Forty six hours in, 48 pages done. On pace for a 75 page novel. I kinda slacked a bit today, and for that I will pay come crunch time. But right now, I can't concentrate.
This is my 100th post! YAY! Please click here to see my web hero on his 100th post.
And also, because it's about that time to remind myself how lucky I am that I prepared for this contest, I will share with you the wisdom I attained in 2004. It's like a Tuesday Excerpt, but on a Sunday night!
===
How to Write a Three Day Novel (from February/March 2006)
Start in grade school, writing short stories based on Star Trek. In middle school, your writing begins to take on a distinct style, which is unfortunately Douglas Adams’ and not yours. By high school, you’ve gotten that out of your system and instead have started putting drugs into your system. Lose your virginity to somebody who subsequently cheats on you on your seventeenth birthday. Journal about this obsessively until three years later, at journalism school in Minneapolis, when you meet a girl named Kathy from Nebraska. Stop smoking marijuana and decide that writers are drinkers.
Become a starving artist, so nobody can ever understand you. Abandon your obligations to attend class by staying at home writing short stories. You don’t want to be a journalist, anyway, or fall in love with Kathy because she’s too responsible to let you become your generation’s Jack Kerouac. You absolutely love her for this and so fall in love. Also, she doesn’t condone your drinking habits so you decide to cut back. Silently admit that, misunderstood starving artist that you are, Kathy understands you and keeps you well fed.
After four months together, propose. This happens after a bout of Mono which forced you to drop out of school. Move back home, but drive up to Minnesota once a month to visit, or else she’ll drive to Missouri to see you. Plan your wedding via phone. You attend a school you swore you never would simply because of its geographical proximity to your high school. Work at your grocery store job as much as you can; you’ve got a future to plan for now. Start apartment hunting.
You turn twenty-one. Now you can drink and enroll in your employee 401(k). You have no idea what it’s for, but Kathy tells you it’s a good idea. Consider this; it makes your paycheck smaller.
Your wedding is in South Dakota, in a quaint church that didn’t cost a dime to use; honeymoon without taking pictures at crucial moments. This is okay, because you are young and in love. You run into your parents in the Badlands, and as you discuss the wedding and the trip, reflect: you didn’t know your parents would be here, but it’s nice to see them; they hated the idea of this wedding until they met Kathy; they obviously trust her and like her more than they do you.
Move into an apartment that is just big enough for you, Kathy and all of your stuff. This is important, because it gets the ball rolling on finding your next place to live the moment you buy a bookshelf, which will happen after you’ve unpacked your books and found you have nowhere to put them.
You haven’t been writing much, because what with school and then the wedding, you haven’t had the time. But, your general education requirements are out of the way, and before plunging into your creative writing certificate, treat yourself to a challenge. Labor Day Weekend is on the way, which can only mean it’s time for the Three Day Novel Contest.
Friday, prepare yourself. Unplug the phone, buy a case of beer and a bottle of good whiskey. Check the chat room; everybody is talking about how they’ve been writing at least ten pages a day all summer. One says she has been brainstorming and mapping her novel for two weeks. Type in the following line: “I’ve been letting it build for the past month. I haven’t written anything. It will all burst out tonight.”
You are met with the internet chat room equivalent of silence. Finally, somebody from Quebec asks if this is your first Three Day Novel contest. Yes, you tell them.
“Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
Mix yourself a stiff drink at 11:45. Kiss Kathy goodnight; she’s going shopping early with your sister to give you some space.
Stare at a blank screen for six hours.
Start, stop and start and stop. Repeat as necessary before falling asleep on the couch. Dream that you’ve missed the deadline.
Write nine pages about how to write a three day novel. Stop at page nine and tell yourself not to give advice about something you’ve never done.
Watch a movie. Start writing a story about people watching a movie. It’s derivative; their dialogue is lifted from the movie they’re watching, which is the movie you just watched. Let this nag at you, but only a little bit.
Your main character is one of your stock characters; you wrote a play about him in high school. His friends in the story are friends from another story he’s in. Chronologically, this is after the play, but before the movie script you wrote last year just for fun. You think, briefly, that you should do an anthology instead of a contiguous novel. But no, the rules are clear. All writing must be done between 12:01 am Saturday and 11:59 pm Monday.
You have seven pages, and you’re stuck. Take a nap, sleep off the whiskey. It’s almost one o’clock, Saturday afternoon. Before you lie down, you check the chat room. It’s empty.
Wake up, because your friend Jerry has stopped by. You’re self conscious; you smell bad, you’re still drunk, you know that you’ve got the world’s worst case of bed-head. You feel like you’ve only slept twenty minutes, but the clock tells you it’s been a solid half hour. He asks if you want to get some food, but your responsibility as a writer says no.
With Jerry dismissed and a glass of water at hand, plunge back in. Page seven. You’re stuck. Grab another movie at random, telling yourself it’s a bad idea. Incorporate this movie into your novel as well. It’s a bad idea, you think but it’s all I’ve got. Think of nights wasted watching reruns, the Olympics, these very movies; how many pages could I have turned out? It would have at least gotten ideas flowing.
Do the unthinkable and leave the apartment. Take a walk with your wife. Your head is spinning because, after the glass of water (and the movie), you had two beers. Also, it’s nearly nine in the evening and you’ve only written fifteen pages. Checking the chat room before the walk proved you were a good sixty pages behind some of the more seasoned veteran contestants. Other Greenhorns like yourself had doubled your efforts and were less than satisfied, which makes you feel significantly less than satisfied.
Mumble, “I’ve got to get back to work.” Your characters are lost, and you have nothing with which to bring them back, so you make them watch another movie, this one about writing. You are writing a novel about people watching a movie about a person writing a novel. This gets you six more pages than you had. Think back to your eleventh grade history paper; that was more than quadruple the length asked for. Ask yourself, “what happened to the guy who wrote that one?” Consider that question on a more existential level; where have you gone? This transfers to your protagonist. He is asking, “where have I gone?” Now he’s depressed. Congratulations, you’ve introduced conflict. And what’s more, check back to find that you alluded to this event at the top of page two. Celebrate by canonballing a shot of whiskey into your beer.
Wake up disoriented. It’s Sunday afternoon. Your wife asks you kindly if you’ll take a shower and brush your teeth, then asks if she can get you something from Taco Bell. Your stomach churns and your mind reels because you haven’t eaten anything besides microwave chicken nuggets and popcorn since Friday night. Decline the food, citing whiskey interference. Make toast and resolve to stay away from alcohol.
After the shower, pledge to plunge ahead. No distractions, no drinks. No more movies.
Find a distinct gay vibe between your protagonist and another character. Worry about this and pour yourself a shot. Surely I didn’t do that on purpose you say to yourself. Take an hour to read select passages. With each passage, make sure your eyes widen with fear. It helps if sweat stands out on your brow. Let it pool on your desk before taking another shot (or three) and open a fresh document. It’s four thirty. Thirty-one and a half hours until the deadline. You know you can’t start from scratch.
Put on a tea kettle and spend a few minutes picking out the right tea. When the water boils, just pick Chai Spice tea because it’s the easiest teabag to get to. Throw the bag in the bottom of the cup and pour the water from the kettle over it.
Forget to turn the stove off, and set the kettle back on the burner with the spout open.
Smell something burning and turn off the stove. Resist the instinct to grab the tea kettle because it will be hot. When you do burn yourself, apply aloe. After the application of aloe, your tea should be steeped past drinkability because you forgot it after you poured the cup.
Drink the tea anyway and write in another movie.
On Monday afternoon, send your wife to Starbucks so you don’t screw up making coffee. She complained all night that you were keeping her up with the keyboard clacking and the printer running. Tell her that it’s all in the name of revision. This is a lie; you don’t have time for revision because you still haven’t finished the novel.
Your characters are hopelessly lost now, spread across the country and unable to resolve their particular crises. As their creator, you do not have good news for them; you are at much more of a loss than they could be, as they are fictional and your dilemma is very real. Three characters have been dropped from site. One character is in Moab, Utah, stalled on his cross-country road trip. He rides his bike up and down a mountain. Go back to the beginning of the story and put in a reference to his bicycle. Flip forward twenty pages and throw in a scene where he rides his bike with friends. Now the mountain makes more sense.
Hit the print button and hand the pages to your wife. “I’m getting a gay vibe between William and Chaise,” she says. You give them each a girlfriend.
It’s eleven o’clock, Monday night, and you have seventy-four pages, double-spaced with one inch margins. Your last chat room check in the early evening revealed many others had doubled or tripled your efforts. Read the last paragraph and do a drastic edit to make sure it does not end weakly. Return to the first page and do the same for the opening; if it begins weak, the judges will certainly hate it. If it begins and ends strong, they may forgive any awful passages that you may have slipped in here and there. Print it.
Put more thought into your biography and thank you letter than you did into the entire story; three straight days of writing has jumpstarted your creativity! The letter is alternately scathing and hilarious. The legal-looking document you type for your wife to sign as witness is full of wit. Wake her to have her sign it. Do not get upset when she does not laugh, because she will also mumble something along the lines of “Acrodyl is on the cow’s second backside stomach,” which is just incoherent sleep-talk. Just make sure the name she sleep-signs is her own and put it all into an envelope, all seventy-seven pages, and address it. You’ll wish the post office was open late, like on Tax Day, because you’ll want to mail it before you change your mind. Do this first thing Tuesday.
Do not return to your novel. When the winners are announced in January and you are not among the finalists or even the honorable mentions, turn your nose up at the contest forever and sit down to re-read your novel.
With each twinge, with each gut-wrenching moment, and with each craving to crawl into your wife’s arms and lament that sad, pathetic youthful inexperienced writer you left back in September, know that next year you will be better prepared.
===
And there you have it.
Most editors are failed writers - but so are most writers. -T.S. Eliot
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Three Day Novel Update Number 3, and Your Questions Answered Volume 3
Eighteen hours in, 22 pages. On pace for an 88 page novel. Target is 100, so that's looking doable. YAY!
After that rum and coke, it was back to business as usual. Cajun Party Mix and regular coke. Except I haven't actually had a regular coke. Or anything, really, I've just been sitting here writing, aside from the short break I took to call my father.
It just occured to me that I should eat something substantial, but that would require taking a real amount of time off. It would be one thing if I had a frozen pizza or something I could just throw in and forget about for a little while, but unfortunately, being the enthusiastic cook that I am, we really have nothing of a substantial nature in the house that doesn't involve intensive preparation. Stir Fry? Can't just let it sit. Pizza? Oh sure, once it's in the oven it's a nice long wait, but first I gotta prepare the toppings, grate the cheese, put together a sauce, etc. And pasta? Yeah, like that's a "Set-it-and-forget-it" type of meal.
I am fairly happy at this point that I have so very few friends in the St. Louis area. Not that I don't value the ones I have, but I can convince myself that everybody else is busy, which is easy to do when there are only about five people on your call list. If all of my Minnesota friends, plus all of my out of town high school friends were here...I could easily find somebody to spend time with, away from what I should be doing.
I wish I had kept a tally like this for the first time I did the contest, just so I could do a better comparison. But, alas! I do know that I am doing much better.
Well, as I am somewhat stuck at the moment, I thought I would take the opportunity to do my usual First Weekend of the Month Feature: Your Questions, Answered!
From the post Your Questoins Answered, Volume 2 on Sunday, August 5th:
Becca asked:
Also, do you think I should start using some sort of blog alias? Everyone else has a cool little nickname, but I'm just Becca. Not very exciting, is it?
Nah, no alias. Unless you start a show like Alias...that was a good show. It was very exciting.
From the post Tuesday Excerpts on Tuesday, August 7th:
Becca asked:
I know that wasn't based on real life events, but why does all of your writing remind me of college - more specifically, living in Bailey?
Because it was a very interesting time of life. Lots of good stories came out of that time. In a couple years, I can start writing about what happens at Webster U, once it's all been processed by my mind a little better. That processing is getting faster as I learn to detatch myself better as a writer. Good question!
The Wife asked:
When are you coming to visit?
I live with you! Oh, you were asking Becca...
From Advice from Todd Zuniga on Wednesday, August 8:
The Wife asked:
What, no quote for today... well lets see are we still trying to find out why Sam was late?
That's right, no quote for the day. Only on Tuesday excerpts, silly. And when I feel like it. And no, we are not trying to figure that out, I am trying to figure it out. But we've moved on.
From Free Write Friday on Friday, August 10:
marty/bridget said:
Did you say the next 24 hours?
Shut it, you.
From Free Write...Wednesday? on Wednesday, August 15:
mGk asked:
Did you really say "drop it like it's hot"? Could you BE any whiter?
Yes, I did, and yes, I could. Nobody I ever dated went through a Eminem/Real Slim Shady phase. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about the twin, and NOBODY ever could be any whiter than he was that year.
From School Week 1 Recap on Thursday, August 23:
Gerald asked:
so wait. you're suggesting that kucinich isn't ripped and tan normally?
Um...we're talking about Dennis Kucinich, right? The man who was characterized by Conan as a Hobbit back in 2004? Yes, I am suggesting he is certainly not ripped. He could possibly have a nice tan, though. I will give him that one along with the single payer health care plan.
From the post Kinda Late, I Know... on Tuesday, August 28th:
John asked:
Is that the Capt'n that has kitty passed out dreaming of BBQ mouse?
Absolutely it is, although what he's dreaming about is fried chicken. Trust me on that one, it's his all-time favorite.
Becca asked:
I love being a college student!!! Don't you, Elliot?
Sure. It would be nice to not be one for a while again, but next time I am not a college student I will have a degree to accompany my non-studenthood. Seven years of being an on-again, off-again college student has taken its toll on my sanity, along with this three day novel.
what exactly is the point of The Tinderbox? Isn't there supposed to be a moral to the story or something...?
Becca, I do not even know what The Tinderbox is. And the moral of the story is that you never, ever ever want to have found five dollars. It's sad.
From Three Day Novel Update Number 1 on Saturday, September 1:
Molly asked:
Right?
Just to be argumentative, Mom, no. Not right! HA! But secretly, after all the friends I'm trying to impress leave the blog, yes. You are right.
From Three Day Novel Update Number 2 on Saturday, September 1:
mGk asked:
Can I have a rum and coke?
If this is Kevin then yes, you can do whatever you want. If this is Madeline, no. No you can't. If this is Maureen, only you know the answer to that one. I have no authority over you. This you know. So why are you asking me?
Okay, back to work!
After that rum and coke, it was back to business as usual. Cajun Party Mix and regular coke. Except I haven't actually had a regular coke. Or anything, really, I've just been sitting here writing, aside from the short break I took to call my father.
It just occured to me that I should eat something substantial, but that would require taking a real amount of time off. It would be one thing if I had a frozen pizza or something I could just throw in and forget about for a little while, but unfortunately, being the enthusiastic cook that I am, we really have nothing of a substantial nature in the house that doesn't involve intensive preparation. Stir Fry? Can't just let it sit. Pizza? Oh sure, once it's in the oven it's a nice long wait, but first I gotta prepare the toppings, grate the cheese, put together a sauce, etc. And pasta? Yeah, like that's a "Set-it-and-forget-it" type of meal.
I am fairly happy at this point that I have so very few friends in the St. Louis area. Not that I don't value the ones I have, but I can convince myself that everybody else is busy, which is easy to do when there are only about five people on your call list. If all of my Minnesota friends, plus all of my out of town high school friends were here...I could easily find somebody to spend time with, away from what I should be doing.
I wish I had kept a tally like this for the first time I did the contest, just so I could do a better comparison. But, alas! I do know that I am doing much better.
Well, as I am somewhat stuck at the moment, I thought I would take the opportunity to do my usual First Weekend of the Month Feature: Your Questions, Answered!
