El Burro Volador

This is a phrase that leapt out at me from the page of a magazine recently, inducing a cringe in yours truly.  The magazine was one my darling wife Rebekah had left lying open on a shelf.  The quote itself was pull-out text, that lovely layout technique where they take a phrase from the main body of the text, blow it up, and place it in some prominent spot on the page to attract the reader’s attention.

Now, I do not particularly enjoy my attention being directed to anything having to do with sphincters.  It is not that I am attempting to vilify or denigrate them, I realize that they perform important functions in the body, and for that I am grateful.  I even had the dubious privilege of knowing St. Jon the Dissembler, himself a sort of faulty sphincter between our world and a vile plane of filth and wretchedness, where seas of excrement lap barbarous shores beneath flatulent skies, and the cretinous natives enact horrifying scenes of depravity and villainy that leak through, for instance, whenever St. Jon opens his mouth.  But I digress.

Despite their commendable utility, I can’t help but include sphincters in that category of things about which I’d rather not think, like the origins of a hot dog I am about to eat, or the living conditions of the children who make my clothes.

Anyhow, it inevitably occurred to me that Rebekah had left the magazine open to that particular page on purpose, sort of like setting a bear trap and then walking away…