I Can Do What I Want

The other day I was sitting at this computer and letting my iTunes playlist entertain me while I did some tedious but necessary paperwork. I got thirsty. I went into the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea and I could still hear my music playing even though my office is in a bedroom at the front of the house. So I thought to myself, ‘self, that music’s kind of loud,’ and hurried back to turn it down. I stopped by the couch, though, as a sudden thought took me.
   I don’t live in an apartment any more. The music that I can hear in the kitchen doesn’t pass the walls of my rental house. I can be as loud as I damn well please.
   I have to admit I was a bit taken aback by this. For years now, far too many years, I’ve been an apartment dweller. I’ve had to consider what I do and when I do it very carefully, since I don’t want to be a bother to anyone else. I really do try to live the golden rule; if I wouldn’t want someone taking a shower at three in the morning then it’s not something I want to subject others to.
   But now… I live in a house. A detached, two-car garage house with solid walls and a tile roof and a thick front door. The closest neighbors are ten yards away, on the other side of a brick wall and past their own garage. The neighbors on the other side are twenty yards away, and over a fence.
   I can make lots and lots and lots and lots of noise now and I won’t be disturbing anyone. I can walk as heavily as I dare on my own floors , I can run the dishwasher at midnight, I can crank up Tom Jones as loud as I can stand it and no one is going to come knocking on my front door in a stained bathrobe to wag an admonishing finger at me.
   I’m free.
   Now… what can I do with my newfound liberty? Midnight smoothie party? Twenty-four hours of darts? Line dancing in the living room? Yodeling competition? Man, the sky’s the limit.

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I'm concerned that solipsism is real, and that everything I see is just a figment of my imagination.
   Because if that's the case, then, man am I f*cked up.
   Think about it. If anyone reading this actually exists, that is. What if everything I see and experience is actually just a figment of my imagination? All my friends, all my family, everyone I've ever met or talked to is just some aspect of my unconscious mind. I've met some pretty weird people in my time. I mean seriously whacked-out individuals who should have been institutionalized, or probably had been. What if I made them up? What if they were nothing but me with idle time to spend coming up with something insane? Scary.
   Or what about every situation in the world? How completely screwed up am I if the mortgage crisis, the end of the space shuttle and the Japanese tsunami are all stuff I just made up. What kind of person thinks up those kinds of things?
   Here's a brain twister. Serial killers. If no one but me exists, that means I made up the concept of serial killers. How deviant is that? And, to put the icing on the cake, if no one else exists, then the serial killers are really parts of me looking to do away with other parts of me. Me stalking myself, as it were. A grand ouroborous of disordered thinking.
   For my money, I hope all you other people are real. Even those of you who smoke. Because the alternative is that I'm just one great big, hyper-imaginative mess.

Creep Repellent

You know how you have mosquito repellent? Slather some on your arms and legs on a summer night and you might not get bitten and thus might not get malaria. There are those little electronic things you plug in that keep roaches and vermin out of your house. There are plastic owls you hang in your trees to keep bothersome birds away. We can buy all sorts of stuff designed to keep away things we don't want near us.
   And yet creepy people still manage to get all up your grill, don't they?
   I'm not talking about people with clipboards and an agenda, or homeless people, or those guys who set up a card table outside the grocery store. I don't mind those people, they want to accomplish something. I mean the guy with the obnoxious laugh and the big cowboy hat who sits right in front of you in the movie theater. Or the tipsy office gals who take the booth beside you at the restaurant and talk waaaaaay too loudly about their lady business. Or the guy in the grocery store who isn't following you around but just happens to be on every aisle you are. Or the guy who parks his beat-up white panel van just a little too close to the elementary school.
   Wouldn't it be great if you could just whip out a can of something, spray it in the air, and these people would find somewhere else to be? You could watch your movie in peace, enjoy your meal, and even get your shopping done unmolested. Literally.
   Only thing is, what if you were out and about and someone sprayed something in the air, and then you had an overwhelming urge to run away? How would you explain that one?