From the post Your Questoins Answered, Volume 2 on Sunday, August 5th:
Becca asked:
Also, do you think I should start using some sort of blog alias? Everyone else has a cool little nickname, but I'm just Becca. Not very exciting, is it?
Nah, no alias. Unless you start a show like Alias...that was a good show. It was very exciting.
From the post Tuesday Excerpts on Tuesday, August 7th:
Becca asked:
I know that wasn't based on real life events, but why does all of your writing remind me of college - more specifically, living in Bailey?
Because it was a very interesting time of life. Lots of good stories came out of that time. In a couple years, I can start writing about what happens at Webster U, once it's all been processed by my mind a little better. That processing is getting faster as I learn to detatch myself better as a writer. Good question!
The Wife asked:
When are you coming to visit?
I live with you! Oh, you were asking Becca...
From Advice from Todd Zuniga on Wednesday, August 8:
The Wife asked:
What, no quote for today... well lets see are we still trying to find out why Sam was late?
That's right, no quote for the day. Only on Tuesday excerpts, silly. And when I feel like it. And no, we are not trying to figure that out, I am trying to figure it out. But we've moved on.
From Free Write Friday on Friday, August 10:
marty/bridget said:
Did you say the next 24 hours?
Shut it, you.
From Free Write...Wednesday? on Wednesday, August 15:
mGk asked:
Did you really say "drop it like it's hot"? Could you BE any whiter?
Yes, I did, and yes, I could. Nobody I ever dated went through a Eminem/Real Slim Shady phase. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about the twin, and NOBODY ever could be any whiter than he was that year.
From School Week 1 Recap on Thursday, August 23:
Gerald asked:
so wait. you're suggesting that kucinich isn't ripped and tan normally?
Um...we're talking about Dennis Kucinich, right? The man who was characterized by Conan as a Hobbit back in 2004? Yes, I am suggesting he is certainly not ripped. He could possibly have a nice tan, though. I will give him that one along with the single payer health care plan.
From the post Kinda Late, I Know... on Tuesday, August 28th:
John asked:
Is that the Capt'n that has kitty passed out dreaming of BBQ mouse?
Absolutely it is, although what he's dreaming about is fried chicken. Trust me on that one, it's his all-time favorite.
Becca asked:
I love being a college student!!! Don't you, Elliot?
Sure. It would be nice to not be one for a while again, but next time I am not a college student I will have a degree to accompany my non-studenthood. Seven years of being an on-again, off-again college student has taken its toll on my sanity, along with this three day novel.
what exactly is the point of The Tinderbox? Isn't there supposed to be a moral to the story or something...?
Becca, I do not even know what The Tinderbox is. And the moral of the story is that you never, ever ever want to have found five dollars. It's sad.
From Three Day Novel Update Number 1 on Saturday, September 1:
Molly asked:
Right?
Just to be argumentative, Mom, no. Not right! HA! But secretly, after all the friends I'm trying to impress leave the blog, yes. You are right.
From Three Day Novel Update Number 2 on Saturday, September 1:
mGk asked:
Can I have a rum and coke?
If this is Kevin then yes, you can do whatever you want. If this is Madeline, no. No you can't. If this is Maureen, only you know the answer to that one. I have no authority over you. This you know. So why are you asking me?
Okay, back to work!
Three Day Novel Update Number 2
Roughly fifteen and a half hours in. Fifteen pages, on pace for a 72 page novel.
Fifteen pages, yes. Going well, but the first bad sign has arrived.
That's right, the first drink of the contest.
Actually, I lasted a good seventeen hours longer without drinking than the last time I did this. And yes, that does mean I was drinking for two hours before the contest started last time. I was young and naive.
Kathy is gone for the day. Not ten minutes after she left, I got hit with a craving, the worst kind of craving...the kind of craving that can't be sated with what you have on hand, no, it's a specific craving for freakin' Archer Farms Cajun Party Mix from Target, and you wonder, "Why the hell do I want anything from Target?" And it's because for almost four years, it was part of your life to get stuff from Target on almost a daily basis and it turns out, hey, I kinda miss some of that. Specifically, the Archer Farms Cajun Party Mix.
It's like a freaking Archer Farms Cajun Party Mix commercial over here!
I would like to thank my sister for taking the time to run to Target to pick some of the aforementioned salty snack concoction for my munching pleasure. I raise this rum and coke to you, Mo!
I can't help but wonder if my father went to scope out a spot from which to watch the Tour of Missouri stage into St. Charles. I wanted to go help, but I have a higher purpose this weekend.
Did everybody hear about the clash between cyclists and police officers in Minneapolis last night? I'm referring to it as the "Critical Massacre of 2007" myself. I was on the City Pages website last night and saw a little bulletin about it. It sickens me, but what sickens me more is that somebody actually commented on the story with "Serves them right, bikes aren't cars, get off the damn roads." Or something like that. I want to hit that person with a bike lock over his head. Hmm. Good thing I have to write a novel.
No more stalling! Onward I must go!
Fifteen pages, yes. Going well, but the first bad sign has arrived.
That's right, the first drink of the contest.
Actually, I lasted a good seventeen hours longer without drinking than the last time I did this. And yes, that does mean I was drinking for two hours before the contest started last time. I was young and naive.
Kathy is gone for the day. Not ten minutes after she left, I got hit with a craving, the worst kind of craving...the kind of craving that can't be sated with what you have on hand, no, it's a specific craving for freakin' Archer Farms Cajun Party Mix from Target, and you wonder, "Why the hell do I want anything from Target?" And it's because for almost four years, it was part of your life to get stuff from Target on almost a daily basis and it turns out, hey, I kinda miss some of that. Specifically, the Archer Farms Cajun Party Mix.
It's like a freaking Archer Farms Cajun Party Mix commercial over here!
I would like to thank my sister for taking the time to run to Target to pick some of the aforementioned salty snack concoction for my munching pleasure. I raise this rum and coke to you, Mo!
I can't help but wonder if my father went to scope out a spot from which to watch the Tour of Missouri stage into St. Charles. I wanted to go help, but I have a higher purpose this weekend.
Did everybody hear about the clash between cyclists and police officers in Minneapolis last night? I'm referring to it as the "Critical Massacre of 2007" myself. I was on the City Pages website last night and saw a little bulletin about it. It sickens me, but what sickens me more is that somebody actually commented on the story with "Serves them right, bikes aren't cars, get off the damn roads." Or something like that. I want to hit that person with a bike lock over his head. Hmm. Good thing I have to write a novel.
No more stalling! Onward I must go!
Three Day Novel Update Number 1
Two hours and seven pages in. I'm on pace to write 252 pages, but I do actually have to sleep. And also, there are the occasional updates, for which there will be reason.
So, update #1, meet reason #1. I am currently stuck just a little bit.
Now, originally, the plan was to post some short excerpts from the novel-in-progress, but it turns out that disqualifies me from the competition if they ever find out, and chances are, if you give a mouse a three day novel, they might go snooping after your writing blog. Or something like that.
Sorry, I did sneak in a little bit about cycling already in the first seven pages. But not to worry, it is not about cycling. There's just a bit in there. That is all I will give away. For real. No, the reason is I am stuck, right. The problem is that I have points A and B, and what I thought were points C, D, E and F at the very least, with likely points G, H, and I, but it turns out I need to bump everything, because what I have now is Points A, B, something new, and C, and D and E are ready to go but...not yet. They need something to bridge the gap. So, revised, points A, B, C (new), I need something in here to be point D, then E (which was the original point C). See? I have dots, just not all of them...do I want this line to go straight? Do I want it to curve? What?
Sorry I can't share any more details with you folks, but, well, you know how it is. Or maybe you don't.
Only 70 more hours until this competition is over! Ah!
So, update #1, meet reason #1. I am currently stuck just a little bit.
Now, originally, the plan was to post some short excerpts from the novel-in-progress, but it turns out that disqualifies me from the competition if they ever find out, and chances are, if you give a mouse a three day novel, they might go snooping after your writing blog. Or something like that.
Sorry, I did sneak in a little bit about cycling already in the first seven pages. But not to worry, it is not about cycling. There's just a bit in there. That is all I will give away. For real. No, the reason is I am stuck, right. The problem is that I have points A and B, and what I thought were points C, D, E and F at the very least, with likely points G, H, and I, but it turns out I need to bump everything, because what I have now is Points A, B, something new, and C, and D and E are ready to go but...not yet. They need something to bridge the gap. So, revised, points A, B, C (new), I need something in here to be point D, then E (which was the original point C). See? I have dots, just not all of them...do I want this line to go straight? Do I want it to curve? What?
Sorry I can't share any more details with you folks, but, well, you know how it is. Or maybe you don't.
Only 70 more hours until this competition is over! Ah!
Friday, August 31, 2007
T Minus...
Eight minutes and counting.
I am currently sitting in the kitchen, at the counter, but that will change before long. It smells like really nice coffee beans and buffalo chicken tenders. My wife is microwaving one of those things.
In 2004, I spent three days writing the worst thing I have ever put on paper. Seriously. The worst. It was called The Wednesday Night Movie Club and it was so terrible, fire wouldn't even catch on it because it would have been an insult to flames everywhere.
T Minus five minutes and counting.
This year, I am prepared.
This year, I will not stare at a blank screen for eight hours straight.
This year, I am not ready, because you never are, how can you be? How can one person sit down and wrie an entire novel in three days? It is, some would argue, patently impossible.
In T minus three minutes, I will begin to make the attempt to prove the impossible to be possible.
Let's Go.
I am currently sitting in the kitchen, at the counter, but that will change before long. It smells like really nice coffee beans and buffalo chicken tenders. My wife is microwaving one of those things.
In 2004, I spent three days writing the worst thing I have ever put on paper. Seriously. The worst. It was called The Wednesday Night Movie Club and it was so terrible, fire wouldn't even catch on it because it would have been an insult to flames everywhere.
T Minus five minutes and counting.
This year, I am prepared.
This year, I will not stare at a blank screen for eight hours straight.
This year, I am not ready, because you never are, how can you be? How can one person sit down and wrie an entire novel in three days? It is, some would argue, patently impossible.
In T minus three minutes, I will begin to make the attempt to prove the impossible to be possible.
Let's Go.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Kinda Late, I Know...
It is two thirty in the morning on this fine Tuesday, August 28th, 2007, and I have just finished my homework for the day. I still have four chapters of my photography book to read, plus whatever Erickson gives me to do before Thursday, and then I am done doing homework for this week and can start looking at the increasingly large mound of homework for next week (Webster 99, Elliot 7), but with the holiday next Monday my media reasearch Literature Review is not due for two weeks (Webster 99, Elliot 8, with a further ninety points awarded upon early completion of said Literature Review, wherein "early" is defined as being more than 48 hours prior to deadline).
I once again have a camera collection. I had lightened the load a bit, with the sale of the old Canon, and throwing out the busted Kodak digital, and for a little bit all we had in the house was the Canon digital, the Nikon N55, the busted Yashica TL Electro, and Kathy's point and shoot Olympus. Then I had to go and buy a Fuji digital, and before my Target discount ran out we bought Kathy a Digital Rebel, and with my photography class I am encourage, for the instructor's peace of mind, to not use my N55 but to find a camera that is fully manual, and with my TL Electro out of commission, I find myself beset with both my father's Yashica TL Electro (so there's a familiarity about it I like, plus a 180 mm lens to boot) and my sister's Nikon FE2. Add that to the video camera, and we once again have almost enough cameras for Kathy and all her siblings.
Now, even with this plethora of cameras, there is still uncertainty. It is possible that my father's TL Electro will not advance film, as his Yashica FR has stopped doing so (otherwise, I would have borrowed that one instead of the TL Electro). It is not advisable to use my Yashica, which will definitely advance the film, because the light seals do not do their job, so the film gets all ruined, even if it will advance. My sister's Nikon, also, might still have mirrors misaligned, as that was an issue a few years ago and nobody can remember if it has been corrected. My N55 is, as stated above, out of the question because it is all new-fangled and automatic. And if the N55 is out, at least it still takes film, which is more than can be said for the Digital Rebel. Nor can I use the Olympus because it's not an SLR. Bottom line is, Wednesday night I am going to be heading to class with a camera still to be determined to start taking pictures that I am not sure will come out. I guess I could run a couple rolls of film through the cameras, but that costs money and so forth. And it takes time. A whole lot of precious time. It's going to take patience and time. To do it right, child.
Wow, still no brevity to my posts. But, let's just make this clear (and if you catch the reference, you might win a prize): To me, he is El Duderino.
New features to the blog: a picture, an updated link list (sort of, I just rearranged them and retitled some) and a poll. Please answer by the end of the week. I figure, if I can't actually update as much as I used to, the least I can do is give you all something to do/look at every once in a while.
Three Day Novel coming up this weekend. Get Ready!
"Nobody calls me Lebowski. You got the wrong guy. I'm The Dude, man."
I once again have a camera collection. I had lightened the load a bit, with the sale of the old Canon, and throwing out the busted Kodak digital, and for a little bit all we had in the house was the Canon digital, the Nikon N55, the busted Yashica TL Electro, and Kathy's point and shoot Olympus. Then I had to go and buy a Fuji digital, and before my Target discount ran out we bought Kathy a Digital Rebel, and with my photography class I am encourage, for the instructor's peace of mind, to not use my N55 but to find a camera that is fully manual, and with my TL Electro out of commission, I find myself beset with both my father's Yashica TL Electro (so there's a familiarity about it I like, plus a 180 mm lens to boot) and my sister's Nikon FE2. Add that to the video camera, and we once again have almost enough cameras for Kathy and all her siblings.
Now, even with this plethora of cameras, there is still uncertainty. It is possible that my father's TL Electro will not advance film, as his Yashica FR has stopped doing so (otherwise, I would have borrowed that one instead of the TL Electro). It is not advisable to use my Yashica, which will definitely advance the film, because the light seals do not do their job, so the film gets all ruined, even if it will advance. My sister's Nikon, also, might still have mirrors misaligned, as that was an issue a few years ago and nobody can remember if it has been corrected. My N55 is, as stated above, out of the question because it is all new-fangled and automatic. And if the N55 is out, at least it still takes film, which is more than can be said for the Digital Rebel. Nor can I use the Olympus because it's not an SLR. Bottom line is, Wednesday night I am going to be heading to class with a camera still to be determined to start taking pictures that I am not sure will come out. I guess I could run a couple rolls of film through the cameras, but that costs money and so forth. And it takes time. A whole lot of precious time. It's going to take patience and time. To do it right, child.
Wow, still no brevity to my posts. But, let's just make this clear (and if you catch the reference, you might win a prize): To me, he is El Duderino.
New features to the blog: a picture, an updated link list (sort of, I just rearranged them and retitled some) and a poll. Please answer by the end of the week. I figure, if I can't actually update as much as I used to, the least I can do is give you all something to do/look at every once in a while.
Three Day Novel coming up this weekend. Get Ready!
"Nobody calls me Lebowski. You got the wrong guy. I'm The Dude, man."
Thursday, August 23, 2007
School Week 1 Recap
Right folks, I was told to "brief it up" on my blog by one of my toughest blog critics out there. So, in the spirit of completely ignoring her (which is what I spent most of my teenage years doing so I have lots of practice), I am going to give you a play-by-play rundown of the first week of classes.
Monday started out fresh and bright at 5:30...pm. Well, no, not really, I mean, I got up, went to work, worked the day away, left work and bought all of my books, all $240 worth...pretty light when you consider all the textbooks a med student or a law student might have to buy, and actually considering I am an English major, shouldn't I relish in buying books? I suppose...anyway, bought them all, checked 'em down, and went to my Intro to Media Research class. Yikes.
