I Can't Be Serious

4/17

I can't be serious anymore. I need to make people laugh. Being serious is for boring people with no souls. I'm going to start making jokes. Good jokes. Funny jokes. Jokes like, "How many frogs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" Those kind of jokes. I'll start telling jokes tomorrow at work. Now's not a good time to start. I'm tired and all by myself. I'm going to bed.

4/18

I thought about telling a joke at work today, but I couldn't manage to get one out. I was in the break room with Jason, Serena, and Elliott. Jason's a really funny guy, and he was hogging all the spotlight. Rightfully so! He's extremely personable, too. He was telling us all about how he and his buddy went to this bar, and they met these two girls, and one of them looked really familiar, and then his buddy realized that she went to high school with him, and dated his brother briefly. Then she dished the dirt on his brother, and, well, I don't remember everything he said, but it was really funny, and everyone was hooked until break was over. So, I never got the chance to say anything. Aw, well...it's probably for the best. This gives me a little more time to hone my newfound comedic lifestyle.

4/19

Started today off in a sour mood. For one thing, it was raining. Rain puts me in a bad mood. Don't know why, but it does. But then, I checked my mailbox, and I finally got that hospital bill. My insurance only covered part of it, and now I owe $1164. That's not a good way to start your day. I know that my bill isn't a whole lot, but it's a lot to me. I guess I'm lucky, though. My cousin survived falling out of a window, but he didn't have any insurance at all, and the whole thing cost him something around $25,000. Maybe more. The important thing is that I'm okay. But still, $1164! All I could think about was how my day of work only pays for a marginal amount of my bill. I did the math. Sitting at my computer for one hour helps pay for approximately 1/100 of the entire bill. That's one hundred hours of work, wasted, all because of a little food poisoning.

I made some macaroni and cheese when I got home.

4/20

Well, today is Hitler's birthday. It's also the anniversary of the Columbine shootings. I think the shooters chose this day because it was Hitler's birthday. I wonder what day they would've chose if Hitler never existed. They only had a few months to go before they would've graduated, too. It's sad to think about. Life can get so terrible for some people, and yesterday I was in such a bad mood about the hospital bill, of all things. In twenty years, I'll have forgotten all about that stupid bill. But the kids who were at Columbine on that day will never forget that horrible day.

Alex called me, and she said she wanted to hang out this weekend. Her new boyfriend, David, is having a birthday party on Sunday. She told me to come, and to bring the chess set, because David plays chess, too.

4/22

I just got back from David's birthday party. He seems nice enough, but the only person I knew there was Alex, and she knew almost everybody there, so there were quite a few moments when I was sitting on the couch reading liner notes from albums in David's vinyl collection. I felt kind of dumb walking in the door with that chess set under my arm. For one thing, David had his own chess set -- duh! -- but also, everyone was drinking beer and the music was loud, and it really wasn't an atmosphere conducive to a chess match. Thankfully, Alex encouraged him to play a "quick game" with me before I left. He beat me in fourteen moves. I've never been beaten that quickly. As soon as he said "checkmate," he zipped right on over to the beer pong table while I sat there, going over the moves in my mind. I thanked Alex for inviting me, and left. I think I prefer hanging out with Alex one-on-one.

4/23

I don't know what I'm doing with my life. What is this job I'm working? Sometimes, I don't even know what I'm doing there. I feel like there's no end-product to the effort I put in. It makes me feel insignificant. I'm still young. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane when he was just twenty-five years old. That's about the age of The Beatles when they recorded The White Album. It's probably unfair of me to compare myself with people like that, but still, I think about it. Why aren't I doing something great like they did? What's holding me back? What am I not doing? Or, what am I doing wrong?

Alex called to apologize about last night. She didn't have to do that, but I'm glad she recognized my discomfort at the party.

4/26

I haven't felt like writing in the past couple of days. There's not much to report at the moment. Same old, same old.

5/13

Dad called me to say Coco died. She had a good long life, but I guess it was her time. I wish I could've been there for her final days. R.I.P. Coco.

