10. Guy from my work that I was afraid to talk to:

As I was walking out of the building, I noticed some guy from some department also leaving the building.  At first I thought he was just going for his car, but then I realized that he was going to be walking to the bus stop.  I reacted with horror and also an admirable decisiveness – I immediately called someone so that I could be trapped in chatter, saving my colleague and myself from the hell of Non-Spontaneously-Generated-Situational Small Talk, or NSGSST.  NSGSST is boring and life is hard; in Babylon, we will lie down by the waters and never, ever say anything.  But here on Earth, it is an obligation, unless one deploys such strategies as the above.  Probably, he thought I was being hella rude, but in my heart I believe that I liberated us from an Awkward Situation, strings of which make up the woof and warp of modern life, which is why we feel so defeated; it’s really the last thing one wants to engage in at the end of a Work Day.  This way, we live to die inside another day.

9.  Pretty good chair frame leaning against an ivy-strewn garage in the alley:

This chair frame had a chair attached to it, the fabric of which was pretty good (kind of a gold and blue paisley), but there were the following probs with it: a.)  some springs in the seat looked broken; b.) it was covered in coarse white dog hair; c.)  I am afraid of the people who live in the house by the garage.  As far as I know, these people consist of two weird dudes who love to drink beer on their back porch and yell at girls who happen to be picking lilacs in the alley in April and tell them to pick the tulips that are under their apple tree, but in a weird way where it seems that they think they are somehow tricking you.  So I didn’t want to look at the chair because for all I know those guys could come out and be all like, “Yeah, take that chair.  And while you’re at it, take five bucks.  Ha – gotcha!”

8.  The bulbous sunflowers of that one house:

There is this one house that has a lot of things in its yard, not least of which are a lot of very bulbous sunflowers.  Somebody told me once that that house is full of bike stealers, but who knows?  At the very least, the house seems full of dogs and sinning.

7.  Judgmental glasses frames place that reminded me of judgment:

I hate that one optical place where they try to make it seem like wearing glasses is exactly like being a steampunk from 2010 who fights fuckers in Strasbourg while colliding nanobots fuck in one’s $800.00 haircut.  You know, it’s like, they’re glasses, man.  They help the myopic see.  You can put thick silver frames on a pig, but it’s still going to spout evangelical crap, you know?

6.  My sweet cellphone backgammon game that is always almost getting me run-over due to my inability to look up from it for more than one second:

Backgammon is cool.  There are worse ways to go.

5.  Lawrence Fishburne-esque homeless guy striding magnificently by the gas station:

He looked like the baby of Lawrence Fishburne (as MOLVAR or whoever he played in the Matrix) and George Clinton.  In 2006 or 7, I found myself oddly touched by the news that George Clinton has panic attacks.  Like, really, George Clinton?  Given your George Clinton history and that parliament you founded in order to express that you are the prime minister of a funk nation, and also you are old, now you get nervous?  (I am sorry George Clinton it’s gonna be okay.  I am sorry and I hope you feel good soon.)

4.  Lousy student drivers:

Lousy student drivers are the new lousy women drivers.

3.  Sad administrative worker holding a box:

Oh administrator, were
your lovers kind, when you were young?  I think
not, because
of the way you hunch over your box, in
this dark blue juggernaut, on
the edge of the world.

2.  Loose dog:

Fucking loose dogs, dude.  They fill me with a terror that will never die.  There was a loose dog that bounded up to me as I was walking through the blue stones and brown buildings and redundant recycling bins and etc. and the dog was big and I thought, okay, I’m holding a coffee, how can I defend myself and also preserve my coffee, and then I thought, fuck it, I will kill this dog even if I have to lose my roommates’ mug that I stole, and then I realized that the dog was just sort of keening at me, it probably didn’t want to kill me as much as make me throw things it at that it could race for, pretending to be a wolf under the grey opaque sun, “killing” whatever goddamn tennis ball I was supposed to come up with, and then I felt silly for a minute, because I knew the dog wouldn’t kill me, but on the other hand, it wanted to help me kill a substitute me, so really I was right to be in terror of this weird latent wolf instinct that the dog was displaying, and I was so startled that the lid of my mug fell off, and the dog fell upon it, and I was going to yield it, but then I was like, fuck it, I’m better than this, and I retrieved the mug and felt a virtual Amazon warrior John Adams fucker coolist.

Shut up your loose dogs, citizens!

1.  An Aslan hippie:

I was almost home and almost home-free (thus) when this dude steps out of the shadows in front of some house and he had a head that was like Aslan and a face full of blear and he looked like he thought either:

a.)  Elves were coming for him (with knives, and friends, and a dolphin liege for him to kneel to);

b.)  I was going to give him a hundred dollars;

c.)  A car was going to stop right by him with people that he knew in it and they were all going to go somewhere really fucking sketchy.

He looked like Aslan, and he thought like him to – if you know what I mean.