My instructor started out by explaining that her background is in theatre. Yeah, no joke there. But, I thank her, because of the $240 I spent on books, not one penny was spent on a book for her class because she hasn't been able to find a book she likes. Yay! So, this class is basically an 8 week intensive pilot study on some sort of media of my choice...and I have no clue what to do or how to go about it. So far for the semester, College 1, Elliot 0.
Tuesday morning rolls around, I get a little bit of a lie-in, I guess. Class at 10, as opposed to the usual work at 9 (but it's still better than Target any day). We gather, it's a small class. It's my advanced playwriting class, and of all the people on the roster, there is only one with whom I have never had class, and only two that were not in my playwriting class last semester. John returned, Chelsea and Anne as well, plus Shannon, with whom I have had a class every semester since I started at Webster, and then the last person is Alan, who seems like a good fit with the group. Sadly, Pat didn't show up, so the score kinda evened out for the day, leaving College ahead, 2-1, but I still had work to go to, and after that...class with Sheila Hwang. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually really like her, so I didn't want that to sound like a terrible thing. It is not, not by a long shot. But it seems that once a semester, just like it is inevitable I will have a class with Shannon, it is inevitable I will be one of a very small number of men-if not the only man-in a class packed with women. Webster's English program is not very evenly distributed amongst men and women, and the men all pick lit classes like "Heroic Themes" and "Lit Into Film; Tinsel Town" and so forth. Not "Contemporary Multiethnic Literature of the United States." That just draws a crowd of women. Plus, the only other guy in this class is a guy who I worked on a project with last fall...a project that he got a worse grade on than our other group member and I (that other person happened to be Shannon...Ah! Small schools are so much better than the U of M (your experience may differ (especially if you were in a small program at the U of M (like design))), because he flaked out a lot. So...Webster 4, Elliot 1.
Wednesday was a mess...the third day in a row I am down at St. Louis City Hall trying to locate a deed to plug up a hole in this chain, plus I had to run to Madison Illinois first thing in the morning, about which the best thing I can say is that at 9:45, it is much easier to find a parking spot in downtown Edwardsville, but it's still fairly close to impossible to find a parking spot which should give you some indication of how my visits to Madison normally go. While that is not the game we are recapping, it's a good time to tell you that the score so far is Edwardsville 23,955,201, Elliot 17. So I took off from work finally, ran to my parents' house and grabbed a sammich for dinner, then over to campus, where the only parking spots I can find are way over by Pearson, and my photography class is all the way over in Sverdrup. Now, this is not a substantial hike, but in the heat, hauling a bag you're not quite sure what the contents thereof are, and you're cutting it close on the first night of class, it might as well be sixty miles uphill. Webster 5, Elliot 1. Get to the classroom, and it's ten degrees WARMER in this classroom. Webster 6, Elliot 1. But then...the teacher turns out to be a really cool French guy who talked about le tour with me a little bit. Nice, Webster 6, Elliot 2. Ah, but then the annoying freshman expert girl, as I will call her (reminiscent of "Poetry Award" girl from Fiction Writing at Meramec...) pipes up about how she loves photography and already knows everything and is only taking the intro class because they wouldn't let her sign up for the advanced one...mm. Hm. It's looking like a runaway win for Webster, they're on the verge of their seventh point when all of a sudden...I know more about things like shutter speed, and how depth of field can be controlled by aperture, and most importantly, how to use the Nikons we were looking at. Webster 6, Elliot 3, then Elliot 4! Yeah! But then, after class, as I am walking back to my car...my car is the ONLY CAR in the ENTIRE EAST PARKING LOT. Elliot 3, Webster 90.
You read that right, 90 points.
So, this morning I went back to my playwriting class, and still no sign of Pat. Fortunately, my monologue went over well, and John has not lost his touch over the summer, and it turns out Alan is a teriffic fit in the group, and Shannon's not doing too terrible herself. So, I left class for work with my head held proudly...it had been a solid win for Webster, but it's only the first week, and I think I held myself in pretty good standing in the face of significant adversity.
Final score for Fall Semester 2007 Week 1:
Webster 91
Elliot 6
"We've seen photo-shopped pictures of French President Nicolas Sarkozy with big love handles, and we've seen massive abs placed on Barack Obama, so what is next?"
"Dennis Kucinich in a Speedo with fantastic abs and a great tan."
"There's only so much photoshop can do, you realize."
-An actual conversation between my photo instructor and I.
Monday started out fresh and bright at 5:30...pm. Well, no, not really, I mean, I got up, went to work, worked the day away, left work and bought all of my books, all $240 worth...pretty light when you consider all the textbooks a med student or a law student might have to buy, and actually considering I am an English major, shouldn't I relish in buying books? I suppose...anyway, bought them all, checked 'em down, and went to my Intro to Media Research class. Yikes.
My instructor started out by explaining that her background is in theatre. Yeah, no joke there. But, I thank her, because of the $240 I spent on books, not one penny was spent on a book for her class because she hasn't been able to find a book she likes. Yay! So, this class is basically an 8 week intensive pilot study on some sort of media of my choice...and I have no clue what to do or how to go about it. So far for the semester, College 1, Elliot 0.
Tuesday morning rolls around, I get a little bit of a lie-in, I guess. Class at 10, as opposed to the usual work at 9 (but it's still better than Target any day). We gather, it's a small class. It's my advanced playwriting class, and of all the people on the roster, there is only one with whom I have never had class, and only two that were not in my playwriting class last semester. John returned, Chelsea and Anne as well, plus Shannon, with whom I have had a class every semester since I started at Webster, and then the last person is Alan, who seems like a good fit with the group. Sadly, Pat didn't show up, so the score kinda evened out for the day, leaving College ahead, 2-1, but I still had work to go to, and after that...class with Sheila Hwang. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually really like her, so I didn't want that to sound like a terrible thing. It is not, not by a long shot. But it seems that once a semester, just like it is inevitable I will have a class with Shannon, it is inevitable I will be one of a very small number of men-if not the only man-in a class packed with women. Webster's English program is not very evenly distributed amongst men and women, and the men all pick lit classes like "Heroic Themes" and "Lit Into Film; Tinsel Town" and so forth. Not "Contemporary Multiethnic Literature of the United States." That just draws a crowd of women. Plus, the only other guy in this class is a guy who I worked on a project with last fall...a project that he got a worse grade on than our other group member and I (that other person happened to be Shannon...Ah! Small schools are so much better than the U of M (your experience may differ (especially if you were in a small program at the U of M (like design))), because he flaked out a lot. So...Webster 4, Elliot 1.
Wednesday was a mess...the third day in a row I am down at St. Louis City Hall trying to locate a deed to plug up a hole in this chain, plus I had to run to Madison Illinois first thing in the morning, about which the best thing I can say is that at 9:45, it is much easier to find a parking spot in downtown Edwardsville, but it's still fairly close to impossible to find a parking spot which should give you some indication of how my visits to Madison normally go. While that is not the game we are recapping, it's a good time to tell you that the score so far is Edwardsville 23,955,201, Elliot 17. So I took off from work finally, ran to my parents' house and grabbed a sammich for dinner, then over to campus, where the only parking spots I can find are way over by Pearson, and my photography class is all the way over in Sverdrup. Now, this is not a substantial hike, but in the heat, hauling a bag you're not quite sure what the contents thereof are, and you're cutting it close on the first night of class, it might as well be sixty miles uphill. Webster 5, Elliot 1. Get to the classroom, and it's ten degrees WARMER in this classroom. Webster 6, Elliot 1. But then...the teacher turns out to be a really cool French guy who talked about le tour with me a little bit. Nice, Webster 6, Elliot 2. Ah, but then the annoying freshman expert girl, as I will call her (reminiscent of "Poetry Award" girl from Fiction Writing at Meramec...) pipes up about how she loves photography and already knows everything and is only taking the intro class because they wouldn't let her sign up for the advanced one...mm. Hm. It's looking like a runaway win for Webster, they're on the verge of their seventh point when all of a sudden...I know more about things like shutter speed, and how depth of field can be controlled by aperture, and most importantly, how to use the Nikons we were looking at. Webster 6, Elliot 3, then Elliot 4! Yeah! But then, after class, as I am walking back to my car...my car is the ONLY CAR in the ENTIRE EAST PARKING LOT. Elliot 3, Webster 90.
You read that right, 90 points.
So, this morning I went back to my playwriting class, and still no sign of Pat. Fortunately, my monologue went over well, and John has not lost his touch over the summer, and it turns out Alan is a teriffic fit in the group, and Shannon's not doing too terrible herself. So, I left class for work with my head held proudly...it had been a solid win for Webster, but it's only the first week, and I think I held myself in pretty good standing in the face of significant adversity.
Final score for Fall Semester 2007 Week 1:
Webster 91
Elliot 6
"We've seen photo-shopped pictures of French President Nicolas Sarkozy with big love handles, and we've seen massive abs placed on Barack Obama, so what is next?"
"Dennis Kucinich in a Speedo with fantastic abs and a great tan."
"There's only so much photoshop can do, you realize."
-An actual conversation between my photo instructor and I.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Free Write...Wednesday?
FINALLY FINISHED! READ ME NOW! UPDATED THURSDAY NIGHT! DROP IT LIKE IT'S HOT!
Part Three.
Please Read Part One and Part Two first.
===
Ben used the awkward silence that followed to cover his exit. Sam stood in his unused bedroom, looking between the Eight Ball in his hand and the conglomeration of eight balls on his bookshelf. He didn't even notice that Ben had left, just formulated a test once and for all to prove that he was right, that this was something different.
He selected twenty eight balls at random from his shelf, none of them touching any of the others he selected, making sure to get a healthy mixture of balls still in their packages, out of the packages, and so forth. For good measure, he chose the first one he had ever recieved, which actually sat on the desk in his "office", which was really the second closet in his bedroom. He took all of them into the living room and laid them out on the table around the edge, and placed the new one in the center. He started at the corner of the table closest to the kitchen, where the oldest eight ball sat, and asked, "Should I go to work on Monday?"
The oldest eight ball failed to answer, as years had drained enough liquid so that the answers could not float all the way up to the window, but with a small amount of shaking, Sam satisfied himself that the eight ball told him "All Sings Point to Yes." He had numbered one to twenty-one down the left side of a piece of notebook paper, and it was to the right of number one that he made a note of this answer.
He consulted the next one to his left, asking the same question. This one answered "Outlook Not So Good." He logged this answer as well.
The next one said, "Yes."
He made his way through all twenty, before finally consulting the Eight Ball in the center. "You Should Try, Sam." He made a note of this and surveyed the results: eight said yes, nine said no, three were indesicive, and the last as enigmatic as he had expected.
He returned to the first one and asked it the same question again. This time, it took even more vigorous shaking before he fianlly gave up on finding out what it's conclusive answer was. He drew a line to indicate it had given no response the second time around, and proceeded down the line again. And again. No immediately obvious patterns emerged as he worked his way through the exercise again and again; almost always an even number of yes and no, a few odd responses, and no consistency from any given eight ball.
But his log of the Eight Ball in the center spoke a different story.
21) 1. You Should Try Sam. 2. Try, Though You Will Fail. Sorry. 3. We've Been Through This, Sam. 4. This Is Pointless. 5. There Are More Pertinent Questions. 6. Outlook Not So Good. 7. Aren't You Getting Bored Yet? 8. You SHOULD Go Through Your Routine Monday Morning.
At this last one, Sam stopped, convinced he had proven himself beyond a doubt. He siezed the Eight Ball and said, "Is something going to happen during my usual routine?"
The Eight Ball displayed, "...Yes. Wrong Question, Though, Really."
Sam thought quickly. "Is something unusual going to happen during my usual routine?"
"You Are Learning, Sam."
Sam asked again.
"Patience." And at that, the Eight Ball lapsed into what could be characterized as a stony silence regarding the matter at hand. Further inquiries were met with responses along the lines of "Magic Out Of Order," "This Unit Is Undergoing Routine Maintenance," "Your Call Is Important To Us, All Our Seers Are Busy At The Moment," and finally, "No More Questions, Sam, It's Close on Four in the Morning."
The next day being Saturday, Sam saw no reason to set an alarm, but as he crawled into bed on his couch, he knew what had to be done. He contemplated a course of action and decided, after several minutes deliberation, that the best course was to get out of bed and put on a strong pot of coffee. He chekced the clock on the VCR, and saw that it was 4:15; he had an hour and a little bit longer to steel himself for what he thought he must do; he started the coffee brewing and went into his bedroom to dig through his closet full of clothes; somewhere in there, he was sure, he had a pair of running shorts, tennis shoes and a plain white tee shirt. As he searched, he tried to remember where Ed said he ran in the mornings.
An hour and a half later, Sam was pulling his car up in front of one of those so-called luxury condominium villages that are really not all that luxurious for their proximity to the train tracks to the north and the lingering smell from the nearby cat food factory.
It was exactly the place for Ed, who was desperate to climb his way up as high as possible, as quickly as possible. It befitted him, this slice of property that would have cost him four times as much in a decent neighborhood, and his rusted white 1986 BMW 513. Half the trappings of the successful, for the guy at the office that wanted everything but would never get there. Even his early morning jogs seemed like something he had adopted because he thought that's what a corporate man should do; a glance at his physique would tell you just how serious he was about his jogging. This suited Sam just fine, as he hadn't run for more than thirty seconds since he was seventeen. He stepped out of his car, wearing a pair of gym shorts and a YoungBlood Brass Band t-shirt he had bought at a concert he went to in high school, and a pair of beat up tennis shoes. He was holding a travel mug full of coffee. He wasn't sure if he should wait or knock on Ed's door, but at that moment Ed stepped out of the house across the street, and Sam felt both relieved and also slightly foolish for getting the house wrong. He hadn't consulted the Eight Ball, which was sitting on the passenger seat of his car, as to which was the right house.
Ed looked around, not seeing Sam, and started stretching. Sam decided to walk across the street and say good morning, so he set the travel mug on top of his car and stepped into the road. "Good morning, Ed!" he shouted, which seemed to frighten Ed a great deal.
Ed gasped, looked around, fear in his eyes, before realizing where the voice had come from. He squinted through his obviously fake Oakley sunglasses and took them off, as if to be sure of what he was seeing. "Sammy, is that you?"
"Yeah, Ed, but it's just Sam."
"What are you doing here?" Something about the tone made Sam stop in the middle of the street. It wasn't accusatory, just, bewildered.
"I thought you had a standing invitation for anybody who wanted to join you for a run in the mornings?" Sam glanced back at the clover-leaf travel mug he left on top of his car. His all-nighter tugged at his eyelids, trying to draw them down, and he needed more caffeine to shore them up enough to last an hour at least.
Ed seemed to relax slightly. "Oh. Yeah. Only..."
Sam waited, but Ed just shook his head and started stretching again. "So that's okay, right? I can take a run with you?"
Ed looked up, pausing in mid-stretch. "Absolutely. Be ready in a couple minutes."
Sam stood still in the middle of the street, watching Ed stretch, Ed whom he realized he had spoken more words to in the last three minutes than he had in the entire three months he had been working at Vanderheyden Financial. Ed, who was a talker but had been suddenly struck dumb. "Okay," Sam called. "I'm going to finish my coffee and stretch, then I'll let you take the lead." He stood still again, waiting for an answer from Ed, but none came. He turned back to his car, and reaching it grabbed his mug and slurped some more coffee. He thought about abandoning his plan, but he had already told Ed he would run with him, and a thought struck him. He took the lid off his travel mug and quicly gulped the rest of his coffee in one swig, then opened his car door. He dropped the mug into place in the cupholder, then picked up the Eight Ball. "Am I the first person from the office to ever go running with Ed?"
"You're Not Running Yet, Sam," The Eight Ball displayed for a moment, before replacing it with, "...But You're The Only One Who's Ever Even Showed Up."
