CAROLINE
DIDCOTMASSIF
CRISPIN GLOVER
ASHLEY JHONEN
STEPHEN COLE
| 'What?' The world's richest homeless person stopped typing long enough to see that what he had meant to say wasn't on the screen. He looked at his hands and then up at the interruptor. 'What? What is it?' Things in plastic bags. Styrofoam peanuts. Tables and desks not cubicles. Computer equipment. Health insurance. Movies. His boss. His boss in a plastic bag, sitting on a desk (not a cubicle) asking him about health insurance. Explaining how movies work. Not light and film but agencies, packages and points. Explaining how work doesn't have to be alienation and bilious boredom, doesn't have to be cubicles, can be like this sunny loft with it's tables and chairs and computers and shiny white ethernet cables. Interrupting. 'What?' The world's richest homeless person knows something about movies. They get between your hands and the thing you meant to say. They roll around your head like a can of tennis balls in the trunk of your car. They aren't safe. Meaning they aren't small, dangerously sharp, or far away. Festooned. Festooned with banners. Festooned with animated banners. Festooned. There were small, sharp opposites here. The sunny loft and the tiny web empire which was almost all black. Moving pictures and pictures that go from nothing to something and then back to nothing again under the small sharp point of his pen, so black and so far away. Running a tiny web empire is like inhaling nitrous oxide in the dairy section of Basic Foods. It's mostly process. The casual walk, like nothing's up. The glance, already salivating a little bit at the sharp danger of it, and then the quick half-depress the rush of sweet reddi-whip air gasping at the stupid colors the ridiculous sex-fantasy indian girl on the land-o-lakes butter the big fat smooth white plastic milk like the pompous boss of the dairy shelf at the carton of country trim with its farmers daughter and missing children now grown old and living in Arizona and the pang is like someone being murdered in the background of a Donna Summer song like a ghost in a Tom Selleck movie smiling, blurry, frame by frame, as if to say 'I never meant to come here.' Websites are like that. And there are so many of them. 'No.' Later, the world's richest homeless person crouches on the fast side of the pedestrian walkway and the dirty wind combs his hair and the city scrolls under him like a tiny empire of links and traffic. He looks at his reflection in the glass, under the sign that says WATCH YOUR HANDS, and he thinks he sees little forcelines thinking beads of sweat worried snot bubbles asleep logs and saws and the last letter of the entire alphabet wrapping around him like a doormat. WELCOME. WELCOME HOME. |
TOMAS CLARK
L. HARDIE
UMBERTO ECHO
erik
CHRIS HEADY
RODNEY HASTY
MATT GUMBEL
SHADOWNASH
SCOTT FAULKNER