keep a-knockin'

The intoxicating joy of buying a new CD, speeding home in your car radio blasting, get home throw coat on the floor and fuck taking your boots off don't care if there is slush on them you rent this place and will move someday so fuck the carpet mom says Woolite takes the stuff out anyway head for the stereo and flip the receiver on and there's some talk show on AM - turn that shit off really don't wanna hear about some damn football team right now, you got heaven in your hands and it's fuckin countdown to ecstasy time. Alright so hit the open/close button on the CD player and nothin happens, so hit it again. Nothing. Hit it again, finally it starts to open, but then jumps back inside again because you hit the button too many times.

Pause. Deep breath. Okay, hit the button again. Slowly, surely. Open sesame, fucker.

It opens. Take last week's purchase off of the carousel, set it atop the stereo with all the other jewel cases and cassette boxes and shit, you'll find the case for that one later, we got the new love of your life to deal with here. Try taking the plastic off the jewel case, it takes a major effort in finding a goddamn seam or fold just to get a foothold on getting the tighter-than-fuck plastic off, manage to get a few little pieces off, they end up on the carpet to be discovered a few weeks later when they stick to bottom of your moccasin slippers, then eventually get maybe half of the plastic off, then you're left with the other half still covering that jewel case, struggle with that for a while, finally go and grab some scissors to remove the rest of the plastic. Get the plastic off, then try to figure out how that silver tab and its accompanying stranglehold gluey plastic should be dealt with. Go with ripping off as much of it as possible, because if you pull where it says PULL, you don't tear much off. Get all of the plastic torn off, you've almost got it open but there's one motherfucking piece near the edge holding you up. Take care of that, get the disc out and set it in the carousel, by now you're worn out and not too psyched for new music.

And as you head for the shot of Jack's with a Leiny chaser that was brought on by this experience, you wonder how many industries there are that try harder to keep you out of their products. Stupid fuckers.



[Back to Exiled #22] [Back to Exiled on Main Street] [Other Writing] [Poetry] [Contact Bill Tuomala]