June 2008
1 post
May 2008
25 posts
GREAT MOMENTS IN THE COMPUTING LIFE OF MY FAMILY...
Aug 1987: Mom comes home from the hospital, so have a big party at the house using our settlement money. I make invitations on Pagemaker with confetti clipart and send them out to the neighborhood. Everybody comes. Oct 1987: I start volunteering at the library’s computer lab, because Mom says I’m going to need community service for my college resume. Stacy Bixler leans on my desk asks...
NIGHT SHIFT AT THE LIGHT BULB SHOP (Part 2 by...
So then a bunch of things happened that would take a novel to explain. I eventually left the light bulb store, but not before encountering my maker, a girl by the name of April M____. The experiments in the backroom were all in an effort to contact her. She had, for some unknown reason, taken a liking to me (perhaps my laidback way of speech or the way I anticipate events far in advance) and...
NIGHT SHIFT AT THE LIGHT BULB SHOP (Part 1 by...
I was in graduate school, without a thesis, when I took a job at the light bulb shop downtown. My research on my original topic, on the habits and culture of urban Vampire-Americans, had not resulted in anything interesting, besides a newfound fear of hepatitis and more than a few late night dinners at the local greasy spoon. I was in desperate need of inspiration. One night, I while was out...
GREAT MOMENTS IN THE COMPUTING LIFE OF MY FAMILY...
Jan 1984: During a lull in the Super Bowl, we watch enraptured as Anya Major pivets on her brazen, tanned thighs and shotputs a sledgehammer into a TV screen ten times the size of ours, officially introducing the Macintosh line. It is the first time I place a pillow over my lap in the TV room. Dad immediately calls his engineering friends in New Jersey to send him trade magazines. Jun 1984: ...
JUNK MAIL (Part 2 by April) - Day 4/12
It was a difference that the two of us never expressed often, either because it was it was ignored or because it was simply taken as a given. Mostly we dwelt one our sameness, our worries about our present lives, our carefully worded hopes for the future. It was almost enough to make us believe that were no differences at all. But there were small reminders. It was in the way she was careless...
HIVES (Part 2 by Aaron) - Day 4/12
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Alice. She’d been to the abandoned orphanage before. She obediently sat in the crib room alone for five minutes (the standard dare) and said the name of the Virgin Mary to the mirrors of the nursing hall. Repeated thrills weren’t thrills at all. “There’s somewhere else we could go,” she said to the head boy. ...
HIVES (Part 1 by April) - Day 3/12
They all had started off the night playing chicken in the parking lot with shopping carts until they were shooed away by supermarket employees. Next, they lit M80s and dropped them into street cones they had found on the side of the road. The noise from the explosions set off car alarms and they fled the scene. They were afraid of neighbors coming out of their houses, sleep-eyed and in...
JUNK MAIL (Part 1 by Aaron) - Day 3/12
Carole found an old apartment across from the new town cemetery, the one with the known gas leak. I wasn’t going to be the one to stop her. Her life was too perfect to be touched then, in the between. Stalwart graves in august light served as strong medicine to her lackadaisical thinking. A morning cup and the freedom to open a window shade and never look away. She never actively...
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SPANIARDS (Part 2 by April) - Day 2/12
She ignores them and wordlessly shifts to the side to hide the jar from their view. For some reason, she feels strangely protective of it. The Spaniards do not press the issue, too impressed with their shared cleverness to bother her any longer. The two make a few more jokes to each other before their conversation resumes. There is more talk about their parallel histories and what...
LAUNDRY DAY (Part 2 by Aaron) - Day 2/12
He surveyed the room once more with new, guilty eyes. With his mysterious hours and lack of visible friends and family, Louis still felt that he needed to display the cautious behavior of a new tenant. The last thing he needed was to be accused of anything indecent. Maybe the owner wrote their name on the tag? No such luck. Louis held up the silky number up to the basement lightbulb with two...
LAUNDRY DAY (Part 1 by April) - Day 1/12
Louis got home from his shift and shed his work clothes: a white shirt, black slacks, and a red vest. Most days, he still smelt the car exhaust on his body, the scent trapped beneath his fingernails and under his armpits. Today, however, he was feeling giddy and clean. Tomorrow, tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow he would get a new job where he wouldn’t have to...
SPANIARDS (Part 1 by Aaron) - Day 1/12
She is sitting on the airport shuttle with her legs hugging the sides of her luggage, listening to two Spaniards who have just met. As children, their families drove to the same town on the Iberian coast to vacation. In the autumn, the same driving path falls to swamp. Remarkably, their wives share the same maiden name, the rare Rial, which they agree is a surname that carries more than a hint...