i'll be your substitute for the day.

apsi tends to be ignored when i've stuff due for school, as is the case right now. so here's a throwaway clip from my story, dear fat kid. speaking here is the narrator, whose name is hal.

Today I spent 45 minutes looking in vain for a way to permanently turn off the Microsoft Word Help Wizard, the dude who automatically pops up in a little box every time I sit down to write you. “Dear Fat Kid,” I write; then I hit Return, then I hit Tab, and up pops Wizard! right in the middle of the f’ing page: “It looks like you’re writing a letter!” Wizard announces through his pixilated gray beard and enormous hands, his starry blue robe flowing. I need the Wizard to help me with a letter? Is there any written anything a person should need less help with? It’s just retarded. You write, “Dear Blankety-blank,” then you write, “Sincerely, Me”—and then you write whatever the f you want in between. Done. Of course it’d be awesome if I were to start to write a research paper, get one line into my draft, and have the Wizard pop up and say, “It looks like you’re writing about land wars in Asia!” That’s too much to expect, probably, but there’s something about the Wiz’s predictions of the perfectly obvious that make him not just annoying but demoralizing—in some ways it’s worse than having him insult me. If I were to write Things to Get at the top of the page, hit Enter, and the Wiz popped up and not just observed what I’m writing—“It looks like you need to Get Some Things!”—but also told me how I should proceed—“Ambition! Girlfriend! Class!”—it would piss me off, sure, but honestly, the rhetorical observations are a buzz-kill because they point to something I’ve refused to admit. When we used to talk about girls or money or my scholarship-loss I hated when you went into Plato mode and would just ask questions for an hour; but later I’d feel better about where I stood and wouldn’t have much residual hate toward you, just a little bit because of the way you’d look at me during those conversations, unblinking eyes and a face so straight it seemed to me a subterranean smirk. Dr. Phil at the free-throw line, I think I used to call it. Ugh—the visual memory of it creeps me out. While we’re on visuals, another thing I hate about Mr. Wizard is his animation. I begin typing my letter, not asking for anything except perhaps a sense of humor about my life situation, and hooray! Help is here! Wearing a gown, and waving at me. This morning, before this standoff with the Wizard of Helpfulness, I’d been so looking forward to a very small, very contained piece of solace; still in your pajamas, I went out to your porch with an ashtray, a big mug of coffee and my laptop. Without a thought, I wrote the words, “Dear Fat Kid.” I lit a cigarette and stared at the thin line of ocean for a bit. Soon enough I looked down, saw the Wiz, and I lost it. Not, like, angry lost it. But I spoke to him like he could hear me; with very enunciated tones and only the thinnest thread of patience, like how the bicycle cop talks to the old bearded homeless man he’s already told to move twice that day.

“Gee,” I said. “I am writing a letter. And I’m so glad you’re here to help, Wiz. I’m worried that when I fill in the edges of my informal letter to my absent friend with casual introspection, it’ll ring hollow!” I believe they’ve done away with the Wizard in the newer versions of MS Word, but I won’t escape him for quite a while, as my next paycheck, however imaginary it may be, will not go to an upgrade. A software upgrade, I mean. I spent 45 minutes searching for some command to make the Wiz go away, ending with me madly pressing random combinations of keys until I hit the one to make my machine go into hibernation. I began to think about my mother.