Hazmat Jigs
It was a simple truth: Nothing could ever be perfect. "Duh," came the follow up thought, leading to a ricocheting cat-and-mouse game of neural pathway tag between the two brainfarts, the bleak slab reasserting itself again and again in pointless argument with the monosyllabic, echoing thok, "Duh". An unintentional and uninterested mantra. It would have been purifying, had anything been anything but pure to begin with.
At first he had been slightly peeved that the coffee machine seemed to not be pushing quite a full cup out. Over time, a dose of the stuff seemed to stop almost a full centimeter below the upper lip of the cup. True, the coffee was free, and he could just have another cup... but that gap... it seemed wrong. Something needed calibration. What if the level kept dropping every dose? He'd be denied precious sips at least in ratio to trips to the machine.
Of course he didn't complain. That would have been some bullshit beyond even his petty capabilities. He suspected nobody did. It was minor and who could possibly care? These people weren't petty. Or, as he watched himself do, they at least suppressed that pettiness in service of pleasant civility. Everywhere! All of his days it was like this, throughout this town. Affability! Good will, tattered about it's edges! Well, perhaps not on a case by case basis; as he got older the servicework performed by current undergraduates seemed to have a certain -- sneer -- to it, but a general aura of complacent (self? he couldn't tell) satisfaction seemed to pervade the streets he shuffled through. No complaints here! Tip-top! And why should he rock the boat? Indeed.
Yet one day the level of coffee was higher. He could only assume that a routine servicing had resulted in a recalibration. Nobody needed to point it out, someone was checking on it as part of their scheduled maintenance, their supplication to that aura. Self-correction! We're already on top of that! Been penciled in for weeks.
This made him think of when he worked at the coffee stand in the University's Student Union and how much variability there had been in the mass of grounds produced by the buzzing grinders. Sometimes the coffee company would send somebody in, and they would invariably grind batch after batch, tweaking the clockwork to achieve just the right throughput, the air reeking of Breakfast Blend, everyone achieving caffeine buzz and blacklung simultaneously, no burnt tongues, no dead canaries. And yet, the batches... they wavered. They chose their own fate, did it on the fly.
But this, this single serving coffee had just the right level. His nose twitched slightly at the invitation to awaken, his tongue throbbed with expectation of the impending heatwave. He lifted the cup and started strolling...
Coffee curled over the styrofoam lip, the antithesis of the big, icy Superior breakers he used to see violating the cement walls jutting out into the Great Lake. No, this was tiny, black, and scalding. His thumb caught it at the base, on a small scar that used to look like a half moon, the result of a glass broken during one of his rare excursions washing dishes between 2003-2004. A translucent brown drip bulged as his skin blushed.
This set off the game of tag in his mind, the Duh-Sutra. No caffeine yet, even! After he sat down, he thought: Christ, I wonder what the sidewalks will be like after all this snow melts.
Sheltered Life #2: "Repetition" Part 1 Part 2
At first he had been slightly peeved that the coffee machine seemed to not be pushing quite a full cup out. Over time, a dose of the stuff seemed to stop almost a full centimeter below the upper lip of the cup. True, the coffee was free, and he could just have another cup... but that gap... it seemed wrong. Something needed calibration. What if the level kept dropping every dose? He'd be denied precious sips at least in ratio to trips to the machine.
Of course he didn't complain. That would have been some bullshit beyond even his petty capabilities. He suspected nobody did. It was minor and who could possibly care? These people weren't petty. Or, as he watched himself do, they at least suppressed that pettiness in service of pleasant civility. Everywhere! All of his days it was like this, throughout this town. Affability! Good will, tattered about it's edges! Well, perhaps not on a case by case basis; as he got older the servicework performed by current undergraduates seemed to have a certain -- sneer -- to it, but a general aura of complacent (self? he couldn't tell) satisfaction seemed to pervade the streets he shuffled through. No complaints here! Tip-top! And why should he rock the boat? Indeed.
Yet one day the level of coffee was higher. He could only assume that a routine servicing had resulted in a recalibration. Nobody needed to point it out, someone was checking on it as part of their scheduled maintenance, their supplication to that aura. Self-correction! We're already on top of that! Been penciled in for weeks.
This made him think of when he worked at the coffee stand in the University's Student Union and how much variability there had been in the mass of grounds produced by the buzzing grinders. Sometimes the coffee company would send somebody in, and they would invariably grind batch after batch, tweaking the clockwork to achieve just the right throughput, the air reeking of Breakfast Blend, everyone achieving caffeine buzz and blacklung simultaneously, no burnt tongues, no dead canaries. And yet, the batches... they wavered. They chose their own fate, did it on the fly.
But this, this single serving coffee had just the right level. His nose twitched slightly at the invitation to awaken, his tongue throbbed with expectation of the impending heatwave. He lifted the cup and started strolling...
Coffee curled over the styrofoam lip, the antithesis of the big, icy Superior breakers he used to see violating the cement walls jutting out into the Great Lake. No, this was tiny, black, and scalding. His thumb caught it at the base, on a small scar that used to look like a half moon, the result of a glass broken during one of his rare excursions washing dishes between 2003-2004. A translucent brown drip bulged as his skin blushed.
This set off the game of tag in his mind, the Duh-Sutra. No caffeine yet, even! After he sat down, he thought: Christ, I wonder what the sidewalks will be like after all this snow melts.
Sheltered Life #2: "Repetition" Part 1 Part 2
- Faust - It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl - So Far
- Faust - Munich/Yesterday - 71 Minutes
- Pole - Warum - Steingarten
- Isolee- I Owe You -Western Store
- Pole - Pferd - Steingarten
- This Heat - Repeat -Repeat
- Eyes and Arms of Smoke - In Three Houses - In Three Houses
- Anaksimandros - Lappi Fast Witch - River of Finland
- Anaksimandros - Run With Vishnu - River of Finland
- Kemialliset Ystavat - Musta Metsa - Kellari Juniversumi
- Kemialliset Ystavat - On Patsi Metsa - Kellari Juniversumi
- Phillip Jeck - Spirits Up - Surf
- Es Sateenkaarisuudelma III - Sateenkaarisuudelma
- Galbraith/Neilson/Youngs - Track 2 - Belsayer
- Terry Riley - Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band - A Rainbow in Curved Air
posted by Quincy Hoist at 6:20 PM
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