I’m going on a trip later and need airplane fodder; any good reads you’d recommend?

They cut and hauled the branches away today, leaving only the massive trunk, which is strung between three apartment complexes like a shoelace. The way it’s lying there, flopped over the wreckage, it looks like someone dropped a wooden whale from a helicopter onto the complex.

The humongous tree in the complex next to ours fell last night. It must have been dead for a while–it’s branches were bare–but still, it was still quite a shock when it fell with what I imagine to be a thunderous tumult. I say imagine, though, because neither Christina nor I heard in the course of our noise-proof slumber, the sound of the many tons of timber falling. All I saw in the morning was a morose-looking insurance inspector examining the scene, which looked like a very localized hurricane.

Luckily, the tree fell in the safest direction possible: away from the apartments bracketing it on either side, as well as the complex behind it. Instead, it smashed a fortuitously empty carport, as well as some exterior fixtures. The only personal property damage appeared to be a car which lifted up by the diseased trunk uprooting and catapulting out of the concrete basin around it. Still, the property damage is not minor. In addition to three pictures taken this morning, I’m posting the only picture I have of the tree before it fell (sadly, as it was a beautifully gothic tree).

Warning: artistic thematic assembly ahead!

One way you know your mosquito netting is working when you wake up and one of the damned bugs is lying dead on your nightstand. It’s shriveled, spiny corpse is just toppled over without a word, and you can project a trajectory for its miserable little life. She probably flew in through the tear in the kitchen windowscreen, probably near dawn but the end of her life, looking for her first bloodmeal. She wandered about the apartment blindly, sniffing for the gasped expiration of some juicy meatbag. In the bedroom, she felt the warmth of supper, but in her way was a impenetrable cocoon of nylon webbing. She probably beat her wings against the walls desperately, probing the netting for weaknesses. Finding none, starving, and without food to feed the unborn beneath her belly, she landed on the nightstand to wait out her prey, for even humans have to leave their castles: to pee, to eat, to shower, to dress; and then she would have her chance! Quick, while his back is turned, while his eyes are still sleepy! Sneak up on his shoulder and dig around with your sharp tongue and take a hot sip while you can! But like her human vampiric counterparts, there is always to risk of starvation. Poised, coiled, gargoyle-like and wretched, the sun beaming on her and drying out her wings and choking the breath from her spiracles, a stake through her mythic heart.

You have to wonder; did she feel pain? Regret? Remorse? Wrong house, wrong time? Did she suffer? Folding her body neatly into a kleenex to flick into the trash–a luxurious coffin for such a beast!–you have to hope she did.

My titles aren’t just enigmatic, they’re also a great source of procrastination in times of need. Maybe I should give out prizes to those that can solve the riddles / find out what I was reading to inspire the titles?