Thursday, June 05, 2008
First 200 Tweets From Twitter Novel "Small Places" - By N.L. Belardes
Now you can read the first 200 tweets from the twitter book "Small Places" (twitter.com/smallplaces) in order. It's actually the first seven chapters.
One.
Pre-Twitter: Stand by for first transmission. This is the fiction novel, "Small Places." The story will begin shortly... 05:31 PM April 25, 2008 from web
Twitter 1: I’ve grown to like small places. I like bugs, bug homes, walking stick bugs, blades of grass, ladybug Ferris wheels made out of dandelions.
Twitter 2: I like puddles, segments of reflections in dew and the parable of the bagworms I once made up. I’ll tell you later.
Twitter 3: On the other side of my apartment window is a dirty grey compartment of Central California sky.
Twitter 4: It's right there; just on the other side of a wall, through a piece of glass, through an unopened doorway, even beneath cracks in the floor.
Twitter 5: Endless grey corporate sky. Above valley cities, cubicles of dirty air. I can see the grey, can practically taste a chunk of cottony smog.
Twitter 6: I tie my shoes. No great mystery about this cul de sac. Southern valley catcher's mitt of mountains harbors the worst air in the nation.
Twitter 7: Just read the headlines in other cities. You won't necessarily read it here in this all-American city, though everyone around here knows it.
Twitter 8: What else can I do but shut the door behind me and start walking? I don't have a goddam car. And yes, it's because I'm not well paid.
Twitter 9: The grey skyline doesn't tower too far above wide, empty streets. From several blocks away I can see Buildicon Enterprises.
Twitter 10: Buildicon uses a four-story bank as its home base for product development, marketing, tech support and shipping.
Twitter 11: I see a line of ants on the sidewalk. They seem to be walking to Buidicon. I imagine them taking my place, in cubicles, hardly working.
Twitter 12: Boxy, the structure looms above the dirty horizon. Lines of ants spill into gutters and cracks. A leaf is carried with them like a stretcher.
Twitter 13: I imagine myself falling down exhausted, shrinking, lying on the leaf and carried into the darkness of small places.
Twitter 14: I'm not thinking about Mulani, not right now anyway. I pass a school auditorium, looks like a Lego. It's haunted complex is ripe with ghosts.
Twitter 15: When I get near Buildicon I stare up. The windows are dirty, dusty. I walk through the parking garage to the foyer. Bankers, lawyers pass.
Twitter 16: Then I see faithful Buildicon workers--all people like me who infest this building. I silently curse the elevator. The doors open. I step in.
Twitter 17: I beg for this to not be the time I get stuck as it chugs toward the third floor. "Please, not me today. I didn't eat a hearty breakfast..."
Twitter 18: Elevator sickness... Are there rooms ants hate, that grubs detest? A type of wood chamber for a termite--a moment when a cocoon is a prison?
Twitter 19: "I don't care if I get stuck in the elevator. As long as you do my work." That's what Mulani, a true time-managed Buildicon employee, says.
Twitter 20: Such kernels of truth are nothing a Rolex after five years of faithful employment can fix. The doors swing open. I walk toward marketing.
Two.
Twitter 21: Perfectly compartmentalized sits endless cubicles with computers in each, all cozily networked, each with a chair fit for lumbar support.
Twitter 22: On each desk rests pictures of Buildicon's idyllic families, all non-management: husbands hugging wives, children with perfect white teeth..
Twitter 23: Cork boards are filled with exotic faraway images of Modesto, Fresno, Van Nuys and California City--the desert town that never grows.
Twitter 24: Desk cities: Kleenex boxes, staplers, tape holders; endless stacks of paper dotted in red ink. Burger King toys that can light up and spin..
Twitter 25: At my desk now thinking about Frederick Taylor. He's the bastard from yesteryear who was so efficient with his hard-on for time management.
Twitter 26: How much time did he waste picking up shovels? The average Joe will always find a way to dig a hole and dog work at the same time.
Twitter 27: It's what all of us clockwatchers do--we are humans and not automatons. I sigh. It's another day at the office...
Twitter 28: So I just wrote an email to Mulani. I realize she hasn't been efficient in relationship with her asshole husband. Note: look up fungible.
Twitter 29: He's a semi-pro soccer player who just spent more than a year overseas screwing God knows how many South American prostitutes and bimbos.
Twitter 30: You'd think missing the birth of his kid would've pissed off Mulani. Or his lack of phone calls…
Twitter 31: Or his once-in-a-blue moon insincere jests of marital love (just after brothel moments). A clear indication of an inefficient marriage.
Twitter 32: There's so much more. But my point? You're right. There's no efficiency anywhere. So I spilled my guts in an erroneous work-related email:
Twitter 33: ...I guess there's always some idiot Jodie Foster around who develops feelings for the monster, knowing full well the man ate brains...
Twitter 34: Pondering: If sex were efficient it would take two seconds. We would all be monkeys, humping, then eating leaves and worms and lazing about.
Twitter 35: So Mulani took it from me for hours in our three, count them, three non-work related escapades. Efficient? No. Time consuming. Yes.
Twitter 36: Taking a break that's supposed to only last an hour and coming back sweaty, smelling like your sexy workmate, that's an efficiency problem.
Twitter 37: I compromised my integrity. I hoped she'd say, "I'm leaving him. I love you," then hold my hand and see the great waterfalls of the world...
Twitter 38: That's the web of adultery: inefficient babbling of one gorilla to another while pumping on an ass, eating leaves. I'd make a great monkey.
Twitter 39: When people are at work, do they think about work, or are they thinking about sex, blowjobs, touching, caressing, lunchtime shenanigans?
Twitter 40: Lollipops are the oral dose of sexcapade medicine that's legal in the workplace. I'll take a red one.
Twitter 41: Why does the company secretary keep a copious supply of lollipops on her desk? Company prez says, "I need a form." She licks her lips. They’re doing it.
Twitter 42: And so the candy, the lollipops, they keep workers working along with their abstract naughty thoughts... Enough. I have to go to a meeting.
Three.
Twitter 43: Of the eight people in the meeting room who appear to be in a state of cryogenics, three of us seem worse off than the rest.
Twitter 44: Vishnu rolls his eyes as if slowly awakening from a month of freezing-tube paralysis. There’s no hope for him.
Twitter 45: His karmic voyage to a land of the sleep gives him a strangely peaceful look as if he's an all-wise half-listening webmaster from New Delhi.
Twitter 46: I glance at my watch. He's at least thirty minutes from point of consciousness.
Twitter 47: Mulani is half-Chinese, a valley girl all the way with her pigtails and bubblegum chewing. She's lost to the marketing manager's monologue.
Twitter 48: In her wide-eyed state she concocts a plan to make it with Michael Jordan. She's knows kissing me put her at only 2.5 degrees of separation.
Twitter 49: How do you break into 'no' degrees of separation? I wonder with her. At least we're brainstorming. "He's old," I said at lunch yesterday.
Twitter 50: She set me straight, said Joan, our project coordinator, is in lust with Sean Connery. "And he's at least three times Michael Jordan's age."
Twitter 51: Is my heart rate in the low 30s? As our marketing manager “Blahs” I think about the Giant Root Borer, the largest beetle north of Mexico.
