Words, words, words!!!

One Chair

She stared at the chair for a long time. She couldn't believe it, the chair only had three legs. Three! She snatched the catalog off her bed to double check, and sure enough, comparing the chair's image and the actual chair sitting before her, she saw that, in the catalog -- the ideal version, the chair had four legs, not three. Or maybe not? She looked closer at the photo. She assumed that there was a fourth leg but the photo's angle obscured the fourth leg, which apparently, as she could clearly see now, never existed at all. Wait, no, impossible! All chairs had four legs. She wondered what kind of company would sell a three legged chair anyway.

She had looked forward to getting this chair for two whole agonizing weeks. Yes, agony is what the wait was like. Everyday she drove home as fast as she could to see if her new chair had arrived. She had the lone chair for so long. This addition was key but now, after so much waiting, pining, she still only had one chair. Well, one and three-fourths chairs to be precise. This would not do. It would not do at all. She had been planning on having guests, or at least one guest, a very special guest -- the checkout girl. She would sit in the old chair and her guest, the girl with the pretty eyes from the checkout, would sit in the new chair, and she would say to her, "Do you like my new chair?"

The checkout girl would respond politely and say, "Yes, this is a good chair." Or something like that, she didn't know her all that well really. The checkout girl only ever asked her how her day was going and smiled while ringing up the groceries. She once commented on how nice her sweater was but she knew it was ridiculous to assume that it was anything more than her being a nice checkout girl.

How could she invite anyone over and expect them to sit in a three legged chair? She grabbed the phone. She needed to talk to someone. A customer service representative, that was it. After pressing the corresponding buttons to reach the correct area of support she was greeted by a soft spoken but generally helpful sounding man.

Studying the four legged chair in the catalog, trying to spot that fourth leg, she said, "Hi, hello, your chair, the one I bought out of your catalog. It only has three legs."

"Does it? Well that won't do."

"Yes, only three. I need another leg. Could you send it to me please?"

"Well, can I get your first and last name, the product code, serial number, and the date of purchase?"

Her heart sunk when she heard these words. She had already tossed the packaging into the trash incinerator down the hall. It was gone, irretrievable. "I don't have those things. I burned them."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that ma'am, but I need these items before I can send you the fourth leg."

She sat down in her old chair. It was red and dusty. It had been with her for seven years. Picking at the fraying fibers on the arm of the chair she said, "Well, can I just describe the chair to you?"

"I'm sorry, I need more information than that. You can send the chair back, well, no you can't, you burned the box."

"This chair was very important to me and you don't care."

"Oh, I'm sure it was and I do care. I have a chair of my own and I often think of it fondly."

"Are you mocking me?"

"No ma'am, my first child was born in that chair."

"Oh, that's, well, that's fine. Congratulations."

"Well, it was ten years ago, but thank you."

There was a pause as she tried to come up with a way to wrangle a fourth leg out of this conversation but she knew it was hopeless. She glanced at her new chair, where it sat lamely on the floor, unable to perform the one simple task expected of it. She thought about the checkout girl sitting in the chair, it seemed ridiculous now. How was she going to pose the question anyway? "Want to come over to my house and sit in my new chair?" Absurd! Clearly, she had not thought this through. She had not thought about it reasonably, no checkout girl ever wanted to be asked such things, to be put in such an awkward position. Thankfully, receiving this useless chair had given her reason to pause and consider her actions, sparing her the embarrassment. Despite the loss of $65.99, she recognized the blessing, and knew it was for the best. This chair was meant to have three legs, just as the checkout girl was meant to ask her how her day was, and she, at least for now, was meant to sit at home alone with her single chair.

The customer rep said, "Is there anything else?"

"Um, no, forget it." She hung up and sat, trying to decide what to do about the chair. She thought about going to the supermarket to buy some eggs, but she didn't need any more eggs. She already had five cartons. With no chair there would be no special guest. It was time to put her fantasies of checkout girls in new chairs and conversations about chairs to an end.

She stood up, grabbed the three legged chair, walked out of her apartment, down the hall, and into the trash room. The room was dimly lit and the floor was coated in a thin layer of gritty dust. The smell of uneaten pizza lingered in the air. She lifted the chair above her head and smashed it against the floor until all of the legs had broken off. Then she tossed the pieces down the chute, into the incinerator, forever ridding herself of the useless object and the notion of a visiting checkout girl with it. She went back to her apartment, sat down in her old chair, that, despite being old, was quite comfortable.

