250

Got in trouble for a bit of a lark at work today. Fraulein Director flitted off to some conference or other, so the atmosphere in our office was a bit more jovial than usual. We had all expected it for several weeks, and a few of us made plans. Marcus, Karen and I all got to the office early and rearranged the cubicles so three sat in the center of the room with a nice wide area around them. We kept the separating walls up and put chairs on either side of the desks, then began decorating.

Decorating our carnival booths.

We decided to have a carnival, and the three of us set up our versions of Updated Algorithms for people to consult with during the day. Marcus brought in a cup full of dice. Karen wrapped a towel around her head and was henceforth known as Psychic Swami Karenanda. And I? Well, I brought in Tarot cards.

“Come one, come all, to the Updated Algorithm Carnival!” we three pitched. There were laughs and shouts. Marcus began rolling the dice and talking about something called “snake eyes.” Karen hammed it up with a really, really bad foreign accent. I think she was going for an Indian accent and ended up somewhere in eastern Europe instead. And I split, shuffled, and flipped my cards.

“Ooh my,” I would say, stroking my chin. “No, no, no. Five of Pentacles, this does not look good at all. The algorithm tells me that journaler skulks about with secret intentions!” or I would fake-gasp; “Death! The Death card! It’s not only about death, of course, but change as well, so it must mean that either this journaler is changing from benign to malignant, or vice-versa. Either way, malignance exists! Off to the gulag with them!”

The shouts of laughter rose…and then were cut off. Immediately.

A pipe burst at the convention center, flooding the floor and postponing the confrence. And Fraulein Director had returned.

**HEADER MISSING** function $tag inoperative.
AUTOREPORT SYSTEM FAIL. connection unavailable.

It took me five years, you pricks. Five years of rooting through trash bins, both real and electronic. Five years of perilous little sleep while my eyes burned from endlessly staring at holo monitors, while I put in eye drops popped caffeine inhalants injected Orexin-A extract and finally I fucking beat you. And now I’ll write my two-fifty, but I’ll write them my way.

This feed contains no metatags, no markers, no worms. It’s redirected to the FUCKING MOON AND BACK. So I’m gonna say what I wanna say.

To the Poor Saps Inevitably Tasked With Finding Me: I’d tell you not to bother, but I imagine that ain’t an option. Let me give you a tip, then: red glasses. Wear red glasses at your computer. The tint decreases the brightness of the screens but increases contrast, so text pops out from background. You’ll strain your eyes less.

That’s the only gift I can give you.

I knew this was gonna be bullshit when it was proposed. And I didn’t think it would pass in a million years, even w/ the Global Congress, even w/ the Blackshirt Attacks, I didn’t think it would happen. We all should have fought it harder, I should have fought it harder, so this is my fault in part, and so partially my responsibility. There’s not much I can do to turn society around, but fucking with you guys is a close second.

ENDTAG FAIL. Reference provided: FU PPL.

My brain turned off again today. I held the brush in my hand and the brush moved, but I don’t know what moved it. I didn’t know what I painted except that it was the start of a woman. But who was she? What did she look like? What was her setting? I didn’t know. But it didn’t matter. The brush moved. The painting followed.

I feel like I’m performing magic when I do that, tunneling some vision of the world through my hand to the canvas. That’s when everything else stops in the world but the painting. And when everything stops and there’s just that sound of wet paint to wet paint, when I feel the bristles of the paintbrush connect and sweep across and push and dot and peck and glide together, movement after movement with choreography I’ll never comprehend, I can hear God. If I were aware of what I did when it happens, it would never happen.

I still don’t know her setting or who she is, or anything except the seven inches of space I stared at for hours. But now I know what she looks like.

She showed herself to me, gradually. I thought maybe she was older and wanted to give her a few wrinkles, but the brush disagreed with me. It didn’t paint wrinkles. It painted makeup. Eyeliner. Eyeshadow. Blush. Then lipstick. Very red lipstick, the kind that reminds me of Marilyn Monroe. She wasn’t older. She was young. No more than twenty, I could see by the end of the painting. Her face was made up like she was ready to go out dancing at some night club, and her eyes were sad. I didn’t choose that. I don’t know why she was sad.

Gaella has been kicking my bladder all day! I can already tell she’s going to be a little hellion like her brothers. The twins decided to make forts in the living room, pulling in kitchen furniture to augment the couch and chairs, draping everything in old sheets and towels. I kept an eye on them from my peaceful corner with my faithful friend the internet to keep me company.

After one particularly nasty kick by the wee one, I cautiously ran to the bathroom. Suddenly the giggles from the front room stopped and then I heard a loud crack. When I returned I found Trystan just launching an egg at Patrick. I looked in horror at the mess they had made of our living room in the few moments they’d had unwatched. A dozen eggs were splattered, several on their bodies and one oozed down the old flatscreen we have been too busy to throw out.

