Since I wasn’t using it, I lowered my chin-up bar to a point of 12 inches above the floor. I ended up damning myself every time I tripped over it. Instead of fixing the situation properly, I just put a traffic cone in front of the bar and then damned myself when I tripped over the cone and the bar. Instead of fixing the new situation properly, I put a flag pole in the traffic cone and then retrieved an autumn-themed flag for the pole to remind myself that there was a chin-up bar impeder. Wouldn’t you know it, I damned myself again as I looked at the flag and thought about how much I enjoy autumn weather and seeing the leaves change color.  I tripped over the chin-up bar again. Instead of fixing the situation properly, I bought a motion sensor that connected to my record player. When I passed by the motion sensor, the sensor triggered the needle on the record player to land on a random part of a John Philip Sousa record, reminding me of the chin-up bar. That seemed to work.
I damned myself for impeding my life.

There was this man who worked at a sanctuary for chimpanzees in Florida. He used to be a nightwatchman for a company that made RFID chips for pets. Some veterinarians would put them in but not others. Some vets thought it ridiculous to put a chip inside an animal in order to keep track of it.
One vet said, “I saw Gattaca once. It was nice.” And then he railed on about people treating people and pets as products. “People will be fucking idiots if you let them.”
The former nightwatchman, Larry, remembered a friend who took empty pill cases and filled them with candy but then didn’t go further with the project. It’s good when cleverness sees a red light and stops, thought Larry. But, his drive to make something amazing dimmed that light, so that he could see behind the warning clearly.
What he saw was a way to take prions that allowed a cognitive ability to speak and inject them into the brain.
In the sanctuary there was a chimp who loved to watch television. Her name was Stacey and she watched soaps and infomercials and sometimes talk shows. Her mate had passed away a few years prior and she mainly kept to herself. Larry would sit with her, watching tv from the floor every night while she sat in the comfortable chair.
Larry stirred about every night, trying to figure out a way to inject this chip of prions into her head without much fuss. He didn’t want to hurt her and was afraid his curiosity would end up killing her. Then, a commercial for a flea-and-tick spray came on the television followed by a lightbulb in his head.  He would put the chip inside a tick, let it rest upon on her head, let the tick burrow in, and wait until it filled with blood. Then, he would then squeeze the tick, deflating its body like a turkey baster, with the blood and the chip rushing into the chimp’s head to be delivered into the brain.
He was so nervous that night but it worked. Furthermore, he looked like a hero to Stacey for taking off the tick.
He sat and waited to see if anything – if anything at all – would happen.
2 hours later, she turned to him and just stared. Larry started to cry, knowing he’d done wrong and then she said, “I’d really like to watch tv alone if you don’t mind.”