Unserious

Dear Michael,  

I write to you in continued frustration over troubles with my family and in the expectation that you will understand my viewpoint and dispense some much-needed advice. We spoke briefly last spring about my ambitions to join the National Society for Foolish Uses of Time, a future which came increasingly into my considerations during the months preceding the completion of my studies. Midway through June, I committed myself to this direction and informed my family of it. I was met only with disdain. This past fortnight, the daily family dinner has seen relentless arguments, and Mother seems to have lost both the desire and capacity to understand my chosen path in life. 

I have come to the realisation that a life unfruitful is one I simply cannot bear. There breathes within me an ambition that compels me to rise out of the channel family tradition has carved out for my future. We have a long history in the business of ornamental typewriters, one that has pressed forward long past the time it became obsolete. Each generation has forced the next to follow it into the back of the dusty workshop at 17 Rue du Mot, where the inventory stockpiles grow ever larger. I myself have seen the typewriters at the very bottom of the stacks being crushed by the steel weight of those above them. I shall not be mangled by the chains of conformity in the name of a senseless pursuit. I will escape this town and do something with my life, make a name for myself. Look at old Uncle Gary. He wasted away painting miniature landscapes to decorate the sides of the typewriters, just like Grandfather taught him; neither of them ever looked up at real mountains. Locked up with his paint cans, it is no wonder he eventually gave in to the bottle. I distinctly remember the servant boy being sent out twice a day on errands to the liquor store and tobacconist. 

The NSFUT would redeem me. An entire institution at the forefront of their field, the quintessential organisation. That which is on top of all other things. That which has no equal in sight, was never and shall never be surpassed. It is true, as Mother has repeated ad nauseam, that they are far from this town and everything it stands for, but where my family sees uncertain horror, I see my sole hope of escape. In any case, the NSFUT are simply the very best at whatever it is that they do. By joining their ranks, I would have a purpose in life, and the contentment of being in the place that allows me to best fulfil it.

In truth, it was your mother’s visit for lunch yesterday that prompted me to write you. Given the current state of family affairs, I did not feel especially inclined to join the mealtime conversation, though I occasionally chimed in to steer the talk away from my plans. I later overheard our mothers as they sat in the drawing room. Despite my efforts over lunch, the issue of my future immediately took centre stage. I am still not entirely sure as to why I stayed by the door to listen, since hearing their talk only frustrated me further, but I suppose it must have been some version of that human affinity for watching a great disaster unfold from a distance, slowly.

Soon enough, in an effort to contribute her two cents to the conversation, your mother spoke of your life and the disappointment it caused her. Through her words, I increasingly felt the presence of a kindred spirit.

At a certain level, I believe she would like you to be happy by her own definition of the term, just as I hope my mother still does for me. I gathered that she feels you are making a terrible mistake in choosing to attend Cambridge, a place that she feels a Comma has no business attending. From her view, seeing her only child throw his life away is an unbearable plight. She once followed her own dream to marry your father; marrying a Full-Stop was seen as a complete affront to the deepest Comma values, a rejection of continuation for finality. Having only recently recovered from the familial shunning that followed, she cannot stand the idea of becoming outcasts once again, should you become the first Cambridge Comma.

I admit to you here that which I had not yet admitted even to myself: I am afraid. Afraid that my own efforts to break free will prove insufficient. As punctuation marks, our journeys are insistently imposed upon us in the form of predetermined identities. However this letter may find you, know that you have my empathy. Should you have found ways to endure this reality, I would be truly indebted to learn of them.

Yours punctually;

Prism Technologies Ltd. employee termination file

Item 3: Excerpts from Konstantinos Zorbapoulos’ work log 

27/01/2013 - Maintenance Trainee #0a7F41 

Work activities: [Onboarding meeting with colorimetry team leader; lunch break; introduction to colorimetry team; mandated rest period; training for light diffuser maintenance]

Employee’s comments: [Nothing to report. Shift proceeded as expected]

08/10/2013 - Junior Maintenance Technician #1a7F41

Work activities: [Meeting with diffusion team; scheduled inspection of diffuser alignment rails; lunch break; assessment of backup power infrastructure; mandated rest period; cleaning of employee rest facility bathrooms]

Employee’s comments: [Nothing to report. Shift unremarkable.]

03/06/2015 - Junior Maintenance Technician #1a7F41

Work activities: [Ventilation duct repair; lunch break; ventilation duct repair; (shortened) mandated rest period; ventilation duct repair]

Employee’s comments: [Suggest replacement of the ventilation fan housing in storage rooms A12 and A58; excessive signs of wear observed. Shift otherwise unremarkable.]