Twitter 52: Our marketing manager's name is Milt Butterlink. He's the proud bug-like corporate embodiment of a big dumb B-movie monster bug.
Twitter 53: Never before has such a re-animated corporate dialogue risen from such a cramped meeting room insectoid. He is what Buildicon emulates.
Twitter 54: Milt Butterlink: As I fall asleep, this is the man who has prepared pages of notes simply to unravel the mystery of the color orange.
Twitter 55: "Team, we'll get a new color though I know you're attached to your tangerine polos. Orange is an out-of-fashion corporate color faux paus."
Twitter 56: Milt Butterlink was beginning to look more wooden, like a stick bug. Like five stick bugs all wrapped into one, with large pine cone hands.
Twitter 57: He's got big grey eyes and large lips; his cheeks puff out above a weedy sidewalk of chest hair that springs up through his v-neck.
Twitter 58: His hands don't look like flesh at all but dry and wood-like (pine cones), as if unfinished, stuck onto his body: lost boy bug monster.
Twitter 59: God only knows what he does with those hands in the Greenhorn Mountains, where he commutes from everyday and lives with his wife and two small children.
Twitter 60: He's probably digging a tunnel to nowhere with those bare wooden hands like shovels. Very time efficient. Very Frederick Taylor.
Twitter 61: Today Milt passes out another document. In case you didn't know, he's the one who puts us in our cryogenic state every Tuesday.
Twitter 62: There are always two boxes of donuts that we inject straight into our bloodstream so we can crash at just the right moment of diatribe.
Twitter 63: I imagine myself in the middle of the conference room table--the donut my life preserver. A current of normalcy pulls me out of the room.
Twitter 64: I wash ashore where marketing is of the cowboy and jeans 'no bullshit' variety. Mulani senses my imagination and showers me with smiles.
Twitter 65: Back to semi-reality, Milt pushes papers in front of us. Always scheduled at 11 a.m., our weekly meetings never start until lunchtime. Why?
Twitter 66: Reason No. 1: Milt sends an email to the entire marketing department at 11:19 a.m. stating, "I want you all to be freakin' superstars."
Twitter 67: Reason No. 2: Meeting has been delayed because he needs to discuss, er, micro-manage magazine ad designs with me, Joan and Mike Neversmith.
Twitter 68: Why is it important to tell you? Because this happens every day, five days a week, blah blah weeks per year. Every single grey cubicle day.
Twitter 69: Milt Butterlink is always second-guessing himself, his intentions, his copywriting, his morning coffee flavor, but not always in that order.
Twitter 70: I imagine a small place in a bug colony. Milt, with no feelers would try to lead us to the productivity room. We'd end up eaten by birds.
Twitter 71: Milt only uses ideas he steals for his own. He passes those straight on to the company president. That would be the enterprise level.
Twitter 72: Milt's Document: "Caterpillar Marketing Plan: Budget and Style for Buildicon's Gadgetary Future." Milt has an excitable look on his face.
Twitter 73: It's an energy no one in the room draws from. His eyes twinkle with nonsense as he leans in to let us know he is working on a major project.
Twitter 74: "This is the most important document to come out of Buildicon. Any leak, our competitors could destroy what is noble and true about us."
Twitter 75: I look at the document. It's gobbledy-gook can't be interpreted. I suddenly imagine caterpillars crawling out of Milt's ears.
Twitter 76: I sketch an image I know he thinks are notes. If I can stay awake long enough to finish I might put it in a frame and hang it above my desk.
Twitter 77: "Is this a marketing plan that crawls all over you?" whispers Joan. It could be a real insecticon Buildicon modicon. I keep drawing.
Twitter 78: "Ha! You guys are all geniuses and yet you're not getting the picture. I don't mean caterpillar in the insect sense of the word," says Milt.
Twitter 79: He thinks we're all idiots because we didn't attend NYU or have lunch at the World Trade Center before it blew up.
Twitter 80: “They’re not cultured,” he says to the prez behind our backs. “They’re small timey, loosey goosey and flashy pants non-extraordinaire.”
Twitter 81: He just wants us to be freakin’ superstars like him. This man who supposedly once made chocolate macaroons with the likes of Bo Derek…
Twitter 82: This man who claims to have single-handedly invented all Adobe products, and who once walked on the moon in a G-string Soviet flag--he was looking for some Cosmonookie.
Twitter 83: Milt: "What I want to tell you is we are like tractors. We're not bugs. Everyone here plays a vital role in unearthing our marketing core."
Twitter 84: All I can gather is I'm some kind of marketing backhoe operator and I need a hard hat to withstand Milt's dense communication methods.
Twitter 85: I'm starting to lose consciousness again. Vishnu looks fish-like. His eyes roll and bulge. The gills I imagine on his neck twitch and gasp.
Twitter 86: Milt: "Let's get to advertising." Micromanaging his creative team means we don't create a piss in the toilet. He doesn't realize this...
Twitter 87: So he begins to criticize his own advertising tag lines, “I want you all to know that too many catch phrases can make you sound like a real trinkydink kind of a company.”
Twitter 88: I write furiously in my notepad. I've been putting together a book of senseless micromanager quotes and Milt has just laid a doozy on me.
Twitter 89: It's right up there in the cloudy angelic fields of marketing nomenclature: "A trinkydink kind of a company." I'm almost jealous.
Four.
Twitter 90: Guy: hair stands on end, metal glasses on a long pale nose, faded Hawaiian shirt and book, "Massage Mataphysics" tucked under scrawny arm.
Twitter 91: He follows me. I get a hot dog and he's reading that book. I'm in a cafe looking for a muffin with more than two blueberries. He's there.
Twitter 92: The next day I see him just as the Winona Ryder look-a-like girl behind the coffee counter says: "My boyfriend has a catheter."
Twitter 93: She continues: “It’s a skateboard injury. The skateboard stood straight up on him in the half-pipe and he injured his dick. Want the usual?”
Twitter 94: I grimace and notice Kramer reading the same book and finally realize he works less than I do. He must be an extraordinarily agile downtown business escape artist. How can I get away with more?
Twitter 95: I want to become efficient as such an expert corporate Houdini. Alakazam! Alavamooshka!
Twitter 96: I can't get away from time: 8-hour day, 1-hour lunch, two 10-minute breaks, boss comes in at eight, I come in at seven. I'm a bug. Stomp me.
Twitter 97: Second day in a row: "...catch phrases make for a real trinkydink kind...," Milt's glazed eyes stare wide-eyed at a sleepy marketing group.
Twitter 98: His dark brown hair is a mess. He's wearing yesterday's Benetton sweater with multi-oranges, greens, blues, purples. A dull Japanese beetle.
Twitter 99: His lips are swollen, while his cheeks puff out, boyish, chipmunky. They're reddened because he slept outside his mountain cabin.
Twitter 100: Milt attempts to write copy. The ad design shows a metallic gizmo with Ethernet cables like tentacles: "Your Autolink Connection Solution."
Twitter 101: He's re-written the ad copy five times. Each revision is as though he hasn't written the previous copy. Does he think we wrote it?? Nuts.
Twitter 102: Maybe he imagines we're mutinous trinkydink catchphrase sailors. I can see the grimace on Mike's face as Milt sits behind him and banters.
