-Copy code #0214-

This is the beginning of Cupid's Spreadsheet. It is a story about an office grouch who finds a piece of paper listing local couples destined to fall in love, and about the choices a loveless person might make when he discovers he is holding the bolts of affection.

Jacob thought he knew every departmental copy code, until the unfamiliar #0214 entered the top of the queue. If he'd blinked, he would have missed it. The copier the tech guys had dubbed "Sloth" picked up the job, and the number disappeared from the mailroom terminal. Someone else might have rubbed both eyes and convinced himself that he'd been mistaken. Someone else might have ignored it altogether, this being a busy Monday. But Jacob was unfailingly suited to the mailroom: too efficient to be promoted, too abrasive to be fired. So he put the company envelopes he'd been sorting into the pine box for unsorted company envelopes, and stalked past copiers Envy, Lust, and Gluttony, (all of them occupied by shrinking interns he would later take to task for setting their foam coffee cups on the paper trays) and stood before the offending Sloth. No one manned it. A single 8.5 x 14 inch page dropped into the lower tray, and the machine fell back into powersave mode.

He curled his dry lip and studied the paper, a spreadsheet with two columns for names, one for dates and times, and another for locations. No part of the table mentioned anything financial, nor did the style resemble any of the business templates. This only made it worse, to his way of thinking. Someone had pushed to the top of the queue, and for something most likely not workrelated. Though he was too low in the company hierarchy to devour delinquent full time employees, the head of the mailroom enjoyed watching the more powerful animals feast. He would gather what information was available for the bosses, and position himself to view the spectacle.

Oddly, the original was no longer on the glass. Even if someone had spirited it away the moment the green light had passed the length of the paper, Sloth should have churned out the copy less than five seconds later - he counted every day to make sure each machine operated at peak efficiency.

And if that was still accurate - and if the mailroom computer was still accurate - he should have seen the owner of this copy retreating. And why didn't that person wait? And where were they now?

That someone could push their way to the top without consulting him or the mailroom assistant was a surprise, and to his way of thinking, an unpleasant one. Jacob was not capable of giving up an ounce of power, however petty the circumstance. He was also not capable of walking from cubicle to cubicle with the offending document. Sniffing out the culprit that way would invite denial, defensiveness, and would be terribly inefficient. He could have interrogated the jittery interns, but he knew they never learned names outside the team designed to coordinate their activities.

Far easier to match copy code #0214 to the guilty department. He could hardly wait, but the morning mail came first.

-Carriage House-

A long, long time ago, the grandson of the man who gave his name to this town built a house for his horses and carriages. Now that it is my home, the troughs are home to plants. The remaining stall encloses my kitchen. And the horseshoes hanging from the ceiling are merely decorative, although they do produce a pretty sound when rung together.

I loathe the technical side of moving, but I can't resist the magic of a new living space, particularly a well-kept one with an original design.

No more third-floor garrets; I am living in a carriage house.

-Hairy Glass Jaw-

Summer, 2002. A van rumbles through the housing projects in Saint Paul. Hmong, Somali, Hispanic. One of the Somali structures held our target audience; Muslim teenagers the Literacy Council deemed unprepared for reading at the high school level. With nothing to keep them in the community center - this was a voluntary program, and the adults are all out working or unable to be seen outside their homes - we didn't raise the average literacy much that summer. And we probably would not have seen any students, if the project's volunteer hadn't agressively recruited some.

She was a hirsute twenty-something with aspirations toward independent filmmaking. She seemed well suited to working in some of the toughest housing projects in the Cities. When the students whined, she held her ground. When they blustered, she held firm. I thought they loved her, until the last day of the project.

We showed up to find the office abandoned, and the kids gathered in small, shame-faced clusters. It took some prodding, but eventually one boy confessed: They'd argued. It escalated. Then he'd made a remark about her thin moustache.

She'd burst into tears and quit on the spot.

Almost three years later, I still can't get my head around that.

-Living Will-

After spending the better part of Sunday morning researching dreams, (in particular the Non-REM type remembered precisely because of the shallow brevity of the restless sleep pattern) I had set off on a series of errands through the most crowded areas of town. Because of the human smog, I phoned my parents and told them not to go see my grandfather tonight. Since I was still in that area and the traffic wasn't improving, it only made sense that I see him through dinner.

And dinner it was; arriving at 5:00 is just soon enough to see the first dishes emerge from the kitchen, where I assume the workers all congregate with the exception of the one who drew the short straw and gets to play crowd control. Actually, the seniors in this wing are all to mentally incapacitated to cause too much trouble, although one wheelchairbound woman is filling the air with complaints none of us understand that only seem to make the other residents uncomfortable.