It's September.

The Man who Said Nothing

He was belligerent, irrational, idiotic.

"Orwell is dead and no one cares about him!"

Everyone stopped to stare at him, not one of them said a word, not out of shock toward this statement, but out of the hope that if no one responded, this obnoxious man would, quite simply, shut the fuck up. He had been saying things like this all night and everyone was tired of it. They just wanted to have a nice peaceful, semi-intoxicated evening, perhaps play some video games. The last thing on anyone's agenda was to have a drawn out discussion on the merits of literature because really, who cares about that shit? Who!? Apparently this man did, and far too much it seemed. Sure they appreciated the discussion of literature now and then but people -- fraudulent people -- often brought up literature out of some misguided desire for acceptance or self-validation rather than the desire to discuss one of the world's finest, most honest forms of art, and this, this self serving, intellectual masturbation, this desire to discuss purely for the advancement of one's own image was painfully evident in the way this man spoke. Yeah, Saul Bellow wrote some great books and you read them, but what difference does it make to anyone other than yourself?

No one knew who he belonged to or who brought him to this party. He just seemed to have shown up on his own accord, or rather stumbled upon, considering how drunk he was. One of the women nodded slightly though she did not know why. A reflex perhaps? The woman was beautiful but she spent a lot of time worrying about her looks, perhaps a desire to be prettier? Granted her nose was a tad large but most people easily overlooked this as it was simply a character flaw, a deviation from beauty, rather than a deal breaking disfigurement.

Aside from this woman's simple gesture the group stayed quiet, hoping, praying, that this unwanted, unshaven, balding, unattractive, bad minded, generally distasteful man would walk away and bring his inane ideas with him. When he spoke he blasted you with the scent of a rotting corpse in a late summer afternoon. The scent matched his ideas in quality.

The unwanted man continued once more, "No one reads books anymore! Doesn't anyone care!?"

"Prove it!" said one young man, quite a bit better dressed than everyone else. You might even have said he was god damned gorgeous. He had no girlfriend to speak of but would likely have one before the night was through. You could tell, just by glancing at him, that he was confident, self assured, mentally stable -- at least superficially. He licked his lips because they had remnants of chocolate pudding on them. People often said he had a heart of gold, so kind he was, like a knight. The words of kindness flowed forth out of him and everyone loved him for it. In any situation, if there was a right thing to say you can be sure he said it. Perhaps, at this moment, his best feature was that he had no qualms challenging a drunken moron.

The man was slow to answer but when he finally did, he said, "Prove it? I...what? Prove it!? Well, I...I can't prove it. I just know these things. I know many things! I read them in a book!"

Three Hundred and Twenty Nine...

What Good is a Book?

"Why is it that we must be forced against our will to read these mediocre works of literature anyway?!"

It was the 16 year old girl in the third row of the class who would not shut up.

Mr. Leonard sat slouched forward on the edge of his desk, slowly rolling over a copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles in his hands. He was a man approaching his late seventies and severely worn from years of teaching kids who no longer believed in anything that came before their immediate time of existence. He exhaled a long wheezy sigh, as his aging body seemed to crumple to the floor.

The girl continued, pushing her black rimmed, designer glasses up on her nose. "I mean, essentially all of these writers are so undeniably obtuse, not to mention obsolete, and they're all essentially wholly consisting of nothing but hot air! Hot air I say! I mean, let's consider this book I am holding here, the one you had us read last time? Slaughter House Five? I mean, what the hell was this atrocious, nonsensical book all about anyway? This Kurt guy is a certified loony! And Catcher in the Rye? Don't get me started. It's just the meandering of an individual who wanders around pondering his existence and bemoaning his troubles!"

She reached down and pulled another book from her back pack.

"And this selected novel I have pulled from my back pack and now hold in my left hand, and I will have you notice for a moment that I have immaculate finger nails, a bright mauve colorization, the aesthetic merits of which one could not argue against. But as I was saying, this book I am holding, here, well, I can't even enunciate the title?! Or even the author's for that matter. I believe this would be Russian but is that matter really of importance here? The book itself is absolutely horrid!"

