Minotaur: Fellini Would Be Proud

Many of my 2.5 loyal readers are already familiar with my amazingly talented friend Javier Grillo-Marxuach, creator of the utterly awesome-saucy Middleman comics and equally awesome-saucy Middleman TV series ** (huzzah!) and writer of fine words/producer for shows including (but not limited to!) Lost, Medium, Boomtown, Jake 2.0, and Charmed (oh, turning Shannen Doherty into a man, still a classic!) Javi even crafted an episode of a dun-dun (aka doink-doink) franchise show. You know what I mean. Oh yes, you do.

Well, Javi (whom you may find here or here or here or here and sometimes here, when he's got his MiddleVibe goin' - follow him everywhere!!) is a filmmaker in his own right. This week, he released a freshly-crafted, wicked cool short film called Minotaur, and you should go spend 14 minutes and 35 seconds soaking up this deliciously twisted cinematic goodness. Now! Go right now! And share the link with your friends. It's pretty dang cool stuff.

Two words: pig head.

Okay - is that not enough to get you to go check it out? Pig. Head. Of course, if this mysterious reference to a porcine noggin isn't enough, let me be more emphatic:

Minotaur. Go. Watch. Enjoy!

Seriously, you'll dig it. It's a total trip.

(And hey -- once you've traveled that path, go check out Javi's short film Reverse Parthenogenesis. Another gem, featuring some of Javi's friends who will be very familiar to Sunnydale High fans.) :)



** And you should go buy The Middleman on DVD. When you're done watching Minotaur and sharing the link with your friends!

Dry Run

For someone like me, economy of words has always been a problem. I never met an adjective or adverb I didn't like. So, having 500-word writing assignments in the creative writing course I took last autumn was a real challenge for me. The instructor's rule was, if you couldn't keep it to 500 words, you could max out at 750. I had one that wrapped up at 749. And that was after considerable editing. 

This one ended up at 699 words. A proud moment, not cracking the 700 mark. This assignment asked us to take a single opening sentence—“Chris began to question the wisdom of this trip.”—and spin out as much of a fiction narrative as possible in 500 words. Okay, in 699 words. The goal was not to finish a whole story, but just get started. We were encouraged to finish our stories on our own. I never did that, but I actually like where this fragment drifts off.

A few notes:

1. Gudbrandsdalsost is an actual Norwegian brown cheese.
2. Kum & Go is an actual chain of gas station mini-marts. However, there is not a Kum & Go in Moline, Illinois. That is just a convenient fiction.
3. Sapp Brothers is an actual chain of truck stops. They have these awesome, giant neon signs shaped like old-fashioned coffee pots. At night, you can see those red pots for miles. 
4. The "windowless lavender shack" is an actual windowless lavender shack (unless it's been repainted) somewhere between Moline and Chicago. And yes, the signage described is accurate.

So, here's a tiny story fragment for you. Fiction is not my expertise, so the training wheels are still on.


Dry Run

Chris began to question the wisdom of this trip. The Stevenson Expressway could be a slow-moving traffic jam on the best of days, but now, with a jack-knifed tractor trailer splayed across all four in-bound lanes, the Interstate was a parking lot. Chris' fingertips drummed on the steering wheel as she squinted at the wall of Illinois State Police cruisers and Cook County Fire & Rescue vehicles blocking the slick roadway. This was a stupid idea, she cursed herself. All for some damn cheese.

Tor's parents, Bob and Marlene Eriksen, were due in Moline that evening, and this time, Chris vowed, everything would be perfect. Every year, without fail, they arrived from Duluth for Christmas, bearing gifts and Marlene's conservative disdain for Chris, "that girl" who made her son live in sin.

"There's no pleasing Mom," Tor would always remind her the first night, wrapping his arms around Chris's waist and kissing her in the quiet of their bedroom. "Don't even try, hon. Just not worth it." In the darkness, while Tor slumbered, Chris would recall the screaming matches, police calls, and emergency room visits of her parents' fractured marriage. Marlene would never understand it, so Chris just smiled and placated her as best she could, if just for a measure of holiday peace. "Christmas détente," as Tor had proclaimed it after the first awkward year.

And that was why Chris was stuck on the Stevenson in freezing rain, trapped behind a shattered semi and its escaped flock of frozen Butterball turkeys. "Gudbrandsdalsost. Brown cheese," Tor had sighed, scrolling through one of Marlene's myriad emails, jammed with glitter and flashing holiday images. "Mom's obsessed this year with making those little Norwegian pancakes and serving them with jam and this damn brown cheese. She says there's an import store in Chicago that sells it. I mean, it's good and all, but, c'mon. Two hours to Chicago for cheese?"

Chris had her coat on before Tor was done talking. One less thing for Marlene to count against her.

She gassed up at the Kum & Go around the corner from their tiny bungalow, and snagged some caffeine for the ride. The Kum & Go gutbuster soda was always Chris' weapon of choice for a haul to Chicago, and she'd dropped ninety-nine cents for a giant Dr. Pepper before hitting the road. Tor disgustingly referred to her enormous refillable mug as the "Kum cup," and, on that basis alone, she'd considered ditching it for something not branded with the Midwest's most questionable gas station name. A liter and a half later, the cup was empty, Chris was full, and Chicago and that goddamn brown cheese seemed a lifetime away. There was no way off the highway now, and the good Dr. Pepper was knocking on her bladder wall.

Chris tapped her foot, breathed deeply, did some Kegels, and tried not to look at the streams of icy rain gushing down the windshield. She should have stopped at Sapp Brothers' truck stop a few miles back. She should have passed on the gutbuster. She should stop letting Marlene yank her chain. Shoulda coulda woulda. Chris flicked off the radio as an ad urged her to cruise the gentle flowing waters of the Caribbean this winter.

She looked longingly down the shoulder to a windowless lavender shack she'd passed a hundred times before. Black letters, three feet high, shouted ADULT VIDEOS - BOOKS - MASSAGE - HOT SHOWERS - 24 HRS and beckoned lonely truckers and road-weary salesmen with an unsubtle siren call. Chris would have welcomed the filthiest toilet in the joint if she could have safely abandoned the old wagon and slid across the expanding black ice. With her luck, she would fall, pee herself, and freeze to the road among the turkeys. She had a vision of one of Cook County's studliest firefighters trying to peel her off the blacktop, and it made her snort. "Turkeys and urine and cheese, oh my!" She giggled, a little hysteria setting in, but caught her breath as her muscles relaxed. She was not going to turn the Focus into the Pee-mobile. That would just make Marlene's week, and there would be none of that.

 Why yes, I did take this photo!

The Window

Last year, I took an online creative writing course through the Gotham Writers Workshop. The course was a gift from my dear friend, the Sasquatch, and it was my first foray into "classroom" writing/education/critique in a very, very long time. Each week there was a writing assignment with a prompt and a fairly draconian word limit. I get that—teachers need to sleep and don't need 3,000 words of navel gazing from someone who thinks he's the next F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

The first assignment was to write 500 words (well, more or less) using simply the title "The Window" as a prompt. It could be fiction or non-fiction, and was just a chance for the teacher to get a feel for our abilities. I opted for a non-fiction entry. Non-fiction is always easier for me, and I thought I should stick to something within my comfort zone for the first time out. Dip the toes. Get used to writing on deadline for myself. Selfishly, deliciously just for myself. Ahhh.

So, I've decided to share these writing exercises on the blog. After all, a story is a story, right? This story is true, save for me changing my colleague's name.  

