An Ode to Load.

Know what you never see at the theater these days? Movies featuring love-triangles involving giraffes. If it were ever to be made, possibly by me if I can find the right key grip to handle my keys, I would pay to watch it. I would also pay for a pen that squirted ketchup on my tax attorney, or a toothbrush that complimented me whenever I remembered to use it.

What would such piece of mind be worth to me? I've studied pie charts, stopped for a martini break, consulted an oracle on my nightstand that's really an old slab of driftwood that got lodged in my windpipe during a canoe-race with a bellicose Shriner, had another martini, and concluded its value: A limp handshake and unsightly weight gain around my tax attorney's midsection. I hate my tax attorney.

But, I quite like his daughter. I learned her name by watching her fill out forms at the DMV for her tractor-trailer license, but forgot it instantly after staring into a strobe light that night, while listening to something by Vivaldi. It might have been Megadeath. She has this way of looking at me that whispers: if you don't put your shirt back on, this instant, I'll staple your nipples together.' I can read her thoughts like the back of a cereal box. Ah, young, violent love!

What if she were to take it up with a loudmouth Shriner? Suppose she's more into someone who isn't afraid of his own toenail clippings, or recites Goethe whenever he sees a paisley neckerchief? What if he wins her over with his ten-key typing abilities? In my defense, it's hard to type while wearing mittens, and harder still to write lovely sentiments while constantly, crushingly drunk on homemade Drakkar Noir.

I haven't left the apartment in days, except the one time it burned down. I'm petrified by my inability to distinguish between humidity and dew point. That, along with sniffing puffy paint will surely be my demise, and all before I learn to play the spoons. It had long been my mother's dream to see me captivate a gathering of woodland creatures with a rousing spoons solo, but she took her own life when informed that the Olympic Committee didn't consider excessive salivation a sport.