8/5

Big news! Today was Jason's last day. We're all really going to miss him, but he's going on to bigger and better things. Good for Jason! Serena brought a cake for everyone. She also brought these chips. The flavor of the chips were "Spicy Thai". There was a quiet moment in the room, and something came to me. I picked up the bag of chips for all to see, and said, "Spicy Thai? That's the kind I pick every time I call an escort service." Everyone laughed! Jason was positively bug-eyed with laughter. He said he never expected something like that to come out of my mouth. But there I was -- I just said it. It felt good, too.

I think it's interesting that I made my first big joke on Jason's last day. It's like God offered Jason a new job so I could take over as the office clown. I'll miss Jason, but perhaps he's leaving at just the right time (for me!).

8/8

There's a new guy at work -- Leo. Everyone likes him except me. I can tell right off the bat that we're going to have problems with each other. Within his first couple hours, he told almost everybody that he's a stand-up comic, and that he was performing at an open-mic next week, and everyone should go. Open-mic? Yeah, right...I'm not going. Seriously, I spoke only two sentences with him before he dropped that bomb. Just because I work with him now, that doesn't mean he can right away ask me to come to a show. The right thing to do is be quiet, and let someone ask what he does outside of work for fun. Then he can spill his guts about his other "career". Instead, he chose the more jolting path towards breaking the ice. He's not that funny, either. Certainly not like Jason, or me.

In other news, Alex is moving in with that David guy. I don't know why. He's really not such a great person. He makes me feel uncomfortable. But I'm sure that Alex will realize soon enough that it's not going to work out. She always does.

I remember when Alex broke up with Tim, she didn't even cry. She told me she had been crying when she was alone, but when I showed up, she looked fine. Her face wasn't red, or flush. And she was baking that pie. She told me that even though she was smiling, she was still a little sad. The whole notion seemed incongruous to me. People don't bake pies when they're sad.

Many Boats

"Don't make me buy another boat, Eleanor," was the best thing Richard could say to keep his wife from coercing him into buying another boat. Like any good husband whose wife had nautical aspirations such as Eleanor's, he had been complacent in the past, letting his wife push him into buying more boats.

They already had eight boats. Now she wanted nine.

Eleanor's obsession began soon after they were married. They had their honeymoon in Italy, which included a ride on a cruise ship along the coastline. Lost in the romance, she bellowed from the gut of her mind, "Richard, let's get a boat!"

Three years later, upon the purchase of the fifth boat, Richard falsely believed that Eleanor's preoccupation with sea vessels would dwindle. He rationalized that growing up in the landlocked state of Colorado, Eleanor had a childhood devoid of rides on boats, dinghies, schooners, and motorboats -- she was just making up for lost sea time. Now that she lived near a marina, she was going through a phase. Surely five boats under her belt would be enough for his darling wife, right?

But she just kept going. While lobbying for the sixth boat, she told Richard that she had "a really good name for it," and "Oh, please can we?". They bought the sixth boat. She named it Gondolina.

The seventh boat was her thirtieth birthday present. Richard didn't ask her what she wanted, but she kept dropping hints like: "I can't believe I'm almost thirty years old and I only have six boats," or "Isn't seven a great number?"

Richard bought the eighth boat on his own without being prompted. Purchasing a boat had become as banal as paying the electric bill, and he didn't realize what he'd done until it was too late. He cringed at his mistake, but Eleanor was thrilled.

This whole business about Eleanor wanting a ninth boat, according to Richard, bordered on the insane. If he had known she was going to keep pushing for more boats after they married, he probably wouldn't have bought that house near the water. There was, after all, that lovely home in the mountains that was an hour and a half away from the coast. She may love her boats, he thought, but boy, oh boy, does she hate commuting.

But could he really dote on this issue? Was it worth his time to nit-pick? Was it really so bad to be known around town as 'Richard and Eleanor with the boats'? Sure, it packed a wallop on his bank account, but she'd always been such a sweet girl, and doesn't she deserve a good new boat every few months?

"Twelve boats," he thought to himself. "If she tries for any more than twelve boats, she can just forget it. That's where I'll draw the line."

Richard picked up a salt shaker from the kitchen counter. He examined it.

"Twelve boats. Twelve."