Sorry Please Thank You Read Online Free PDF Page B

am I so self-conscious? What am I so scared of? It’s now or never.
    “Would you like to go see a movie on Thursday?”
    “Are you asking me or her?” Janine says.
    “Looks like she’s already seeing someone,” I say.
    Janine looks at me for a long moment, like she’s trying to look inside of me, almost as if she’s noticing me for the first time.
    “Yes,” Janine says. “Yes I would.”
    I look at Zombie Lady, who is staring at us, slack-jawed. Whatever flicker of awareness I might have seen behind her eyes a moment ago isn’t there anymore. She turns and drags herself toward the exit, and then, with a whoosh of the automatic double doors, she’s gone.
    “I wonder if she’s still going on her date,” I say.
    “I’m pretty sure she’s going to find Burt and chew on his brain,” she says.
    Janine and I stand and watch for what feels like a very long time, enjoying the mix of hot and cold air here at the boundary of the store, glad to be on the inside.

Troubleshooting
    1
    It’s a device. A device like any other. It takes in inputs and puts out outputs.
    2
    Acceptable inputs include: wishes, desires, thoughts, or ideas.
    3
    You have up to forty-eight characters, including spaces, so it’s important to be honest with yourself. Punctuation counts, too.
    4
    Be careful of sentence fragments. Stay away from vagueness. Avoid ambiguity. Be clear. Be clear with your intentions.
    5
    It’s like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do.
    6
    You are wondering: how does your desire get projected out into the world?
    7
    It is a kind of translation device. You translate the contents of your mind into words and then input them into the machine. The machine accepts those words and translates them into effects in the physical world.
    8
    When you ordered this thing, you thought you would use it for good. Everyone thinks that at first. It’s harder than you thought it was. For one thing, what does it mean to do something for good? Do you know? Are you the best person to judge that?
    9
    Figure out what you want. Be honest. Put it into words.
    10
    Is language all about desire? Is desire all about loss? Would we ever need to say anything if we never lost anything? Is everything we ever say just another way to express: I will lose this, I will lose all of this. I will lose you?
    11
    Be specific. If you want an apple, will any apple do? Or will only a certain apple do? That apple, there, right in front of you, looking delicious. Is that what you want?
    12
    Is what you want to obtain a noun? Or is your objective to verb an object? If you want to verb this object, how would you like to verb this object?
    13
    There are objects you may desire but cannot explain. There are objects that are not nouns, there are actions that are not verbs. There are things we want that exist at the edge of the forest, at the rim of the ocean, just over the hill, just out of sight.
    14
    Beware of unintended consequences. Don’t mess with that button until you feel comfortable with the device, its quirks and limitations. Cause and effect are tricky. Don’t like what’s happening? Does it not seem correct? Before you say it’s not correct, here is a question: what is correct? Correct assumes there is some universal registrar, some recorder of your infinitesimal, momentary desires. Correct assumes that there is some perfect mind, speaking some ideal language, into some infallible translator. A perfect three-way dictionary: mind to word to world.
    15
    You want sex.
    16
    You want to be a good person.
    17
    Imagine you are in a swimming pool.
    18
    You are lying on the surface of the pool, faceup, ears half in and half out of the water. If you are doing this right,you can hear the world below, the world above, and the inside of your head. You can hear all three worlds, the nether, the air, the boundary, like mountaintop radio stations, broadcasts cutting in and out, static, and secret, and