rocket to nowhere

I woke up this morning after dreams of slipping and falling. I don’t remember hearing the coffee-maker grind the beans. I did hear my alarm. I did toss a cat off the bed. I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, peed, didn’t flush, turned on the hot water, undressed, got in the shower, pulled the little plunger thing to make the water go through the showerhead, turned the cold water on just a little, and washed myself. I don’t remember thinking about anything, but if I did, it was probably something like, “The right side of my head misses out a little on the scalp massage because I’m left-handed.” I got out of the shower (after turning the water off), dried myself, and flushed the toilet. I did not comb my hair. I cleaned my ears and enjoyed it maybe a little too much. I applied deodorant and did not think about Alzheimer’s. I put my pajama bottoms back on. I did not shave. I stared at myself in the mirror some, maybe pinched here and there. I looked at the clock and thought perhaps I should get my ass out of the bathroom. I unlocked and opened the bathroom door. At least one cat came in. I walked to my computer and checked the weather. I went to my bedroom and closed the door. I took my pajama bottoms off, put them on the bed, made the bed, walked back around to the dresser, opened the top drawer, took out a pair of boxers, and put them on. I closed the top drawer and opened the second drawer. I took out an undershirt, put it on, and closed the drawer. Just now, I thought about how nice it is to type the word “drawer” because it is typed entirely with the left hand. I picked my pants up off of the floor, and put them on. I opened the closet, picked out a shirt, took it down from the hanger, closed the closet, and put the shirt on. I slid my feet into my flip-flops, and was officially washed and dressed. I did not break for a paragraph. I will not break for a paragraph. I will not break for a paragraph and I will not know what the salient details are. I will ask myself if the details I have listed are salient. I will ask myself if autobiography consists of lists of things done or lists of things thought or both. I will not answer the question. I will ask myself if autobiography can be both boring and well-written. I will ask myself if autobiography can be exciting/interesting/engaging and poorly written. I will ask myself if H would be annoyed by the hyphen I put into “well-written,” and I will answer that question with another question: “Do I care?” I will answer that question. I will answer that question, and I will stop thinking about the answer and the questions leading to it. I will forget the hyphen. I will instead wonder if autobiography consists not of so-called salient details or lists of things done or thought, but rather of minor slippages that allow the reader to glimpse the author’s feelings. I will look at the word “slippages,” and wonder about my use of it. Perhaps it would be a better word if an adjectival friend came to play with it . . . say, “deliberate.” Deliberate slippages. I will think about the love-letter I am going to write later that will consist of nothing but deliberate slippages. “I dreamt about you last night, and I fell out of bed twice. You can pin and mount me like a butterfly. . . .”

Finally, I will wonder how much of the above is true.

From: sh
To: social
cc:
Subject: I’m selling some things

I’m selling off some things I have collected over my lifetime. I have them in my cube if anyone is interested. I will deliver to the LW building if necessary (although, the way you people act as though we don’t exist over here, I don’t know why the hell I should go out of my way).

All prices are TBD (to be determined). Some of these items could be considered priceless, so please don’t insult me by lowballing–offer me what you think the item is worth, and we’ll work from there.

1. Collected and created over a lifetime: 13 pieces of pocket lint arranged to look like the Last Supper (the Judas lint has a red top!).

2. Three sex-ed filmstrips produced in the 1970s: “What’s Happening to Me, Am I Dying?” “From Raggedy Ann to the Rag” and “The Hair Down There” (Sorry, these are just the filmstrips, all of the attendant cassette tapes were either lost or burned years ago.).

3. Several “Tuberculosis Tissues”: paper tissues with blood spots drawn on them, many by prominent local art school students!

4. A hernia truss (I think it belonged to my grandfather).

5. 77 dried seahorses mounted on unsanded, unvarnished, untreated knotty pine (you’ll want to be careful when picking this beauty up, I knocked five seahorses off when bringing it in this morning, and am still picking splinters out of my hands).

6. A jar of Ava Gardner’s toe-jam, collected by the Chairman of the Board himself (ostensibly).

7. A box of coupons (many of these are collectors items since the businesses they came from no longer exist!).

8. 127 movie posters from Disney’s The Mighty Ducks (that Emilio Estevez sure is a cutie!).

9. Transcripts from the last seven years of weekly, Sunday afternoon calls made to my mother.

10. Miscellaneous underwear.

Hurry and snap these items up before someone else does! They’re bound to move quickly! Call me or send me an email if you’re interested. My extension is x3254.

Thanks!

sh

[letterhead]

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Dear Ms. Furey,

I would hereby like to offer my sincere thanks for your sincere apology, despite the fact that said apology was wholly and completely unnecessary: There is a time for picking nits, and a time for letting nits be.

Yesterday was one of those “letting be” times, and yet, I pressed on in the name of useless specificity and forced the picking of at least one innocuous nit, who, heretofore had been perfectly content minding his own business.

It is my sincere hope that I in no way offended you. If I did, I hope you can find it within yourself to forgive me.

If you were offended but cannot forgive me, I will understand, and mark down the death of our fledgling friendship as yet another of life’s little disappointments–you know, the kind that get under your skin and itch a little, much like nits in need of picking.

Most sincerely yours,

The Author of this Blaaaaaa

Ornery Ninja Elf, The: (1975-present) Spontaneously generated in 1975 when a young Japanese girl (and martial arts expert) of Irish heritage ate an entire box of radioactive Lucky Charms, the Ornery Ninja Elf has devoted her life to saving the world (although she specializes in islands) repeatedly.

In 1993, when the Emerald Isle was threatened by a giant mutant cod and a giant mutant potato (who were, inexplicably, referring to themselves as “Starchy and Husk”), the Ornery Ninja Elf developed two new magic ninja moves: Filetfry and Julienne. She used these moves to defeat Starchy and Husk, and then (unfortunately using timber from the Amazon basin) fashioned the largest sheet of newspaper ever created, which she then used to keep the Irish in Fish’n'Chips for several years.

Using her magic marshmallow powers and super skills of blarney-kwon-do, the Ornery Ninja Elf has at least twice kept giant robots from destroying Tokyo, once in 1983 (when she was eight years old) and once again in 1999. In both cases, the Land of the Rising Sun was threatened by a shape-shifting or “transforming” robot, and in both cases, the Ornery Ninja Elf used a combination of marshmallow goo and awesome rainbow awesomeness to jam the robots mid-transformation. The twisted hunks of metal formerly known as Megatron and Starscream now stand as modern sculpture in a park in Tokyo.

No one is quite sure where the Ornery Ninja Elf now lives, and she has not been seen for several years. Some say she has retired to the planet Nearer Flojinny where she practices a particularly difficult form of leprechaun meditation. Others maintain she walks among as a normal, workaday scientist who is perfecting a new world-saving procedure known as Robot Nullification And Interference.

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explanatory link