Illinoir

Various excerpts for your amusement:

“Are you okay now?”

“Yeah, I’ve learned to focus my chi, the energy that flows from all things and binds all things together.”

“Are you serious?”

“No, not at all. I’m still the Ragin’ Cajun.”

“But you’re not Cajun.”

“No, not at all. I’m still the Jumpy Jew.”

“But you’re not–”

“Yes I am.”

I realize I’ve been talking about all the things I hate — I hadn’t realized there were so many, enough to carry me through the first half of a month — and haven’t mentioned a thing that I love, that I truly love. So I will do so here:

I really love, and I mean this with all my heart, corn flakes. Corn flakes, I feel, are the single-most perfect item, food-related or not, on the face of the earth. Perfection has not been achieved before or since that fateful day in 1894 when William Kellogg accidentally invented the corn flake. You heard me right — it was an accident. It is often overlooked when discussing accidental inventions — penicillin, cheese, and the Incredible Hulk get all the press — and nobody knows the tale of W.K. Kellogg and his magic grains.

You see, Kellogg was an Adventist, and therefore, apparently, a vegetarian, and he was looking for a way to improve the diet of people in the little crazy house he ran. So one night he’s stirring up some grain to try to make an easily digested bread substitute and he lets it sit out and the grain tempered over night. The next morning, he checks it out and discovers that when the grain is rolled, it comes out as these nicely formed flakes that taste pretty good. Blammo! Corn Flakes!

I recognize — and love — the humor of walking into Walgreen’s — no babbling this time — to buy some spackle and a bottle of Veryfine Relax juice, flashing my bloody knuckles at the cashier. This sort of Just in Time purchasing is like buying an umbrella when it’s pouring or razors and shaving cream with three days worth of growth on my face. It just reeks of a general lack of preparation.

“Will? That card doesn’t say ‘take me to my hotel.'”

“It doesn’t? I didn’t know you knew Japanese, Sheila.”

“Yeah, a little.”

“So?”

“It says, ‘I am an American. I dropped the nuclear bomb that ruined parts of your country for generations. I caused you untold amounts of pain and misery and suffering and now I am here, on your land, completely at your mercy.'”

“It says all that?” The card didn’t look big enough to cover all that.

“Yep. More or less. It’s a good thing your father never used it in Japan.”

“Hell, it’s a good thing I didn’t use it when I was at camp.”

The next note says, “Every breath you have left is shallow and uninspired.” I quickly check my breathing. Seems okay. A little raspy perhaps, but nothing to worry about.

“Who’s writing these?” Sheila is very concerned.

“I don’t know. A co-worker? An ex-girlfriend? You?”

She laughs, “Like I’d threaten you, Will. You’re all I’ve got.”

“You keep saying these are threats. I don’t find them all that threatening.”

“Well, they’re ominous anyway. You’d agree they’re ominous, right?”

“I can only go as far as ‘slightly morbid.'”

“Regardless, they’re downers and who goes around writing downer notes to someone?”

“They obviously have more time on their hands than I do. I like this one, though. I have been uninspired lately. And breath and inspiration are so closely linked. It’s a brilliant play on words. And then there’s the word ‘shallow’ –”

“Will?”

“Sorry. I just wouldn’t go reading too much into these. If I told you, ‘One day, eventually, you will die your eventual death,’ would you be worried or just annoyed at my stating the obvious and my poor grammar?”

“That’s a relaxed attitude you’ve got there.”

“Well, if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s accept the inevitable. It’s the unknown I’m not so good with.”

He starts talking to me about the newspaper I’m reading — an offshoot of the Tribune geared, allegedly, towards my generation. The graphics are “hipper” and the writing is more “cutting edge” and the whole thing, if you ask me, is a big “piece of crap.” But, I’ll read just about anything, and so I am skimming an article about Winona Ryder’s court decision. It’s on the front page of this paper. Thank God nothing’s going on in Iraq today, huh? Oh wait; there is. Well, it’s a good thing nobody in my generation needs to know about it.

Anyway, this guy’s the kind that knows things like how Colonel Robert R. McCormick would be rolling in his grave if he could see what the Tribune was doing today.

“You know, they’re basically demanding that we go to war with Iraq. All those inflammatory headlines and propaganda. Bob McCormick realized the terror of war when he was in Mexico and in Paris back in the ‘teens. He came back feeling that the US should never get involved in these sorts of conflicts. He’d never approve of that headline.”

The offensive headline, “Ryder Convicted on 3 Counts” had very little to do with Iraq, but in a way, it did make me want to fight.

“I think you’re talking about the Sun-Times, sir. Their headlines are a bit more slanted — look over there. It says, ‘We Must Bomb the Shit out of Iraq.'”

“The Sun-Times is one of the 10 biggest daily newspapers in the country.”

“By big, you mean in size and not circulation, right?”

“No, it’s actually one of the tiniest papers there is,” he said, indicating the size of the paper with his thumb and forefinger. “The largest is the Greensboro, North Carolina Sentinel which runs an average of 530 pages a day.”

Then it’s an Eastern European woman talking with her Slavic sounds, munching through an apple, encroaching on my space and now — you won’t believe this — she’s cutting dead skin from her fingertips with a pair of cuticle scissors. Now clipping her nails, one of my ten most-hated sounds (in no particular order: slurping; munching; nose-breathing; the sound of a Zippo lighter being flicked open and closed repeatedly; gargling; stomping; clarinet; the sound people make when they suck on their teeth; nail clipping; and self-rightousness.)