Six Things

Next to the rail yard on my way home today, a man whispered "Sorry" into my ear. I heard a muffled click and hot pain shot up my back. He ran. After he sensed that I wasn't chasing, he turned back to look. He had wild eyes and there was a cut above his left cheekbone. He brandished a staple gun in his right hand. Better a staple gun than a syringe.

The woman walking behind me, after making the requisite cooing sounds, was able to remove the piece of paper stapled to my back. She identified herself as a nurse and offered to remove the staple too, but I declined her offer. It's really more of a job for an administrative assistant.

So I'm at home now, and I'm not really looking forward to taking my coat off. I'm probably going to pull my arms out, then grab the coat with both hands. I'm going to take a couple of deep breaths. Then I'm going to yank it up over my shoulder, and I am totally going to scream.

Anyhow, this is what the paper says:

- Players start with six random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their six things and post these rules.
- After writing your blog post, you need to find six bloggers and staple a copy of this to some part of their body.
- Don't press charges unless secondary symptoms develop.

Okay, here goes:

1) In first grade, an older kid wanted to nickname me Mouse. The nickname never stuck, but my worldview was forever framed by the rodent family. I spent my younger years hiding, sneaking out under cover of night to experience the thrilling and forbidden, senses invigorated by the fear of predators. Always the fear. If I was Falcon or Chimp or Tapeworm, things might be different, but different is not necessarily better. And today I live in a burrow and have a pungent scent owing to glands found near my tail.

2) I like clean things a lot, but I love dirty things.

3) I don't like pasta that's smaller than elbow macaroni or anything that associates with that pasta. I don't like those things at all. You could even say I hate them. Chicken and Stars -- fuck 'em, fuck 'em, fuck 'em with a brown cock in their brown stars.

4) Could a dragonfly ever fly into my ear canal? Why would it want to? What do dragonflies eat? Ladybugs? Where am I? That is, I believe that insects will one day take over the Earth, or maybe just my home, or maybe just my body, or maybe just my ear.

5) I still keep my favorite stuffed dog from when I was a child. It's lying on a shelf in my bedroom closet, cozy under a pile of folded polo shirts. The dog is red, but it's not Clifford. Every once in a while it catches my eye. It doesn't seem unhappy, just kind of bored. I should have it cleaned and sewed securely in case someone else might love it. I no longer call it "him." That's kind of sad.

6) I believe music is the highest art. I haven't a bit of musical talent. All you read here is compensation for that. A nicer way to put it would be that I explore the musical properties of words.

Well, that's done. Finally. What I need to find now are some self-dissolving staples, some antiseptic, and six bloggers whose partner has a puncture wound fetish. I really should have got that nurse's number for the first two. I think I know an administrative assistant who can arrange the other six things.
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