DAWN of the DISH-PEOPLE (part I)
Dawn of the Dish-people
Bath-robe and flip-flops, hung to the gills at three in the afternoon on a week-day. What a slob! What a headache. Some of the functions of my brain had just turned on, like the first guys on shift, the keeners. Stomach and thought alarms had rung off in my throat and stomach and I coasted to the kitchen on some distant and shrouded archetypal impulse power.
That particular morning (and I acknowledge that my definition of morning is vastly different from the contemporary) I walked slowly and painfully to the fridge, my sustained sluggishness having had lost out to the very driest of mouths. I chugged back the last mouthful of milk in the fridge, knowing full well that my stomach would soon crave cereal and give me grief for this decision.
Mental note: still have two beers left. Good deal.
It was right after I’d tossed the big, plastic milk container carelessly behind me in the rough vicinity of the garbage pile in the corner when the tiniest piercing noise appeared, just barely within the range of my hearing. It was enough to pierce my sensitive brain -currently so dehydrated that it had adhered itself entirely to the left side of my skull, playing hell with my equilibrium- and enough that hurting as I was, I knew I had to hunt down the source of that sound and extinguish it at all costs.
Such a tiny sound is difficult to track down, but eventually I tracked it to the worst of places, the vilest most disgusting place in my whole apartment. My kitchen sink and the dishes therein had been festering and coagulating for so long that I’d actually entered a whole new level of irresponsibility, actually buying paper-plates instead of just washing the damned things. Previously I had only washed what few dishes I needed for each meal, however, the pile was such that washing anything now was pure folly.
“This is 2006!” I had exclaimed aloud to my apartment one day not too long ago, “why should I sully myself with this heinous clutter? Paper plates is the answer!” So off I went to the corner store congratulating myself for the idea and humanity in general for the invention, and bought a pack of 200, most of which are now in the garbage pile in the corner amidst an omnipresent haze of fruit-flies that I fire-bomb biweekly. I am a bachelor and remain defiantly unshamed about any of this.
So anywho, there I stood, perplexed, having determined after an extensive auditory search that the noise was emanating from somewhere within that nasty dish-pile. This didn’t make a lick of sense, but I strained my ears anyway. It was not just a hum but some light melody drifting barely beyond recognition.
The human brain is complex and intricate, able to do several different things at the same time. This was one of those instances, as my brain simultaneously expounded on the true wonder of the moment (what the fuck!?!), received ultimately unanswerable signals from my stomach declaring it to be empty (need cereal, no milk left), identified the melody that I was hearing ("the Age of Aquarius," by the Mamas and the Papas, and instantly wrote the whole thing off as impossible and somewhat disturbing so therefore unworthy of anymore of my time (isn’t there a football game on?). I shuffled off, rubbing my temples, entirely unaware of the complex mental gymnastics that had just happened, and on a hung-over day to boot.
Because the human brain is so complex and intricate, mine eventually came around again to the strange phenomena that I couldn’t have just witnessed. I turned off the World Cup prelims (Ireland was getting their asses handed to them anyway) and all other extraneous noise sources. I approached the sink and as I did, well, there it was again: “Aquaaaaarius, A-quar-i-us, bonnanannanana, bonanananana…” but it was really fast like the Chipmunks used to do it back when white paint was cheap.
“What the Christ?” I asked aloud. Aquarius stopped at that time (where had I heard that song before?) and then the dishes actually spoke to me for the first time ever.
“WhattheChrist?” a tiny voice, or voices, responded. “Uh,” I began, unsure how one actually addresses suddenly animate cutlery and chinaware, “hello?”
“Hello!” the voices returned, and my dishes actually cheered. I admit to being thoroughly creeped out about then. If my mouth were open any further I’m sure the top of my head would have fallen off. Save me money on haircuts.
“Listen, just what the hell is going on here?” I asked, feeling ridiculous, which was a little better than thoroughly creeped out.
“I’m afraid I don’t get your meaning,” a single tiny voice responded to me, ultra-fast. “We certainly don’t mean to disturb you…” Was I imagining that this response was a little bit slower this time? And where had I heard Age of Aquarius, was it last night? Who plays that damned song these days anyways?
“To disturb me?!?” I blurted out wondrously. “Jesus-jumped-up-Christ in a sidecar!”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite get your meaning, sir. Should I call you sir or…?” Whoever it was let the sentence hang.
“What, do you want my name or something?” I asked incredulously, “you’re my dishes for Christ’s sakes!”
There was a pause then, and I took that time to absently scratch my head and my nuts at the same time.
“Hello?” I asked again, thinking I must have just imagined this wacky phenomenon. I remembered this urban legend about a guy who’d had an acid party at his house, and had unwittingly lost one of these tabs of acid in his carpet, only to have stepped on it some eight months later! As the legend goes, this poor bastard had just stepped out of the shower and got all prepped and prissied for a job interview, drives off in his car, gets to the place and starts peaking in the waiting room. A total-surprise, hallucinogenic time-bomb just implodes his day. Was I in for some kind of hellish psychadelic mind-trip? “What the hell,” I thought, “didn't have a whole lot on the agenda today anyways.”
“Sorry about that,” came the voice, “I was just consulting our meta-physicists about that dishes thing. They assure me that from your point of view we can in fact be considered your dishes.”
“Well that’s a relief now isn’t it?” I responded peevishly. “Of course you are! What the hell else could you be? From your point of view?”
“Well we might just be a civilization capable of recognizing and responding to the signals of another life-form,” the voice responded somewhat haughtily, “that’s what the hell else we could be, for one thing!”
