-
Lament of the Living
I would miss summer afternoons,
the green of mulberry leaves superimposed on the blue of sky
if I were dead.
I mean, by then I wouldn’t really, but
for now I fret about it. -
Hamlet: An Addendum
Actually, Guildenstern had an undiagnosed, mortal illness, so you don’t have to feel so bad about the way that turned out. Also, Rosencrantz was an asshole.
-
Theseus and the Minibar
Theseus, our hero, finds himself in a dark and winding hotel room. Running his hand along the wall, he cautiously seeks a light switch. He finds panel after panel, flipping each rocker, but merely turns on the air conditioner. Cursing the chill, he steps forward and trips over a duffle bag on the floor.
Ariadne stirs from her slumber. “What’s that?”
“Nothing, go back to sleep.” Theseus lifts himself off the tile floor and gets on one knee. “Father Poseidon, please show me the way.” As he gropes for the wall, he finds the cord of a hair dryer that Ariadne has used after her evening shower. He follows the cord’s course around a wardrobe and arrives at the bathroom door. Inside, he quietly lifts the toilet seat. He notices a fly with the head of a bull alight in the bowl and aims his stream at it, knocking the beast into the water. Satisfied, he flushes and goes back to bed.
-
Grayscale
If he’s being honest, and he isn’t always, his first gray nose hair shocked him more than the first on his head. But when he spotted a gray hair down there, it filled him with a dread that kept him holed up in bed all weekend. The following week he kept the lights off whenever he used the bathroom. His gloom was only broken when he saw a replica of the David, potent physique beneath gray skin and gray hair, standing in a neighbor’s lawn beside the poppies.
-
At a Reception for Friends of the Dallas Botanical Garden
Cedric Pasarbre plucks a toothpick from a passing waiter’s tray. “When we started designing cell towers that mimic trees, people said it was farcical. Heck, I gave us one chance in forty they’d be any good. And, between you and me, they weren’t. At least not at first.
“We churned out these robotic, pine-ish imitations you could spot from miles away. And I have. I’ve been on treks where it was impossible not to see the giant pipe cleaner across the river, twice as tall as its nearest neighbor. After two years of fiascos, I spearheaded a project to replicate the palm tree; the result could have come out of a Lego set.
“I had my first big innovation after road tripping with my partner along California’s Pacific Coast Highway. We drove north from Big Sur to Mendocino. And the trees we saw: craggy cypresses clinging impossibly to cliffs and monumental sequoias reaching to the sky. The breadth of possibilities was staggering. But the setting, the setting is everything! We cut back on scaling the manufacturing and doubled down on design. We went boutique. Every job we took was custom. We’d send two designers with a Leica camera and a sketch book to the prospective site and they’d do portraits of the tree community and sketches of how our arbor ware would fit in. They had to the sketches there—en plein air—to be suffused with the æsthetics. It costs more but it’s worth it. If you care enough to hide a tower, you don’t want to just have a different sort of eyesore.
“But even then after a few years we got stuck in a rut. I could tell the team needed a change of venue, of perspective. We closed up shop and took a two week sabbatical in Japan. We spent time with bonsai, of course, but also looking at how they melded the architecture with the parkitecture, if you will. I found it harmonious. We’re back now at work, saturated with brio. I’ve been experimenting using computers to add that vital fractal aspect. You’ll forgive me if I say our field is about to turn a new leaf.”
Another waiter comes near and Cedric wraps hit toothpick in a napkin and places it on the tray. He asks, “what is on the menu tonight?”
“Hearts of palm salad.”
“Ah, yes.” He closes his eyes. “Palm. One day I’ll come back to you.”
-
Garnish
Picture me shaving bison liver treats over the dog’s kibble, looking like a waiter in your favorite Italian restaurant working a hunk of Grana Padano, his hair dark and curly, distracted only for a second as he recalls the easy laugh of that beautiful young woman who he and his friends walked passed, years before coming to America, on the Ponte Sisto above the Tiber River.
That dog has it good.
-
Q&A
Q: Why do you write?
A:
Q: Which of your pieces do you consider to be the most successful?
A:
Q: Have you considered employing contemporary literary techniques, such as structuring a story in the format of an interview with the questions omitted?
A:
Q: I feel the same way. Also, why should answers be considered more important or meaningful than the questions?
A:
Q: Like 42?
A:
Q: Wouldn’t Socrates be more relevant here?
A:
Q: But, going back to the subject of questions, how do you see them fitting into a narrative?
A:
Q: So, might a better formulation of that old saw “show, don’t tell” be “question, don’t answer?”
A:
Q: What if the reader doesn’t interpolate good answers to the questions?
A:
Q: Isn’t that the author’s job, though? I mean, could the piece even be compelling if they didn’t?
A:
Q: Are you thinking of Twin Peaks?
A:
Q: Would you agree that it is easier to deepen a mystery than to resolve it?
A:
Q: But might that be taking the conceit too far?
A:
Q:
A:
Q: Yes, I see things can get away from you… Maybe it’s okay to do that?
