up.
He notices her.
I’m calling myself to remind myself to go out later and buy ingredients for veal stew!
Just some old crap
Jonah listens to music while he works. He uses the CD player in his computer. He wears blue plastic headphones that are either really cheap or really expensive. We can hear sounds leak through, tiny voices squawking impotently. This isn’t so bad. It makes us think we’re working in a relaxed, groovy environment instead of a disaster area.
What we don’t like is when Jonah starts tapping a pencil to the music, or pumping his legs so hard his desk shakes. You can hear it from outside his office. Crease makes a loud show of migrating to his other desk whenever Jonah gets into his musical phase.
If you ask Jonah what he’s listening to, he’ll say,
Just some old crap.
We figure it’s country music or show tunes. But Pru corners him and learns that the CD in Jonah’s heavy rotation is a recording of a Czech opera about a woman who is three hundred years old and from a different planet or something.
Is
Jonah
from a different planet? This might account for the weirdly glowing slate-colored eyes, the sleek briefcase made of futuristic water-repellent material, the tendency to predict the future with better than average accuracy. The trips to Mexico are to deliver complex information and late-capitalist artifacts to the mothership.
Also, once Laars saw him in the office early in the morning, the lights still off, typing with his eyes closed.
Recently, Jonah explained that his name is properly pronounced
Yawner,
a Czech pronunciation perhaps, but no one’s going to make the switch. It could also be that Jonah wants the Sprout and Maxine to think he spells his name with a
Y,
since all the
J
s are getting fired these days.
FYA
Maxine e-mails some of us a link to an article she thought was funny, from a blog we’ve never heard of.
FYA,
she writes in the subject field, followed by a smiley face.
Opening the link crashes everyone’s computer, except Pru’s. We reboot. She copy-pastes us some of the photos and text. The site is devoted to images of dogs and cats nuzzling each other.
We expect more from Maxine, somehow.
After Pru hits Send, her computer crashes. Then our computers all crash again.
An hour later, Crease says,
I think it means For Your Amusement?
< 11 >
Laser Henry
Magic realism in the HR department: Henry gets the LASIK surgery and is out for a week. When he comes back, the blues of his irises have intensified fivefold.
Today he tells Jonah that he can see through things—clothes, metal, wood, brick. Not all the time, and the image goes in and out of focus. He has no control over the clarity or power. Sometimes he can see people’s inner organs. It is as much a curse as a gift.
Since when has he been totally insane?
asks Jonah.
Still, we make ourselves scarce when Henry walks by, scatter from his line of sight as fast as possible.
Background check
Periodically, Jill suffers repetitive stress disorder, though Jonah calls
his
pains carpal tunnel syndrome. They are not the same thing, though neither victim can quite delineate the difference.
She used to wonder if it was all in her mind. She gives us a synopsis of a book she’s been reading about back pain. The writer asserts that nearly all such agonies are manifestations of pent-up stress. The psychosomatic explanation is attractive but leads to problems. We all develop back pain within a week of hearing this viewpoint.
Make it stop
Another of Maxine’s FYA e-mails leads to a website showing cats curled up in bathroom sinks, gazing up with oppressive cuteness. What is wrong with her? Unless maybe it’s some sort of virus that’s hijacked her address book. We’ve heard of things like that before.
Laars read about a virus called YourPhyred that lurked around certain job websites. When you try to upload your résumé for potential employers, the virus turns it to gibberish or worse. Except
you
never know it.
He notices her.
I’m calling myself to remind myself to go out later and buy ingredients for veal stew!
Just some old crap
Jonah listens to music while he works. He uses the CD player in his computer. He wears blue plastic headphones that are either really cheap or really expensive. We can hear sounds leak through, tiny voices squawking impotently. This isn’t so bad. It makes us think we’re working in a relaxed, groovy environment instead of a disaster area.
What we don’t like is when Jonah starts tapping a pencil to the music, or pumping his legs so hard his desk shakes. You can hear it from outside his office. Crease makes a loud show of migrating to his other desk whenever Jonah gets into his musical phase.
If you ask Jonah what he’s listening to, he’ll say,
Just some old crap.
We figure it’s country music or show tunes. But Pru corners him and learns that the CD in Jonah’s heavy rotation is a recording of a Czech opera about a woman who is three hundred years old and from a different planet or something.
Is
Jonah
from a different planet? This might account for the weirdly glowing slate-colored eyes, the sleek briefcase made of futuristic water-repellent material, the tendency to predict the future with better than average accuracy. The trips to Mexico are to deliver complex information and late-capitalist artifacts to the mothership.
Also, once Laars saw him in the office early in the morning, the lights still off, typing with his eyes closed.
Recently, Jonah explained that his name is properly pronounced
Yawner,
a Czech pronunciation perhaps, but no one’s going to make the switch. It could also be that Jonah wants the Sprout and Maxine to think he spells his name with a
Y,
since all the
J
s are getting fired these days.
FYA
Maxine e-mails some of us a link to an article she thought was funny, from a blog we’ve never heard of.
FYA,
she writes in the subject field, followed by a smiley face.
Opening the link crashes everyone’s computer, except Pru’s. We reboot. She copy-pastes us some of the photos and text. The site is devoted to images of dogs and cats nuzzling each other.
We expect more from Maxine, somehow.
After Pru hits Send, her computer crashes. Then our computers all crash again.
An hour later, Crease says,
I think it means For Your Amusement?
< 11 >
Laser Henry
Magic realism in the HR department: Henry gets the LASIK surgery and is out for a week. When he comes back, the blues of his irises have intensified fivefold.
Today he tells Jonah that he can see through things—clothes, metal, wood, brick. Not all the time, and the image goes in and out of focus. He has no control over the clarity or power. Sometimes he can see people’s inner organs. It is as much a curse as a gift.
Since when has he been totally insane?
asks Jonah.
Still, we make ourselves scarce when Henry walks by, scatter from his line of sight as fast as possible.
Background check
Periodically, Jill suffers repetitive stress disorder, though Jonah calls
his
pains carpal tunnel syndrome. They are not the same thing, though neither victim can quite delineate the difference.
She used to wonder if it was all in her mind. She gives us a synopsis of a book she’s been reading about back pain. The writer asserts that nearly all such agonies are manifestations of pent-up stress. The psychosomatic explanation is attractive but leads to problems. We all develop back pain within a week of hearing this viewpoint.
Make it stop
Another of Maxine’s FYA e-mails leads to a website showing cats curled up in bathroom sinks, gazing up with oppressive cuteness. What is wrong with her? Unless maybe it’s some sort of virus that’s hijacked her address book. We’ve heard of things like that before.
Laars read about a virus called YourPhyred that lurked around certain job websites. When you try to upload your résumé for potential employers, the virus turns it to gibberish or worse. Except
you
never know it.
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