• • •
Hollow everyone, hollow there!
Howl do they do it and once it is known, howl bout that.
My segment has been cut by the higher ups again, so I will refrain from interviewing the parrot.
Lunch was wonderful, if you like having your stomach turn by finding out how the young graphic designer that replaced you is so wonderful and talented, outside of the bad designs that the production manager does not like, but blamed a busy schedule for the outcome. Amazing what a promotion from the library will get you, that a few classes at the community college which arms one with the ability to become the next Milton Glaser of the machine tool world.
In the bunker again, the friendly place to put ones mind and heart when you become invisible at the lunch table. Former boss is moving back to Cleveland where homes are worth a fourth of what they are in the Washington DC area, and everyone else is just waiting for retirement, unless of course buyouts and layoffs come my former co-workers way. Is a buyout better than a sellout, but sellouts are able to pay the monthly bills, were buyouts give you a sense of wealth for a very short period of time, unless you die suddenly, then your rich for life.
I aspired to be a heckler but my shyness got in the way. The stage beckons but a debilitated Saturn cast its mighty shadow as a barrier on the street to fame and fortune. So I heckle when alone, sometimes even at myself, just for the sake of living my dream.
Old graphic designers, oh you know, those over 55 but under the radar screen who don’t dye their hair to look like a TV anchorman with roots that just do not agree.
Buy the latest software, keep current, create things because you have no choice, put a contract out on the editor, have an affair with air and quit falling asleep on the ironing board, where all wrinkles in the plan get straightened out.
I attract the homeless and the elderly on my walks with the dog, for some reason, either through a shared awareness of the hostile suits who drive their Beamers and Lexus SUV’s too fast through the neighborhood in order to get back to the room where the weekly quality meeting are held, or the fact that we detest personal ID’s hanging from our necks casting shadows on the newly bought Dockers which informs the world that this is indeed the uniform of choice for the pay the bills squadron.
We all do what we have to do, even if it is to sit quietly and intake the instructions of the latest Deepak Chopra fulfillment of desire meditation, while you consider cashing out the 401K to pay the mortgage next month, can’t loose my cable and internet connection just now—godless dammit! Om Mani Padmi Hum and sing a few bars before hitting one or two for the poetry jam segment that my tongue refuses to partake in.
Whoaisme, whoaisyou, whoa Nelly and Black Betty, well at least the one sung by Spider Bait. Conclusion, well no more lunches with the company that downsized me once and twice, for three times is a charm that I am allergic to … being pitied or marginalized, much like nasal discharge with no hankies or tissue available for the pick up lines that just do not work anymore, much like my runny resume that sits in file cabinets and hard drives, saying a mighty hollow … and howl in the hell did it get this way?

