What is the emotional content of a Saddle Factory?
Camping Equipment Department of Fear. During these in-between months, it’s easier than usual to scare yourself. To inadvertently frighten, startle or otherwise upend your own emotional well-being is another of God’s Correctives the lesser mammals never enjoy. Long hair in your peripheral vision or even your own shadow is enough to quicken your pace. Convincing yourself you’ve forgotten a child’s birthday, even while watching him blow out the candles, can make you eager to give them all up (wife included) to the state and hide yourself deeper in the bayou. Misinterpreted woodgrain patterns can leave you fruitlessly stabbing furniture during dinner parties with trusted clergy. John, we can’t live this way. The only – and obvious – solution to this...
Total Humiliation.
Complete Incompetence.
In-Depth Shaming.
Panoramic Denial.
Limitless Cramping.
Overwhelming Stagnation.
Intense Acceptance.
Certain paths are proscribed for us in life. Despite all our efforts, we cannot stray. Forging new, unmarked roads leaves you with little more than bloody hands and flea bites. It’s best to be content with a life of opening unmarked jars, looking inside and rapidly drawing a tiny sketch of whatever you see, be it corpse or canary. It’s best to stick with such a scheme for 50, 60, even 70 years. Even with the knowledge that most of your drawings will be immediately torn up by the next man in the line. And that those drawings that do survive will be placed in pre-stamped envelopes, alone, with no explanatory note and mailed to random addresses circled in the White Pages Directory by the man seated across from you. You were chosen for this task, just as the other men –...
TV seemed like such a good idea at the time. The miracle of imagery and sound, beamed live around the world, through the air, carried by invisible elves. Even a few years into the reign of the Lobster Men, TV was still a friend you could count on to never betray you. Sure most of the shows now starred Lobster Men (or Lobster Men in drag) but they were basically unchanged. I can watch a Lobster Man give away sets of tires to celebrity charities. It has the same effect. Now, though, TV doesn’t feel good. Maybe it’s because all the shows are performed in Lobster Man language. A language that’s primarily chomping and grinding sounds. Or it’s because there’s really only one show now: Lobster Man after Lobster Man, one after the other, hour after hour, reading off...
I enjoy reading recipe cards aloud. Especially at the homes of neighbors and trusted friends. I always ask to see their kitchen files. Although sometimes I don’t ask. I just find the cards myself. They’re usually not hidden very well. Stacked in a drawer or folded into an envelope or strapped to the Gentleman-of-the-House’s thigh.
I always return them in the correct order. But only after I’ve read them. Out loud. Right in the middle of conversation. Or even if I’ve been left alone while they go check on the baby.
I can’t help myself. I just have to find out how they end.