Deadly Day At Dusty Creek

With a flick of his finger Marshall Sherman lifted his hat off his forehead, which let him get a better view of the Goolsby boys, all three of them.
   He and they faced off from opposite ends of Main Street, the Marshall down by the Chinese laundry, the Goolsby Boys up past Billings' wainwright shop. All three of the brothers hated the Marshall, but the oldest one, Hiram, hated him most of all. The Marshall had sent him to Dodge City for horse stealing, and Hiram had been sentenced to hang for the crime.
   Clearly the authorities in Dodge City had failed that execution.
   With Hiram back the boys were out for revenge, and with three-to-one odds it looked like the Marshall was mere heartbeats away from finding a spot in the cemetery with all others who had ever crossed the Goolsbys.
   "I'm a merciful man, Marshall," Hiram said, glaring down Main Street with his one good eye. "If you clear out of Dusty Creek, I might not shoot you in the back."
   "You know I can't do that, Hiram," the Marshall drawled. "Dusty Creek is where I keep all my stuff."
   Agonized groans erupted from behind sacks of grain destined for the mill.
   Hiram spat, his fingers twitching on the handles of his revolvers. "Are you having fun at my expense?"
   "Wouldn't dream of it," the Marshall replied. "I'd never have a battle of wits with an unarmed man."
   The dance hall girls watching from the top floor of The Trail's End Saloon frowned, then backed from the window when Hiram glared at them.
   "All right, that sounded like an insult," Hiram said. He looked at his brothers who both nodded slowly. "Though it has a familiar ring."
   The Marshall wiped at his forehead, suddenly all too aware of the heat. And the eyes of all the townsfolk. "Well, I never could get anything by you. Which isn't odd considering you... the fact that you've only got the one..."
   Hiram bristled and one of his brothers pulled his revolver. The Marshall caught glimpses of several townspeople turning away, going back to their everyday tasks.
   "Hold on, wait a minute," the Marshall urged. "I... I meant to say that... uh... I could never get anything by you, except on your right side. Because that's the eye you lost when... oh..."
   Shutters closed on the saloon, the blacksmith went back to hammering out horse shoes, and even Wing in the Chinese laundry returned to stirring the vat of unmentionables from the whorehouse.
   "Looks like you're dying out here, Marshall," Hiram said. He raised his revolver and fired once, dropping the Marshall where he stood.
   "I'd call that a mercy killing," Hiram sneered. Giggles sounded from the top floor of the saloon, and the showgirls looked down admiringly.
   Mayor Green plucked the silver star from Marshall Sherman's corpse and approached Hiram Goolsby. "There's a vacancy, and horse thief or not I think you might be the man for the job."
   Hiram raised his still-smoking revolver to his lips and blew. "I aim to please."

A Nose For News

I got a bit of a situation, and I don't quite know what to do. There's guy I know, I see him like once a month, once every two months, and he smells funny. And not ha-ha funny either, but also not repulsive. He's in this odd middle ground of olfactory confusion, and that's the source of the problem. I don't know how to tell him that he offends, because he doesn't smell offensive so much as strange. Really, really strange.
   Some people smell like the cedar chest or closet they keep their clothes in. Some people might smell like dirty clothes because they pulled their wardrobe from the hamper. Some people might smell like too much smell-good (like the janitor where I work (Ugh...)), and some people might smell like BO. Or whiskey. Or cigarettes. Or halitosis if they've got serious dental problems.
   This guy smells like none of that. He smells like no single identifiable thing, but he is absolutely, definitely funky. Funky like an old batch of collard greens, not funky like P-Funk (everybody get up).
   When you get a snootful of his aroma the top note is mostly old-man smell, that vaguely stale yet vaguely Bryllcreem-y pop that hits you right between eyes.* But after a moment or two, not even a second, the middle note assaults you, a waft of something compost-y yet not organic. Kind of like that sterile potting 'soil' you can buy that isn't really soil at all. And the finish - the bottom note - is a barely-there hint of decay, almost like something that's been dead outside for a few weeks. And, yes, I actually spent time trying to figure out what exactly each of these things smelled like.
   This wasn't a one-time thing, it's pretty much every time I see this guy, so I think he might intend to smell this way. God help him, I think it's on purpose. But it's not good. Waaaay not good.
   I don't think I'm going to say anything, I don't see him often enough that it's a huge deal, and we're not good enough friends that I can tell him anything and have him take it like a man. So I'm gonna let him go on stinking, while he probably thinks he's a major player. I'm assuming this is some sort of cologne, otherwise his whole house has to have the same smell, which would be a public health issue.
   For the life of me, I can't think of any other reason he'd smell like this. Unless his goal is to keep the ladies at bay, and then it's mission accomplished.