I was furious. Probably a bit irrational with the hormones but honestly, can’t I trust them for TWO MINUTES? I think we need to get a babysitter. At least until I’ve had the baby. I love my family. My boys are fiesty and mischievious and they have the most adorable smiles. When they cry it’s like an arrow through my heart but they need discipline! After a few spanks I sent them to opposite corners to stare at the wall for 30 minutes. Then we all cleaned up the living room before Daddy got home.

I met Jace at the door with a kiss, told him about the day and had him sit down for a talk with the twins while I escaped to the bedroom with a good book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

Man, my friends are savages.
“Took a girl to the holos and she didn’t put out.
Took a girl to the holos and she didn’t put out.
Took a girl to the holos and she didn’t. put. out.”
I want to point out the shame, want to point out the fallacy.
Romance shouldn’t be a 20th century artafact.
Granted, who am I/to be/proselytizing about love
when I can’t even ask out the girl of my dreams?
Green hair/green eyes/wide eyes,
she dances through my dreams twirling chemical glowsticks.
Smoke curls around her like it longs to touch her
but
dares not.
And I know how the smoke feels.
“Took a girl to the holos and she didn’t put out.”
If I took Green Eyes to the movies I’d let her choose which.
“Took a girl to the holos and she didn’t put out.”
I’d just watch it through the reflection in her eyes.

So yah the new poem needs work, I wrote it really freaking fast when I was pissed off earlier today. I don’t even know why I hang out with those guys. So full of meat their eyes are leaking blood, you know? No spirit, no freaking mind, just meat. And I sure as shit don’t want to be like that.

I keep trying to work my self up to ask Green Eyes out but every time I get near it’s like she’s an incoming air raid and all my laser defenses suddenly went down. My heart is laid bare on the landing strip, caught naked and preparing, as her psychic bombers approach.

So she says, Henry, that jam is never coming out of the couch. And I agree with her. You know how she is, Government Overlords. She bought a frickin white couch. I am supposed to feel guilty.

I wore clothes today. I also breathed air. The air included oxygen. Oxygen is good for the body. It is also bad for the body.

Today I had work. I went to work. I worked. I saw other people at work. They were working.

Then I went home. On my way home I passed a lot of cars. There were people in the cars. The people drove the cars. I drove my car, too.

I was hungry. I ate dinner. I ate it on the couch. This makes me very, very, very, very, very terrible. The jam was very, very, very, very, very good.

Government Overlords, I hope that your day was as nice as mine. Did you breathe air today? Did you wear clothes?

The English alphabet has 26 letters. 26 is a nice number. It is not as good as 25, though. 26 is probably ashamed of itself when it stands next to 25.

Today I drank water. I drank it more than once. I drank it because I was thirsty. I got the water from the tap and it flowed into a cup and then I put my mouth to the cup and drank it down. It made me less thirsty.

Tomorrow maybe I will eat dinner at the table.

I am so goddamn sick of words. Sure, that’s what I went to school for. Sure, that’s the basis of my employment. But consider me ridiculously sick of words.

Well, at least other people’s words.

Some days I wish I had majored in computer science rather than cognitive linguistics. That way, I could reprogram our useless search algorithms to red-flag useful posts, posts that deserve attention and scrutiny, rather than every third post in the bloody system. I’ve tried four times now to get a meeting between Linguistics and Programming, and been denied four. Some bureaucratic blather about maintaining distinct lines and missions between disciplines. I mean, I’m a pleasant guy. I can cooperate. I can compromise. But I just need Programming to fall the fuck in line and put out some good code. Is that too much to ask?

The kicker came this morning, this pain-in-the-ass morning, when the Director called me into her office for a proper reaming. Excuse me, Director dear, for having the fucking initiative to propose collaboration to institute a more efficient flagging system for suspicious journals. Excuse me for wanting to alleviate some of the stress on assembly-line Analysts and reduce the queue to a manageable size. I will, I promise, become a good worker drone and from here on out never think about improving the workplace again.

Went back to my desk in that dismal LED-screenlit dungeon to work some more on the queue when she was done. Analysis was rather droll. Spent my time reading the past work’s worth from some pissed-off schoolteacher who was red-flagged for Subject Inconsistency. I don’t know how someone could post so randomly, so many disconnected subjects, and not expect the algorithms to pick up on it. Given their semantic capabilities, it’s about as subtle as posting “Fuck you” one hundred and twenty five times. The only consistency in his entries seems to be an underlying anger, or perhaps disregard, for the process. The algorithms only picked up the concept randomness, but any analyst worth his salt can see the disrespect.

He bears watching, I suppose. And after today, I deserve a drink.