Data Dump

Random scenes from a weekend on the road

I have no right to mock influencers and the “do it for the ‘gram” people, because since I started writing these dispatches, every time I see or hear something notable, the tiny editor in my head (he’s got one of those old-timey green visors on and he looks like clip art from a 1950s grocery store circular in the newspaper) hollers “that’s one to hang a column on!”

They rarely actually are, that’s the thing. But it all goes in the hopper and will eventually come out as part of the ground beef on the business end of the nozzle. A character in a story will be born with an entire personality because I saw a guy make a face when he didn’t like a price on a few of my CDs last Saturday. My fictional version might wind up reacting to the going rate for anti-radiation pills at a dystopian truck stop on an asteroid, but the look on his face will be pure plagiarism on my part.

He hit me right at the low point of my self-doubt that day, when the hardcore record guys were making tracks to get past my bargain bins and spend half a paycheck on some sealed OG mint shit. He picked up a Genesis CD box set, a nice one that’s been out of print for a bit. I have $50 on it. “You take forty?” I told him I’d split the difference and accept $45 and he looked at me like I had shit on my shoes.