* or, if you're familiar with the blue alcohol dip barbers used to put their combs into, it's kind of like that, but not as astringent

You Know What Would Be Cool?

Do you know what would be cool?
   If somebody made ice cream that was chock-full of vitamins. And I mean for real, like it was the most vitamin-enriched thing you could possibly buy. More vitamins than those really nasty vegetables that are totally good for you but are completely gross, like kale or chard or rhubarb.
   And then those guys who are on the daytime talk shows telling people what not to eat would have some sort of aneurysm when they read the nutrition label. Because, after all, it would still be ice cream - which is just sweet fat - but it would also be better for you than a multi-vitamin. It would BE a multi-vitamin, just with a ribbon of silky fudge in the center.
   Ice cream companies would piss themselves trying to come up with the latest and greatest 'healthy' ice cream. No doubt there would be segmentation, with senior-marketed ice cream competing with infant and toddler-marketed ice cream, each with its own specialized vitamin ingredients. And then the inevitable diet books would follow, advocating one brand of vitamin ice cream over another. In the meantime registered dietitians and nutritionists would be screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to get people to realize that it's still ice cream, after all, and totally bad for you no matter how many vitamins you shove into it.
   It would be madness, conflicting opinions, people convinced beyond any convincing otherwise that they were right and there was no other answer. No one listening to each other, just a lot of noise and people yelling to people who already agree with them. It would be like our current political climate, only with ice cream.
   Ah... sweet anarchy...

Odd Coincidence Or Sinister Gathering?

I drove down to the OC last night to see my older niece's soccer game. Her school - Mills College - had come down to play Soka University, and since I'm in the neighborhood I wanted to show my support.
   Game results: Mills lost 0-3, but not for lack of trying. Some good players, lots of good ball-handling but a few bad breaks. And I got to spend some quality time with my niece, one of the few players who had family close enough to show up. It was a good time and I'm glad I went.
   HOWEVER... you ever have one of those times where you see something and then you see a lot of that same something over and over again? Like maybe you see an ad for mousetraps (which aren't really advertised all that much) and then over the next few days you see lots of mousetraps in places you wouldn't usually see them?
   Yesterday it was men with casts on their arms. I saw the first one when I was walking from the parking lot to the game, a guy who was probably a student at the school with his arm in a sling. Too bad for him, I thought.
   Then as I was sitting in the metal bleachers I saw another man, a player's parent, with his arm in a cast and two fingers immobilized. An odd coincidence, I thought, and kind of amusing.
   Then during the second half I saw another man, probably another player's parent, with TWO casts, one on each arm. Now I was getting suspicious, and I started looking around for the hidden cameras, waiting for Ashton Kutcher to punk me (does he still do that, or is that reference old and tired now?).
   After the game there were snacks - it was one of the girl's birthday - and I took my leave of my niece and her soccer team. I pulled into a Chevron there in Aliso Viejo, still mildly amused/ concerned about the excessive cast-wearing I'd seen. I filled the truck with gasoline and as I was ready to leave I saw little red sports car pulled over by two AV police officers. I watched from my truck as the officers approached the driver, and then I noticed cast on the driver's arm.
   I escaped the Chevron as fast as I dared and sped back to Pasadena. I didn't know what the hell was going on the OC with men and casts on their arms, and I didn't want to join them.
   Seriously freaky.

Beware The Couch

I stubbed my toe the other day. My little toe. Hard. Really hard, against the wooden leg of my couch. So of course I hit the couch, because it's the couch's fault for... you know... being a couch.
   Big mistake.
   This moment of indiscretion started a karmic backlash that I don't think I've seen the end of yet. Monday night I stubbed my toe, slapped the couch. Later on that night I was flossing my teeth (yes, every night) and scraped my fingernail across my gum, on the upper inside. If you've never done this, don't go trying it. It's hard to do, and hurts like Hell when you do it. Trust me. Brought tears to my eyes.
   The next morning I didn't duck enough when I got in the shower and I hit my head on the door frame. Hard. Scraped my scalp a little bit too.
   At work (ugh...) I jammed my elbow into the bathroom door and hit my funny bone. Been a while since that's happened to me. It's not funny. Well, maybe to someone else, but not to me.
   Tuesday night I ran my thigh into the sharp edge of my recliner, which really, really hurts. Like cuss-out-loud hurt, even though I was alone in the room.
   This morning I painfully brushed my teeth around the scrape in my mouth, nursed the bruise on my elbow and the knot on my head, and examined the dent in my thigh. Then I ran my knuckle into the water faucet. Got blood out of that one.
   I almost - ALMOST - slammed my fingers in the truck door, and had elevator doors close on me as I was leaving the garage at work.
   I'm starting to fear for my life. For good karma I gave $5 to the guy outside the grocery store soliciting for Labor Day feed the homeless stuff.
   I also apologized to my couch for abusing it. Really. You can't be too careful.

I'm Trying, Really

I've been sitting at my desk for the past 57 minutes, fully intending to post something witty or poignant. Possibly both. But it's just not coming.
   Writer's block is not a concept I subscribe to, it's like saying a quarterback has 'throwing the ball block.' Writing is what writers do, and if you're having a hard time of it you figure out what's wrong and work through it.
   But right now, this morning, forces are conspiring against me. Downstairs, since 8 AM, workers have been hammering, sawing, screwing things in and generally making a racket to wake the dead. Or me. I think they're replacing the AC mechanism(s) down in #9, because they're indulging their noise-making about five feet from where I sit and around the corner. Where my own AC stuff is. I tell you, I'm like Sherlock Holmes here.
   Just when I think they're done they find something new to beat on, or something new to saw, or something new to screw into something else. Crazy-making.
   And there's a couple on the first floor with a baby, the cutest little girl you've ever seen, probably two years old I'm guessing. Big surprise, she doesn't like the hammering, sawing, and screwing any more than I do. But since she's two she gets a free pass to complain in the only way she knows how. By crying.
   Hammer hammer hammer saw. Cry cry cry. Hammer hammer hammer saw. Cry cry cry. Hammer saw hammer saw screw screw screw. Cryyyyyyyyyy...
   But wait, there's more... since the gates downstairs are open for the workers determined to keep me from concentrating, door-to-door salesmen now have no barries to keep the off the property, so now I have uninvited guests. About fifteen minutes ago someone knocked on my door. I assumed it was the manager or one of the workers downstairs telling me they needed to get into my place for some reason. Oh no. A kid, pimply-faced, nervous and dirty looked at me with wide-eyed surprise as he realized I didn't have a shirt on.
   'Hi, my name is (fill in forgettable name here, I think it was Jared), and I'm selling subscriptions to pay my way through school...'
   Kee-rist. I just can't get a break.
   I politely refused and decided not to threaten him with a visit from the cops. Even though our police force loves rousting these slave-labor subscription selling operations, this kid has enough problems just being part of it, he doesn't need me to add to his misery.
   It's quiet now.
   Too quiet...

Scary Friday

Some days are just normal, regular old days when you go about your business like you always do and nothing particularly strange or eventful happens. Then you'll have a day like today. There's got to be something in the water, or in the air, or in the mind-control beams the CIA sends all over Los Angeles, because the crazies were out in force. I'm wondering if I have some sort of tracking device that lets the weirdos know where I am.


On the way to work:
   A woman in a sequined cream-colored evening gown - really - crossing the street against the light in Koreatown. She was definitely NOT tall or glamorous, and the gown was too big for her and worn and frayed at the hem. Nobody honked, we didn't want to draw her attention to us. But there was obviously a story there.
   A guy running backwards down Wilshire. The sidewalk West of LaBrea is plenty wide enough for it, and I like to think he was trying to exercise his legs differently or something. But he was absolutely trotting opposite the way he was looking. I didn't stop to see how he handled the crosswalks.

At the post office:
   A skinny, way-too-tan guy with long gray hair, wearing a tank top and little tiny running shorts that reminded me of Daisy Dukes, small and tight and cut up the side, threatening to flop open and show the world more than we're prepared to see. That was enough to qualify for the list, but it gets better. He had a prosthetic left leg and was wearing black socks with his green-and-yellow tennis shoes. I'm gonna cut the guy a break and say he was color blind or something. 'Course that doesn't explain the shorts.
   Behind him, a Filipino woman in blinding pink scrubs, loudly explaining to the Post Office lady how she had absolutely nothing illegal, fragile, perishable, or illegal in her package. Nothing illegal at all. Did she mention that there was nothing illegal in it?
   Behind me, a doofus-y guy who would cough self-consciously and then make a weird high-pitched mumbling sound. Not words but like pieces of baby talk. Then he'd be quiet for thirty seconds, cough again and mutter again. Twice. Then the cycle would repeat. He was buying a stamp. That's right. One stamp.

