Worm Journalism

June 4, 2012 Leave a comment

(note: this was written in 2007, I think. Somehow I got the phrase “worm journalism” stuck in my head. I think I initially imagined the phrase to mean a specific way of writing or some sort of way of going about being a journalist, but I didn’t ever solidify a meaning related to the mechanics of writing. This piece resulted from me still wanting to use that phrase, and I was pretty proud of myself for what I came up with. A few years later, I entered it for inclusion in a book put out by a local writers’ group. I added some more to it but it got needlessly complex. I like the brevity of the original piece, as it drops this strange image and considers it for a little while before leaving it to linger in your brain (I think…?). ) 

                The other day, when walking down the sidewalk, I happened across some folded pieces of paper stuck on the curb, fluttering in the breeze. My curiosity got the best of me, so I proceeded to pick them up. The lot of them was no bigger than the palm of my hand, and although the print was miniscule, I had no problem reading it with unaided eyes.

                The papers were folded in half from bottom to top, like a book, a sharp crease holding the pages in order, and then folded in half again perpendicularly, suggesting someone had folded them on his or her own accord, and not in the same manner as the one who put them together.

                It was plain to see, judging from the photos and text, that this was a worms’ newspaper. Having never read one before, I was at first taken with the similarities to our own newspapers, but then understood that this was a foolish assumption – why wouldn’t what’s important in worms’ lives be reported, organized, and distributed in the same manner?

                I made another quickly-corrected observation regarding the worms’ manner of writing. They used an alphabet that was exactly like an alphabet one would think would be utilized by worms – the words and characters were billowy and curvy, looping and grandiose in their arches. It also possessed an aesthetic quality similar to that of writing with a stick in a pool of oil – somewhat streaky in parts but retaining a delicate and ephemeral beauty. Though I was unschooled in the language of the worms, I found that I could read what they were communicating with no difficulty. The pictures accentuated the text instead of helping to define it for me or guide me through it. The newspaper was the current day’s issue, and I read it to see what was occurring under my feet.

                Like most bulletins aimed at community awareness, the inside of the front page contained information and public service announcements concerning the dwellings of communities of worms – where humans were going to be building new buildings, where various works were going to be taking place, and other similarly important goings-on. At the top of this page, there was a list of generic help-tips for relocating one’s community (for example, how much depth one should allow for the basement and supports of a human structure, how to keep track of belongings on the go, etc.), which, judging by the tone, all seemed to be common knowledge, but, just like warning or instructional labels are put on the most basic of items, these tips were always printed for quick reference or reassurance.

                There was an article (which I assumed to be the day’s installment of an ongoing series) about worldwide worm varieties of chewing and processing food, my word ‘chewing’ being an approximation of what I assumed to be the equivalent action in humans. I postulated (and still feel comfortable with my theory) that this was part of a series because of the relevance of the information; it seemed that information as revolutionary as suggesting changes to what must be timeless methods of eating (to the worms of this area, at least) or even reporting that other methods actually exist wouldn’t be presented as nonchalant as it was here – one would probably have to be gradually introduced to such an idea to pay it any mind. The article did detail eating backwards, but like humans, I would think (again, merely an assumption) that the masses aren’t keen to change their evolutionarily refined functionality. Then again, maybe the article is simply a recipe, and my interpretation of the cries for readers to realign their eating habits is reading too much into the author’s intention, as eating the opposite way may simply award different taste sensations than those that come from eating forward.

                In the Opinion section, I saw a reprint of what was evidently a rude cartoon the paper had previously published, apparently reprinted to refresh the reader’s memory because it was surrounded by numerous letters of complaint and an apology by the newspaper’s publisher for exhibiting such crudity. Unfortunately, its meaning, or at least the deeper meanings that one could only understand through a familiarity with worms’ customs and mores, was a bit over my head, as I wasn’t quite sure as to why the cartoon was so rude or why its apparent crassness warranted so many demands for apology.

