The tall buildings hinted at a land of slender, willowy people, but the smell that lingered promised something else.
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“The employee was not aggrieved by the exoneration having deprived him of any indemnification he might have been entitled to pursuant to Labor Code Section 2802, since an individually liable tortfeasor is not aggrieved by the exoneration of a joint tortfeasor even when that exoneration defeats what would otherwise be an actionable cause for contribution.”
I’m already ready for the end of adolescence, when my daughter will let me kiss her cheek in public again.
Much to Lydia’s consternation, the trial court refused to consider her having an earworm stuck in her head—specifically “No! No! A Thousand Times No!”—as an affirmative defense in Jethro’s tort battery action against her.
Juan found himself somewhat peeved by his new employee’s unexcused absences and failure to turn in projects on time despite the fact that her first day of work wasn’t for a couple months.
In response to his declaration, “I’m not a complete asshole,” I was forced to reply, “No, you are merely the creamy center.”
She could have cleaned the house in the long hour between doing her homework and picking up her children, but that, she knew, would be letting the terrorists win.
When the tenant presented him with the broken sprinkler head, the chief shook his fist at the heavens, cursing the foolish human need for manicured lawns.
Having listened to that quirky Radiohead tune Everything in Its Right Place constantly for, gosh, the last decade, I just noticed that Thom Yorke claims that ‘...yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon…’ and I have, like, this ‘V8’ moment where hand-meets-forehead because suddenly all of his other lyrics make perfect sense when viewed through the prism of a sour breakfast, and I’m all, “Dude, geez, seriously, just grab some granola or have some Cheerios, but put the lemon on the table and just back away slowly.”
As inspired by: grudknows's Failing negotiations
“Err, no, I don’t think so”, Henry said in earnest tones to the Devil, “I’ll get a much better deal if I sell my wife on ebay”.
No matter how hard she dreamed for it, her hands never became covered in scales, nor did they ever grow filthy, long, dark claws.
I say cheers to Keith, who is as groovy as ever, as is our beloved Scrine.
She packed a wallop, but all she needed was a pencil.
As inspired by: grudknows's Failing negotiations
“Henry - Luke, from Revenue: bit of a problem I’m afraid, all to do with that ebay thing of yours: not only are we taking capital gains tax, but we’re also obliged to deduct sales tax, stamp duty, and inheritance tax—yes, Sir, well, you are effectively moving on from ‘this life’ into the next, aren’t you?—and quite frankly, there won’t be too much left over when all is said and done - No Sir, I can assure you, I am not He, although I suspect He is having the last laugh right now—you really should be more careful of whom you welch on a deal with, hadn’t you: better the devil you know and all that.”
“Err, no, I don’t think so”, Henry said in earnest tones to the Devil, “I’ll get a much better deal if I sell my life on ebay”.
One thing you can say about elderly Russians; they sure as hell know how to stand in line.
While his dreams no longer trickled past smelling of the warm, flushed skin of some young lover, they also didn’t smell anything like old, stale beer, so he didn’t complain.
It was not the first time the chief had encountered a conniving old woman, nor would it be his last.
I used to walk down Telegraph Avenue here in Berkeley, and guys would try to sell me pot; later, they changed to scalped Cal football tickets; and now they just look at me and hand me coupons for Subway sandwiches.
I need this embroidered somewhere: “Women who own white terriers should never wear black.”
Tammy wondered why she could never score a joint when she needed one; she couldn’t shake the feeling it had something to do with the time she’d been at that underground party and confessed she was a narc(oleptic).
Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff drink.
“Searching is half the fun: Life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.”
When the time came for her big ukulele solo she took a deep breath, started to twang the first few bars and found her fingers frozen in abject terror.
Tasty and well prepared.
The lithe whiny hipster boy complained to his girlfriend as they passed me at the farmer’s market, “It’s a GREEN market, not an ORGANIC market.”
Sometimes when I’d ruffle the boy’s hair three or four bones would fall out, and while the dog always looked guilty, he never would admit to anything.
“It’s too hot to go swimming, Dad.”
She had trouble waiting in line, waiting for trains, and waiting for friends to arrive; never, however, did she have trouble messing around until she was late for others.
When I read the words “... and now runs the harmonica school…” it really did catch me off-guard, but then I couldn’t help but wonder if all those grown bluesmen had to cram themselves into those tiny little school desks, with their lanky legs sticking out into the aisles, a dozen black oxfords tapping to the beat.
