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Treasured Reader Training Exercise
Hopelessly Remote
Knowing that you would require some time to acclimate to the
Treasured
Reader Training Exercise, and even more time to adapt your random
behaviors to the predetermined proper behavior, I decided to retire to
the coast of Maine in order to sit quietly and monitor your progress.
This turned out to be somewhat problematic in that there is no Internet
connectivity here, it being a Hopelessly Remote Locale and all. So, while
I was able to sit quietly, I wasn't actually able to monitor your progress.
At least, not in real time.
This leaves me wondering how it affected the results of the training
exercise.
Racing
I woke up this morning at 4 AM, as usual, my mind racing with
the long list of overdue things that must be done and the email that must
be checked. But, not as usual, the coals in the wood stove crackled, reminding
me that I have no Internet access here in this tiny cabin.
I smiled, turned over, and went back to sleep for another ten hours.
Whitespace
Having taken a friend to a dozen lighting stores in the Bowery
in the process of advising her on a lamp for her apartment, I have convinced
myself that I have a lucrative future in interior design.
And the first thing I need as an interior designer is a pretentious
business card. So here it is.
Take a number.
Analysis
| Friend: |
I was looking at your Weblog the
other day. I'm not sure I understood what was going on there. I'm going
to have to spend more time with it. |
| Me: |
It won't do any good. |
Hello
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura, and
I am my step-daughter's wicked step-mother.
Indications
Sign in a local restaurant:
MENS'
ROOM
Drive-By Shootings
 
Surrounded By "Canada"
We are not, quite, far enough north in Maine to be surrounded
by "Canada". But the mere prospect is terrifying. It is the creeping menace,
the Northern Threat. It is the image of the Canuk Horde, lurking in the
moosen woods, plotting, darkly, their day of retribution, sharpening their
woodsman axes, their greasy thumbs wiped slatheringly over the blades,
it is that image that jolts us out of an otherwise deep sleep to sit, suddenly,
upright, sweating, gasping and looking anxiously out the black windows
for bearded flannel faces.
Blue Heaven
The dinner plates in our tiny cabin are porcelain from the
early 1960s, white with a circumferential border in patterns of light blue
and gray. It is the dinnerware of the space age, of flying cars and robot
maids. It is the promise of floating cities and perfect, spotless suburbia.
In a rustic cabin. In Maine. In 2003.
Peace
There is, in the night here, such peace. The only sounds are
the conversations that the water has with itself, the lapping and bubbling,
and the occasional car, yes, there it is, that crosses the narrow roadway
between this part of the bay and that.
And other than these, nothing.
Simply silence.
And the chill of night, and the woodsmoke, and the waxy ripple of the
few, far lights of the town across the water.
The Crab Cleaner
Can I take your picture?, asks the gray-haired tourist
of the young man who is sitting on the dock below the restaurant.
Sure!,
the young man replies, grinning broadly.
The young man is cleaning crabs. He plucks a crab from a large tub,
tears off its claws and legs, throws these in another tub, and tosses the
armless body into the water of the bay.
It takes me several minutes to realize that the crabs are still alive.
I can see their claws and legs gyrate as the young man picks them up. They
are still alive as their limbs are torn off. They are still alive as their
limbless bodies are tossed into the water. They are still alive as they
float slowly away, unable to do anything but breathe and wait to die.
There must be, I say to Helen, terrible stories that the crabs tell
to their young. Eat all your fish, they say, or the hobgoblins
will whisk you away and rip your legs off.
They even take pictures of it.
Ahhnold
You cannot imagine the glee with which I greeted the news that
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been elected governor of the Great State of California.
As a supporter of politics only when it is funny, I regard this as the
greatest opportunity for mockery in my lifetime. I thought that opportunity
had come when Jesse "The Body" Ventura took control of  Minnesota,
and that was indeed quite funny. But, with all due respect to my Treasured
Midwest Correspondent, that was Minnesota.
This is California, my former home, my tothood residence, one of the
richest, most populous, most culturally influential places in the world.
And who's about to be in charge of its political infrastructure? Mr. No
Problemo.
Only Gary Colemen could have been funnier.
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