Jazz Thieves

To be honest he is a little disappointed. He begins to think that he has fallen for the hyperbole once again. Fortunately, the food by the river is as he remembered it. He is grateful that his friends like it too; they at least will not leave feeling tricked. Afterwards, as they wander aimlessly on the roads, it is a craggy old Seminole that points him and his party in the right direction. With the promise of music and warmth they keep on. Once they turn the corner they are faced with a line of watering holes, like before. People stream in and out, like before. The stage is packed, but who's playing? Who's paying? A sense of purity, unlike before. And the best part of it all? No beads.

(circa ENAR 2010)

Enjoy the Silence

He has a great many things to do, but he dillies and dallies and dithers and delays. In his mind: An incessant background noise that just will not fade out. The run was good but not helpful. He managed to cover 3 miles in 25 minutes, but the annoying sound kept up.

He puts on his Sennheiser headphones and turns up the volume, hoping to overpower the hiss. He starts surfing randomly - the model PageRank navigator. The sound is getting louder.

Poor girl, Pandora, is drowning.

Fed up, he shuts the notebook and picks up his notes/books. Almost immediately a smile breaks out on his face.

It was the sound of procrastination.

One of These Days

He wonders why he is treated differently when different guests arrive. He cocks his head to a side and tries to figure out what he has to do to get attention more regularly. He cannot understand why Master ignores him when Master's special friends are around. Is Master ashamed of him? Why would that be the case?

When Master is sad he feels very anxious. He would do almost anything to please Master. In fact he does. He rarely barks at the things he finds funny or irritating nowadays. He knows it annoys Master and so he suppresses all his most instinctive emotions. He cannot bear to disappoint Master that way. He has stopped sniffing even flowers - they used to be his favourite. Now he doesn't take a second look at them. Surely the Master knows what he has given up for Him?

But he feels so helpless when Master ignores him. He whines quietly and slinks away.

Run Like Hell

While he is supposed to be coding, his mind wanders to the gym. He pats himself on the back for completing 4 miles without the knee-guard on Wednesday. If he manages to repeat the distance today, he will have made it 11 miles in a week. Metamucil, his friend in the mornings, threatens to force him off the treadmill and back onto the throne.

He wonders if he will be able to eventually reduce his time down to 8:00 minutes per mile; if he will be able to repeat this distance next week. Will he get fit enough to run the marathon?

The calfs cry out for a massage even before the run - will the Wife oblige? Suddenly the phone rings - it is the Wife. Is she calling with a pre-emptive 'No'? No.

She has fallen while running and is hur

How Can You Have Any Pudding If You Don't Eat Your Meat?

At lunch he wonders to himself, "What is the best way to eat Asparagus?" It truly is an ungainly opponent for one who strives to be so elegant, he ponders. It occurs to him that it is not really the fault of the vegetable. Rather it is the fact that none of the common utensils handle it very well. The stalks simply roll off a spoon, while using a fork offers an awkward view, when the stalks are long, of a gaping mouth towards his lunch buddies. Of course there is the option of cutting up the Asparagus into smaller lengths, but it seems too much effort for something of so little volume. The Asparagus is not being a cooperative prey.

A Perfect Day

How productive can a man truly be? Can he live a day where he makes no mistakes? Some things though, are out of one's hands and he realises it would be futile to hope that every single event of chance goes his way. But what about making the correct decision in every situation he is faced with? Can he do that? "Think that you are someone else", he tells himself, "someone good".

Smells Like Teen Spirit

With his new sneakers and cords in one hand, Wife in the other, he saunters into yet another store selling kids' clothes. Instantly he looks for the customary benches set aside for the husband or boyfriend. He finds one, gestures to the Wife and plants himself down on it.

The smell of the store brings back memories of packaged biscuits, hospital food and freshly laundered scrubs. The relentless Christmas songs of the present fade out. He is back in the tower where he used to peddle samples of his blood for cash. He is thankful he had prominent veins.

To him odors are a lot like Portkeys. They transport him to where he first encountered a smell. He wonders when the invention to capture smells will arise - just as cameras capture images and microphones capture sounds. Maybe it is already out there, and he is just too lazy to look for it on the Web. It will need a catchy name though - sniffera, coolwhiffs, rec-odor. Or maybe just perfume.