To Scrine for the sake of Scrining is a waste of the precious space left for lost and lonely sentences.
The feeling’s so unfamiliar, I’m not sure it has ever happened before.
What very few seem to understand is that the only thing I’ve really chosen is permanent company.
And all the shapes and shades
That made the colours see
When they suddenly turned grey
That they’re no longer there
It seems like you never get the dues you quite thought you deserved.
The first couple of volumes that left Peggy’s hands only grazed Peter’s head, but the third caught him squarely on the left temple and knocked him unconscious; the coroner would later testify that it was after Peggy had piled on somewhere between 15 and 18 volumes that Peter’s head would finally squish out so flat that his ears would reach the edge of the bay, which in turn would lead to a whole series of rather unfortunate events, “Which,” the coroner added (his statement later ordered stricken from the record), “should in no way detract from the hideous and grotesque misuse of the OED.”
Since when is “turkieses” a word in anything but baby-talk???
What is it about slightly browning a slice of bread that makes it so comfortingly delicious?
I gave my love a cherry that had no stone; he said “Thanks, babe”, left me, patented the stoneless cherry and made a fortune off of my idea.
Some things cannot be hurried, and by “some things” I mean financial aid offices and apartment hunting.
I just received a text on my phone, replied by email from my PC and followed up in the Scrinechat box… and somehow that seemed perfectly natural.
This afternoon I discovered that a) I had completely forgotten that I had made plans with a friend tomorrow, plans that had taken us a few weeks to make thanks to schedule conflicts, b) I had promised to bring her a cake the next time we saw each other, and c) for all that I swan about insufferably vis a vis my baking cred, it is possible for me to have a moment of “oh, hell, I have to bake a cake tonight!” panic.
It is indescribably satisfying to clean out old papers and throw them away; it is positively orgasmically satisfying to light a match and watch the whole desk go up in flames.
Her perpetually singed eyebrows, Gertrude explained to her bewildered Preschool class, were due to the fact that living life was like carrying around a grenade with a faulty timer - you walk along content and happy until it blows up in your face and makes a mess of things; she left out the part about limbs being held on with Velcro, that was a lesson they would learn all too soon, and she wanted them to enjoy the illusion of finger paints and afternoon naps while they could.
Eventually the air was so thick with cellphone signals that birds had to take turns flying.
Every drop of sweat from when you exercise makes Jesus weep with joy.
I generally tend to be a technology embracer - if it’s new, and it’s fun, I want it; however, Office 2007 is without a doubt the most confusing, ill-advised software release since Godzilla decided he needed to implant RFID tags in humans.
“So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.” [Bill Gates, c2003]
Dear Self: When your email indicator goes off, and the resultant email is not a reply from the financial aid office to your increasingly edgy messages, but rather an e-newsletter from the nice little pickle company whose pickles you like so much, it’s not Nice Little Pickle Company’s fault that Financial Aid Office isn’t writing back, so maybe you should refrain from hollering “f*** you and your f****ing pickled f***ing ramps!” and just calm down already, you big pottymouthed baby; Yours, etc., Bakerina.
There’s good stress and there’s bad stress…and then there’s the stress which makes you contemplate the margarita you will be drinking four hours from now with impatience and dread, rather than the happy anticipation with which margaritas should fill you: that, dear friends, is Beyond Bad Stress.
No matter how hard she tried to control herself, Tammy just couldn’t stop the twitch in her right eye that flared up every time she saw a billboard with a grammatical or typographical error.
While I enjoy being a member of the 300-club, I have to say I still don’t understand the significance of the ceremonial goat at the initiation procedures…ooops did I spill too much?
I’m not quite sure how to interpret the car that came careening across the highway and missed my back bumper by at least 18 inches on its way to smashing into the center divider at 70 mph this morning.
You might have offended someone when this shows up in your yard; the corollary to this is that I’d like to send some people I know this very package.
Rufus thought that society only functioned when accompanied by a clear and precise set of laws, but my friend Schuster thought that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard, and reminded Rufus that while the laws were put in place to protect people, they only really applied to the idiots stupid enough to get caught.
the new job is actually going quite swimmingly; there are soda fountains and popcorn machines on every floor and I’m already mucking around in the payroll database; what more could I want?
Seriously, they aren’t my fault.
Sure my friend feels happier, what with her anti-depressants, and she has a boy to feel happy about, but one can’t help but wonder if she’s dropping off the deep end with her tattoos, drugs, and alcohol.
that will break out at random moments to say: “it’s 9:30 pm, let’s make brownies!!”