My grandfather is sitting at a strange table tonight, and I've only caught a few words from him that were intelligible. This usually means that he has the right balance on his medication: enough happy pills to make him pleasant around the help, and enough food to absorb the pills' propensity for rendering the patient unconscious.

That makes me think of the questions we ask ourselves every time we go there, all the time: is he happy? Does he know that something is missing from his mind? Does he still have an identity without memory?

I used to struggle with these things, but I don't any longer. It isn't easy for me to give up hypothetical questions, but between spoonfuls, my grandfather gazes at me through pin-prick pupils. Perhaps it is another side effect of the medication, but those eyes, devoid of the proper cues, tend to stymie my imagination. And there's just so many details to manage while we're there. There are bathrooms and sheets to inspect, clothes and grooming to evaluate, and teeth - false teeth to find and identify.

And erratic behavior to manage. Like Grandad's potential explosion when the Greek woman sitting at his table begins shouting in her native tongue and gesturing at his plate.

"??????! ??????, ??????. ??????, ??????, ??????."

She said a lot of other things I didn't catch, but I'd guess the cognate of a word that sounds like "patata" is potato. I had to look up the one that sounded like "aresko." It translates as please.

Later, I plod into his bathroom, expecting to find that he's missed the toliet seat again. I'm pleasantly suprised to find he has not, but I suppose he uses the planters now - at least, that's what the staff said. So there's no number two, but my shoes are sticking to the floor as in a second-run cineplex.

There's no soft drinks here, either.

-Soft Sell-

grandfather's hat ad
Originally uploaded by benedict monk.

No need to worry about copyright here; this advertisement was taken from 1880 copy of the Reading Times. At the princely sum of $0.08 a line, they certainly knew how to grab the consumer. Especially if the ad was political - G.C. stands for Grover Cleveland.

Another used a softer sales approach. The lead was "Not exactly."

"Have you ever been at sea? No, Not exactly,
but my brother married an admiral's
daughter.
Were you ever in France? No, not exactly,
but my mother's name was French.
Did you ever have the Rheumatism? No,
not exactly, but my father has and he cured
it with Dr. Thomas' Eclectic Oil."

-CC: e-mail field for the sycophant-

Now, babies, I know there are those out there who use the CC (carbon copy) field for good and not for evil, but my recent experience has turned me off to the line that brings other mailboxes into a conversation meant for two.

I'll stand by any of my work e-mails, at any time. But trust works both ways; when you call me, you have faith that the hollow sound you hear on the other end is the revolving door I'm spinning through, not a speakerphone with a transcriptionist and the Secretary of Wildlife and Fisheries listening in the wings. So why would you reply to my email with an accusation simultaneously sent to high ranking college officials?

If you must bring the bosses in, you'd better be damn sure all negotiations had been exhausted. This just causes more work for everyone, and you know what else? Possibly another record in your file you'll have to explain come evaluation time.

No, this won't effect me at all. I'm the only one who knows the ordering codes, and I've seen how you spent the petty cash. Trust me, it doesn't match your complexion.

Let us resolve problems here, in this department, and try to make it through a full work day without our fingers poised over the CC field. Because, let's face it: there's nowhere to go but down to the BCC (blind carbon copy) field, and no one wants that.

-Oh, hell no.-

If your engine timing belt snaps on a highway when everyone is around, could you pull off safely to the side?

cartow'd
Originally uploaded by benedict monk.

It was a good day to sit on your car and wait for a tow; warm even before 9:00 AM, and almost uncomfortable as midday approached. Warm enough to read and not think about how much of your next paycheck is going to a mechanic. Warm enough to take off your professional garb and look downright regular in a regular guy T-shirt when the tow arrives. Regular enough to talk football and cars with regular guys who know more about both. Regular enough to be downright warm in the garage, and receive conscientous automotive care from regular, warm people.

Yes, you could coast safely to the side. And you could keep warm, and cool when you get there.

-Rent to own-

They might wink at you. Sway a little, too, if they've been drinking.
Chances are, they'll talk over you.

One thing is certain; you tell a stranger you're shopping for a new place to live, and they'll extol the virtues of ownership or renting. Usually the former.

You should buy, they say, or you'll be paying the same amount per month and have nothing to show for it at the end. That is valid, yes.

But they don't know my price range. Here's a publically available description from the realtor's own site. It describes a property that is within my means:

"DANGER"" New electric service turned off at main panel box. Take flashlight to show. DO NOT SHOW AT NIGHT; OPEN FLOOR BOARDS IN KITCHEN - YOU COULD FALL THRU. Foreclosure property, rehab started but not finished. Home is not liveable yet! All building materials stored there stay with sale except for tools and ladder. Matching siding is also there to finish outside area.

It'd be like camping!