When furries and the slave trade collide?

I don't think this requires any embellishment. Congratulations, Facebook.

"______ invited you to join the Human Pets society, a social networking game set in a virtual sub-society in which humans act like pets. Buy each othe\ r, bid on auctions, get food at the store, give each other nicknames, chat, play games, and more."

This one is from my brother.

My younger brother, Wade, is sixteen. He recently got a job answering phones and putting stickers on pizza boxes at the local Papa John's, which is conveniently located in the far corner of a strip mall about five minutes from our house.

Until Friday of last week, he had a North Carolina driver's license but wasn't legal to drive in Virginia, where the driving age is sixteen and three months. I had been taking him to work.

So it's Tuesday, and I'm picking him up from work at 9:30PM in his green Papa John's polo shirt and khaki Papa John's hat. He gets into the car in silence, takes off his hat, and closes his eyes. I back out of my parking space and turn right onto Silverbrook Rd.

"So . . . how was work?" I ask.

"It was okay. This guy called, and he wasn't in the computer system, so I was entering his stuff into the computer, and I thought he said 'Ferris Drive' so I asked, 'Ferris as in Ferris wheel?' And he said, 'No, Paris as in Italy.'"

I look, and Wade is giving this sort of blank stare.

"Oh my God," I say. "What did you do?"

"I asked him, 'And what would you like to order, sir?'"

Cerebella Faerienoggin

Unemployment was making me feel worthless so I finally got a job working at Fancy Crafts, a jaunty little gift shop in Wadesboro. I pull weeds, talk to customers, troubleshoot e-mail clients, and clean collections of rooster wall hangings for a sarcastic, energetic woman named Denise.

In the mid-90's the Boyd’s Bears craze hit mothers, wives, and little old ladies all across America. Often in the form of resin figurines depicting bears and other animals in cute situations like going to the dentist, Boyd’s Bears were in high demand from stores like Fancy Crafts. However, it seems that after the turn of the millennium America collectively realized that their favorite plastic bears were hideous and hokier than they had bargained for. When I began working at Fancy Crafts, all Boyd’s Bears were 75% off. Denise was desperate to get rid of them, and one day we sat down at the computer to see if the internet offered any hope. On e-bay entire collections were up for 1 dollar with no bids and an hour left on the auction. Nobody in the world wanted handcrafted figurines of bears wearing fireman suits and rescuing kittens from trees anymore, it seemed.

Today Denise and I started boxing up and inventorying her entire stock of Boyd’s Bears, which took up half of the cluttered storage room. Apparently, every figurine has a name. It was for this reason that, today, I caught myself saying things like:

“Did you want Widdle Coldfin or Waddle Coldfin?”

and

“Do you have another Cerebella Faerienoggin?”

Routines.

You would think a town called Lorton (which consists of townhouses, a brand-new high school, a CVS, and a very old prison) would be full of lurking surreality, but apparently Anson county is far more fertile ground.

It's all in the little things: like when I wake up at 8AM, eat a banana for breakfast, watch the news until I get sick of Nancy Grace, sit on the balcony and read until it gets too hot (9:30AM), realize that the day isn't even close to half-over, and, in fact, it won't get completely dark until 9:00PM or so, and make eye contact with the dog . . .


. . . who is clearly saying, "Please put me in the car and drive us off a cliff."

(More to come--Natural History Museum--but I wanted to show that I figured out my username and password!)

The Wal-Mart Limousine

My mom and I went to the Super Wal-Mart after dinner today to pick up thank-you notes and dog food. We had been navigating the parking lot for maybe 20 seconds before we realized, hey, there’s a white limousine in front of us.

Prom was months ago. Today was graduation, but people don’t get limousines to go to the beach do they? So, who in Wadesboro, North Carolina would be in a limousine today? Is it because it’s Saturday? Have I been gone too long? Anyway, who in Wadesboro in a limousine would be going to Wal-Mart at 7:00 in the evening? Maybe it was one of the funeral home limousines. But that doesn’t make it any easier. I’m having a very hard time connecting white limousines to Super Wal-Mart.

My mom and I watch the limousine make a full loop around the parking lot. They must have made a wrong turn and need to go back the other direction. That explains it. Phew.

No, it doesn’t. They turn back the way they came, making another round through the parking lot, this time rapidly honking the horn. By this time, my mom and I are out of the car and walking toward the automatic sliding doors of Wal-Mart. The limousine passes in front of us and a grinning adolescent girl in the passenger’s seat waves at me.

The limousine drives on through the parking lot, honking, and I can only guess the girl is waving at every other poor confused person in the parking lot who just wants to buy cat litter or a pair of flip-flops or lightbulbs.

That was the last I saw of it. Where are you, honking limousine and smiling girl?

Re-visiting Anson High School for the 2007 Commencement

Considering my NCSSM graduation a week ago, I’m not sure whether that graduation or Anson’s was surreal. Keep in mind, Anson County is where I was born and raised until two years ago when I ended up in Durham. I’ve attended past Anson High graduations, not at all dissimilar to the one I attended today, with no frame of reference. So I guess it is just now occurring to me that there are few feasible realities in which these two graduations can coexist.

I arrived at the rapidly-filling football field bleachers at about 8:00. Earlier that morning the sky was a shade of grey that made me wonder if I needed to bring an umbrella or scope out a seat with an easy escape route, but now it was managing to be sunny. Good. The pair of speakers on stage, unfortunately, could not quite handle the piano concerto that was blasted as we were seating. Whenever there were too many notes played too fast or too loudly the speakers produced mixture of feedback and static that I thought was almost fashionably punk but I don’t think they were going for that. The class of 2007 processed onto the field to a rendition of Pomp and Circumstance with a climatic high chord that didn’t quite make it. The piece was also accompanied by the vocals a woman standing near me who had already started screaming madly for Rashaawn.

As the principal and master of pronunciation introduced Jamie, who was to give the “valetory address,” the wind was picking up, driving the American and North Carolina flags on stage wild, and distant thunder sounded. Great. Meanwhile, the woman in front of me had taken the last picture on her camera which started whirring angrily and the person behind me continued to use some device that could have been a phone, camera, or gigapet that beeped, rang and –now, I could be mistaken –mooed.

The guest speaker for this year’s commencement was the superintendent.

Before the presentation of the diplomas the principal reminded us to keep this “the dignified ceremony it is.” This was met with light chuckles scattered ominously through the crowd.

Most students’ names were met with what were unmistakably war cries. Rashaawn also got a full paragraph screamed by his mother, including the line “and then the lord looked unto Rashaawn and it was GOOD!” One girl’s name was greeted with a bicycle horn. You know, the kind clowns sometimes use.

I almost felt obligated to scream something for the students whose families were either quiet or absent. Shame on me for not doing so.

The recessional was a combination of people standing respectfully to another indie-punk piano concerto and people running down the stands who wanted to get out before the parking lot got “CRAAAZY.”

Well, that was commencement, and I feel like a twat now so I’ll leave it at that.

Guidelines.

Posts may begin after June 9th, 2007.

Posts should document . . .
a) Some surreal incident in the poster's life.
b) Something else of interest that is best communicated in writing--i. e. not over the phone. Mad libs and images are included in this catagory.
c) Life at college. This may be included in catagory a.

Posters should aim to update at least twice a month. There is no upper limit to posting frequency.