Sometimes, the only important question is WHY?!
Superman’s got his kryptonite; JadedBeauty’s got Goldschlagger.
that something so small can be the straw that breaks your camel.
Having managed to escape the ‘burbs, Grud scrambled madly through the thickly populated forest of social networks looking desperately around for her friends - some who she hadn’t seen for nigh on 6 months.
Elves Without Borders has been spinning words into yarn for as long as anyone can remember, and certainly long before the invention of the comma or period.
When the chief walks by the swimming pool, the tiny little girls now recognize him and cheer; sure he could crouch down low and take off flying into the sky, showing off some real super powers, but they are young and innocent, and simply knowing that he knows how to unplug a toilet is all the heroics their young minds can handle for the moment.
As inspired by: Here goes nothing...
Well, I suppose the worst that could happen is the apocalypse, but at least there’d be pretty horsies involved, and nothing takes the edge off of the end times like pretty horsies.
“Amy Winehouse, from one non-religious person to another: you need to find Jesus.”
Maybe I’ll just sit here all day and write comments.
Somewhere in the world is a bowl of rice vermicelli studded with pork, scrambled eggs, chicken, vegetables and diced egg roll with my name on it; unfortunately, that bowl of rice vermicelli is over 300 miles from where I’m sitting now.
Should it really be this hard to borrow $20,000 from the federal government?
On one hand my suicidal ideation will be more manageble, but on the other hand - impotence.
Unfortunately the water service to my building was shut off for repairs just as last night’s Mexican entree was making a timely exit from my body.
The chief knew that one day all 200 toilets would join together in song, and that while the music itself would be a touching tribute, the stench of the toilet chorus’ breath would most likely ruin the concert for anyone who happened to be listening.
As inspired by: This dude
“Why I love Wikipedia: ‘When invigorated by spinach, Popeye can lift or press about 36 tons. [citation needed]’.
My own web of words, woolly though they be.
“Passion fruit is edible, but seedy: It can be used to make jelly, but its best usage may come from being a food source for several species of butterfly and their larvae.”
the brush has thickened, the path is overgrown, the buttons are unfamiliar, and the memories have long since been covered; but deep down a part of Scrine still feels like home to a weary wanderer such as me.
“socks spun from the words of someone like Boot”
Possibly the only contemporary artist I have time for is Louise Bourgeois, on two counts: firstly, her work ‘maman’ (do a web-search, admire, consider what ‘maman’ means in French, look again); and secondly, because at age ninety-something, she still does critique (in the harshest possible sense) sessions of up-and-coming hopefuls at her home.
The Social Anxiety Support Group had only one member show up, and she came drunk.
A bundle had been moved away, stored far out of her reach, still for her, still part of her, but making her feel far, far less of herself than ever before.
Would anyone really name his child Pretoria Posey; only if I expected her to attend Hogwarts academy to be a wizard.
‘Tis the season for my idyllic little campus to be infested with tomorrow’s leaders attending camps involving soccer, field hockey, Baptists(!), reading, basketball, and evidently some strange effort in origami education that leaves me both frightened and confused, but the most affecting camp has to be that of junior high and high school cheerleaders, whose endless pep and high-decibel enthusiasm permeate every building and cause dogs surrounding the campus to fling themselves into traffic.
If there is a footprint in your bathroom that appears to be mashed into feces and you call in the chief for repairs, you should be prepared to be unceremoniously put out of your misery.
Thank god for Diet Coke (in copius quantities).
woke up this morning in a significant state of buyer’s remorse, and i didn’t even buy anything!
she couldn’t accomplish the only thing that would allow her to be sane, for he…was there in every way shape and form; he was there.
Tiny little girls will sit at the door, eat snacks and giggle while the chief plunges the toilet, oblivious to the awesome plugging power of toilet paper.
It always never fails.
“You call *that* a first-aid kit,” growled Kate after the head of Personnel gestured to the large red and white box bolted to the wall, “There isn’t a single damn Snickers bar in there, and certainly no pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream… first-aid kit, my ass!”
From the moment this piece of sculpture first spoke to him, Juan began to plot how he was going to pull one of those action-movie-type, through the laser-security system, black-suited ninja, art-gallery heists so he could possess (or be possessed by) the object of his desire.
