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I’ve always hated the exclamation point. It’s abrasive, booming, as dangerous as a billy club or baseball bat. I find that people use it as a crutch, the way adverbs or the dialogue tags like “quip” and “mocked” are employed to compensate for bad writing.

At work, there is a woman who uses the following as her signature: Thanks! Sara. I picture this woman with a phony smile, holding some pompoms, doing a cheer to extend her gratitude. Thanks exclamation point should be saved for when I give her my spare kidney, not when I agree to set up a meeting. Thanks exclamation point translates in my head into THANKS or Thank you very very much. It should be used sparingly, not as a signature on every email sent.

Also at work, I’ve been revising copy for opt-in offers in which the user checks a box next to a phrase like: Yes! I want to receive weekly updates by email. I find the use of this exclamation point horrifying. Can you imagine anyone exclaiming, Yes! Send me crap every week; Yes! Put me on a list I can never get off of; Yes! SPAM, junk mail, please, please, I want more. But the horrifying part is that to do my copywriting job well, I should probably keep the exclamation points in these opt-in offers, even add more of them to convince the customer that this offer is really exciting. Whatever happened to subliminal messaging? Could anyone really fall for the obvious false sentiment of an exclamation point?

Then there is the text messaging culture which contributes to most people under the age of 25 thinking an exclamation point is a period, but for something that is important. And when you are under 25, everything is important. The subject line on a recent email from Kristina read: Reminder! Parties! One that’s tonight!

Three exclamation points in a row is blatant overuse. Two in a row is overuse. The guidelines for a magazine I’m writing for say no more than one exclamation points per article. That’s generous, not to mention problematic that a maximum is even stated. I conducted an informal survey amongst my writing friends and one person said he uses the exclamation point about once every six months. That sounds about right.

I gave Kristina a hard time about her exclamation point overuse. The good thing about dating a writer is that she takes punctuation seriously. The bad thing is that she will argue with me about punctuation, use my own words against me: You say things on your blog like, “and then Kristina yelled, ‘its a bat. rabies. rabies.” um. hello? yelling requires exclamation points!” She mocked my improperly punctuated yelling in a monotonous drone, “bats. rabies. rabies.”

Kristina has a point. It is now that I must confess that I’ve never ever used an exclamation point, and there are cases when they are necessary. The problem is not that I hated them, but that I was prejudiced against them. I thought of exclamation points as tools of the overeager, signs of laziness, and I associated them with the annoying inflections of Valley Girls.

After years of boycotting the exclamation point, of judging it without understanding it, I’m reconsidering its potential. The good thing about having friends who are writers is that they will debate the merits of punctuation at a party, and later give me handouts to prove their points. That is how I received the Dennis Johnson story, “Car Crash While Hitchhiking.” I’m told it will change the way I think about the exclamation point. I’m ready to be blown away!

I’ve been a busy with my brother’s visit, a short vacation, and the new job, of course. I’m starting to hear the distant song of the blogging muse, but until she puts the megaphone to her lips, this post will have to suffice while I play catch up with my life.

Rather than describe a cubicle job, a hackneyed subject ever since the movie, Office Space, I’ll leave you with two samples from my job and hope that they don’t break any confidentiality agreements.

I snapped the following picture on my phone while everyone at my company went on a bowling excursion. I stayed behind because I’m a contractor and can get paid while surfing the Internet, but not while bowling. The sign is taped above the microwave with the text below.

This is simple
No Fish in the microwave
Nothing with Fish sauce. Nothing that sat next to a Fish in the store.
If you’re unsure, ask yourself, “Does this smell like Fish?”
If you’re still unsure, ask another person, “Does this smell like fish to you?”
If there’s any doubt, don’t microwave it.

I think of that as an office poem.  The other thing I want to share is an office email. It starts: “I have received numerous complaints about people using their cell phones while using the bathrooms.” I do not feel comfortable providing any more information from the email, which predominately focuses on the consideration we all need to avoid taking a piss and talking to our mothers while a co-worker is in the next stall. The email ends on an unrelated note, but perhaps one related to the fish poster, which has been up for as long as I’ve been at the company. The email ends with, ” Also, please do not post unauthorized signs around the office.”

Kristina (the gfriend) and I occasionally housesit/petsit for a friend who lives in the outer sunset, a San Francisco neighborhood reminiscent of the Jersey shore. I should probably clarify the situation to say that Kristina petsits and I water plants, move cars, change lightbulbs and do the dishes. I didn’t know what purring was until my mid-twenties, but Kristina makes up for my lack of cat and dog experience. She prefers animals to people and is the kind of person you’d want protecting your ant farm, fighting off bullies who flick the glass and turn the farm upside down. Critters, rodents, and insects large and small, she loves them all.

The fist time we housesat, we received a list of all the items I.O., a Jack Russell with an underbite and white fur the texture of twine, has devoured. A few of the items on the list: lipstick, sunglasses, a bottle of anti-depressants, gum, chocolate, coughdrops and condoms. This list never scared Kristina and me. We considered it part of the warning, “Do not leave anything within I.O.’s reach and watch her at all times.” When we are there, we stash all of our belongings above waist level. We don’t leave any food out. We always know where she is.