A:
Q: Ha! I love it. Can I steal that bit about “like a connect the dots without enough dots”?
A:
Q: Thank you very much for your time. It’s been a pleasure. I’m sure our readers will find some valuable ideas for their own writing.
A:
Q: Do you always have to have the last word?
A:
-
What Lead Inexorably to a Puli Named Marley
Humans and dogs’ wolf-like ancestors teamed up when it became clear that dogs are better at tracking prey and humans are better at semiotics and aero-astro engineering.
-
Preparation for an Invasion of North Africa
“You were a big shush-er when you were young,” Glen said to Sam. Sam turned to look at Glen, then let his head fall back between his arms. “Did you ever shush the sea?”
“No.” Sam shifted backwards on his red and purple beach towel. “I love the sea.” A wave broke and retreated, and then another. “I did punch it a few times.”
“You punched the sea?”
“I used to pretend I was fighting the waves. They were attacking the shore and I was trying to stop them. Kid stuff.”
“I miss kid stuff.” Glen folded the top of his towel over and scooped a shallow hole out of the sand with his hands. He replaced the towel over the hole and lay down with his face resting in it. “How’s work?”
“Not bad. The civil engineering org. has almost doubled, so there’s about 200 people reporting into me now. We’re fighting to get the Riyadh airport done on time.”
“Nice you could take time off.”
“This is an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. How’s Hollywood treating you?”
“Trying to run two shows now. The new one’s taking most of my time; we need to get the ratings up. The Great Adventure is kind of on autopilot.”
Sam nodded, sat up, and set a timer on his smart phone. He crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and began to meditate. When the alarm chimed, he opened his eyes and surveyed the beach. He tapped Glen’s shoulder.
“I think the guy’s coming this way to check passes.”
“Let’s take a swim then.”
They stood up and walked down to the water. Glen ran forward to dive into a wave. Sam watched. He waited for another wave to break and rush past him, then scrambled in until the water reached his waist. He turned and fell backwards, kicking with his legs to get beyond the break point. The water was cool and cloudy from the silt the waves dredged up. By the time Sam turned to face the sea, Glen had swam almost a hundred yards out. Sam paddled a bit farther and bobbed until Glen finished his lap.
“How did it go at the White House?”
“The President was organized, very crisp. Once it starts, it should be over quickly: maybe a month and a half. ‘Explosive, yet surgical,’ were his words. And then there’ll be a lot of reconstruction to do.”
“And he offered it to you?”
“No, he couldn’t be that direct. But he talked about what the main procurement criteria will be; handed me some samples of the requests for proposals. He even showed me a list of some of the targets they’ll hit in the first wave.”
“So you’ll be ready.”
“We’ll have the materials staged and paperwork finalized. I called my CEO and told him to talk to possible partners in Italy or Morocco.”
Glen pointed to the next wave. “There’s a big one.” He closed his eyes and dove under while Sam balled up and used his arms to spring up and over.
“The President said they were looking for a producer who could film a few pieces for them. To get the public rallied. I gave him your name, of course.”
“His chief of staff left a voicemail. I figured you had a hand in it since it’s the first I’ve heard from them since the inauguration.”
“I guess you need to think bigger with your contributions.”
Glen shrugged and looked back at the beach. “The coast looks clear; want to ride this one in?”
“Sure.”
They swam to get speed before the next wave. They caught it with their bodies just as it broke and the white tumult carried them onto the sand.
“It’s good to be back at the shore,” Sam said as he brushed the sand off his chest.
“Totally. The ocean makes me feel like a kid again.”
-
Whitsundays
The cockatoos are mobbing your balcony. When the first landed, you darted inside and slammed closed the sliding glass door. Now there are three of them. You think that cockatoo is a word ill-equipped to capture their menace; googly-eye zombie parrot seems more appropriate at the moment.
They warned you about them at check-in and, even if they hadn’t, you know they are no-good because you saw one steal a whole waffle at pool-side breakfast this morning. Still, you recall the clerk’s admonition effortlessly: “they can open the minibar.” Your eyes search the room for an implement of self-defense. The corkscrew is too small and the riesling too precious. The clothes iron might work; you consider plugging in, but then you’d get tangled in the cord as you swung wildly at their white feathered bodies.
Glancing over at the nightstand, there’s Jennifer Lawrence on the cover of Vanity Fair with another of those damned cockatoos standing on her wrist. She looks to have her wits about her. But this is no time to regard her semi-submerged breasts.
You take a step backwards, almost tripping on the bed. The wooden chair at the desk looks heavy so you grab it and barricade the minibar with it. You’re about to rip the non-removable hangers from the closet when one of the birds gets bored and flies off. Then another. The last one locks its right eye on you before shaking its wings and soaring off the railing.
At dusk, you’ll learn about the island’s colony of huge fruit bats.
-
It’s All in the Spelling
If you call it that “whip nae-nae” song, then it sounds like it’s about elder abuse. However, if you say “Whip Neigh-Neigh,” it becomes the ballad of America’s first congresshorse, a Washington outsider, who rises through the ranks and gets out the vote.