Twitter 103: "OK Mike, let's look at this really super cool design. I mean, you're really a genius. This is what we need! It's what I was thinking!"
Twitter 104: Two seconds later: "Let me show you what I would do. I mean, this is a little too goo gah. You should have caught this bad vibe idea."
Twitter 105: "Well yeah, we could use a little less of the trinky and the dinky," Mike grimaces, realizing he doesn't understand his own words.
Twitter 106: Milt nods in agreement as if Mike finally understands the manager's enlightened marketing lingo. "Exactly. So make the changes," Milt says.
Twitter 107: I'm bored with the nonsense of micromanagement and wander to the bathroom to wash my face. I wonder: Is this everyone's mad corporate dream?
Twitter 108: Just as I demand to the mirror that I wake up, the bathroom door opens. It's Glen from Tech Support. "Fancy meeting you here," he says.
Twitter 109: "You know, it's funny how you can only take so much of work before you have to get up from your desk and attempt to piss it away," he adds.
Five.
Twitter 110: Mike stares into an outdated MAC G3. He downloads a Prince tune because we think a boyish secretary looks like she starred in "Purple Rain."
Twitter 111: Our desks share the opposite walls of a low-wall cubicle. We can see each other working. This is the part of the ant colony where the mandibles are made out of NERF.
Twitter 112: Mike's got a contract the rest of us don't have making him immune from the daily grind. Truth? He never has to attend marketing meetings.
Twitter 113: Jealousy: Mike's strange anti-meeting immunity idol that he wears around his neck. It's a secret "Survivor" clause he can't talk about.
Twitter 114: That doesn't stop me from harassing him each day. And it doesn't keep him from showing off his imaginary idol and thumbing his nose at me.
Twitter 115: He pretends to take it off and wave it at me. I think hateful thoughts. He grins. Would he eat rat poop on "Survivor"? Of course he would.
Six.
Twitter 116: I've been here six months. I do nothing. It comes down to setting the mood. Ask yourself: "What can I do my first three weeks on the job?"
Twitter 117: I brought four axioms for a better work environment and for better all-around 'inefficiency' when I first arrived at Buildicon.
Twitter 118: Write these down, but not necessarily in this order. No sticky notes please.
Twitter 119: 1) How to increase sexual tension in the workplace. 2) How to woo the corporate crowd with a tasty salsa. 3) How to have fun at work and not feel guilty about it. 4) The ‘three week’ rule.
Twitter 120: Number four: Fake incredible work ethic. Act busy even if paying bills online. Company prez should see you stay five minutes extra each day.
Twitter 121: Number three: Laugh. It makes people think twice about your state of mind. Believe me, work laughter is impossible to achieve for most.
Twitter 122: I'll get back to number two. Number one occurs with relative ease and is contrary to every corporate code ever written in the post "me" age.
Twitter 123: The idea is nothing is serious. So statements become flirty, bombastic, sexy, overly offensive, sexually humorous, odd-gestured signals.
Twitter 124: Mulani pretends to be a victim, though really she is just as strange as Mike and I when it comes to increasing sexual tension at work.
Twitter 125: Example: Mulani walks up to Mike's desk: "Can I see the report?" Mike: "Not sure I wanna share unless you're blindfolded." Mulani: "OK."
Twitter 126: And then she rolls her eyes right after licking her lipsticky red lips and walks back to her office. It's an hourly routine. So we cope.
Twitter 127: Example: Mike: "Got the plotter to work. Says it needed less suckage." I reply: "Who would have thought anything would need less suckage?"
Twitter 128: Mulani and Joan both roll their eyes and tell us we're sick. Truth? They would be bored if it weren't for our sexual tension statements.
Twitter 129: Same phrase by Doug in shipping? Forget it. Mulani prefers jokes from non-creepy guys. Besides, these are matter-of-fact axioms to live by.
Twitter 130: Back to number two. Early on at Buildicon, Mike said: "You've only worked a week and you're already stinking up the office with that salsa!"
Twitter 131: It's such moments where I'm most calm. I stood next to a big bowl of my salsa. I calmly handed Mike a tortilla chip. He raised an eyebrow.
Twitter 132: Mulani then stepped from her office. Two eyebrows went up as Mike dipped. He took a bite. He chewed. He double-dipped and that was that.
Twitter 133: Mulani smiled as she tasted the salsa. Soon afterward I couldn't keep middle management fingers from greedily grabbing food from my desk.
Twitter 134: Everyone stopped by but the corporate prez. He's kind of like one of those weird beasts in Star Wars than can't be swayed by the Force.
Twitter 135: This Force was a salsa I swore, "I will never share such a guarded secret with others." Ten days later I posted the recipe on willieboy.com.
Twitter 136: By the way, in regards to the fourth workplace axiom, after three weeks of exceptional behavior, slack to your heart's content.
Twitter 137: I buy an ant farm and name all the ants inside after me. I call them my collective consciousness. They're all named Willie. I talk to them.
Twitter 138: I take the ant farm to a coffeehouse. I get a mocha, smile at the ants, read the paper and feel like God spinning planets on his fingertips.
Twitter 139: What else can I do but bring the ant farm to work? Workers come, stare into the little cubicles of sand. They wander off. I feel giantish.
Twitter 140: Soon I come to work and the ant farm is filled with water. The ants float hopelessly, lifeless. Milt walks by, winks. I stop bringing salsa.
Twitter 141: Milt is in his Benetton sweater attire, probably bought at the Cusack Movie Collection auction from High Fidelity. He oozes seedy Hollywood.
Twitter 142: He declares himself a big fan of Japanese samurai movies. He currently reads, "Samurai Stories and Other Decapitation Romances." I hate him.
Seven.
Twitter 142: Most jobs are about nothing. The corporate world is no savior from that. I mean, what are we but a slowly drowning ant farm, anyway?
Twitter 143: I have a college degree, a marketing background that you can't laugh too hard at. But I make a mere 34K per year. I don't even have a car.
Twitter 144: I don't make as much as my cab-driving father did back in the 1970s. He didn't have a degree. So where's the money? At Buildicon?
Twitter 145: Not in this job where ant-killer Milt Butterlink gets 110,000 clamshells per year. Now I think I need to explain my take on advertising...
Twitter 146: Advertising. It's what fills sports stadiums, magazines, computer games, TV shows about nothing. It's a numbing new take on dish soap.
Twitter 147: Can you feel orgasmic about advertising? Sure you can. It gets ladies and gents to wash in adorable new ways and makes you coo and googoo.
Twitter 148: It's about interactive thinking. We need subliminal Buildicon messages that spin heads like soap bubble carousels in mindless playability.
Twitter 149: Ad creation takes enlightenment about the corporate world. A true mystery, yes.
Twitter 150: I work in a corporate world where everyone thinks I'm weird. No mystery there. Though I don't think my dead ants thought I was weird.
Twitter 151: Milt wants me to think up an ad concept for Buildicon's wireless recordable transmitter devices. it's for industrial data, like evil robots.
Twitter 152: I'll think up copy for an ad, sure. This industry is so C3PO. We help protocols speak to each other. He was a protocol droid. We translate.