Mr. Leonard, sliding his hands down his withered face, said, "Why do you have all of these books in your backpack?"

"Oh, I was going to burn them after the period of my day which I refer to as school had come to it's inevitable conclusion."

"Oh."

"Anyway, this one, put your eyes here, which would now be my right hand, your left. This work of literature is entitled, Sometimes A Great Notion. God I hate this book, detest it, abhor it! It was so uninteresting and it was essentially, in-disputably lacking substance in any substantial way! All of these antiquated writers, why do we even bother to listen to them anymore? Why even bother? Let's be frank, I mean, they're generic, I mean, geriatric, they didn't even comprehend, essentially, what they were essentially talking about. What I am trying to say is that, writers suck! I'm better off not reading them at all! I mean, I could write a better work of literature than these dolts but I won't because every book ever written is stupid and writers are stupid, they are terrible people, you know? Sometimes I want to go and take a gargantuan shit right on Kurt Vonnegut's gr-"

A large book soared through the air, hitting her in the face.

"Oh my God! Did you not just pick up Infinite Jest and heave it across the room at me striking me directly in my nose?" Blood leaked from her nose, dribbling down her chin, pooling on her desk, and onto her shirt. "You totally threw a substantially sized novel, which is inarguable since Infinite Jest is just over one thousand pages, locating it in the upper echelon of obscene page counts, and this said book, this tome, hit me in my said face!"

Everyone sat up, wide awake, staring at Mr. Leonard, who stood up, straightened his tie, and walked around behind his desk. Retirement was less than a year away but he was not thinking of this at the moment, he was wondering how easily a metal bat could crush a 16 year old's skull. He dug around in his desk for a moment and procured a large metal bat. He turned and looked at the girl, slapping the sweet spot of the bat in his palm.

Cupping her hand over her nose to catch the spilling blood, the girl asked, "Are you presently holding in your hands a thirty six inch regulation college metal baseball bat?"

Mr. Leonard stepped up to where the girl sat, bat in palm, mind gone. Carefully lifting the bat above his head, preparing to bring the wrath of over 100 years of baseball bat engineering perfection down on her skull, he said, "Kurt Vonnegut was a great man and-!"

"Uh, no he wasn't! And, furthermore, what are you doing with the aforementioned baseball bat suspended above your head in such a menacing position?" She held up her index finger to signal him to wait and said, "Just a second I absolutely must acquire a photo of this partially humorous, yet partially terrifying pose for placement on one of my several Facebook galleries, it's exact location to be determined at a later time." After digging around in her back pack for a moment, she pulled out her iPhone, aimed, and clicked a photo.

He loosened his grip on the bat and looked around the room. All of the students were staring at him wide eyed, tightly gripping their desks in anticipation. He lowered the bat to his side and dropped it on the floor. He hung his head and tears rolled down his rugged cheeks.

She slid the iPhone back in her bag, procured two tissues of Kleenex and stuffed them up her nose. She looked at him bug eyed and continued, "So, anyway, the most atrocious book I've ever, indisputably, read in said class would have to be...1984. That book is super ridiculous, beyond absurd. Let me rephrase-"

A boy seated in the back, stood up and proclaimed, "I have Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis!"

Four Hundred and Nine...

Ridiculous Literature Rant

"You know when fluoridation first began?"

I absolutely love this character because he is an excellent portrayal (in a funny way mind you, which I love) of what happens when people give up informing themselves on their own and doing their own investigating and instead have their heads filled with crazy, uneducated ideas, which is very relevant to today. He might as well be ranting about death panels.

I was re-reading 1984 today (yeah I said re-reading in a sad attempt to impress you, better than that though, a friend told me about a friend who read Catch-22 every year) and, back to the point, there is a part in the book where Winston, the main character, is writing in his journal, and it reads, "If there is hope [wrote Winston] it lies in the proles." This is one of those lines where you just have to stop reading right there and go do something else for a while because it blows your mind out the back of your skull. You really have to read this in the context of the book though because it just hits at the perfect time. It's an incredibly powerful, hopeful line and I think one that has a lot of truth to it.