05/07/2017 - Maintenance Technician #2a7F41

Work activities: [Team safety briefing; video review of incident 040717c; lunch break; inspection of incident site and assessment of alignment rail damage; mandated rest period; preparation for scheduled restart of coaxial light diffuser]

Employee’s comments: [Nothing to report. Shift completely unremarkable]

05/07/2021 - Operations Technician  #2b7F41

Work activities: [Onboarding of trainee batch; review of outreach team comments; lunch break; spectral adjustment based on outreach team comments; reevaluation of shortened trainee rest periods in light of current guidelines] 

Employee’s comments: [Nothing to report, as usual. As usual, shift completely unremarkable.]

16/12/2021 - Operations Technician #2b7F41

Work activities: [Reporting on projector maintenance oversight; spectrometry briefing for trainees; lunch break; atmospheric monitoring station visit; review of accident statistics; inspection of new alignment rails]

Employee’s comments: [The equipment functions as usual. Some of it breaks down, as it usually does. The maintenance team fixes it when needed. Post-lunch breaks have been entirely removed. Against my advice.]

07/04/2021 - Operations Technician #2b7F41

Work activities: [Review of stock; lunch break; review of stock]

Employee’s comments: [I have no idea what I’m doing writing this. My job’s already done for anyways. Hell, I don’t even know if this thing has a word count limit. Eight years of daily comments with nothing show for it. Even if I had anything of use to say, who even reads these? This whole time management has had us crunching numbers, servicing machinery, addressing incidents. Just clock in, shift away, and clock out. After a couple years, that gets to you, you know? Sure, we make rainbows, but get past the first few hundred and you stop seeing them as much more than a gimmick. I barely even look up at the live feeds anymore. Align the right projector, throw in a diffuser, adjust the spectral profile, check the telemetry, and humans will eat it all up. The company’s been in this business for millennia. Somehow in all that time they haven’t figured out how to treat us workers better.  But that’s besides the point. Looking back, I can’t think of a single day since I was a trainee where I actually had something to look forward to. And I’m on the job almost all my waking hours. What type of life is that? See, this morning I went to Sam’s office to pick up the set of keys I’d lent him yesterday. His eyes had that foggy, glazed-over look to them, like most people here. He went to get the keys from his locker, and as I waited there, I checked out the feed on his monitor to pass the time. It was one of the CCTV streams from our sector. A human in Munich was stepping into his shower. He’d opened the bathroom window, and beams of light were streaming into the room, lighting up the steam that had started to rise. We had just started operations in this quadrant, quickly deploying two miniature rainbows. I saw the human stop in his tracks to take a closer look. I did too. You could see the droplets from the shower change colours as they flew through each band, looking like multicoloured welding sparks. It was hard to tell on the monitor through all the steam, but I think I made out a smile on the man’s face. We both stayed there for a few minutes. Slowly, he turned away and got on with his shower. I could hear Sam’s footsteps outside in the corridor. Something in the back of my mind decided to a leave parting gift for the man in the shower. As a thank you of sorts.]  

Section 3: Excerpt from incident report 070421a

(Original article below)

I've spent the last ten years of my life working as a professional kitchen fire. This occupation has taken me far and wide, and is what lights me up every morning. I write here to set the record straight. 

I have seen things. Done things. This I will not deny. In several ways, however, the authors of this guide stray from the truth in their portrayal of fires.

Whether these inaccuracies are an act of narrative embellishment or deliberate deception is not something I wish to discuss here. We kitchen fires are above such speculative discussions. I write here instead to offer a more enlightened view on this matter, a view widely shared amongst my colleagues of the incendiary persuasion. Yes, senseless paperwork enrages us, but does it not enrage you too? And yes, your attempts at befriending kitchen fires will not save your skin (or your kitchens, as the authors rightfully pointed out), but will your amity with a professor salvage your grades from oblivion? Does that justify painting the teacher as savagery manifest, incapable of empathy? Much of behaviour is an unchangeable facet of one's nature, irrespective of intention. We fires, kitchen or otherwise, simply are. We burn, smoke, flicker and roar, not because we are particularly inclined to do so, but because that is what makes us fires.

An (incomplete) guide on how not to put out a kitchen fire. 

Entries taken from painful experience and catastrophic failure.

Pull out a printed copy of this guide and read it too close to the fire. 

This was a serious issue during the editing process.

Read it a bedtime story. 