Twitter 153: We can buildicon that gizmo. We can help protocols speak to one another. Only like C3PO I can't help but feel impending doom when I think.
Twitter 154: The day I saw boxes filled with pink sponge packaging I stared in wonder at the little rectangles. Here was my temporary answer to fun.
Twitter 155: Most corporate folk consider 'fun' a ludicrous non-serious detrimental work behavior. Creative marketing people are freaks who live for fun.
Twitter 156: Fun: more than just ballgame beer. Sorry to offend you simpletons. Fun is a complex process often meaning hyperfocusing on the mundane.
Twitter 157: There is something inherently appealing in a block of pink sponge. In and of itself it has no real value other than as a packaging product.
Twitter 158: You stuff them into empty spaces in boxes. They fill voids. Yet I see living shapes. I decide the sponge rectangles will make nice puppets.
Twitter 159: I suddenly want to create diorama of pink packaging corporate puppets, not merely for my entertainment, but for all bored Buildicon workers.
Twitter 160: What do you think if you see pink packaging sponges with faces: felt-pen grins of asinine pondering and surreal cartoonland pontifications?
Twitter 161: Mike and I design a character in this pink sponge puppet named Blockhead Joe. Much of his story is simple. He marries Airhead Pam.
Twitter 163: Blockhead Joe and Airhead Pam have a grand wedding. They appear on a sitcom. He cheats on her. She cheats on him. They have baby larvae.
Twitter 164: We put up a 'Free Larvae' sign. They're made out of packaging popcorn. We draw faces on them so each one is unique.
Twitter 165: Glen quits his job in Tech Support and takes his larvae to Mississippi. I soon get an email: "We're here!" I never hear from him again.
Twitter 166: Airhead Pam gets murdered. Some of the larvae turn into spawnlings that are Styrofoam, half sponge. Blockhead Joe gets framed.
Twitter 167: Blockhead Joe gets kidnapped. The ransom is twenty bucks. Body parts begin to arrive. How do I get away with this you might ask?
Twitter 168: I have no idea how I get away with this sponge show other than the four workplace axioms I defined earlier. I'll do some real work tomorrow.
Twitter 169: 2 am: I dream about my dead ant farm. I am inside it, lost. There are no ants to show me the way, only plastic walls and hulks of dead ants.
Twitter 170: I split open a dead dried ant and make a sort of shaman costume that I wear while I explore. I commune with their dead consciousness.
Twitter 171: I find a room with ant eggs stuck to the walls and ceiling. One is cracked open. Black lifeless eyes stare out at me. I am them.
Twitter 172: In my shaman ant dream I grow thirsty. I use two broken antenna as divining rods. I dig and water springs out. I wake up having wet the bed.
Twitter 173: Milt's eyeballs are nearly touching the new ant farm I brought to work. "Where are the ants?" he asks. "I just mail-ordered them," I say.
Twitter 174: He seems more impatient than me about the ants arrival: "When will they come?" Me: "Any second now." Milt stares for minutes on end.
Twitter 175: I finally get the ants and dump them into the ant farm. They spread throughout like they'd just been on vacation and start digging tunnels.
Twitter 176: I watch the ants watch me. I think they can see me. They gather at the plastic walls. No wait. It's the dead fly I put in there. Nevermind.
Twitter 177: After lunch I see the ant farm is a complete wreck. All the sand walls have collapsed. There's no movement. A Post-It reads: "Earthquake."
Twitter 178: Milt walks by. He doesn't look at me but snickers to himself. I follow him to the bathroom where I can hear him laughing insanely.
Twitter 179: Today is like yesterday only worse. I walk up to Buildicon where a bum pisses on a tire in the parking garage. Thank God I don't have a car.
Twitter 180: I say: "Don't you have a goddam outhouse? Or a newspaper? Or a friend to piss on? Cause you're pissing me off!" He laughs in my direction.
Twitter 181: I snap out of it as Buildicon's self-imposed beauty queen, Kira de Frito passes by. She builds spreadsheets that Mulani has to fix.
Twitter 182: She talks to Brazilian product buyers, perhaps about lingerie. She's the Wicked Witch of the West Indies, kind of dark, with a hook nose.
Twitter 183: Kira de Frito slinks by in a jaguar of an outfit, very catlike, with tight black pants and cleavage you could put a pineapple platter on.
Twitter 184: By the copier Mulani tells me about Kira de Frito's crisis: "I will not suffer this one alone. She has to dance for her husband." Me: "No!"
Twitter 185: Me: "He can't?" Mulani: "Nope." Me: "So she dances a jig each night before they salsa?" Mulani: "Every night." Me: "Horrible!"
Twitter 186: I mean, don't get me wrong. Shake it don't break it. "But that's not all of it," Mulani says. I run the copier again to buy more time.
Twitter 187: Mulani: "She's only clothed from the waist up, a corset." Me: "Right now?" I look. "No, you idiot. When they you know," Mulani says.
Twitter 188: As I sit down at my desk I suddenly realize that if Buildicon is the social heart of Americana I'd rather be in Brazil with Kira de Frito.
Twitter 189: I want to be carrying around platters of pineapples, wear an oversized cabana shirt, and see Kira scream "Carnival!" in her coconut bikini.
Twitter 190: I'd rather it be Mulani than Kira de Frito. Let's eat, let's dance, let's get away from the color grey in a seaside town filled with color.
Twitter 191: Except there will be copacabana boys by the hundreds. I can't bear the thought of losing Mulani to a pineapple plate distributor.
Twitter 192: "Ay!" I yell. "Is there no justice?" Mike looks at me. I don't think he cares that I yelled. He's busy designing a robotic ad for Buildicon.
Twitter 193: Me: "Do we have to sing a musical?" Mike: "Yes. Can we make one up?" Me: "Of course. I don't know any actual words or tunes. Do you?"
Twitter 194: Mike realizes he doesn't know any musicals either, but we sing. He leads. Next door is the president's office. He doesn't say a word.
Twitter 195: He knows we're crazy. He's also happy because I know Margo in Orders just intercepted a fax that he paid $300,000 for a turbo prop.
Twitter 196: And that's OK, except now he's wearing goggles to work. He's happy we're bringing life to the land of grey. But now I call him captain.
Twitter 197: Up walks Kira de Frito. Dear me, did I forget to mention that she has a birthmark on her forehead? She's got that look in her eye again.
Twitter 198: "You do not like me," Kira says. I say in reference to her birthmark: "You're so retro Gorbachev." She doesn't get it.
Twitter 199: We battle with questions: "What did I ever do?" "You didn't like the song?" "Why are you so angry?" "Are you not a fan of musicals, Kira?"
Twitter 199: Kira de Frito once starred in a Brazilian novella. I never acknowledge her stardom. So she's overly sensitive. She bolts into Milt's office.
Twitter 200: "What's up with the colorful new ads?" I say to Mike. "It's like robots in dance gear." Mike: "It's our new look and feel." Me: "Rainbows?"
Twitter 201: Mike imitates Milt Butterlink: "Make Buildicon recognizable with color." He adds, "Milt can't choose one color so he goes with them all."
Twitter 202: Milt's door opens and out pops Kira de Frito. She bolts for her cubicle. "What's up her pineapple?" Mike says.