"So should I go for this run then?"
"Yes."
Sam looked back at Ed, who had finished stretching and stared uncomfortably across the street. "Where to, Ed?" Sam called. A dog barked.
Ed shrugged his shoulders. "There's a park about three blocks away, it's got a jogging path." And Ed started clumsily jogging along. Sam fell into step behind him, taking notice of Ed's shoes.
"New shoes?" Sam asked.
"No," Ed called back. "Just...haven't taken them out yet." Ed was already breathing somewhat heavier than Sam would have assumed a person who jogs every morning would, and Ed slowed to a walk after only one block. Sam caught up and matched his pace.
"One of those days, huh?" Ed merely grunted. "Tell you the truth, Ed, that's the farthest I've run since my last high school gym class." Ed remained silent. Sam wished he could ask the Eight Ball if he should persist, or wait for Ed to talk. He closed his eyes and in his mind's eye he saw, clear as if he were holding it in his hand, the Eight Ball. He thought, should I wait for Ed to talk? and in his mind's eye, he saw the display read, I Would if I Were You.
They walked halfway down the next block, and Ed turned to cross the street. Sam turned as well, and at the same moment they broke into half-hearted runs, barely faster than they had been walking. When they reached the other side of the street, a city bus drove past, and Ed turned to look at Sam.
"It's the farthest I've run since I started working at Vanderheyden."
"I'm sorry?" said Sam, suddenly brought back to the world. He had been trying to come up with more questions to ask the Eight Ball in his mind, but was having trouble getting the clear picture he had had moments before.
"I hate running alone, and my wife..." he trailed off. "Well, she never went running with me anyway, that's why I always asked around, had the standing offer."
"And I'm the first one to show up?" Sam asked.
"In three years. Can you believe that?" Ed turned his wide eyes on Sam at his side, and though Sam could believe it, he also believed that to be the wrong response.
"That's...I'm sorry," Sam said. On a whim, he lied, something he had not done in years because he knew the bad luck that always followed lying. "I've been meaning to come do this for a while, but just haven't got around to it." They walked in silence until they reached the park.
The park was of a good size, with a running path that would be well shaded in the summer but now, at the peak of autumn, was nearly lost under the cover of red and gold leaves upon the ground. Spaced periodically at intervals along the path were the kind of work-out stations municipalities put up in spite of the fact that Sam had never seen anyone use them in his entire life. "Let's try and make it around once," Sam suggested. Ed grimaced, but nodded. Together they set off at a slow pace, running in silence but for their breathing. They were not the only ones using the path, and Sam was very conscious of this fact when they were lapped the second time by a man more than twice his age.
Yet they continued running, each of them silently pushing the other, neither willing to give up while the other one could still run. When they reached the chin-up bar, which was where they had been when they started running, they came to a halt in unison. Ed looked at Sam, and Sam back at Ed, each gasping for air. Sam's muscles ached, and his rabbit's foot key chain had shifted in his shorts pocket, poking into his upper thigh with each stride he had taken for the last twenty minutes. Finally, Ed swallowed hard and said, "What made you come here?"
"I need to know," panted Sam, who paused and took a few deep breaths before starting again. "I need to know where you got the Eight Ball I got for my birthday."
"Really?" Ed looked skeptical. "That's it?"
"I promise you," Sam said, heading off any punishment for lying with this preemptive pennance, "that I will come running with you every Saturday morning if you tell me where you bought it."
Ed looked bewildered, and sat down on the ground. Sam sat next to him, eager to hear what Ed had to say but also very grateful for getting off of his feet. He had been thinking about how painful it would be to go all the way back to his car when Ed derailed his train of thought.
"I bought one for myself, because...I'm in this tough spot. And I'm desperate, and maybe a little off kilter, which would explain an awful lot about what's happened to me in the last day or so, but...I bought two of them. I just happened to be walking by this shop, I was looking for somewhere to get your present because it had just occured to me that I was supposed to get it. I am sorry, by the way, but you're lucky I remembered, I don't even know why they make me get the gifts sometimes because I almost always forget. Anyway, I was having trouble even deciding where to go, and there was this sign in the window of this shop over on Nebraska Street. The sign said, something like 'Have A Tough Decision To Make? Try Our Magic Eight Ball!' So I thought, that's fitting, okay, I'll take it. And I went in, and picked up the one they had on display, and asked it if I should buy one for you."
He paused, and Sam found that he was leaning forward, listening to Ed's story. Finally, Ed spoke again. "The display didn't say what I figured it would say at all. You know, I've seen these things before, they have standard responses, and I've seen them with gimmicky responses but nothing like this one. It said, 'Don't You Think You Need The Help More, Edward?' Now what are the chances of it knowing my name?"
Ed stood up and paced. "That's why I got up to go for the run. Yesterday morning, when I woke up, the first thing I did was ask my Eight Ball if I should go for the run, and it said, 'Ask Me Again Later. Like, Tomorrow Later.' So then I asked it if I should go to work, and it said, 'For the Sake of a Co Worker, Yes.' I still don't know what that meant.
Sam thought he knew. "It meant for my sake. If you hadn't come in, I wouldn't have gotten my gift, and I wouldn't have found out that I won't make it to the big meeting on Monday morning."
Ed cocked his head at Sam. "What do you mean?"
Sam told Ed the story of his Eight Ball, the tests he put it through the previous night, how it told him he should go jogging.
"Mine said I should go jogging, too. That's why I did," Ed admitted, as they walked back towards Ed's condo. Sam noticed something missing from Ed's left hand.
"Ed, did you get a divorce or do you just not wear your wedding ring when you run?"
Ed frowned. "She left. Three years with minimum salary increases, no bonuses, and no prospect of future advancement...I guess the glamor got to be too much. But it's for the best."
"You checked the Eight Ball?"
"No, I just know that it is. She deserves so much more than I can actually give her. She needs a man with a heart and a soul already installed." They had reached Sam's car, and Ed asked Sam to wait a moment while he ran back inside. He came out momentarily with his Eight Ball and a piece of paper. "I just have a test I want to run," Ed said, handing his Eight Ball to Sam. Sam understood, had been eager to perform the same test himself, and so he had his at the ready, and surrendered it to Ed.
Sam turned Ed's Eight Ball over and asked it, "Do you know who I am?" When he looked, he was surprised enough to laugh at the response.
"Not Really, But You're Sure as Hell Not Edward."
His test completed, he looked to Ed, who was staring at the Eight Ball in confusion. He noticed Sam looking at him and he smiled weakly. "I'm just not sure what to ask it."
"Ask it if knows your name," Sam suggested.
Ed closed his eyes, turned the Eight Ball over and looked. He laughed as well, before showing it to Sam. It read, "No, We Haven't Been Properly Introduced Yet, Friend."
"Either we're not crazy," Ed said, "or we're getting the same brand of crazy. Here, directions to the shop, I can't remember what it's called, but trust me, you'll know it."
They exchanged Eight Balls and thanks, and Sam got into his car. He asked the Eight Ball if he should go home and sleep. "Only If You Don't Want To Crash Your Car On The Interstate," it answered.
===
Okay okay okay, I know, it is NOT finished, but I AM for now. I have spent three weeks + on this one story, and I like where it is going and how it is getting there, but I need to put it to momentary rest. You will see it later, excerpted, polished, done, because I am going to use this for something, if not for the Three Day Contest then something else. A great idea and a BIG THANKS to Becca for the original suggestion, Kathy for the second, and all who made suggestions. Some of them may even add to the final outcome. As it stands, he will go to the shop and find...his destiny? His soul mate? Certain death? The cocktail napkins that match his dessert plates, even though he was sure they had been discontinued? What?
I leave you today with a quote from my very own wife, whom I love dearly.
"Man, I wish I had this cartoon character's legs. Look at those!"
Part Three.
Please Read Part One and Part Two first.
===
Ben used the awkward silence that followed to cover his exit. Sam stood in his unused bedroom, looking between the Eight Ball in his hand and the conglomeration of eight balls on his bookshelf. He didn't even notice that Ben had left, just formulated a test once and for all to prove that he was right, that this was something different.
He selected twenty eight balls at random from his shelf, none of them touching any of the others he selected, making sure to get a healthy mixture of balls still in their packages, out of the packages, and so forth. For good measure, he chose the first one he had ever recieved, which actually sat on the desk in his "office", which was really the second closet in his bedroom. He took all of them into the living room and laid them out on the table around the edge, and placed the new one in the center. He started at the corner of the table closest to the kitchen, where the oldest eight ball sat, and asked, "Should I go to work on Monday?"
The oldest eight ball failed to answer, as years had drained enough liquid so that the answers could not float all the way up to the window, but with a small amount of shaking, Sam satisfied himself that the eight ball told him "All Sings Point to Yes." He had numbered one to twenty-one down the left side of a piece of notebook paper, and it was to the right of number one that he made a note of this answer.
He consulted the next one to his left, asking the same question. This one answered "Outlook Not So Good." He logged this answer as well.
The next one said, "Yes."
He made his way through all twenty, before finally consulting the Eight Ball in the center. "You Should Try, Sam." He made a note of this and surveyed the results: eight said yes, nine said no, three were indesicive, and the last as enigmatic as he had expected.
He returned to the first one and asked it the same question again. This time, it took even more vigorous shaking before he fianlly gave up on finding out what it's conclusive answer was. He drew a line to indicate it had given no response the second time around, and proceeded down the line again. And again. No immediately obvious patterns emerged as he worked his way through the exercise again and again; almost always an even number of yes and no, a few odd responses, and no consistency from any given eight ball.
But his log of the Eight Ball in the center spoke a different story.
21) 1. You Should Try Sam. 2. Try, Though You Will Fail. Sorry. 3. We've Been Through This, Sam. 4. This Is Pointless. 5. There Are More Pertinent Questions. 6. Outlook Not So Good. 7. Aren't You Getting Bored Yet? 8. You SHOULD Go Through Your Routine Monday Morning.
At this last one, Sam stopped, convinced he had proven himself beyond a doubt. He siezed the Eight Ball and said, "Is something going to happen during my usual routine?"
The Eight Ball displayed, "...Yes. Wrong Question, Though, Really."
Sam thought quickly. "Is something unusual going to happen during my usual routine?"
"You Are Learning, Sam."
Sam asked again.
"Patience." And at that, the Eight Ball lapsed into what could be characterized as a stony silence regarding the matter at hand. Further inquiries were met with responses along the lines of "Magic Out Of Order," "This Unit Is Undergoing Routine Maintenance," "Your Call Is Important To Us, All Our Seers Are Busy At The Moment," and finally, "No More Questions, Sam, It's Close on Four in the Morning."
The next day being Saturday, Sam saw no reason to set an alarm, but as he crawled into bed on his couch, he knew what had to be done. He contemplated a course of action and decided, after several minutes deliberation, that the best course was to get out of bed and put on a strong pot of coffee. He chekced the clock on the VCR, and saw that it was 4:15; he had an hour and a little bit longer to steel himself for what he thought he must do; he started the coffee brewing and went into his bedroom to dig through his closet full of clothes; somewhere in there, he was sure, he had a pair of running shorts, tennis shoes and a plain white tee shirt. As he searched, he tried to remember where Ed said he ran in the mornings.
An hour and a half later, Sam was pulling his car up in front of one of those so-called luxury condominium villages that are really not all that luxurious for their proximity to the train tracks to the north and the lingering smell from the nearby cat food factory.
It was exactly the place for Ed, who was desperate to climb his way up as high as possible, as quickly as possible. It befitted him, this slice of property that would have cost him four times as much in a decent neighborhood, and his rusted white 1986 BMW 513. Half the trappings of the successful, for the guy at the office that wanted everything but would never get there. Even his early morning jogs seemed like something he had adopted because he thought that's what a corporate man should do; a glance at his physique would tell you just how serious he was about his jogging. This suited Sam just fine, as he hadn't run for more than thirty seconds since he was seventeen. He stepped out of his car, wearing a pair of gym shorts and a YoungBlood Brass Band t-shirt he had bought at a concert he went to in high school, and a pair of beat up tennis shoes. He was holding a travel mug full of coffee. He wasn't sure if he should wait or knock on Ed's door, but at that moment Ed stepped out of the house across the street, and Sam felt both relieved and also slightly foolish for getting the house wrong. He hadn't consulted the Eight Ball, which was sitting on the passenger seat of his car, as to which was the right house.
Ed looked around, not seeing Sam, and started stretching. Sam decided to walk across the street and say good morning, so he set the travel mug on top of his car and stepped into the road. "Good morning, Ed!" he shouted, which seemed to frighten Ed a great deal.
Ed gasped, looked around, fear in his eyes, before realizing where the voice had come from. He squinted through his obviously fake Oakley sunglasses and took them off, as if to be sure of what he was seeing. "Sammy, is that you?"
"Yeah, Ed, but it's just Sam."
"What are you doing here?" Something about the tone made Sam stop in the middle of the street. It wasn't accusatory, just, bewildered.
"I thought you had a standing invitation for anybody who wanted to join you for a run in the mornings?" Sam glanced back at the clover-leaf travel mug he left on top of his car. His all-nighter tugged at his eyelids, trying to draw them down, and he needed more caffeine to shore them up enough to last an hour at least.
Ed seemed to relax slightly. "Oh. Yeah. Only..."
Sam waited, but Ed just shook his head and started stretching again. "So that's okay, right? I can take a run with you?"
Ed looked up, pausing in mid-stretch. "Absolutely. Be ready in a couple minutes."
Sam stood still in the middle of the street, watching Ed stretch, Ed whom he realized he had spoken more words to in the last three minutes than he had in the entire three months he had been working at Vanderheyden Financial. Ed, who was a talker but had been suddenly struck dumb. "Okay," Sam called. "I'm going to finish my coffee and stretch, then I'll let you take the lead." He stood still again, waiting for an answer from Ed, but none came. He turned back to his car, and reaching it grabbed his mug and slurped some more coffee. He thought about abandoning his plan, but he had already told Ed he would run with him, and a thought struck him. He took the lid off his travel mug and quicly gulped the rest of his coffee in one swig, then opened his car door. He dropped the mug into place in the cupholder, then picked up the Eight Ball. "Am I the first person from the office to ever go running with Ed?"
"You're Not Running Yet, Sam," The Eight Ball displayed for a moment, before replacing it with, "...But You're The Only One Who's Ever Even Showed Up."
"So should I go for this run then?"
"Yes."
Sam looked back at Ed, who had finished stretching and stared uncomfortably across the street. "Where to, Ed?" Sam called. A dog barked.
Ed shrugged his shoulders. "There's a park about three blocks away, it's got a jogging path." And Ed started clumsily jogging along. Sam fell into step behind him, taking notice of Ed's shoes.
"New shoes?" Sam asked.
"No," Ed called back. "Just...haven't taken them out yet." Ed was already breathing somewhat heavier than Sam would have assumed a person who jogs every morning would, and Ed slowed to a walk after only one block. Sam caught up and matched his pace.
"One of those days, huh?" Ed merely grunted. "Tell you the truth, Ed, that's the farthest I've run since my last high school gym class." Ed remained silent. Sam wished he could ask the Eight Ball if he should persist, or wait for Ed to talk. He closed his eyes and in his mind's eye he saw, clear as if he were holding it in his hand, the Eight Ball. He thought, should I wait for Ed to talk? and in his mind's eye, he saw the display read, I Would if I Were You.
They walked halfway down the next block, and Ed turned to cross the street. Sam turned as well, and at the same moment they broke into half-hearted runs, barely faster than they had been walking. When they reached the other side of the street, a city bus drove past, and Ed turned to look at Sam.
"It's the farthest I've run since I started working at Vanderheyden."
