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Thank You for Calling the Matching Hawaii Outfit Line. For Sizing, Press 2. You Will Need It.
For seven years I wrote phone menus for a health insurance company in Tucson. “Para español, oprima dos.” “If you are calling about a claim, press 3.” That was me. […]
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GO/NO-GO Poll for Our Halloween Couple Costume: Scrubbed. New Launch Window: December 12.
Flight loop transcript, reconstructed from memory and one very long text thread. Columbus, Ohio. Wednesday, October 14, 9:40 p.m. Two people on a couch. I watch rocket launches the way […]
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Call Sheet: Family Pajama Photo, Nov. 22. Six Cast Members, One Print Left Standing.
Distributed to: Marcus, Ruby, Sam, Grandma Bev (by text, she doesn’t open attachments). June is five months old and has not been consulted. For eight years I coordinated commercial shoots […]
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Close Reading: I Annotated a $228 Coat Listing Like a Poem. Two Words Sold Me.
Handout for Period 4 (which is me, at my kitchen table, with a red pen I took from my own classroom). I teach tenth-grade English in Minneapolis. Every fall I […]
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Hansard, Flat 2: The Burberry Hoodie Bill Tied 1–1. The Cat Had the Casting Vote.
Official Report of the House of Flat 2, Headingley. Sunday 11 October. Taken down by the Member for the Sofa (me), because I have the laptop and Jo has the […]
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Alteration Ticket No. 152: Take Up Four Inches, Keep the Original Hem, and Please Stop Asking If I’m Sure
Filled out at my desk in Quarry Bay, cardigan on, air-con at what I’m fairly sure is 19°C. I am 152 centimetres tall. I have never, not once, bought a […]
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Anything to Declare? Four Red Knits, One Carry-On, and My Mother Working the Front Door
My mother has never worked for Customs and Border Protection. You would not know this from the way she opens her front door. She doesn’t say hello first. She looks […]
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Lab Report: Is the Altuzarra Tag at Old Navy Worth CA$70? I Ran the Experiment.
I was a chemistry TA for three years in grad school. I marked something like nine hundred undergrad lab reports, and the format got into my bloodstream. Hypothesis, method, data, […]
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Séance Transcript: Night Shift Contacted the Ghost of My Sold-Out Halloween Scrub Top. It Had Notes.
Some background, because nobody holds a séance in a hospital break room for no reason. Last October I fell in love with a Halloween scrub top. Black cats, little pumpkins, […]
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Fall Draft Scouting Report: I Graded Five Satin Pieces Like Prospects. The T-Shirt Went First Overall.
Front office memo, first. My closet has a roster problem. I have something like nineteen cotton T-shirts, two dresses I only wear to weddings, and absolutely nothing for the in-between: […]