I was reading a newspaper at the library when I had an idea. I wondered what would happen if I put a tree in a blender. It turned out I didn't have any trees, so I had to go to the tree store. Instead of having any good trees, all they had were azalea bushes. So I went home and cut it up, and put it in a blender. It didn't smell or taste very good, probably. That's when I realized an old man had tried to feel me up in the toy aisle. I was checking out the products my former company had recently released, when a man in a maroon fedora came into my aisle. "Well, hello there, " he proclaimed.

"Uh, hello."

Then, he grabbed my shoulder, tipped his hat up, and said in the most stilted, serious tone I've ever heard, "You take it easy, now. It can be a dangerous world out there. Don't let it get you down." And he walked away without looking back.

"Um. Yeah. I'll ... do that."

Who was this fucker, this beast of a man, to stroll into my toy aisle. I didn't know then, and I'm not too sure now. But at least now I know he's been following me.

Life is a wasteland. Sometimes you're knee deep in the shit, sometimes the shit is deep in you. I was walking to the break room to buy a soda and an imaginary copy of People magazine, when I passed Durjaya in the hallway. Durjaya was a fellow programmer, and he was generally a happy fellow. He always had a smile on his face, even when he got stuck with the worst problems. He looked a lot like this:



One could never tell if he enjoyed life, or if he was deranged. I only said "hey" as he passed, because trying to have a conversation with Durjaya was usually quite an adventure. It was worse than pulling teeth. It was like pulling the teeth of a brown recluse, who is also a recluse. He only comes out once a week for groceries, and also he's poisonous.

I was on the phone with some old lady who couldn't right click her touchpad or something, editing my resume, when Henry came, red faced and boiling over, into my office. When Henry wasn't conducting a chocolate concerto, he was freaking out over minor mistakes.

"Uhh, the site is down."

I kept staring at my monitor. Henry looked like he'd seen a ghost. I looked at him without moving my head. "It's down?"

"Uhhhh yes. And I uhhh," (shaking his head vigorously, as if to will our website back to life through pure magical thinking) "I cannot find the problem, I did not cause it, and I will not be responsible."

By this point in time, I had long since moved to other supervision, and thus Henry's blustering had as much effect on my demeanor or actions as a wiffle bat in a hailstorm. I kept staring at my resume. Looked good. "Alright. I'll take a look at it."

Henry was a big fan of Lord of the Rings. Henry had a life-sized portrait of himself commissioned in full medieval regalia, holding an incredibly phallic sword in front of his face. He had it in his living room. I was unable to look at Henry without picturing it. So, I didn't.

He stood in the doorway of my office for a few more seconds, looking absolutely heartbroken. Then, he left. Durjaya stared at Henry's huffy walk back to his cave, and slowly stepped in to talk to me. Durjaya was Brian's replacement. Technically, he was a good one. On a personal level, he was hopeless - and made me feel more lost than ever. "Something is wrong with the web server?" He had his usual look on his face the entire time.

"Oh. No. I think Henry's just having some computer problems. See?" I turned my monitor around, and showed Durjaya our working homepage. I hit refresh a couple of times.

"Oh oh ok." I turned the monitor back around and opened my resume back up. After all, I knew everything was fine. I had pinged Henry's computer to death myself to see how long it would take him to come storming in all red faced. It was a boring day. And Durjaya didn't really care if I had a purse that could talk to dead people, a baseball figurine that refused to move, a plastic wand that kills mold, or an endless individual bar of soap.

"So, how was your weekend?" I looked up, and he was gone. I guess I didn't really care how his weekend was anyway. Looked at my list of instant messenger contacts. Old ladies, middle managers. Everyone interesting was dead or offline. I decided to send Durjaya a message. "so how was your weekend?"

"very good." Then, he signed off.

I decided to make some more thorough edits to my resume. Then I wrote a short story about a programmer from Czechoslovakia who rode the bus every night, and found a magical pair of scissors that could teleport him to work. I decided to call it "Public Transportation."

Then, I drew this picture: