Randomness from the Drafts folder
I use my Drafts folder to take notes, and this practice has consequences. The notes I take, they're never where I need them. They're like Post-Its stuck to the back of the deepest page on your desk. Or, if your desk is neat, my desk. And of course the practice itself is also a consequence. Running Windows 98 on a nine-year-old computer, I'm always a long way from Notepad. And my computer desktop mirrors my real one.
I explain so much so as to bring you this list comfortably. The list of things in the current Sharper Image catalog that, for various reasons, are most ridiculous to me, currently: a remote control pool skimmer, motorized bumper boats, "a homa sauna that installs in 30 minutes" (the picture shows a man in a big wooden box), a motion-activated soap dispenser, the Oral-B Triumph toothbrush with FlossAction brush head, an iGallop "to simulate all the action of horseback riding," and NapSoft "the world's most touchable blanket."
The only other Drafts note in the last three years come from March. It contains: a Post story about the Idiotarod, a Threadless T-shirt I thought about buying but ultimately decided against as my name more amusing as a verb, another Threadless shirt that tempted me in vain for being funny but unwearable, and the only bumper sticker I've ever bought online. The sticker is on my fridge.
Going back three years, there's another random roundup. The tone is more cryptic or at least less decipherable: "mother jones — cookies," "top 25 under 26," and "nellie mckay really." There's also a link to the old website of Jack Bridges, a photographer friend in grad school and co-rider of Deja Vu's opening day, and the beginning of a post about tables.
Three and a half years back, there's a draft of "Johns go a-meetin'." Two days prior, there's the final contents of my previous wallet.
In order as listed: a check in need of cashing, a Safeway receipt, a U.S. Capitol Press Galleries visitor sticker, a driver's license, an ATM card, a Gap gift card (eventually used), an E.T. 20th anniversary phone card (never used), a healthcare card, my dad's business card, a Kmart/Sprint phone card (never used), a work phone list, contact info for the second Atlanta house (because in three months I never learned the phone number), a collection of unknown CNN phone numbers, contact info for the first Atlanta house (never learned that number either), car insurance cards, Lindsay's parents' number, an index card with circa-1998 AT&T calling card instructions (with a grade-school spelling word on the back — "It" — thanks to family recycling), instructions for my answering machine, an AARP temporary membership card, an unknown key, a dime, and a tiny metal heart.
Immediately below this list is a paragraph from a story that ended up somewhere but damned if I can remember where.
He thought of the old men in Spain. When they grew weary of watching the bullfights, the old men would roll their cabezas back and let their eyes close under the sun. Their cheeks and foreheads would turn red, but sunscreen was for the little ones. The old men had lived enough years to see failure, and they were contented to see little more. Asleep in the grandstand, they would roll their faces on the shoulders of their neighbors.
One random line follows about "running the web site for a bullfighting ring in Spain." For sure, a great idea at the time.
