Controlled Scribbling

Another Sunday

Another wasted Sunday. I was completely unconscious until a little after three in the afternoon. We started drinking early Saturday and kept a good pace all afternoon and deep into the night. Gray clouds spit at my window as the wind screamed through the screen. The all-too-familiar churning of wet cement throbbed in my skull. The screaming wind sounded more and more like a cat caught in the jaws of a hunter's rusting, forgotten trap. I began to wonder if the wind sounded as if it were in pain or if I was just projecting the last bits of my hangover into the world. My bladder forced me to get out of bed and face the day. After appeasing my bladder, I went downstairs and got a Coke (breakfast of champions). I stopped myself halfway to the mailbox. I stood between the front door and the mailbox, staring. Mail doesn't come on Sundays--never did, never will. I was having a hard time dealing with the fact that tomorrow was going to be Monday. Monday already, Monday, Monday. The word rang like a distant churchbell in my head, Monday. I started to explain to myself that Monday was not the villain, that the things that happened because it was Monday, they were the pissers. Idle chat for an idle mind, like a young child talking to himself in a vacant playground. The phone began to ring inside and snapped me out of my spiraling thoughts. I felt like I was just waking up again. I moved slowly back inside and down the hall to where the answering machine lives. I stood in front of my faithful electronic friend. I watched it as it counted the rings; I counted with it. Three, four, five, click--whir. "Hello, I am not in right now (you stupid bastards--leave me alone). Please leave a message at the beep." What a pal; it's there night or day, rain or shine, sleet or snow, even on Sundays when the people from the post office sleep in. Yes sir, my little electronic friend protecting me from the evils of the world (at least the ones that can come down through the phone lines). The voice wasn't evil this time. It was my sister Lila with some good news. "Pick up the phone you lazy butt!" She knows about my relationship with this electronic miracle and always leaves a long pause before she leaves any real message. I let out a chuckling laugh of a sigh and picked up the phone. We swapped stories of the night that just passed, about my relationship, the "nothing too new" chit-chat. Douglas Coupland has ten "fiction X-rays" in the April SPIN. The rain started to come down with more enthusiasm. Thor must have noticed I woke up--always showing off. After the phone conversation, I did some laundry and paced around aimlessly. "...fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way." The rain had worked itself up into a full-blown storm with rumbling thunder and flashes of lightning. My little pal down the hall was disturbed four more times that day before I decided to go out. Two times only to get hung up on, once to listen to another machine trying to conduct a survey, and once to listen to a man with a wheezy voice talk about aluminum siding. Machines calling machines, what would George Orwell think about that if he were alive today (or is he alive today?). When I say, "I decided to go out," that is about all I did. I didn't have much of a plan about what I was going to do once I was "out." Pick up the April SPIN Lila had told me about and some more Coke--beyond that, who knew? The rain reminded me, once again, that I should do something about my pathetic windshield wiper blades. I had been awake for a little over four hours and it was already dark. Night comes quick when you sleep until three--mental note for future reference.

unconsciousGrayappeasingdealingtomorroway, Monday.ThewordranglikesvillainplaygroundelectronicaluminumAprilwindshield ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ Þ TIME \@ "MM/dd/yy hh:mmAM/PM"03/30/92 09:55 PM
ime. It was my sister Lila with Ã% !
d d note1st laptop story BEER ME"dos can only store 8 char. titles Calvin Kap Calvin Kap


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