At the grocery store:
   A really, really, really fat guy trying to sneak up on his friend. We're talking 350 + pounds of floppy-fat goober, mincing down the aisle like he was a ninja. He was about the same width side-to-side as he was front-to-back. Best of all, the guy he thought was his friend was not; he was 'sneaking' up on the wrong person.
   A lady making her lunch out of things she bought at the deli counter. She'd gotten a prepared sandwich and potato salad and was enjoying both while she shopped. I'm assuming she intended to pay for them when she was done. Unless she was going through the self-service registers. Although... she's given me an idea for a way to economize during this economic downturn.

I have no idea why this assemblage decided to present itself to me all at once today. Maybe because it's a long holiday weekend? I'm kind of afraid to leave the house now, don't know what else is lurking out there.

Were-Squid

You ever have one of those days where people just get too close?
   From time to time it's unavoidable that someone is going to invade your personal space. It happens. But there are days...
   Like today. Seemed like everyone was trying to determine what I ate for breakfast by what my breath smelled of. Five people in a tiny elevator, too many guys in a small bathroom, someone looming over me in a meeting room, people standing right off my stern when we shared pie. Even when I voted this evening the polling place workers got close enough to feel my aura.
   I want something to let people know they're getting too close. Aside from a solid punch to the solar plexus, that is. So I figure I'll cross my genes with a squid's. I'll fill my ink sacs with black fluid, and when someone gets too close - SPLAT! - I'll squirt them right in the face.
   ... make people think twice about invading my personal space ...


COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 40 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 34 days

Pimp-tastic

There are days I hate LA. And mean LA itself, not the greater LA metro area, which I'm also not all that fond of. I'm talking about LA North of the 10 and South of the Hollywood Hills. The place they keep everything the world thinks LA is. The place where I'm working now. That's the part I hate.
   But some days, you just gotta love it.
   Like today. I left the building for lunch, more accurately I left the building with a co-worker who wanted a sandwich from a particular place and I went along for the ride because I wanted to get away from the office. He got the sandwich, I got a bottle of iced tea, and we turned back towards work.
   And that's when I saw it. A pimpmobile. A for-real, honest-to-Pete pimpmobile complete with fully-attired pimp behind the wheel. It was green for the money with gold trim for the honey, and just waiting at the light with everyone else. Freaky stylin'.
   I have to admit, I was happy the rest of the afternoon after seeing that.
   LA taketh away, but LA giveth too. You just try rolling past a green-and-gold pimpmobile wherever you live. Bet you can't.


COMMUTE - there - 37 minutes      back - 30 minutes to go 10 miles, LA sucks
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 49 days

Are You Talkin' To Me?

You know what you don't see enough of any more?
   Pinky rings.
   Maybe I'm just not hanging around the right crowd, but it's been a long time since I've seen a pinky ring displayed un-ironically. I think Joe Pesci ruined the pinky ring for everyone, made it a cliche and a joke instead of a statement.
   Used to be, a pinky ring said 'I'm so tough that I can decorate my least-useful digits.' But now all a pinky ring says is 'I'm going as Goodfellas for Halloween.' Either that or you're trying to be Leisure Suit Larry (now there's a blast from the past).
   It's time to take the pinky ring back. Men should be able to flash a little bling on their little fingers and feel like people are admiring them instead of ridiculing them.
   You guys go first, I'm allergic to goombah gold.


