Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Happy Holidaze

I don’t mean to point any fingers, but ever since the addition of a certain employee, rather odd accents of freedom have been sighted in the office.

The first being an American flag coffee mug, which wasn’t strange initially. But it started making rather bold appearances at the front of the cupboard at eye level. Then a calendar honoring our troops was hung above our copier. Again, not too strange…I’m all about protecting our freedom and all. But pictures of soldiers hugging small children before raiding their parents’ homes in Iraq? Hmmm.

So to demonstrate my freedom toward this individual, I plan on giving her a National Geographic magazine on Evolution for our company festivus celebration. While dropkicking a baby down the hall to exercise my freedom of choice. Glory to the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the highest.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

On Synesthesia, Nabokov

On top of all this I present a fine case of colored hearing. Perhaps "hearing" is not quite accurate, since the color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter...The long a of the English alphabet...has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard g (vulcanized rubber) and r (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal n, noodle-limp l and the ivory-backed hand mirror of o take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my French on which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass. Passing on to the blue group, there is steely x, thundercloud z, and huckleberry k...The confessions of a synesthete must sound tedious and pretentious to those who are protected from such leakings and drafts by more solid walls than mine are.
Speak, Memory. Nabokov, Vladimir.

My entire life I have read only one autobiography. Even with an English degree. Yet recently that's all I have read. Before you know it, I will have invested in a leather barcolounger to watch the History Channel all day.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.