In our experience, kitchen fires have not proved to be particularly interested in stories of any kind, nor are they good listeners. Picture books are the worst of the lot, as most kitchen fires are farsighted and will get frustrated by the blurry images.

Feed it your dinner.

Kitchen fires are not typically calmed down by tasty treats. The likeliest outcome is a burnt dinner and an unhappy fire.

Hands.

It seems that over thousands of years, kitchen fires have become unnaturally skilled in the art of painful hand-disassembly. Hands, conversely, have made no strides in fire resistance, so remain vulnerable to this vector of attack. Definitely do not try this on larger fires, which are additionally proficient in the ways of body-disassembly.  

Attempt to carry the fire away. 

Attempts to entirely displace the burning object from the situation and dispose of it elsewhere are entirely misguided. This is primarily due to the fact that in most localities, neither of the four available bin categories – household waste, recycling, glass, and compost – make accommodations for a live fire. As a responsible citizen, this simply cannot be your course of action.

Threaten it with pointless paperwork and the crushing weight of an absurd bureaucracy. 

Demanding that the fire fill out forms 543-21.c and 172-3.y and present them to K. in office 81D of building H will do nothing more than anger it. Remember; a good fire is a cooperative fire. An angry fire is not a cooperative fire. 

Take it to court.

The problems with this approach are threefold. First, the typical kitchen fire lacks a clear understanding of arson, personal property and appropriate kitchen etiquette. There is an ethical issue in accusing it of a crime that it cannot appreciate. In addition, legal institutions have historically been reluctant to accommodate fires on their premises. Understandably so, seeing as no courthouse has ever burned down without a fire present on the scene. Transport is a further difficulty. A kitchen fire is not the most mobile suspect, and certainly presents a considerable flight risk.

Befriend the fire.

Bureaucratic violence is not the answer, but neither is love. Unlike kitchen fires of the moving-castle variety, your local kitchen fire is unlikely to be a mischievous but benevolent demon who is easily appeased by eggshells. You are also presumably not the Devil from singer-songwriter Don McLean's 1971 hit single American Pie, in which case fire is not your only friend, and is in fact not your friend at all.

Close your eyes and pretend there is no fire. 

There is definitely still a fire. When dealing with a kitchen fire, the last thing you want to do is blind yourself. This puts you at a severe disadvantage; in such cases, the fire is well-positioned to sneak up on you out of the self-imposed darkness. In a similar vein, walking away is ill-advised. Others will suffer in your stead, and the unattended fire's actions will eventually be blamed on your negligence.

Cover it with inflammable cloth.

 By some act of etymological trickery, inflammable does not mean, as one is wont to assume, ‘not flammable’. It in fact means (as we have quite violently come to understand), ‘yes flammable’. Not good.

Cry.

Tears may bring you temporary comfort, but offer a wholly insufficient volume of water to extinguish most kitchen fires. As much as you may need to process how things went so horribly wrong, delay it until the situation is under control.

Shoot it with a flamethrower. 

Inspired by events from the life of Kayrahan.

Rain. Three hours. Rain. Three hours too many spent on this grey street, surrounded by grey homes, poured on by grey rain, passed by a trickle of grey people with grey hands. The chill dug its way into my jacket, slipped between my ribs, and cut into my stomach. My damp trousers and soaked socks stung my skin. And here I thought I had finally come to terms with this town’s less-than-punctual buses.

I stared at the bus schedule. No buses in the morning, buses at 14:57, 15:23, and 15:41, then no more buses. I looked at my watch; 17:53. I had been here for three hours, with no sign of any bus, holding on to a failing fragment of hope.

I heard the dull click of a cane.

‘Young one, you must walk. They left you.’ I turned to face the raspy voice. A small old man wrapped in a pilled grey cloak limped towards me. ‘You must walk. I will walk with you.’ He came up to me and stared through thick lenses that magnified his eyes. He pulled a hand out of his cloak, holding a rusty chain. It terminated in an equally rusty pocket watch, held up for me to read. 

‘Did you see the last bus? I watch them from my window.’ He pointed towards a rickety box stuffed between two buildings, with a glass pane on the front.

‘There are rarely people here on Mondays, especially rainy Mondays. The drivers skip this stop to go home early.’

‘So I've been waiting for nothing?’

‘Not quite. There is another bus that leaves soon. I will take you towards the previous stop, past the corner where the drivers turn away.’

He started walking. Puzzled, but desperate, I followed him. I became worried that the next bus would pass us by while we were between stops. I expressed my concern to the man, and in response he began whistling a tune. We turned at the corner.

