The Giant Rubber Roof and Other Boring Stories of Life

A home with a flat roof in the Pacific Northwest is a peculiar thing. The entire seven years of inhabiting this house, the roof has leaked during the winter at least once, if not many times, and those were just the leaks we could detect. I imagined that up above my head lie a moldy mass of soggy twenty-year-old insulation trapped under a layer or two of decrepit torch-down roofing. Each year I would investigate the roof structure on my hands and knees, searching for the source of the leaks. I would apply patching compounds and completely re-coat the roof in various products designed for the do-it-yourselfer to no ultimate avail. It still leaked. Maybe a little less, but BOY was I tired of this cycle. So this summer, the home was re-roofed with the latest, state-of-the-art PVC sheeting and the old insulation removed and replaced with new POLYISO -- all at CONSIDERABLE expense. This is the Rubber Roof Story. I have an even less interesting story about The Missing Downspouts, should you wish to indulge...

Oxygen Tanks

I had a summer job delivering medical supplies from a pharmacy to customers in Bountiful, Utah. I drove a white Chevy three-speed pickup that had a weak six-cylinder engine that begged to be driven hard. To make life more interesting, I would take corners quickly, and if the delivery included oxygen tanks, they would slam from side to side, denting the walls of the pickup bed. I never seemed to contemplate the wrongness of this behavior, but often wondered if the oxygen tanks could explode. The old people who needed the oxygen were quiet and sad, and I often had to wheel the tanks past years of their lives that took the form of worn carpet, old furniture and photos of loved ones. They often asked me to change out the empty tank, which I would do, even though I wasn't trained. To my knowledge no one ever died, other than from the inevitable finality of their respective conditions. When I didn't have deliveries, I would hide out in the basement storeroom, hoping that there would soon be another delivery so I could drive the truck and take out my teenage aggressions on the accelerator peddle. This job therapy must have worked. I went back to school and forgot about just how dangerous oxygen tanks can be.

RGB

We can take color and make it change, by the simple twist of a dial. Subtle shades of finely crafted reality adjusted to look just as we perceive them to be. Who really sees the correct color? Red, green and blue blend to thousands of colors. This is the way we make the world better.

Cloud Cover

I hate cars. I love cars. I hate cars. I love cars. I hate cars. I love cars. I hate cars. I love cars. I hate cars. I love cars. I hate women. I love women. I hate women. I love women. I hate cars. I love cars. Women and cars.