Let me speak now, once and for all, against the horrors of the Backspace Key. So innocent and beautiful, you think, with the promise of reduction - less clutter, fewer words, unwieldy syllables removed before they grow and, perhaps, spawn trouble. Syllables cluster together, they spore, they usually carry with them a bassline and a fucking rhythm section. BUT DO NOT BE FOOLED. The Backspace offers absolution from the sin of production, construction, creation, inflation (like the cock, baby, or vaginal fluids flowing on, on, on to facilitate production), the Backspace will take away those pages before you have to look at them again. Select all and click. Backspace.
I speak out against the Backspace: less is not more. More is more. Less is something else. The Backspace Key should be registered with the government and allowed after a nine day waiting period (between writing and revision) because it's a murder weapon first and foremost. It murders entire days of work; spend a day writing ten or twenty pages and what does it do? It takes them away from you. You don't get to show anybody the beautiful work you produced, you can't justify your lifestyle if all you've got is a blank Word document with the underline icon clicked for the purposes of a title.
Comments (6)
The rotting cantalopes were not the first sign. The first sign was the stop sign at the corner of Hankshaw and Hughes, where the white-white STOP was accompanied by a black-black GO, not all that surprising, really. Shortly thereafter, a family of amateur bodybuilders moved into the neighbourhood. The father strutted around the front yard in zebra-skin trunks that clung unscrupulously to his body while he mowed the lawn and lifted the back end of the car in one hand to reach underneath and grasp at coins that ran under.
Mostly, the neighbourhood gossip revolved these newcomers, as it always does, and slowly people stopped mentioning that awful thing from the previous summer, though many of them would lie awake at night and think about it, in the private domes of their own brains. Mister Harrison in 1231, particularly, stroked at his thatch of left arm hair as he contemplated, swearing that those strange events recurred as soft-lit reflections in the window pane. He couldn't sleep because of it, ripped down all of the curtains, and began to lie in the bathtub with the light off. So he couldn't see the mirror.
No, they didn't talk about it. Andrea Zuckerman brought over a tuna casserole to the new family and made awkward overtures of friendship toward the mother, Missus Mistletoe who displayed several trophies on the mantlepiece, advertizing her supremacy in local women's bodybuilding circles. Her bicep, of course, was nearly as large as Andrea's head.
As they were quite alone, Missus Mistletoe -- Ruth -- offered Andrea a cold tallie of Pabst and they sat out on the back patio with the cans in hands and a cigarette from Andrea's private stash, shared between them. "Normally I don't," said Ruth, "But I've been so nervous with coming here, being new, not knowing anyone..." Afterward, she crushed the empty cans between her thighs and flattened them.
"Oh, everyone's very friendly around here," said Andrea. "You really shouldn't worry. Your family seems very lovely, actually. That Ken of yours sure likes to put on a show!"
"Kenneth has always put the performance first in his bodybuilding. He's an inspiration, really." And, as she loaded the dishwasher, "How did you meet your husband, Andrea?"
Posted by ben | December 12, 2006 10:49 PM
Posted on December 12, 2006 22:49
Ben. See you're doing well. As usual. Hem. Heeemmmm.
The gale. She's picking up, and the pillows - they will be wet. And not with my tears. Oh no. Never. Never with my tears.
Posted by caroline | December 12, 2006 11:42 PM
Posted on December 12, 2006 23:42
Backspace key reinvented as Teenage Kidnapper on a spending spree.
Posted by joy | December 13, 2006 3:48 AM
Posted on December 13, 2006 03:48
Backspace Key sent to Hollywood as an antihero and starring in a bunch of pictures by Spielberg.
Posted by ben | December 13, 2006 8:02 AM
Posted on December 13, 2006 08:02
Backspace Key lost in the desert after a helicopter crash and dying of thirst, tormented by mirages of incorrect words.
Posted by joy | December 13, 2006 4:34 PM
Posted on December 13, 2006 16:34
OH, THE HUMANITY!
Posted by ben | December 13, 2006 4:51 PM
Posted on December 13, 2006 16:51