Conveyor Belt
My project for August is going to be locating my apartment building's dumpster. On day one I had nothing to begin with, and therefore had nothing to throw out. But as the days went on and my collection of small surplus material started building up, I ventured out of my apartment in hopes of finding the garbage chute. It turned out to be right there behind the door outside the elevator, how many mornings had I stood right beside this door, grunting and twitching as the garbage piled up under my sink?
This deep, black portal to nowhere scared the crap out of me at first, but I forced myself to begin using it. The obsession became exceedingly bad the day I turned the light on in the garbage chute room and saw the sign on the inside of the door that warns you that a real live person is handling your garbage at the other end of the chute. Of course I panicked and ran back to my apartment and locked myself in, how could they conveniently forget to put this in the contract? Which scientists and analysts had all along been untying and placing my carelessly folded napkins and dirty razors on a moving conveyer belt on the bottom floor, studying me intensely, trying to determine what nefarious projects I had on the go?
I could only emerge for another try after starting my ritual of doing the initial tie really tight as I normally would, then stuffing the tied bag upside down into another bag and tying it again really tight, hoping they'll just harmlessly pass by my refuse as a waste of their time. How embarassing would it be if a bag got lodged halfway down? Nobody could honestly expect you to fess up to something like this. Nobody would own up, somebody one day would just open the garbage chute and place their bag atop the tower of stuck bags that had been building up to finally reach their floor, and would realize something was up and call the maintenance man immediately. It is absolutely crucial that I find out where the dumpster is before this happens to me.
- Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 23:43
