Friday, May 25, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Someone...
Someone Ate the Eggs
Someone Opened the Fritos
Someone Found the Cat
Someone Said Something
Someone Spilled the Slurpee
Someone Burned the Toast
Someone Ate the Bagel
Somone's In the Office
Someone's Out of the Office
Someone's On the Television
Someone Opened the Fritos
Someone Found the Cat
Someone Said Something
Someone Spilled the Slurpee
Someone Burned the Toast
Someone Ate the Bagel
Somone's In the Office
Someone's Out of the Office
Someone's On the Television
DON'T!
Don't Drive the Car
Don't Open the Refrigerator
Don't Take the Message
Don't Wash the Clothes
Don't Feed the Fish
Don't Date the Cheerleader
Don't Laugh at the Joke
Don't Say Anything Silly
Don't Eat the Ice Cream
Don't Coach the Team
Don't Wash the Sweater
Don't Step On the Insect
Don't Open the Cola
Don't Use the Towel
Don't Open the Refrigerator
Don't Take the Message
Don't Wash the Clothes
Don't Feed the Fish
Don't Date the Cheerleader
Don't Laugh at the Joke
Don't Say Anything Silly
Don't Eat the Ice Cream
Don't Coach the Team
Don't Wash the Sweater
Don't Step On the Insect
Don't Open the Cola
Don't Use the Towel
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Monday, May 07, 2007
I wrote this story on a notepad while temping in Glendale, California, June 2003.
He hated The Bachelor. At first he couldn’t figure out why he hated it so much. He realized that it depressed him The whole thing was really depressing and he hated it. He hated the guys they picked to be the bachelor on The Bachelor. The second one reminded him of his freshman college roommate and he didn’t want to remember that time of his life. His mother died that year and his roommate was not supportive. He kept on partying and promising that he’d take him out for a drink but he was always with his girlfriend and he kept on promising that he would and it was a long time before he did take him out and by that time it seemed like his roommate was doing it out of pity and not friendship. It was just as well, the two of them had never bonded and he never liked his roommate’s friends and if they’d become friends he would’ve had to hang out with his roommate’s friends and he didn’t like his roommate’s friends. He remembered feeling very awkward in college, even though he was fairly popular in high school. It seemed that people in that part of the state where he went to college were different somehow. Not as many Catholics and he was a Catholic and his roommate was Protestant, not that they ever went to church or even discussed religion at all. He’d made a couple of friends in college by that point so he didn’t depend on his popular roommate for a social life. But after his mother die, things got really rough for awhile and he thought about dropping out of school. The only thing that kept him going was the fact that he really liked his major.
That was twenty five-years ago. He remembered reading a couple of books in college that were not textbooks. He really liked a couple of them. He couldn’t remember why he picked them up or why he read them. He supposed that he was bored and because there was not TV in his room – only in the student lounge downstairs—that he had some free time on the weekend when he wasn’t studying and found a couple of books along the way and decided to read them. He hadn’t picked up a book since.
He thought that maybe he could pick up a couple of books and read them. Nothing too difficult; and if it went well, then, maybe he would pick up a couple more, maybe he’d even join the library. He had a library card somewhere, a library card that wife got for him when they were thinking about adding a deck. His wife borrowed the books about adding a deck and when they decided not to add a deck she took them back to the library. But maybe he could find his library card and go to the library and borrow some books. He was sick of renting movies from Blockbuster. The novelty of renting movies to watch at home had worn off years ago. His friends till went to Blockbuster a couple of times a week and always wanted to rent the movie that was the most popular movie in the store. One time he and his wife went over another couple’s house for dinner and they wound up watching this female serial killer movie that the couple had rented and wanted to watch. The movie was due that night and they wanted to watch it that night so they could return it that night and not have to pay an overdue fee. It felt like they were doing homework. And the people who worked at Blockbuster were always recommending movies that he thought weren’t any good and the customers always were trying to stop you from renting a movie that they thought wasn’t any good.
