rant is where the heart is

diaryland: sirilyan.diaryland.com: entry for 2003-01-20 (20:40)
In which our plucky young hero is as dry as a dry thing.

9:00 am: The plumbers shut off the water to the building, so that they can play their little plumber games and dance merrily around the pipes pretending to fix things while really just getting $90 an hour for figuring out new ways to make a pipe wrench look like things that are not a pipe wrench in elaborate shadow puppet games.

9:01 am: I roll over on my side, still fast asleep. Perhaps there is a little drool into my pillow. But probably there is not.

12:30 pm: I wake up, listening as always to 680 News, because I am down with the underground. The news-listening underground. Combined weather and traffic reports on the ones are the new White Stripes.

12:31 pm: I think something along the lines of "Ha ha ha, you dumb bastards, having to take the DVP to go from one bland, lifeless suburb to another. If only you would get out of your cars, you would know how to truly live! Live, I tell you!"

12:33 pm: Still lying in bed, pillow conspicuously free of drool, I try once more to be engaged by Godel, Escher, Bach. I once again get all the way through the part with the talking animals, then crash into a brick wall of who cares. I think of those lucky bastards on the DVP, driving from beloved families to equally-beloved mistresses, stopping on the way to pick up inflated paycheques from defense contractors.

12:45 pm: I get up, ready to take on that world. (When you're an adult, that's no cliche. It's the truth.) (I used to love that band.)

12:48 pm: Well, lucky me. There's enough water in the toilet bowl to flush the toilet, as it turns out.

2:20 pm: Well, once.

2:50 pm: I begin to notice that I want to take a shower. But I cannot. The faucets make only a vague angry noise when I turn them. They are like pipes full of bees. I picture the plumbers, down in the basement or the sub-basement or the Morlock tunnels, being squirted with water every time I turn the faucets. I laugh merrily at the thought.

5:00 pm: I leap to the sink to test the faucets. The announcement clearly said that at 5, the water would be back on! It said it as clear as day!

5:00:10 pm: It lied! It lied, the goddamn bastard! It lied!

6:30 pm: I have no water. No water for me! I sip joylessly at a glass of soy beverage (have I fallen so far, so fast?) and think about how many things I could be doing right now, if only I had showered. If only my hair was not stringy and dull, like a medieval serf, or [insert Phish joke here]. There are movies, and porn stores, and shitty bands with no cover! But ...

6:45 pm: I joylessly turn the faucet, an empty exercise. I know it will... produce a stream of cold water!? My God! Can it be? Is it too good to be true?

6:45:05 pm: Hint: The answer to the final, rhetorical question is the opposite of the answer to this question: "Does the hot water work, too?"

7:10 pm: Hot water! Hot, hot water.

7:10:05 pm: Screw it. I didn't want to go to a movie anyway.

7:10:06 pm-present: Indolence.

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