"I'm sorry?" said Sam, suddenly brought back to the world. He had been trying to come up with more questions to ask the Eight Ball in his mind, but was having trouble getting the clear picture he had had moments before.
"I hate running alone, and my wife..." he trailed off. "Well, she never went running with me anyway, that's why I always asked around, had the standing offer."
"And I'm the first one to show up?" Sam asked.
"In three years. Can you believe that?" Ed turned his wide eyes on Sam at his side, and though Sam could believe it, he also believed that to be the wrong response.
"That's...I'm sorry," Sam said. On a whim, he lied, something he had not done in years because he knew the bad luck that always followed lying. "I've been meaning to come do this for a while, but just haven't got around to it." They walked in silence until they reached the park.
The park was of a good size, with a running path that would be well shaded in the summer but now, at the peak of autumn, was nearly lost under the cover of red and gold leaves upon the ground. Spaced periodically at intervals along the path were the kind of work-out stations municipalities put up in spite of the fact that Sam had never seen anyone use them in his entire life. "Let's try and make it around once," Sam suggested. Ed grimaced, but nodded. Together they set off at a slow pace, running in silence but for their breathing. They were not the only ones using the path, and Sam was very conscious of this fact when they were lapped the second time by a man more than twice his age.
Yet they continued running, each of them silently pushing the other, neither willing to give up while the other one could still run. When they reached the chin-up bar, which was where they had been when they started running, they came to a halt in unison. Ed looked at Sam, and Sam back at Ed, each gasping for air. Sam's muscles ached, and his rabbit's foot key chain had shifted in his shorts pocket, poking into his upper thigh with each stride he had taken for the last twenty minutes. Finally, Ed swallowed hard and said, "What made you come here?"
"I need to know," panted Sam, who paused and took a few deep breaths before starting again. "I need to know where you got the Eight Ball I got for my birthday."
"Really?" Ed looked skeptical. "That's it?"
"I promise you," Sam said, heading off any punishment for lying with this preemptive pennance, "that I will come running with you every Saturday morning if you tell me where you bought it."
Ed looked bewildered, and sat down on the ground. Sam sat next to him, eager to hear what Ed had to say but also very grateful for getting off of his feet. He had been thinking about how painful it would be to go all the way back to his car when Ed derailed his train of thought.
"I bought one for myself, because...I'm in this tough spot. And I'm desperate, and maybe a little off kilter, which would explain an awful lot about what's happened to me in the last day or so, but...I bought two of them. I just happened to be walking by this shop, I was looking for somewhere to get your present because it had just occured to me that I was supposed to get it. I am sorry, by the way, but you're lucky I remembered, I don't even know why they make me get the gifts sometimes because I almost always forget. Anyway, I was having trouble even deciding where to go, and there was this sign in the window of this shop over on Nebraska Street. The sign said, something like 'Have A Tough Decision To Make? Try Our Magic Eight Ball!' So I thought, that's fitting, okay, I'll take it. And I went in, and picked up the one they had on display, and asked it if I should buy one for you."
He paused, and Sam found that he was leaning forward, listening to Ed's story. Finally, Ed spoke again. "The display didn't say what I figured it would say at all. You know, I've seen these things before, they have standard responses, and I've seen them with gimmicky responses but nothing like this one. It said, 'Don't You Think You Need The Help More, Edward?' Now what are the chances of it knowing my name?"
Ed stood up and paced. "That's why I got up to go for the run. Yesterday morning, when I woke up, the first thing I did was ask my Eight Ball if I should go for the run, and it said, 'Ask Me Again Later. Like, Tomorrow Later.' So then I asked it if I should go to work, and it said, 'For the Sake of a Co Worker, Yes.' I still don't know what that meant.
Sam thought he knew. "It meant for my sake. If you hadn't come in, I wouldn't have gotten my gift, and I wouldn't have found out that I won't make it to the big meeting on Monday morning."
Ed cocked his head at Sam. "What do you mean?"
Sam told Ed the story of his Eight Ball, the tests he put it through the previous night, how it told him he should go jogging.
"Mine said I should go jogging, too. That's why I did," Ed admitted, as they walked back towards Ed's condo. Sam noticed something missing from Ed's left hand.
"Ed, did you get a divorce or do you just not wear your wedding ring when you run?"
Ed frowned. "She left. Three years with minimum salary increases, no bonuses, and no prospect of future advancement...I guess the glamor got to be too much. But it's for the best."
"You checked the Eight Ball?"
"No, I just know that it is. She deserves so much more than I can actually give her. She needs a man with a heart and a soul already installed." They had reached Sam's car, and Ed asked Sam to wait a moment while he ran back inside. He came out momentarily with his Eight Ball and a piece of paper. "I just have a test I want to run," Ed said, handing his Eight Ball to Sam. Sam understood, had been eager to perform the same test himself, and so he had his at the ready, and surrendered it to Ed.
Sam turned Ed's Eight Ball over and asked it, "Do you know who I am?" When he looked, he was surprised enough to laugh at the response.
"Not Really, But You're Sure as Hell Not Edward."
His test completed, he looked to Ed, who was staring at the Eight Ball in confusion. He noticed Sam looking at him and he smiled weakly. "I'm just not sure what to ask it."
"Ask it if knows your name," Sam suggested.
Ed closed his eyes, turned the Eight Ball over and looked. He laughed as well, before showing it to Sam. It read, "No, We Haven't Been Properly Introduced Yet, Friend."
"Either we're not crazy," Ed said, "or we're getting the same brand of crazy. Here, directions to the shop, I can't remember what it's called, but trust me, you'll know it."
They exchanged Eight Balls and thanks, and Sam got into his car. He asked the Eight Ball if he should go home and sleep. "Only If You Don't Want To Crash Your Car On The Interstate," it answered.
===
Okay okay okay, I know, it is NOT finished, but I AM for now. I have spent three weeks + on this one story, and I like where it is going and how it is getting there, but I need to put it to momentary rest. You will see it later, excerpted, polished, done, because I am going to use this for something, if not for the Three Day Contest then something else. A great idea and a BIG THANKS to Becca for the original suggestion, Kathy for the second, and all who made suggestions. Some of them may even add to the final outcome. As it stands, he will go to the shop and find...his destiny? His soul mate? Certain death? The cocktail napkins that match his dessert plates, even though he was sure they had been discontinued? What?
I leave you today with a quote from my very own wife, whom I love dearly.
"Man, I wish I had this cartoon character's legs. Look at those!"
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A Reason...
...I find that I am actually getting a little creatively burnt out, which is no good as the school year starts in a week and I have the three day novel contest looming on the horizon. But, I do apologize for leaving everybody hanging, and in suspense. That was not my intention, these things just happen. There will be no Tuesday excerpt, and tomorrow I will finish last week's free write. Tomorrow, after I finish the free write, I will solicit suggestions for one last Free Write Friday...because I do not foresee myself having enough time to blog consistently during the school year. Rest assured you will get excerpts from works in progress, and updates on school. Also, the three day contest will be a live blog feature, in that I will periodically post during the contest. More details on that later.
Again, look for completion tomorrow. Promise.
Again, look for completion tomorrow. Promise.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Free Write Friday
Two weeks now...ok.
Winning suggestion comes from the wife.
"Sam is late because the 8 ball doesn't give him an answer as to what to do next- he spends most of the days (hours or whatever) before the meeting asking tons of questions and getting answers from the 8 ball that tell him what to do and he is faced with a critical decision directly before going to the meeting and the 8 ball does nothing so he is frozen like a bomb pop in an ice cream truck and decides on his own to..."
===
Ben was frowning at Sam that night, as Sam sat on the floor, legs straight out in front of him under the coffee table, the Eight Ball resting on the table like it was his dinner. Ben continued to frown at Sam, but Sam just sat resolutely staring at the Eight Ball, so Ben flipped his frown around the apartment. He frowned at the rabbit foot dangling from a hook just inside the door, the only adornment on the walls. He frowned at the impossibly white ceiling and the impossibly off white carpet. He frowned at the closed door to what he presumed to be the bedroom. He frowned at the entrance to the kitchen, frowned at the half-glimpsed refrigerator humming tunelessly, the neat stack of dirty dishes next to the sink. He frowned at his friend again.
"Maybe you should call off on Monday, Sam."
"No, I already asked. It said there would be no need to."
"Sam, nobody really lets those things govern their lives, you know...it's just like rolling a dice, it's controlled by chance."
"No, it's not just like rolling a dice. It's exactly like rolling a dice. Only this isn't your usual Magic Eight Ball, this is the real deal."
Ben bent down and snatched the object from in front of Sam, who looked up with a mixture of anger and fear.
Ben turned it over and shook it, asking, "Is my friend Sam losing his mind?"
Sam shot up and looked as Ben turned it over. "I hadn't thought to ask it that yet," Sam confessed.
The eight ball read, "All signs point to no." Sam sighed in relief and Ben laughed.
"See?" Ben guffawed. "Totally useless. Doesn't know a thing. Couldn't predict the sunset."
"But no, I keep telling you, it's telling me things."
"That's what it's designed to do. It's designed to be a novelty, but there are a select few in the world who take these things too seriously...and if I had known how serious you would take these things, I probably wouldn't have recommended you for the job. Mr. Vanderheyden himself considered you to be kind of squirrely."
Sam set the Eight Ball back down on the table. "Have you ever seen me with one of these before?"
Ben considered for a moment. "No."
"Follow me," Sam said, walking past Ben to the closed bedroom door.
When the door opened, Ben was overwhelmed; piles of books, what looked to be thousands of them, covered six very immense bookshelves. There was no bed in the room. Sam turned the light on and Ben saw even more to surprise him on a seventh bookshelf; plastic bins lined the bottom shelf of one case, each bin full of a different color Rabbit's Foot. The next shelf up contained shoeboxes, stacked three high running six accross, each witha different label. Ben could read only a few, but they said things like Ouija Board Keychains, Worry Stones and Four Leaf Clover Buttons. A Notre Dame Fighting Irish display seemed to occupy the next shelf up, and on the fourth, a row of Magic Eight Balls, many still in their boxes.
"Jesus, don't you ever throw anything away?" Ben looked at Sam, who was making the sign of the cross.
"You shouldn't use the Lord's name in vain, it's bad luck. And it's also bad luck to throw out a present somebody gives you. So I keep them all. But I know what's real and what's not." He pointed to the shelf full of Eight Balls. "Those are toys, useless for making decisions." He pointed towards the living room. "That thing is real. It knows things. It says things no other Eight Ball has ever said. It knows my name."
Ben had asked the Eight Ball a dozen questions already that evening, and each time he had recieved a standard response; it had never once displayed Sam's name, or Ben's name. Ben was still wondering what was wrong with his friend when Sam ran back out into the living room. He returned, to Ben's disappointment, with the Eight Ball he was obsessing over.
"You said you couldn't see it? Fine, we'll try again. Eight Ball, can Ben see the same answers I do?"
The Eight Ball said, "No."
"That doesn't prove anything," Ben said.
"Can anyone else see the answers I can?" Sam asked, not paying attention to Ben.
"Yes."
"So there are others!" Sam exclaimed, but the Eight Ball seemed to think it had been a question. As Ben turned away, the "Yes" display changed.
"This Is Getting Tedious, Sam."
"There!" Sam shouted, reaching for Ben and jostling the Eight Ball in his enthusiasm.
"What?" Ben said skeptically, looking around.
"There!" Sam shouted again, pointing at the Eight Ball. But as he looked, his face fell.
Where a second ago the display had read, "This Is Getting Tedious, Sam," it now read, "Can Not Predict Now."
===
I apologize, readers. I am not yet finished, but it is dinner time, and time to go out for my Friday evening. I promise you I will finish this in the next twenty four hours. Promise.
Winning suggestion comes from the wife.
"Sam is late because the 8 ball doesn't give him an answer as to what to do next- he spends most of the days (hours or whatever) before the meeting asking tons of questions and getting answers from the 8 ball that tell him what to do and he is faced with a critical decision directly before going to the meeting and the 8 ball does nothing so he is frozen like a bomb pop in an ice cream truck and decides on his own to..."
===
Ben was frowning at Sam that night, as Sam sat on the floor, legs straight out in front of him under the coffee table, the Eight Ball resting on the table like it was his dinner. Ben continued to frown at Sam, but Sam just sat resolutely staring at the Eight Ball, so Ben flipped his frown around the apartment. He frowned at the rabbit foot dangling from a hook just inside the door, the only adornment on the walls. He frowned at the impossibly white ceiling and the impossibly off white carpet. He frowned at the closed door to what he presumed to be the bedroom. He frowned at the entrance to the kitchen, frowned at the half-glimpsed refrigerator humming tunelessly, the neat stack of dirty dishes next to the sink. He frowned at his friend again.
"Maybe you should call off on Monday, Sam."
"No, I already asked. It said there would be no need to."
"Sam, nobody really lets those things govern their lives, you know...it's just like rolling a dice, it's controlled by chance."
"No, it's not just like rolling a dice. It's exactly like rolling a dice. Only this isn't your usual Magic Eight Ball, this is the real deal."
Ben bent down and snatched the object from in front of Sam, who looked up with a mixture of anger and fear.
Ben turned it over and shook it, asking, "Is my friend Sam losing his mind?"
Sam shot up and looked as Ben turned it over. "I hadn't thought to ask it that yet," Sam confessed.
The eight ball read, "All signs point to no." Sam sighed in relief and Ben laughed.
"See?" Ben guffawed. "Totally useless. Doesn't know a thing. Couldn't predict the sunset."
"But no, I keep telling you, it's telling me things."
"That's what it's designed to do. It's designed to be a novelty, but there are a select few in the world who take these things too seriously...and if I had known how serious you would take these things, I probably wouldn't have recommended you for the job. Mr. Vanderheyden himself considered you to be kind of squirrely."
Sam set the Eight Ball back down on the table. "Have you ever seen me with one of these before?"
Ben considered for a moment. "No."
"Follow me," Sam said, walking past Ben to the closed bedroom door.
When the door opened, Ben was overwhelmed; piles of books, what looked to be thousands of them, covered six very immense bookshelves. There was no bed in the room. Sam turned the light on and Ben saw even more to surprise him on a seventh bookshelf; plastic bins lined the bottom shelf of one case, each bin full of a different color Rabbit's Foot. The next shelf up contained shoeboxes, stacked three high running six accross, each witha different label. Ben could read only a few, but they said things like Ouija Board Keychains, Worry Stones and Four Leaf Clover Buttons. A Notre Dame Fighting Irish display seemed to occupy the next shelf up, and on the fourth, a row of Magic Eight Balls, many still in their boxes.
"Jesus, don't you ever throw anything away?" Ben looked at Sam, who was making the sign of the cross.
"You shouldn't use the Lord's name in vain, it's bad luck. And it's also bad luck to throw out a present somebody gives you. So I keep them all. But I know what's real and what's not." He pointed to the shelf full of Eight Balls. "Those are toys, useless for making decisions." He pointed towards the living room. "That thing is real. It knows things. It says things no other Eight Ball has ever said. It knows my name."
Ben had asked the Eight Ball a dozen questions already that evening, and each time he had recieved a standard response; it had never once displayed Sam's name, or Ben's name. Ben was still wondering what was wrong with his friend when Sam ran back out into the living room. He returned, to Ben's disappointment, with the Eight Ball he was obsessing over.
"You said you couldn't see it? Fine, we'll try again. Eight Ball, can Ben see the same answers I do?"
The Eight Ball said, "No."
"That doesn't prove anything," Ben said.
"Can anyone else see the answers I can?" Sam asked, not paying attention to Ben.
"Yes."
"So there are others!" Sam exclaimed, but the Eight Ball seemed to think it had been a question. As Ben turned away, the "Yes" display changed.
