You’re still at work? What do you think you’re getting done between now and quitting time? Cut out and stop pretending. Take a POETS Day. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

First, a little verse.

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This week I turned cartwheels in the surf. I exuberated. One passer-by was heard to exclaim, “By Goodness! He’s filled with beans.” Another called upon me to have decency and quiet the ruckus.

What catalyst, you ask, set off such an uncharacteristic reaction? I found John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, Vol I. I can’t share on these pages, intended, for the most part, for public readings and sharing with our less deviant peers, the extomysis I experienced when recalling the wise admonishments of Frank Thomas, my ninth grade English teacher in explaining how to properly structure arguments: “You cannot have an ‘A)’ without following it later with a ‘B)’ or you look like an idiot [In the 80s you could call students idiots.] Write ‘First’ to open a paragraph and one of the next better damn [You could also say “damn” at them] well begin with ‘Second.’”

To whit: If there is a Brief Lives, Vol. I, there must follow a Brief Lives, Vol II. And there does.