KjB

dinner party, kirkwood elementary

It is 11:07 am, and someone is cutting concrete outside our office door. The complex here is full of design studios and medical supply companies and PR firms, and everyone is at work – and now plugging their ears. Someone needs to go out there and get all Richard Simmons on their asses.

illumination

Mason warns “don’t leave soup in the car.” Other things I’ve recently found you shouldn’t leave in the car overnight (or for weeks on end, as the case has been):

• frozen orange juice under the passenger seat

• a bottle of bleach (especially not under a 50 lb. bag of potting soil)

• soggy hamburger onions, in a Burger King bag

• live crickets (the outcome isn’t pretty)

• liquid orange juice in a plastic bottle (gases escape. messes are made)

Recently, I’ve been thinking very hard about updating my tattoo-collection (right now, I have one.) And I’ve been considering a variety of motifs - but one idea has surfaced multiple times in mixed company, and that’s the idea of getting a barcode of some kind emblazoned on one’s skin. Take it any way you want, as an affront to soulless global homogenization or faceless technocracy, or just as a kind of cool graphic element (the lines are kind of hypnotic) - but what if you got one, and it wasn’t just random? What if it really meant something - however trivial?

Seems someone’s already thought of that. Go here to brand yourself. And make sure, once you’ve answered the questionnaire to hit “scan”.

Emma is half Irish. And so am I.

In the spirit of the day, and on behalf of Emma (who is a Wheaten Terrier mix, derived from the farm dogs of County Cork) and me (A German/Irish hybrid with a firey green-blooded Grandmother who is lovingly referred to as the “Irish Nazi”), have a lovely St. Patrick’s Day.

Go raibh tú daibhir i mí-áidh // Agus saibhir i mbeannachtaí // Go mall ag déanamh namhaid, go luath a déanamh carad, //
Ach saibhir nó daibhir, go mall nó go luath, // Nach raibh ach áthas agat // Ón lá seo amach.

(May you be poor in misfortune, // Rich in blessings, // Slow to make enemies, // quick to make friends, // But rich or poor, quick or slow, // May you know nothing but happiness // From this day forward.)

A little SF in the ATL

And because I have been fiction-lazy for a while now…something I wrote a while back:

He trudged a jagged course in front of me down the grocery aisle. A slow, uneven shuffle that meandered dangerously close to the “easy Italian dinner” display, wavered a bit too near the stack of cost-cutter crème-cookies. He wore a Chick-fil’A championship golf tournament jacket. A ball cap. A neck and skull-back that looked as if it had been shaved with a paring knife, slowly, in a rest stop lavatory. He was a bull in the ramen noodles. A lumbering, tottering giant in the dairy aisle, making slow progress toward the cheese.

Which was appropriate, because of the smell.

Scents in winter (and in other, more artificially chilly places) ride the air like persistent, skimming dragonflies. Current up, current down, hovering about. My mother’s outlet-store-designer perfume. Nutmeg and cinnamon in the oven on Christmas Day. Fall leaves on the wind. There, that trick of the weather is worth it.

Rancid sour-cream-death on a hot Georgia night cooked with cabbage and cider vinegar is somewhat less welcome.

I had to wonder, between gulping breaths toward the stale, cold-case air, what could make a person radiate such a smell. And more importantly, what could prevent that poor, fermented soul from noticing?