Gordaen’s Blog

Last week, Enzo (one of the two trouble-making cats who graciously allow me to sleep in their apartment) developed a schedule of waking me up at 4:34am. The first time, I just remembered looking at the clock and it was four-something in the morning. The next time, I saw that it was 4:34. The day after that, he did it again at the exact same time. After my brain solidified from the wild, goo-like state it takes during sleep, I felt like writing. I’ve always been most creatively inspired at early hours (2-4am is not uncommon), perhaps because the logical part of my brain that would be saying, “Go back to sleep, you idiot!” was actually sleeping, which left only the insane part to do the work. Anyway, the following is the result of that early morning. Beware that it’s extremely rough, saturated with cynicism, and jumping with ADD.

I stayed up far too late last night to be waking up to the sound of my alarm at four in the morning. I’ve never been able to just go to sleep earlier when I needed to wake up extra early. It’s a problem like misplaced eggs. You can spend a lot of time up front to fix things or you can wait a few days, when the situation really starts to stink, and then the solution presents itself.

Not that I have ever misplaced eggs before…

Did you know birds chirp at four in the morning? What the hell is there to chirp about this early? I’m convinced that other animals have figured out the secret to life but humans still aren’t even looking. But at least we have opposable thumbs that we can target with our hammers.

I checked in my cupboard, but I didn’t find the secret there, so I grabbed a bowl and some cereal from the secretless cupboard and briefly wondered why cupboards have doors. After deciding that it keeps carpenters employed and that people like to put obstacles in the way of their goals, I added the cereal to the bowl and then completed my masterful breakfast with milk from the fridge (see, that is something where doors make sense) and a spoon from the silverware drawer.

I carried the breakfast and the box of cereal to the table. Laboriously crunching away with less and less noise as the milk slowly defeated the crisp cereal, I read the words on the cereal box. You never know, the manufacturer may have discovered the secret, but it’s a long shot since they can’t even figure out how to keep me from being hungry an hour after eating their cereal.

If you’re wondering what cereal I eat, don’t waste your time; it’s not integral to the story. I buy whichever kind has the highest number next to “calories.” I don’t understand how food manufacturers can keep tricking people into buying their food by advertising that it has fewer calories. That’s like a gas station advertising “Pay for two gallons and receive just one!” I guess most people have really fallen for the “starving ribcage with legs and a square foot of fabric that costs enough to feed me for a week” look. Animals are smart enough to eat every chance they have. That brings the score to animals: 2, humanity: 0.

At this point, I should probably apologize for not warning you about my tendency to ramble—though I guess I just did warn you. And if you haven’t figured it out by now anyway, you’re probably still wondering what cereal I eat. Besides, how was I supposed to know that you’d start the book at the beginning instead of this paragraph? Of course, you could be one of those people who reads the last page first, but I threw that page in there because of people like you. It’s not really connected to the last chapter.

Wow, all these pages and I’m no closer to the interesting part of the story. And those damned birds are still gloating. And people who think I shouldn’t start sentences with conjunctions want to throw this book across the room. But they can’t, because they wasted all their energy with trivial constructs. And they’re no closer to finding the secret of life either.

The end… of chapter one.