The Window 

It was ungodly hot in the Hotel Yerevan café that afternoon. Summer was at full boil in Armenia, and there was no breeze from the large windows that faced the street. The waitress had cranked the thick glass panes open as far as they would go, but left the curtains closed to try to shade the empty room. We were her only patrons, and she sat in a corner with her arms crossed and lips pursed, fanning herself with a menu. She had eschewed her hotel uniform in favor of a thin, daisy-dotted cotton shift and sandals (with white socks), and she was clearly annoyed by us lingering in the swelter of the day. With a glare, she'd brought us a cold bottle of local white which sweat profusely in front of us. My colleague Julia pulled a large stack of photos away from the damp ring expanding on the tablecloth. 

"Oh, we can't damage these priceless artifacts," she said with a smirk. The photos were all the same—blurry black and white images of supposed UFOs our local host,Wolfgang, had snapped off the balcony of his flat. "My wife says I'm crazy," he'd told us that morning, mopping sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve. "But it's true. They come visit me almost every night." I was more fascinated that his name was Wolfgang. "My parents loved Mozart," he'd shrugged in explanation when I raised my eyebrows at our first meeting in the Yerevan airport. 

Wolfgang was on the city council, and he'd volunteered to be our guide on this brief humanitarian aid visit, but he had ulterior motives—he'd been dying to share his supposed UFO encounters with Americans, whom he assumed would embrace his obsession. We agreed to review his handiwork. After all, it would make a good story back in Moscow. Thrilled, he'd left us a pile of his pictures to study while we had lunch. Uncharitably—and encouraged by wine—we snorted at Wolfgang’s fuzzy smears of light. 

As we laughed, though, a sound was building in the street outside. It was a keening, ragged wail that chilled the heat of the day and drew us and the waitress to the window. 

Through the thin fabric, we saw a slow-moving mass of people walking up the steep, stone street below. We pulled the curtains back and hung over the sill, watching the crowd—men and women sobbing, shrieking, staggering, holding each other up. In the heart of the mass, six men held aloft a long, thin box containing a long, thin man. 

He had been dressed in a plaid shirt and dark trousers, and his arms were draped across his torso,hands gently and modestly crossed over his groin. His skin was dusky, and his wide lax face was framed in jet black hair and a broad mustache. A perverse, nervous thought ran through my brain. He looks like Freddie Mercury. 

But then Freddie Mercury didn't have a bullet hole in his forehead. This man did, centered above his closed eyes. 

The dead man floated and dipped above the crowd, his body jarred now and then with the surge of mourners. Every time the crowd bumped his casket, I held my breath, praying they would not knock him to the ground in their frenzy. The weeping grew, the crowd passed by, and the echoed misery faded in their wake. 

"Freedom fighter," our waitress sighed. "Nagorno-Karabakh. We see so many these days." She pointed to a house up the street. "See that coffin lid? That's another one there. There's another on the next street, too. All the time now." We stood there for a couple of minutes, saying nothing. Just breathing. 

“Alright, girls. Enough.” The waitress dismissed us, pulling the curtains closed. She moved back to her corner and resumed fanning herself, and we returned to our table, silent, subdued. 

Julia carefully gathered up Wolfgang's UFO photos and tucked them in her briefcase. We slowly drank the rest of our wine, avoiding each others’ eyes, the lightness of the day consumed in the weight of strangers' grief. 

He said

He said, "I love your profile. You're funny. God, you've traveled everywhere! Love your pictures."

I said, "Well, remember, those pictures are only of my oversized head." He laughed. I had been very honest in my profile. No surprises. Just me. He had no photos on his profile. I knew he was 6'1", that he loved ska and 80s music and science fiction, and that he was "a spiritual guy," raised Catholic, but had fallen off that wagon long ago, like me.

He said he had two children—daughters. They were young and lived with his ex-wife, except for two weekends a month. I told him I was sorry, that it had to be hard to raise kids that way. Hard for everyone. He didn't respond to that.

He said he was really happy to find someone who liked the same movies and music as he did, the same TV shows. And oh—he liked to run.

I said, "Well, as you can see, I'm not much of a runner, but I love to walk." Running was just "fast walking," he said. He said he was 39. I told him I had eight years on him. He said he didn't care. He really wanted to meet and have coffee with "such an incredible woman."

