy in the [social realm]. [Web aggregator] reports [10^(# references to barbarian nation-state [from America's perspective] or terrorism [perceived/actual/both]) multiplied by top story average] stories are being aggregated for [human catastrophe] topic.

I remember questioning the existence of my "permanent record." After The Net, I decided that more energy should be expended questioning the validity of my permanent record. My first fear was of bumblebees, my second, cicadas; third, wasps; fourth, roaches; fifth, tornados; 6th, genital papercuts; 7th, caterpillars, 8th, lightning, and my ninth fear was tarnishing my permanent record. That probably had more to do with my discovering of the difference between "permanent" and "temporary." When the mind stores a pristine copy of the word "permanent (and the semantics thereof)," after it has done the same for the concept of death, the word "permanent" is an air-conditioned hut on a desert island.

But more than any of this is the desire to tempt the fates with relatively villainous deeds, and so to light a flame and hope for a clear calm day. Turbulence begets tufts of fire that swirl upwards and tempt the body-canister into exploding, ending it all. The skeins of white organic matter swirl and become whiter. Nothing about an egg is black or blue.