The holiday season yields an abundance of gifts, if you are a music teacher. My sweetheart is a music teacher, and one of her students gave her a pair of homemade coasters, which together form a wintry scene: Santa Claus is whipping his beasts of burden. Then another student gave my sweetheart a shiny, golden gift card to a failing bookstore. So I pruned the card into the shape of antlers and glued it onto the reindeer whose name is Comet.
Dear diary,
Why is the ground always shaking? This is new for the Midwest: we were never known to have tremors. It’s like a perpetual, low-grade earthquake around here.
And what do people want for their children? Work and more work? Soot? How about flannel shirts. A thick, full beard like trendy folk. An opportunity to drill.
If money DID grow on trees, would the world have more or less of it? Here in the United States we use dollars for currency: they’re made of paper. And paper comes from trees. Is it easier to manufacture a kiwifruit or a banknote?
Why do people move into their apartment and immediately start hammering everything? I wish you would enjoy your hardwood floor as it is. And just let your cupboards be. The kitchen is fine. The wall shelves are sturdy, they look nice: no need to replace them.
Let’s say I’m your new neighbor. I just moved in next door, and we share a wall, so you can hear everything I do. OK, here’s the situation: I let my toddler run up and down the stairs like a maniac, screaming and chasing (or being chased by) our huge dog that gallops like a clumsy horse; also I own a shrill bird whose shrieks are like the shower scene from Psycho (1960).
The rest of my life is going to pass in slow-motion.
Plus all my family members are supposed to get together for my sister’s birthday tonight. But I don’t like bowling. You have to rent shoes: that’s stupid. Then you have to find a proper ball – not too heavy or too light. This game should be illegal.
And why is science so well respected? All you have to do is assert “Science has proven [X]” and everyone will believe [X] – and I mean everyone: even religious leaders. But a lot of science takes place in laboratories, where humans pass notes to other humans. What I’m saying is that the data sometimes gets compromised, corrupted… Corporate stooges enter the building and induce everyone to report thus and so on their scientific pie charts…
I’ve no hard proof about any of the above claims: I’m just strumming on a hunch that the realm of scientific “information sharing” entails a fair amount of monkeyshines; although it maintains a dignified exterior, like a bubble-gum cube with a gooey liquid center.
Really, I’m only jealous that I’m not part of the club. I want to get paid for observing strange plants and making checkmarks in boxes. I want to exchange beakers with thugs in the shadows of underground parking lots, and take bribes to leak trade secrets.
I’d also like to control the news. All the networks. …But what shall I do with them, once I acquire ownership of every last investigative reporter, camera operator, and news reader in the entire industry? I guess I don’t know – give me a week to mull it over. I’m sure I’ll think of something…
This is a little off-the-subject, but did I ever tell you that my grandpa on my mom’s side worked all of his life at a fish hatchery? He was in charge of counting the eggs.
Actually, I’ve no clue what his job entailed. But I like imagining him with eyes narrowed in concentration, whispering numbers to himself while waving a pencil over a canteen of caviar.
And I like the word aquifer.
Do cheap motels still have those coin-operated vibrating beds?
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