FACT 137 – an apology of impatience

i believe that god, that is, UPS, put tracking numbers on this earth to tempt the unweary and make them weak. for instance, having thusly ordered my fancy-ass new mp3 player, i duly received a tracking number from the One Who Controls Tracking Numbers, that is, UPS, and i proceeded directly into the so-called “hit the refresh button fifty hundred times in an effort to make the package arrive more quickly” phase. i feel certain that this phase will be familiar to you, dear reader, if only because i’ve talked about it before. have we not all experienced that horrid torment of knowing that the fanciest piece of music-playing equipment this side of yo-yo ma is, at this very moment, somewhere in kansas, and that the closest fix you can get on its locality is that it’s somewhere between Cerritos, California and your front door? who among us has not wanted to hunt down the UPS driver ourselves in an effort to obtain our toys that much faster? indeed, it is human nature to want our goods directly after we have purchased them, and this has been the standard for the vast majority of human existence, with only a few anomolous exceptions, such as the now-extint Lay Away Plan. however, with the advent of the internet, many things became subverted, such as the 3ngl1sh langu4g3, typefonts and even the time-honored love song. instant-gratification seems to be the byword of the internet era, and perhaps god, that is, UPS, has designed tracking numbers as some sort of cruel joke, but it turns out that when you buy something from the venerable Amazon.com, you don’t get it instantly. they use an outdated mode of delivery called “the united postal service,” that is, UPS, so that you must wait before you can play with your new toys or read your new books. i know, wait? what the hell’s that? in other news… ok, yeah. seriously. i want it, and i want it now. why has my tracking information not been updated since yesterday morning? i neeeeeeeed to know. well, not really. i do have a little paper to write. that’s due in a week. that i don’t even know what i’m writing it on. anyway. i said i’d have some pictures for you of my book for the BESTbooks bookswap, and indeed i do:

i couldn’t really get a picture of it open vertically, but you get the idea. each ‘flag’ is a different layer of the ocean, and from the top, you can see all the way down to the bottom. the cover is some sturdy chipboard covered in canvas left over from a bag i cannibalized (for the ‘leather’ on it’s bottom, a whole other series of pictures, trust me). i had some sort of nautical cord, too, but i figured, this book was about the ocean not the high seas. (^_^) i can’t wait to see what everybody else dreamed up. the swap books have been getting classier and classier as time goes on~ . this post brought to you by, that is, UPS. .

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