Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

I feel shallow for saying so, but I can’t imagine a more Kafkaesque place than the dementia ward of a rest home. As a patient, you’re tethered using the same technology as Charlie Sheen to keep that sundowner wandering at bay, but because senile dementia is eating away at your mind you have no idea why. I regularly go to such a home to support my husband, who is nursing his 85-year-old father through the twilight, and each time I’m confronted by a new and bizarre sight.

The other day I met Agnes, who was a sundowner that continuously paced back and forth (well with her arthritis it was more like a shuffle) at all hours of the day except when her stomach told her it was mealtime. A nurse told me her son, a plumbing contractor, had made the PVC walker she pushed around; it doubled as a chair with memory foam cushions into which the poor lady sank when sundowning had worn her thoroughly out.

When I attempted to make conversation with her, Agnes (who was 90 if she was a day) asked “Have you seen my mother?”

The other regulars in with my father-in-law include Bessie, who will stride around and confront anyone she sees with the shouted question “Are you a man?” The first time we met I replied, offended, that I was not; Bessie simply asked the question again, louder: “Are you a man?” Trying reverse psychology, I told her that I was in fact a man cleverly disguised as a 45-year-old mother of two. Bessie responded instantly to my revelation: “Are you a man?”

Apparently I wasn’t convincing as either gender.

Poor Ethel, whose nephew told me had been a nurse, would wander around the area trying to share things. She would approach you, thrust whatever was in her hand into your face, and ask sweetly “Do you need this?” More often than not it was a used tissue, but items as varied as a dessert spoon and a (thankfully unused) enema bulb had been offered helpfully to me by Ethel. I would often accept if it wasn’t too grody, out of politeness. But if you turned her down, Ethel would simply move onto the next person to try and help them with the gift of secondhand kleenex: “Do you need this?”

Occasionally, Bessie and Ethel would run into each other and have a conversation.

“Are you a man?”

“Do you need this?”

“Are you a man?”

“Do you need this?”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Sunset Time was a boutique home video manufacturer famous for tackling Betamax, VHS, and later DVD releases of rare and unusual movies. Never produced in large quantities, many Sunset Time products were the only available source for older movies from 60s and earlier making them sought-after collector’s items. Especially valuable were the Sunset Time Solar Club releases, in which movies were (due to rights issues) produced only in limited runs of 1000-5000 copies.

When Sunset Time went out of business in the Great Recession of the late 2000s, its stock was liquidated by wholesalers and bought by the Dollar Party chain of discount stores. Mixed in with other stock, a pile of DP DVDs or VHS tapes (yes, they still sold those, mostly in rural areas) might yield Sunset Time products or even Solar Club items worth $100-$500 to the right collector. Or they might yield 50 copies of From Justin to Kelly.

Tom Speckler was in it for the movies. A long-time cinema buff, he had begun methodically visiting every Dollar Party he could find in an attempt to unearth Sunset Time gems for $2 apiece. The fact that the ones he already had could be eBay’d for hard cash was a side benefit. As a result, Speckler was often arms-deep in discount movie bins at far-flung rural Dollar Party stores.

The employees were not always understanding.

“Sir, could you please stop taking the DVDs out of the display and putting them on the floor?” Cynthia Mudwaddie of Dollar Party #8734 in Gristle Mill, Missouri, asked him. Speckler had been digging to the bottom of the bin and had stacked rejects around him like a kind of crude movie fort.

“How else am I supposed to see what’s at the bottom?” Speckler asked without moving. “These really should be on shelves. Do you really expect people to dig to the bottom of a pallet-sized bin?”

“Sir, we do not put the merchandise on the floor,” Cynthia said. “Unless you want to buy it, then you can put it any old place you want.”

“Do you ask an archaeologist not to put his dirt on the ground?” Speckler said. “Do you ask a picker not to put the useless junk between him and a 1902 Buick on the floor?”