-
How Many Punches in that ThinkPad?
The units we use to measure computers are dry and overly fastidious: the kilobyte, the megahertz. They feel metric and, frankly, European, despite America’s central role in this industry. To rectify this fault, I am proposing a set of Imperial computing units with their own joyous idiosyncrasies.
Storage
- Punch – 80 bytes
- Floppy – 18,000 punches
- Jaz – 694 floppies
Processing
- Nes – 7 million operations per second
- Cray – 50 Neses
- Wii – 34 Crays
Before we unveil networking, let’s pause for a moment to consider how the existing system handles it. All the units here are in terms of storage units per second (e.g., MB/s). That’s all fine and dandy and actually convenient in practice, but the Imperial system thinks little of convenience. Why should such a key facet of modern computing have to ride sidecar to storage? So, a distinct set of units is in order.
Networking
- Net punch – 1 punch per second
- Modem – 45 net punches
- Trunk – 53.6 modems
-
The Botanist
He needs the cherry tree to blossom. Right now, it is bare. It’s early March and his grandkids visit in a week. He’s standing on the sidewalk wearing a dull yellow sweater, tan slacks, and sneakers that haven’t been white for six years. In his hand is Suze’s hair dryer; its black cord is plugged into an orange extension cord that is plugged into a green extension cord that runs from the back of the garage out to the curb. He is working on the far side of the tree now. He moves the hair dryer from left to right and from his tip-toes to the lowest branches at shoulder level.
“Suze, could you get the ladder? I’m not gettin’ the top.”
This might take longer than he thought. He’s thinking about bringing out the space heater and running it overnight. Where did he see it last? It’s probably next to the broken microwave on the shelf above the water heater. Or maybe under the guest bed. If he runs it the whole night long the electric bill will be nuts. Still, he promised Sophia the cherry tree would be blooming. The look in her eyes when she’s smiling is worth a hundred utility bills.
This dachshund waddles up to the orange extension cord, sniffs it, and then over to the open earth around the tree. A young woman is talking into her phone as she walks with the pooch. She keeps moving but the dog stops and vigorously smells one of the roots. She’s almost to the corner when the dog lifts his leg. He glares at the dog. Seeing that she’s looking something up on her phone now, he takes the hair dryer and directs it right in the dog’s ass. The dachshund wiggles his tail and runs off towards the woman.
Suze steps out of the garage carrying the kitchen step stool. “Is that my hair dryer?”
-
Juror’s Duty
If you are in a student’s mindset when summoned as a juror, it is easy to get confused. You are being quizzed. You want to give the right answer. At first, that seems, in the student’s mind, to be the one that gets you on the jury—the one that passes the test. Then you realize you don’t want to be here and the right answer becomes the wrong answer. Finally, you step out of the student’s mind, finding the truthful answer as there is no right answer.
-
No Plungers
Don’t flush masculine products down the toilet.
The body hair and broad shoulders gum the works.
Keep them far away from the bidets as well.Anything macho, any testosterone,
is a trigger. We had to mix Drano with
a shot of estrogen after Bill was in.No trans-masculine or genderfluid stuff
either. We don’t discriminate about this.
The plumbing is old and very sensitive. -
One Car Inbound
The subway car before him is full—not Tokyo full, but enough that the straphangers struggle to keep their elbows out of each others’ faces. On the platform, two people stand between him and the open doors. He does not want them to go in. If they go in, he’ll have to decide whether to go in too. If they go in, he’ll have to weigh the struggle of pushing himself into the passengers nearest the door versus the embarrassment of someone cutting past him and doing the same. If they go in, he’ll be responsible for how late he is going to be.
In front of him, one of the two takes off her backpack, holds it low, and steps across the gap. She is attractive and if she smiled at the two business men she wedged herself between, they’d probably smile back. But she does not smile here.
He looks pleadingly at the remaining one, then glances away before anyone notices. Through the window, he sees a row of seats occupied solely by a to-go cup of Panera coffee and a latex glove. There’s a foot-wide gap between the seats and the crowd. If only someone could clean that up. Even use a long-sleeve-covered arm and knock the mess to the floor discretely, people might fill that space.
The other takes a small step toward the doors but before she crosses the threshold a man wearing a leopard-print carpet swears loudly. The vagrant walks along the yellow-painted edge of the platform up to the open doors. “Make room, you candy-ass suckers.”
He rocks backwards slightly and exhales.
-
Double Stocking
Santa has problems. One of them is how to fill all those stockings hung with care in the middle of the night without waking up the sleeping tykes. There’s enough work to be done deploying the full-size presents. How can we make this Christmas tradition less trying?
Inspired by my friend Brian Christian’s writing and my extended family’s efforts to stuff Christmas stockings without their children noticing, I regifted a computer science algorithm for the Yuletide. If parents were to buy two sets of Christmas stockings and hang one set, empty, above the fireplace, they could fill the second set at their leisure. Then on Christmas Eve, they only have to swap the two sets. Easy.
-
Welcome!
Welcome to Chardsy. Good things are coming soon.
Subscribe via RSS