A Job in the Absurd

**Much of my early blogs will be either re-posts from other social networking sites or writing assignments I completed during my college years (2003-2006). This particular post comes from a "Setting" writing exercise assigned in Short Story Writing ('05).**

With the bend of an opposable appendage and the clichéd flick of a switch, the fluorescent lights, screaming with elegance between the cheap Styrofoam tiles, illuminate the geometric room. Taking their cue from the lights, the purple and yellow walls pop out to say hello—and won’t pop back in again until midnight. It’s finally sunny, but the idyllic outdoors contrasts sharply with the dark static from the seven working TVs that every morning call to mind the opening lines of a William Gibson novel. The 28 double-paned windows display their nakedness openly through sassy red frames. On clear days like today, the sun glares at the checkout counters, indiscriminately throwing its rays in a thousand different directions on the transparent plastic of a thousand different DVDs. In any other situation, the store would make for a glorious prism and people would come from miles around and pay the average hourly wage as the price of admission in order to witness the ricocheting ballet of light. But this isn’t any other situation and prisms are made of glass. The shards force the employees in their stylish eggplant, collared shirts to wear sunglasses and squint at the computer monitors from a proximity that mothers swear will make children go blind. It’s a windy 40 degrees outside, but the chill is not felt indoors. It’s hard for teeth to chatter and goosebumps to honk when the air conditioning constricts the feeling of your extremities. The low hums of the soda refrigerators soothe to the point of distraction, but when they quit their tune every 30 minutes, the recognition of the obvious silence is more bothersome. The silence is usually tolerable, as the doors chime upon all entrances and exits, but the doorjamb is broken again, and the right door bulges between its left twin and the outside air, adding to the draft and the silence. At least the customer service is warm. (Unless Katherine is working. Then you’re better off fighting the polar bears outside than contending with that shrew.)

Nineties computer hardware and a 2005 laser printer (but Dude, there are Dell CPUs!) sit defiantly on countertops that pretend to be white but instead show a decade’s worth of scuffs and carvings, at least on the parts that have not grown ashamed and retreated behind mail, magazines, clipboards, and months of unfiled paperwork that would make an audit this year total hell.

Art deco styles with 2005 upgrades. Warhol colors in a sedate shopping center. Resilient ‘90s computers with broken Y2K televisions. If it wasn’t so endearing in its warped acquirement of coziness, the building would laugh at its own absurdity.

And the clientele is just as ridiculous.

This is my blog.

There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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This is a constant, organic work in progress, so please leave comments, suggestions, etc.

Content may or may not be limited to theatre, music, film, and pop culture; it all depends on the Muses, but hopefully it will become video-based in the near future as I get better at--and can afford--video blogging.

Tell your friends!

~Lauren