how are you? i could give you a run-down on me, my pros cons and so-soses, but what i'm really after is what your life is like these days and how are you. so let's do an exchange, a list; candidate questions for which could include,
1. are you more of an air balloon person or a unicycle person?
2. a human cannon person or a clown car person?
3. the picture you would most like to have on your mousepad
4. which are you most likely to pull out of your ass, a paper or a project?
5. your favorite verb, today
6. your favorite noun, today
7. your favorite adverb, today.
{preliminary answer key: 1. sort of a combination of the two -- a uni-ball person 2. clown car, duh 3. paris hilton naked but covered in thousand island dressing 4. since "projectile" is not an option, let's go with "paper" 5. please 6. myself 7. poorly}
28 February 2006
23 February 2006
dally ho. (a serial)
part 1.
If someone had remarked that Ron’s life looked rather a lot like a farce, then he would not have disagreed. Or not even a farce, he thought as he carefully aligned the partially conductive widgets on the store shelf. It’s more specific than that. A capitol-F Farce is The Jerk or Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid or some movie with Steve Martin before he started making Cheaper by the Dozen Parts 1—Franchise. Before he started making pap that runs on the strength of his own past strength.
“Oh, damn!” Ron whispered violently, knocking the stacks of orange and yellow widgets to the floor (warm colors on the side that greets the customer! always!) as his hands clasped together in shock. This is what I am: I’m Steve Martin in reverse. Instead of parodying my younger brilliant self, I’m doing a preemptive parody of stuff I hope to do when I’m older. Ron groaned.
And groaned again. Groaned like a grumpy old man as he got on his hands and knees. Groaned like a grumpy old man with a grumpier prostate as he strained to reach under the bottom shelf far enough to collect the fallen widgets. He wondered if there was a positive spin to be found in this realization. Like, maybe by living as the shadow of his hypothetical future self now, such that even his brightest moments are only wrinkly reflections of the many successes of this wildly charming not-yet-self, he will be able to see in advance where he will go wrong, and then make adjustments so that his much-adored older self will not get type-cast. And will maintain an aura of dignity. Dignity, yes, thought Ron as he strained his fingers through the dirt and cobwebs to reach a widget that had rolled all the way into the corner, Dignity is the thing.
From his gerbil-like position on the floor, Ron looked up and, through a gap the shelf, and saw two pairs of shoes standing toe-to-toe in the next aisle. The girl pair, rubber-toed and pink and cute, raised up on its toes, and kissing noises followed. Or maybe, thought Ron, I just need to get laid. The other shoes, a pair of cheaply distressed brown boots, he recognized as belonging to a wildly unremarkable floor manager named Rod, whose tendency to ignore the needs of his fellow workers was matched only by his penchant for breaking into nasal, freestyle rap on topics varying from widgets to bitches. Rod was kissing a girl, a girl whose feet Ron did not recognize, but a girl still – a girl with sharp pink shoes. Who, underneath what was probably late-term eyeliner and an overdone perm, was probably cute. This made Ron very sad, and even before he’d finished re-aligning his fallen widgets, he’d decided to go to the handicap-accessible bathroom where he could lock the door and lean against the sink until he found something new to sulk about.
The restroom door was locked. Ron stretched, shifted his weight and tried to look at and think about something besides the array of camping-oriented widgets that surrounded him. Countless times he had walked customers through this section, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the manual-shaft widgets versus the solar-powered widgets. He had feigned excitement about the smallness of the plasticized mini-widgets (“widgies”) on more occasions than he could bear to consider. He tried looking at the ceiling. He tried casually rubbing his eyes for an extended period. He tried to consider something worth anything. For a moment he thought hard about boobies. He tried to imagine the boobs belonging to the girl in the pink shoes, wondering: were they big enough to have some heft to them? Pert enough that she didn't wear a bra under her shirt? But then he got yanked back to the windowless rear of the store, where a florescent army of widgets was closing in on him. Suddenly he was flush with the realization that maybe being purposefully lazy at a job he hated himself for having was not a way to compensate. For anything. His lungs feeling weak, he decided to knock on the bathroom door.
Before his knuckles could rap a third time the door swung open, just enough to reveal a pair of large blue eyes. Peering at him. These eyes looked into his and saw something they recognized. Whether it was something they liked (a mellowed, casket-aged perspective on politics and world events?) or something they pitied (an apathy-inducing mixture of confusion and distress?) Ron didn’t know. Sooner than he could know anything the eyes had disappeared, a hand had shot out; fingers encircled his distressingly limp wrist, yanked him inside, and flipped the lock. Then there the eyes were again, surrounded by a face he recognized – that of Kat, a fellow Widgeables employee.
Kat was beautiful. Kat was tall, with smooth, pale skin, a body drawn in easy curves, and a lustrous shower of red hair. But now the eyes were all he saw, big and blue and perfectly round. Even in the unnecessary light of a public restroom they sparkled, shy and confident. Full of life. A life that was full and yet totally unhurried. Ron stared at them, at Kat, and found that he did not care to question why she had pulled him into a bathroom. Nor did he question why she, this more-beautiful-than-she-knows young thing with whom he had had exactly one conversation (about the pros and cons of the write-up method of disciplining employees: They had agreed that, since their employer treated them like children, the purpose would best be served if they were disciplined like actual children; they differed only in that Kat thought spanking would do the trick while Ron favored a timeout corner) was now busily pulling tiny votive candles from her bag, which she lit and placed in a circle around the bathroom floor.
“Will you put these ones atop the towel dispenser?” said Kat, handing him two freshly lit candles. Then she spread out her fingers and turned in a slow circle, examining the room: the dulled metal of the mirror, the monochrome putty color of the walls and floor and ceiling, the glistening white of the toilet and sink. “I’ve never understood,” she said, “why they decorate restrooms in the style of Kafka. You?”
“No.” Ron shook his head. “But there’s something to be said for having the toilet be the shiniest thing in the room. As a boy I spent a lot of nights at my friend’s dad’s house. Dad was divorced and successful and super cool, in a really disaffected and unloving and depressed kind of way that you don’t recognize when you’re ten. ‘Cause all you see is the cool part. So the toilets in this house were a shiny black and cut really low to the floor like a sports car, and I thought it was so cool the first time; I went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet and felt like I was on the set of Miami Vice—and am I rambling and totally boring you?”
“No no. Go.”
“Okay well, I guess I’m almost done anyway. My point is just is this, just that after the first time the toilets there started to back up on me. …Oh god, sorry, I didn’t even mean to be tacky like that.”
Kat laughed and dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry, no. And I think I know what you mean, there’s something about a shiny white toilet. Makes you know everything is going to be okay.”
Ron grinned and fluttered shyly, embarrassed. “Yeah, that must be it.”
“So,” said Kat loudly, like she was reading from a teleprompter. ”So. I think we’re all set. And I am glad you showed up; this was going to be my only little deal here, but it’s nice to have some company.”
“Some company?” Ron’s eyebrows stitched themselves together. “It looks like you’re having a séance. In which case you’d already have company, you and some ghosts.”
“No, it’s not a séance.” Kate giggled. “I don’t like dead people.”
“A poetry reading, then. Revolutionary poetry, safe only to be read deep, deep in the underground, here in the handicapped bathroom at Widgeables.”
“That might be fun.” said Kat. “But what are we revolting against, hmm.” Long, elegant fingers stroked her chin.
“The Widget militia, duh,” he said. Kat seemed to him to be really contemplating this matter, which he very much liked. He looked at her again, this time with a mixture of confusion and longing; the confusion part got smaller the longer he looked. He dropped down across from where she sat yogi-style on a green bed sheet she’d spread on the floor, crossed his legs so that their kneecaps almost were touching, and assumed a contemplative face. “Now what?”
“Now?” said Kat with a grin. “Now we’re into it.”
If someone had remarked that Ron’s life looked rather a lot like a farce, then he would not have disagreed. Or not even a farce, he thought as he carefully aligned the partially conductive widgets on the store shelf. It’s more specific than that. A capitol-F Farce is The Jerk or Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid or some movie with Steve Martin before he started making Cheaper by the Dozen Parts 1—Franchise. Before he started making pap that runs on the strength of his own past strength.
“Oh, damn!” Ron whispered violently, knocking the stacks of orange and yellow widgets to the floor (warm colors on the side that greets the customer! always!) as his hands clasped together in shock. This is what I am: I’m Steve Martin in reverse. Instead of parodying my younger brilliant self, I’m doing a preemptive parody of stuff I hope to do when I’m older. Ron groaned.
And groaned again. Groaned like a grumpy old man as he got on his hands and knees. Groaned like a grumpy old man with a grumpier prostate as he strained to reach under the bottom shelf far enough to collect the fallen widgets. He wondered if there was a positive spin to be found in this realization. Like, maybe by living as the shadow of his hypothetical future self now, such that even his brightest moments are only wrinkly reflections of the many successes of this wildly charming not-yet-self, he will be able to see in advance where he will go wrong, and then make adjustments so that his much-adored older self will not get type-cast. And will maintain an aura of dignity. Dignity, yes, thought Ron as he strained his fingers through the dirt and cobwebs to reach a widget that had rolled all the way into the corner, Dignity is the thing.