“That’s it,” Cynthia fumed. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Speckler protested, comparing Cynthia unfavorably to Benito Mussolini, whose first act as Il Duce had no doubt been to keep Italian patriots from rooting around for movies in discount bins. But after Cynthia called “Ox” Bunker, Dollar Party cashier and amateur professional wrestler, as backup, he relented and left.

“What was that about?” said Petunia Lavos, who was on break in the back. She’d heard the ruckus and accosted Cynthia as she hung a security camera picture of Speckler to the “banned for life” wall.

Cynthia sat down next to her on a sealed box labeled “Sunset Time Solar Club Limited Editions.” “I have no idea,” she sighed.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

So many goodies on display; Jared mused on the irony that he could now afford all the baked goods he’d coveted as a tot but couldn’t afford calories that his younger self would have burned through in an afternoon.

The person behind the bakery counter, who looked like they had been regularly tucking into their own stock for decades, sliced Jared’s rye bread and bagged it.

“There’s only one thing I want to ask you,” the baker said after the till rang up the amount.

“Oh?” Jared expected a question about his Døzer t-shirt (yes, they’re a real band), his out of town status (yes, he wasn’t from around here, at least not anymore), or the sunglasses on his brow (yes, they’re real Ray-Bans, a lucky thrift store find).

“How do you fit into those skinny jeans?” the baker asked instead. He smiled, as if expecting to hear some kind of secret about how to fit his own well-rounded frame into a pair of the same.

How best to handle such a query? The answer to that, as everything, was sarcasm. “Well, you see, I actually weigh 230 lbs but through a combination of lamaze and Satanism I’m able to fit into these,” Jared drawled. “Don’t touch them or even look too hard, as you might upset the delicate balance and be injured by high-speed denim shrapnel.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

ANNOUNCER: You’ve been thrifting long before you became the stars of the Archaeology Channel’s American Thrifters™. What are some of your most bizarre finds?

THOM: Well, one of the great things about thrifting is that you never know what you’re going to get. It’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates if you replace chocolates with McDonald’s toys, uranium glassware, and the soundtrack to City of Angels.

STAN: That’s absolutely right, Thom. I remember, it must have been 1993 or so, I found the deed to a speakeasy sewn into the lining of an antique Queen Anne couch at a Thrifty Shifty in Armhurst.

ANNOUNCER: Like the kind of thing a gangster would do?

STAN: Exactly. Turns out what the family thought was rust ruining the couch was actually the blood of a slain gangland underboss. The deed was still good, too; we evicted the tenants and sold the property and all their possessions for a pretty penny.

ANNOUNCER: Fantastic. And what about you, Thom? What’s your most bizarre finds on or before Archaeology Channel’s American Thrifters™, new episodes airing Wednesdays this fall?

THOM: Well, one of my earliest and most memorable finds was at Thrifting Without a Clutch in Sarasota, either 1984 or ’85. I found what I thought was a piece of tourist mass-market crap, the kind of decorative metal urn that tourists get fleeced into buying in India or such and then ditch after the appraisal turns out goose egg. Turns out it was authentic: a real urn from the 1940s made by hand in India, and still sealed!

ANNOUNCER: Was there anything inside?

THOM: Well, it turns out that there were ashes inside. We had them tested, you know, because the value of wood chips versus anyone famous would make or break the thrift. And it turned out to be Mahatma Ghandi! Those were part of Mahatma Ghandi’s ashes which one of his followers had stolen before the rest were ritually scattered in the Ganges. We sold the urn and a pinch of ashes back to India for, what was it?

STAN: Twenty-three million dollars.

THOM: Right, twenty-three million. And the rest of the ashes that we kept, we sold a teaspoon at a time. They’ve shown up everywhere from temple shrines to special limited edition baked goods.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

There are many reasons to cheap out on sports equipment. Low-paying job, for one. Buying equipment to fulfill a resolution or get a spouse off one’s back, equipment which in all likelihood will wind up being strictly ceremonial. Naked cheapassery is also a popular option.