                A number of things struck me upon reading the apology and the readers’ angry letters: 1) as was mentioned before, I could only appreciate the cartoon superficially, but I still thought the drawing of a smiling worm with its tail in its mouth with the caption “Looks like he’s got his mouth full!” printed below was funny. Perhaps this is some sort of taboo act for the worms; if this is the case and even a cartoon of its practice is outrageous, it makes the newspaper’s decision to print it again instead of just the apologies and unhappy letters-to-the-editor hilarious in itself. 2) Thus, I felt that showing the offending article again right next to an apology for it shone a different light on what the newspaper’s ostensibly apologetic intentions may have been – was the cartoon printed alongside the apologies as a deliberate mockery to those offended? Was it a sly dig at how they took offense? And 3), whatever the occasion may be, I still marveled at the fluidity and hypnotic beauty of the writing-in-oil appearance of their alphabet. Visually, it reminded me so much of oil that little streams of the viscous liquid seemed to dance through the folds and creases in my brain, leaving a little trail of residue so that I would remember what I had read and keep appreciating the language after the fact. I could see this particular ink leaping like squirts from a mechanized inkwell onto the paper; this, of course, wasn’t likely the manner by which the newspaper was printed, but the playful nature of the vision complemented my enjoyment of the language.

                The emotion wasn’t just apparent in the language used but in the physical way it was written as well. The anger of the offended letters caused the writing to lean towards the right, be a bit neater, and have an almost imperceptible sharpness to its curves, as opposed to different emotions which affected different degrees and directions of slanting – the writing of a well-wishing birthday notice and an ad announcing a big sale leaned to the left and was a bit looser in the way that the angry emotions were a bit tighter. The straight-forward tone of articles whose purpose was to report the news utilized a natural, vertical, essentially neutral posture, and the cartoon’s caption was totally erratic, with larger, loopier curves on some of its words and compact, clean, cutting curves on a another. The line of the caption itself sloped fifteen degrees down and to the right, which, coupled with the writing, suggested the laughter with which one told it or the uncontrollable, joyously anxious urge to see the recipient laugh.

                There were a few other complexities to the writing which I couldn’t really translate into an equivalent example of human speech. The “voice” used in advertisements and in wanted ads, for example, was entirely specific to selling or looking for something. I can’t think of a way to explain how these ways of expression work other than by saying that these subtleties are exhibited similar to, when asking a question, the voice raises its pitch at the end of the interrogative sentence. This isn’t to say that this is the only or the most difficult element of expression – the worms’ written language seems to have its own “voice” for every occasion, so much so that despite understanding what I was reading, I couldn’t figure out why things that I perceived to be more or less similar in intent needed some different curvature than another.

                Reading on, I was struck by the relatively detached emotions exhibited by the Obituaries. The list of recently deceased was extremely long, and didn’t contain any information about their lives, accomplishments, and families like one would expect to find in humans’ newspaper obituaries. After a few pangs of sadness, I realized what was likely the case: I theorized that although their capacity for and outpouring of grief was no less than our own, the sheer magnitude of the dead logistically prevented even the most brief individual biography, and as to not award favor to one worm or another, nobody was allowed them. I also ruminated over the length of the obituary section – was it always this long, or was it due to the recent rains? What were they like during the winter? What about the onset of spring, because of the rain and fishing season? The weeks when schools dissected worms? What was the chance of a worm surviving to die a natural death?

                My curiosity to know the answers to these questions was great, but I also understood that the small glimpse I had into the worms’ waking lives was tremendously pleasurable and educational. I could leave them the dignity of their death and spare any intrusion into what was probably just as solemn an occasion for them as it was for us. How the newspaper got to the surface was anyone’s guess, and whether they intended a human to read it and relish its advice, laugh at its comics, or peruse its advertisements demands further rumination. Anything that awards such a sense of innocent delight and the appreciation of something previously unknown probably wouldn’t anger whoever left their newspaper behind, even if it did fall into unintended hands. As such, I set the paper back down a few paces from where I had found it (for this was all I managed to walk while reading), though I buried in a bit more mud than before in hopes that someone below would have a use for it. And, I must admit in my selfishness, I buried it in an attempt to keep the discoveries I had been privy to as my own, for having a passerby diluting my the worms and their newspaper’s majesty by scoffing at what I had found so enthralling, or another using what he thought were mere scraps of trash to wipe off his shoe would certainly be an unwanted and unfitting end to my experience.

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I Have a Bad Thing to Say to You!

May 16, 2012 Leave a comment

I’ve got a thing to say to you! A Bad Thing to say to you! A bad thing that my brain is having trouble defining the parameters of. Almost indescribably bad, like all bad things combined can’t add up to what I need to tell you. I can’t even choose what comparison would be the best (to describe the worst, in this case). It’s really obnoxious. A total pain in the ass. I would probably want to put off telling you as long as possible because once the conversation starts it will be a total chore to finish. It’s pretty bad. It’s like seeing your clone and not knowing what to say to him even though it would probably be the greatest, coolest experience of your life; like having your worst nightmare every night for a year straight; like your glasses exploding inward right into your eyes; and getting struck by lightning as soon as you get free of jail. It’s like having to go through the process of drawing dry circles all over a piece of paper for ten minutes every single time you need to use a pen; going to get a huge drink of soda through a straw but instead of sucking up pop you inexplicably suck up a bunch of sewing pins; having cold water sprayed on you at intervals only following one man’s cruel whims; like using a word incorrectly in front of people (and everyone knows it’s wrong); being the head of a group or being known for supporting something and being caught doing the opposite; falling off of a swing backwards right onto your back while you’re really high in the air; falling into a state park port-o-pot; fully licking the bottom of a county fair trough-toilet; having all of the fog you experience in your life be giant clouds of steamy piss like that which emanates when you piss in a gross gate toilet; like smelling like a juicy, sun-roasted alley dumpster, but only to the one person you want to love you; being caught off guard and made to look totally uninformed and idiotic on a news program; having one of your kids throw a tantrum in a store and while flailing about kicks you in the crotch in front of everyone; your teeth feeling like there is a dentist’s plaque-pick plucking at them all the time; having all of your conversations on the phone be with a partner who is constantly and distractedly talking to a crowd of friends instead of you; having untrimmable pubic hair in such abundance that it utterly dwarfs whatever it is surrounding; like being a supercomputer and somehow getting a calculation wrong; like throwing up in class every day but every time you throw up its like the first time in terms of surprise and grossness though peoples’ revulsion to you compounds as if you did it every day; someone grabbing a handful of your skin and folding it really hard; having your friends tacitly distrust/disagree with everything you say and every suggestion you make; like running fast and then sliding on your bare skin on a basketball court; having every award you win in your life be only the token ‘everyone has to win something’ sort; being unaware of having one really, really long greasy hair growing out of your shoulder that grosses everyone out; like facing a wall-sized sweaty beer belly and having your head shoved in it belly button and swabbed around, collecting huge pieces of lint on your face while the over-sized oily hairs slop wetly all over your back like seaweed; hitting not your testicles but the soft spot directly underneath the body between your legs on the high crossbar of a bike as you ride down an infinite set of stairs which are broken up by flat road long enough for your to acknowledge the extreme pain before you start bouncing down the steps again; pointing out that someone random looks like someone you know and then having the person you pointed out get really paranoid that you are staring and start screaming at you in some incomprehensible language, and then tries to attack you; always biting down hard on a fork as you try to take a bite. Seriously, it’s completely and totally as bad as feeling compelled to re-smell the gag-inducing contents of food in Tupperware that spoiled in your refrigerator; like thinking you made a fool-proof pact when it was decided that you never had to hear again in your life the song you hate most in the world, but while it’s true that you don’t have to hear the song, anytime it is audible to other people it sounds to you like the worst, loudest, most grating noise in the world; like if every time you said a certain word (like “was,” for example – but you’ll never be able to know what word is the trigger), someone walks up to you and wipes on your cheek a little glob of the white stuff that collects on the corners of your mouth when you talk; like every promise you make to someone will be followed not long thereafter by a desperate desire to get out of it but you can’t because you made a promise; like accidentally really hurting someone who was just playfully sneaking up on you, like smashing them in the face or throwing boiling water on them because you thought they were an intruder; like sneaking up on someone playfully and having the person kick you full force in the groin because they thought you were an intruder; like falling into a pile of something that isn’t overtly gross but the context of falling into it makes the situation really disgusting; like having to take a bath in someone else’s bathwater; like accidently swallowing a full mouthful of toothpaste and spit after vigorously brushing your teeth; like your buried box of secrets and memories and mementos irretrievably rotting away; like being happily married to somebody but being torturously in love with your spouse’s best friend or sibling or someone equivalently inappropriate and unattainable; like driving a car knowing that the airbag is going to deploy unexpectedly sometime while you are driving; like not being held directly responsible for something and are thus technically free from blame but having it known that had you done your job better, less disastrous results would have occurred; like wearing a really ostentatious cardigan and finding out it’s for the wrong holiday (ie Christmas for Halloween); like someone vigorously rubbing a nail file against the spaces between your toes; like the steel toe of a steel-toed boot caving in around your toes; like perceiving everything like it was the most extreme version of whatever it is so your reactions are proportionally intense and you thus are always making everyone uncomfortable with your histrionics and emotion; like every time you go to take a drink from your glass at a bar the guy next to you playing pool jabs his stick into your head accidently as he’s playing the game; the most probable thing to happen happens: your ceremonial opening pitch falls comically short of home plate; or as bad as having your only form of entertainment be listening to other people explain their dreams. Seriously, it’s completely and totally as bad as having everyone for some reason be under the impression that every time they are talking to you, you are sitting on the toilet; like having to ride a motorcycle a long way home in the freezing cold with no gloves, because that is absolutely the only option available to you; having 100% of the toilet seats you go to sit on be covered in drops of urine; eating a sandwich totally over-packed with peanut butter and having only a half-gallon jug of spoiled milk available to help it down, which you have to drink because you have to give an important speech a few moments hence; having to choose between using a razor already clogged with hair every time you have to shave or having your foreskin pulled really hard every morning by someone assigned exclusively to that job; the only way you’re able to feed yourself being a pitchfork for a fork and a shovel for a spoon, even on regular size plates; the only toppings you’ll ever be able to have for waffles are black olives. I don’t know if you really get how bad it is. Seriously. It’s so annoying and so obnoxious and so crummy. It sucks so much. It’s like every day going to sit down in chair and missing and falling down, then getting up and accusing your coworkers of pulling it out from under when nobody actually did, so not only did you fall but you make a fool of yourself by getting fanatically mad for no reason; like being unaware of and painlessly pounding the nail you are hitting into the wall through your hand but having to deal with the pain of pulling it out when you do realize that you did it; being the guy in charge of reversing a snow day after it’s already been called; never being able to enjoy the second day of the weekend because you know it’s bound by the fact that you have to go to work the next day; sort of lucking out: where Saturdays are great because you are immensely relaxed after the work week and even more so because you know you have another day ahead of you, all of your Saturdays feel to you like Sundays, which while cool because you don’t have to work, you can never fully enjoy it because of the nagging reminder you have to work the next day and thus regret staying out late when you do or regret leaving a party early to go to sleep; taking a lifetime to learning all of the instruments in an orchestra so you can exactly express the symphony you have in your head but then having it be considered really boring and uninspired/uninspiring; being the person who constantly makes your friends wait all day to hear from you to confirm plans but who never calls; having to go to bed every night with a random four inch-square area of your body feeling like there is a metal press putting pressure on it; being the guy who invented longer and more frequent commercial breaks into free television programming; getting kicked just square in the privates – directly, powerfully, accurately; walking to your house and seeing some indistinct grey figure appear suddenly in your attic window; having the only spice and condiment you’ll ever be able use again be that flaky orange and brown fish food; like your family’s little rituals and traditions publicly announced and made fun of by all of your classmates; never being able to reach your full potential, not for lack of trying but because life is against you; always being sweaty and having bad breath; being in a perpetual long line with people constantly trying to crowd you; knowing you prematurely found something extremely important to someone else and even though you picked it up in absolute and total innocence it still prevented the most important event in someone’s life from taking place; inadvertently hurting your grandma’s feelings; not being acrobatically-inclined and being forced to do a hand-stand on the edge of the Empire State Building (imagine throwing your legs up and starting to teeter along the edge, not knowing or controlling which way your body will swing itself…); taking the challenge to wear full winter gear for twenty-fours on a hot summer day for $1000 because you want the money but it may not be worth it, but it is $1000 so it is sizeable enough to try to make it but not enough to put up with the discomfort but if you quit you’ll definitely be mad at yourself for forfeiting $1000; having to get your hair cut with a jagged house key; having all of the caricatures you do for people at a company picnic for some reason turn out really offensively; having everyone always think you are selling something; always being plagued by the following scenarios: having the possibility but no condom, popcorn but no oil, an idea but no pen, (etc – more of these ‘this but not that’); being shrunken, sealed in a jar, and forced to fight an angry bee; being totally shamed by someone in public; losing a bet you didn’t think you’d lose and as a result you have to eat cardboard for every meal of the rest of your life; having your mother briefly but at unpredictable intervals take on the appearance of your worst nightmare and as a result you shriek or are totally repulsed by her appearance but your mother doesn’t know what is going on or why you are horrified to see her; like opening a banana and finding that instead of the fruit inside there are thousands of fruit flies tightly compacted that swarm out into your face in an appalling cloud; having every bite of food you take start with the sensation of sticking your tongue on a battery; having the extent of your friendships with people be of the type that they only thing they can think to write in your yearbook is “Stay cool! Don’t ever change!”; falling tiredly and contentedly onto a hay mattress but finding out that it is actually filled with cactus needles on the way down; having your mail dropped in a random different mailbox in your neighborhood every day and having to search for it and retrieve it when you want it (and your neighbors can’t just bring it to you); having someone escort you by walking you really fast by placing a hand on your back every time you want to walk somewhere, like they are quickly escorting you from danger; having the earplugs you are wearing be sucked brutally into your ears due to some extreme change in pressure; only being able to drink cups of other peoples’ spit to sate yourself; having all of the water in the world be turned into milk; like your partner possessing the scary strength of an ape during sex; having to shop at a grocery store that charges lower prices in exchange for the fact that twenty random items per day are secretly infected with salmonella (with the selection of items changing daily); having to blackmail someone you really like; having to pick between one of the following, and you are only allowed to do it and not the other for the rest of your life: read or listen to music; having to run a mile barefoot over a road of small dead birds; having X-Acto knife blades as the part of your glasses that rests on your ears; taking a huge slurp of a thick, nourishing smoothie and having a big stream of ketchup come up your straw; ordering a cup of coffee and pie at a diner and they bring you grape pie, of all things; consenting to the end of your half of a secret handshake being a strong punch in the forehead; like any fart anywhere you are being blamed on you, even if you are completely gas-free; getting caught going through someone’s drawers and cabinets; coughing up a throwing star – you won’t get seriously injured but you will feel the pain of coughing up a throwing star; having a huge bird fly beak-first into your forehead; walking across fresh asphalt and having it dry and seal around your feet; getting a ride to the best place on earth but in order to get there you have to ride on the top of a semi truck on the highway with your face tied down right next to those huge exhaust pipes, and, without fail, always, always, always shitting your pants in public, farting while receiving oral sex, sitting on one of your testicles, having something in your eye, slipping in the shower,  spraining your ankle, prematurely ejaculating, biting your tongue, clogging the toilet, having those little sores on your tongue, using the broken toilet while a guest in someone’s house, pouring a ton of salt on your expensive, mouth-watering steak because the shaker lid was loose, getting hit in the face with a really strong basketball pass, seeing reruns anytime you want to watch a program, spilling sauce on just-pressed pants, burning the special meal you’re making for someone, stepping in shit while wearing the most tread-intricate shoes, sneezing with food in your mouth so that a chunk of food gets itchily stuck in your nose, touching your penis to the inside of a public toilet when you sit down, receiving salads made with brown, wilty, decomposing lettuce, having to use someone else’s toothbrush, having your plans fall through, putting on a coat and having a lower layer’s sleeve bunch up irretrievably and super-annoyingly…always.
            That’s how bad it is.

