Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Zoom

 

(Technology is fucking killing me.)

Yesterday, I woke up at 5 a.m. and drank a cup of instant coffee. Then I walked outside for a cigarette. The weather was so cold that I was afraid that my testicles might actually freeze to the side of my leg. I shit you not. So I went back to my apartment and read the headlines on my smartphone while taking a giant dump.

A man from Seoul got married to an alcoholic. One morning, the police brought his wife home at 11 a.m. after a night of heavy drinking. He became furious and punished her harshly by chaining her to the refrigerator. He also beat her severely with his fists and feet. Well, the poor lady ended up dying due to her injuries. In fact, she bled to death due to extensive internal damage. Now the angry husband will spend the next nine years in prison for his crime.

I cooked bacon and hash browns for Rice-Boy Larry.

I said, “I can’t get the fucking Zoom to work on my computer.”

He said, “On your laptop?”

“No, the computer at work.”

“Why do you need Zoom? What’s wrong with Google Meet?”

“The-powers-that-be demand Zoom, so who am I to argue?”

“Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the application.”

I shook my head. “No. I never thought of that? Do you think it will work?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Do I look like a fortune teller?”

I shot him the stink eye. “Asshole.”

Larry laughed and laughed.

Later, I caught the bus to school. The wait was hell. I kept shivering like a cold starving refugee. I finally made it to my office at 7:30 a.m. and switched on my computer. Then I followed my son’s instructions to a tee. And voila! Now I can use Zoom until the cows come home. Good for him.

My day ran pretty smoothly. I’m currently reading a poem called The Emperor of Ice Cream with my high school class. It was written by a rich lawyer named Wallace Stevens. And let me tell you retards something. This poem is art at its finest. In fact, it never fails to send jolts of joy up and down my spine.

I said, “Notice the setting in each of the stanzas. It starts with a party out in the kitchen as the sexy boy makes ice cream. The young women are there looking for potential husbands, and the guys show up with flowers in their hands. Yet the following stanza switches to the bedroom where we see a corpse lying on the bed. She’s as cold as the ice cream. See what the poet is trying to do?”

One of my feisty students raised her hand. “Big freaking deal.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Big freaking deal.”

I tried my best to ignore her. “Well, the thing about ice cream is you have to eat it fast. If you don’t, it will melt. And that goes for our youth, too. Soon, we’ll all be lying in the bedroom covered in a sheet while our friends have a drink or two in our name before forgetting us. The river keeps flowing whether we are here or not.”

She let out a huge yawn, and some in the class began to giggle.

Once again, I ignored her. “The human condition can often be regarded as ridiculous. You’re here, you have the occasional good time, and then you die. Like your impolite friend said, big freaking deal, right?”

This time, she greeted me with a deafening sigh signifying both her boredom and disinterest.

I looked in her direction. “Would you please stop that…for the love of God?”

She smiled triumphantly.

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4 comments:

  1. It's "Voila!", not "viola!" which is a musical instrument.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe have them read "The Sorrows of Gin". That's a knee slapper.

    ReplyDelete