by kristin, more to come

When I was five years old, I was convinced that an accountant lived beneath my bed. I could not see him, but could hear him, the moment the lights went out: “Mathilde,” he whispered. “Two copies of the income statement for the third fiscal quarter.”

Who is Mathilde?  I thought, trembling. And: What is a fiscal quarter?

My parents were of no help. They peeked beneath my bed, announced, “No accountant,” and flicked off the light, leaving me alone with the sounds of his typing, faxing, invoicing. I was on my own. I slept with a knife beneath my pillow. I taught myself the rudiments of Tae Kwon Do. I tossed leftover baked beans onto the carpet to dissuade the accountant from hungering for my blood, flesh, and bones.

“Mathilde,” he said. My fingers gripped the hilt of the blade.

In time, my parents discovered the baked beans. They discovered the Tae Kwon Do manuals, and the knife. They were not pleased.

“Stop being ridiculous,” they said. “There is no accountant beneath your bed. And even if there were, accountants are not dangerous. They take care of our money. They are our friends.”

But they did not hear his whispers. They did not hear his rasps. They did not hear him call out, “Mathilde,” again and again in the night, demanding bank statements, expenditure reports, subsidiary ledgers, balance sheets, accounts receivable, his voice dripping with wantonness and lust.

The accountant was no friend of mine.

Shot in the stomach, I dialed 911. The pain was incredible. There was a spectacular amount of blood.

The 911 dispatcher put me on hold, and there was Muzak. I didn’t know that 911 could put you on hold, but they did. The Muzak was a smooth jazz version of “Rock and Roll All Nite” by KISS. There was a fretless bass, a guitar playing the melody in octaves, and a clarinet.

I tried to make a tourniquet with my shirt, but it didn’t work very well.

At first I thought that “Rock and Roll All Nite” was a poor choice for Muzak. But then I realized that it was actually pure genius. In its original form, it is a party anthem, a crowd pleaser. But in Muzak form, it is an existential meditation on dissatisfaction and yearning. The musicians want to rock and roll all night, they want to party every day, but they can’t. They have to play smooth jazz. The guitarist wants to set fire to his guitar and wear garish make-up and have sex with groupies, but he can’t. He has to make do with melodies in octaves and Lydian chords.

It was the saddest song I have ever heard.

Despite the tourniquet the blood kept flowing, and I felt very faint. I thought about hanging up and trying 911 again, but I was curious to hear how the song would end, and so I waited. There was a clarinet solo. I hoped that it wouldn’t be very long.

1. Even if I averaged, per night, 7.2 dreams, and dreamed for a thousand years, I would never dream up someone as magical and wonderful as you.    

2. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

3. Sorry about last night with Heather.

4. You are the reason I weld ultrafine-grained steel.

5. How do you configure the universal remote to our television?

6. You make me happy when skies are gray.

7. Sorry about last night with Heather (different night, different Heather).

8. The green tupperware contains pasta with clam sauce.

9. You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.

10. The yellow tupperware contains pasta with strychnine (technically, this was said, but admittedly far, far too late).

11. Please don’t take my sunshine away.

In a bit of serious news, the imposing drummer of Airship Rocketship, Mr. Richard Hargett, was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor.  He is in very good spirits and the outlook is positive.  Chemotherapy and radiation treatments begin soon.  He gave me some fun pictures to pass along to the interwebs – here are a couple!

this is his shunt – it’s a little tube that draws fluid from his brain into his stomach.  impressive!!

i think the tumor is right there in the middle.

anyway, please wish Richard well.  He’s been a real trooper about all of this, and it’s all been going well so far.  We’ve made an awful lot of tumor jokes.  His drumming this week was impressive – it sounded better than the rest of us, and we don’t have cancer.  It was good to hear him hitting things again.

Think positive!  Come see us on Friday at Vagabond.

burning trash cans!  always sensible.

True Story.