So he got up and made coffee for himself and made the kids’ lunches and then he remembered that it was pizza day at his kids’ school so he put the lunches in a Tupperware container and put the container in the refrigerator. He hoped that his kids wouldn’t notice day old sandwiches. If his kids complained he knew what his wife would say. She would say “If they don’t want it they can starve.” He remembered that he was a picky eater when he was a kid. Onetime when he was little he had to have lunch at a neighbor’s house and the neighbor cut the sandwich on a diagonal. He didn’t want to eat it, even if it meant skipping the neighbor’s famous homemade peach pie. So he ate half the sandwich and then went to the bathroom and threw it up in the toilet and then threw the rest of the sandwich in the garbage. Of course this is what he thinks he remembered doing, now that he thought about he was sure that he ate the whole thing but hated every bite, whining to his mother the whole time. Then the peach pie tasted bad to him because it was made with real peaches that had a lot of bite to them, not like squishy canned peaches, so he hated the pie as well. One time when he was eight, he gave a classmate one of his hostess cupcakes on a field trip to Teddy Roosevelt’s house. The classmate was very grateful and the next day he gave him a bag of homemade blueberry muffins. He refused to accept the muffins; they were made by a complete stranger in a strange kitchen. The classmate was crushed and begged him to take the muffins. He refused.
He poured the rest of the coffee into a car cup. He planned to buy a bagel at the office cafeteria. Usually during the drive to work he thought about the bagel he was going to have at work but this morning he thought about the book he was going to buy. The first thing he needed to do was either borrow or buy the book. His wife had a library card. She could go with him to the library and he could pick something out, or he could go and get his own library card, something he hadn’t done since he was a kid. Or he could buy a book. There was a Waldenbooks in the old mall, a new Barnes and Noble next to the Home Depot, and a Target next to the Outback Steakhouse next to the Home Depot. If all he was interested in was a best-seller, the easiest thing for him to do was to go to the CVS near work. The kids needed some school supplies and though he preferred to buy them at Target, the CVS was easier. If wanted a recent best-seller, then the worst place to go would be the library. Even if he could get his hands on one, he would only have a couple of weeks to read it. It occurred to him that there were two kinds of best-sellers: hard-cover and paperback. The hardcovers were expensive and the paperbacks were relatively cheap. He could probably get a Hardcover of a paperback best-seller at the library and keep it for a month or he could get a paperback of an older best-seller and keep it for a month. He could go to the library after work and get the book and be done with it. The library had an outside book drop, so you could return the book after hours. This was convenient. He could finish the book and drop it off on a Sunday after his son’s hockey practice which was at the rink near the library. He could even drop his son off and hang out at the library during practice and then come back and pick up his son.
Getting a library card was easy, but he might need to explain to his wife why he wanted one. His wife might not accept his sudden interest in books. He could say that he wanted to borrow some books on home improvement. He remembered when his father borrowed some home improvement books from the library. The books remained on the bookshelf unread for several years. He returned them himself, placing the overdue books at the checkout desk when the librarian left the room for a minute. Suddenly the library idea seemed like a terrible one. He didn’t want his son to go through the same guilt he felt when he returned his father’s library books. At the same time he knew that the library probably had DVDs and that they were free to borrow.
He got to work early and bought a bagel. The company he worked for had changed food services the month before and since then the bagels tasted better to him. They began making fancier sandwiches. He’d been buying the sandwiches with a credit card. He knew that this was a bad idea and he’d been trying to stop. It was costing him too much money. Usually when he felt that he was spending too much money on lunch he would bring a brown-bag lunch from home. This would last about three weeks. The problem, as he saw it, was that he made lunch for his kids most mornings and always ended up making the same kind of sandwich for himself, even if it was peanut butter and jelly.
He asked them to put cream cheese on his bagel. He noticed that the cafeteria now featured several varieties of creams cheese spreads, including one with sun-dried tomato.
