17 April, 2007

Deliberate Haze

...their eloquence escapes me/ their logic ties me up and rapes me....


I was told by a third party that he claims to be the father of my second child. Well, until it was evident that she was a terror, and at that point he was happy to renounce her.

Why would you start a rumor like that?

"I never!"

She said that you did, you started the rumor. And I wondered what purpose it served, how saying that would benefit you.

"I didn't! I never said I was the father of your child!"

Hm.

I sip my beer, gaze at him. Herb begins to squirm.

Chin goes up, and eyebrows. Head tilted to one side, just slightly. Beer glass rotates slowly on bar top.

"I, I, I, well, I may have said, said something to the EFFECT, of, of, but I never..."

The eyebrows ratchet another notch.

"Okay. What I SAID was, and this is totally true, was that I was living with you for awhile, and your husband kind of wasn't, and nine months later you had a baby. Which was true."

Agreed. All but the 'kind of wasn't', except, no, I guess that was when he was travelling with the IT job he had at the time. So while Herb's responsible for a certain level of culpability in regards to the rumor mill, to himself he can pretend complete innocence.

Later, we argue about what qualifies as an adverb.

Later still, he e-mails me with a definition to prove his point.

Geek.

(Hello, pot? This is the kettle.)

A giant banner grabs my attention:

Stroke Targets By Color



and then, in smaller letters,

Know Where You Stand.

It's good to be aware that you're nearest the blue targets, in case you need to walk around and pet all the yellow ones first.

You'd think that the folk writing for billboards, or the folk paying for writing on billboards, would realize that a message has fewer than five seconds to imprint upon the viewer, and would tailor messages for maximum clarity. Two words in a row that function both as nouns and verbs (and why can I not find a word for that?)is a mistake anywhere but comedy; e.g.:

Doctor Cuts With Bandages.




(De Do Do Do De Da Da Da; The Police)

4 comments:

Aimee said...

Ok, I've spent way more than 5 seconds, and I still don't get what the banner is trying to say.

How's the knitting going?

Cybele said...

It is supposed to raise awareness that black people have an increased risk factor for stroke. It is unclear from the message whether the blacker you are, the higher your stroke risk is, but that seems to be the implication.

The one sock is never going to be a pair. I am bored. It will make a nice beer cozy instead.

Totsie said...

I am completely confused by the banner.

Posted for you!

Michael said...

Took me a while, but I understood. A good entry for Eats Shoots and Leaves.