I love Orwell because you can tell he really cared, I try to care -no strike that - I'm just a guy who whines a lot, anyway, Orwell is great because of the extent he took his obsession with human rights and the plight of the common man. This is what makes him more than just some guy who wrote an incredibly amazing book that is way better than whatever the fuck your favorite book is so there and furthermore I'd say I hate on enough things as is so it's probably for the better that I embrace any work of art with anything approaching feelings of love, besides it's not for the totalitarian message, I love this book more for the well presented relationship between Winston and Julia that breaks your heart, the precise, economical writing and descriptions, and the fact that I can't breathe for the last 90 pages of the novel, than for the heavy underlying social message, it just so happens it's about something on top of all of this awesome, and that something happens to be a BIG something.

This is why it's the greatest novel I've ever read. Orwell didn't just rest on the fact that he had a really neat idea, because he actually cared for the characters in his story, much like he cared for the plight of anyone under oppression. What makes Orwell so great is his journalistic side, he really didn't live in his head nearly as much as most writers, I'm generalizing here but I'm pretty sure it's a safe one, because lot of his fiction was very much grounded in reality, well, never mind, all writing is essentially. I can't a think of a lot of writers who have created a fake world of poverty based on personal experience. Tell me if you know.

You also have to love Orwell because he openly admitted he wrote for narcissistic reasons and that it was the laziest pursuit anyone could take up. He had no delusions of grandeur. On top of this he wrote Politics of the English Language, which every writer, every human being really, should read at some point in their education. God I wish David Foster Wallace had read that thing, then maybe he wouldn't have killed himself. Also, I don't want to hear about these new contemporary writers masturbating for 900 pages, that's a bunch of shit. Yeah, Joyce did it but he's Joyce not some young punk kid who can't get enough of the words he writes. Shit, what a crock. 1984 is infinitely smarter than Infinite Jest and it's 1/3 of the size and has twelve hundred billion less syllables. Oh, and at least 1984 has double quotations for God sakes! Wait, a lot of books have double quotations! Gosh, if we're going for cute stylistic choices why don't we just stop capitalizing and butcher all the useless words?

If it takes you 1000 pages to tell your story, you're doing it wrong. Why stop at 1000 then? Why not 2000? Or 4000? Clearly plotting is of no concern to you, so just go hog wild, make a book so huge no one can pick it up, include every fucking detail of every moment of every stupid, pointless character within a 100 mile radius.

I'd also like to mention that 1984's plotting is pitch perfect, comparatively it makes White Teeth look like Zadie Smith just vomited the words and story of her novel out for several days then sold it off as literature. Sorry, that was unnecessary, well, while we're bashing White Teeth, I also would like to mention that White Teeth is the first book I've read where I skipped to the back and read the last page just to be done with it. Sorry, now I'm just digressing and spewing venom.

I should read Ulysses someday. You know, I think if Orwell ever read White Teeth he would vomit for several days. This is undeniable. I wrote this without coffee. I actually don't hate Zadie, she's an incredible writer of digressions that don't matter (which I love if you had not guessed) and I've read some things she said in interviews and cheered, she just can't tell a story. I apologize if I offended anyone's favorite book, if it makes you feel any better I have several slivers in my finger and they are quite a bother, furthermore I am losing my hair and you are likely not so no matter what I say, the jokes on me. Orwell had wonderful hair. Sigh...

Three Hundred and Ninety Nine...

Basketball is a Sport I Played

The coach with the buzz cut kicked the locker room door open and screamed, "You all suck!"

Twelve sullen, exhausted boys turned and looked, no one said anything, all too sad, scared maybe, to say anything. Not that they could argue his point.

"I said you suck!" he repeated, "How could anyone play basketball so sucky!? I've seen women play better basketball - and I hate women! I killed my wife!"

The smallest boy raised his hand.

Coach turned his beady eyes on him and impatiently said, "What!?"

He turned away sadly, whimpered, and rubbing an enormous black bruise on his shoulder said, "But, I didn't sign up for basketball!"

"Well that's too-" he stopped and stared at him for a long time, eyes narrowing, then screamed, "What do you mean you didn't sign up for basketball!? I don't care if you signed up or not! You're here now! So deal with it - and play some better defense or I'll break your legs!"

"But I just want to make art," whined the small boy.

"Art!? What in God's name are you going to do with art!? At least sports will get you in the local paper! At least sports will get you chicks! You know who makes art?!"

