I stole a marker from work today. I'm sorry. I know it's wrong, but I... I had to have it. I had to have the bright red Avery Marks-A-Lot Jumbo Chisel Tip marker.

This ain't no Sharpie you carry around in your pretty pink dress for making lemonade stand signs, Alice. This is a man's marker: six throbbing inches of crimson ink with a 5/8" chisel point. Lumberjacks use this marker to designate trees for clear-cutting. Our troops overseas use this marker to write snappy slogans on bombs ("INSURGENTS HAVE POOP IN THEIR PANTS"). Christians use this marker to brand the foreheads of adulterers with scarlet letters. What's that, Hester? The "A" won't come out no matter how hard you scrub? Oh, I'm sorry -- that ink is permanent, beeyatch!

My favorite marker used to be the Sanford Mr. Sketch Scented Instant Water Color. I liked the blue one best. It smelled pretty, like fresh mountain blueberries grown by chemical engineers at Dow Corning. The Marks-A-Lot, by contrast, smells like a pint bottle of Five O'Clock vodka left in the trunk of your car for a couple of summers. Doesn't sound so good to you? Go get a Y chromosome and try again, sister.

People will take me seriously when I wield the Marks-A-Lot. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a guy like that my shoe size, let alone my phone number," attractive women will say. "But when he pulled out that big red marker, I found myself helpless to resist its pulsing charms." President Bush will ask to borrow my Marks-A-Lot to veto some commie pinko fake-war-hero freedom-hating Democrat legislation. "I'm gonna draw a big red 'X' across it and write 'Try again, fellas' on the front, and that marker of yours would be just the thing," the president will say. I will politely decline unless he sets me up with Barbara (his daughter, not his mom, of course, although if Barbara's busy I could make do with her cousin Lauren).

+posted by Lawrence @ 8/25/2004 11:40:00 PM