121518 A new router sits behind the tv. The sticking of a card into a slot and the pulsing of electromagnetism in a certain gravitational-spatial pattern caused the continuation of a sequence of hypothetical events leading to its ensconcement there to become waveform collapsed and therefore to be perceived by a certain set of monkeys as having “actually” occurred. A CD of an old Van Morrison album spins at a certain speed inside a metal box containing gewgaws of electromagnetic pulsation that cause to be emitted certain sounds familiar to a certain monkey’s brain; the monkey’s ears suck ’em in like a vacuum cleaner sucks in cat hair, and the picture is complete; the world is as cohesive as a snow-globe village; we’re frozen mid-pirouette on the surface of the bubbly glass pond; the depths of its murk are as impenetrable to us as the outer limits of the hypothetical universe beyond the globe. Pause the time. The teakettle screams. Make some coffee. Sit back down. Time clicks on. Next track. Things seem a little stuck. The notion of christmas shopping looms. Is there a box one can check to opt out of the whole pathos- and guilt-ridden thing? Like truly, honestly, don’t get me anything and I won’t get you anything? But you don’t really want that, do you? As long as what you get significantly outvalues what you give, who’s gonna check that box? Only someone who’s tired of feeling like a baby monkey, but who doesn’t see any other way out of that particular basement. The curtains are someone’s grandma’s. The furniture came from Goodwill. The computer is sleek and up to date. The router blinks thru the night, relentless as a line of truck headlights disappearing into the cold dark bright conspiracy-theory-ridden skies above new mexico. blip blip There’s any number of exercises one can do when one’s vainly trying not to get overly dramatic about dumb teenage stuff. Like for instance, avoiding the capital first-person personal pronoun for a couple of days. Like Tom Petty said, “tired of myself....” Guitars and saxophones and idiophones make a lakelike hiss and hum in the foreground of this shabby room. All the edges of everything are cat-chewed. The rugs are gritty. OK brief interlude to wherein I go ahead and use the word “I” for a while: This keyboard I said I hated actually has some potential; you just gotta adopt an entirely different typing technique. Use all your fingers. Lay your heels flat on the palm rest. Relax your hands, almost to an exaggerated extent. *Slide* your fingers over the keyboard. Barely lift them. Practice reducing extraneaous movement. Slow down and build speed back up gradually. I don’t know; this is probably bullshit. But I suppose it could work. I want the little pink one. I don’t want to think too hard about $25 gifts for anyone else before I go; those stores are gonna be crowded and tense and overstimulating! What if I can’t find anything good! What if I make myself look unobservant, self-centered, and lame! But I can certainly sit here and daydream about buying myself a $1200 computer at the drop of a hat, so I can feel special and cute and powerful! Woooooot~! It’s not even necessary to have the internal rhetoric about whether it will make me a better writer or not, because that’s not even part of the equation. Honestly, nobody in Keepbuyingshitordie Land really gives a shit about whether anybody’s a writer or not. All we care about is making the next purchase, cuz the purchase enables, defines, and outlines our existence. A few seconds left on the clock, and all I can think is, *why?* The song comes to an end. A kid runs down the stairs, through the kitchen, back up the stairs. Woooooot~!