Here's the next page from my book of 300,000 Drawing Prompts (the last page appeared on 14 August); the prompt for this present drawing was "Snow globe".
Dear diary,
What’s gonna happen today? I don’t know. Do I ever know what’ll happen on any given day, before it begins? Do I ever awake with the knowledge that this or that event will surely occur? Yes, I do. But not today. I can’t even tell you if my boss is gonna wanna work on his wall. He’s trying to repair a wall in his house, and I told him to call me if he wants help, because I like doing that kind of stuff. And he hasn’t called me yet. In truth, I actually hate doing that kind of work, yet I wanna learn it so that I can get better at it; for the more experience you have in a particular area, the closer you get to becoming a certified master. If you get really good at carpentry and installing drywall, you can then become a teacher at your local hardware store. You might even end up having an affair with one of your pupils: a late-middle-aged ex-hairdresser. The gossip columnist in your small-town newspaper might write up an exposé of your sin. You could become a local celebrity.
Or you could do nothing, and just sit on your sofa waiting for your boss to call. You could write an aimless blog post where you wonder about how words are used.
Think of how weak words are: they do practically nothing. But now think how strong they are: they sway the mind of multitudes. That’s why tyrants are very wary of authors (that’s what we call those fools who write words). The next time you visit an evil empire, note what packaging material they fill their prisons with — that’s right: authors. And why is this? It’s because all an author has to do is pen the words “Disobey your brutal dictator,” and the multitudes rise up as one and create heaven on earth. Nobody wants that, believe me. So it’s easier just to give free prison cells to all authors, so that they have a place to write their books, and they never have to walk to and fro in the premises searching for the lavatory, because there’s a toilet right there in the room.
And certain words are worse than others. Take the word “terrorist”, for instance. What a frightening term! You can toss it around and get all sorts of people in trouble. Say you work at a library, and you don’t like the second-shift crew. You yourself work the first shift, and you hate when these second shifters come in with their snarky attitudes — they turn their nose up at whatever title you’ve displayed on the “Book of the Day” pedestal: they always take down your choice (which is usually one of the classics) and replace it with their own (a piece of cyberpunk trash). So here’s a trick that I learned while working at the Thief River Falls branch last semester. You can get the entire second shift replaced with workers more to your liking, by making one telephone call to the authorities. Start by saying:
“I believe that the second-shift team at my place of employment are, one and all, terrorists.”
The woman on the other end of the line will then ask, “Where is it that you work, ma’am?”
Say: “The Public Library of Thief River Falls, on Cosmos Ave. Our ‘Book of the Day’ is the Selected Longer Poems of A.R. Ammons.”
When she says, “I’ve never heard of it — is that a classic?”
Simply answer: “It is, to me.”
Then, the next day, when the second shift employees come shuffling to work, federal agents will burst in from all angles and arrest them and haul them away. They’ll even help you burn the stack of volumes that those offenders appointed to challenge your own daily picks, if you gather the titles and pile them outside on the pavement.
But here’s my point: That magic word “terrorist” would lose a lot of its power if we were to think about it. I mean, think about it: it consists of the root word “terror” and the suffix “-ist”. Let’s take that last part first: What other words possess that suffix? — Narcissist, an adherent of the teachings of Narcissus. Big Pharmacist, one who deals drugs for Big Pharma. Racist, a person who believes in race. Flautist, a being who plays the flaut (not necessarily to snakes). And sexist: a person who loves a particular gender.
So we can conclude that that suffix “-ist” simply bestows personhood on whatever corporation it is forced to merge with.
Now take the word “terror”, meaning fear. What are similar words — not necessarily exact synonyms, but terms that sorta mean the same thing? How about “scary”: that’s the only one I can think of. What if we substituted this new word for the one that the autochthonous lexicographers chose to employ? Consider this claim:
“All the second-shift team members are scaryists.”
Nah, that lacks the same ring of truth. I don’t think you’re gonna get anyone fired and whisked out-of-country for enhanced interrogation by accusing them of scaryism. My advice is to stick to the tried-&-true terms “terrorist” and “terrorism”.
*
So what did I learn today, by writing this claptrap? — I learned that I have no clue what horrors the future has in store for me. I learned that my boss is a bad person and a terrible communicator. I learned how to repeal the entire second shift at any workplace. And I learned that there’s nothing so rewarding as becoming a master craftsman & then indulging in romantic scandal.
No comments:
Post a Comment