In Which I Finally Get Around to Opening My Notebook

I wonder whether those tattooed knuckles
ever considered autism
as a possibility as the ink was pressed
into the rebellious skin.
I wonder whether the teen
at the tattoo parlor
intent on etching her soul
on her hands
was thinking about kids
or about wrinkles
which fold some of the ink away
keeping it secret
as other parts fade in the sun.
And I wonder what she thought
when those hands picked up her son
for the first time, the dark ink contrasting
harshly with the soft, pale skin.
Did it ever seem foolish?
Were the tattoos more planned
than the pregnancy?
Did her rebellion fade gradually with the ink
or was it a sudden separation
when the stick showed positive?

Poem:
I'm finally getting around to opening the notebook I try to carry with me everywhere, and this poem was inside from a time I (obviously) saw a woman with old tattoos trying to deal with her crying boy. She looked around constantly, her gaze both apologetic and defiant, and when she noticed my attention, she told me he was autistic, like she needed to make an excuse. Too bad my parents didn't have that one at their disposal. All of my public scenes would have been a lot easier to explain, I'm sure. I just nodded at her. I wasn't intending to convey disappointment or anger or anything. I just wanted to write things down in my notebook. So this poem resulted. This is obviously a rough draft, but I think it has potential, even though the idea of old tattoos is obviously not a new topic.

Observation:
In my political science class there was a guy with a laptop. On the laptop were two stickers. The first said "Abort73.com" and the second said "IHOP mission base." Now, I knew absolutely nothing about either of these things, but I was made curious because obviously abortion is a big issue, and IHOP to me is a place that makes some fantastic pancakes. This guy didn't seem like a guy particularly interested in either of these things. When the professor asked us to seat ourselves based on political self-identity, he moved to the far right. So I knew I absolutely had to figure out what these things meant in order to make fun of them. Sure enough, Abort73.com is an anti-abortion website purporting to provide all the facts you need to know about how people with a different viewpoint murder innocent babies every day, and IHOP, rather than being an establishment focused on deliciousness, stands for International House of Prayer.
As a pro-choice atheist, I feel I am obligated to make fun of these things. Not their beliefs. I'm not going to open that can of worms here (and if you want to talk with me about my views, it's possible I won't even be that open to sharing them in private). I have long since resigned myself to the fact that people on both sides are unable to benefit from argumentation. But I will poke merciless fun at these stickers. Now, when I saw the sticker "Abort73.com" I was taken aback. I honestly thought that this person was making a statement about a goal. Like, everyone should abort 73 fetuses. The NFL has a program called the play60 program that encourages kids to play for 60 minutes a day, for example. I'm sure there is some logical reason for their website name, but honestly, I think they should have thought it through a bit better. And the IHOP one is equally poorly targeted. If there were a mission that involved eating pancakes, rest assured I would be all over that. This was almost cruel in the way it got my hopes up. If there was a pancake rebellion that needed to be put down, or an evil pancake dictator that needed to be consumed, I was fully prepared to report for duty to whatever mission base there was. And there's no way this organization doesn't know that acronym is more commonly associated with breakfast food. So I think in both cases, these methods of spreading the word need some serious reconsideration.

Exercise:
"Falling Mattresses"
"They had been waiting, umbrellas up, for the falling mattresses." Take this as the first line of your story and start writing.

They had been waiting, umbrellas up, for the falling mattresses. There was little doubt they would be on their way soon. The forecast had called for it, after all. The dogs and cats came plummeting to earth just as predicted, and it was sure that the mattresses would be close behind. The people in the streets had little idea just what kind of mattresses to expect. The prevailing theory held that a twin-size was the maximum the clouds above could produce, but a few Mastiffs and Maine Coons had wound up on rooftops when the estimates had called for the largest of each species to be Golden Retrievers and slightly-overweight Calicoes. So the people, while figuring the upcoming shower to be a mostly crib-sized affair, were ready to duck under nearby overhangs at a moment's notice.

Me:
In general, today was a pretty mediocre day. I missed the bus I wanted to catch after my first class. I saw the bus which immediately precedes it leaving the stop, so I started jogging, sure that I would get there just as the one I wanted arrived. Sure enough, I walked up just as it got to the stop. It paused, and I started walking toward it, only to have it leave again as I was looking through the doors. It must have been the only time I've seen that bus stop at that stop without anyone disembarking, too. It's a major stop on the route with transfers to all the other routes around town, and to have it leave after I was so sure I wouldn't have to walk back to my apartment in the cold was a disappointing turn of events indeed.
Switching topics completely, in my philosophy of law class we were challenged to come up with an example of a self-evident moral truth. As a graduating philosophy major in an intro-based class, I am greatly looking forward to dismantling peoples' responses. I have discussed the idea of an objective morality in at least three separate classes, and I don't think we've ever been able to come up with an example, but it's always fun to see people try. I honestly think morality is a myth. It's a well-perpetuated myth, and it does a lot of good, but to suppose that any action is objectively wrong is presumptuous on a couple of counts. The first is that I think a situation can be thought of to justify any action. Now, the more horrific the action, the more convoluted the situations become, but that doesn't mean the situation doesn't exist. The second reason I scoff at people assuming there is an objective morality is that, even if there is one, it's impossible for us to be sure we are interpreting it correctly. In other words, even if there is a right and wrong to the universe, there's no way for us to know at the time we make our choice, what the right option is. Even looking back, there is no way to know absolutely we made the wrong decision, since the alternative could have led to a completely different outcome than we assume. Suppose you regret running a stop sign, for example. There is no way to know that, had you obeyed the law, the few seconds you were set back wouldn't have resulted in you hitting a small kid whose ball happened to roll into the street. It's the whole "butterfly effect" thing, essentially.
Sorry to have gone off on a philosophy tangent. It will undoubtedly happen again in the "me" sections, since it's what I think about a good deal. Thanks for bearing with me, though. Oh, and sorry for the extremely delayed posting from yesterday.