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Talking animals, talking statues
Aug. 5th, 2004 08:06 amSaw the little otter swimming close to the beach again. Floating on its back with some yummy sea urchin in its paw, then flipping and diving sleekly into the waves - a game. Same otter? The open ocean is actually a strange place for an otter, they generally congregate in the kelp forests that grow out of the underground canyons where there is no beach.
For the rest of my walk I gave myself over to a complicated fantasy: a race of were-otters - they wouldn't be silkies, silkies are half-men/half-seal - living in a complicated symbiosis with humankind in a place that had once been a fishing village before time and chance turned it into a tourist theme park. A were-otter child who desperately wants to be human, maybe enters a sand castle contest and wins a trip to Disneyland. Then disappears. A contest official must track him down. She, of course, is a lonesome woman who eventually rows herself out to one of the scatter of dilapidated houseboats that float just off the fishermen's wharf to confront the were-otter child's father. He is sleek and dark with a strange accent - half Irish, half Eastern European - covered with a fine mesh of dark, silky hair, possessed of a pronounced overbite -
All right. Otters don't work as sex objects.
In other news I am feuding with the Cannery Row Company. They gave Del Sol - the t-shirt store that popped up like a poison mushroom to replace Coastal Tees, the store that just went under - permission to paint a promotional sign on a wall that happens to be the outside wall of my store. Uh, uh, uh, says I. I put on my reading glasses to pore over the two-point font of my lengthy and laborious lease and pull up the relevant chapter and verse - Section 7.3 lease defines my premises in a way that includes the outside wall. Or at least is ambiguous enough to be interpreted that way. Hey! Their choice of language, not mine.
There ensues an email roundrobin with ____ ______, the pointy-toed and ungenerous property manager for all of the Cannery Row Company's vast holdings. He makes veiled threats - “Please be advised that on my tour last Friday I discovered an unusual advertising piece on the Plaza. I wish to notice you that we did not have any request or approval in file for a talking statue. Nor did we have any conversation regarding its placement within the common area of the Plaza.”
I write back: “Please be advised that the Homer Simpson figure is underneath the awning that defines the doorway entrance to SLOW Burn, much in the same way that Del Sol's sandwich board is underneath the awning that defines the doorway area to the hall with the elevators. Section 7.2 of my lease only speaks to restrictions on the use of unapproved signage outside doorway areas.”
Then I go throw up in the toilet.
I hate being a grown-up. Hate it, hate it.
(This picture of the talking statue under dispute was emailed to me from a satisfied customer in Brisbane, Australia. The talking statue is the one on the right.)
For the rest of my walk I gave myself over to a complicated fantasy: a race of were-otters - they wouldn't be silkies, silkies are half-men/half-seal - living in a complicated symbiosis with humankind in a place that had once been a fishing village before time and chance turned it into a tourist theme park. A were-otter child who desperately wants to be human, maybe enters a sand castle contest and wins a trip to Disneyland. Then disappears. A contest official must track him down. She, of course, is a lonesome woman who eventually rows herself out to one of the scatter of dilapidated houseboats that float just off the fishermen's wharf to confront the were-otter child's father. He is sleek and dark with a strange accent - half Irish, half Eastern European - covered with a fine mesh of dark, silky hair, possessed of a pronounced overbite -
All right. Otters don't work as sex objects.
In other news I am feuding with the Cannery Row Company. They gave Del Sol - the t-shirt store that popped up like a poison mushroom to replace Coastal Tees, the store that just went under - permission to paint a promotional sign on a wall that happens to be the outside wall of my store. Uh, uh, uh, says I. I put on my reading glasses to pore over the two-point font of my lengthy and laborious lease and pull up the relevant chapter and verse - Section 7.3 lease defines my premises in a way that includes the outside wall. Or at least is ambiguous enough to be interpreted that way. Hey! Their choice of language, not mine.
There ensues an email roundrobin with ____ ______, the pointy-toed and ungenerous property manager for all of the Cannery Row Company's vast holdings. He makes veiled threats - “Please be advised that on my tour last Friday I discovered an unusual advertising piece on the Plaza. I wish to notice you that we did not have any request or approval in file for a talking statue. Nor did we have any conversation regarding its placement within the common area of the Plaza.”
I write back: “Please be advised that the Homer Simpson figure is underneath the awning that defines the doorway entrance to SLOW Burn, much in the same way that Del Sol's sandwich board is underneath the awning that defines the doorway area to the hall with the elevators. Section 7.2 of my lease only speaks to restrictions on the use of unapproved signage outside doorway areas.”
Then I go throw up in the toilet.
I hate being a grown-up. Hate it, hate it.
(This picture of the talking statue under dispute was emailed to me from a satisfied customer in Brisbane, Australia. The talking statue is the one on the right.)