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A Nice Guy, to a Fault

May 16, 2012 Leave a comment

Roger Feldenkriss is the quintessential nice guy, happily indulging his desire to see other people comfortable and to have any small slight rectified as pleasantly as possible. He is a person who maintains a perpetual buoyancy, as if his existence necessitates repeated acts of kindness as fuel to keep itself going. His benevolence comes naturally and his unending quest for goodness is an undertaking pursued without his conscious choice. There is no higher calling to which he adheres or that he can claim inspires him; the only way to consider his actions in relation to a higher power is to imagine that before conception, before the thought of conception, even, his essence, already noble, was floating unattached and waiting to be placed into a body, and when that time came, it would carry out its noble and celestially predetermined duty. But musings of this theosophical sort are irrelevant – the fact of the matter is that Roger is by disposition inclined to be helpful, and that is truly all the characterization he needs.

From as early on in his life as anyone can remember, he has been trying to lift the burdens of others though kind gestures, like the times he helped a neighbor paint a fence, assisted someone from a train, or carried out a bag of stinky garbage for an already overworked busboy. While not the most original gestures they at least satisfied his modest largesse, not to mention garnering the appreciation of those he was helping. As he got older, he didn’t feel pressured to increase the magnitude of his deeds (again, they were not viewed like “points” he could earn) but he would tirelessly expend the energy required until a deed was done. It was as if his body acted unconsciously, for every good thing he did came naturally. And so, when he thought it appropriate, for example, to grab someone’s wallet from their hands and without looking hurl it into the street, it was just as natural an act of goodwill as holding the door open for the person walking behind you. But why throw someone’s wallet into the street? The act, in a manner of speaking, was symbolic, though its physical message was clear enough; the ridiculous notion that a friend would pay for a meal out of turn was made literally impossible by making the wallet physically unreachable (and furthermore soggy from being lobbed into a puddle).

Seemingly oblivious to the boundary between the gracious assumption of a bill and the irreparable damage to a friend’s belongings, Roger operated under the belief that everyday gestures of kindness are the most basic ways to cure the unfriendliness of the world. Similar gestures included roughly shoving people to safety before they stepped in dog waste, slamming a car door and re-opening it for a startled passenger whose fingers were almost clipped off in the process, and through making the controversial statement in casual conversation that he would have immediately helped Jesus down from his agonizing position on the cross, not realizing that doing so would have negated the alleged miracle and entirely prevented the Christian story from developing. It did eventually come to light thanks to the subject being delicately broached by some of his friends that he was at times a bit overzealous (“to say the least,” one friend said while caressing a bruise) and that perhaps his intentions could be carried out in a slightly less intrusive way. Roger didn’t waste much time brooding over the criticism; he was by disposition willing to listen to his friends’ critiques regardless of how his feelings may potentially be hurt (and if they were, the slight was forgotten very quickly, likely usurped by the creative industry with which his brain soon buzzed, thinking as he immediately did about how to rectify the slight). He understood that it wasn’t his presence that his friends were maligning but that the unannounced nature of his charity could be a little startling.

“Hmmmm,” he thought, because therein lay both the problem and solution: as he couldn’t be available one hundred percent of the time to act when his politeness might be required, when he did get the chance to help, it was like he was suddenly let loose to do so. What he could do, however, was make it so that his friends – or anyone else, for that matter – could harness his help when it was needed, as it was needed. Good deeds on demand…He couldn’t make portable copies of himself but he could make some small machines that could do the work for him! And so, extremely excited by the revelation, he got to work inventing.

One of his first inventions was called the ‘Payment Assumer,’ and its purpose is as blunt as the surprising smash to the foot it delivers. The Payment Assumer gives a decisive answer to the obligatory postprandial argument about who among friends or family pays the dinner bill: it is a retractable weight hidden in a coat sleeve that can be ejected onto someone’s foot in order to distract him or her from paying for dinner. The recipient of the blow is so confused by the sudden pain that he will be quite unable to focus on the matter of the bill, leaving whoever used the invention free to pay as he or she intended. However, its use had to be carefully planned because it can’t very well be used in a well-lit restaurant – a dark room is necessary to disguise the fact that one friend has willingly smashed another’s foot.