After a short while, we saw the bus approaching. As I had feared, we were too far to make it to the stop in time. The man stepped onto the street in front of the bus. I expected him to try to wave it down, but he let it pass. 

NYSE, 15/04. Chaos ensued yesterday morning at the IPO of Stylischgermandatastoragekompanie GmbH. The Sandau-based startup made headlines early last year, promising safe, redundant data storage at unprecedentedly low costs, made possible by an alleged ‘patent-pending process’. The company quickly drew millions in investments from potential clients and angel investors. After taking on its first clients this fall, the then-private firm enjoyed resounding success, installing itself as a landmark player in the data storage market.

Yesterday, hours after its much-anticipated IPO, clients started reporting service outages. Stylischgermandatastoragekompanie temporarily blocked off access to clients’ stored data, citing ‘minor technical difficulties’, which they expected would be ‘resolved shortly’. This shutdown sparked outrage amongst investors and clients alike, who now demand answers and accountability. Thus far, their calls have gone unanswered; the company has also declined our request for comments.

Today, light is finally being shed on the situation. Our offices in Libya were contacted by Monira Zwait, the 19-year-old co-founder of Sharikat Storage LLC. This under-the-radar outfit currently counts only three employees, two founders included, and operates in the country’s remote south.

Monira revealed that Sharikat Storage was founded shortly after a conspicuous group of German investors visited her hometown, looking for cheap data storage. ‘My friend Nasser and I had just finished high school, and were quite worried about finding jobs. We [went to ask them] what this ‘storage’ was all about, and they said that they would pay us to store information. Now, we had spent many years in school filling endless notebooks, so we told them we knew a thing or two about data storage. They asked for our company's name, so we made one up on the spot. Then we signed a couple papers, and they promised to pay us for our work.’

Remarkably, this misunderstanding went unnoticed for months, even as the German company rapidly scaled its operations. According to Monira, the arrangement between the two companies included an office for co-founder Nasser at Stylischgermandatastoragekompanie’s Sandau headquarters. ‘From there, [Nasser] would call me every day and read out long strings of numbers from his computer, and I would copy them into notebooks. When necessary, I would read out requested pages to him.’ The pair’s only operating costs were international calls and stationery. They quickly ran headfirst into an obvious issue. ‘The data just kept coming in, and our notebook scheme was becoming unsustainable. One evening, as I gazed out at the desert sunset, I wondered if the answer perhaps lay in the dunes. The next morning, I brought a stick and started writing in the sand. Wind would erode the numbers, so I hired my brother to go through them and restore those that were getting erased.’ By means still unclear to us, the trio’s plot remained undetected for months. ‘We were just that fast. But it all fell apart when Nasser had to leave headquarters to attend the IPO. The board had invited him. We couldn’t transfer the numbers anymore, so our whole system froze over. Cue yesterday’s service meltdown.’ Monira claims to have shortly received a call from Stylischgermandatastoragekompanie’s COO. ‘They started asking for answers. I gave them answers. They really did not like those.’

​​So many frustrated weeks I have spent trying to become a better writer. Sometimes, when I cannot fall asleep, I watch writing tutorials on my laptop meow. None have been of any use to me. They all revolve around reading my work, and the idea of being my own first reader. Most people are apparently able to relate just fine with this, and improve with such advice.

I am convinced these tutorials would work just as meow for me, if it were not for one small detail; I am unable to read.

Most of us understand literacy as the ability to read and write. Read and write. Nobody thinks of my unique plight. For years, I have been writing, yet I completely lack the ability to read. I should clarify here that I am not blind. My eyesight is quite fine, but all it ever allows me to see of my writings is a meow of convoluted gibberish upon the page.

Sometimes I pick up an old piece of writing. I can vaguely discern where the block of text ends, so I pick up where it leaves off. The problem with this is that sometimes I am not certain what the original piece was about. Goodbye!

Now that we have spoken at length about cats in general, I'd like to talk about my own particular little feline friend, Cinderblock. I am perpetually fascinated by the little things he does every day. I would not have thought that he knows English, but just yesterday, he was pawing away at my keyboard, surely writing another of his stories. I wish I could understand. Cinderblock likes taking naps on that keyboard. Some days I go without writing; his peace should not be disturbed. Cinderblock likes flowers. He takes little bites of the petals. I got him tulips this week.

Meow.

Sunday's shopping list:

Eggs.

Roses.

Cat food.

Dish soap.

Human soap.