Read more "Small Places" at www.twitter.com/smallplaces
One.
Pre-Twitter: Stand by for first transmission. This is the fiction novel, "Small Places." The story will begin shortly... 05:31 PM April 25, 2008 from web
Twitter 1: I’ve grown to like small places. I like bugs, bug homes, walking stick bugs, blades of grass, ladybug Ferris wheels made out of dandelions.
Twitter 2: I like puddles, segments of reflections in dew and the parable of the bagworms I once made up. I’ll tell you later.
Twitter 3: On the other side of my apartment window is a dirty grey compartment of Central California sky.
Twitter 4: It's right there; just on the other side of a wall, through a piece of glass, through an unopened doorway, even beneath cracks in the floor.
Twitter 5: Endless grey corporate sky. Above valley cities, cubicles of dirty air. I can see the grey, can practically taste a chunk of cottony smog.
Twitter 6: I tie my shoes. No great mystery about this cul de sac. Southern valley catcher's mitt of mountains harbors the worst air in the nation.
Twitter 7: Just read the headlines in other cities. You won't necessarily read it here in this all-American city, though everyone around here knows it.
Twitter 8: What else can I do but shut the door behind me and start walking? I don't have a goddam car. And yes, it's because I'm not well paid.
Twitter 9: The grey skyline doesn't tower too far above wide, empty streets. From several blocks away I can see Buildicon Enterprises.
Twitter 10: Buildicon uses a four-story bank as its home base for product development, marketing, tech support and shipping.
Twitter 11: I see a line of ants on the sidewalk. They seem to be walking to Buidicon. I imagine them taking my place, in cubicles, hardly working.
Twitter 12: Boxy, the structure looms above the dirty horizon. Lines of ants spill into gutters and cracks. A leaf is carried with them like a stretcher.
Twitter 13: I imagine myself falling down exhausted, shrinking, lying on the leaf and carried into the darkness of small places.
Twitter 14: I'm not thinking about Mulani, not right now anyway. I pass a school auditorium, looks like a Lego. It's haunted complex is ripe with ghosts.
Twitter 15: When I get near Buildicon I stare up. The windows are dirty, dusty. I walk through the parking garage to the foyer. Bankers, lawyers pass.
Twitter 16: Then I see faithful Buildicon workers--all people like me who infest this building. I silently curse the elevator. The doors open. I step in.
Twitter 17: I beg for this to not be the time I get stuck as it chugs toward the third floor. "Please, not me today. I didn't eat a hearty breakfast..."
Twitter 18: Elevator sickness... Are there rooms ants hate, that grubs detest? A type of wood chamber for a termite--a moment when a cocoon is a prison?
Twitter 19: "I don't care if I get stuck in the elevator. As long as you do my work." That's what Mulani, a true time-managed Buildicon employee, says.
Twitter 20: Such kernels of truth are nothing a Rolex after five years of faithful employment can fix. The doors swing open. I walk toward marketing.
Two.
Twitter 21: Perfectly compartmentalized sits endless cubicles with computers in each, all cozily networked, each with a chair fit for lumbar support.
Twitter 22: On each desk rests pictures of Buildicon's idyllic families, all non-management: husbands hugging wives, children with perfect white teeth..
Twitter 23: Cork boards are filled with exotic faraway images of Modesto, Fresno, Van Nuys and California City--the desert town that never grows.
Twitter 24: Desk cities: Kleenex boxes, staplers, tape holders; endless stacks of paper dotted in red ink. Burger King toys that can light up and spin..
Twitter 25: At my desk now thinking about Frederick Taylor. He's the bastard from yesteryear who was so efficient with his hard-on for time management.
Twitter 26: How much time did he waste picking up shovels? The average Joe will always find a way to dig a hole and dog work at the same time.
Twitter 27: It's what all of us clockwatchers do--we are humans and not automatons. I sigh. It's another day at the office...
Twitter 28: So I just wrote an email to Mulani. I realize she hasn't been efficient in relationship with her asshole husband. Note: look up fungible.
Twitter 29: He's a semi-pro soccer player who just spent more than a year overseas screwing God knows how many South American prostitutes and bimbos.
Twitter 30: You'd think missing the birth of his kid would've pissed off Mulani. Or his lack of phone calls…
Twitter 31: Or his once-in-a-blue moon insincere jests of marital love (just after brothel moments). A clear indication of an inefficient marriage.
Twitter 32: There's so much more. But my point? You're right. There's no efficiency anywhere. So I spilled my guts in an erroneous work-related email:
Twitter 33: ...I guess there's always some idiot Jodie Foster around who develops feelings for the monster, knowing full well the man ate brains...
Twitter 34: Pondering: If sex were efficient it would take two seconds. We would all be monkeys, humping, then eating leaves and worms and lazing about.
Twitter 35: So Mulani took it from me for hours in our three, count them, three non-work related escapades. Efficient? No. Time consuming. Yes.
Twitter 36: Taking a break that's supposed to only last an hour and coming back sweaty, smelling like your sexy workmate, that's an efficiency problem.
Twitter 37: I compromised my integrity. I hoped she'd say, "I'm leaving him. I love you," then hold my hand and see the great waterfalls of the world...
Twitter 38: That's the web of adultery: inefficient babbling of one gorilla to another while pumping on an ass, eating leaves. I'd make a great monkey.
Twitter 39: When people are at work, do they think about work, or are they thinking about sex, blowjobs, touching, caressing, lunchtime shenanigans?
Twitter 40: Lollipops are the oral dose of sexcapade medicine that's legal in the workplace. I'll take a red one.
Twitter 41: Why does the company secretary keep a copious supply of lollipops on her desk? Company prez says, "I need a form." She licks her lips. They’re doing it.
Twitter 42: And so the candy, the lollipops, they keep workers working along with their abstract naughty thoughts... Enough. I have to go to a meeting.
Three.
Twitter 43: Of the eight people in the meeting room who appear to be in a state of cryogenics, three of us seem worse off than the rest.
Twitter 44: Vishnu rolls his eyes as if slowly awakening from a month of freezing-tube paralysis. There’s no hope for him.
Twitter 45: His karmic voyage to a land of the sleep gives him a strangely peaceful look as if he's an all-wise half-listening webmaster from New Delhi.
Twitter 46: I glance at my watch. He's at least thirty minutes from point of consciousness.
Twitter 47: Mulani is half-Chinese, a valley girl all the way with her pigtails and bubblegum chewing. She's lost to the marketing manager's monologue.
Twitter 48: In her wide-eyed state she concocts a plan to make it with Michael Jordan. She's knows kissing me put her at only 2.5 degrees of separation.
Twitter 49: How do you break into 'no' degrees of separation? I wonder with her. At least we're brainstorming. "He's old," I said at lunch yesterday.
Twitter 50: She set me straight, said Joan, our project coordinator, is in lust with Sean Connery. "And he's at least three times Michael Jordan's age."
Twitter 51: Is my heart rate in the low 30s? As our marketing manager “Blahs” I think about the Giant Root Borer, the largest beetle north of Mexico.
Twitter 52: Our marketing manager's name is Milt Butterlink. He's the proud bug-like corporate embodiment of a big dumb B-movie monster bug.