Another invention was the “Clock Deceiver,” a sound-activated plunger that presses an alarm clock’s ‘snooze’ button as soon as the alarm sounds. This permits a sounder sleep by alleviating the sleeper’s responsibility to roll over and press the button herself. [The initial version was stuck to the clock with an adhesive foot but was subsequently improved with the addition of extendable legs, for a sturdier quadrupedal Clock Deceiver that won’t fall over when you knock it with a sleepy gesture.] However, to allow the sleeper the unexpected and thus more refreshing sleep, the device has to be put into position by someone other than the sleeper. And this unfortunately calls the genius of the invention into question – if the sleeper set an alarm it is usually for a reason, and the amount of post-alarm ‘snoozing’ is only that which the sleeper can budget. Like many well-intentioned acts, meddling in someone’s affairs often corrupts the beneficiary’s intentions (in this case, getting somewhere on time), not to mention possibly providing the incalculably creepy scenario of waking up in middle of the night to see not only a person lurking next to your bed but positioning a little machine on your bedside table.

A third invention is a computer program called the ‘Credit Taker.’ Although the name may lead you to believe otherwise, the program doesn’t have anything to do with facilitating underhanded financial acquisitions, though, regarding the theme of money, if you’ll permit a short digression, a friend suggested to Roger that if he was really looking to be kind, random monetary gifts to friends may be of better use than quaint acts of neighborliness. Roger just laughed at what he thought was a joke and answered that while giving gifts is a nice gesture, there is an ‘expected’ quality to it that makes it seem somewhat theatrical and insincere. Anyway, the ‘credit taker’ bestows the responsibility of a job well done onto someone else – once the program is uploaded into a computer network, it changes records so that credit for work is transferred to the person who installed the program. Needless to say, taking others’ credit is not very nice, and thus, by design, the program only transfers credit for work the humble inventor did himself. In fact, the credit for this very invention was itself given to someone else, though because I am an intimate friend of its true inventor, I am quietly able to impart to you the truth of its origin.

Similar to the credit-taking function of the last invention though for the opposite reason, Roger was constantly taking responsibility for a number of the minor infractions that plague day-to-day life. For example, if he rounds a corner with sufficient berth but another pedestrian doesn’t take the same precaution and collides with him, Roger will immediately collect himself and the other person (and his or her things, should the accident have been particularly explosive) and apologize profusely for not taking into account the blind-spot the corner of a building creates. Despite knowing he was free from guilt, his apologies are so heart-felt that the offending person is always pacified – even if they bear no ill will regarding the innocent mistake in the first place – and are usually so touched that they feel their spirits lifted for the rest of the day.

But I think I have mistakenly given the impression that the man was incapable of doing wrong, that ingratitude just wasn’t in his being, that his entire system would be overwrought with a boundless wrenching guilt if he succumbed to the baseness of being annoyed. Though he isn’t inordinately offended by the variety of (oftentimes rude) actions that go on around him – he is aware that people apply standards of behavior to their lives that may be different than his – Roger isn’t deficient in any human emotion and is quite capable of making snarky comments or sighing impatiently. But when he gets flustered it’s because it seems so apparent to him that (avoidable) negativity and selfishness in turn cause (avoidable) unhappiness in the world. Despite his frustration that people had to be mean to one another without any good reason, overall it could be said that in Roger the balance of spite and ingenuousness was drastically tilted in favor of the latter; it was his luck of the draw temperament-wise and not that he was necessarily bestowed with a saint to end all saintliness.

Moved by the plight of someone hobbling along on crutches, he developed a self-explanatory set of ‘Crutch Wheels,’ which are small wheels that fit onto the bottom nubs of crutches and around the cast of the injured foot like roller-skates. The injured can then propel himself and glide to his destination instead of hobbling, unbound by time or any other impediment (save for a rocky or muddy road). The gift was received warmly by an injured friend, and in an act of reciprocal kindness, the extreme danger of the Crutch Wheels wasn’t mentioned to its inventor. Care was taken while the injured party was out and about to avoid seeing Roger as to not alert him to the lack of crutch wheels, for it goes without saying that trying to coordinate the movements of three wildly errant wheels (while already debilitated, no less!) was not a task that anyone would be willing to undertake. It turned out, however, that his invention was quite helpful when only the wheel attached to the cast was used: the wheel on the ball of the injured foot was very helpful for the patient’s mobility, not to mention that it helped to reduce the strain on a leg incessantly keeping aloft a foot bearing a heavy cast.