"Well my mom likes to-"

"Fags! Fags make art!"

The fattest boy on the team emitted a loud moan and burst into tears. Then another boy started crying. Then another. Yet another. Even the team manager started crying. Eventually everyone was crying pitifully. Their sobbing echoing throughout the locker room. The coach slid his hands down his face, stretching his cheeks to their limit. The janitor appeared from one of the bathrooms stalls, where he had been cleaning diligently. He threw his scrubby brush on the ground, and said, "I hate basketball! I like paintings!" The coach slapped his hands on the side of his head and screamed at the top of his lungs for several seconds. His screams joining the muffled sobbing, forming a melodramatic symphony of sorts.

Clenching his fists at his side he said, "Shut up! Shut up! Everyone stop crying!" then pointing to the janitor, "And you, janitor, you're not even part of this sucky team! Clean those showers!"

The small boy threw up several times. The puke cocktail consisted of cereal and Tuesday's lunchroom spaghetti. After he finished puking, he fell off the bench, face first into his own vomit. He curled up and rolling back and forth in his vomit, he cried for his mother and lamented the existence of basketball and peach baskets.

The fat boy chewed voraciously at his hand drawing blood. The janitor picked up one of the benches, lifted it above his head, and screamed, "Fuck the system!" then tossed it across the room.

The coach dodged the flying bench, grabbed the small boy, picked him up off the ground, and threw him against a locker, and into the boy's face, he screamed , "It's not going to kill you to play basketball you fucking pussy!" The boy shook his head back and forth in disagreement. His face went white and his body shook violently in protest. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he died. The coach groaned and tossed him aside, he could always find more small forwards.

One Hundred and Fifty Eight in a row...

Part 5

The grotesque pair steadily made their way through the restaurant spreading hysteria all around. People screamed, cried, and did all they could to get out of sight of these two intruders. One desperate couple over turned their table and finished their dinner on the floor in behind it. It was becoming readily apparent that someone had to take action before total chaos ensued. The night needed a hero and it was the highly unlikely restaurant owner who decided he would be the one to take up the cause.

Straightening his tie and thrusting his chest out he approached the two and said with a wavering voice, "You are n-not welcome here! Please, um, go away. I will not have people throwing up and fainting in my restaurant! S-so go away."

The two disgraceful abominations stopped in their tracks and faced the owner to take a moment to observe him with a bored stare. The man scratched at his facial hair, yawned, and then stuck his small finger in his ear and wriggled it vigorously.

The restaurant owner looked away for a moment to keep from gagging but managed to stand firm against this onslaught of indecency. "That is disgusting. You sh-should be ashamed!", he said in his most commanding voice as he stuck a finger in the man's face while still making sure to maintain a safe distance.

These characters were an awful intrusion on his restaurant, however, he felt a bit of excitement he was not used to and found he was actually enjoying it on some perverse level. He lived in a near perfect world where no one ever bothered to disrupt his restaurant with obnoxious behavior, complain about service, or send food back for some absurd reason. Aside from this the thought of all these strangers witnessing his heroism was also quite thrilling!

M watched from a nearby table with growing interest. She could not be sure what she was feeling but with every disturbing action this strange man took her desire to be near him grew. It was all very confusing to her why she should feel this way. He was, after all, an incredibly disgusting individual yet she wanted more than anything to speak to him, to know him more intimately. She blushed - again.

X touched her arm lightly and whispered in her ear, "Do not worry my dear. I shall protect you. I know karate."

Meanwhile the restaurant owner, despite greatly enjoying his moment in the spotlight, was not making any progress removing these two from the premises. He began to ponder what other choice words he could use to further add drama and impact to his performance but the two turned and walked past him as if he were never there to begin with.

He hung his head dejectedly and pouted. His moment of glory had turned out to be a complete failure. Perhaps running a high priced, highly successful, post-post modern restaurant was all he was ever meant to do.

M could hardly believe it but the two were approaching her table. Her heart raced. The imperfect man stared directly into her eyes. She took a big gulp from her glass spilling some of it on her clothes. They stopped before the table and stood for a moment staring at M and her perfect friend.

M was about to lie to X about how disgusting the two were and that they should probably leave immediately when the man gently took her hand and held it up as if inviting her to come with him.

A woman at a table across from her threw up gold all over her date.