Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Fragrance

It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining through the clouds, the storm seems to have washed the air clean. So, on my drive into work, I roll down my windows and try and enjoy the beauty; after all, I will be in my cinder block office with no windows for the next eight hours or so.

There's some kind of funky smell in the air. It smells like, hmm, what's that smell? Dirty diapers, that's it. The air in Newark smells just like dirty diapers. What the heck? That's not cool. So, getting out of my car, I ask someone else in the parking lot, "do you smell that funky smell?"

"Yes", she replies, "it's the smell of Lancaster county. They have mushroom farms there, and that's what they smell like. When the wind is just right, that smell wafts our way."

So wow. At Michigan State, where I was an undergrad, they had these fields they would manure every so often, you could smell that too. Two universities out of three that I have been associated with have the aura of feces occasionally pervading their space. What a coincidence.

"Stop it." There's a voice behind me, recognizable but unexpected. "You're being sophomoric. Both UD and MSU are land-grant schools, it only makes sense that they would be near agriculture. Agriculture smells bad, that's just the way it is."

I don't even need to turn around. "How the hell did you get here?"

The camera pans out and up, going just from a framing shot of my face to revealing more and more of the parking lot behind me. A figure, standing twenty yards back, is still blurry and indistinct. As he comes into focus, the scene goes dark and is replaced by the words

To be continued...

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Jamming

Laser hair removal commercial on the radio. "Well, if I had laser hair, I'd want it removed too. That sounds fairly alarming". Whoop whoop whoop, look out, laser hair on the loose! "chhhchrp ... and today, in Chicago, thirty people were balded when a hair laser went rogue ... chhhchrp". Some day, I will go bald. How will I react? Will I do the comb-over? Will I get a toupee? What about implants? Or will I just let it go. I know a guy with a military-style flat top (he's in the military, fancy that (but he can't fancy things, because of the whole don't fancy don't tell policy)), anyway, this flat top has a hole in the middle. Don't get me wrong, he looks fine, but he clearly isn't doing anything about his impending baldiosity. Did you know that "ericaceous" is a word? True story.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Symbols

It's Tuesday. That must be why I'm wearing these weird pants. It's Tuesday, and I'm having a flashback moment. I take a surreptitious look at my wristwatch and note the date. Hmm, the fact that I'm wearing a wristwatch at all means I must be in high school. The calculator-watch stares back at me, reflecting the light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs. Of course the watch knows what year it is, but I do too now. By the state of my pants, it is 1993 and I am in high school again. Or still. Or whatever.

I get up, leave my books near my desk, and walk out of the classroom. My physics teacher doesn't say anything, I remember him being one of those progressive teachers who gives students freedom to do things like go to the bathroom during class. Anyway, I don't even bother with the bathroom. I go out into the hallway, and take off my wristwatch, let it drop to the floor. While I'm at it, I take off my pullover poncho and the Nirvana t-shirt that it covered. Gathering steam, off come the Chuck Taylor All Star Converse Hi-Tops (in purple), the ripped and patched Levi's 501 Jeans and the boxers. All that I am wearing now are socks, and that's because I'm in the wing of the school with tile floors. I walk slowly over to the carpeted area so I can take the socks off too.

A shout from behind me, it's some administrator or another. "What the heck is going on here?" He actually said heck.

So I turn around and say, "Isn't this one of those dreams where I'm still in high school and I'm naked and everyone is looking at me, and I'm about to wake up?".

"No, this isn't one of those dreams. You're just naked, put your clothes back on." I can see in his hands, he has collected all the items I shed back outside my physics classroom.

Talk about embarrassing.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Passage

Some things really cheese me off. People who refer to one-way mirrors as two-way mirrors, for example. They're always talking about them in cop shows and other places. To me, a two-way mirror would be a piece of normal glass, something that allows light to go two ways through it. A one-way mirror would be those things they have in the police station, behind which the trembling witness can point her finger at a wrongdoer. A zero-way mirror would be your average, run of the mill, mirror.

Then again, there's no arguing with the crossword puzzle. Lasonerd is clearly not a word, so two-way mirror it is, which makes lasonerd into lastword. It's like getting a trivial pursuit card with an incorrect question on it. Just really cheeses me off. Or perhaps, should I say, yogurts me off?

No. I should not say that.