Monday October 2, 2006
	We're in a canoe.
	"This is really nice Norman," she says. She's sitting in the front of the canoe and I'm sitting in the rear and we're paddling and while were paddling we're talking. "Wait 'til you see what's inside the picnic basket," she says.  "Chocked full of goodness?" I say.   "Chicken and potato salad and cornbread and homemade pie and a few other surprises," she says. "Jeez that's really something," I say.  I can smell her perfume and I like the way she holds the paddle using her manicured female hands. She thinks I'm husband material. She says: "I'm really enjoying this Norman.  Thank you." I feel like I'm acting.  Like everything we're doing and saying is right out of a scripted TV commercial or a Lifetime for Women TV movie.  Picnic baskets and cornbread and pie.  I'd like to stop paddling and lean hard to the port side and drop into the lake and maybe sink to the bottom.  In Utica, Michigan there were commercial sand and gravel pits and wire cables were stretched high above them spanning the length of the water filled pit and once I tried to cross one hand over hand but I got tired midway and fell a couple of hundred feet into the water and I remember how cold the water got as I went deeper and deeper and how I initially felt panicky but then I didn't and when I stopped descending I just floated in the darkness and I remember how I could hear my heart beat.     "I was in a canoe race once," I say.  She says: "Really?" I say: "The Clinton River.  It was me and a friend and everyone was a lot older than the two of us and we figured we'd easily beat them 'cause we were young but we came in last place." "That's funny," she says. "I guess experience counts for something," I say. "Absolutely," she says.  When she pushes the paddle into the water there's barely a ripple.  "I've been working on a new invention," I say. She says: "You're an inventor?" I say: "Pretend I live in a brownstone somewhere in New York City." "You're in a brownstone in New York City," she says. "On the roof of my brownstone there's this birdhouse and connected to this birdhouse is a flexible pipe like a vacuum cleaner hose," I say. She kinda chuckles when she says: "You're an inventor and you live in a brownstone in New York and on the roof is a birdhouse with a vacuum cleaner hose attached to it." I say: "When the bird goes inside the birdhouse I can press a button and seal off the door and using my pc in conjunction with motorized controllers I can aim the other end of the vacuum hose at people walking by my brownstone."  "Huh?" she says. I say:  "There's a high powered air compressor connected to the vacuum line.  When the bird enters the birdhouse the vacuum/compressor will suck the bird out of the birdhouse and using my desktop computer and a remotely controlled digital video camera (and some servos mounted on the exhaust end of the hose) I'll be able to position computer animated crosshairs (like a rifle scope) at people walking by my brownstone." She says: "For what reason?" I say: "I figure the bird will shoot out the end of the hose at about 100 miles an hour and I feel it'll be great fun seeing the bird explode as it crashes into the forehead of an unsuspecting passerby." "A bird goes into a birdhouse wanting to make a nest for her family and she's sucked out of the birdhouse and shot into someone at a high rate of speed while you watch and control the whole thing from your computer?" she says.  "That's your invention?" I say: "An explosion of feathers and this shocked rube looking up and they're coughing because of the feathers they've inhaled and they're waving their arms around and they're saying things like:  A bird just fucking attacked me!" "I see," she says. PREVIOUS   HOME   NEXT