"This Is Getting Tedious, Sam."
"There!" Sam shouted, reaching for Ben and jostling the Eight Ball in his enthusiasm.
"What?" Ben said skeptically, looking around.
"There!" Sam shouted again, pointing at the Eight Ball. But as he looked, his face fell.
Where a second ago the display had read, "This Is Getting Tedious, Sam," it now read, "Can Not Predict Now."
===
I apologize, readers. I am not yet finished, but it is dinner time, and time to go out for my Friday evening. I promise you I will finish this in the next twenty four hours. Promise.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Book Review: The Ministry of Special Cases
The problem many would-be writers encounter is in telling the tale about the right person in the right circumstances: it's easy enough to come by if the situation is ordinary. It is easy to come by if the character is ordinary. But when you start introducing the extraordinary, it is very easy to fall into cliche. Think Superman fighting supervillians; it may be exciting, but what is more wondrous is Joe Shmo taking on a large corporation and winning. Think The Rain Maker; that's a better movie than any Superman flick.
Not everybody knows the details of Argentina's Dirty War, but the tales of The Desaparecidos, the thousands of citizens who were neither officially missing or dead, haunt the country still. And it is into the midst of this extraordinary national nightmare that Nathan Englander drops Kaddish Poznan, his extraordinary character.
Kaddish Poznan makes his money by erasing the past; the only Jewish man in all of Buenos Aires to admit to being the son of a whore and pimp, he is an outcast, but a useful one. The other remaining Jews in the community pay him to remove their parents' names from the gravestones and records, so no trace of their disreputable past remains. But one day, Kaddish's son Pato is taken from their home, and Kaddish discovers that he is not the only one in the business of erasing a person's existence.
The story takes us from the silent graveyard to halls of power, and everywhere in between, and eventually to the halls of the Ministry of Special Cases, a bureaucratic monstrosity. Kaddish's hopelessness clashes with his wife's determination to bring their son home alive.
But this is more than just a story of one family's struggle to reunite (or not); it is a story about oppression, the frustration felt by those who are oppressed, and the desperation that comes along.
If you know about the Dirty War, or if you don't, this book is for you. It opens your eyes with the same immediate intensity as a U2 song, but it holds onto you the way Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings can. It is both terrible and beautiful, and exactly as it should be. And it speaks to the permanence of the past; the names are gone but the headstones remain. Pato may never walk into their home again, but Lillian and Kaddish remember him. There is a moment when Kaddish removes a name woven in gold thread from a velvet curtain, and when he steps away the name is yet more legible, as time has tarnished the curtain except where the gold thread covered it. This image stands out foremost in my mind, and that is the mark of a good story, and a good writer. No superheroes and no cliches.
Nathan Englander spoke on Fresh Air on NPR May 7th, 2007, which is where I first heard of it.
Not everybody knows the details of Argentina's Dirty War, but the tales of The Desaparecidos, the thousands of citizens who were neither officially missing or dead, haunt the country still. And it is into the midst of this extraordinary national nightmare that Nathan Englander drops Kaddish Poznan, his extraordinary character.
Kaddish Poznan makes his money by erasing the past; the only Jewish man in all of Buenos Aires to admit to being the son of a whore and pimp, he is an outcast, but a useful one. The other remaining Jews in the community pay him to remove their parents' names from the gravestones and records, so no trace of their disreputable past remains. But one day, Kaddish's son Pato is taken from their home, and Kaddish discovers that he is not the only one in the business of erasing a person's existence.
The story takes us from the silent graveyard to halls of power, and everywhere in between, and eventually to the halls of the Ministry of Special Cases, a bureaucratic monstrosity. Kaddish's hopelessness clashes with his wife's determination to bring their son home alive.
But this is more than just a story of one family's struggle to reunite (or not); it is a story about oppression, the frustration felt by those who are oppressed, and the desperation that comes along.
If you know about the Dirty War, or if you don't, this book is for you. It opens your eyes with the same immediate intensity as a U2 song, but it holds onto you the way Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings can. It is both terrible and beautiful, and exactly as it should be. And it speaks to the permanence of the past; the names are gone but the headstones remain. Pato may never walk into their home again, but Lillian and Kaddish remember him. There is a moment when Kaddish removes a name woven in gold thread from a velvet curtain, and when he steps away the name is yet more legible, as time has tarnished the curtain except where the gold thread covered it. This image stands out foremost in my mind, and that is the mark of a good story, and a good writer. No superheroes and no cliches.
Nathan Englander spoke on Fresh Air on NPR May 7th, 2007, which is where I first heard of it.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Advice From Todd Zuniga
A year and a half ago, I took a Fiction Writing class at St. Louis Community College. My teacher was Angela Hamilton, a person to who I owe a great many thanks for advice and guidance. But, she wasn't the only person I got advice from that semester. A friend of hers, Todd Zuniga (who is the editor of Opium Magazine) sent the class a little advice for writers, and I would like to share that with you because it helped me a very great deal with a particularly difficult piece of flash fiction I wrote that semester.
"To answer your first question [How did you come up with the concept for “A Children’s Book Without Pictures for Adults About Space”]:
I was falling in love with a girl in Vancouver who wanted to move to Toronto or Montreal. We were, maybe, one month into the relationship, but I had very strong feelings for her--in part because in Vancouver no one is interesting, and she was a poet. I knew, from past experience, that a long-distance relationship wouldn't work. I cobbled together all of these ideas in my brain, from the multiple failings of long distance relationships, and inspected those. But a long-distance relationship, as an entity, wasn't very interesting to me. So I do what I do with all of my stories: I throw the idea up in the air like pizza dough, and wait for it to land in a way that's interesting. Ultimately, what I had created was a long-distance relationship with an unbridgeable gap: space to earth.
Also, while living in Vancouver, a great guy (San Shepherd) told me a story about his budgerigar, and how they're insanely intelligent. That parrot served as a way out. Plus, there was a story in Best American Short Stories way back when called, "Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of a Parrot"--I think that's it. I didn't "get" that story then, but now it breaks my heart.
To answer your second question: My advice is the same as every other writer’s: read (specifically Aimee Bender's "A Girl in the Flammable Skirt" and George Saunders' "Pastoralia"). But beyond that, I'd say take as many chances as you can in the first draft. You're going to scale back if you're worth your salt, but dump a truckload of stuff into what you're doing. Let the story be like a huge clump of rock. Chisel away and create Michelangelo's David.
Also, if you write something long, say a 20 page story, aim to make your next story 3 or 4 pages. And vice versa. If you're going to write something that surprises, you need to surprise yourself.
Don't write about suicide. Don't write about cancer. Don't write about drugs. Unless you're going to undress every expectation possible. Also, don't masturbate before writing. It'll make you sleepy and take your brain out of the equation, and not in a good way. The same goes for alcohol. Don't drink and write."
So there you go. Keep giving me suggestions for Free Write Friday. Look for a book review tomorrow!
"To answer your first question [How did you come up with the concept for “A Children’s Book Without Pictures for Adults About Space”]:
I was falling in love with a girl in Vancouver who wanted to move to Toronto or Montreal. We were, maybe, one month into the relationship, but I had very strong feelings for her--in part because in Vancouver no one is interesting, and she was a poet. I knew, from past experience, that a long-distance relationship wouldn't work. I cobbled together all of these ideas in my brain, from the multiple failings of long distance relationships, and inspected those. But a long-distance relationship, as an entity, wasn't very interesting to me. So I do what I do with all of my stories: I throw the idea up in the air like pizza dough, and wait for it to land in a way that's interesting. Ultimately, what I had created was a long-distance relationship with an unbridgeable gap: space to earth.
Also, while living in Vancouver, a great guy (San Shepherd) told me a story about his budgerigar, and how they're insanely intelligent. That parrot served as a way out. Plus, there was a story in Best American Short Stories way back when called, "Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of a Parrot"--I think that's it. I didn't "get" that story then, but now it breaks my heart.
To answer your second question: My advice is the same as every other writer’s: read (specifically Aimee Bender's "A Girl in the Flammable Skirt" and George Saunders' "Pastoralia"). But beyond that, I'd say take as many chances as you can in the first draft. You're going to scale back if you're worth your salt, but dump a truckload of stuff into what you're doing. Let the story be like a huge clump of rock. Chisel away and create Michelangelo's David.
Also, if you write something long, say a 20 page story, aim to make your next story 3 or 4 pages. And vice versa. If you're going to write something that surprises, you need to surprise yourself.
Don't write about suicide. Don't write about cancer. Don't write about drugs. Unless you're going to undress every expectation possible. Also, don't masturbate before writing. It'll make you sleepy and take your brain out of the equation, and not in a good way. The same goes for alcohol. Don't drink and write."
So there you go. Keep giving me suggestions for Free Write Friday. Look for a book review tomorrow!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Tuesday Excerpts
This week's excerpt comes from yet another playwriting exercise. This one was supposed to be a seduction, but it didn't have to be a sexual one. I am not going to post the whole thing, as it is definitely not PG, but you should get a good sense of what's going on in the bit I give you. A little set up: It's a dormitory cafeteria, lunch time, and Chris, Derek and Kathy are alternately discussing their plans for drinking that night and Derek's failed attempts to get Meghan into bed the previous night, when Derek gets a brilliant idea. Enjoy!
===
from Seduction Exercise, April 2007
CHRIS
What did she say?
DEREK
Oh, you know, I had Dirty Dancing playing on the TV, and we were on the futon getting all cuddly, and I had turned the heat off and opened the window so she’d be compelled to cuddle, and the next thing you know...she’s telling me Jennifer Grey is the world’s worst actress.
CHRIS
(mocking)
The audacity!
DEREK
I know!
CHRIS
Whatever did you do?
DEREK
What was I supposed to do? I told her that by way of apology, she had to go back to her room, dress like Jennifer Gray in the training sequence, and tango with me.
(pause)
Horizontally.
(pause)
On the bed.
(pause)
Without any clothes-
KATHY
Derek! Enough!
(looks at Meghan as she heads offstage right)
Does she ever eat anything but salad?
CHRIS
Well, she is part of the track team. She’s got to stay in shape. She has to offset all those wine coolers with something, and salad is cheaper than diet pills or heroine.
DEREK
Though slightly less effective.
(contemplating)
I’ll be right back.
(gets up, exits stage left)
KATHY
Where is he going?
CHRIS
You can bet it’s something we’ll enjoy. Now, about tonight; I’m skipping my stupid playwriting class to head to the store. But I’ll need a car.
(smiles hopefully at Kathy)
KATHY
(disgusted sigh)
You know I’m going to say yes. But, if we get caught, seriously...I’m not taking the hit for you. You are driving the car. You are going in. If we get caught, I was only along for...um...
CHRIS
We’ll stop and get some ice cream or something.
KATHY
...for the ice cream. All on you.
CHRIS
We won’t get caught. We’ll be fine.
(Derek returns, with a plastic straw)
That’s what you went for? A straw?
DEREK
Wait and see, my friend...wait and see...
KATHY
Derek, not another one of your stupid pranks. I’ll tell you what, after the incident with the flying tampons...
DEREK
Relax, Kathy. Chill. This is not one of my stupid pranks. This is one of my brilliant ones.
CHRIS
No offense, mate, but I haven’t come across one of those yet.
DEREK
This one will make me legendary. At least, amongst the likes of the three of us.
Now, watch: I stick the straw into the cake, like so.
(sticks straw into cake)
I suck with all my might.
KATHY
Sometimes, you do.
(Derek sucks through the straw, then removes it from the cake)
DEREK
I get the cake out of the straw like so.
(blows cake out of straw, onto his tray)
Now, somebody hand me the Tabasco sauce.
(hesitation from Kathy and Chris)
Quick! Before Meghan gets here. Trust me.
(Kathy hands him the Tobasco bottle)
Thank you. Now, you just take the top off,
(takes top off)
and insert the straw,
(inserts straw, etc)
put your finger on top of the straw and pull it out and you’ve got yourself a nice bit of hot sauce in your straw. Genius enough, I know. But wait, it gets better.
CHRIS
Here she comes...wait, heading to the fruit stand. Hurry.
DEREK
Put the straw back into the cake, and release your finger, and voila! Hot cake.
(Derek plunges the straw back into the bottle and repeats his tampering of the cake)
KATHY
Great. Amazing. Except the girl doesn’t eat cake.
DEREK
That’s where I need you two to come in. Take the cake.
(he passes them each a piece of untainted cake, taking the last of these clean pieces for himself)
Now, when she walks by, invite her to sit, be nice, be cordial...and be interested in your cake. And let me do all the verbal persuasion. You do all the mental and culinary type.
(enter Meghan)
Meghan! Come sit with us!
(Meghan, carrying a tray with a large salad and an apple, timidly approaches their table)
MEGHAN
Um...hi. Really, I can sit here?
(all nod, she sits)
Because frankly, Derek, after last night...
DEREK
Ignore it. All my fault. If I skip a meal, my blood sugar gets low and I do all kinds of crazy things.
MEGHAN
I didn’t know you had low blood sugar problems...is that why you have two pieces of cake?
DEREK
(exchanging looks with Chris and Kathy)
No, actually...I noticed they were running low so I grabbed an extra one in case you showed up. Would you like it?
MEGHAN
Well...
(she looks longingly at the cake, then looks dejectedly at her salad)
...I shouldn’t. I mean, I know one piece of cake isn’t going to hurt me, but then I’ll just want more and more.
CHRIS
(taking a large bite of his cake)
Mmmm.
(mouth full)
This is fantastic.
MEGHAN
(distracted by Chris’ reaction)
And...I mean, with the team heading to Springfield this weekend, you know, I should really wait until after the races to start-
KATHY
(mouth full)
Oh God. Oh, my God.
DEREK
(taking a bite of his cake)
Mm hm.
(mouth full)
You said it, Kathy.
KATHY
Mm.
DEREK
Mm.
CHRIS
Mm.
KATHY
Mm mm mm mm mm!
CHRIS
Mm!
DEREK
Mmmmmmm hm.
MEGHAN
(looking with intense desire at the piece of tainted cake)
It’s just that...sugars like these can sit in the system for days and-
KATHY
(almost obscenely loud)
Mm!
(Derek shoots her a look which plainly says “Don’t overdo it!”)
Sorry, it’s just that...I haven’t had cake like this since grade school.
DEREK
Are you sure you don’t want some, Meghan?
(he pushes the cake towards her)
MEGHAN
(staring at the cake)
No.
(pushes it away)
Yes.
(takes it back)
No.
(pushes it away)
No.
(firmly)
No!
DEREK
Suit yourself!
(finishes the last bite of his cake, takes the cake he offered Meghan in his hand)
Chris?
(offers Chris the cake)
CHRIS
I couldn’t possibly...I mean, it’s good, but it’s also rich, so one piece is more than enough for me.
MEGHAN
Ooh...
DEREK
Okay. Kathy?
(offers cake to Kathy)
KATHY
Well, as you can see, I’ve still got some left...
(indicates her half eaten cake)
...but if nobody else wants it, I mean...
DEREK
Chocolate does release all the same hormones in women as sex does, I can’t see how you’d pass it up. I mean, even if you are gettin’ some every night, it comes at a price, right?
(indicates Chris)
KATHY
Who says he puts out every night? “Kathy, I’m too tired. Kathy I have a play to read for class. Kathy, I got tired of waiting for you to come back from class so I just downloaded some porn and jerked myself off, maybe tomorrow night.” Gimme that cake!
CHRIS
Hey! I...well...that did happen, once...
KATHY
My sex hormones are gonna feel all overloaded after this sweet piece of cake!
(she starts to move her fork toward it, but...)
MEGHAN
Stop!
(all freeze, look at her)
Actually, um...I have all this pent up...well...
