THE ALGORITHM KEEPS ME SANE

After a few days at work it's good to have some time off. What with not being the most social of creatures, dealing with people whom I would naturally choose to see less of has left me feeling somewhat unclean and slightly diseased. Several conversations left scraps in my brain I am keen to rinse, so that the stain fades.

Fortunately my computer and social media are run by algorithms. So they know I need to see kitten pictures, red pandas, crows, raccoons, waddling mama ducks, and squirrels.

And obscene pictures of food.

That I must eat.

Close-up of chili paste

Today is probably dumpling day. Which, if everyone celebrated dumpling days periodically, might make the world a saner place. But force me to hide. Because dumplings are good for the mind ONLY when there are fewer people about, and the nearest tables empty. Go away, I'm gasaking soul food, your inane tourist yuppie marketing department important person chatter is icky. And quite superficial. Un-grooves, dude.

Please go play in traffic.



Everything goes with sambal. And cups of Hong Kong Milk Tea. Followed by a pipe filled with aged Virginias and a smidge of Perique, which will smell old-fashioned and comforting, rather like when you're in the drafting department on a weekend, dust motes faintly nictitational in the weakly rising heat from the blueprint machine.

My parents' generation knew the fragrance of mimeographs. By the time I started working, that had disappeared, but the smokers were all desked closer to the blueprint equipment, so that all of us stinky types were closer to the brain-rotting chemicals of the office. Then, just before Noah landed the Ark, ashtrays disappeared. Hence all those cigarette butts, pipe cleaners, and cigar droppings on downtown streets outside offices near the terminal.

After the cellphone became common, many people stopped thinking.
It was no longer necessary, modern technology did it all.
Kitten pictures, conspiracy theories.
Pornography and recipes.
It's all there.


The vape pen, inseparable from cell-phone addiction, will never replace the briars of pipe smokers. We're immortal, lurking in dusty vacant corners of the city near where the huge Kodak copy machine, blueprinters, and mimeographic devices once stood. You never go there because you're scared of the shadows, or the possibility of fentanyl-laced coke and cheap bourbon taking over your life and keeping you from shopping on-line.

Come over to the twilight side, kiddo.
We have actual kittens.



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