He took the elevator to his floor. As he left the elevator he thought about the book that he was going to read. It suddenly seemed absurd. He tried to picture himself reading a book. Where would he read it? In the living room while sitting on the couch. The chaise lounge in the backyard? In bed? He noticed a secretary noticing him noticing her noticing him. He almost tripped. He was lost in thought. She had a book on her desk. A thriller. He remembered seeing commercial about the book. It occurred to him that it was strange that they made television commercials promoting books. But a book was a product just like any other product, so why was that so strange? He wondered when they started doing that. He was old enough to remember when they advertised cigarettes on television. And he remembered some advertisement in one of his parent’s magazines where a woman was smoking a cigarette and smiling, even though she was sporting a very black eye. He knew that the black eye was fake—it looked painted on like the black grease paint that baseball players put under their eyes to deflect the glare—but it disturbed him nonetheless. Then he remembered the game show where you won a car and that was it; a game show where the grand prize was a car. The host of this game show was Tom Kennedy.
He read his emails. They were all work-related, except one, which was a forwarded email from an acquaintance. The premise of the email was a humorous one but he failed to get the joke. He knew that it was funny but it didn’t make him laugh. He wondered if he might exchange emails with people about books once he’d read a few. He could even bring a book to work and read it on the cafeteria on his lunch hour. The secretary with the book might notice his book. Eating lunch while holding a book.
That was twenty five-years ago. He remembered reading a couple of books in college that were not textbooks. He really liked a couple of them. He couldn’t remember why he picked them up or why he read them. He supposed that he was bored and because there was not TV in his room – only in the student lounge downstairs—that he had some free time on the weekend when he wasn’t studying and found a couple of books along the way and decided to read them. He hadn’t picked up a book since.
He thought that maybe he could pick up a couple of books and read them. Nothing too difficult; and if it went well, then, maybe he would pick up a couple more, maybe he’d even join the library. He had a library card somewhere, a library card that wife got for him when they were thinking about adding a deck. His wife borrowed the books about adding a deck and when they decided not to add a deck she took them back to the library. But maybe he could find his library card and go to the library and borrow some books. He was sick of renting movies from Blockbuster. The novelty of renting movies to watch at home had worn off years ago. His friends till went to Blockbuster a couple of times a week and always wanted to rent the movie that was the most popular movie in the store. One time he and his wife went over another couple’s house for dinner and they wound up watching this female serial killer movie that the couple had rented and wanted to watch. The movie was due that night and they wanted to watch it that night so they could return it that night and not have to pay an overdue fee. It felt like they were doing homework. And the people who worked at Blockbuster were always recommending movies that he thought weren’t any good and the customers always were trying to stop you from renting a movie that they thought wasn’t any good.
So he got up and made coffee for himself and made the kids’ lunches and then he remembered that it was pizza day at his kids’ school so he put the lunches in a Tupperware container and put the container in the refrigerator. He hoped that his kids wouldn’t notice day old sandwiches. If his kids complained he knew what his wife would say. She would say “If they don’t want it they can starve.” He remembered that he was a picky eater when he was a kid. Onetime when he was little he had to have lunch at a neighbor’s house and the neighbor cut the sandwich on a diagonal. He didn’t want to eat it, even if it meant skipping the neighbor’s famous homemade peach pie. So he ate half the sandwich and then went to the bathroom and threw it up in the toilet and then threw the rest of the sandwich in the garbage. Of course this is what he thinks he remembered doing, now that he thought about he was sure that he ate the whole thing but hated every bite, whining to his mother the whole time. Then the peach pie tasted bad to him because it was made with real peaches that had a lot of bite to them, not like squishy canned peaches, so he hated the pie as well. One time when he was eight, he gave a classmate one of his hostess cupcakes on a field trip to Teddy Roosevelt’s house. The classmate was very grateful and the next day he gave him a bag of homemade blueberry muffins. He refused to accept the muffins; they were made by a complete stranger in a strange kitchen. The classmate was crushed and begged him to take the muffins. He refused.
