one of my favorite comedians
made me extremely sad for the first time ever
by dying
i watched reruns of his shows
and laughed and laughed so hard i cried
but then i got confused
was i crying from the dying?
it does not matter because he was great
and i miss him
#katyamills
life will always be a tragedy will
always be a comedy. may it be the most dramatic
breathless thing you’ve ever known
and go down fighting
#katyamills
Bombardiers by Po BronsonThe book is overall an easy read and almost like watching tabloid television, what with all the misfit mortgage-backed security salespeople and the anecdotal narrative. I had a lot of laughs. It is helpful to hit the ground floor running as there is a lot of industry jargon. I briefly worked an institutional sales floor -in a past life- and you can tell the author was in the business; this is an inside job. I think the character Mark ‘Eggs’ Igino may be a foil for the author. He’s the new guy who seems to have both talent and a conscience, and we hang our hopes on him to maybe find a way out of an ultimately degrading profession. Everyone’s in the game for quick money and devoting a few solid years (body, mind and soul) to ‘the company’ for financial security for themselves and their families. The company gets to treat them like dogshit. They bounce you at any time for any reason with 15 minutes notice. They bark at you like a boot camp drill sergeant. They spy on you and steal your phone records, all in the name of protecting trade secrets. They use your vices and vulnerabilities against you to keep you docile in your chair for 12+ hours a day. The author tracks the lives of several company men and women and they do indeed have the elements of the horror stories we hear about a life in high finance (misogyny, greed, deception, adultery, addiction). All wrapped up in a closed system of money chasing money in an abstract, global, electronic market. One of the telling moments is when Igino demands to hold a real-live paper bond in his hands so he can see what he’s really selling – the company is horrified! Good luck getting out because your ass is owned!
How to audit your brain this tax season…
i kicked the earth
in the dirt
it spun me around
24 hours
it hurt
IT wasn’t until i held it in my hand, by the tail of its cylindrical cone, which thank god succeeded the old-fashioned sugar cone, for the generous ledge guarding my grip bought me almost time to escape the dripping cascade of frozen cream, desublimated against the early autumn air…
IT wasn’t until then that i realized i required an instruction manual on ice cream cones.
OF course, wanting one left me hanging. So i desperately shot up out of my car, and out into the safety of the parking lot, where i shielded my activities from my friend…
THOUGH i use the term irresponsibly, to discuss someone who hands off such an imminent disaster as this to me, with a solitary small napkin, and says have at it, expecting some ‘thanks’ in return…
BY my body, between us, for no greater pleasure ought they assuredly be denied than to watch me pitch and moan as the clock ticked out each precious second, in battle with the sugary former globe they so selflessly gave away moments earlier.
AFTER searching the sky for shelter in vain, i went about my coarse and shocking affair of problem-solving, pragmatic at best, American to the teeth.
WHICH were most helpful to me in taking out the better portion of the wilting cream head in one unhinged jaw sorta predatory swoop from above.
WHY this appealed to me for a solution, i cannot say. Under pressure, my mind likes to fold, leaving my body to grope around, prehistorically.
MY friend was bending his neck out the car window under guise of offering help, as he tried to see around my back, feeling deservedly patriarch to the comedy he had set in motion.
MY mouth turned ice cold as the slush rush moved unsettling fast toward the pain center of my brain. My eyes watched helplessly as the thawing mass above my hand crept over the new cone barricade.
I began to lick furiously from below the lip, up, turning the cone as i went. But the pressure of my tongue dislodged the whole blob, which started leaning precariously to one side, and almost fell its death on my boots.
I pulled back on the tongue, and forward sculpted with the tip. Funny faces were appearing at the windows of the ice cream shoppe before me. I could not seem to work the precarious balance of judicious touch and quick rotation.
ICE cream rivulets formed and slid happily down my wrists and up into my shirtsleeves. I was too preoccupied with my frozen head ache to notice.
MY fingers had tightened their grip, under duress, and broke through the shell of the new cone, so now i was watering the parking lot with liquid sugar. The kids had half their faced imprinted on the glass, and a few had run outside to stare and laugh.
My inhibitions all left me, finally, followed the ice cream’s way out. The spell was broken! I put a mean deliverance on my face, and tossed the useless watery shell casings to the oily lot of them.
Epilogue
Nobody moved. Not even the second hand of the clock. I held myself high and walked into the old ice cream shoppe of new cone and horror, and found my way to the wash room, gracefully.
In the looking glass, staring back at me, a hideous and wonderful thought!
Returning to the car, i stopped first at the passenger side window, and smiled kindly so as to get a roll down.
Then, out from behind my perspirated back, came a triple scoop of Rocky Road on an old cone (the unforgiving kind), for my dear friend. I handed it to him…
with one, single, solitary napkin.
No one would be expected to smile or greet you, though they could if they wanted.
No dogs just cats.
Yes to miniature tigers and teradactyls.
You work at what you choose, and you may sleep when done working and work when done sleeping.
No more cell phones just walkie talkies. No mayonnaise. No social media, in fact, advertising and marketing are banned and punishable by tickle torture.
No more pavement and the animals live freely among us. No sentient being owns any other living thing.
You can still own property.
No currency just barter.
You can still fight wars if you want, but no draft and don’t involve anyone whose peaceable-like. Punishable by hippie farm segregation.
Sorry but no more cars or planes. Let the birds do the flying and everyone gets a bicycle on their 5th birthday. And a bell.
You can live in a house but you won’t need one. You can fall in love but that’s your business.
No weddings, and funerals are called commencements, and celebrated madly.
Only assholes and bitches get disappeared. This includes wannabe dictators, sociopaths, and tattoo artists who decide to deliberately ignore your design and permanently mark you up with their sad art.
Creative types get to create whatever they like wherever they wish, so long as its divinely inspired and not hurtful, just helpful.
If you like my world, please follow my website @ katyamills.com and buy my books on Amazon.
And feel free to write me in for mayor of Toronto, to replace the crackhead whose got the malignancy in his belly. May he get well soon.
The days of laptops and tablets and cell phones subsided into a sea of fourth world residuals 3d printed out in the dark of light and night of day, via second hand servers globally attuned to pipeline transmissions.
Beneath it all was a bitcoin traffic jam the size of Luxembourg.
The royal family of Amazon decried the undercutting of their undercut. In senseless haste, they waged war on Penguin, which beat a retreat on a mechanical bird straight to Mars.
Cause despite all of modern devolution, everyone reluctantly confessed to their anonymous divinities… in this year of our (insert divinity preference here) 2120, penguins still cannot fly.
Here are some fictional ebook hierarchies. Strategic placement might get you an apocryphal showcase for window shoppers.
General fiction»
Urban legends in rural places»
Tall tales»
Sex Lies And Audiotapes»
Celebrity Worship»
Unreliable Author»
Ebooks you wrote in a day»
Collections of self-indulgence»
Look at me, 101»
Too ‘good’ 4 the big house»
Amorphous religiosity»
Anhedonia sleeper reads»
Coattail hangers»
Nano slushpile»
Paranormal Expectations»
Bucketlist Retirement Fulfillment Orders»
“Chipotle. Because the White House is not walking distance from reality.” – Katya©2014
K IS SILENT 