But, as Ames reflected, a summer party in which alcohol would be flowing was not the time or place for bad badminton equipment.

He surveyed the line of mangled equipment piled in the driveway. First were the badminton birdies, mangled pieces of cheap plastic barely able to hold themselves together. One had been bitten by a dog, one by a person, and one was cut clean in half and covered with tire marks.

Then there were the rackets. One was bent at a nearly 90-degree angle and still had a birdie stuck between its nylon strings. The angry birdies that had come with the set were so flimsy that they tended to comically stick in the rackets as often as not, and Ted’s response to a stuck birdie had been to thwack it against the cooler repeatedly rather than sully his hands or risk birdie flu. Another matched pair both had bent necks and snapped strings as a sobering illustration of what happened when you hit something that was not a birdie. That pretty much went without saying for the first racket, which had been used to hit a full can of Miller Lite and Andy Culloden, but the cause of the second’s injuries was a mere tennis ball.

The less said about the racket that was charred and twisted into a corkscrew shape, the better.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“It’s…it’s haunting,” said Sielger. “I know people have said you’ve been coasting lately, but…wow. How did you do it, and are you sure this picture is worthy of it? I’d hate for the director to throw such a beautiful melody out in favor of a crappy pop song.”

“It’s a love theme,” the composer coughed. “I’ve been holding it back for years, until my very last hour of need when inspiration and creativity fail me. It’s a love theme for myself, and it’ll probably be the last thing that every has my name on it.”

“Why hold it back?” Sielger. “How long have you been sitting on this thing?”

“I wrote it in the summer of 1969 to be a proposal of marriage. She said no, and I locked away my finest composition out of sheer spite.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

History
Orc culture is very ancient, stretching back to some of the earliest civilizations in the recorded era. Enormous orcish ruins can be found along major rivers and oases in the Interior Deserts of the Last Continent, and for a period they dominated civilization on the coast of the major continent, before the rise of more technologically advanced human and dwarvish civilizations.

The orc civilizations were eventually destroyed and incorporated into human and dwarven empires in the colonial era, with the orcs serving as laborers, soldiers, and one more than one occasion, rulers. Mixed with indentured human, dwarven, and elven laborers, they allowed for the massive mercantile empires that emerged around that time. This steep decline in orcish culture was arrested with the fall of the empires that had ruled them, and a number of powerful orcish kingdoms arose once again, though never reaching the preeminence they had once known. Orcish power was supreme in the Last Continent until the modern era; they have had difficulty adapting themselves to the modern era of nation-states, and many still work abroad as laborers and mercenaries.

Biology
There is considerable debate on the evolution of orcs as with all sapient life, with scholars from other races generally preferring an evolution from a common proto-sapient ancestor and the orcs themselves favoring either a local evolutionary origin or advancing themselves as the proto-sapients from which other species evolved. As orcs evolved in the very arid climates which dominate the Last Continent, they possess natural adaptations for deriving some energy and sustenance from the sun. This takes the form of chlorophyll in their skin, which converts solar energy into a usable form. This explains the greenish cast visible in most orcs, especially those with lighter skin; while orcs posess the same range of skin tones as humans, the presence of chlorophyll makes them seem to range from green to dark greenish-brown. They tend to be somewhat shorter than humans and elves, but stockier, and stronger on average. Despite specist tracts and opinions to the contrary, orcs are neither less intelligent nor more prone to violence than any other species.

Orc children are often multiple births, with twins nearly as common as single children, and triplets occurring in roughly ten percent of all orc pregnancies. Due to their faster metabolism, orc children reach maturity quickly, usually in about ten years. However, while their metabolism gives them greater strength and endurance, it also shortens their lifespan. Modern medicine has saved many that would otherwise have died, and prolonged the lives of others, but there is no record of an orc living beyond the age of seventy.