From his gerbil-like position on the floor, Ron looked up and, through a gap the shelf, and saw two pairs of shoes standing toe-to-toe in the next aisle. The girl pair, rubber-toed and pink and cute, raised up on its toes, and kissing noises followed. Or maybe, thought Ron, I just need to get laid. The other shoes, a pair of cheaply distressed brown boots, he recognized as belonging to a wildly unremarkable floor manager named Rod, whose tendency to ignore the needs of his fellow workers was matched only by his penchant for breaking into nasal, freestyle rap on topics varying from widgets to bitches. Rod was kissing a girl, a girl whose feet Ron did not recognize, but a girl still – a girl with sharp pink shoes. Who, underneath what was probably late-term eyeliner and an overdone perm, was probably cute. This made Ron very sad, and even before he’d finished re-aligning his fallen widgets, he’d decided to go to the handicap-accessible bathroom where he could lock the door and lean against the sink until he found something new to sulk about.
The restroom door was locked. Ron stretched, shifted his weight and tried to look at and think about something besides the array of camping-oriented widgets that surrounded him. Countless times he had walked customers through this section, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the manual-shaft widgets versus the solar-powered widgets. He had feigned excitement about the smallness of the plasticized mini-widgets (“widgies”) on more occasions than he could bear to consider. He tried looking at the ceiling. He tried casually rubbing his eyes for an extended period. He tried to consider something worth anything. For a moment he thought hard about boobies. He tried to imagine the boobs belonging to the girl in the pink shoes, wondering: were they big enough to have some heft to them? Pert enough that she didn't wear a bra under her shirt? But then he got yanked back to the windowless rear of the store, where a florescent army of widgets was closing in on him. Suddenly he was flush with the realization that maybe being purposefully lazy at a job he hated himself for having was not a way to compensate. For anything. His lungs feeling weak, he decided to knock on the bathroom door.
Before his knuckles could rap a third time the door swung open, just enough to reveal a pair of large blue eyes. Peering at him. These eyes looked into his and saw something they recognized. Whether it was something they liked (a mellowed, casket-aged perspective on politics and world events?) or something they pitied (an apathy-inducing mixture of confusion and distress?) Ron didn’t know. Sooner than he could know anything the eyes had disappeared, a hand had shot out; fingers encircled his distressingly limp wrist, yanked him inside, and flipped the lock. Then there the eyes were again, surrounded by a face he recognized – that of Kat, a fellow Widgeables employee.
Kat was beautiful. Kat was tall, with smooth, pale skin, a body drawn in easy curves, and a lustrous shower of red hair. But now the eyes were all he saw, big and blue and perfectly round. Even in the unnecessary light of a public restroom they sparkled, shy and confident. Full of life. A life that was full and yet totally unhurried. Ron stared at them, at Kat, and found that he did not care to question why she had pulled him into a bathroom. Nor did he question why she, this more-beautiful-than-she-knows young thing with whom he had had exactly one conversation (about the pros and cons of the write-up method of disciplining employees: They had agreed that, since their employer treated them like children, the purpose would best be served if they were disciplined like actual children; they differed only in that Kat thought spanking would do the trick while Ron favored a timeout corner) was now busily pulling tiny votive candles from her bag, which she lit and placed in a circle around the bathroom floor.
“Will you put these ones atop the towel dispenser?” said Kat, handing him two freshly lit candles. Then she spread out her fingers and turned in a slow circle, examining the room: the dulled metal of the mirror, the monochrome putty color of the walls and floor and ceiling, the glistening white of the toilet and sink. “I’ve never understood,” she said, “why they decorate restrooms in the style of Kafka. You?”
“No.” Ron shook his head. “But there’s something to be said for having the toilet be the shiniest thing in the room. As a boy I spent a lot of nights at my friend’s dad’s house. Dad was divorced and successful and super cool, in a really disaffected and unloving and depressed kind of way that you don’t recognize when you’re ten. ‘Cause all you see is the cool part. So the toilets in this house were a shiny black and cut really low to the floor like a sports car, and I thought it was so cool the first time; I went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet and felt like I was on the set of Miami Vice—and am I rambling and totally boring you?”
“No no. Go.”
“Okay well, I guess I’m almost done anyway. My point is just is this, just that after the first time the toilets there started to back up on me. …Oh god, sorry, I didn’t even mean to be tacky like that.”
Kat laughed and dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry, no. And I think I know what you mean, there’s something about a shiny white toilet. Makes you know everything is going to be okay.”
Ron grinned and fluttered shyly, embarrassed. “Yeah, that must be it.”