I felt a twinge. I don't take compliments well, especially from strangers. It makes me distrust them. It makes me question the sincerity. But coffee is just coffee. I said yes and very cautiously turned the key in my chest, a rusted key that kept my heart from taking sucker punches and being shattered. The door opened a tiny bit.

He said, "How about the Starbucks in Wheaton?" I agreed. It wasn't far from home—mine or his. I described what I would be wearing, but added, "You can't miss me. I'll be the biggest woman in the place."

He laughed. An online laugh. "LOL."  He said, "I'll be in a black jacket and jeans, with a plaid scarf." We set a date. We set a time.

I arrived about 15 minutes early. Coffee shops get crowded on Saturday afternoons in winter. I wanted to make sure I had a table to avoid any awkwardness. Well, more awkwardness than there would already be, the fat broad meeting a stranger for coffee and small talk. I had let my hair fall in its natural curls, my minimal makeup in place. (If I have lip tint and mascara on, that's a big deal.) Green jacket to highlight the sparks of green in my hazel eyes (eyes most people don't even notice are hazel), Russian scarf... I smelled like roses.

And I waited.

I saw an old Honda pull up, and a dark-haired man stepped out. Black jacket, blue jeans, plaid scarf, average build. But he was far from 6'1". I know 6'1". I like looking up into someone's eyes. He was in the neighborhood of 5'8", 5'9", but I'm short, and I'm fat, and what does it matter in the end if he fibbed to feel good, right? Right?

He walked in and scanned the room. His eyes fell on me, and I could feel his entire body stiffen from across the cafe. I didn't wince, but just said, "Kenneth?" and waved. A smile appeared and then fled from his face as he waved back. He walked over, taking his scarf from around his neck. He said, "I'm going to get some coffee. Do you want some?"

I said, "Sure, I'll take a small coffee, cream and two Sweet'N Low, please." He walked up to the counter and stood behind two other customers who waited for their drinks.

And then, he turned around.

He strode to the door, right past my table, without looking at me. He pulled his scarf tight around his neck, fumbled with his keys, and got in his Honda.

He pulled out of the lot, and he drove away.

He pulled out and drove away fast.  

Fast.  

Fast.
 
I sat for a few minutes. I waited for the people who had been at the counter—the people who had seen what just happened—to get their drinks and go. There were no open tables, so no reason for them to linger. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes... I finally got up and quietly walked out to my car, hoping no one at the tables had noticed. Hoping that they were so engaged in conversation or texts they didn't see my humiliation. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes... I sat in my car and felt my shame well up. 

And then my phone buzzed. New e-mail. 

It was him.

And he said, "Sorry. I just can't do this. I didn't realize just how unattractive you'd really be."

I re-locked the door in my chest, the key settling into familiar rust. And it hurt. Old rust, scratched with fresh pain.  

I closed my eyes and breathed in roses.  

And I drove home, to the quiet, to the empty. Full of things, but still empty.

He said, "I just can't do this."

I prayed. "I hope someone can."

Rusty Heart by Vera Kratochvil

Open Mic Night and the Rebirth of the Spoken Word Performance

So, the Sasquatch and I have been attending open mic nights at Jerry's Music, a fab local music shop and rehearsal space in Rockville. It's a small group of people who get together every couple of weeks, with nice, talented folks performing largely blues, folk, and country music. The Sasquatch brings a totally different feel to the experience by playing classical works on his trumpet. I love it. I first heard him play about 27-ish years ago, and I love it every single time he gets up with a horn in his hand. The boy ain't too bad with the "expensive plumbing" (his term).

