THAT'S THAT MATTRESS MAN

The job I’ve been working at the Michener Center will be through on Monday. So of course I have donned the ole sandwich board with front and back that read: “Will Work For: Rent, Utilities, Groceries, Occasional Dvd’s or Cd’s, Etc.”

I applied for a job called “EDITOR I” on the job board at the University. And because this is a professional-type grownup-type job, I had to appear in person and drop off a paper letter of interest, resume, and professional references. The building, in which I would be working, is at the base of the notorious tower where Charles Joseph Whitman famously perched with a rifle and shot 14 people to death and injured 32 others. The building smells of post office and is, I would posit, inherently boring in every way that it is possible for a place to be boring. Walking through its old-smelling/post-office-smelling lobby, I found myself aimless in a throng of purposeful, deliberate students, each one walking with important dissertations in hand without any shred of doubt in their gait while I doddered from place to place, reading signs and failing to work up courage to ask directions to the correct office.

Eventually, I found my way to the boring command center that I hoped to some day work in. It is called “REGISTRAR”. I was at the end of a long line snaking out the door The woman standing directly in front of me was holding a document that looked an awful lot like mine. She was paging through to make sure all was in order.  A finely paper-clipped wad of documents (1. Letter of Interest 2. Resume 3. Professional References). She approached the front desk and spoke, clarifying that she was in fact applying for the same job I am wanting.

So I immediately began comparing myself to this woman, judging her clothing against mine, her professional, boring gait against my indecisive, insecurely jocular one. I evaluated the both of us, placing us side-by-side and bringing down harsh judgment just as the woman in the hiring department is most likely doing just as I type this. Who has more experience with Microsoft Word? Who has won more Intramural Medals? Who has the most comprehensive Itunes? Who would suit better as a sexual bargaining chip for amongst high-powered managerial types involved in a power struggle? Etc. Of course, I realize that I have about as good a perspective on her and I do on myself. That is to say, I probably know my own outward appearance as well as I do a woman of whom I have seen only the back of the head and heard one uttered incomplete sentence. (The Incomplete Sentence is one strike against her.)

But I assume the woman is going to get the job instead of me anyway. She, and I say this with the most objectivity I can possibly muster, is far more boring than I and therefore a superior candidate for the job. Only those with natural dullness are fit to work in places wherein it smells of post-office. The candidate is meant to be boring and work amongst the boring paper smell and then eventually snap under the pressure of their own boredom. I have foreseen this boring woman turn her boringness inside out and perch with a rifle atop the main building at the University of Texas, assuming the posture of Charles Joseph Whitman. HIRE ME REGISTRAR. I WILL NOT CRACK UNDER THE PRESSURE.

HOME IMPROVEMENT

I.
Before Christmas time, I flew on an airplane via Chicago back to Pennsylvania, sitting next to an Indian woman and the toddler-aged girl she possessed. At the outset of our flight, I intuited that neither woman nor baby could speak English all that comprehensively. The mother sat on the aisle and I sat near the window, wailing baby between us. The mother would apologize each time her little girl woke me, nudging my arm, trying to give me gifts like her mother’s IPhone or a wad of twenty’s from her mother’s wallet or some distinctly Indian snacks from her mother’s purse. The mother, remaining jocularly embarrassed and flabbergast through the entire duration of the flight, would look at me and say, “Sorry Guy’s!”, pluralizing me with her Indian accent. Then when her baby could not stop laughing and applauding as she flipped the overhead lights on and off, the mother would exclaim, “Oh My Goodness!”, laughing and smiling at me as if to say of her daughter, “Can you believe this woman?!”

Chicago from my bird’s eye view was an intricate design of snow-covered yards lit by the dull Christmas lights that covered the perimeter of each house. Overhead, Christmas-neighborhoods just look like dark squares outlined in gold and colored glitter. My flight was heavily delayed so I naturally imaged being stuck in Chicago and meeting up with the Obama’s, their flight having been delayed or maybe even cancled as well.
“Why don’t you just come and stay with us tonight? Your flight will probably be delayed through next week.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly. I’ll just sleep here in the airport using a bag of Au Bon Pan trash as a pillow.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t hear of it! You’ll come with us. Actually, since I’m going to be president soon I was given a special/secret DVD of the season premiere of Lost. We were going to watch that and probably get Thai take-out tonight anyway. Since our flight is delayed as well.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Never you mind imposing! Also: I, President-Elect Obama, have noticed that you have a kind face. Would you want to be offered a high-paying cabinet position where you get to live in the white-house and sit in a room and write stories and draw pictures all day and have no responsibilities or utility bills to pay?”

I stepped off my first flight at 10:08 and my connecting flight was leaving at 10:10. I stepped onto the plane just in the nick of time only to sit on the frozen runway for an hour while a crew of workers deiced the wings. This was a two-step process I will now describe:
1) A man wearing a mask (you can imagine what variety) sits in an official American Airlines cherry picker holding an unwieldy hose, spraying piping hot steam onto the frozen flanks of the plane.
2) Same man sprays plane with a substance not unlike coagulated mountain dew onto the freshly steamed flanks.

II.
After landing I spent about three days in New York, living as I did in the summer, working for Keith and staying with Lauren. This was good fun except for the cold. I was able to work with Willy again, the man from Grenada who, last summer, would sing improvised R&B love songs to himself like, “Girl… you are so Beautiful… I would commit suicide for you…” 
Except now he sang Christmas songs, muddling and conjoining mangled favorites, yielding results like, “Here comes Santa clause, it’s good outside, baby. Happy and bright. Singin’ tonight. Walkin’ in the weather of the land…”
Later he said, “Billy-boy! We gotta lift that goddamn tub? Fuckin’ bullshit, what I say…” Then we counted, One, Two, Three, and hoisted a cumbersome bathtub onto a very high shelf.

III.

Christmas-time itself was the same as it ever was, every other Christmas before that, except now toys, DVD’s and computer games are now displaced by items of necessity. These are harsh wintry times. Times where you do not get, “ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY COMPLETE DVD BOX SET”, but rather, “1 METRIC TON OF BROWN BASMATI RICE”.
Here is an example which undoes the previous example that professed my poverty: My sister and I spent the contiguous days of Christmas watching a marathon of the television show, “HOUSE” on our parent’s bus-sized television.
Also: I saw Mike, Scott, Abbey, Matt; which was especially great. I got a great book from Bonnie, which was also especially great.


IV.

Lauren came back to Austin with me and we spent New Year’s Eve laying around at Josh Harris’ house in Super South Austin, watching the following bloody things:
1) Battle Royal II: Japanese school children massacring one another. Heads exploding with geysers of blood, etc.
2) True Blood: A vampire related television series on HBO that is about two increments too much for my edginess threshold. There are elongated sex/murder scenes involving gallons of blood/boobs. I would describe the sex on this television show as “Hard Core Fucking”.
3) Inglorious Bastards: Bad war film Quentin Tarantino is apparently remaking with an all-female cast. It was retitled and resold at a black exploitation film in the 70’s as “G.I. Bro”.

V.

Lauren and I were both sick with an ailment that evidently strikes a lot of people down here called “Cedar Fever”.

VI.

I had an idea that there should be a new kind of police officer not unlike those on horses and bicycles. These police officers will be on stilts. They will specialize in catching especially tall criminals and intimidating short/normal-sized criminals into confessing.