staples for life, a mystery

Months ago, I noticed my stapler was out of staples. More accurately, the stapler was likely almost out of staples. I purchased staples at -- where else? -- Staples. I bought a package of staples. The purchase encompassed two plastic-wrapped cardboard packages of 5000 "standard staples" each, or "agrafes standard," in French. From a glance at each cardboard package, the staples have yet to be used. At all. They are arranged in 12 rows, with each row piggybacked oppositely with its twin set. Staples of beauty, order, precision. (Allow me to do the math: 5000 staples divided by 24 rows, equaling 208.3333 in each row. That sounds wrong for this assemblage of one-quarter-inch (6.35mm) staples, made in China. Nevertheless, I am now disquieted by this observation of staple abundance, overabundance, if you will. 

I will not be able to use up all these staples in my lifetime.

Not even close.

Perhaps if I went on a binge, an orgiastic, frenetic outburst of stapling activity, I could approach the use, the employment, of 10,000 staples (remember: each little carton says "qty 5000" [without the comma]). Still doubtful. 

I could try some sort of performance art or stapling obsession of loose documents, papers, receipts, bills, notes, scraps.

Still doubtful.

Why does this bother me?

Supplies of salt, pepper, and paper clips do not disquiet me in the same way.

Something to do with grasping versus letting go? Mortality?  Numerology? The metaphors that "staples" invoke?

'we apologize for any inconvenience'

Isn't that a business's most lame statement? (Or any other entity that declares it.) It's false, phony, insincere, inauthentic, self-regarding, fraudulent, shallow, unimaginative, superficial, provocative, one-dimensional, wrongheaded, insipid, and dumb. And the icing on the rancid cake is the fact that "inconvenience" is often spelled wrong!

pair this

Foodies, gourmands, and assorted oenophiles love to toss around, as in a salad, the verb "pair." You've seen it. Or heard it. "The escargot retains its maritime yet diffident character when paired with a 1973 L'Armandaise Bleu." That type of pinkies-out remark is readily slurped up by aesthetes. "Via Va Voom Venuto's menu boasts a zesty pasta sauce, called 'gravy' by the local denizens, that pairs well with a bottle of handcrafted red from the nearby GMO-abstinent, non-frackable vineyard."  

Pair. Pairs. Pairing. Paired.

Such a genial word, with its seductive invitation to couple, twin, or more! 

And yet.

And yet let us admit to its linguistic impediments.

Some pairings are ill conceived and ill fated, are they not?

You wouldn't pair a Trump with a Sanders, would you?

Or a vegan with a carnivore, a liberal with a conservative, a dove with a hawk -- WAIT! Maybe those are the very pairings we in fact covet and crave. Maybe we indeed need to conspire and courageously conjure oxymoronic pairings that will yield unexpected civility and eruptions of harmony and blasts of bonhomie.

Ya think?

Knowledge is power

I rolled up to Colonial Laundromat. From Bubble-Up car wash, I hear a voice. He's talking to me in rapid-fire fashion. Shades of the Midway. Step right up. Something about $15, wash and wax and polish your car, $20 inside and out, while you do your laundry, $50. Hunh? I walk up to him. One five or five oh? I ask. One five, he says. Twenty, inside and outside. I have to go up the hill, I tell him. Which I do once I start my wash. I come back. I go for it. Inside and out. What's your name? Knowledge, he says. You should have a T-shirt that says Knowledge is power. I take him up on it. This entrepreneur with a bit of the showman and the entertainer. Philosopher, too. You gotta love what you do, he sings out as he makes some change at the laundromat. As I dry my clothes, and he does my car.

fragile liquid perishable hazardous

The postal clerk asked the typical and mandated question: “Does this parcel contain anything fragile, liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous, including lithium batteries and perfume?” 

(Technically, I believe she did not mention "including lithium batteries and perfume.")

I responded, "I don't think so. Are words perishable or hazardous? It's a book. I guess words can be perishable or hazardous."

She half-smiled.

"I guess you have a point."

Upon post-shipping reflection, I concluded that words can indeed be fragile (the infinite space between yes and no is but one fragile example), liquid (flowing in several directions, pliant, not solid, moving, healing as a balm), perishable (even set down on paper, words can be lost, burned, evaporated, forgotten), and potentially hazardous (yes, subversive too; think of the Declaration of Independence, or a declaration of war or marriage vows or divorce decrees or papal bulls or misreadings of traffic signs).

But I nevertheless betrayed my vocation and craft by answering "no" to the clerk's query.

'true medical emergency'

You've heard it. You call the doctor's office. (Excuse me, you call the office of your aggregated healthcare practitioners.) Before a human with a voice attends to your need or query, a recorded voice declares: "If this is a true medical emergency, hang up and dial 911." Curiously, though, later, as one of the options presented, you are invited to press 1 if it is for a medical emergency. Hmmmmm. Which summons the obvious cerebral (in my head, at least) debate about what constitutes a "true" versus an "untrue" medical emergency.

TRUE MEDICAL EMERGENCY: Unasked for amputation.
UNTRUE MEDICAL EMERGENCY: Unasked for ampersand.

TRUE: Cerebral hemorrhage. 
UNTRUE: Cerebral hemorrhoids.

TRUE: Aneurysm.
UNTRUE: Androidism.

TRUE: Four-hour erection.
UNTRUE: Four-hour erection.

TRUE: Fibula fracture.
UNTRUE: Fractured fable.

Got more? 

Comment below.

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