Culture
Orcs tend to value physical signs of wealth and power, along with demonstrations of such, and are often skeptical of those who cannot prove themselves thus. Traditionally, orcish women have been accorded very few rights and in many traditions are forbidden from leaving their dwellings; this has begun to change in recent history. They have a rich literary tradition of epic poetry which combines a list of (male) ancestors with their exploits; the head of every orc household is expected to prepare an updated copy of their family poem and hand it down to their eldest son. Because of this, literacy among orcs is extremely widespread (approximately 98%) and the distinct orcish scripts are a familiar sight in most multicultural cities.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

I worry too much, it’s true. I worry so much that I worry about worrying, what my professors would call metaworrying because slapping a prefix like meta- onto anything immediately makes it sound cool.

A lot of people say that, that they worry too much, and then when you quiz them it turns out they mean worrying about one thing ever is too much, the implication being that we should all be carefree and living in the moment. Then you have my uncle Frank, who says that there is usually one person in every organization who does the worrying for the other 99 twats who can’t be bothered, with that one person also usually being the one who does all the work.

So I guess you could say that I’m the worst of both worlds, in that I worry over a lot of things but am in a position to do very little about them, powerless as indentured graduate student instructors are.

So here I am worrying what I’ll do if that sass in my 2:00 class tells me my assignment is a waste of their time again (odds are about even for losing my temper and breaking down in tears in front of the whole class). Worries about the esoteric (what if the mediocre job I’m doing is condemning me in the afterlife?), the prosaic (why can’t American manufacture anything people want to buy anymore?), and the cosmically unlikely (what if my high school crush Abby Durant turns up on my doorstep–embrace or revenge?) mingle freely.

Why can’t I find a church that’s a happy medium between raging fundamentalism that hands out suicide bomb vests instead of votive candles and the Grand Generic Universalist Church of the Warm Liberal Fuzzies? I worry that’s a personal failing. Am I so negative that without complaints and worrying I’d have nothing to talk about? I metaworry on that one frequently. What if I wind up like Great Aunt Agnes, sitting in a nursing home with nothing but worry and bile to sustain my husk? The metaworries march on.

Then of course there are the heavier ones that I try to avoid, not because I want to be all oblivious and happy-go-lucky but because they make me ice-cream-tub depressed. I worry that no one would ever want to spend their life with me, I worry about clinging to my virginity in the unconscionable depths of my mid-twenties, I worry that I lack the courage to change anything about myself and that the worries will blur together as my entire life spins itself out as a lonely, bitter monotony.

And I worry about being too depressing, which means trying to worry about puppy dogs (and their under-representation versus kitty cats on the internet) and rainbows (and their co-option as a symbol by various and contradictory groups) for a while.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

In spring 1979, as spectacular color photographs of Jupiter were flooding the papers and television, a parishioner approached Reverend Carver after a service.

“Reverend,” he said, “What is role of the Lord in a world where Voyager is taking pictures of the heavens? What meaning do our little prayers and sermons have when we see everything that we’ve ever done, and everything we’ve ever known the Lord to have done, as a little blue dot against the dark?”

Reverend Carver paused to consider that. “It sounds to me,” he said,” like you’re asking why we’re searching for answers in here when it seems like they’re out there.”

“That’s the very thing,” the parishioner said.

The reverend thought long and hard on the question as he wrote the next week’s sermon, wrestling with the question as he balanced a copy of Time Magazine and the KJV on either knee.

“Someone asked me last week what role the Lord could have in a world with Voyager space probes,” Carver said to his flock one week later. “I’m not a scientist, and for all my preaching I don’t know everything about the Lord. But I can say this: Voyager represents mankind’s search for meaning in the inconceivable, as does the thing that brings us together today to let the inconceivable find meaning for us.”

Carver left the confort of his rostrum, which was not normal at all for the Reverend, he continued: We find answers, out there as in here, but we will never find them all. We will never understand everything; it is ultimately unknowable, and deep down perhaps we all know that. But in striving to know our universe, as in striving to know our God, we express the same yearning.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

#97: Is there any more perfect illustration of the futility of life than a janitor mopping a floor as people walk over it?

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!