The other night, while we were cooking dinner, I.O. was in the hallway with the cat, Chawala. Then Kristina was in the hallway. There was flapping, then Kristina screaming, “I.O’s got a bat. Rabies. Rabies.” I’ve always wondered whether I’m the type of person who would run into a burning building to save a stranger, leap off a cliff to rescue a drowning child, shield an injured soldier with my body, or whether I’m a coward whose feet would turn to lead in a time of crisis. I’m proud to report that I have the hero gene. Without thinking, I grabbed I.O. by the stomach and squeezed as if trying to perform the Heimlich maneuver. But I.O. wasn’t choking and she was hungry. With one crunch and a swallow, the bat was gone. I.O. licked her lips, all innocent and cute, and started sniffing under the door looking for dessert.

We think the bat came in through a locked, handleless door. Don’t ask us what’s behind it, we don’t know, we’re just housesitting. But whatever is on the other side is apparently used by the neighboring storefront. There is a medium-sized crack under the door and most likely the cat shot her mouse-grabbing paw through the crack and came back with the bat. There is a bird hospital a few doors down, and only after asking Kristina eleven times if maybe I.O. ate a small bird, a parakeet perhaps, did I believe her when she said it was definitely a bat.

We did all the stuff you’re supposed to do when the dog you’re petsitting for eats a bat. We called the animal hospital, the vet, animal control, and the owner, interrupting her peaceful yoga retreat. Both the dog and the cat were up to date on their rabies vaccines and we (and by we, I mean Kristina) took them for booster shots the following day. The vet is also conveniently on the block (yes this is a weird neighborhood), so first she took the cat, then the dog, over in the pet carrier. By now, I.O. has passed the bat, and we did not look for the bat head in her stool, as we were instructed to do. We were too shell-shocked by the end of the debacle.

Once the animals were fine, we turned to human concerns and whether Kristina and I needed rabies shots. After consulting two people in the medical profession, we learned that because the bat didn’t touch us or bite us or inject mass quantities of saliva into us, we would be fine. Even if the bat had left dried drool on the counter and I touched it with a finger that had a cut on it, I would be fine. Although by asking the question, I prompted concerns about my mental health and anxiety.

For now, everyone is okay. We added bat to the long list of things I.O. has eaten. It is the only the item on the list that was alive at the time of consumption, and I feel special to be part of that moment, holding I.O. by the stomach while she guzzled that flapping little mammal in 3 seconds flat.

I read Daniel Alarcon’s collection of short stories, War by Candlelight, by accident. I had wanted to read a book, something that would propel me on from page fifty, not end at page ten and start again at page eleven. And I didn’t want to read something true or mostly true or information heavy, what is commonly thought of as nonfiction. I wanted to lose myself in a novel, Alarcon’s new novel, Lost City Radio. He’s part of my obsession with local authors. He lives in Oakland (and is originally from Peru and grew up in Alabama). I’ve heard him read twice, both times from a short story about a modern day gay Abraham Lincoln. It was a bit like fan fiction, or what I consider fan fiction, which to me means turning all the characters gay and then fantasizing about them doing it. I guess Alarcon’s story was more like literary political fan fiction, or maybe just a story. Perhaps if I went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop like he did, I could categorize it. This guy is virtually my age, barely thirty. I fantasize about having his career and his hair. Alarcon has great hair. It is brown, thick and overgrown, wavy with just enough grease to tame the frizz. He’s hot in that disheveled writer way, and I’m into the future of the book business, where it’s not about the books themselves, but the persona of the author, the author’s sex appeal, his hair.

Since I couldn’t get the novel at the library, I borrowed the stories. I read the acknowledgments section first, as I always seem to do, and learned that his very first short story was published by Granta or Zoetrope or somewhere uber-literari like that. People say it’s hard to sell short stories in the current marketplace and this seems to be true, because whenever I come across the collection of a first-time writer, he or she will inevitably write in the acknowledgments, “Thank you to the New Yorker for publishing my first story and taking a chance on me.” There are the few, the talented, the published.

I proceeded to rip through the entire collection, reading them out of order, but in my own noncommittal order of the shortest story to the longest. I have a thing against 40 page short stories or articles. I like to read anything that’s not a novel in one sitting, but I don’t always have time or the focus to read 40 pages. I find long-short standalone stories or articles daunting. The mental investment is high and then it’s over. However, once I started Alarcon’s stories, I could not stop. It was one page-turner of a short story collection, and I moved easily from one teary ending to the next bold opening. “Science of Being Alone” turned on my waterworks, and not just a pooling in my eyes but a splatter onto the page. That story and that last paragraph captured all that is hopeless, fated and lost in love, while also managing to show the pride and acceptance of the defeated. It’s a moment when you want to scream at the protagonist, “Don’t do it you. Don’t do it,” and (maybe it’s because the other character screams it, as well), but when the protagonist does it, bending down on one knee for his annual marriage proposal, it’s only then that you realize he is stronger than you will ever be. The act is not particularly original, but the depth and complexity of the characters and the arc of the story is so well developed that the ending is a light squeeze to the heart.

I think the title, War by Candlelight, which is also a title of one of the stories, sets the mood for the collection. Each character is in a sense at war, and regardless of whether the battle is waged on the streets of Lima or in a small apartment in New York, on the outskirts of a prison or an earthquake shattered town or in the mind of a soon-to-be illegal immigrant, the characters are all fighting for survival. For pennies, for freedom, for love and meaning. And the stakes are death or akin to death. Bombs, bullets, poverty, prison. The stories are like flares shot from a deserted island or matches burnt inside a cave, dim sources of hope in the vastness of despair. When you read a good short story, it’s as if the small selection of scenes and moments become emblematic of an entire life, as if you’ve been given everything in a few pages to understand all that is this person. A good short story tells of worlds and places and experiences that that are foreign yet common. These ones are terrific, quietly explosive. They’re really worth reading.