::Calamity Calvin and the Inconspicuous Zipper::

HE was wondering out loud what kind of title would be appropriate for the first sitting behind the snazzy laptop he knew nothing about. It marked a momentous occasion for two reasons, the second of which was that the link known only as 'Journal,' which had one day - about a week ago - appeared before his very eyes and disappeared with twice the speed, was suddenly back in his life. He was in the midst of wondering about its mysterious and gripping return when he began to type.

CLICK, comma, click, comma, click, comma, click, full stop. Before he understood what was going on, he was typing and sharing and humming and digesting food that had somehow found its way deep into his caverous mouth only moments earlier.

'I know,' he gestured, raising his perky white right index finger high into the sky as if responding on cue to the director's call of pretending to have discovered the cure for baldness.

THE fact that there was no Director, no cue requiring action of any kind or anything remotely resembling the filming of proceedings he was the star attraction in didn't faze him one bit for he was unfazeable. He was also wearing his best, cleanest jocks, which made him even more unfazeable than normal: a kind of super unfazeable if there even existed such a thing, though it was past lunch time and the weather had been rather humid all morning, reducing his super unfazeable status to one of reasonably unfazeable. Being unfazeable came with certain attachments and asterisks.

THE blathering throng of co-workers could go and get stuffed if they thought they were about to punch the keys of the laptop he knew nothing about before he did, so he endeavored to type for as long as his train of thought would allow.

'SOD that!' he said, as he continued to type and every one of his co-workers looked up, wondering what the strange words and gestures he was saying and gesturing meant.

'LANGUAGES are a wonderful way to bring communication to a complete standstill,' he thought, as letters strung into words that were aided by a series of carefully orchestrated spaces to form entire sentences. He marvelled at the rationality of it all and instantly stopped typing.

MOMENTARILY, he sat back aghast with the revelation that sitting back and discontinuing to type would result in an undisclosed amount of procrastination, though he realised that by adjusting his position through the extension of both arms and the contraction of said arms upon gripping the edge of the table would shove procrastination back to its rightful place, enabling him to get back to where he ought to be: slapping keys senseless.

HIS co-workers thought about the significance of it all, wondering quietly amongst themselves whether there was any to begin with. They also wondered about his remonstration with thin air and concluded there was none in the former or the latter. They resumed pushing paper across the tables, which were joined to form an elongated rectangular shape that spanned half the room, before anyone noticed they weren't pushing paper.

THERE was barely room to squeeze by the ends of the tables to flick the kettle on, let alone stir the sugar into the coffee, but the desks were joined to form an elongated rectangular shape - as outlined in section three, sub-heading B: This is How to Join Desks, in the Blatherers' Guide to Furniture Geography, originally published in 1982 and about as likely to have a positive outcome to anything it was intended for as the Twelve Steps programme to curbing alcoholism. Everyone was powerless to be anything other than ecstatic about it, so his co-workers resumed being ecstatic while he resumed slapping his fingertips on the laptop that was as foreign to him as fins are to a rock wallaby.

'I'LL write some daft title that has no bearing on what I'm writing,' he said as his colleagues continued to ignore the madman in the far corner of the room, who slapped keys like a man possessed, occasionally blurting something unintelligible and increasing the circumference of his eyes by sticking his tongue to far reaching sides of his face.

HIS sweaty fingertips were by now punctuating virtually every key on the keyboard and his tongue mopped the remnants of the lunch that had somehow found its way into his gaping mouth.

HIS ever widening eyes revealed an alarming redness where whiteness ought to exist, leading his co-workers to deduce through hushed tones and hand gestures that he was suffering from the same symptoms that previous foreigners had suffered from by sitting and typing in the exact position that he was in.

'EXCESS caffeine and not enough exercise,' they concluded in their native tongue.

HE was sitting on the far corner of the other set of desks that had been joined to form an elongated rectangular shape, which took up the other half of the room and prevented most from accessing the wash basin on the far side of the northern corner. It seemed like the perfect existence for anyone with a fetish for claustrophobia and desks placed in an elongated rectangular shape.

HIS colleagues were bad at pretending to ignore him so in order to justify their lack of ignoring capabilities they pretended some more. It didn't work well for they sucked at pretending to ignore people, especially him - and he knew it - so he continued to slap keys on the laptop that didn't belong to him. He loved situations like that because he knew he could outlast them, especially in pretending to ignore people, on any given day of the week - provided it wasn't a Saturday or a Sunday because he not only hated working on those days, he didn't work on those days. He wouldn't make an exception to that unwritten, though continually enforced, rule.

'I wonder what STEVE's up to right now?' he thought, casting one eye outside and seeing a huge truck reverse mightily close to his red 4WD.

[interlude]

'AND I wonder what SCARLET's up to right now,' he thought, following a brief visit outside to where he exchanged stern glances with the driver of the huge truck that had reversed mightily close to his red 4WD.

'I wonder if they mind that I've already written a Top 5 list prior to them asking me to write one and,' he wondered, 'why are there three women dressed in blue Thunderbirds costumes running around after the truck all of a sudden?' he thought all of a sudden, beginning to wonder about the legality and nonsensical qualities of the entire affair with the huge truck and the three lost Thunderbirds.

'HMMMM,' he concluded, re-checking the title of the maiden post in the new section of his Buzznet site's page marked only 'Journal *NEW' and concluding that it would be fine without adjustment or alteration of any kind.

HE wondered if he'd ever see again the truck, the man in the truck, the three mysterious women dressed in blue Thunderbirds costumes, the 'Journal *NEW' link or the imaginary purple talking whale that spoke fluent English and frequently appeared in his dreams in the heart of his daydreaming afternoon.

FINALLY he wondered whether his maiden voyage into his 'Journal *NEW' section was enough or whether he should continue to spill words from his mind via the ends of his fingertips as he did, to which only one answer could and did ring true.

Yes in the first, no in the second.

BTW, I prefer creative writing to journal keeping, so if you have a moment, come and visit my original works of fiction.

Udder1's Journals

::Calamity Calvin and the Inconspicuous Zipper::