Twitter 53: Never before has such a re-animated corporate dialogue risen from such a cramped meeting room insectoid. He is what Buildicon emulates.
Twitter 54: Milt Butterlink: As I fall asleep, this is the man who has prepared pages of notes simply to unravel the mystery of the color orange.
Twitter 55: "Team, we'll get a new color though I know you're attached to your tangerine polos. Orange is an out-of-fashion corporate color faux paus."
Twitter 56: Milt Butterlink was beginning to look more wooden, like a stick bug. Like five stick bugs all wrapped into one, with large pine cone hands.
Twitter 57: He's got big grey eyes and large lips; his cheeks puff out above a weedy sidewalk of chest hair that springs up through his v-neck.
Twitter 58: His hands don't look like flesh at all but dry and wood-like (pine cones), as if unfinished, stuck onto his body: lost boy bug monster.
Twitter 59: God only knows what he does with those hands in the Greenhorn Mountains, where he commutes from everyday and lives with his wife and two small children.
Twitter 60: He's probably digging a tunnel to nowhere with those bare wooden hands like shovels. Very time efficient. Very Frederick Taylor.
Twitter 61: Today Milt passes out another document. In case you didn't know, he's the one who puts us in our cryogenic state every Tuesday.
Twitter 62: There are always two boxes of donuts that we inject straight into our bloodstream so we can crash at just the right moment of diatribe.
Twitter 63: I imagine myself in the middle of the conference room table--the donut my life preserver. A current of normalcy pulls me out of the room.
Twitter 64: I wash ashore where marketing is of the cowboy and jeans 'no bullshit' variety. Mulani senses my imagination and showers me with smiles.
Twitter 65: Back to semi-reality, Milt pushes papers in front of us. Always scheduled at 11 a.m., our weekly meetings never start until lunchtime. Why?
Twitter 66: Reason No. 1: Milt sends an email to the entire marketing department at 11:19 a.m. stating, "I want you all to be freakin' superstars."
Twitter 67: Reason No. 2: Meeting has been delayed because he needs to discuss, er, micro-manage magazine ad designs with me, Joan and Mike Neversmith.
Twitter 68: Why is it important to tell you? Because this happens every day, five days a week, blah blah weeks per year. Every single grey cubicle day.
Twitter 69: Milt Butterlink is always second-guessing himself, his intentions, his copywriting, his morning coffee flavor, but not always in that order.
Twitter 70: I imagine a small place in a bug colony. Milt, with no feelers would try to lead us to the productivity room. We'd end up eaten by birds.
Twitter 71: Milt only uses ideas he steals for his own. He passes those straight on to the company president. That would be the enterprise level.
Twitter 72: Milt's Document: "Caterpillar Marketing Plan: Budget and Style for Buildicon's Gadgetary Future." Milt has an excitable look on his face.
Twitter 73: It's an energy no one in the room draws from. His eyes twinkle with nonsense as he leans in to let us know he is working on a major project.
Twitter 74: "This is the most important document to come out of Buildicon. Any leak, our competitors could destroy what is noble and true about us."
Twitter 75: I look at the document. It's gobbledy-gook can't be interpreted. I suddenly imagine caterpillars crawling out of Milt's ears.
Twitter 76: I sketch an image I know he thinks are notes. If I can stay awake long enough to finish I might put it in a frame and hang it above my desk.
Twitter 77: "Is this a marketing plan that crawls all over you?" whispers Joan. It could be a real insecticon Buildicon modicon. I keep drawing.
Twitter 78: "Ha! You guys are all geniuses and yet you're not getting the picture. I don't mean caterpillar in the insect sense of the word," says Milt.
Twitter 79: He thinks we're all idiots because we didn't attend NYU or have lunch at the World Trade Center before it blew up.
Twitter 80: “They’re not cultured,” he says to the prez behind our backs. “They’re small timey, loosey goosey and flashy pants non-extraordinaire.”
Twitter 81: He just wants us to be freakin’ superstars like him. This man who supposedly once made chocolate macaroons with the likes of Bo Derek…
Twitter 82: This man who claims to have single-handedly invented all Adobe products, and who once walked on the moon in a G-string Soviet flag--he was looking for some Cosmonookie.
Twitter 83: Milt: "What I want to tell you is we are like tractors. We're not bugs. Everyone here plays a vital role in unearthing our marketing core."
Twitter 84: All I can gather is I'm some kind of marketing backhoe operator and I need a hard hat to withstand Milt's dense communication methods.
Twitter 85: I'm starting to lose consciousness again. Vishnu looks fish-like. His eyes roll and bulge. The gills I imagine on his neck twitch and gasp.
Twitter 86: Milt: "Let's get to advertising." Micromanaging his creative team means we don't create a piss in the toilet. He doesn't realize this...
Twitter 87: So he begins to criticize his own advertising tag lines, “I want you all to know that too many catch phrases can make you sound like a real trinkydink kind of a company.”
Twitter 88: I write furiously in my notepad. I've been putting together a book of senseless micromanager quotes and Milt has just laid a doozy on me.
Twitter 89: It's right up there in the cloudy angelic fields of marketing nomenclature: "A trinkydink kind of a company." I'm almost jealous.
Four.
Twitter 90: Guy: hair stands on end, metal glasses on a long pale nose, faded Hawaiian shirt and book, "Massage Mataphysics" tucked under scrawny arm.
Twitter 91: He follows me. I get a hot dog and he's reading that book. I'm in a cafe looking for a muffin with more than two blueberries. He's there.
Twitter 92: The next day I see him just as the Winona Ryder look-a-like girl behind the coffee counter says: "My boyfriend has a catheter."
Twitter 93: She continues: “It’s a skateboard injury. The skateboard stood straight up on him in the half-pipe and he injured his dick. Want the usual?”
Twitter 94: I grimace and notice Kramer reading the same book and finally realize he works less than I do. He must be an extraordinarily agile downtown business escape artist. How can I get away with more?
Twitter 95: I want to become efficient as such an expert corporate Houdini. Alakazam! Alavamooshka!
Twitter 96: I can't get away from time: 8-hour day, 1-hour lunch, two 10-minute breaks, boss comes in at eight, I come in at seven. I'm a bug. Stomp me.
Twitter 97: Second day in a row: "...catch phrases make for a real trinkydink kind...," Milt's glazed eyes stare wide-eyed at a sleepy marketing group.
Twitter 98: His dark brown hair is a mess. He's wearing yesterday's Benetton sweater with multi-oranges, greens, blues, purples. A dull Japanese beetle.
Twitter 99: His lips are swollen, while his cheeks puff out, boyish, chipmunky. They're reddened because he slept outside his mountain cabin.
Twitter 100: Milt attempts to write copy. The ad design shows a metallic gizmo with Ethernet cables like tentacles: "Your Autolink Connection Solution."
Twitter 101: He's re-written the ad copy five times. Each revision is as though he hasn't written the previous copy. Does he think we wrote it?? Nuts.
Twitter 102: Maybe he imagines we're mutinous trinkydink catchphrase sailors. I can see the grimace on Mike's face as Milt sits behind him and banters.
Twitter 103: "OK Mike, let's look at this really super cool design. I mean, you're really a genius. This is what we need! It's what I was thinking!"
