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Spies & Janus
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1325
(Tired, head cold, bad/odd dreams)
I'm up the street, there's a black guy, famous actor, not photogenic, he's working on a steel plate set in the road. A car pulls up, people get out, he uses a bar to pull aside the steel plate and beneath it there's a narrow hole into the earth, they walk up to it deliberately, fall into it, it's rough hewn like clay, they disappear into the earth and I think to myself "spies, definitely...". The car disappears. Another car pulls up, the situation repeats, he pulls aside the boilerplate with a crowbar, they step into the hole, one is too big to fall down so he begins whacking them with a shovel, forcing them down the hole, the whacking turns them into clay as well, like an animation by Svankmajer, eventually they disappear down the hole.
I've got to go to a friends, I walk far around the hole, I don't want the black guy attending the hole to see that I've been watching, I know he's bad news, a high rise nearby to visit some friends but now the black guy is walking towards me, a half smile on his face, slowly, he wants me to get into the hole as well, I don't want to, but he's coming after me with that awful inevitability, slowly, inviting me to step into the hole, I wake from the dream disturbed and thinking of the word "Janus"...
(made a mental note to remember that dream, there's no light or pad in the bedroom, there was more, the head cold providing an unending stream of bad inspirations and dreams...)
Outlaws and Bankers
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1279
The image of a banker, well dressed at his desk in a fit of imagination holding a pencil in his hands as if it were a gun, on an imaginary crime spree, imagining himself holding up the bank, saying "pew, pew, pew" as he fires his pencil pistol menacingly at invisible tellers...
(Inane, I know, but upon waking from it I reminded myself to remember it, it seemed to acquire a disproportionate importance, the idea of a banker imagining himself to be an outlaw, when the profession of banking offends every law already, only the suit lends it legitimacy...)
The Source - Extended Warranty
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
- Hits: 2312
Now last year, last summer, in the midst of the prospecting season and into a couple of weeks of homelessness I had need of a cellphone.
I'm morally opposed to cellphones. I, I don't need a cellphone. But when you're living out of your car and people want to keep in touch, children, family and such, a cellphone or some means of contact becomes a necessity.
I went to "The Source". Set up with a new phone, phone number, all to be billed later on my bill. And they up-sold me on their extended warranty - if anything went wrong, for $70 extra bucks, I could just bring in my phone and exchange it for a new one.
From everything I've heard things go wrong. Mostly screens breaking, occasional dips in water, I'm going to be off in adverse circumstances in the bush, generally I'm aware that the extended warranty is a scam, but in this instance it just seems prudent. I buy the extended warranty.
On Monday my phone doesn't charge. A connection issue. I fiddle with it, screw around, it's not working, time to cash in on the extended warranty, back to The Source. Thank god for the extended warranty.
The clerk requests a receipt - by some miracle I have it, and by another it's survived a year and a half in my car's trunk without (mostly, in essential parts) fading, they print these receipts like this on purpose, I swear, cheap thermal fax paper that is unlikely to survive even a week of your extended warranty...
...and he pulls up my account, hums, haws, acknowledges the extended warranty, then explains that they'll return it to the factory for refurbishment, it'll take 2-4 weeks,....
I can't go 2-4 weeks without a phone. Who can?
OR - I can upgrade my cell-phone plan, pay out the balance, get a new phone....
I choose the latter. More fiddling, swapping out the sim card, 10 minutes and $150 dollars in unanticipated charges later I have a new contract, a new phone....
"Would you like to buy the extended warranty?" the clerk suggests..."Only $70.00...3 years, anything goes wrong with your phone and you can just swap it out for a new one...."
Uh-huh. NO. The Source, Extended Warranty, Zero out of 5 stars.
Tsunami Treasure
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 1519
The title says it all, really:
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