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Family

9. A picture of your family. January 8, 1978. "A Family Portrait"

Another tough one. Raises questions of what family is, and so on and so forth. Back when I was 2 and a half years old, it wasn’t so complicated….

The novel, if that is its real name, has gotten weird. From mystery-of-an-ethereal-candleholder to zombie/cicada story to now….some sort of Mark Leyner-esque megalomania-filled rant…. But, I wrote a couple thousand words today. Next year? Back to historical fiction. Or another Baywatch novel. Easier to keep on track.

Words: 20,639. Here are 348 of the more ridiculous ones.

“I do not sound like him,” Therese protested. “His ‘they’ is a non-existent shadowy cabal made up of elected officials and corporate bigwigs. His ‘they’ is the product of watching too many movies, playing too many video games, and smoking too much dope.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “I stopped smoking dope years ago. It made me paranoid.”
“Well, I think it stuck, Arthur. You’re obviously delusional.”
“Delusional? Me? Just because I think there are better ways to run a business? And because I think — no, I know — that while it appears that we live in a democratically governed free market society that there are actually five people — Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, the cryogenically stored brain of Dick Cheney, and Wesley Thomas, a 53-year-old farmer from Akron, Ohio — that are secretly in control of everything?”
Paul added, “You also think that all the hot sales assistants want to sleep with you.”
“Alyssa totally does. She told me so last Thursday.”
“I think that must have been a dream.”
“No, it was definitely real. We were walking down the street and she said, ‘Arthur, I need you to make me a woman.’ And I said, ‘Alyssa, I’m not God. I can’t just make you a woman.’ And she said, ‘No, stupid, I want you inside me.’ And I said, ‘You mean you want me to like climb inside your skin.’ And she said, ‘No, dummy, I want you to take me to bed.’ And I said, ‘But it’s only 11:30, you can’t possibly be tired yet.’ And she said, ‘No, you idiot, I want you to have sex with me.’ And I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I knew that’s what you meant.’ And then all of a sudden, we were in Detroit, only it wasn’t really Detroit. And she turned into Hilary Clinton. And there was a talking rabbit. Now that you mention it, that was probably a dream.”
“Probably. That’s a good one though.”
“I have to remember to write that down in my dream journal.”

Still plugging away…


8. A photo of your favorite band/musician. Soul Coughing? Sure, why not?

Not as psyched about this particular part of the photo-a-day meme. Required me to choose a “favorite” band. Then it required me to find a photo of them. I haven’t taken photos of any bands. Anyway. Here is a picture of Soul Coughing.

Very nearly gave up on this thing today. Just felt like, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” Hey, been there before, right? Just not in love with anything that I’m writing. But, this evening, a well-timed pep talk from the NaNoWriMo people convinced me to just keep going. So, thanks NaNoWriMo people…. I guess. Anyhow — word count: 18,167. Excerpt: some silly stuff I wrote yesterday.

Jimmy kept the one room shed dark most of the time, but when I finally made my way inside I found it to be brightly lit by a dozen floating fish-shaped lamps. Paul was standing in the middle of the room gazing up at the lights with a look of child-like wonder on his face. I joined him. Each of the lights was cycling through a set of soft pastels, and though they each put out an incredible amount of light, more than one would expect, it still maintained a gentle quality, not harsh or glaring; just…bright. Jimmy was seated at a long table, tinkering with a lamp that had somehow malfunctioned.
“Jimmy,” Paul breathed, “these are amazing.”
“Yeah, Jimmy,” I agreed,  “these are awesome. When did you come up with these? I thought you were snowed under with your holiday things.”
“What? Oh. These are just something I’ve been messing with in my free time.”
“In your free time?” I asked, disbelieving. “…Ok.”
“Anyway, I wish you’d tell Trammel how much you like them,” Jimmy said, looking up from his work. “He thinks they won’t sell.”
“He thinks they won’t sell?” Paul exclaimed. “They’re floating fucking fish lamps.”
“Yeah. He says that fish shaped stuff is done. Last year.”
“Does he know that they float? Like. In the air?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Um, Jimmy?” Paul asked.
“Yeah?”
“How do they do that? Float, I mean.”
“Oh, it’s really quite simple. The excess thermal energy generated by the light in the lamp is used to heat a small capsule of gaseous iron maganate, which, when it expands creates a negative gravitational index.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yeah. A chemist friend of mine who works for NASA hooked me up with it. Here, check it out.”
As he spoke, he gave the tail of the lamp he was working on a quarter turn. It lit up purple, cycled through green and red. He held the fish in his open palms and shortly, it floated out of his hands. He gave it a gentle push and it joined the rest of the lamps just slightly over our heads. The lamps gave the room a peaceful, ethereal feel. I wanted half a dozen of them for my apartment.
“How much would these retail for?” I asked.
“That’s the thing. Right now we’d have to sell one for $13.99. I’m trying to get the cost down to two for $10. You know how Trammel feels about the Threshold.”
The Threshold was the name Trammel had given for what he felt was the price point that an average consumer would buy something. It varied from product to product, but there were some general rules. For something like this, which fell firmly into the novelty lighting category, Trammel stood firm at two for 10. When something had been dumbed down, cheapened or otherwise fucked with in order to fit in Trammel’s pricing structure, we said that it had been “Thresholed.”
“You mean these things are only $14? And the only reason Trammel doesn’t want to produce them is because they’re fish? And you might not be able to make them two for ten?”
“Better products have been axed for worse reasons, Arthur,” Jimmy said solemnly. “Is it lunch time?”
“Yes, it is,” Paul said. “I’m starving. Let’s go.”

