The Corduroy Mtn. The Company Physical Sean Lovelace I had to run on a treadmill and breathe into a hose. I felt like Skywalker, after frozen on an ice planet (and excised a monster's arm to escape) but before he kissed his sister. When he was floating in that cylinder/aquarium. (Aside: George Lucas appears to hold a fetish for amputating arms.) They took blood, other fluids. They rubbed a chalky blue patch onto my forehead. I had to eat salts and urinate into cups decorated with roses. I had to engage in dynamic, multi-step processes, on an elevated carpet. They said, "Cut the dead wood!" and other encouraging words. They studied my enzymes, my catalysts and voids. They studied my thoughts on paper. They researched my muscle mass, vinegar status, and ceramics. This took days. They showed up at my cubicle; eyes glaring like Light Sabers. Handed me a binder of blue vowels. They said I drink too much. They said my kidneys were the size of telephones ringing in the night. My heart a fucking Fender Bender. A Pacific Northwest Experiment Station. Finally, after crunching numbers, after pre-writing, writing, and post-writing, after slide script and script slide, after consulting with a Nobel Laureate over Kobe beef and MasterCard, they developed a comprehensive plan: I must quit smoking! But I did quit smoking; I quit smoking years ago, when my lungs were ripped away-the long November, the Tuesday my wife left, and took away my only son. "Oh," they said, wrinkling their noses. "Then get back to work." previous | next Added to The Corduroy Mtn. on February the Twenty Fourth in the year Two Thousand and Nine.