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Looking for home....

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Dreams

Published: 07 March 2011

Hits: 1725

I'm with my children, the boy and the girl, and we're going home. It's a grey day, featureless, the boy is walking with us just out of reach, the girl, she's clinging to me, she's sad and crying.

There's a long row of condominium / townhouses, they vary in size and shape but they're all connected. I live somewhere in there, but I'm not sure exactly where, and we climb a flight of stairs to this covered "subway" type platform and she's there. It's her, only she's exaggerated in limbs, extra thin, long, long legs and arms, a slender torso, she's wearing a short skirt and a corset and a Venetian half mask and she's come to surprise me, she's wearing a wide, toothy smile like you might imagine the joker to be wearing....

When she sees us she laughs lightly and runs away down the stairs on the other side, laughs like a Japanese Geisha, then she returns and follows me, talking, prattling. The children don't recognize her, but my daughter is clingy, sad, holding on to my side. She's lost the mask and is prattling to me, talking, trying to make plans for a rendezvous, right now I don't care, walking across the parking lot, an empty field, the town-homes extending off in an endless row to the horizon, I just want to find our home.

Without the slightest trace of irony....

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 05 March 2011

Hits: 2541

It's a busy day. And at lunch a couple of the servers cut early, leaving the Bosses Nephew and I to finish up.

It's busy, but we can handle it. The owner, he looks for the missing staff, can't find them. I tell them they're gone. And there's a couple of minutes, a couple of minutes only, where we fall behind, the Nephew, he's not so strong, doesn't speak English well enough to answer the phone, he isn't really a big help.

In the evening the boss goes on a tirade. There's the "You fucking lazy bastards" and all sorts of permutations, he's having his monthly rant. Mostly I just ignore it, but it casts a pall over the shift and the staff. He goes on for about half an hour, then "You are all fucking-a taking advantage of my kindness ....".

Customers come in and it's a bit of a relief, he compensates for his earlier tantrum by being extra nice to the customers.

I go for a cigarette. There's a customer pulled up in the back parking lot, he's having some trouble, I walk over to assist him. "Are you wheelchair accessible?" he asks, and as I begin to explain that we'll need to assist him over a short step "No shortage of help" I assure him, he begins to swear, we've misrepresented (in his opinion) our handicapped and wheelchair-accessible options....I walk away. Even I have my limits. He calls me back, apologetic he's assuring me that he still intends to come in for dinner (and I'm not so thrilled, the wheelchair appearing to be the least of his handicaps...).

The customer gets inside (without my help) and the Owner calls me over - "Was he just rude to you guys?" he asks, and I begin to explain and the owner interrupts - "because we don't need any fucking rude-a people around here, we can just-a kick him out..."

Without the slightest trace of irony. 

100 Billion Pennies

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Lost

Published: 03 March 2011

Hits: 2081

Or, roughly 1 Billion dollars in lost pennies throughout the USA. Of course, the 1 billion dollars is face value only, rarer pennies will be more valuable, and so probably that figure is closer to a couple of billion dollars.

Source: The MegaPenny Project