COMMUTE: there - 40 minutes      back - 40 minutes to go 11 miles
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 61 days

Shudder To Think

I had to kill a roach this morning. It was the first one I've seen in my apartment ever, the building owner must be neglecting the pest control bill like she's neglecting the elevator - which is STILL not fixed, by the way, it's been six months. So I got the bug spray, which I usually employ on spiders, and nuked the cockroach, totally soaked it in what is essentially bug nerve poison.
   I followed it for a while to make sure I didn't lose it, and it eventually expired in the front hall, on its back, legs curled up, the classic roach death pose. I left it there while I got busy revising a book and printing out a manuscript for submission to an agent (remember this post?). When I got around to picking up the roach corpse it had been a few hours since I killed it. So not only was it dead, it was, as we say in Texas, good 'n dead.
   But when I got the paper towel and picked it up, I still shivered, a good long shudder that shook me from head to toe.
   Somebody needs to figure this reaction out. I know for a fact that this roach is now an ex-roach, it's moved along the karmic path to whatever its next incarnation is, and I was the agent of that demise. But I still raced to the trash can to throw it away, just in case it decided to scurry out and run up my arm.
   Why? What's so visceral about bugs that a grown man can get squeamish and girly when he has to dispose of a tiny little body?
   That's it, I gotta toughen up. Maybe I'll crawl into a sleeping bag full of rattlesnakes or something, that's man stuff right there.

An Argument Like Music

So I'm driving to work today... yeah, sounds weird to me too...and I'd just made it through Koreatown with my windows down because it was a nice, cool morning. I heard what I thought was someone's car stereo, blaring some terrible rap.
   But I was oh so wrong.
   A white car pulled alongside me - between Crenshaw and Rossmore if you're familiar with the area - which was the source of the music. Except it wasn't music, it was an EXTREMELY angry woman berating the man in the passenger seat.
   As traffic moved along it was like listening to the ocean waves, I would pull ahead and the argument would fade. We'd reach a stop light (lots of those) and the argument would grow louder as the car pulled alongside me. The light would change and the argument would lull into the background again. Over and over and over.
   I expected at some point the woman would stop yelling, or at least take a breath, but she just kept going. I tried to hear the actual words she was saying, but the only thing I could tell was the man - husband, boyfriend, son, brother? I don't know - had been late for something. Perhaps the first in his long line of infractions that earned him the most serious tongue-lashing I've witnessed in a long time.
   At least it kept my morning commute entertaining. I'm still pissed off that I have a commute, but that's nothing I can fix for now.

-- Oh, and I saw a guy smoking a pipe today too. That's odd because the last person I knew who smoked a pipe was my father and he quit smoking back when I was a freshman in college. You just don't see that any more. And, yes, the guy smoking the pipe was old.


COMMUTE: there - 35 minutes back - 40 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 85 days

Entropy Gnomes

I guess the little guy thought I was asleep. I was on the couch, after all, and it was after midnight, and the TV was still on. And my eyes were closed.
   I heard something rattling around behind the coffee table, too big for a spider, too small for a burglar. I wondered how a stray cat had gotten into my apartment, but I kept my eyes closed and waited for it to get closer. It was doing something with the papers on the coffee table, which is also where I keep bills I need to pay. I heard it come around the corner and that's when I pounced.
   I expected to get a handful of fur, but instead I got a foot-and-a-half tall wriggling little man, with a white beard, red cone-shaped cap, and a fat little tummy. He kicked his little feet and battered me with his little fists, uttering a string of what I can only assume must have been colorful curses in his native language. I just held on tighter.
   "Okay... jeez... you got me," the little man squeaked in English. "Ease up, you're gonna squeeze my dinner out of me."
   "What are you?" I asked, as the Sham-Wow infomercial played on the TV.
   "Carl," he said, offering me his tiny hand.
   "Not who," I replied. "What. What are you?
   He seemed disappointed. "I'm an entropy gnome."
   I raised an eyebrow at him and held just a bit tighter.
   "What? You think the Second Law of Thermodynamics just happens on its own?" Carl said. "The Universe needs help bringing disorder to order. That's where we Entropy Gnomes come in."
   "You sure you're not just a tiny burglar?" I replied.
   Carl struggled, punching me futilely with his little bitty fists. Finally he gave up and sagged in my grasp.
   "You ever get a notice that you didn't pay a bill, but you know for sure you did?" I nodded. "Well, that was us. You ever wonder why you only have seven forks when they come in sets of eight? Why you need to change your oil? Why a hinge starts squeaking for no reason? Where all the dust behind the TV comes from? All us."
   "Oh, I get it," I said, as realization dawned on me. "Like when I'm missing a sock out of the dryer."
   Carl shook his head, frowning. "No, those are Sock Gnomes. Creepy little fetishists. Look, I'm on a pretty tight schedule here, so if you don't mind..."
   "But I have so many questions," I said. "Like, what if you guys just, I don't know, passed me by for a while?"
   "Well, the food in your fridge wouldn't go bad," Carl said, raising a hand to his chin as he thought. "That's an entropic process. Your coffee wouldn't get cold, your soda wouldn't get warm. Your jeans wouldn't fade. Your shoelaces would always stay tied. You'd never grow old."
   I sat back against the couch, still clutching Carl tightly.
   "I probably shouldn't have said that last one, huh?" Carl continued, with a nervous laugh. "Look, we're a union shop, so even if you... get rid of me, there's gonna be another Entropy Gnome here tomorrow with the same checklist. Maybe even my supervisor, and he's a real sticker for regulations, if you know what I mean."
   "What about Entropy Gnomes themselves?" I asked.
   Carl shifted uneasily. "What do you mean?"
   "Well, if everything in the Universe is trending towards disorder," I said. "Doesn't that mean Entropy Gnomes are subject to the same thing? Shouldn't you guys eventually just fade aw..."
   Carl glared up at me, furious, as his tiny body turned ephemeral and insubstantial. "You son of a bitch."
   In a moment Carl was gone, and I had nothing to prove that he had ever been there in the first place. I went to bed, resolved never to fall asleep on the couch again.