I had considered maybe singing at one of these someday, but I haven't sung in public in a long time. Other than in car, my singing has been limited to doing things like singing Russian lyrics into an MP3 recorder in the ladies room at work, so I could send them off to my friend Thomas Dolby for a project a couple of years ago. Singing solo in the toilet, I managed to go horribly sharp, a fact attested to by the track Thomas sent back to me, with him playing keyboards to accompany my howling. Despite the horror of my efforts, I absolutely treasure the fact that I have my very own custom Thomas Dolby track. That's pretty damn cool, no?

The Sasquatch has been encouraging me to get up at open mic night and not sing, but, rather, read one of my spoken word pieces -- resurrect my essay writing that I started when I did radio commentary here in DC (before the show for which I wrote these pieces was dramatically altered for a young hipster audience and the older commentary crowd, including me, was sent unceremoniously to the rest home). So, I pondered, the Sasquatch encouraged, and I printed out my piece about being attacked by a squirrel in the parking lot at the Wendy's on Nicholson Lane in North Bethesda. (Or is that Rockville? I seriously don't know.) I waffled a lot about this, got shy, and considered skipping it. After all, everyone else was a musician - talented folks - and would it be incongruous with the rest of the event? Also, with my back really messed up (now it's the sciatic nerve, and total numbness in my right leg), I was worried about even getting on the stage.

Turns out, getting on the stage was the hardest part. After the Sasquatch played a couple of numbers (very well-received by the audience of fellow performers and shakily recorded by me), he came back to escort me to do my thing. I felt like such an invalid, but the Sasquatch and Phil, the guy who hosts the open mic nights, helped Fat 'n' Gimpy up the stairs, and breathlessly I started talking. I gave an intro to the piece, explaining that I'd spent the last two days at the Explorers Symposium at National Geographic, spellbound and awed by the spirit of adventure and wonder personified in the assembled explorers, who shared amazing stories with us all.

We had the first woman to summit all 14 of the world's highest peaks without supplemental oxygen. We had James Cameron ("explorer and part-time filmmaker") fresh from his Mariana Trench dive and Don Walsh, who, with Jacques Piccard, made the first astounding journey to the bottom of the Mariana in the 1960s. There were mesmerizing talks by scientists and filmmakers and photographers (and generally just cool individuals) who shared stories of the rich and fragile biodiversity of the planet, our increasingly indelible connection to technology, and even an archaeologist studying Egyptian dig sites using satellites! (Side note: said archaeologist came by my office, and I think she was greatly amused to see both my autographed photo of Harrison Ford and a Sallah "Mighty Muggs" vinyl figure, complete with fez. At the time, I didn't know one of her areas of work and expertise is Tanis. As in "The Nazis have found Tanis?!?" As in the Map Room and the Well of Souls. Yeah, that Tanis. And yeah, I know there's no real Map Room or Well of Souls, but this woman must have realized she'd found a kindred, but totally goofball, I ♥ Egypt chick.)

So, there I was up on stage, talking about how amazing the past two days have been and how inspired I was by all the explorers. I took a deep breath and said, "And what has that inspiration led me to? Here's a story about being attacked by a squirrel."

I kinda sucked, I was a little out of breath, but I did it. And here is the story, which will be familiar to those who heard me back in the day on public radio:

Wild, Wildlife

I got attacked by a squirrel last week. Yes. A squirrel. I was being lazy, eating some buck-ninety-nine chili in my car, reading Entertainment Weekly in the parking lot of a Wendy's right off Rockville Pike. There I was, minding my own business, when suddenly I had a face full of chattering, manic rodent. I can only assume the critter in question had been hanging around the Wendy's lot so long it had developed an insatiable addiction to chili. All I know for sure is that it launched itself directly at me through my open window. I proceeded to scream like a little girl and thrash around, trying desperately to dislodge this little ball of fuzzy fury from my person.

The harder I fought, of course, the more entrenched the squirrel became in my shirt, which was now covered in both tufts of fur and hot chili. I had to pull my shirt almost all the way over my head to get the squirrel back out the window. Let me tell you, there's nothing quite like being half naked, hyperventilating, screaming, and covered in spicy beef and beans in a public place. Any passers-by who didn't spot the demented squirrel would have thought I was clearly insane. Chili was spattered on my dashboard, my face, my hands and I was swearing at an innocent-looking creature on the pavement.

