Expectations

There was always the assumption, that if you made it through Janitor College, you'd end up at the Met, or the Chicago Institute, or someplace where you just manipulated robots to do the actual cleaning. I hadn't foreseen hanging art as a final occupation. Had long imagined, as Dr. Quint railed, that I'd end up in knee-pads, in an area I had cordoned off with orange cones and plastic tape, with a comb, flipping bits of dry shit free. His lesson was that shit wasn't difficult to deal with, if you let it dry. You flip the shit free, after it's dry, and vacuum it up, wipe the area with cheap perfume. It's not rocket science. Turned down a lucrative gig recently, because I don't fly, dealing with the carpet in Buckingham Palace, where there's an aging Queen with old dogs. I couldn't trust myself to remain civil, even if I could fly, which I can't. At some point the dogs stay in the doghouse and you visit them there. You don't walk the dogs through the dining room. That's akin to inviting failure. The orange traffic cone was Dr. Quint's invention, he was just looking for a way to let shit dry. His stainless steel comb looked like a weapon but he just used it to flip flakes of dried matter free from the fiber of carpet. Beautiful, really. A stroke, a note, a nod to the unknown. Bach as janitor. The scene opens with a view of empty warehouses, then we focus in on a strip mall that's barely surviving, the soprano sings a lovely aria of loss, her family (oriental, Chinese) restaurant is failing, the bass counters with an argument for violence, as if that could be a solution. The tenor, meanwhile, was making off with the ingenue. The lovely daughter with buck teeth sings a ballad. Our hero, the baritone, was a orthographer who could give her the correct font. Not to be underestimated, the bad guy, the bass, argues we should kill everyone. The sultry maiden cautions we should, maybe, slow down. Opera.