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Atlas | Mar 12 2004

The cliche about accidents is that everything seems to happen in slow motion. In this case, everything sped up, way up. I was in the shower and, having long since finished washing myself, was singing A Day in the Life in the voice of a German torturer. This is my favorite thing to do nowadays—sing popular songs in the voice of a German torturer. I used to sing popular songs in the voice of Johnny Rotten, but that got tiresome. At any rate, A Day in the Life is a nice song to sing in the voice of a German torturer because several things happen in that song which the torturer can take sadistic pleasure in reporting, and also because the line I’d love to turn you on can be sung in such a way as to mean, I’d love to make you suffer. It’s all in the delivery.

Anyway, smoke alarms are incredibly annoying. Obviously they’re designed to be annoying, that’s the whole idea, but come on. I ran around the apartment in desperate search of an implement to wave at the thing so as to clear the smoke away and squelch its horrible screech. Actually the first thing I did was turn off the burner under the charred and smoking pot of oatmeal; then I ran around the apartment. I was naked of course, naked and dripping wet, but more to the point I’d left my glasses in the bathroom, which meant I couldn’t see anything. Three times I started back to get them, and three times thought better of it. I didn’t realize this at the time, but in retrospect the scene resembled a compacted, minimalist version of the Keystone cops, with all the cops played by a single actor who for reasons unknown is naked, wet, and severely nearsighted.

Here’s something I learned today: Dynamic HTML by Danny Goodman, while certainly an excellent reference source, comprehensive and well-written, is not the best thing to wave at a smoke alarm. For starters, it’s 1,073 pages, not counting the front and back matter. That’s a lot of pages. Despite using two hands, I couldn’t get any speed going. Worse, the book is just nine by seven inches, so there’s not much surface to generate resistance. This is a problem with the entire genre of computer reference books: they’re just not big enough to generate much resistance. A coffee table book, being both lighter and larger, would have been ideal; that or an atlas. I just now thought of the atlas. I don’t own any coffee table books, but I do own an atlas. Two, in fact. They’re tucked between my desk and my filing cabinet. Fuck.

Anyway, whatever, I used Dynamic HTML because that’s the best thing I could think of. For a moment I considered looking for the off button on the smoke alarm, only this would have meant getting my glasses from the bathroom and dragging a chair from the kitchen, and I wasn’t even sure that smoke alarms have off buttons. Do they? Probably they do. Which is too bad for me, because I must have waved that book for two full minutes before the screech finally stopped. When it did, I turned to the bathroom to dry myself, but then the screech started up again. This happened four times, with the pause between screeches growing progressively longer. During the pauses, I dried myself, put on my glasses, dressed, moved the pot to the sink, opened all the windows, and turned on the vent above the stove.

Now it’s a few hours later, and I can’t tell if my apartment smells a bit better, or if I’m just getting used to it. Probably it’s a combination.

Also, I’ve been entertaining myself for the last half hour by singing Radio, Radio in the voice of a German torturer. The best part is when he goes:

You had better do what you were told
You better listen to the radio