Meanwhile, outside the Colosseum, part 4
A GRAMMAR GAMES MAN ON THE STREET INTERVIEW
[A repair chariot parked outside the Colosseum, Day 35]
(with apologies to Victoria Easterday)
Somewhere in the unwashed masses loitering around the stadium walks a wannabe journalist accompanied by his film “crew” — a very smart Belgian Shepherd with an iPhone — looking to get reactions to the action taking place inside the arena.
The reporter approached a woman in a construction worker’s toga with a nameplate that read “Victoria.” She was sitting on the ground surrounded by an open toolbox, a laptop and assorted tools and snacks spread out everywhere. She seemed preoccupied, consulting a programming manual, shaking her head over the madness of Medium and being forced to ask Dave Grigger for technical instructions. Perhaps her scattered thoughts were connected to a curious cloak of blue smoke floating in the air around her.
Before he could ask a question, she held up her hand, picked up a cell phone and then waited for the technical support center to come on the line, while mumbling
…my #1 go to guy. ( OK, just counted, 36 words here).
I find myself thinking about Jennifer Smith a lot! I have found my self teetering on the brink of asking where she lives and does she have sheep. Sometimes I think that she might, who knows why. So here goes Jennifer. Do you have sheep and why? (37 words here, now let me see, 36+46 =80.)
A voice came on the line, and the reporter caught something about broken algorithms, but mostly heard her responses:
I don’t know Lon, I’m only 80 words in, and I am counting them by hand; as in reading each line with my pointer finger, getting lost and having doing it again, per paragraph…
The counting up of the words per paragraph, adding them together, twice, to make sure the count is correct…
I am not certain about symbols ie #, do numbers count as words?
Well Lon, I am weak in three things; spelling, punctuation and math…
I don’t know Lon, I really don’t know if playing the Grammar Game is right for me, and yet I am feeling tempted to count every word from the first two sentences down…
Oh dear Jesus, Joseph and Mary and the cat on the hill…
The call ended and Victoria said to herself
Me thinks I might be fucked!
She took a bite out of a Lil Peep marshmallow candy that had somehow been missed by the street urchins who had surrounded and gutted a giant broken piñata nearby.
She finally noticed the reporter who asked “are you going to be able to improve the quality of feeds on Medium, so it’s not so flooded with posts about self-improvement, life-hacking and entrepreneurship?”
Instead of responding, she lit up a fatty and took a long drag. A beatific smile came across her face like it was 1968 again. She started to float away up the sky like the old guy in UP, but without the aid of a hot air balloon. The last words heard from Victoria were:
“I am the air around the donut’s hole.”
The reporter shook his head over losing the interview.
The dog exhaled and said “groovy, baby.”
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