Delirious with fatigue while working on his other projects, he would occasionally snap out of his stupor and amaze himself with ideas that were too good to be true. The ideas subsequently proved themselves just that, as they were usually household utilities that he simply explored from a previously unconsidered angle. Poor Roger thought he struck gold when he reflected on the limits of the average plate – what if one wanted to eat something that couldn’t be accommodated by the plate’s flat sides, like a food in a liquid state for example? He laughed aloud at the ease of the problem’s solution as he began to mold a concave plate. It dawned on him moments later that what he already began calling a “Parabolic Food Holder” was widely available under its other name, ‘a bowl.’ A portable fire-starter, a food-stabbing apparatus, and the stopped-heart re-initiator were all million dollar ideas that came unfortunately a bit too late. He did have success with some of his original inventions, though, like the “Luggage Luggage,” “Sock-toe Reinforcers,” “Random Back-Patter/Auto-Congratulator,” and the ‘Tonsure Ensurer’ self-haircut pattern.

And finally we come to the last of his inventions I am going to mention, a flawed undertaking called the “Soap Caker.” In one of those entertaining conversations where you find that somebody shares the same observation about some tiny quirk of life that you do, a few people found themselves discussing the difficultly of grafting the ubiquitous remnant of a previous bar of soap onto a new one, as the sticky surface of the new bar can not overcome the pocket of air under the sliver, or because the slippery resistance of the mushier bit is too much to be grafted. It’s not uncommon to curtail this frustrating ritual entirely by throwing the remnant into the garbage, but some people take the estimable position of not wanting to be wasteful and thus try to use all remaining pieces of soap. After the conversation Roger immediately got to work finding an easier way to complete the grafting operation. And leave it to Roger to not only come up with the answer but to also give it a spot-on, straightforward name, viz. the aforementioned “Soap-Caker.” A collection of seemingly impossible to use bits of soap are placed into a metal mold, two of whose ends are compressed to create a new regulation-size bar of soap, the various pieces of which are guaranteed not to come undone when rubbed against skin or a washcloth. Unfortunately the device was met with only a lukewarm response, primarily due to the bar of soap Roger made as a demonstration of the invention. The complaint was something even I didn’t have a hard time sympathizing with, for it was clear that despite his good intentions he simply should have known better than to make a sample bar made from his own old soap. The idea of recycling is admirable but it is up to the Soap Caker user to recycle soap as he or she sees fit; the possibility of accidentally brushing a wiry, curly, foreign black fiber against your skin while trying the product is substantially gross, and even something not quite as harrowing, like feeling a few bristles of a friend’s facial hair that got stuck in the soap post-shave would still be a totally uncalled-for experience. I don’t know that if in his zeal he forgot to groom the fragments for stray hair or lint, but it suffices to say that while the other inventions were considered by his friends with bemused warmth, cleaning with someone else’s used soap was a bit much to ask.

But Roger is not to blame for this latter transgression because these inventions were to be used at the user’s discretion anyway. Etiquette dictates that gifts should be received graciously even if not to the recipient’s taste; Roger is aware that accepting a gift doesn’t mean that it will be often used, and in any case, if you want his helping hand, he is by all means there in spirit to lend it to you. It wouldn’t be any stretch of the imagination to see him considered amongst the ranks of Alfonso the Magnanimous, Edward the Benevolent, and Lakha-datari (“the Munificent Giver”), for after all, purely in the spirit of camaraderie, he built the “Crutch Wheels,” “Soap Caker,” “Clock Deceiver,” “Credit Taker,” and “Payment Assumer,” not to mention the “Tongue Dryer,” “Phone Stilts”, the “Brick Ensoftener”, “Chimney Searcher”, “Falling Fruit Parachute,” and “Table Surface Salinity Tester”, and his improvements on the common four-legged table and the occasionally problematic one-ended spoon. His inventions are tireless tools to make your life easier: he is simply a nice guy and anything involving him will reflect it.

Filed under Fiction

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