August summer nights on late shift at the grocery store. Sometimes business be slow, and though there's always stuff that needs doin', the layabouts sit on the loading dock and smoke and shoot the shit. Sometimes I do too, careful to be upwind of the death sticks.
Lots to talk about on the dock on slow summer nights. The previous day's unread newspapers are a source of debate, mostly local politics and sports. A few of the masters of bs have researched topics for debate, or just want help with their distance ed homework.
Sometimes I'll have ideas from e2. "What do moths do during the day?" I asked recently. Apparently they eat holes in Jimmo's gal's sweaters so she swears like a sailor. But those are different moths, the little buggers that get in your closet. Anyway, nobody hit on the sun theory of the node.
Or you can talk about the sounds of the night. Early on the ugly yet beautiful insects, cicadas, might be making their buzzsaw sounds. Sirens, of course, always. And the streetlights - They hum like angels. That node ought to be in Lost Gems of Yesteryear but isn't. Yet.
Twenty-three good things about pickles and dirt is in there. I'll tell you, those are two things I hate. People want their grocery to be spotless. Even though they'll come in from cutting the grass or changing the oil or the diapers, or maybe both at once. People wouldn't go to WalMart like that, but they'll come and pick over the mangoes (Mangos? Damn that Dan Quayle, he spoiled the plurals words ending in O for everybody.) Uhm, yeah, anyway, we're always cleaning the store because people won't shop where it's not spotless. And pickles, I'll tell you, jars of pickles falling from a high shelf are like frags. They go everywhere, it's annoying as hell. By contrast Cheez Whiz hardly spreads at all, glass sticks to the crap. Liquids are easy to mop. But pickles, something about the solids in liquid makes them go all over. And you can't mop pickles, you've got to get down and pick them up one by one. I hate pickles. Especially when some clown leaves them on the edge of a shelf in cereal or somewhere, and then blammo.
Now, Cold reptilian blood and hot Japanese steel, there's a writeup. Snake approves, of course, but can't you just see it in your head? And it ends well too. I think of this writeup when I see the energy drinks with the lizard on them at the cash. But I don't describe it to the dock loiterers, they wouldn't understand.