Love!

7. A photo of someone you love. Phil Martin & me at Morseland 11/2/10

Another tough one to figure — what with photos of my best friend(s) and family coming up. Certainly Phil falls into those categories as well, and people in those categories crossover too. But, hell, decisions had to be made, so Phil makes it in. How could I not love him? Driving out to Golf Mill on Saturday mornings, through the gray of Chicago winter and the morass of teenaged minds; chopping wood; getting lemonade on the nose. So much history.

Realized I haven’t updated the word count here lately: 15,517.

Today’s excerpt is based on an actual conversation about an actual website:

Shutting the door of the cutting room behind me, I found myself mere feet away from the cubicle. A trip that should take five minutes at the most, it had taken me nearly a half hour to traverse the building. I couldn’t believe I’d finally made it. I rested for a moment against the cubicle wall, listening to the bickering coming from within.
Paul’s voice: “It’s fake, Therese. It’s not real.”
Therese: “How do you know that?”
“Because, Therese, I looked it up on Snopes.com and it said it’s not real. Also, because I saw the same email 2 years ago. Also, because nobody would actually publish a real how-to website on how to make a bonsai kitten.”
I could hear Kate say something, but because she spoke so quietly and in a monotone, I couldn’t make out any of the words. I was surprised that either Paul or Therese could understand her, but apparently Paul heard her perfectly because he replied directly. “Kate, there is no valid reason to censor the website. Anybody who is stupid enough to believe the website is real — no offense to either of you, of course — has bigger issues. And anybody who’s insane enough to try it probably already has a freezer full of body parts.”
“Ewww, gross,” said Therese.
“I’m just saying,” Paul replied.
Therese scoffed. “‘Just saying,’” she mimicked. “You’re just saying that you think it’s okay for someone to post instructions on how to abuse kittens on the web.”
“There are much worse things out there, Therese! And we shouldn’t be looking to censor the web, especially not a site that’s so obviously a joke! The site’s owner can’t and shouldn’t be held responsible for what people do after they look at the site. You can’t blame Ozzy Osbourne for suicides, Dexter for murders, or Grand Theft Auto for carjackers. If people are fucked up, they’re fucked up. End of story.”
“You sound just like Arthur,” Therese said. I smiled. It was true. He did.
“Well, there are worse people to sound like,” Paul said. “Where is that dude, anyway?”
If I’d needed a cue, that was it. I love making a good entrance. I stepped around the corner. “Have no fear, my friends. I’m right here.”
“Heeey, Art,” Paul said. We high-fived.
Therese and Kate, who had both been facing the center of the cubicle, turned their chairs back towards their desks.
“Ladies,” I said, walking to my desk. “Nice to see you again.”
I fell into my chair, exhausted from running the obstacle course that was the Cola Industries building.
“Hey Art,” Paul said, “don’t get too comfortable.”
I sighed. I just wanted to sit at my desk, maybe waste some bandwidth out of spite. “Why not?” I asked.
“Time for lunch.”
Immediately rejuvenated, I jumped from my chair. “Cool. Let’s grab Jimmy.”