A Sleeper's Entanglement

Everybody's familiar with the idea of quantum entanglement, right? It's one of the basic principles of quantum physics that states that no matter how far apart two linked objects become, a change in one will automatically produce a change in the other. Einstein called this 'spooky action at a distance.'
   So why am I boring you with this? Because I had my own instance of quantum entanglement last night. And it was spooky and it was at a distance, not only in space but in time.
   I was dropping off to sleep, and I heard a car the next building over that sounded like one of the cars our next door neighbors had back when I was a kid. The exhaust sounded the same, the manual transmission whined the same, the crunch of the tires on the pavement was the same. In an instant I was back in my bedroom in my parents' house, listening to the neighbors come home as I fell asleep.
   Now I don't mean I imagined I was there, or recalled it, I was there. In my old bed, arranged underneath the window, with my old headboard above me and the shelves on the wall at the foot of the bed and the hum of the electric clock on the wall. Even with my eyes closed I felt the furniture, my desk, my dresser, the hutch where I kept books and trophies. I can recall it now as I write this, but the placement is a memory, like looking at an old photo and remembering it like you remember a movie you saw long ago. Last night it was a certainty, if I reached out I would have touched a wall where there isn't one in my own apartment. I knew if I opened my eyes I would see everything where it should be like it was when I was fourteen. It was a sense of place that I have very rarely had.
   When I realized what was happening I knew I had to write it down, so I opened my eyes. My bedroom seemed hazy and indistinct, as if I were fighting to bring myself back to the here and now. I felt a little dizzy and disoriented as I went to my desk and took notes.
   I went back to bed and tried to find that place again, but even though I could see my old bedroom, I wasn't there - really there - not like I had been minutes before.
   I don't know what happened, if it was just a dream I took myself out of or if it was a deep memory that involved all my senses or something else entirely, but it was a ride. Like two electrons separated by billions of miles, myself now and my old self years ago connected. I sure hope it happens again, I want to explore this.

Some Days You Just Can't Win

I'm not normally one to revel in another's misery... well, maybe I am. A little. I do love it when liars get what's coming to them, and cheats lose all their ill-gotten gains, stuff like that makes my day. I should say I'm not one to revel in an undeserving stranger's misery.
   Until today.
   I was at the gas station, putting a few gallons into the truck* when a lady drove up to the pump next to me. The credit card reader on that one was broken and I tried to tell her, but she realized she'd pulled up on the wrong side of pump, the cap was on the passenger side.
   So she got back in the car and turned it around. Only to get back out of the car - this time with her back to me - whereupon she found the sign that said the card reader wasn't working.
   She got back in the car and drove around to the other row of pumps. She got out of the car only to realize that once again she had lined up the driver's side, but the cap was still on the passenger side.
   I tried not to be obvious as I watched her turn her car around AGAIN, this time facing the right way. But the story doesn't end there, I took my time cleaning the rear windows on my truck to watch. She tried a credit card, which didn't work. She tried another one, which also didn't work. She pressed the button to get the attendant's attention, and asked, a little irked, if any of the card readers on any of the pumps worked.
   He told her both her cards had been declined.
   The poor lady screwed the cap back on, got in her car and drove away.
   Man, some days the best stuff just falls into your lap.