Welcome to the whacked out wildlife of Montgomery County.

My neighborhood, despite being less than a mile from the Beltway–and even closer to a busy section of Rockville Pike–is crawling with critters, especially at night: deer, rabbits, raccoons, coyotes, owls, and a fox that likes to sit under the crabapple tree outside my bedroom window. Night after night, he plants himself there, yelping out what I assume is a lonely bachelor’s mating cry. From the frequency of his visits, I can only assume he’s not very successful with the ladies.

By the way, the wacky squirrel wasn’t my first experience with overly aggressive animals here. I've done repeated battle with a huge pileated woodpecker that likes to attack me on the way to my car in the morning.Once I even chased off a hormone-crazed buck that cornered a neighbor one evening during mating season. I'm still not sure if he wanted to mate with my neighbor or just challenge him to a head-butting contest.

Just the other night, I had a ten-minute stare-down with a coyote who kept me trapped in my car as he sized me up. He was a long-leggedy beastie, tall enough that he barely had to tilt his head up to give me the evil eye. I ended up spraying him with a bottle of raspberry seltzer water pulled from my groceries in the back seat. It worked, and he fled the scene. No harm done, I think, except, perhaps for some wounded coyote pride.

Now, a black bear has been spotted wandering around Potomac, Gaithersburg and right here in my little corner of Bethesda. Great. I’m usually quite fond of the critters that dot the landscape in my part of the county. But I walk with a cane, I’m slow and have only one fully functioning eye. To a hungry bear, I might as well have the words “tasty snack” tattooed on my forehead.

A couple of days after the first bear sighting, I saw a very large tree across the street from my building shaking and swaying – branches bent with the weight of something much larger than a bird or squirrel. That was the same day I stopped leaving my balcony door open at night.

I once had a dinner guest hop from the ground to my balcony in one fell silent swoop. If a slightly out-of-shape smoker could do that, I figured a bear could, too. I can handle the occasional mouse under my stove, but a bear lounging on my La-z-boy? Sorry, I’ll pass.

It's not just suburbia here with the abundance of wildlife. The District has plenty, too. Early in the morning, I've seen deer grazing on Mass Ave, right across from the British Embassy. Once I almost flattened a fox racing between cars at Dupont Circle. And just about every morning, there's this amazing Great Blue Heron that poses on a large stone in Rock Creek, as if for the benefit of the passing commuters.

Of course, there are those who might say the DC wildlife gets more aggressive and colorful the closer you get to Capitol Hill - sharks, barracuda, and the occasional weasel and rat... but those are all of the variety that walk on two feet.

All in all, I think I prefer my chili-crazed squirrels. They're less dangerous.

Basta!

DC summer is here, despite the calendar swearing it's still spring. The season, as usual, was heralded by hideous heat and humidity arriving late last week. Of course, I didn't really have to experience the sweat-fest, as I spent the Memorial Day weekend housebound by an ankle injury (which followed a back injury). How does one badly screw up an ankle while lying still? I don't know, but I did it. 3:30 Friday morning, Princess Insomnia is out on the sofa, watching old Mythbusters episodes, when suddenly there was an audible grind and POP from my right foot, and I was rendered a gibbering, moaning, writhing mess. I ended up going to the hospital on Friday for an x-ray (nothing broken, fortunately) and then proceeded to curl up in a fetal ball at home for days.

The Sasquatch had offered to drive me to the hospital, but I declined. I think I was pretty awful and very succinct about saying no. He was sick, and when that man gets sick, it's never just a little cold. He seems to have a switch that goes from healthy to *click* full-blown Stephen King straight-from-The-Stand Captain Trips. Thus, my reluctance to take him up on his incredibly kind offer.