A Wig and a Coke

6. A photo that makes you laugh. Dave Dubois @ Ripon College, ~1995(?)

This photo is hilarious because that’s not his real hair. It’s not his hat either.

Good timing on this part of the meme because yesterday I was given the phrase “Where are we going to find a Canadian at this time of night?” which is just about the funniest phrase ever and the perfect caption for every New Yorker cartoon. Anyhow:

Covered in scratches, I made it to the patio door just as Greta and Helene, two women who worked on the second floor and whose job descriptions I had never quite figured out — I had thought that maybe Greta worked in HR and perhaps Helene did something with accounting but the heads of those respective departments had each told me that wasn’t true — were coming out for their 11:30 smoke break.
Greta was finishing a joke: “…and then the priest says to the violin maker, ‘Where are we going to find a Canadian at this time of night?’” she said.
“I don’t get it,” Helene said.
“Neither do I,” Greta admitted. “I was hoping you could explain it to me.”

Also, for some reason today I decided to write as if Coca-Cola was sponsoring this novel. Keep in mind that “Cola Industries” is the name of the entirely fictitious company where the narrator is employed and has nothing to do with Coke or Coca-Cola or beverages of any sort:

I stepped through the doorway into the break room and stopped dead in my tracks. The room was filled with the older folks, and they all stopped mid-sentence, mid-chew, mid-swallow to look up at my arrival. I waved, smiled, pointed at the soda machine.

“Just, uh, just here to get a Coke,” I said. “You guys know how much I love Coke.”
The room nodded as one. The break room contained the only aluminum recycling container in the building, and since it was upstairs from the cube, that meant expending a certain amount of effort in order to be a responsible citizen of planet Earth, not that I really gave a shit about that, but it was good to keep up appearances. Thus, my desk was often home to a stack of empty Coke cans. People mistook my apathy and lethargy for an extreme sugar and caffeine addiction and just loved to comment on it. I’m not hypoglycemic, I’m just lazy.
I made my way to the Coke machine, fed it a dollar bill, retrieved the can and my change and turned to leave. At the door, I found myself face to face with Cheryl, the head of IT. I said hello and tried to get around her, but she blocked my way
“Arthur Traum,” she said, looking as sour as usual. “Just the person I wanted to see.”
My luck had run out. I knew it had been too good to be true. I had almost made it to the relatively safe haven of my desk but I had pressed my luck, stopping for the Coke. Curse my love of its distinct cola taste, the sweet bite of the bubbles.
“What’s up, Cheryl?” I asked, opening the can. I even loved the sound of the spliting metal, the escaping carbon dioxide. It was like music.
“It’s about that web site of yours,” she said, the words dripping like flat Coke from her mouth.
“The web site of mine?” I knew she was referring to the Cola Industries intranet site. Aside from the sales staff I was the only one who made use of it, but I had never claimed it and certainly felt no ownership over it. The site had been built by a third party web development firm — one that, coincidentally, I had applied to upon my arrival in Jersey. I mentioned this to their project manager after a strategy meeting. He had given me a thin lipped smile and said that he “vaguely recalled” seeing my resume. So much for that. “What about it?”
“Your photo uploads are tipping us over our bandwidth allotment. You’re going to have to reduce the file size. Or something.” She smiled, saccharine sweet and just as cancerous.
“You mean to tell me that uploading a couple hundred 30k files each month is putting that big a dent in our bandwidth allowance? That’s just not possible.”
Her smile vanished, evaporating like Diet Coke on a hot summer day, leaving behind a sticky residue of disdain.

Cicadapocalypse

4. A photo of the last place you went on holiday. Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco, CA.

The last place I went on holiday was just a few weeks ago when I went to San Francisco for Halsted‘s wedding (which was wonderful). This is one of the few photos I took while I was there and just one of two or three that aren’t completely blurry messes. Also: This is where chocolate comes from.

The first night of the cicada invasion. The bugs emerged and started crawling up the side of the house.

So, I’ve started down the zombie path, which led to me adding some of my creepiest memories of the cicada invasion which occurred while I lived in New Jersey. Brood X, a 17 year cicada popped out and made for some surreal living. And I’m thinking, what better cause for zombieism than a bunch of terrifying bugs? Or perhaps it’s just a good backdrop for them? Or maybe they’re the zombies themselves? The thought of a body bursting open, filled with cicadas…. Ok, I’m making myself ill now. Let’s just move onto an excerpt:

Towards the end of the worst of the cicadas, this one was wedged into the hood of my car.

But now, here it was again. A cicada invasion was once again the talk of the town. It was all anybody could think of. The conversation rankled me; nobody would listen to reason.
“I’ve been through this before,” I said, for what must have been the hundredth time that month. “It’s all a bunch of hype and fear mongering. They need to keep us scared of something, so they’re latching onto this.”
“Who’s they?” Therese asked.
“You know,” I said. “They. Them.”
“Who?”
I sighed, looked to Paul for help. He just shrugged. As my best friend in the bunch, the only civilized person amongst the savages of central Jersey, I often needed backup from him. He was usually quick to come to my aid, but sometimes he seemed to derive a sort of sick pleasure from watching me twist in the wind.
I turned back to Therese. “They are the government, the news media, the entertainment industry. Gun control nuts. Red state extremists. Fucking…fucking McDonald’s and PepsiCo.” I was on a roll, reaching for straws perhaps, but on a roll nonetheless. Once I got started it was hard to stop. “Think of everyone that benefits when we’re kept afraid. Docile. Timid and meek inside our houses, too scared to come outside, much less to question a government edict that makes it legal to drag citizens out of bed in the middle of the night to question them without counsel present, to hold them indefinitely without charges, to make people disappear, erase them from the public record as if they had never existed. Think about how quickly emergency acts get passed. And look at all the revenue being generated. All the advertising dollars. All the protective gear being sold.”
Sharon took her eyes off of Paul for a second and cast a dark but amused gaze in my direction. “Do you really believe all the things that you say?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” I said. “If you can’t recognize a vast, global governmental conspiracy underwritten by Coca-Cola and Frito-Lay and executed by CNN and Comedy Central when the proof is right there before your very eyes, then can you claim to be paying attention to what’s going on around you?”
Sharon rolled her eyes at me — something she did with frightening regularity. It was okay: I was used to it, and tended to return the gesture with similar frequency.

It’s Still Alive….

2. A photo of yourself a year ago. From Pic-A-Day Nano2k9

25 minutes into day 2. Over 3500 words which isn’t bad for a novel that I constantly feel the urge to bash about the head.

Novembers are melancholy beasts. Bad things happen in November. Every time.

Here are the first couple lines:

“You’d better get going, Arthur. The photos won’t take themselves,” she said, and she laughed, as if she had said something clever, which she hadn’t.

An update…

I know you’ve all been wanting new updates and excerpts.

Well go to hell, I’ve got a novel to write.

No no, just kidding.

31398 words. About 3000 short or so. Already 1000 written for the day, so I think I can make my 2000+ quota for the day. Funny how much that jumps….

Here’s your stinking excerpt:

Memories. I think about the places I’ve been and the things I’ve done and they don’t seem real. Everything is just a dim, blurry image in my head. Who’s to say I’m not making it all up as I go along? Specific incidents from my past are so vague that it all might as well be a badly remember story someone once told me. Or an episode of a television show that I saw a long time ago and didn’t pay very much attention to. I can’t remember last Friday’s lunch. I remember meeting Sheila as well as I remember my fifth birthday: fuzzy flashes of images and movement, so much room for re-interpretation. Any details I give have been made up, by me, or Sheila, or any number of othe people whose embellishments of the story have added up and been added on through the years. All these memories must belong to someone else. Even photographs don’t help. I might have been retouched into them for all I know.

So who am I? How did I get to where I am? It must have been quite a journey. I don’t remember a single step of it. I’m certain someone knocked me out and carried me here. To this moment. And then to this one. Am I awake now? Will the future be any different? Will I remember this moment of writing these words and think, even that memory is false, even that time someone else was controlling my hands and feet and head and pushing me along the path?

Every second of every minute must have been — and must continue to be — programming that is, at the same time, the determination of my future and the result of my past. I guess I can just shut my eyes, and let it go. Let it ride….

A banging noise. And yelling. “End of the line!” I wake up quickly. Disoriented, sluggish, embarrassed. Unsteady. The conductor is hitting a metal bar directly above her head with a wooden stick. “Get off the train.”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” I say. To my feet and through the doors, I have no idea which end of the line I’m at.

It turns out I’m at the opposite end of the line from any end of the line I’d like to be at. In Chicago, this means being at the ass end of the Red Line train. 63rd street. The kind of place that people like me don’t visit and live to tell about. I have no idea how I ended up here. Was I on a train a minute ago? Was I thinking…. It’s all so blurry. I’m pretty sure I was headed North at some point. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t on the Red Line. Am I awake and dreaming? Am I asleep and walking? I have no idea how I ended up here….