Einstein didn’t care much for the metaphysics of Sartre and said so to the bus driver as he was riding home from the library, but Schrödinger’s cat found it great fun to imagine that the city bus could just as easily be a crocodile floating languidly down a river much to the dawning horror of the riders.
Broadcasting from a different, secret location every night, the pirate radio station played Arlo Guthrie and Beck, pausing between songs to let its listeners read out one lone sentence at a time.
Sunday afternoon I saw several illicit deals go down in the Park’n'Ride lot, but mine was the only one that involved a Chevy blazer pulling up behind a Dodge caravan and the quick and slightly furtive exchange of a toilet.
If you’re going to sell me an 18-pound flat of bing cherries for $12, I’m going to eat a lot of cherries.
As Bronwyn relaxed in her seat, 27,000 feet over Pennsylvania, she looked out at the clouds, felt the plane shake gently and thought, no worries here!; a moment later she nearly lost her cool as a tentative voice said, nervously, over the loudspeaker, “uhhhh…everybody?...is this thing on?...can everybody hear me?,” but happily, her cool was regained as the voice continued on: “Gina, I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy, so…”
Bronwyn has a tip for all you traveling chowhounds: That nifty molcajete you picked up for a song in the Strip District will show up on airport security x-rays as a crystal; the TSA folks will be really pissed off if they think you’re trying to sneak a crystal on board, and if you try to put your hand out to keep your bag from falling over and your chocolates from smashing as the TSA folks unpack it, you are in for a world of blunt language.
i forget what it’s like typing on a real keyboard (see? words!) looking at the big flat monitor on the real computer in the study… except….well, it’s circa 2004 and not a lot of capacity…hmmm…wonder how much a new cpu would cost to plug into this setup….. hmmm (sigh)
Juan couldn’t decide if the worst part of turning into his father was the hair in his ears or the grey chest hair.
This is why I drink.
Oooooooh, I’m signing my life away
Lookin’ for a better way, for me
Oooooooh, I’m signing my life away
Lookin’ for a sunny day
Just when the world seems all grey and dreary something comes along to remind you the world’s a fun and funny place.
She had the library of congress classification letters memorized down to the smallest subcategory; and furthermore, she could snap the necks of undergraduates like twigs.
I’m going to get rich inventing a machine, or perhaps a drug, that guarantees your nights will be dream free.
Now George Carlin; who is going to utter all 7 forbidden words to our political foes?
VanEck was less “left questioning man’s desire to construct a god in the absence of one”, and more appalled that some three million euros of tax-payers’ money had gone into purchasing a giant, eight-legged, paint-splashed couch.
I love travelling: it reminds me that I have a soul (still here, usually bleeding).
innies - Mother Nature made you a change pocket for when you’re streaking and need to make a phone call; outies - you’re just SOL.
rich, creamy, and chocolatey; my bathtub has never looked so good.
i like airplanes; they are best when folded out of credit card bills and lit on fire before they sail across the room.
Professional Tone Lowerer, yup, that’s me.
The labels on the jars marked Summer, Spring, Winter and Autumn were one thing, but it worried Beth that Winter seemed to have icicles on it and Summer smelled vaguely of pickles and sweat.
I’ve heard all sorts of sayings that concern dramatic events happening around dimes, but I can’t say I’ve actually ever seen one happen.
My duties sometimes involve acting polite and official, but I’m also allowed to swear gently if plunging a difficult toilet.
Larry always kept a snowball in his freezer, hoping to amaze his friends when the weather turned 100 degrees; unfortunately, it always turned to solid ice and stuck to the bottom of the freezer, and no amount of prying with a knife would extract it.
Mayor Truddle always wore the official mayor’s top hat whenever he made his rounds, which he perfunctorily performed every Sunday morning at 7 a.m., rain or shine; “But not on windy Sunday’s,” he was quick to point out, “on account of the hat.”
anonymity is the last great luxury of our times.
“Think of it like one of your $100 fingernails,” Henry told his wife, “except instead of acetate to remove the old broken parts, my heart requires something distilled in Kentucky with a bit more bite to it.”
Girls are far less likely to dunk each other, splash, run, cannonball off the diving board onto their friends and generally drown than boys.
Geoff gave his troops a final, desultory glance figuring his rosemary was seasoned and stood some chance of holding the line but, the basil, the parsley, they were too green and he knew they had no hope of surviving in this place where the enemy literally sprang up out of the ground.