There had been a wonderful plan to grill lobster tails with the Sasquatch, but between my gimpiness and his 100F fever, it did not happen. I contacted the nice people of Salt River Lobster and canceled my order of lovely crustacean tailage, and they promised they would "be sure to find a loving home for them." That message alone guarantees that, when I'm less hobbled, I will procure some tasty lobster badonkadonk from them, big time.

I had Giant's Peapod service delivery groceries to me on Saturday, which was a blessing, since I can't carry a newspaper upstairs without weeping and dragging limbs like some cut-rate Hammer film monster. Sadly, I could not convince the Peapod delivery guy to do my laundry or take down my trash, so I've been eyeing all the crap and clothes in the entryway, pondering just when I will run out of clean clothes and be forced to go downstairs. That day is coming. Soon. Very soon.

Until then, here I am. Stuck and increasingly cranky about it. (But hey - I'm 1000% less cranky than I was the six days my orthopedist had me on some steroid pain pack. I almost took somebody's head off over getting the wrong - sugared - flavoring in my McDonald's iced coffee. Not pretty.) When you're a cranky, housebound insomniac, you have too much time to think. So, I'm going to take advantage of the heightened crank factor and share a short list of things I never want to hear about, ever again.

Ready?

Things I've already grown weary of this summer:

1. Fifty Shades of Grey
2. Snooki's pregnancy
3. Any show with the word "Housewives" in the title that isn't a canceled narrative drama on ABC
4. Donald Trump and "birthers" (didn't we go through this crap already)?
5. Project America's Got Gleeful Duet Voice Idol Talent
6. Wonderful musicians dying
7. Kardashians. All of them. ALL of them. If they grow facial ridges and giant lizard necks and move to a space station, I may be willing to revisit this point.

Side note: Bruce Jenner. Why all the plastic surgery? I'd like to say it was a rare moment of foolishness late in life, but then I remembered this:

8. Big Fat Gypsy Weddings on any continent or island, Toddlers with Tiaras, Dance Moms, and that aging surfer dude and his four wives
9. That I even know the shows in #8 exist
10. A distinct lack of margaritas in my life

I know. First world problems. Get me out of this apartment and I'll work on real world problems. For now, this is what you get, snark and too much basic cable.

But hey - at least I wrote something.

It's a start. Maybe the Muse will take the trash downstairs...

Conversations You Can't Believe You're Actually Having: the Staples Edition

Staples, somewhere along Rockville Pike, 5 p.m.-ish today...

Me to Clerk: Hi, I need to exchange this 12 x 12 x 12 shipping box for this 18 x 12 x 12 one. I miscalculated my shipping needs just slightly.

Clerk to Me: Ma'am, these boxes are the same.

Me: Uh... no, they're not. One is 12 x 12 x 12. The other is 18 x 12 x 12.

Clerk: They're both marked "medium," ma'am. They're the same.

Me: Nooo. They're different sizes. One is bigger than the other.

Clerk: No, ma'am. They are the same. It's just that one is a square and one is a rectangle. They just are shaped differently, so it's an optical illusion. They are both medium boxes.

Me: Umm... that's not an optical illusion. One is bigger. The one with the EIGHTEEN in the dimensions is bigger than the one with all twelves in the dimensions.

Clerk: No. (Points at writing on both boxes.) See? They are both marked MEDIUM so they are the same size. You can just keep your first box, and it will fit the same.

Me: You're kidding, right? Look, I may have flunked out of honors math in high school, but even I know that these boxes have different volume. There are several box sizes and shapes you carry - some are in the small range, some are medium, and some are large.

Clerk: And these are both medium, so they hold the same amount, but can hold different shapes.

(At this point, I start to assemble both boxes. I was the only customer up front. Man, I wish there had been an audience for this.)

Me: See? This box (points to 18-incher) is bigger. It also costs fifty cents more than the other one.

Clerk: Oh, it's more expensive? Then it must be bigger.

Me: (smiles) Yes. It is.

(Not so much.)