Twitter 104: Two seconds later: "Let me show you what I would do. I mean, this is a little too goo gah. You should have caught this bad vibe idea."
Twitter 105: "Well yeah, we could use a little less of the trinky and the dinky," Mike grimaces, realizing he doesn't understand his own words.
Twitter 106: Milt nods in agreement as if Mike finally understands the manager's enlightened marketing lingo. "Exactly. So make the changes," Milt says.
Twitter 107: I'm bored with the nonsense of micromanagement and wander to the bathroom to wash my face. I wonder: Is this everyone's mad corporate dream?
Twitter 108: Just as I demand to the mirror that I wake up, the bathroom door opens. It's Glen from Tech Support. "Fancy meeting you here," he says.
Twitter 109: "You know, it's funny how you can only take so much of work before you have to get up from your desk and attempt to piss it away," he adds.
Five.
Twitter 110: Mike stares into an outdated MAC G3. He downloads a Prince tune because we think a boyish secretary looks like she starred in "Purple Rain."
Twitter 111: Our desks share the opposite walls of a low-wall cubicle. We can see each other working. This is the part of the ant colony where the mandibles are made out of NERF.
Twitter 112: Mike's got a contract the rest of us don't have making him immune from the daily grind. Truth? He never has to attend marketing meetings.
Twitter 113: Jealousy: Mike's strange anti-meeting immunity idol that he wears around his neck. It's a secret "Survivor" clause he can't talk about.
Twitter 114: That doesn't stop me from harassing him each day. And it doesn't keep him from showing off his imaginary idol and thumbing his nose at me.
Twitter 115: He pretends to take it off and wave it at me. I think hateful thoughts. He grins. Would he eat rat poop on "Survivor"? Of course he would.
Six.
Twitter 116: I've been here six months. I do nothing. It comes down to setting the mood. Ask yourself: "What can I do my first three weeks on the job?"
Twitter 117: I brought four axioms for a better work environment and for better all-around 'inefficiency' when I first arrived at Buildicon.
Twitter 118: Write these down, but not necessarily in this order. No sticky notes please.
Twitter 119: 1) How to increase sexual tension in the workplace. 2) How to woo the corporate crowd with a tasty salsa. 3) How to have fun at work and not feel guilty about it. 4) The ‘three week’ rule.
Twitter 120: Number four: Fake incredible work ethic. Act busy even if paying bills online. Company prez should see you stay five minutes extra each day.
Twitter 121: Number three: Laugh. It makes people think twice about your state of mind. Believe me, work laughter is impossible to achieve for most.
Twitter 122: I'll get back to number two. Number one occurs with relative ease and is contrary to every corporate code ever written in the post "me" age.
Twitter 123: The idea is nothing is serious. So statements become flirty, bombastic, sexy, overly offensive, sexually humorous, odd-gestured signals.
Twitter 124: Mulani pretends to be a victim, though really she is just as strange as Mike and I when it comes to increasing sexual tension at work.
Twitter 125: Example: Mulani walks up to Mike's desk: "Can I see the report?" Mike: "Not sure I wanna share unless you're blindfolded." Mulani: "OK."
Twitter 126: And then she rolls her eyes right after licking her lipsticky red lips and walks back to her office. It's an hourly routine. So we cope.
Twitter 127: Example: Mike: "Got the plotter to work. Says it needed less suckage." I reply: "Who would have thought anything would need less suckage?"
Twitter 128: Mulani and Joan both roll their eyes and tell us we're sick. Truth? They would be bored if it weren't for our sexual tension statements.
Twitter 129: Same phrase by Doug in shipping? Forget it. Mulani prefers jokes from non-creepy guys. Besides, these are matter-of-fact axioms to live by.
Twitter 130: Back to number two. Early on at Buildicon, Mike said: "You've only worked a week and you're already stinking up the office with that salsa!"
Twitter 131: It's such moments where I'm most calm. I stood next to a big bowl of my salsa. I calmly handed Mike a tortilla chip. He raised an eyebrow.
Twitter 132: Mulani then stepped from her office. Two eyebrows went up as Mike dipped. He took a bite. He chewed. He double-dipped and that was that.
Twitter 133: Mulani smiled as she tasted the salsa. Soon afterward I couldn't keep middle management fingers from greedily grabbing food from my desk.
Twitter 134: Everyone stopped by but the corporate prez. He's kind of like one of those weird beasts in Star Wars than can't be swayed by the Force.
Twitter 135: This Force was a salsa I swore, "I will never share such a guarded secret with others." Ten days later I posted the recipe on willieboy.com.
Twitter 136: By the way, in regards to the fourth workplace axiom, after three weeks of exceptional behavior, slack to your heart's content.
Twitter 137: I buy an ant farm and name all the ants inside after me. I call them my collective consciousness. They're all named Willie. I talk to them.
Twitter 138: I take the ant farm to a coffeehouse. I get a mocha, smile at the ants, read the paper and feel like God spinning planets on his fingertips.
Twitter 139: What else can I do but bring the ant farm to work? Workers come, stare into the little cubicles of sand. They wander off. I feel giantish.
Twitter 140: Soon I come to work and the ant farm is filled with water. The ants float hopelessly, lifeless. Milt walks by, winks. I stop bringing salsa.
Twitter 141: Milt is in his Benetton sweater attire, probably bought at the Cusack Movie Collection auction from High Fidelity. He oozes seedy Hollywood.
Twitter 142: He declares himself a big fan of Japanese samurai movies. He currently reads, "Samurai Stories and Other Decapitation Romances." I hate him.
Seven.
Twitter 142: Most jobs are about nothing. The corporate world is no savior from that. I mean, what are we but a slowly drowning ant farm, anyway?
Twitter 143: I have a college degree, a marketing background that you can't laugh too hard at. But I make a mere 34K per year. I don't even have a car.
Twitter 144: I don't make as much as my cab-driving father did back in the 1970s. He didn't have a degree. So where's the money? At Buildicon?
Twitter 145: Not in this job where ant-killer Milt Butterlink gets 110,000 clamshells per year. Now I think I need to explain my take on advertising...
Twitter 146: Advertising. It's what fills sports stadiums, magazines, computer games, TV shows about nothing. It's a numbing new take on dish soap.
Twitter 147: Can you feel orgasmic about advertising? Sure you can. It gets ladies and gents to wash in adorable new ways and makes you coo and googoo.
Twitter 148: It's about interactive thinking. We need subliminal Buildicon messages that spin heads like soap bubble carousels in mindless playability.
Twitter 149: Ad creation takes enlightenment about the corporate world. A true mystery, yes.
Twitter 150: I work in a corporate world where everyone thinks I'm weird. No mystery there. Though I don't think my dead ants thought I was weird.
Twitter 151: Milt wants me to think up an ad concept for Buildicon's wireless recordable transmitter devices. it's for industrial data, like evil robots.
Twitter 152: I'll think up copy for an ad, sure. This industry is so C3PO. We help protocols speak to each other. He was a protocol droid. We translate.
Twitter 153: We can buildicon that gizmo. We can help protocols speak to one another. Only like C3PO I can't help but feel impending doom when I think.
Twitter 154: The day I saw boxes filled with pink sponge packaging I stared in wonder at the little rectangles. Here was my temporary answer to fun.