As I packed sunscreen and mosquito repellent in my daughter’s suitcase for camp, she remarked she really hoped she’d get her first kiss next week; suddenly I was tempted to take my grocery list and write down “boy repellent”.
It’ll be a million degrees today, hot enough to melt clocks.
Upon arrival at my hostess’s house in Pittsburgh at 10:30 on Thursday morning, her tenant greeted me with: “I’ve fired up the grill; would you like a steak, and if so, would you like a beer with your steak?”; at that moment I knew I had made the best vacation choice in the world.
Sometimes, it’s about a big ol’ chair, sometimes a giant mug of hot chocolate, but sometimes nothing matches the company of good friends.
The raging tempest never quite arrived, but was always coming, always near, just around the corner, breathing like a live thing.
“Can I put my meat in the rear of your unit?”
When ordering at the local gay pastry shop it is best to stay away from the sticky buns.
Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for.
Muriel’s etiquette books had never taught her what sort of gift to give the man who didn’t want gifts because he felt he was too cash-strapped to ever reciprocate.
Coworkers enjoyed their morning break with Patsy because they could gripe to her for 15 solid minutes, interruption-free; all Patsy cared was that they bought her coffee and ignored it when she turned down her hearing aid.
I hope your first day of Summer sets the tone for an amazing season, and that you don’t sunburn your feet, because it hurts.
I stared out the window into the looming dusk with the one-word query of ‘Why’ jogging through my head on repeat, when suddenly the fax machine sprang to life and a piece of paper came through with the disheartening answer, ‘You already know why’.
She was so exceptional at playing devil’s advocate to her own thought processes, that the devil himself felt that his presence was unnecessary; she was already doing his job so well, that he was tempted to start sending her a paycheck every couple weeks for ‘services rendered’.
He felt like a walking Library of Contradictions, in that each time he looked in the mirror it was as if he were staring at a card catalog detailing all of his neuroses that together constituted every poor decision he’d ever made.
I have half a cake, and for some reason feel compelled to eat it too.
Mr. Bacon cleverly addressed Monsieur Tofu as he struggled against his restraints - “Do you expect me to talk?”- he inquired sardonically, chuckling to himself, but Monsieur Bacon just looked him in the eyes - his own eyes black and emotionless - as he said, “No Mr. Bacon, I expect you to die.”
If you’re in the market for a fresh new baby, I can hook you up, my preceptorship in the Mother and Baby Unit starts next Thursday.
“Well,” The Amazing James sighed as they took him away in handcuffs, “I’m just glad you didn’t arrest me for a failure to DISappear, as it’s much easier to conjure oneself from the ether than it is to disapparate.”
Upon waking this morning I discoverd that I had died during the night, but as I looked at my peaked face in the mirror I wondered if a ghost could have an actual reflection or sleepy dirt in the corner of his eyes.
My motivation level has gone from ‘Warp 8’ in May to ‘Deceased’ in June, and while it’s not necessarily a bad thing to wile away the hours conversing ‘mongst the flowers regarding love and art, there are things that I probably should be doing, though I’m finding it impossible to actually do anything at the moment.
Most afternoons, Fender could usually work in a micronap at his temp job; the coworkers who noticed seemed to assume he was just deep in thought, despite the nature of a copy boy’s job.
When Helmut von Glockenspeil woke this morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed into a huge gurken, and he could see the large bumps and ridges that made up his body as he lay glistening on brine soaked sheets.
A tiny Buddha had settled himself on top of my cell phone, not because he wanted to teach me patience, but because he loved the vibrate function.
Working only two days a week has allowed me to see exactly what my pets do all day: Stage epic battles against each other, using my furniture, shoes, and other random items as weapons.
Henry was just as surprised as his wife when the baby cried out, “Ode Byrd, Ode Byrd!”
i swear, the npr woman just announced that piece as “youtube, joy of man’s desiring,” didn’t she?
i read somehere recent (here? where?) that it takes a full three weeks before teachers fullly relax into the life-rhythms of a summer break and i am glad for it as here begins week three.
Does wanting to stab your ex repeatedly with pointy sharp objects (like oh, say knitting needles) ever really go away, or does it just fade to the back of your consciousness to rear its ugly head when the jerk intrudes upon your new life?
This task would be much easier if I had a helicopter at my disposal.
The ghost of Mae West keeps flirting with me at breakfast, but not once has she offered to butter my toast.
Cows have been tipping ever since the day they discovered the refreshing taste of cold beer.