My story Building The Perfect Lolcat was published at Six Sentences.

24 things Leslie told me:

1. I used to watch CSI and the Law & Orders but I had to stop because I just started seeing all the ways people could suck, and it made the world scary, which is no good for me because I generally am not a scared person, I sort of have a lot of faith in humanity but something like that is hard to hold on to - I think sometimes you have to work at being a believer in the good of man but thinking everyone sucks requires zero heavy lifting, if that makes sense. But that’s not who I want to be.

2. we got pizza in the middle of julian dibbell’s book party and drank beer on the street and he almost kissed me but my friend viv walked out the building door and interrupted it and we never got the moment bac k and i hoped typing that would make his name pop in my head but it didn’t work. he had a really soft coat. but unfortunate hair.

3. I actually really love a bunch of Steely Dan songs - Black Cow, Babylon Sister, Kid Charlemagne, and man, do I love Dirty Work. And don’t get me started on “Any major Dude.

4. It’s also weird no one mentioned your never ending quest for excellent beverages, vegetarianism, and how your writing has recurring themes of communication with the dead and blurring lines between imaginary things and real interactions. i also still know most of “when your mother was a spy byheart” though, so you know, I’m a bit ovbsessive with details.

5. we’re always ahead of the curve! he’s a turbodouche. I really feel like he should get the boot and we should change the list address. am i overreacting?

6. I have been ranting and raving about shit like this for YEARS and it’s getting grosser bythe minute. why create anything when we can define ourselves by what we consume? HATE HATE.

7. I’d like the chance to be disappointed by a kfan blowoff.

8. that would have to be one hell of a bunnypearl to have a shipping weight of 10lbs.

9. here are two things that cheer me up.

1. asian baby w. statue.
2. monkey in a bucket.

10. I have two space ghosts ad a brak show I refuse to delete in my tivo, and one of them has brak on coffee which is so kickass and makes me laugh so hard, but actually partly because it’s funny and partyly because ages ago I made paul ford watch it and he periodically calls me and does his version of brak on coffee. when he’s delighted by something, it’s one fo the most charming things ever.

11. I debated whether or not to mention this to you, but after you told me you took fiber every day even though it wasn’t technically necessary, I decided to give it a try, despite my lack of having any issues in that general theme. Anyway, it does make a difference for the better, I think, I actually feel a little better, and so I guess I want to say thanks, but what a super crazy ultra personal topic I’m nto at all comfortable with. I’m much more comfortable with explicit sexual conversations that this topic. Seriously it’s my least favorite thing, so I’m sorry to bring it up but thanks.

12. wow, no one ever asks me tv questions - let me think on it a minute. i want to say Golden Girls, but I know that’s not really right.

13. yahoo maps gets a few things around the city wrong - they also have bass ackwards directions to my parents house which was disappointing the time i flew home and drive around in a blizzard with no mobile phone trying to “surprise” them.

14. kevin, that’s so nice of you, thanks you so much! i really look forward to reading it. I am really attracted to stories like this, I love it when conventional wisdom is re-conceived into something that works differently and etc. etc. anyway, thank you so so much, i really appreciate it and look forward to reading it.

15. I like to rock out with my crock out.

16. all that’s missing is a locker combination and a homeroom.

17. also one thing that’s alwys infuriated me is that around the same time you and i have similar ideas but yours are always about a half inch better than mine and then i get frustrated and do nothing instead.

18. what happens, i think, ispeople get so afraid fo confronting on the legit issue theypuff it up with the stuff thatends up being needlessly hurtful and not what they intended, like they can muster the ire and strength shoot canonballs, but lobbing the tennis ball that’s littering thier yard over the fence is impossibly taxing.

19. I’m really a good little drug spotter, I can almost always tell what someone’s poison is by looking but that’s just flat out unsubtle heavy handed heroin what with the nodding out.

20. wow. that talked me out of the harp thing 100%.

21. her definition of fucking with whitey was to ask if you loved her? that’s kinda sweet, actually.

22. i don’t want to fight about fake meats.

23. as an aside. all oa sudden raimi looks more like a little person and less like a muppet. it’s both a little sad and a lot awesome when that happens. you know, before too long you’re going to have to deal with me visiting the you in person. with advance notice, of course. but i’m just saying, start warming up to the idea, please.

24. awesome, I’m glad he’s well. I’ve been wondering but I’m on my campaign not to be such a Yenta so I didn’t ask. I sent him an email about the project, anyway, thanks so much for the address.

I’ve been thinking about how the story I posted here earlier this week doesn’t stand up to mathematical scrutiny. But anyways. Some things I liked recently:

• Fiction Volante: The Separation - Repairmen shake their heads, refuse to enter the front door.