* by the way, has anybody noticed gas is still over $3 a gallon? During a recession when people are out of work and no one's driving? I smell a conspiracy.

The Ghost Of Things Undone

   It was dark when I woke, and a look at the clock let me know it was midnight. Moonbeams shone through the window, painting silver stripes on the dark comforter. And there was something else, a person - or an echo of a person - just beyond the foot of the bed.
   "You cannot rest, you must not rest," the phantom muttered in sepulchral tones, a whisper from beyond.
   "You again?" I said, falling back onto my pillows. "Jeez, what do you want from me?"
   The apparition stirred, floating back and forth slowly, carried on invisible currents. "Things remain. Things you cannot avoid. You must not avoid."
   "Yeah, you told me last night, and the night before, and the night before that," I said, rubbing my eyes and hoping the ghost would fade away soon. "If this is so important that you have to wake me up four nights in a row, why can't you tell me what these things are?"
   The wisp of a presence hovered there, insubstantial as a cobweb, a ghostly hand raised to its fading chin, thinking. "You have a point. Doesn't make much sense to haunt you about your earthly tasks if you have no idea what they might be."
   "You think?" I said wearily. "So tell me already. I have to avenge the death of a friend? I have to put right some grave injustice? No wait, I have to find a way to bring you final peace. That's it, isn't it?"
   "I don't really know," the ghost said.
   "Are you kidding me?" I said. "You don't even know what you're hounding me about?"
   The spirit leaned against the foot of my bed, thoroughly confused. "They don't really give us details at Central Office."
   I pulled my pillows up, determined to at least be comfortable if I couldn't be asleep. "So they just told you to come haunt some guy named Don and didn't tell you why?"
   "I'm sorry, what was that?" the ghost said. "Don? Your name is Don? Are you sure?"
   "Pretty sure," I said. "My wallet's on the dresser over there if you want to check for yourself."
   The ghost sighed, a small chuckle escaping its ectoplasmic lips. "You're not gonna believe this. I'm supposed to be haunting a guy named Dan. Man, I'm really sorry. The bureaucracy we ghosts have to put up with... well, you can imagine."
   "Does this mean we're done?" I said. "You're gonna leave and not come back tomorrow night?"
   "Scout's honor," the ghost said, holding up three fingers.
   I flipped over, pulling the covers up to my chin. The seconds ticked by and I still felt a spirit presence, the hair on the back of my neck raising painfully as the ghost continued to watch me.
   "What now?" I asked, sitting up.
   "You don't happen to know a guy named Dan, do you?"

Future Fossils

I was down in the garage the other day, doing a little routine auto maintenance, when I noticed a bit of something in the dust underneath the storage bins. I scuffed my foot at it and found an IndyMac Bank lapel pin. It had to have been mine, I don't know that anybody else in my building has ever worked there. It was under five years of dust, dirt, cobwebs and kitty litter, which the guy parking next to me uses to soak up the oil from his leaking car. It was well on its way to being preserved in the strata of the ages until I disturbed it. Which got me to thinking. In ten thousand years, what fossils of mine would future scientists find?

   Old stamps. One-cent and two-cent, which you used to have to buy when the Postal Service raised rates. I'm thinking about using them all on one letter.
   Obsolete video games. These ran on computers that I long since trucked to the recycle place. I don't know what I'd run the games on, and I'm not really interested in playing them again, but they're in the closet just in case.
   Recipts from years back. They say you only need to keep the past seven years of tax returns, but I still got 'em all, going back to the 90's.
   College textbooks. For some reason I still have many of them.
   Acres of comic books. This would be the King Tut's treasure of my tomb. 'I see things. Wonderful things. All bagged and boarded.'
   Sweaters I never wear any more.
   Fast food wrappers.
   Old, broken sunglasses.
   Decks of playing cards with at least one card missing.

Kind of a pathetic haul. But maybe it'll provide a PhD thesis for one of my distant ancestors.