Sketch 1

W- The face of the popular girl from high school, thirty years on. The eyes still have the girlish twinkle. There are some lines around them, but not many. Even in her late forties, she still has kept some of that spark about her. She wears skirts short enough to draw the eye and introduce a vague question involving dress codes and seemliness, one that fades. She tends to say 'blahblahblah' to quickly gloss over something that doesn't need to be pounded out in detail.

Her whole aspect is a double entendre, and begs another question of how to interpret her. Is she the attractive older woman who has held her power to turn people's heads? Or is she rather the desperate fortysomething who has, frighteningly, never changed? [Would I be considered an anti-feminist boor in some circles for the manner in which I pose these questions?—A separate question entirely, you will agree.]

[bracketed digressive interspersals doing anything for you?]

I saw a shock of gray emerging at her hairline yesterday and was struck by how well the dye had done its duty: I never once considered how old she must be. It was all I could do not to stare at it after that. Does she know that I have guessed at her secret? [A hint here at the secrets we all keep in plain sight and we think people don't notice. They must have, though, no?]

These questions I'm inclined to pose about her make her one of the only people in the department who is truly interesting on her own merits. What happened to her? How did some part of her become arrested in a stage of growth, before it was fully mature [I am presuming, but what is life without presumption?]? I can only hope that it is not one of the darker mysteries that is hinted at by the evidence. Assumption: she married young to a high-school sweetheart, felt trapped, but stayed in it, and acts out in barely perceptible ways to assert her lost freedom. And who says you can't judge your elders and postulate their life stories based on appearances and surface perceptions?

The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life.

Being on my lunch break at work, and not having too much else to do before 1:50 pm, I thought I'd post a list of some of my favorite periodical titles, whether absurdly obscure, or just humorously titled, that I've encountered working in the Checkin department.

-Portable Restroom Operator - Basically everything that could remotely be considered an industry has its own trade paper. This is one of them. There's a lotta dung out there that needs to get moved and disposed of, and this is the magazine for the people who are out there on the front lines every day.

-Australian Clay Target Shooting News - The title really speaks for itself, like an absurd Sci-Fi channel movie (Sharks in Venice, anyone?). The thing that gets me, though is how small the target audience must be for this publication. How many people subscribe to this? 500? 1,000? Can't be too many more than that, can it?

-Journal of Civil War Medicine - Not that funny a title on its own, until you notice that it's published by "The Society of Civil War Surgeons". Sorry guys, it's not 1863 anymore. You can call yourself "Civil War Surgeons", but you're really just 20th Century People who have way too much time on their hands.

-Millionaire Corner - For those issues in a millionaire's life that ordinary commoners just wouldn't understand. As I remember, this publication concerns itself mainly with telling millionaires about things that other millionaires enjoy, and that they should therefore enjoy. And I think it goes without saying that you have to be a millionaire to subscribe.

-Mythprint - I think the lithping English professor/mythologist who thought of this title is still patting himself on the back to this day. Mythprint! Get it? Mythprint! No, seriously, do you get it?

-The Avant Gardener - My favorite, and another one, in the vein of Mythprint, that's just a little too clever for its own good. Really, guys, you've outdone yourselves. Let's scale it back a little. Once again, though, everything you need to know about the magazine is right there in the title. Looking for cutting-edge horticultural techniques? You've come to the right place!

sake

Spring is in the air
Nothing's really fair
But I don't care

Robert Frost's lines
are often filled with rhymes

don't worry about it

tough guy

Yeah, I'm with a little outfit out of Ipswich, Mass. It's called EBSCO Publishing, maybe you've heard of us?


Serials, baby, serials.