He poured the rest of the coffee into a car cup. He planned to buy a bagel at the office cafeteria. Usually during the drive to work he thought about the bagel he was going to have at work but this morning he thought about the book he was going to buy. The first thing he needed to do was either borrow or buy the book. His wife had a library card. She could go with him to the library and he could pick something out, or he could go and get his own library card, something he hadn’t done since he was a kid. Or he could buy a book. There was a Waldenbooks in the old mall, a new Barnes and Noble next to the Home Depot, and a Target next to the Outback Steakhouse next to the Home Depot. If all he was interested in was a best-seller, the easiest thing for him to do was to go to the CVS near work. The kids needed some school supplies and though he preferred to buy them at Target, the CVS was easier. If wanted a recent best-seller, then the worst place to go would be the library. Even if he could get his hands on one, he would only have a couple of weeks to read it. It occurred to him that there were two kinds of best-sellers: hard-cover and paperback. The hardcovers were expensive and the paperbacks were relatively cheap. He could probably get a Hardcover of a paperback best-seller at the library and keep it for a month or he could get a paperback of an older best-seller and keep it for a month. He could go to the library after work and get the book and be done with it. The library had an outside book drop, so you could return the book after hours. This was convenient. He could finish the book and drop it off on a Sunday after his son’s hockey practice which was at the rink near the library. He could even drop his son off and hang out at the library during practice and then come back and pick up his son.
Getting a library card was easy, but he might need to explain to his wife why he wanted one. His wife might not accept his sudden interest in books. He could say that he wanted to borrow some books on home improvement. He remembered when his father borrowed some home improvement books from the library. The books remained on the bookshelf unread for several years. He returned them himself, placing the overdue books at the checkout desk when the librarian left the room for a minute. Suddenly the library idea seemed like a terrible one. He didn’t want his son to go through the same guilt he felt when he returned his father’s library books. At the same time he knew that the library probably had DVDs and that they were free to borrow.
He got to work early and bought a bagel. The company he worked for had changed food services the month before and since then the bagels tasted better to him. They began making fancier sandwiches. He’d been buying the sandwiches with a credit card. He knew that this was a bad idea and he’d been trying to stop. It was costing him too much money. Usually when he felt that he was spending too much money on lunch he would bring a brown-bag lunch from home. This would last about three weeks. The problem, as he saw it, was that he made lunch for his kids most mornings and always ended up making the same kind of sandwich for himself, even if it was peanut butter and jelly.
He asked them to put cream cheese on his bagel. He noticed that the cafeteria now featured several varieties of creams cheese spreads, including one with sun-dried tomato.
He took the elevator to his floor. As he left the elevator he thought about the book that he was going to read. It suddenly seemed absurd. He tried to picture himself reading a book. Where would he read it? In the living room while sitting on the couch. The chaise lounge in the backyard? In bed? He noticed a secretary noticing him noticing her noticing him. He almost tripped. He was lost in thought. She had a book on her desk. A thriller. He remembered seeing commercial about the book. It occurred to him that it was strange that they made television commercials promoting books. But a book was a product just like any other product, so why was that so strange? He wondered when they started doing that. He was old enough to remember when they advertised cigarettes on television. And he remembered some advertisement in one of his parent’s magazines where a woman was smoking a cigarette and smiling, even though she was sporting a very black eye. He knew that the black eye was fake—it looked painted on like the black grease paint that baseball players put under their eyes to deflect the glare—but it disturbed him nonetheless. Then he remembered the game show where you won a car and that was it; a game show where the grand prize was a car. The host of this game show was Tom Kennedy.
He read his emails. They were all work-related, except one, which was a forwarded email from an acquaintance. The premise of the email was a humorous one but he failed to get the joke. He knew that it was funny but it didn’t make him laugh. He wondered if he might exchange emails with people about books once he’d read a few. He could even bring a book to work and read it on the cafeteria on his lunch hour. The secretary with the book might notice his book. Eating lunch while holding a book.
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