Twitter 155: Most corporate folk consider 'fun' a ludicrous non-serious detrimental work behavior. Creative marketing people are freaks who live for fun.
Twitter 156: Fun: more than just ballgame beer. Sorry to offend you simpletons. Fun is a complex process often meaning hyperfocusing on the mundane.
Twitter 157: There is something inherently appealing in a block of pink sponge. In and of itself it has no real value other than as a packaging product.
Twitter 158: You stuff them into empty spaces in boxes. They fill voids. Yet I see living shapes. I decide the sponge rectangles will make nice puppets.
Twitter 159: I suddenly want to create diorama of pink packaging corporate puppets, not merely for my entertainment, but for all bored Buildicon workers.
Twitter 160: What do you think if you see pink packaging sponges with faces: felt-pen grins of asinine pondering and surreal cartoonland pontifications?
Twitter 161: Mike and I design a character in this pink sponge puppet named Blockhead Joe. Much of his story is simple. He marries Airhead Pam.
Twitter 163: Blockhead Joe and Airhead Pam have a grand wedding. They appear on a sitcom. He cheats on her. She cheats on him. They have baby larvae.
Twitter 164: We put up a 'Free Larvae' sign. They're made out of packaging popcorn. We draw faces on them so each one is unique.
Twitter 165: Glen quits his job in Tech Support and takes his larvae to Mississippi. I soon get an email: "We're here!" I never hear from him again.
Twitter 166: Airhead Pam gets murdered. Some of the larvae turn into spawnlings that are Styrofoam, half sponge. Blockhead Joe gets framed.
Twitter 167: Blockhead Joe gets kidnapped. The ransom is twenty bucks. Body parts begin to arrive. How do I get away with this you might ask?
Twitter 168: I have no idea how I get away with this sponge show other than the four workplace axioms I defined earlier. I'll do some real work tomorrow.
Twitter 169: 2 am: I dream about my dead ant farm. I am inside it, lost. There are no ants to show me the way, only plastic walls and hulks of dead ants.
Twitter 170: I split open a dead dried ant and make a sort of shaman costume that I wear while I explore. I commune with their dead consciousness.
Twitter 171: I find a room with ant eggs stuck to the walls and ceiling. One is cracked open. Black lifeless eyes stare out at me. I am them.
Twitter 172: In my shaman ant dream I grow thirsty. I use two broken antenna as divining rods. I dig and water springs out. I wake up having wet the bed.
Twitter 173: Milt's eyeballs are nearly touching the new ant farm I brought to work. "Where are the ants?" he asks. "I just mail-ordered them," I say.
Twitter 174: He seems more impatient than me about the ants arrival: "When will they come?" Me: "Any second now." Milt stares for minutes on end.
Twitter 175: I finally get the ants and dump them into the ant farm. They spread throughout like they'd just been on vacation and start digging tunnels.
Twitter 176: I watch the ants watch me. I think they can see me. They gather at the plastic walls. No wait. It's the dead fly I put in there. Nevermind.
Twitter 177: After lunch I see the ant farm is a complete wreck. All the sand walls have collapsed. There's no movement. A Post-It reads: "Earthquake."
Twitter 178: Milt walks by. He doesn't look at me but snickers to himself. I follow him to the bathroom where I can hear him laughing insanely.
Twitter 179: Today is like yesterday only worse. I walk up to Buildicon where a bum pisses on a tire in the parking garage. Thank God I don't have a car.
Twitter 180: I say: "Don't you have a goddam outhouse? Or a newspaper? Or a friend to piss on? Cause you're pissing me off!" He laughs in my direction.
Twitter 181: I snap out of it as Buildicon's self-imposed beauty queen, Kira de Frito passes by. She builds spreadsheets that Mulani has to fix.
Twitter 182: She talks to Brazilian product buyers, perhaps about lingerie. She's the Wicked Witch of the West Indies, kind of dark, with a hook nose.
Twitter 183: Kira de Frito slinks by in a jaguar of an outfit, very catlike, with tight black pants and cleavage you could put a pineapple platter on.
Twitter 184: By the copier Mulani tells me about Kira de Frito's crisis: "I will not suffer this one alone. She has to dance for her husband." Me: "No!"
Twitter 185: Me: "He can't?" Mulani: "Nope." Me: "So she dances a jig each night before they salsa?" Mulani: "Every night." Me: "Horrible!"
Twitter 186: I mean, don't get me wrong. Shake it don't break it. "But that's not all of it," Mulani says. I run the copier again to buy more time.
Twitter 187: Mulani: "She's only clothed from the waist up, a corset." Me: "Right now?" I look. "No, you idiot. When they you know," Mulani says.
Twitter 188: As I sit down at my desk I suddenly realize that if Buildicon is the social heart of Americana I'd rather be in Brazil with Kira de Frito.
Twitter 189: I want to be carrying around platters of pineapples, wear an oversized cabana shirt, and see Kira scream "Carnival!" in her coconut bikini.
Twitter 190: I'd rather it be Mulani than Kira de Frito. Let's eat, let's dance, let's get away from the color grey in a seaside town filled with color.
Twitter 191: Except there will be copacabana boys by the hundreds. I can't bear the thought of losing Mulani to a pineapple plate distributor.
Twitter 192: "Ay!" I yell. "Is there no justice?" Mike looks at me. I don't think he cares that I yelled. He's busy designing a robotic ad for Buildicon.
Twitter 193: Me: "Do we have to sing a musical?" Mike: "Yes. Can we make one up?" Me: "Of course. I don't know any actual words or tunes. Do you?"
Twitter 194: Mike realizes he doesn't know any musicals either, but we sing. He leads. Next door is the president's office. He doesn't say a word.
Twitter 195: He knows we're crazy. He's also happy because I know Margo in Orders just intercepted a fax that he paid $300,000 for a turbo prop.
Twitter 196: And that's OK, except now he's wearing goggles to work. He's happy we're bringing life to the land of grey. But now I call him captain.
Twitter 197: Up walks Kira de Frito. Dear me, did I forget to mention that she has a birthmark on her forehead? She's got that look in her eye again.
Twitter 198: "You do not like me," Kira says. I say in reference to her birthmark: "You're so retro Gorbachev." She doesn't get it.
Twitter 199: We battle with questions: "What did I ever do?" "You didn't like the song?" "Why are you so angry?" "Are you not a fan of musicals, Kira?"
Twitter 199: Kira de Frito once starred in a Brazilian novella. I never acknowledge her stardom. So she's overly sensitive. She bolts into Milt's office.
Twitter 200: "What's up with the colorful new ads?" I say to Mike. "It's like robots in dance gear." Mike: "It's our new look and feel." Me: "Rainbows?"
Twitter 201: Mike imitates Milt Butterlink: "Make Buildicon recognizable with color." He adds, "Milt can't choose one color so he goes with them all."
Twitter 202: Milt's door opens and out pops Kira de Frito. She bolts for her cubicle. "What's up her pineapple?" Mike says.
Read more "Small Places" at www.twitter.com/smallplaces
Labels: authors, blogs, comedy novel, creative writing, fiction, literary, N.L. Belardes, Small Places, tweets, twitter book
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