Bath-robe and flip-flops, hung to the gills at three in the afternoon on a week-day. What a slob! What a headache. Some of the functions of my brain had just turned on, like the first guys on shift, the keeners. Stomach and thought alarms had rung off in my throat and stomach and I coasted to the kitchen on some distant and shrouded archetypal impulse power.
That particular morning (and I acknowledge that my definition of morning is vastly different from the contemporary) I walked slowly and painfully to the fridge, my sustained sluggishness having had lost out to the very driest of mouths. I chugged back the last mouthful of milk in the fridge, knowing full well that my stomach would soon crave cereal and give me grief for this decision.
Mental note: still have two beers left. Good deal.
It was right after I’d tossed the big, plastic milk container carelessly behind me in the rough vicinity of the garbage pile in the corner when the tiniest piercing noise appeared, just barely within the range of my hearing. It was enough to pierce my sensitive brain -currently so dehydrated that it had adhered itself entirely to the left side of my skull, playing hell with my equilibrium- and enough that hurting as I was, I knew I had to hunt down the source of that sound and extinguish it at all costs.
Such a tiny sound is difficult to track down, but eventually I tracked it to the worst of places, the vilest most disgusting place in my whole apartment. My kitchen sink and the dishes therein had been festering and coagulating for so long that I’d actually entered a whole new level of irresponsibility, actually buying paper-plates instead of just washing the damned things. Previously I had only washed what few dishes I needed for each meal, however, the pile was such that washing anything now was pure folly.
“This is 2006!” I had exclaimed aloud to my apartment one day not too long ago, “why should I sully myself with this heinous clutter? Paper plates is the answer!” So off I went to the corner store congratulating myself for the idea and humanity in general for the invention, and bought a pack of 200, most of which are now in the garbage pile in the corner amidst an omnipresent haze of fruit-flies that I fire-bomb biweekly. I am a bachelor and remain defiantly unshamed about any of this.
So anywho, there I stood, perplexed, having determined after an extensive auditory search that the noise was emanating from somewhere within that nasty dish-pile. This didn’t make a lick of sense, but I strained my ears anyway. It was not just a hum but some light melody drifting barely beyond recognition.
The human brain is complex and intricate, able to do several different things at the same time. This was one of those instances, as my brain simultaneously expounded on the true wonder of the moment (what the fuck!?!), received ultimately unanswerable signals from my stomach declaring it to be empty (need cereal, no milk left), identified the melody that I was hearing ("the Age of Aquarius," by the Mamas and the Papas, and instantly wrote the whole thing off as impossible and somewhat disturbing so therefore unworthy of anymore of my time (isn’t there a football game on?). I shuffled off, rubbing my temples, entirely unaware of the complex mental gymnastics that had just happened, and on a hung-over day to boot.
Because the human brain is so complex and intricate, mine eventually came around again to the strange phenomena that I couldn’t have just witnessed. I turned off the World Cup prelims (Ireland was getting their asses handed to them anyway) and all other extraneous noise sources. I approached the sink and as I did, well, there it was again: “Aquaaaaarius, A-quar-i-us, bonnanannanana, bonanananana…” but it was really fast like the Chipmunks used to do it back when white paint was cheap.
“What the Christ?” I asked aloud. Aquarius stopped at that time (where had I heard that song before?) and then the dishes actually spoke to me for the first time ever.
“WhattheChrist?” a tiny voice, or voices, responded. “Uh,” I began, unsure how one actually addresses suddenly animate cutlery and chinaware, “hello?”
“Hello!” the voices returned, and my dishes actually cheered. I admit to being thoroughly creeped out about then. If my mouth were open any further I’m sure the top of my head would have fallen off. Save me money on haircuts.
“Listen, just what the hell is going on here?” I asked, feeling ridiculous, which was a little better than thoroughly creeped out.
“I’m afraid I don’t get your meaning,” a single tiny voice responded to me, ultra-fast. “We certainly don’t mean to disturb you…” Was I imagining that this response was a little bit slower this time? And where had I heard Age of Aquarius, was it last night? Who plays that damned song these days anyways?
“To disturb me?!?” I blurted out wondrously. “Jesus-jumped-up-Christ in a sidecar!”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite get your meaning, sir. Should I call you sir or…?” Whoever it was let the sentence hang.
“What, do you want my name or something?” I asked incredulously, “you’re my dishes for Christ’s sakes!”
There was a pause then, and I took that time to absently scratch my head and my nuts at the same time.
“Hello?” I asked again, thinking I must have just imagined this wacky phenomenon. I remembered this urban legend about a guy who’d had an acid party at his house, and had unwittingly lost one of these tabs of acid in his carpet, only to have stepped on it some eight months later! As the legend goes, this poor bastard had just stepped out of the shower and got all prepped and prissied for a job interview, drives off in his car, gets to the place and starts peaking in the waiting room. A total-surprise, hallucinogenic time-bomb just implodes his day. Was I in for some kind of hellish psychadelic mind-trip? “What the hell,” I thought, “didn't have a whole lot on the agenda today anyways.”
“Sorry about that,” came the voice, “I was just consulting our meta-physicists about that dishes thing. They assure me that from your point of view we can in fact be considered your dishes.”
“Well that’s a relief now isn’t it?” I responded peevishly. “Of course you are! What the hell else could you be? From your point of view?”
“Well we might just be a civilization capable of recognizing and responding to the signals of another life-form,” the voice responded somewhat haughtily, “that’s what the hell else we could be, for one thing!”
End Part One
posted by SensingChange | 8:25 PM
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