And I then face that terrible feeling, like in the Walgreen’s parking lot, where any choice I make will not lead me to ruin, but just won’t lead me anywhere. I can’t leave the platform, I can’t stay on the platform. I can’t choose, and I can’t not choose. There is no way to win this one. The thought of going home, again, what’s the point? What’s the point in staying here or not staying here? What’s the….

No. Go home, there may be no point, but there’s a reason that it’s called home. You’ll feel better in the morning, you’ll feel better in the morning, you’ll feel better in the morning.

Barely able to open my front door, close it again, take off my coat. Too late for sleep, too early for anything else. Such a disturbing in-between time, 4:30 until 6:30. There’s no point to it. Up until now, I wasn’t even certain it existed. Too much in my head to think. Too many feelings… this feeling like I’m not as alone as I think I am. This feeling like I’m being watched. This feeling like I’m watching myself. A blow to the back of my head in the form of Sheila’s voice, “Will, I need to talk to you.”

“Woah, woah. Ease up there. It’s too early…or late for this. I’ve had the shittiest night on record. What’s going on?”

“I’m worried about you. You’ve been acting strangely lately. You’ve been acting out.”

“Oh all that crazy stuff I’ve been doing? I guess it seems pretty weird, but it’s really just for show. And for fun. You really do become free once you let go of the social norms.”

“You’re worrying your family. You’re about to lose your job. You –”

“Is this an intervention?”

“Why did you spend the night riding the trains?”

“I don’t know. There was….no, I don’t know. I ended up on the wrong end of town and had to make my way back here. There is nothing more depressing than the people on the train at 3 in the morning. And the sound of a nearly-empty train going through the tunnel at speed. It’s agonizing. And returning to an empty house….”

“I’m here, Will,” Sheila says. That soothing voice again.

“But why? Or better yet, how? In what way are you here?”

“As long as your head isn’t empty, your house isn’t empty.”

A Well-Reasoned Boycott

No update here for long while. Can’t afford waste wrds or even letrs here, so make do.

No, just kidding. Word count up to 26k+. Well far behind, but who gives a rat’s tooshie? Two more big milestones to hit. 4k till 30, 14k till 40 and….let’s not think about the last one.

Another tasty excerpt:

“What on Earth are you doing?” my mother asks.

“Oh, we’re boycotting ‘The Vagina Monologues.'” I reply.

“Why are you doing that, Will?” she sighs. Eve Ensler, Oprah Winfrey and Roger Ebert are the three people alive that my mother will listen to.

“We don’t believe that the vagina should be given this platform to speak without proper penile representation. No platform has been given for the penis to present its views and we believe this is patently unfair.”

If only you could see my mother roll her eyes. It’s like she invented it and has been doing nothing but practicing her mastery of the skill her whole life. It’s truly amazing.

“Have you even seen the show?”

“Of course not. You can’t properly boycott something if you have full knowledge of it. Look at the Italian-American boycott of ‘The Sopranos’ — the leaders of the protest group had never even seen a single episode of the series. They managed to get quite a bit of attention for themselves. That one woman even landed an Olive Garden commercial — now tell me that’s not irony.”

“But you hate those people. And that restaurant.”

“Exactly. But seriously, how ridiculous am I, if they’re not.”

“You lost me.”

“Exactly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a costume to put on. I am this boycott’s mascot, after all.”

A Cavalcade of Excerpts

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.)

First Excerpt

And just so I can overload this thing…. Here’s your first excerpt. I’m happy with the idea, but I wrote it on the train and was cramped into a seat and unable to expand on everything, but I think it’s good meat for something to blow into, oh, say, 500 words….

There are the twitchers and the mumblers and god knows who else. They all congregate here, or else they are following me around or else they are everywhere. It’s gotten so it’s easy to hide your insanity these days. When everyone has a cell phone, it’s tough to know who’s having an actual conversation and who’s just faking it. Lunatics with hands-free devices walk down the street, talking animatedly and now we don’t give them another look except to sigh and fret about the prevalence of personal communication devices and the need for everyone to be talking to someone that’s somewhere else, when in fact they’re likely talking to someone that’s not anywhere at all.

And then my phone rings, or at least I think it does.