(Michael Chinen)

Yesterday I was at Owl & Company over on Piedmont Ave in Oakland and came across an interesting read by complete chance. It is a book of poetry and narrative of archy, who was a roach in 1920, and before that, a free verse poet. Archy hops from key to key on a typewriter leaving notes for his human ‘boss’ who owns the typewritter and ‘provides’ him with food in the garbage can. It is a real treat, and because of the whitespace, a real short treat at that. I finished it within a couple hours. The curious thing was that soon after reading this I found an untitled document open on TextEdit that I do not recall having anything to do with. I’m keeping it here so that I can document it.

i used to be a programmer
but now i am just a roach that had my soul transmigrated from
a programmer after i died
why a roach you ask well if you must know
it is for my programmer sins like
using so much indirection and so many underscores
oh the irony
i can t even press the shift key being a roach
can t even make an underscore much less
left parenthesis right parenthesis

the funny thing is
being a roach now
i have many ideas
but can t code any more left parenthesis
i had some ideas while human
they all made money
like the one to drive cars
with mustaches or umlauts
can t remember same thing really
they all take thirty percent right parenthesis

when you die and turn into a roach
they give you all your money
it carries over so to say
but as a roach it is hard to pick up
a dollar bill and
they don t make credit cards for us
but now i have no rent to worry about
i live in a lovely victorian
and the food is good as ever

now i have time to think
come up with some real good ones
but since money doesn t mean anything now
i think of programs to make abstract art
i described it to the venture capitalist
he said people don t want roach art apps
they hate things that are ugly and free
or maybe just things that are free that are made by a roach
i told him i don t need money
he said why dont you need money
i said i m a roach
he said lol i should have known
i am hiring a taskrabbit to step on you
and another to save you to make it a fair game
because they call me an angel investor
and i want to disrupt the world
anyway i decided to leave then

only a few problems for roaches
there is a programmer rat here named steve
code reviewing my text
bad indentation he says
its not even code i say
he says you got that right
what a jerk