• sevensixfive: Dettifoss - Six days on the Eimskip container ship Dettifoss.

• Apples are the Only Fruit - You explain how they were once flown around the world in half a day, and also explain that every kiwi required more than its own weight in carbon emissions to reach your kitchen. The kids nod; this is a familiar story.

• The Pits | Alana Posts - And the last time another woman touched me as carefully as you touch those olives she didn’t want a girl at all.

• How to Play “The Thing Is…” - There’s some sort of accident at the New York Times that results in the entire upper half of the front page being a really close up picture of your face, accompanied by a huge headline proclaiming “FARTS RULE!”

It’s nothing. It’s an abstract idea with no relation to anything, ever, and no inherent meaning of its own. In a meeting someone would say “OK then I need X and Z by Tuesday.” Maybe X and Z were the Paterson Report and the Svetlana File, or maybe they were a cup of coffee and a peck on the cheek. Either way, Tuesday would come and go, or it might never come, who knows, but the person definitely wouldn’t get their X and Z. So we’d have another meeting and say all the same things about needing X and Z and now, also, very important, Y, and we need them by Thursday or we’re screwed. And everything would happen (or not) over and over again.

What it comes down to is that people measure time differently. You can’t expect individual human beings, walking around with their memories and feelings in their own leaky little plastic bags, to all agree that a certain day is ever happening at a certain time. Because it isn’t.

Now in meetings we say things like “I need the Crater Ridge Financials six months from when Carol’s father died.” And we get them. We need to schedule a meeting with the Trout Angle people about a year from when Dana had her car accident. We’ll need to hire a new Project Manager for the Dingledine Appropriation in three weeks since Diego saw that really lovely sunset. Esmeralda will need to finish up the Bacteriophage Endeavor by two years after her cat, Serafina Pekkala, had to be put to sleep after a long battle with feline leukemia. Or, if Josh ends up taking over that account, by three weeks before he has to visit his father in prison.

In seven weeks since I escaped the fire we’re going to start teaching other businesses how to use our system. The prediction is that Non-Abstract Calendars will be in wide-spread use by 50 years from when our CEO spent an afternoon with a woman at the Pont Mirabeau and never saw her again.

So I turned 18 and my father took me aside and said And now you will go to college, and you will earn a degree. And the degree will grant you a certain station in the workforce, and an according wage. The wage you earn will have no bearing on your worth as a human being, no; rather it will have to do with the personal stress you are afforded as a result of the amount of money which your job causes you to move through the machinery of society. The larger the sums, the larger the stress, the larger the take-home, and so forth you get the idea.

And I said But Dad that sounds crappy and I don’t want your life. And he said Me neither and drank heavily, on into the night. Probably just root beer, but still. Later we learned that he’d been having an affair with a woman in Fairfield for like, I don’t know, 10 years. I guess my point is that no one’s getting any presents this year, so don’t ask.

When I was 15 my father took me on vacation to play golf at Hilton Head. (”I don’t play golf.” “We’ll get you a lesson.”) I didn’t even know he played golf. It felt like what it ending up being: a last-ditch effort. It was April, golf weather in South Carolina. So fine, we go. In all the time since the last Ice Age, it has snowed exactly once on Hilton Head in April. Ask anyone who ever lived there: they still remember that weekend. So I sort of got my wish.

I woke up in the middle of the night, my father’s bed empty, his room key gone. A weekend away is a weekend away, golf or no, but you probably knew that. I took a couple things out of the minibar and put them in my bag. Silence is cheap, you guys.

Years later, after college, at my station in the workforce (which did not cause me to move significant sums of money through the machinery of society, but somehow still imparted plenty of stress) I had to call someone for a phone interview. I was nervous then, as I still am, about talking to people on the phone, and I wonder if I would have eventually had to force myself to become more outgoing if email hadn’t been invented. To be more able to confront people directly.

I looked at this person’s resume and noticed that she was probably about my age, and that she had grown up on Hilton Head. Hey, I said. Do you remember, and I told her the story of how my dad took me to Hilton Head one year to play golf, and how we didn’t end up being able to play because it snowed, of all things—

—and she laughed and said yes, she was there, and told me the story of that weekend from her perspective. Nice, this little human connection made across the country from my cubicle with the fluorescent light and the stapler with someone else’s name taped to the bottom. Did I somehow have an excuse to email her later, which turned into something else? Or did I even have cause to travel to South Carolina, something business related? Or whoa, this is totally random, but she was actually going to be moving to my town soon, and since she didn’t know anyone here—

No, none of that. I asked her the rest of the questions and the call ended. I looked her up on Facebook but it felt weird to add her as a friend. So anyways, like I said, it snowed exactly once on Hilton Head in April. Ask anyone who lived there.