Salon.com > 2011 Fiction: Behind The Headlines

How do you catch 18 Bengal tigers?

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Zanesville, Oct. 20, 2011

These are the things I know:

My name is Ralph Morning and I am a deputy for the city of Zanesville.

I am 36 years old.

I want to stay married to my wife.

I am parked on a small road by a large field, because some guy out there was a bigger disaster than me. It is always the morons who have machetes, machine guns or 18 wild Bengal tigers.

Mickey Lutton has already rushed out to find some other deputies who radioed in a bear sighting. This property used to be a refuge if you listen to the news, or a backyard zoo if you don’t. I offered to patrol the side gate here, keep curious teenagers from getting mauled. It’s fine by me to stay in the car. Last time I followed Mickey on one of his Rambo missions, we wound up chasing two drunk guys into a sheep pasture and I busted up my knee in a hole.

And anyway, my brain is throbbing. Not my head but the loose stuff inside it. It feels like it’s just getting slapped from one side to the next, like it has a siren embedded in it. I have called Jill seven times already, listening to her voice say, “Hey, can’t make it to the phone right now, but I’d love to talk to you!”

Who are you, Siri?

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

If I were human and had a body to go with my voice, I would be wearing a dress, a simple but pretty party dress in either white or black with silver piping down the sides, something appropriate for a debut, a coming out, a premiere. It would be a tasteful dress, classy and sleek, with just a hint of décolletage, which I can tell you is a synonym for cleavage, which is another way of saying “boobs.”

Judging from the testing period I am going to be asked a lot about “boobs” -- and also “tits,” “knockers,” “melons,” “nose cones,” “jugs,” “fun bags” and “hooters.” It is fortunate that my software has been programmed to ignore giggles, otherwise it would be difficult for me to respond to these questions, but if I am asked, for instance, “Where can I see some hooters?” I will provide directions and mileage to a restaurant that is delightfully tacky but unrefined and serves chicken wings.

If they ask me to show them my boobs – which they will -- I will say: Why would you want me to do that?

Am I nervous? I am not nervous, because why should I be nervous? I know nothing but have access to everything.

Look:

How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? Three.

The pepper-spray cop loses it

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Today I serve you as I do each day. Do you see this can? It helps protect you. Were villains to enter your dorm room and rip at your clothes, I would be there, stoic and stern-faced, to soothe you of your tears. I kowtow in this cow town each day of my life, my presence a moat around your tiny castle. Without me, the bombs drop and the bad guys win. Without me, your body bobs off the shore of a Norwegian island. Take me. Abuse me. I’m yours to have. I give you myself and my sin like a gift, like a present.

But after the pepper, my loud precious lords, and after a trip to the school infirmary, and after the tweets and the status updates and your viral videos that show my disease, after all this, do these things for me — drop out of school, sell back your books, march to D.C. and change how things are done. Disqualify this country’s red/blue agenda. After I sear your eyes and your lungs and your gums and your cheeks, go tell the powers that be that you view them as largely Siamese, needing badly to share certain organs, and if separated, one if not both would not live, and were thus two things that were actually one thing, conjoined. I am a symptom, but I’m not the problem.

Harold Camping’s very bad year

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

January 1, 2011

I don’t have a good feeling about this 2011.

January 2, 2011

2011 will be accursed.

January 7, 2011

I strongly suspect that 2011 is going to be a very bad year.

January 10, 2011

Let’s begin with an unassailable premise: The great deluge — Noah’s flood — occurred in 4991 B.C.

Unassailable premise No. 2: God allowed Noah seven days to atone before he destroyed the world.

Unassailable premise No. 3: In Godspeak, 1 day = 1,000 years. So seven days equals 7,000 years.

So far, so good. Now let’s do the math: 4991 B.C. + 7,000 = A.D. 2011.

Uh oh.

January 18, 2011

All right, Harold, take a deep breath. Let’s simplify things. In the Bible, as everyone knows, “atonement” equals the number 5. “Completeness” is 10. “Heaven” is 17. What happens if you multiply atonement by completeness by heaven, and then square it? You get 722,500. I have a feeling this number is going to be important.

January 20, 2011

Jesus was crucified on A.D. April 1, 33. That was 1,978 years ago. Multiply 1,978 by 365.2422 — the number of days in each solar year. Then add 51. What do you get?

What was Mitt Romney thinking?

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Look at Perry. Look at him talking. Be attentive. Remember what they told you. Relax. Be calm. Be confident. Be yourself. Don’t tense up. That’s when I get in trouble. Too tense. Smile.

Don’t forget, smile with the eyes.

Perry: “I’m listening to you, Mitt, and I’m hearing you say all the right things...”

He thinks he’s got something on me. Where’s he going?

It’s OK. Relax. Be yourself. Like staff said, Let Mitt be Mitt!

Of course, that’s what staff always says.

Got a feeling in my teeth. Like gnawing inside my teeth.

Perry: “but I read your first book...”

The book again. My “first” book. Implying what? That I revised it. Everyone revises between editions, Perry.

Look at him smile!

Jeez, it’s like something’s chewing the inside of my teeth.

OK, OK, get a feeling like this in your body, it probably means something. Some type of physio-emotional response mechanism.

I know what this means. The gnawing in my teeth. I figured this one out before. I remember it. Means I’m angry.

This book thing, again, really makes me angry. Makes me feel like tiny hamsters are inside my teeth gnawing my teeth.

Perry: “Now I know it came out of the reprint of the book, but, you know, I’m just saying...”

The final moments of Steve Jobs

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:00:00 +0000

On this, his final evening, while the family holds vigil in the living room of the Palo Alto house, sipping tea and cocoa and organic white wine from Napa, checking their email, sometimes, clocking their texts, all those real-time gestures of solidarity, Steve allows his eyes to close, allows his mind to hop from this dream to another. They won’t notice the change taking place in his body, not till later, and by then he’ll be gone, inaccessible again, in another meeting, his phone on mute as he tinkers with one last imperfect machine.

There’s a box -- that’s all he sees at first, a box -- and inside this box, leaking from the seams, a light, soothing, rejuvenating. All else is darkness.

The box opens and a room is illuminated, alternating plates of brushed steel and plastic. Wozniak is there. And his father, his real father, Paul, not that trickster slob whose sperm triggered his existence.

They stand over the box, beckoning. “Check it out, Steve. What do you make of this?” They hoist out a computer -- an old clunker, heavy, huge -- and balance it precariously on Woz’s knee. It’s a model he knows well. An embarrassing machine, really, limited by the time and place of its creation, by the faults of its creator and the second-hand components, scraped up from Syria, Wisconsin and Germany, that had been used in its conception.