Nice Costume, Weenie Boy!

Time for some bureaucracy, I think: red tape and departmental reports, all that sort of lark. I'm in a bit of an office mood tonight. Coffee and power-lunches, what. Meetings and Macintoshes. Oh, and cellular phones. Definitely cellular phones--no, wait! Manila folders! Three-hole punches! Sellotape. Hey, I can't be in an office without pinching some supplies. If these office types didn't want their things pinched, they wouldn't make them so nice. All these colour-coded reinforcements and felt-tipped pens--what's a drone to do? As long as you do your job, you're entitled to a highlighter or two. And I do mine:

From the Department of Internet Hitler Sightings

Somewhere in the ninth pit of myspace.com (ah, you guessed it! I have, I have been exploring the Other Side of the Internet again. The draw of the dark side is harder to resist than those colourful little paperclips with the rubber sheaths!)--but, as I was saying, somewhere in the ninth pit of Myspace, I came upon a blurry phonecam shot of a young man dressed as Hitler. He looked about nineteen or twenty: well old enough to know better. His right arm was raised in a Nazi salute, and his left was wrapped round a girl who appeared to have bought her entire outfit, makeup included, on eBay. (Note to self: when you dress up as Hitler, your options narrow drastically, pussy-wise.)

This otherwise dreary photograph had one redeeming factor, though, in the form of some bloke standing directly behind ersatz-Adolf, holding a finger-gun to his temple. Nice costume, weenie-boy. This is what I think of it! Later that evening, spurred on by Red Bull and vodka martinis, Mr. Fingergun probably took Mr. Führer out in the car park and knocked him around a bit. Stamped on his silly Nazi hat, I expect. As for Miss eBay, I imagine her corset burst, and she went home early. (Possibly with the local bowling team. Hoo-ah!)

From the Department of Rodent Inadequacy

Rats are, by nature, social creatures. They are often to be found in bunches, huddles, and clumps, but seldom alone. Rats A and B, however, have carried this natural inclination to its logical conclusion: they have joined their inept selves together, thus forming a single proper rat. They sleep with their bodies pressed together from nose to bum, that Rat A's dreams might enliven Rat B's brainless existence, while Rat B's lardy body prevents Rat A from catching a chill. They eat and drink at the same time, and, some hours later, guard each other's toilet activities from prying human eyes. Lately, they've even been insisting on coming out of the cage together. Once they're out, Rat B keeps my hands busy while Rat A stages a raid on my head. Can't imagine what she expects to find up there, but there you have it. Two utterly inadequate rats, functioning together to create--oh, dear God! They're Zuul.

From the Department of Worthless Memories

When I was living at Gurgel's, we kept a communal shopping list on the kitchen table. We'd both write down what we fancied, and Gurgel'd shop for it when food stores ran low. Once, I wrote something on there that looked like "losers". We never figured out what I meant by that. Liverwurst, perhaps--except, if I'm not vastly mistaken, I was having a liverwurst-hating phase that year. Liver-worst, I'd have snorted, through a mouthful of fil.

"So, you don't want any losers, then?" said Gurgel, crossing that entry from the list.

"Well, maybe harmless losers are OK."

"Good," he said, "--then I can come home."

From the Department of Talented Avifauna

This morning, I watched a clever* starling avoid being hit by five cars. He took off right into traffic, and the first car would've had him, had he not been seized by an updraft at the last possible second, and sucked, flapping, over the hood. He went straight up the windshield--still without being struck--and shot into the air like a rocket. But then he came down just as precipitously, and, but for some truly impressive fluttering, would've fallen prey to Car Number Two. After that, he seemed exhausted. He landed with a quiet flump, still in the middle of the road, and a third car drove straight over him. I figured he'd take off and get knocked senseless by the undercarriage, but he started running instead. I didn't observe this first-hand, of course, since there was a great honkin' car over him, but when my line of vision cleared, he'd moved a foot to the right. And then he moved another foot--hop, hop, hop!--and down swooped another car, right in line to crush him beneath its wheel. But the starling took to the sky, and that was when he nearly collided with Car Number Five (which was parked in front of Performance Visual Optometry).

My dream of watching a line of seagulls sing Vien, diletto, � in ciel la luna suddenly seems almost plausible.

* Well, it was clever, the way he avoided the cars. Being in the middle of the road in the first place, that was slightly less clever.