there's a light in your eye that keeps shining

Thurs|01.30

So remember my salmon dilemma? No? It's down there (pointing). Anyway I talked to a biologist and SHE says no to farmed, because they are genetically inferior to wild salmon, and often escape and cannot survive, or worse, mate with wild salmon, producing a genetically inferior fish that has some problems.

You know, problems.

Also like they produce this waste which is fine in normal numbers of the salmon but when they're all like wall to wall salmon, it's freakin toxic and it has to be dumped somewhere or whatever instead of just floating away and not harming anything which it would do if they were just wild salmon going about their business.

AND THEN ALSO! They are carniverous so all these tiny fishies that they eat have to be gotten from somewhere, and that throws THAT kind of fish out of balance, blah blah blah.

So it's better, if you care about this particular thing, to eat a wild salmon species that has not been overfished, which right now is Alaskan salmon. No COHO! Or anything.

Did you already know this? I didn't.

It's interesting.

Now I wonder where the heck the peanuts from my peanut butter came from, exactly.

And who got them that way? And is that person unionized?

LALalalalALLAlala.

Tomorrow Friday. Sunday is not my fun day. I would have to go with Saturday. Yes.

Saturday. And okay I like Sunday morning and PART of the afternoon but the night, you know, I get the week dread, and how is that fun? WELL it isn't.

tick-tick-tick-tick-tick

we chicken feathers all without one nut

Tues|01.28

I love my father's letters. Even in e-mails, his style is inimitable.

YES I WILL SHARE!

Hi Cleo#5 THOUGHT i DIDN'T SE THAT DIDN'T YOU IWAS JUST STUCK ON SEND, NOW I AM STUCK ON CAPS IT JUST DOESN'T UNLOCK LIE THE SMITH-CORRONa there, i was just pshing the wrong button, we are glad you have nice weather, at about 8 pm last night it was minus13.5 and lowering, our furnace was going amost non-stop, yo are ight, it will soon be spring, I think our pool must be one big round ice cube thanks again for the calender, your mother is alling fo e to cme get my porridge . Love from your daddy. sory about the typos, I didn't see them until too late.

By "thought I didn't see that, didn't you?" he means the #5 I put under my name on the e-mail he is replying to. That's where I am when my siblings and I are ranked by age. By now I'm aware that he and everyone in my family know who I am, but back in the day, when I was first learning how to write, I sent letters to my sisters (they were in college and whatnot), and would compulsively add a parenthetical reminder after my name.

(your sister)

Just in case? Yeah, I guess.

I was a goofy little mofo, though. So they tell me. I nicknamed my sisters' boyfriends (Pretty Shoes, Tubeman), I wrote "NO HATS TODAY!" on the garage blackboard, I shouted things at Alex Trebek, I was a dog named Laffy, and my favorite joke was one I'd made up myself.

"Why did the cat flush itself down the toilet?"

"Um, I don't know. Why?"

"I don't know! I'm asking YOU. Why did the cat flush itself down the toilet?"

"Uhhh..."

"SERIOUSLY. This is not a joke."

I'm not sure how that would end. Maybe my sister would rescue whichever friend of hers I was torturing, I'd look down at his feet and say, "PRETTY SHOES!" and then we'd all call it a night. Bless us every one.

P.S. - Tonight's entry might literally make me puke. AM I NOT A CUTE CHILD?? You're welcome.

just a fool waiting on the wrong blo-ock

Sat|01.25

I'm a confused person. Like, I buy fish, right, salmon, because I think it is good for me and I should eat it. Then I realize I don't know how to cook it. Then I think, is this an endangered fish? Am I upsetting the ecobalance of the agua? I think back to documents I've typed. I really can't remember.

But the wrap says it's Atlantic and farmed. Farmed is okay, right? Raised to kill? I don't know. The two slabs are so obviously a dead animal, cut in half. I put it on aluminum foil and dump tangerine juice over it and put it in the oven and just resign myself to not eating it because I have some kind of problem with cooking meat.

I guess that means I should stop eating it. I do love a hamburger now and again though. ANYhoo.

But it turns out really good and I eat it.

Today I went to the library. It was hot out. It's never winter anymore around here, not like it used to be. Back in MY day. When you needed a winter coat. Hmph.

So when I was waiting for the bus to go to the store after the library, there's a couple waiting near me, and they're talking, and a guy comes up to them with an old ten-speed and tries to sell it to them.

"How much?" the manly half of the couple says. He's got a buzz cut and glasses and seems kind of, well, not, well, not bright. His wife (I've decided they're married) doesn't seem to understand much English and repeats, "Bike? Why bike?" when it becomes obvious her husband is interested in it.

"Ten bucks," the guy selling the bike says. I've seen him around. It's my neighborhood, after all. Ten bucks, ha. I wonder whose it is. It's old and abandoned-looking and the handlebars move up and down.

The buzz cut husband thumbs through a stack of money and I see hundreds in there. I'm not joking. Hundred dollar bills he's flashing. Meanwhile his wife is saying, completely puzzled, "Bike? Why bike? No, no bike, need no."

"I'll give you five," husband says, and the seller makes a face. The husband tries out the handles, the brakes, etc., says, "It's not in very good shape." Because he needs to bargain down from TEN DOLLARS. For a BICYCLE.

"It's a bike!" the guy says, getting edgy.

"Okay, well I don't have a ten," the husband says, leafing through his wad of cash again.

I swear to God, he ends up paying ONE DOLLAR for the bicycle. ONE DOLLAR. Yes, American.

"Listen, I'll ride this home, and you take the bus," he tells his wife, who doesn't comprehend a word.

"Ride the bus," she says, "on the bike?"

"I'll ride this home, you take the bus." He repeats it several times. She just isn't catching on. He ignores this, gets on the bike, and pedals off. She follows him, confused.

The bus comes, and I get on. I sit by the window and watch the woman as we pass. She's still standing near the bus stop, clutching her shopping bag to her chest, looking dazed. Husband on the bike is long gone.