I get really put off when somebody says, “Well, speak of the devil!” I’m like, “You’ve just made our mutual friend materialize by speaking about him, and now you want to discuss the devil? Actually this might not be a bad time to not mention the devil under any circumstances whatsoever. Because I could really go without summoning the fucking devil right now.”
All posts by wickensworth
Motion-sensing porch lights
Motion-sensing porch lights were invented as a theft deterrent, but in reality all they’re good for is continuously startling the holy Christ out of me. Not only do these lights put me in a state of panic, they make me feel like a suspected burglar. I guess I deserve that for casually meandering down a public sidewalk anytime after dark. Meanwhile, if I should happen to inadvertently set off car alarm when I’m walking, I simply head on over to the police station to turn myself in.
Sometimes I like to pretend that these porch lights aren’t motion-sensitive after all. Sometimes I imagine a panicked family huddled up in the corner of their foyer, flicking on the light switch in an act of desperation as if you to say: “We know you’re there, burglar! And the Jenkins family won’t stand for it!” Then I bash in their window with my crowbar.
Firemen
A lot of people are anti-police, which is a reasonable sentiment. Police often use excessive force, and they can be boorish, and it’s hard to enjoy a party after Officer McPolicey threatens the host with a noise violation. But all this animosity towards police seems kind of unfair when you consider how long we’ve been letting firemen off the hook.
Where do firemen get their sense of entitlement? Sometimes they save lives, but big deal, that’s their job. It’s not like they’re working voluntarily (unless you’re talking about volunteer firemen, who make me sick to my stomach). When I see a fireman, I want to yell, “Hey, fireman! Why don’t you go shove that ladder up your ass?” They expect me to be impressed by their mastery of a fire hose, but to me they’re just glorified gardeners.
You say I can’t park in front of your precious fire hydrant due to the off chance that there’s a fire in the vicinity? Tell you what, if there’s a fire, go ahead and loop your hose around my car. Maybe this wouldn’t be “convenient” for you, but the world is not set up for your convenience. Nor were Dalmatians bred for your personal self-gratification. Sometimes I want to purchase a Dalmatian, but I can’t ever find one because you’re hoarding them all in your little fire engines.
For these reasons and more I’m currently organizing a mass protest against firemen. In the meantime I invite everyone to take part in my “stop snitching” campaign. If you see a fire and you snitch about it to firemen, you’re no better than they are.
Walking to my friend’s car
When a friend and I are walking toward his or her car, sometimes I’ll inadvertently position myself by the driver’s door, from the habit of waking toward my own car. In these cases I do not demurely move around to the passenger’s spot, because I have never in my life admitted a mistake. Instead I turn to my friend and say, “That’s right, motherfucker, I’ll be driving today.”
If while I’m driving my friend’s car I accidentally turn the wrong way onto a one-way street, I pretend like it’s perfectly normal. I say, “Yeah, we’re going to be zigzagging through oncoming traffic for a little bit. Don’t worry, I do this every day. It’s kind of my thing.” My friend should consider himself lucky I didn’t accidentally turn onto a dead-end street. I have great sympathy for anybody who has to endure one of my life-threatening “short-cuts through the forest.”
My time-traveling dream
I had a dream last night which was both vivid and stupid. I was in a house I didn’t recognize, speaking with a girl I’d never met. She was a credulous sort, taken to offbeat theories on spirituality. Specifically she claimed that one could transport oneself back in time with a certain kind of meditation. She was clearly crazy, but I asked for a demonstration anyway. She sat me down in a strange super-padded rocking chair and instructed me to close my eyes and attempt to visualize the history of a particular object she wore around her neck. I played along and began rocking back-and-fourth in the super-padded rocking chair, which was the finest and most comfortable chair I’d ever known. But after a few short moments of this my alarm went off and I was sent back into consciousness. I pounded my pillow and said, “Goddamned dreams fooled me again!”
If I’d known I’d been dreaming, I wouldn’t have even bothered trying to go back in time. I have long ago realized that I can count on waking up exactly one second before anything sweet like time-traveling is going down. For example, if I have a dream where I meet somebody who claims he’s going to take me to a planet populated entirely by robots, I’ll say, “Oh, a robot planet you say? I guess that means I’ll be waking up right about now. I can’t wait to miss fucking awesome robot world.” Sure enough, next thing I know I’m in the shower shampooing my hair and scowling—right about when I should be shaking hands with the mayor of Robot City.
But I got to thinking about my dream today, and suddenly it occurred to me: maybe my dream-state had in fact been the future. Perhaps the meditation had actually sent me to our present via the portal of the dream world. In fact, that is almost certainly what happened. You see, at some point in the future I’m going to meet that nutcase girl and, having forgotten about my dream, she’s going to show me her meditation technique and send me back to June 15th, 2007—and once again I’m going to be writing this dumb entry. I’ve probably been in this loop for all eternity, and it only seems like I’m living a normal linear life. I hate living in a time loop because even though I don’t remember the future, things get pretty dull after about the 20th trip through time. Still, every time I get sent to the past, I smile a little bit inside knowing that it’s only a matter of time before they invent those great super-padded rocking chairs from my dream.
