Cotton Candy/ Cobweb Mélange

Once, on the phone, a guy described it as an Elephant Burying Ground which of course could have been almost justly misinterpreted to mean a place where old people go to expire and have parasitic estate dealers rummage through their hoard. But being the kind that he was I understood it immediately as a creepy place that one mishaps upon through unruly circumstance only to discover ghastly mementos kept from our knowledge by beings with a sounder grasp of the general futility and suffering of it all.

Sometimes it seems like the only rule around here is unrelenting exception. You’ll be soothed upon spotting a well jacketed business man in a café only to reveal his coat pocket adorned with greasy screwdrivers and half smoked cigars. Or a sundressed blonde will smile down at you when asked driving directions to reveal nostrils bulging like a basket of avocados with antiquated mucous. It doesn’t end when you notice that the slender, lisping shopkeeper is sporting a seven pound bronze Skoal belt buckle: It doesn’t end when the one Mercedes in town turns out to have a rotting garbage smell to it when you walk by on a hot day: And it doesn’t end when you see the father who lives down the street riding his eight year old’s bicycle with a paper bagged pint in his hand. The guarded responses these people offer when greeted are not indifference, they’re suspicion coupled with a snap analysis of their own firearm’s load.

You can catch glimpses of how it all came to be, too. As you’re driving by sometimes there will be an empty lot or a field and you’ll realize what used to be here: nothing. Scrubland. Palm trees and the kind of hard grass that would saw off a toe through flip-flops. It’s all just backstage behind the tourist catalogue shoot where skill and effort is applied with cakes of makeup to dress up the fetid appendage oozing on the inner thigh of the country. And these are the people who sprung from it. Or worse, came to it. Like me.

I Was Thinking That Abandoning and Discovering Ideas May Just Be Shades of the Same Thing

I woke up at the same time this morning but this time it was a little earlier so I took a moment to listen. To the news and birds. And some music. It all kind of made me feel like I thought adults would feel when I was little.

I wonder if being French is the answer to being American.

Your love is a soap bubble in a twister and my arms are a meddlesome bumble bee in the cockpit of a helicopter hovering in its vortex.

People’s torsos and trunks weren’t lining up again today. This time some were also on backward and one woman in line at the grocery store had two. I wonder if it’s getting worse.

When In

Recreate old Charlton Heston movies with NASCAR taking the place of chariot races.

Next Ham

The only reason I had the job was to see for myself how this store around the corner stayed in business. I couldn’t imagine how these people kept their doors open, unless they were a front for the mob or a cardboard set for a John Watters movie or something.

So of course all I discover is that not only are there idiots out there dim enough to speculate their dead grandfather’s hard earned money on a softball, Prozac-housewife idea like a spiral cut ham store, but also that the only thing the average American can turn his TV off long enough for is to drive around the corner and pick up a frickin’ spiral cut ham. Incredible.

Of course all the businesses ideas I came up with were good ones. That’s why they never succeeded. If I opened a store selling flannel and silk garden hose cozies I’d probably be writing this from a private 747.

So last night on the way home from getting smacked in the face by my ATM I noticed an office holding some sort of new years celebration, which sent me driving home to put on a nice shirt. Back at the door I turned to a guy who looked like he was about to ask me who I was and said I thought Caruthers was out here for some reason, give me a hand finding him, will ya’? And of course the guy turned and disappeared and I was in. People seemed to be mingling in a predictably awkward way, the 30 year old music was just enough to get the white guys doing their weird wiggle and the sheet cake and meatballs looked like they would be happy to start an argument in just about anybody’s lower GI tract without discriminating.

Fielding and sweeping up little pieces of conversation these people turned out to be regional transportation brokers for CSX; Large and stable enough. A few minutes later I turned to laugh at one of Cindy’s personnel department anecdotes and mentioned that a friend had just come on board and was asked for an ID when he came to say hello at my office. She was nice enough to mention that the attendant at the photo ID office was still in at this hour and if Tim was around he could just step in and take care of it. After my photo was taken the guard congratulated me and mentioned that he’d look forward to seeing me on Monday at 8;30 where he offered new hires a ten minute security briefing.
In 24 days I’ll have dental.