Democrats are very interested in time. Specifically, today and tomorrow. Today is the 21st century. Tomorrow is … tomorrow.
Texans wear bootstraps.
We just lived through an American century. I missed that.
Give us, Oh Lord, humility.
We defeated terrorism. I missed that too.
The man in the ugly tie just said he is a “proud card-carrying capitalist. Do people, like, say that?
The answer is President Barack Obama!
I can’t tell them apart anymore. Everything is blinding blue, or red. They died, or their parents died. But their fathers worked in a bottle factory. Or a can factory. Something with containers.
But they loved their mother. We all love mothers. Something about mothers.
They all seem slightly drunk. It’s blue, or red.
Condoleezza Rice in a pink dress. She talks about war. I think she’s in favor of it. I was waiting for her to talk about her mother; it was distracting. She says, “Self esteem comes from achievement, not from lax standards and false praise.” She looks like she’s about to cry.
Republicans.
The only satisfaction in test-taking is doing well.
That’s really the trouble with medical tests. The most you can hope for is being told you’re average.
Normal, abnormal. Healthy range, unhealthy range.
This is what I want to hear: The results of your MRI are in. Your brain glows in the dark!
Your blood test revealed your blood is a lovely shade of purple. It particularly loves riding the slope from the your right shoulder to fingertips.
We have examined your X-ray. Your neck muscles are in spasm, but secretly in love with your brain. By night they read magazines in its light.
Image from the bibliographic collection of the Library of the Faculty of Law and Labor Sciences of the University of Seville, via Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla on flickr
All things considered, it was a very productive sleeping month. Had a marital affair, discovered a magic washing machine, attended a funeral, received hate mail, saw spiritual principles turn into fabric, and appeared in a reality television show … where I could not open my eyes.
I also performed a spy mission overseas, which inadvertently led to the death of a rhinoceros. But the rhinoceros died laughing. That is some consolation.
The judge is a large white man with a large white mustache. He sits under the illuminated silver words, “In God We Trust.”
The defendant wears a beautiful pink shirt. He is accused of shooting someone to death on Stuyvesant Avenue.
Amazing how quickly potential jurors are divided into given demographics: married, unmarried, children, no children, renting, owning.
When I say I am involved in an organization called Occupy Bushwick the stenographer makes me repeat it twice.
The defendant seems to be staring at me, and I awkwardly catch his eye when I look up. I have no idea if he wants me on his jury. I have no idea where I rank in this game, a single white woman who studies media. I realize it’s strategy, but that pink shirt is damn beautiful.
We file out, we file in. The air is static. Names are read, and none of them are mine. I am surprised by my own relief. I want to leave this room, this windowless room with a male judge and all-male council and armed male guards.
Downstairs, another indefinite wait. I am told I will not have to do this again for eight years and given a document stating, “Thank you for your participation and contribution to the delivery of justice.”
In ten weeks I will receive a check for $40.00.
Image from Ballads of the Bench and Bar; or, Idle Lays of the Parliament House by John James Reid and James Balfour Paul, 1882, via The British Library on flickr
A bed bug [bɛd bʌg]: a small bug that is unhappy, unattractive, and mean.
1. Stare at its likeness in a subway poster. Consider that it may be the most unphotogenic creature on earth.
2. Continue in Midwestern delusion that such things only exist in seedy hotels.
3. Discover in New York, a clean apartment is no guarantee. Something is biting in the night — and when you are not sleeping with another human, this is never a good thing.
4. Conduct research.
A bed bug: a parasitic insect that lives exclusively on blood. Bed bugs can live for up to 18 months without a “feeding” or purportedly up to three years in the case of the Oeciacus Vicarius. Bed bugs have recently surged in the United States to “near epidemic proportions.” (Feeding and mating rituals withheld to spare the sensitivity of readers.)
5. Consider following: a.) Leave New York immediately. b.) Throw bed out of window. c.) Is DDT really that bad? It worked in the 1940s.
6. Continue Reading.
7. Discover bed bugs now thrive on DDT (it’s weird but true.) Scratch option c. Discover bed bugs live in walls and also the cracks of floorboards. Scratch option b.
Consider throwing self out window.
8. Be relieved to learn “natural bedbug enemies” do exist. They include: cockroaches, ants, mites, rodents, centipedes, and something fantastically called the “masked bedbug hunter.” But as wikipedia helpfully points out, “Unfortunately, biological control is not very practical for eliminating bedbugs from human dwellings.”
Return cockroach.
9. Discover people blog about bedbugs. Discover lots of people blog about bedbugs. With domain names like “Bed Bugs are Ruining My Life,” and “The Bedbug War.” With lots of “!”s and profanity, for good measure. Like an addiction support group, they speak of prevention, relapse, and recovery.
10. Discover people pay up to $5,000 to render the creatures thoroughly, professionally dead.
11. Consider graduate school loans.
12. Consider sleeping in plastic. Consider sleeping in sin, so long as it is not in this apartment.
13. Consider never sleeping again.
14. Consider I have just unwittingly joined a group that speaks in the epic language of Good versus Evil, The Common Enemy, and Victorious Battle.
A bed bug: a force of evil whose presence on earth will soon be obliterated through the work of a chosen few.
———— addendum: Day 6. Wake up on an air mattress, on the kitchen table. Pick outfit out of carefully plastic-wrapped items currently hanging beside the stove, which have been cleansed at high heat. Check UPS status of various weaponry en route. Inspect mattress. Inspect self. Prepare for battle.
Image: continuous line drawing by highwaycharlie on flickr
A Strange Day on Planet Earth 