“So,” said Kat loudly, like she was reading from a teleprompter. ”So. I think we’re all set. And I am glad you showed up; this was going to be my only little deal here, but it’s nice to have some company.”
“Some company?” Ron’s eyebrows stitched themselves together. “It looks like you’re having a séance. In which case you’d already have company, you and some ghosts.”
“No, it’s not a séance.” Kate giggled. “I don’t like dead people.”
“A poetry reading, then. Revolutionary poetry, safe only to be read deep, deep in the underground, here in the handicapped bathroom at Widgeables.”
“That might be fun.” said Kat. “But what are we revolting against, hmm.” Long, elegant fingers stroked her chin.
“The Widget militia, duh,” he said. Kat seemed to him to be really contemplating this matter, which he very much liked. He looked at her again, this time with a mixture of confusion and longing; the confusion part got smaller the longer he looked. He dropped down across from where she sat yogi-style on a green bed sheet she’d spread on the floor, crossed his legs so that their kneecaps almost were touching, and assumed a contemplative face. “Now what?”
“Now?” said Kat with a grin. “Now we’re into it.”
12 February 2006
vishizzous square.
when i wrote a post on 1.12.2006 i'd just been notified that i was the candidate NOT selected for a job at the UW College of Engineering. it was a heard-poetry sort of thing, featuring lines that have been said to me over the course of my past year of writer-job searching. some bitterness may be detectable in those lines -- at the time of the writing, my mellow had been severely harshed. now though things have begun to fill and i am, without doubt, at least part-way up in this bitch. to capture my current confindent state of being, the particulars of my dope-ass idiom, let's look back on those same lines through a different lense. this one courtesy of gizoogle.
vishizzous square.
i’m jizzay positive tizzy you’re going ta be very successful.
tha list of th'n i know fo` certain `bout me is pretty shizzort.
i really enjoyed our conversizzles playa really a lot.
one thing on there is this: thugz generally like me. mizzle tizzle not.
you wizzy absolutely tha bizzy writa of tha bizzay.
anotha is tizzle i’m a decent nigga.
i look forward ta tha day wizzle i wizzle into tha store n piznick up a book wit yo name on it dogg.
i’ve a long, almost deadly long stretch in F-R-to-tha-izzont of me if i’m ta git ta wizzle i know i’m capable of, writ'n-wise.
tha panel decided ta go wit someone who has more experience.
but i’m decent. right now: i’m a nigga who speaks Truth.
tha group fizzay you lacked a certain level of experience.
don’t misunderstand: i’m a shit-all amateur n i kizzle it.
tha team recognized that you do superb work, but tha relevant experience was not there.
it’s jizzay that i also happen ta kizzy that on a dime i can concoct an elaborate sausage regard'n tha panel’s need ta self-fellate – ta shiznit they cheeks wit they own collective bureaizzles C-to-tha-izzock – n it will be more delightful n evocative than tha lifetime of professizzle wizzork by whicheva brow-furrowed eaga-lipped wrinkle-resizzle fleshy-sacked cockmeista it was who had tha appropriate experience today.
everybody feels sure that you’re going ta be a bootylicious success whereva it is that you finally kick it root down.
vishizzous square.
i’m jizzay positive tizzy you’re going ta be very successful.
tha list of th'n i know fo` certain `bout me is pretty shizzort.
i really enjoyed our conversizzles playa really a lot.
one thing on there is this: thugz generally like me. mizzle tizzle not.
you wizzy absolutely tha bizzy writa of tha bizzay.
anotha is tizzle i’m a decent nigga.
i look forward ta tha day wizzle i wizzle into tha store n piznick up a book wit yo name on it dogg.
i’ve a long, almost deadly long stretch in F-R-to-tha-izzont of me if i’m ta git ta wizzle i know i’m capable of, writ'n-wise.
tha panel decided ta go wit someone who has more experience.
but i’m decent. right now: i’m a nigga who speaks Truth.
tha group fizzay you lacked a certain level of experience.
don’t misunderstand: i’m a shit-all amateur n i kizzle it.
tha team recognized that you do superb work, but tha relevant experience was not there.
it’s jizzay that i also happen ta kizzy that on a dime i can concoct an elaborate sausage regard'n tha panel’s need ta self-fellate – ta shiznit they cheeks wit they own collective bureaizzles C-to-tha-izzock – n it will be more delightful n evocative than tha lifetime of professizzle wizzork by whicheva brow-furrowed eaga-lipped wrinkle-resizzle fleshy-sacked cockmeista it was who had tha appropriate experience today.
everybody feels sure that you’re going ta be a bootylicious success whereva it is that you finally kick it root down.
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