AbsurdMurmurs.com

This is where I work. It’s the selection studio for a construction company in the McMansion business. I perform faxing and filing duties. I also tidy the formica samples, the carpet carousel, and the pressed board “wood” floor display. Mostly I listen to the radio and read, or chat with people. The building is an old warehouse with the suites surrounding an atrium. Occasionally, fancy parties and weddings are held in the atrium so the tinkling of a piano and the aroma of cocktails floats up to the fifth floor. On those evenings I might lean over the railing, tempted to drop something into the glut of fake blondes and real fur. I wouldn’t drop something heavy like a stapler but rather something more resistant to gravity, like a poem.

I just finished my BA in Linguistics. So I get a lot of the obvious question: what am I going to do with my degree? In the spirit of my sociolinguistics training, I have found the following ways to apply my degree to daily life. This is just the beginning, of course.

- Express holiday and birthday greetings in tree diagrams.
- Demonstrate my knowledge of the northern midland dialect at parties.
- Write all correspondence using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
- Watch daytime television with the close captioning.
- Peer presure people into inverting their syntax.

Milo had to take a piss test for his new temp job in plastics. I went along. The waiting room of this tiny lab was packed. The chairs were either wood or plastic, either way, uncomfortable. There were people, with a lot of gel in their hair, who seemed like they might not pass the test. There was also an elderly woman. I wondered what her vice was. The lab technicians insisted that everyone signing in “help themselves” to the water cooler. Then the technicians made everyone and their full bladders wait. And wait. Damn sadists. I spent a good part of the forty minutes counting the pharmacutical ads in the many issues of Ladies Homes Journals (57).

like sandpaper with an ego.

shit house

Funny, punchy, and fast acting.

This is your sardonic sadness.