--When I was leaving for work on Tuesday there was a man from
Comcast standing on our driveway, holding the end of a rope.I couldn’t see him, but a second man was apparently way up in
our neighbors’ tree, holding the other end.
It wasn’t really any of my business, but I said, “So what’re you
guys doing?”I thought they
might be trimming the branches back from the cable.
But it turns out they were repairing “squirrel damage.”The guy told me squirrels like to strip aluminum off the
outside of wires, and it’s almost a full-time job cleaning up after
“the little bastards.”
Weird, I thought.Aluminum?On the outside
of wires?Do the squirrels like to eat it, or are they just bushy-tailed
delinquents? And what's the story with the rope?All these
questions flashed instantly through my mind, but I decided to take it
in a different direction.
“Is that why our internet has been slow for the past couple of
days?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “this wouldn’t have anything to do with
that.”
--Toney and I went to
Wendy’s for lunch today, and they’re not serving tomatoes on their
burgers anymore.You know, on
account of people dropping dead, or whatever.
I don’t care for it.Tomatoes
are an important part of the rich tapestry that is
a #1 with cheese, no pickles.You
can’t just go around adding and subtracting things, all willy-nilly.
Wonder if LegalZoom has a form I can download, copy, and carry with
me, that releases restaurants from any and all liability if I
happen to get a death ‘mater?I
think it’s something worth looking into…
While we were eating our incomplete burgers, a van pulled into the lot
and parked across
three or four spaces. What in the pop ‘n’ lock hell??I watched to see who got out of this rolling buggy of
inconsideration.
And one old man after another emerged from the thing.They all looked alike, more or less, and were wearing matching
baseball caps.
They descended on the place and it instantly sounded like the New York
Stock Exchange.Every one of
them was talking at the same time, at a volume usually reserved for
groundskeepers having a conversation across a baseball diamond.I guess they were also losing their hearing at the same pace,
as well?I just don’t know.
And what’s the deal with the caps?Is
there now a male version of the Red Hatters, or whatever those
bellicose, hard-charging old ladies call themselves?Please tell me it ain’t so.
--I have a Word document saved
on my computer, where I write these updates.Every once in a while, when it gets too bloated, I delete
everything and start over.And
that’s what I did today.
The oldest entry was from February 28, and since then I’ve written
66,954 words, in the daily updates alone.Using the standard 250 words equals one page of a book
equation, I’ve
cranked out 268 pages since the end of February.
And that’s a lot
of nonsense.
--While I was at work on
Tuesday some sort of apocalyptic storm rolled through.Rain was hammering the roof of our building, thunder was
shaking the Earth, and the lights were trying to decide whether or not
to just say fukkit.
I talked to Toney after it was over, and she told me a tree had fallen
across a main street near our house.It
appeared some of our neighbors had no power, but we were still OK.Some rare good news…
Before she climbed atop the dormancy platform, we spoke one more time
and there was no mention of a problem at the Compound.I assumed we’d dodged the bullet.
But when I drove back into our neighborhood, at 3:15 am, it was disturbingly dark.Not a single porch light, or flickering TV screen behind a
curtain, or even the moon.It
was just dark, in every direction.
I turned on a street and saw a team of guys from the electric company
working on something or other, with their big-ass spotlights
a-blazing.
A car went past them in the opposite direction, and I had to wait for
him to squeeze past the truck.When
it was my turn one of the workers looked at me and gave me some sort
of exasperated, theatrical motion to just
come the hell on.He had a look on his face that seemed to say, what is this,
I-81?Who are all these
douche-nozzles driving around in the middle of the night?
And when I turned off that street, and began the final approach, it
was so dark I felt an actual twinge of unease.Everything was deader than Kelsey’s nuts; the whole world was
black and dark gray.
I parked in the driveway, and started collecting all my crap to carry
into the house.I had two
notebooks, my iPod, two CDs, a Dean Koontz paperback, and my keys.And during this collection process, I looked around and
wondered if there were any escaped lunatics hanging around.Because it certainly was lunatic weather…
When I slammed my door shut, it became absolutely dark out there.I walked to the front door, half expecting a madman (the
Porketta Slasher?!) to come up behind me and slit my throat.But I made it without incident, and when I was finally inside I
felt like Helen Keller.
It was completely silent (where was Andy and his standard
whimper-greeting??), and I could see nothing.As Spongebob once said, “This isn’t regular darkness.This is… advanced
darkness.”
I stumbled forward, taking tentative steps with my hands straight out,
like a sleepwalker on TV.It
was amazing how black it was.
Then I heard something, and saw a dim greenish light floating around,
way up high.WTF?!My heart skipped a beat, took one, then skipped a couple more.What in the living crap is going on??
It was the oldest Secret, at the top of the stairs with his cell phone
open.He was using it as a
makeshift flashlight, which I thought was a pretty good idea.I did the same, and together we located three real flashlights.By this time Toney was also up, and all of us were walking
around like coal miners.
I took out my contacts with a flashlight lying on the sink, and
wasn’t really ready to go to bed.But
what else was there to do?I
stumbled into the bedroom (Toney and the Secret had already hit the
sack again), and found Andy, all frightened and beside himself.I gave him a reassuring pat on the head, and started taking off
my shoes, socks, and pants.
I almost drove a knee completely through the side wall of a dresser,
and nearly tripped over Andy.I
couldn’t see a thing in there.Was
the moon off that night, or what?!Toney
said, “Would you just come to bed? What the heck are you doing, kung
fu?”
So I climbed atop the platform, and laid there wide awake.It was muggy hot, and I was not ready for sleep.It sucked.
After ten minutes or so of lying on my back like a man in a coffin, I heard
a droning sound somewhere.Then
the lights came on, the air conditioner cranked back up, and the alarm
clock started flashing…
Within seconds I was in the bunker, a cold bottle of Lord Chesterfield
Ale beside my monitor, and the Smoking Fish materializing on the
screen.
And all was right with the world again…
--I’m listening to Clive
Bull, right this minute, and he’s asking people how they answer the
phone.This seems like a fairly
weak topic to me…Don’t
most people just say, “Hullo?”But
if you’ve got anything on phone answering, use the comments link.
--And now I’m going to turn
it over to Buck, and call it a week here.Tomorrow is set aside for an extracurricular writing project,
which was supposed to be completed by June 1.And so it goes…
