Today’s soundtrack: stop this madness before it starts
Today at 8:02pm: eating dinner in a restaurant with decent chow but shitty service


I think I would’ve made a pretty good hitman. Some people like to work in teams but I enjoy working alone and in silence. If I just took the time to master the killing arts and made the right connections to get the right contracts, I bet I’d be doing great.

Yesterday I get to The Corporation at 8:30am with my coffee and there’s a girl sitting in my office. What the fuck.

“Hi, you must be Rain,” she says, perkily. (I hate perk. I need perk in my life like I need a prison shank in my kidney.) “I’m Robin! I’m the new intern.”

Ah, goddammmit. They never tell me things around here. “Nice ta meet you Robin,” I mutter in my pre-caffeinated tone. Subtext: Let’s can the chatter ‘til my coffee’s down the hatch.

“I hope you don’t mind if I just kind of, you know, look over your shoulder while you work. You know, see how you do things!” she says, pulling a chair over as I try not to recoil in horror. I fire my computer up and launch into derivative small talk, to feel her accent out and figure out where she’s from. Hobby of mine.

“Where’d you go to school?” I ask, trying to confirm if it’s a slight undercurrent of southern drawl I hear. I wish it was the 1950s and you could smoke at your desk. If I still smoked I’d light one up and blow copious clouds all around me in a defensive carcinogenic ring. I would create my own personal ecosystem of bioterror.

Turns out she’s from Texas, and a bit of a Chatty Cathy. She likes to ask questions and, when I begin to answer them, cut me off to provide an (invariably lengthy) answer herself.

I try reminding myself that in a parallel universe I am paid to put people like this into car trunks. I wear black Boston-Strangler-type gloves and a natty jacket. I drink my coffee with the gloves on and sit in diners at 3 in the morning, staring off into space. When the jukebox runs out it takes me a moment to register, then I put another quarter in.