I always think it’s a good policy to like the people who like you.
As a foreigner in London, I like that there are so many other foreigners.
I won’t put in a load of laundry, because the machine is too loud and would drown out other, more significant noises – namely, the shuffling footsteps of the living dead.
If I’m riding my bike I just replay the same scenarios over and over in my head, like I haven’t had a new mental adventure since high school. So that’s what I like about books on tape, so my mind can’t wander anywhere.
Besides, if I wanted to hear people speaking wall-to-wall French, all I had to do was remove my headphones and participate in what is known as ‘real life,’ a concept as uninviting as a shampoo cocktail.
But I’m a humorist. I’m not a reporter, I never pretended to be a reporter.
But most good movies have a gun in them.
And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I’d remind him that these were pests – disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware.
I like books on tape, and will listen to just about anything.
There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents.
Of course, the diary helps me as well. ‘That wasn’t your position on July 7, 1991,’ I’ll remind Hugh an hour after we’ve had a fight. I’d have loved to rebut him sooner, but it takes awhile to look these things up.
If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.
Whenever I write about my family, I start by getting my parent’s approval. I like to think I write about them with obvious affection. When it comes to the people I’m related to, I consider myself to be very lucky.
Lovers of audio books learn to live with compromise.
I don’t like travelling if I know I have to write about it.
In the Netherlands now, I imagine it’s legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church.
I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis.
What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.
What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks? Trains don’t normally sneak up on people. Unless they’ve derailed, you pretty much know where to find them.
The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear.