by Jimmy CHEN

4:00AM. Wake up. Groan in an ex­ag­ger­at­ed man­ner. Go to bath­room. Ex­ca­vate mu­cous from throat in an ex­ag­ger­at­ed man­ner. Go down­stairs. Turn on CNN very loud. Make fresh squeezed or­ange juice. Go to back­yard. Prune ros­es, move around large piles of soil, saw down tree stump. Go back in­side. Sand down hard­wood floors with elec­tric sander. Tell wife to go back to sleep. Turn on CNN loud­er. Get two Snap­ples from the fridge. Dri­ve to ten­nis courts. Play ten­nis with oth­er se­mi-re­tired, mod­er­ate­ly wealthy and emo­tion­al­ly un­re­cep­tive men. Come back from ten­nis. Show­er. Turn on CNN. Ask wife why she turned off CNN. Put in den­tures. Ap­ply large amounts of hair gel. Go to work. Fin­ish al­go­rithm #1. Fin­ish al­go­rithm #2. Email friends and fam­i­ly po­lit­i­cal­ly in­sen­si­tive jokes found on­line. IM Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent. Ar­gue re: sev­er­ance pay over IM. Take 3 hour lunch break. Dri­ve to Ma­cy’s. At­tempt to re­turn sweater pur­chased 80% OFF at an­oth­er Ma­cy’s four months ago for full price. Ar­gue with cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Pro­nounce fuck ‘falk’. Leave Ma­cy’s and dri­ve to Copeland’s Sports. At­tempt to re­turn used ten­nis el­bow band. Ar­gue with cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Say ‘falk’ again. Buy two ten­nis rack­ets. Dri­ve to Bren­dan The­atres. Buy tick­et. Sit down in seat re­served for hand­i­capped per­sons. Watch first twen­ty min­utes of movie. Fall asleep. Go back to work. IM Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent re: sev­er­ance pay. Fin­ish al­go­rithm #3. Check eBay ac­count for sta­tus of Rolex sale. Email high­est bid­der: Meet me at the air­port on Thurs­day, bring sev­en thou­sand dol­lars cash. Be­gin al­go­rithm #4. Email son vague emails about his grand­moth­er. Turn off com­put­er. Dri­ve home. Lis­ten to AM ra­dio very loud. Stop by Home De­pot. Buy caulk­ing gun, coarse sand pa­per, and 12 tubes of caulk. Get home. Turn on CNN very load. Ap­ply caulk to ran­dom crevices through­out house. Go to bath­room. Sit on toi­let. Grunt in fu­til­i­ty for five min­utes. Take off den­tures for din­ner. Eat large amounts of food very fast. Gag on fi­brous veg­eta­bles. Spit out non swal­low-able food on ta­ble. Talk to wife. Com­plain about Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent. Ridicule her for her slow­ness in chew­ing. Go to couch. Grab re­mote con­trol. Go to a hi-def chan­nel. Tell wife to come over so she can see how great hi-def is. Ridicule her for be­ing tech­no­log­i­cal­ly un­savvy. Fall asleep. Have dream about telling every­one at work to falk off. Wake up around mid­night. Turn off TV. Look for miss­ing sock. Groan in an ex­ag­ger­at­ed man­ner. Go to bath­room. Ex­ca­vate mu­cous from throat in an ex­ag­ger­at­ed man­ner. Crawl in­to bed. Tell wife to go back to sleep. Sigh in an ex­ag­ger­at­ed man­ner. Close eyes. Trace con­tour of Mer­cedes GL550 SUV with mind. Fall asleep.

Filed under Fiction on October 29th, 2007

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