Piece 2.1

"The Misters Butt"

Mister Butt, Mister Butt. Welcome. Good to finally meet the Butts. Or should I say, the Misters Butt.

If someone had told me upon waking this morning "Sir, today you are going to meet the brothers Butt," I would have simply discarded that statement as fanciful monkeyshining. But here you are! Here you are, and here I am in the presence of the the Misters Butt.

Please, sit. Would the Butts care for a refreshment? Perhaps some burritos supreme from the freezer? I am told they are quite delicious. No? No? How about a drink, then. Surely the Misters Butt could not refuse gins and tonic...Fine, fine. Two gins and tonic, coming right up, one each for the Butts.

Thank you dear, yes, one each please. And tell your mother thank you from myself and the Misters Butt. No, no, just water for me. My wilder days are behind me, I'm afraid. We Justices of the Peace had our fun when we were upholding the law alongside the likes of you Butts...ah, those halcyon days, fresh out of Harvard, eager to- Ah, well, you must not let an old man meander through creaky memories. But tell me, when your father, God rest his soul, started Butt, Butt and Butt, had you any idea the family Butt would grow to be so influential? Already, you must know, there is talk of putting a Butt on the ballott. Well, we can't have a joint presidency, of course! But one Butt in the whitehouse is better than no Butts at all!

Here are some interesting things about Santa I remember from this most wonderful time of the year:
Santa made the front page of my favorite newspaper, the Chicago Sun Times. He was getting his boots shined and reading the sports section.
Anna's brother teaches english to children in a small town in Japan. When he asked them "Who's birthday is on Christmas?" they all said "Santa!" in unison.
My parents have cable, and we were watching one of those crazy news stations that try to cram as much information as will fit on the screen, complete with updates scrolling along the bottom. There was a shiny, red pulsating icon that said "Terror Alert: HIGH" hovering over the FOX NEWS logo, and behind it they were tracking Santa, probably via GPS or something, as he made his way through the winter night sky on a sleigh drawn by eight CG reindeer.
My grampa gave me a ride to the train station on Christmas, and while we were waiting in the car for the train to arrive there was an old man with a gray beard and a sports jacket also waiting on the platform. My grampa said something like "Who's that, Santa?", and even though he said it quietly and we had the windows rolled all the way up, the man turned around right then and gave us the googley-eyes and then a big smile before turning his back to us again.

Right now I am sitting on a stuffed turtle. The thing is, my bed is really close to the ground, so I have to sit on my stuffed turtle in order to be able to type comfortably. A long time ago I gave it the name Gamera, after the big monster, but I only just remembered that now. Who needs to name their stuffed animals?
Here is what is on my desk: a desk lamp; two chopsticks that were presents from Anna; a sharpie; a little bottle of Clerz Plus lens drops; two dirty, mismatched ear plugs for when my roommates are being noisy; a laser pointer (the best cat toy around); a contact lens container containing contact lenses; another sharpie; a plastic toy Kappa, which is this Japanese gremlin with a lily pad head that hides just below the surface of a pond and molests children when they go swimming; a teeny-weeny alarm clock; some trash; some scotch tape; a mint; my cd wallet that I got for free at the Fireside Bowl which came with four packs of Winstons; a stone bear from Arizona that was a present from my mom; a Marks-A-Lot permanent marker; two and a half WIP manuscripts; and a whole bunch of change. It's actually a pretty small desk, too. Oh, and I missed one of the sharpies and a pen. I have no idea how I got so many sharpies. I don't even use them, really.

Today I threw a cookie into the Chicago river. It was an oatmeal raisin cookie, I think, but I had a whole pocket full of them so I'm not sure. I ate the rest.
But when I threw it in a seagull swooped down on it from nowhere and snatched it out of the water, and then flew it over to locations unknown. It's so funny that seagulls eat cookies, I think. People don't eat seagull food, whatever that is. We don't even eat seagulls. At least, I don't.
The cookies came from Subway, but I didn't buy them. Someone at my school bought a whole bunch of sandwiches and gave them to us for free. The cookies came with the package. I think Subway is sick, but I ate it anyway. I used to work there, and even though it was clean and well organized and so on, it was still artificial and prefab and nasty, all except for the lettuce. You can't really fuck up lettuce.