(blushes)
...and it’s been...well...
(blushes again)
...just...could I have the cake, please?
KATHY
(suddenly defensive)
What about your track meet?
DEREK
Yeah, what about the sugars sitting in your system for days?
CHRIS
Yeah, what about my girlfriend violently molesting me in the middle of the night because one piece of cake got her all riled up and you took the one that would have calmed her back down?
MEGHAN
Well...please? It’s just that, you all made it sound so good...
DEREK
...and all the cool kids are doing it.
CHRIS
That’s how I lost my virginity.
KATHY
That’s how I got my hip tattooed.
DEREK
That’s why I went to college.
CHRIS
Those are all good things.
KATHY
This could be good for her, I suppose.
DEREK
You’re sure you want it?
MEGHAN
(after a pause)
Absolutely.
DEREK
(takes cake from Kathy, hands the cake to Meghan)
Bon Apetite!
MEGHAN
Thanks.
(as she sinks her fork into the cake and lifts the cake to her mouth, the lights fade)
Curtain
===
Based on actual events...the cake part, not the Derek/Meghan part. That was sheer invention. Well, not really. But the two events were unrelated in real life.
"It's not plagiarism - I'm recycling words, as any good environmentally conscious writer would do." -Uniek Swain
===
from Seduction Exercise, April 2007
CHRIS
What did she say?
DEREK
Oh, you know, I had Dirty Dancing playing on the TV, and we were on the futon getting all cuddly, and I had turned the heat off and opened the window so she’d be compelled to cuddle, and the next thing you know...she’s telling me Jennifer Grey is the world’s worst actress.
CHRIS
(mocking)
The audacity!
DEREK
I know!
CHRIS
Whatever did you do?
DEREK
What was I supposed to do? I told her that by way of apology, she had to go back to her room, dress like Jennifer Gray in the training sequence, and tango with me.
(pause)
Horizontally.
(pause)
On the bed.
(pause)
Without any clothes-
KATHY
Derek! Enough!
(looks at Meghan as she heads offstage right)
Does she ever eat anything but salad?
CHRIS
Well, she is part of the track team. She’s got to stay in shape. She has to offset all those wine coolers with something, and salad is cheaper than diet pills or heroine.
DEREK
Though slightly less effective.
(contemplating)
I’ll be right back.
(gets up, exits stage left)
KATHY
Where is he going?
CHRIS
You can bet it’s something we’ll enjoy. Now, about tonight; I’m skipping my stupid playwriting class to head to the store. But I’ll need a car.
(smiles hopefully at Kathy)
KATHY
(disgusted sigh)
You know I’m going to say yes. But, if we get caught, seriously...I’m not taking the hit for you. You are driving the car. You are going in. If we get caught, I was only along for...um...
CHRIS
We’ll stop and get some ice cream or something.
KATHY
...for the ice cream. All on you.
CHRIS
We won’t get caught. We’ll be fine.
(Derek returns, with a plastic straw)
That’s what you went for? A straw?
DEREK
Wait and see, my friend...wait and see...
KATHY
Derek, not another one of your stupid pranks. I’ll tell you what, after the incident with the flying tampons...
DEREK
Relax, Kathy. Chill. This is not one of my stupid pranks. This is one of my brilliant ones.
CHRIS
No offense, mate, but I haven’t come across one of those yet.
DEREK
This one will make me legendary. At least, amongst the likes of the three of us.
Now, watch: I stick the straw into the cake, like so.
(sticks straw into cake)
I suck with all my might.
KATHY
Sometimes, you do.
(Derek sucks through the straw, then removes it from the cake)
DEREK
I get the cake out of the straw like so.
(blows cake out of straw, onto his tray)
Now, somebody hand me the Tabasco sauce.
(hesitation from Kathy and Chris)
Quick! Before Meghan gets here. Trust me.
(Kathy hands him the Tobasco bottle)
Thank you. Now, you just take the top off,
(takes top off)
and insert the straw,
(inserts straw, etc)
put your finger on top of the straw and pull it out and you’ve got yourself a nice bit of hot sauce in your straw. Genius enough, I know. But wait, it gets better.
CHRIS
Here she comes...wait, heading to the fruit stand. Hurry.
DEREK
Put the straw back into the cake, and release your finger, and voila! Hot cake.
(Derek plunges the straw back into the bottle and repeats his tampering of the cake)
KATHY
Great. Amazing. Except the girl doesn’t eat cake.
DEREK
That’s where I need you two to come in. Take the cake.
(he passes them each a piece of untainted cake, taking the last of these clean pieces for himself)
Now, when she walks by, invite her to sit, be nice, be cordial...and be interested in your cake. And let me do all the verbal persuasion. You do all the mental and culinary type.
(enter Meghan)
Meghan! Come sit with us!
(Meghan, carrying a tray with a large salad and an apple, timidly approaches their table)
MEGHAN
Um...hi. Really, I can sit here?
(all nod, she sits)
Because frankly, Derek, after last night...
DEREK
Ignore it. All my fault. If I skip a meal, my blood sugar gets low and I do all kinds of crazy things.
MEGHAN
I didn’t know you had low blood sugar problems...is that why you have two pieces of cake?
DEREK
(exchanging looks with Chris and Kathy)
No, actually...I noticed they were running low so I grabbed an extra one in case you showed up. Would you like it?
MEGHAN
Well...
(she looks longingly at the cake, then looks dejectedly at her salad)
...I shouldn’t. I mean, I know one piece of cake isn’t going to hurt me, but then I’ll just want more and more.
CHRIS
(taking a large bite of his cake)
Mmmm.
(mouth full)
This is fantastic.
MEGHAN
(distracted by Chris’ reaction)
And...I mean, with the team heading to Springfield this weekend, you know, I should really wait until after the races to start-
KATHY
(mouth full)
Oh God. Oh, my God.
DEREK
(taking a bite of his cake)
Mm hm.
(mouth full)
You said it, Kathy.
KATHY
Mm.
DEREK
Mm.
CHRIS
Mm.
KATHY
Mm mm mm mm mm!
CHRIS
Mm!
DEREK
Mmmmmmm hm.
MEGHAN
(looking with intense desire at the piece of tainted cake)
It’s just that...sugars like these can sit in the system for days and-
KATHY
(almost obscenely loud)
Mm!
(Derek shoots her a look which plainly says “Don’t overdo it!”)
Sorry, it’s just that...I haven’t had cake like this since grade school.
DEREK
Are you sure you don’t want some, Meghan?
(he pushes the cake towards her)
MEGHAN
(staring at the cake)
No.
(pushes it away)
Yes.
(takes it back)
No.
(pushes it away)
No.
(firmly)
No!
DEREK
Suit yourself!
(finishes the last bite of his cake, takes the cake he offered Meghan in his hand)
Chris?
(offers Chris the cake)
CHRIS
I couldn’t possibly...I mean, it’s good, but it’s also rich, so one piece is more than enough for me.
MEGHAN
Ooh...
DEREK
Okay. Kathy?
(offers cake to Kathy)
KATHY
Well, as you can see, I’ve still got some left...
(indicates her half eaten cake)
...but if nobody else wants it, I mean...
DEREK
Chocolate does release all the same hormones in women as sex does, I can’t see how you’d pass it up. I mean, even if you are gettin’ some every night, it comes at a price, right?
(indicates Chris)
KATHY
Who says he puts out every night? “Kathy, I’m too tired. Kathy I have a play to read for class. Kathy, I got tired of waiting for you to come back from class so I just downloaded some porn and jerked myself off, maybe tomorrow night.” Gimme that cake!
CHRIS
Hey! I...well...that did happen, once...
KATHY
My sex hormones are gonna feel all overloaded after this sweet piece of cake!
(she starts to move her fork toward it, but...)
MEGHAN
Stop!
(all freeze, look at her)
Actually, um...I have all this pent up...well...
(blushes)
...and it’s been...well...
(blushes again)
...just...could I have the cake, please?
KATHY
(suddenly defensive)
What about your track meet?
DEREK
Yeah, what about the sugars sitting in your system for days?
CHRIS
Yeah, what about my girlfriend violently molesting me in the middle of the night because one piece of cake got her all riled up and you took the one that would have calmed her back down?
MEGHAN
Well...please? It’s just that, you all made it sound so good...
DEREK
...and all the cool kids are doing it.
CHRIS
That’s how I lost my virginity.
KATHY
That’s how I got my hip tattooed.
DEREK
That’s why I went to college.
CHRIS
Those are all good things.
KATHY
This could be good for her, I suppose.
DEREK
You’re sure you want it?
MEGHAN
(after a pause)
Absolutely.
DEREK
(takes cake from Kathy, hands the cake to Meghan)
Bon Apetite!
MEGHAN
Thanks.
(as she sinks her fork into the cake and lifts the cake to her mouth, the lights fade)
Curtain
===
Based on actual events...the cake part, not the Derek/Meghan part. That was sheer invention. Well, not really. But the two events were unrelated in real life.
"It's not plagiarism - I'm recycling words, as any good environmentally conscious writer would do." -Uniek Swain
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Your Questions Answered, Volume 2...and A Question From Me
Alright, my format for my last answer session was a little...off. We'll try it again.
From the post Your Questions Answered, Volume 1 on Sunday, July 15th:
Becca asked:
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I was posing some rhetorical questions?
That did not occur to me.
So you will essentially answer any phrase, statement or other assemblage of words that just happen to be followed by a question mark (or two)??
Pretty much.
A dog cat farm tractor makes hey ya weed poke?
Forty seven people are left on the train when it gets to Los Angeles.
You'd answer that?
Yes.
Huh?
I think I already said yes.
And Marty/Bridget asked:
is becca a blog post hog?
No, it just looks that way because some days, she's the only one that posts.
From the post Dissidents on Thursday, July 26th:
mGk asked:
What else am I supposed to do at the office?
Eat free pastries or "inventory" the Thin Mints.
Work?
No thanks, I already do that for a living.
From the post Free Write Friday on Friday, July 27th:
Gerald asked:
Is this some sort of joke?
No, it's a free write. I thought I made that clear.
What happens to Sam?
That's sort of up to my readers...if you would all just make some suggestions. Come ON!
From the post Last Monday on Monday, July 30th:
heartcooksbrain asked:
So it was your last Monday working at Target as in you aren't available Mondays anymore or it was your last Monday working at Target as in you aren't working at Target anymore (after your subsequent last Tuesday-Sunday)?
I'm thinking I would have had less trouble wrapping my head around this question without the parenthesis. It was my last Monday working at Target ever, which would sort of imply that I had come up with some scheme that would guarantee I would never be available to work there on a Monday again. The only way to do that I can think of is to quit completely. Does that answer your question?
Jak Attack asked:
So whatcha gonna do now?
Title research, court filing, finish school, get a job working at a newspaper or magazine while working to get some stories/novels written and published or a play produced. But first, I should get together with you and Jerry for a beer.
I asked:
Could this be the Jak I think it is?
It would appear so.
Has air conditioning hit Egypt?
Wow. I can't believe I would ask this question. Unless it were as a joke. Which it was.
Molly asked:
What's up with that?
Just life I guess.
When are you having me over for dinner?
Well, I am running a hotel...so just come on over, we'll seat you and ask if you need a room, get you some food and scare you with the local wildlife. It's fun! But really, soon. Sometime in the next month.
From the post Thoughts on Thursday, August 2nd:
Becca asked:
WHEN AM I GETTING MY COPY OF YOUR PUBLISHED WORK IN THE MAIL??!!
Stop yelling! I assume you should probably get your copy of my published work in the mail shortly after I get around to mailing it...I am a bad friend sometimes when it comes to snail mail.
That concludes this question and answer session. Now...What's the deal, people? I need suggestions. Please give me suggestions. Unfortunately, I did not do a Free Write Friday because I didn't have enough suggestions! So, okay...I will give you another week to come up with more suggestions...go ahead and suggest them as they come to you, and this Friday I will pick one (maybe two). Remember, this week there is a theme. I want you to read the last Free Write Friday and give me suggestions as to what makes Sam miss the meeting on Monday.
Here Is The Link To The Last Free Write Friday. Read it before you give me a suggestion.
Thanks! I'll give you a brief post tomorrow, and Wednesday I'll be giving you a book review on Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases.
From the post Your Questions Answered, Volume 1 on Sunday, July 15th:
Becca asked:
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I was posing some rhetorical questions?
That did not occur to me.
So you will essentially answer any phrase, statement or other assemblage of words that just happen to be followed by a question mark (or two)??
Pretty much.
A dog cat farm tractor makes hey ya weed poke?
Forty seven people are left on the train when it gets to Los Angeles.
You'd answer that?
Yes.
Huh?
I think I already said yes.
And Marty/Bridget asked:
is becca a blog post hog?
No, it just looks that way because some days, she's the only one that posts.
From the post Dissidents on Thursday, July 26th:
mGk asked:
What else am I supposed to do at the office?
Eat free pastries or "inventory" the Thin Mints.
Work?
No thanks, I already do that for a living.
From the post Free Write Friday on Friday, July 27th:
Gerald asked:
Is this some sort of joke?
No, it's a free write. I thought I made that clear.
What happens to Sam?
That's sort of up to my readers...if you would all just make some suggestions. Come ON!
From the post Last Monday on Monday, July 30th:
heartcooksbrain asked:
So it was your last Monday working at Target as in you aren't available Mondays anymore or it was your last Monday working at Target as in you aren't working at Target anymore (after your subsequent last Tuesday-Sunday)?
I'm thinking I would have had less trouble wrapping my head around this question without the parenthesis. It was my last Monday working at Target ever, which would sort of imply that I had come up with some scheme that would guarantee I would never be available to work there on a Monday again. The only way to do that I can think of is to quit completely. Does that answer your question?
Jak Attack asked:
So whatcha gonna do now?
Title research, court filing, finish school, get a job working at a newspaper or magazine while working to get some stories/novels written and published or a play produced. But first, I should get together with you and Jerry for a beer.
I asked:
Could this be the Jak I think it is?
It would appear so.
Has air conditioning hit Egypt?
Wow. I can't believe I would ask this question. Unless it were as a joke. Which it was.
Molly asked:
What's up with that?
Just life I guess.
When are you having me over for dinner?
Well, I am running a hotel...so just come on over, we'll seat you and ask if you need a room, get you some food and scare you with the local wildlife. It's fun! But really, soon. Sometime in the next month.
From the post Thoughts on Thursday, August 2nd:
Becca asked:
WHEN AM I GETTING MY COPY OF YOUR PUBLISHED WORK IN THE MAIL??!!
Stop yelling! I assume you should probably get your copy of my published work in the mail shortly after I get around to mailing it...I am a bad friend sometimes when it comes to snail mail.
That concludes this question and answer session. Now...What's the deal, people? I need suggestions. Please give me suggestions. Unfortunately, I did not do a Free Write Friday because I didn't have enough suggestions! So, okay...I will give you another week to come up with more suggestions...go ahead and suggest them as they come to you, and this Friday I will pick one (maybe two). Remember, this week there is a theme. I want you to read the last Free Write Friday and give me suggestions as to what makes Sam miss the meeting on Monday.
Here Is The Link To The Last Free Write Friday. Read it before you give me a suggestion.
Thanks! I'll give you a brief post tomorrow, and Wednesday I'll be giving you a book review on Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Thoughts
I was originally going to blog about theatre ettiquette, and how even if it's summer stock and free and outdoors (like, say, you go sit in the back rows at The Muny or you go to the Shakespeare in the Park festival here in the StL), you should still behave as though it were real professional theatre because-guess what?-it IS real professional theatre. So don't get up and leave right as Joseph is reunited with his father and brothers, because there's a whole other song or two afterwards and even though you may think that they can't see you leaving, the actors certainly can see you leaving, and they can also hear you leaving. And those of us who are good patrons have trouble seeing around you as you stumble down the row in front of us.
As you can see, I still got the rant in, albeit the abridged version. No, I have decided to scrap the lengthy tirade in order to share some thoughts.
To my friends, family and readers in Minnesota: I am glad to have already heard from so many of you, and I hope to hear from the rest of you soon. Let me know you're okay. For the rest of you, I want you to know that I do have ties in the Twin Cities area, and I've heard from the majority of them, and as they're all either related to each other or very close friends, I am not too worried about those I have not heard from yet.
Think of how many bridges you drive over a day. I myself have driven over the 1-35W bridge many times. I have friends whom I am sure drive over it at least once a week if not every day.
This is the kind of thing that could scare some people away from bridges. Like 9/11 scared people from flying or going into tall buildings. But that kind of fear could paralyze you...especially because sometimes the only way to get where you need to go is to cross a bridge.
Life is full of risks, and there are some that we just can't avoid. The idea is to minimize the risks while maximizing their benefits; taking the I-35W bridge over the river is a lot quicker than heading north of the river's source and coming down the other side.
My thoughts are with everybody affected by this tragedy. In perspective, it could have been much much worse I am sure, but then so could a lot of things have been that shouldn't have been as bad as they were. And this is one of them, but there's nothing can be done about it now except to find out what went wrong so it can be prevented from happening to somebody else, somewhere else. Because we have to remember that to somebody else somwhere else, you and I are somebody else.
It seems trite to ask for suggestions for my Free Write Friday in light of this tragedy, but we must forage on. So, look back to last week's Free Write Friday and then I pose you this question as your jumping off point for your suggestions for starting point for this week's Free Write Friday. Let me read that last sentence to make sure it makes sense. No, it doesn't good. Okay, here's the question:
What happens to Sam to keep him from showing up to his meeting on time?
And GO!
As you can see, I still got the rant in, albeit the abridged version. No, I have decided to scrap the lengthy tirade in order to share some thoughts.
To my friends, family and readers in Minnesota: I am glad to have already heard from so many of you, and I hope to hear from the rest of you soon. Let me know you're okay. For the rest of you, I want you to know that I do have ties in the Twin Cities area, and I've heard from the majority of them, and as they're all either related to each other or very close friends, I am not too worried about those I have not heard from yet.
Think of how many bridges you drive over a day. I myself have driven over the 1-35W bridge many times. I have friends whom I am sure drive over it at least once a week if not every day.
This is the kind of thing that could scare some people away from bridges. Like 9/11 scared people from flying or going into tall buildings. But that kind of fear could paralyze you...especially because sometimes the only way to get where you need to go is to cross a bridge.
Life is full of risks, and there are some that we just can't avoid. The idea is to minimize the risks while maximizing their benefits; taking the I-35W bridge over the river is a lot quicker than heading north of the river's source and coming down the other side.
My thoughts are with everybody affected by this tragedy. In perspective, it could have been much much worse I am sure, but then so could a lot of things have been that shouldn't have been as bad as they were. And this is one of them, but there's nothing can be done about it now except to find out what went wrong so it can be prevented from happening to somebody else, somewhere else. Because we have to remember that to somebody else somwhere else, you and I are somebody else.
It seems trite to ask for suggestions for my Free Write Friday in light of this tragedy, but we must forage on. So, look back to last week's Free Write Friday and then I pose you this question as your jumping off point for your suggestions for starting point for this week's Free Write Friday. Let me read that last sentence to make sure it makes sense. No, it doesn't good. Okay, here's the question:
What happens to Sam to keep him from showing up to his meeting on time?
And GO!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tuesday Excerpt
This week's selection comes from a one act play I wrote last year for the Surfacing Emerging Playwright Festival. It did not get selected, though members of the selection committee told me it was due to length and number of male characters, not because it sucked. Great. Next time, if it doesn't suck, don't not pick it.
Don't...don't not...more better...yeah.
Okay, the title for this one is The Unfinished Paper. It tells the story of James Evans as he sits in Jeremy Noy's coffee shop on the campus of the University of Minnesota. He is skipping class and they get visited by James' classmate Angela, his roommate Colin and the Professor Weinskart, who's last assigned paper James is valiantly ignoring. We join the action as it happens!
===
from The Unfinished Paper, 12/06-1/07
JAMES: This place reminds me of home.
JEREMY: Is that why you’re in here all the time?
JAMES: That, and it’s close to all the classes I’m skipping.
Jeremy smiles and turns his attention to goings-on outside the window, while James stares thoughtfully at nothing, warming his hands with his coffee mug. He sets it down gently.
JAMES: Bike shop slash coffee shop.
JEREMY: Excuse me?
JAMES: That’s my idea. There’s a bookstore attached to my parents’ coffee shop. I want a bike shop with a coffee shop in it.
JEREMY: Is that really your dream?
JAMES: Well, mostly my roommate’s. It would be open twenty four hours. But it’s just a pipe dream. Good name for it, though.
JEREMY: Oh yes?
JAMES: Either way we go. The Vicious Cycle or Gear Grinders. (he resumes his search through the newspaper) Although the second one sounds like a bike shop slash hoagie vendor.
JEREMY: I take it that’s not really your plan, though.
JAMES: Colin has all of these grandiose ideas, but almost no follow through. That’s why he’s going to be a journalist, so he can report on things and never have to actually do things.
JEREMY: (glances at the door) Here comes another friendly face.
The door opens again and Angela Grable walks in. She is average height, blond hair, blue eyes, the look of the Swede about her. She is bundled against the cold with a heavy coat, gloves, and hat. She is carrying a messenger bag.)
JEREMY: (checking his watch) Good morning, Ang.
ANGELA: (shaking off the cold) Hi Jeremy, um, I’ll have a—
JEREMY: Hot cocoa and a chocolate chip cookie?
ANGELA: (smiling warmly) Yes, thank you Jeremy.
JEREMY: Four dollars and three and a half dimes. (she digs in her purse and throws a five dollar bill on the counter) Be right up.
ANGELA: Keep the change, Jeremy, and I’ll be over here with James. (pause) Oh, how long has he been here?
JEREMY: I opened at 7, and he’s been here since about, oh…six.
(Jeremy winks and gets to work while Angela walks over to the table where James sits, oblivious to her presence. She slams her bag on top of his paper just as he is about to take a sip of his coffee, causing him to spill a little.)
JAMES: Holy, Shit, Angela, what are you doing? (he wipes some coffee from his chin with his left hand)
ANGELA: (angrily) What the hell are you doing, James? (he continues to shake the coffee from his hand) You missed another one of Weinskart’s classes. Do you know that our paper was due a week and a half ago?
JAMES: (pushes her bag to the floor, where it lands with a dull thud) Relax, I asked him for an extension. (Jeremy brings her cocoa and cookie) Have a seat, Angela.
ANGELA: (sitting heavily) How long of an extension did he give you? Thank you, Jeremy.
JAMES: (reluctantly) I guess it was kind of…open ended, you’d say. (Angela is bringing her drink to her lips as he says this, but stops, brings the drink back down and stares fixedly in James’ eyes) I asked the class period before it was due if I could have an extension and, well, he said that was okay. The next class period, I asked if he wanted me to e-mail it to him and he said to just, you know, give it to him the next time I saw him.
ANGELA: Oh, James. You know he meant the next class period.
JAMES: Details, details. If he had wanted it the next class period, he would have said so.
ANGELA: (head in her hands momentarily) No, James, he wanted it on the due date. He said so, too. An extension is for one class meeting later. Have you read the syllabus?
JAMES: Of course. It told me that before class today, I was supposed to have read the first half of Colonel Chabert, and I did.
ANGELA: But then you didn’t come to class.
JAMES: My paper isn’t done.
ANGELA: Why not?
JAMES: (long pause, several drinks of coffee. Angela sips her cocoa and takes a bite of her cookie) Because in order to finish it, I have to start it. And in order to start it, I have to be interested in one of the topics. Can’t I just sit in a coffee shop for the rest of my life, though? It’s warm, it’s friendly, there are fresh Sudoku puzzles every day in the paper, always somebody new to meet. (he turns and looks at the man in the suit, still sitting near the door) Hi there, I’m James and I’m probably going to fail my Cultural Perspectives class because my professor wants me to write about Oedipus and Phallic symbols. (back to Angela) Seriously, why is Weinskart so obsessed with male genitalia? Have you noticed that in his lectures? The one about Balzac’s statue grasping his erect-
ANGELA: Why can’t you just bullshit a paper, James? Isn’t your roommate a writer?
JAMES: Colin? He’s busy writing cover letters for internships and his own work Oh, but you should read his humor paper, it—
ANGELA: You’d better come up with something, and fast. Weinskart asked me about you after class.
JAMES: (obviously surprised) He did? How about that, he knows who I am.
ANGELA: He asked me if I knew where he could find you. And it just slipped out, and I’m sorry.
JAMES: (stopping in mid drink) What just slipped out, Angela?
ANGELA: I told him you spend a lot of time here.
JAMES: Here where? Here Earth? Here Minneapolis? Here campus?
ANGELA: Noy’s Coffee.
JAMES: So he’s coming here to find me? (Angela nods her head) Well, thanks, Judas.
ANGELA: That’s not fair. Come on, I’m letting you know, you can escape if you want.
JAMES: (drains his coffee mug again. Calls) Jeremy! Another.
JEREMY: Coming up, James.
JAMES: Not today. I’m too comfortable here. What can he do? (stands up, walks to the counter and sets his empty mug next to his new, full mug. He picks up his new drink and turns back to Angela) It’s not too late to drop classes, is it?
ANGELA: (removing her coat) Yes, the withdraw date was sometime last month. You’re only hope would be a medical reason. Or death.
JAMES: (considering) Death, huh? Or a medical reason? Like a broken leg?
ANGELA: Extended hospital stay.
JAMES: (slumping into his chair) Forget it.
ANGELA: Hopeless, James.
Angela sits back and ruminates over her mug of hot chocolate. Jeremy continues working behind the counter. James sits, looking dejected, holding his mug in both hands close under his chin. His demeanor suddenly brightens as he sets his coffee mug on the table and begins rooting through the messenger bag he has brought with him. He pulls out a USB drive and sets it in front of him on the table. He puts his bag back down on the ground with a thud, which gets Angela’s attention. He then stands and takes the USB drive to the door. He opens it and stares outside for a moment, listening to the traffic as it rolls by. Jeremy checks his watch, then quickly puts a fresh pot of coffee on.
JAMES: Oh, the express! (He tosses the USB drive out the door as the sound of a bus goes by. He waits at the door for a moment, then exits)
Angela stands and goes to the door, looking out and cradling her mug of cocoa. She takes a step back as James opens the door and re-enters the shop, carrying what used to be his USB drive before it got run over by a city bus.
ANGELA: James?
JAMES: Angela, I’d like you to meet my excuse. (He hands her the two biggest pieces of his USB drive.) Now, how long do you think it will take Weinskart to get here? (James does not wait for a reply, but instead returns to the table, pulling a laptop computer out of his bag and setting it on the table, opening it, turning it on, etc.) This is better than saying my dog ate it or anything.
ANGELA: (returning to her seat, placing the bits of the USB drive on the table and sitting down heavily) You think Weinskart will believe that the only copy you had was on your jump drive?
JAMES: (working furiously on his computer) No. But when I show him my tragically corrupt document that is on my computer, with only a part of my heading, title, and a few words here and there intact, and the remains of my jump drive, perhaps he will… (trails off)
ANGELA: (pause) Perhaps he will what? Only flunk you a little bit? (pause. James stands again) Do not throw your computer under a bus.
The man in the suit drinks the last of his coffee and stands up. James watches him put on his coat, gloves, hat and scarf. The man walks to the door and opens it.
COLIN: (offstage) Hold the door, gang way! (The man jumps aside, holding the door open and Colin rides his bicycle into the shop, causing everyone to turn their attention to the door. Colin is tall and he gangles. He is wearing jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt under a windbreaker. He has a schoolbag slung behind his back) Thank you, sir. (The man gives Colin a bewildered look, then exits as Colin himself dismounts from his bike and busies himself in his bag, which he swings around to his side) The usual, Jeremy. (He digs out his wallet and a thermos)
JEREMY: Coming up, Colin. (He sets a small mug on the counter) Here’s your espresso, coffee’s brewing.
COLIN: (walking over to the counter with his bicycle) Thanks a million. (He sets a wad of cash on the counter along with the thermos and picks up the drink. He cools it with his breath, then turns on the coffee shop) James, Angela, nice to see you both.
***
COLIN: Thanks, Jeremy. Time for an epic battle with sleepiness. I’ve got a class with Garrison Keeler next. Great class, great man, but that voice of his! My parents used to play Prairie Home Companion tapes to put me to sleep, and his voice still makes me…(wiggles his hand back and forth while making a strange sound. He swings his bicycle around to face the door, and swings his leg over it) Could somebody grab the door for me?
At that moment, Professor Weinskart enters the coffee shop, looking thoroughly windswept. He is in his late fifties, wearing a long black overcoat and a yarmulke. He straightens this and his coat as he walks in, looking around.
COLIN: Pardon me, could you just hold that door for me a second please? Thank you.
WEINSKART: Oh, yes, sure, go right ahead, son.
Weinskart stands aside and holds the door for Colin who, with a wave of his hand, is off and out into the cold. Weinskart lets the door close and makes his way to Jeremy at the counter.
WEINSKART: This place used to be a Subway, right?
JEREMY: Yes, it was.
James has been staring at Weinskart since he entered, though Weinskart has not acknowledged either Angela or James. Through the next exchange, Angela snaps her fingers in front of James’ face in an effort to get his attention, but James continues staring at Weinskart with silent fear.
WEINSKART: Your prices are a bit higher than Starbucks, hmm. What’s the advantage?
JEREMY: Personality. Warmth. My wife bakes the cookies and the coffee is Fair Trade.
WEINSKART: You’ve just made a lifelong customer, my friend.
James finally reacts to Angela’s snapping fingers. She points towards the door and silently urges him to make a run for it. He shakes his head no, and stoically brings his coffee mug to his lips.
JEREMY: That’s probably the best news I’ve heard all day, sir. Was it the cookies or the Fair Trade that caught you?
WEINSKART: I haven’t tasted the cookies yet. I think I’ll take a large cappuccino and the biggest chocolate chip cookie you’ve got.
JEREMY: (ringing up the register) Six dollars and twenty three cents if you would be so kind. (Weinskart hands over a bill and waits while Jeremy makes change) Here’s your change and just take a seat, I’ll bring you the coffee. Here’s the cookie.
WEINSKART: Thank you, very much.
Jeremy busies himself as Weinskart turns from the counter. He casually wanders from the counter to the newspaper stands, to the center of the shop, where James and Angela sit. James has been watching him over the rim of his coffee mug. Without a look in James’ direction, Weinskart takes a seat at their table.
WEINSKART: You don’t mind, do you? (pause, no answer or movement from either James or Angela) Good. This place has a nice feel to it. It’s probably just the fair trade coffee, you know, those hard-working, underpaid—oh, but I didn’t come here to lecture you, Miss Grable, sorry. (Angela hides her head in her hands and, over the next few minutes, shakes her head slightly. Weinskart takes a bite of his cookie, from which he obviously derives great pleasure) Exquisite. No, I apologize for the lecture, Miss Grable. (Turns to James, who noticeably shrinks at the following words) You, on the other hand, Mr. Evans.
JAMES: Professor, I—
WEINSKART: I’ve heard it all, trust me. What’s this?
He picks up pieces of the jump drive.
JAMES: Um, my USB drive. I threw it under a bus.
WEINSKART: Ah, I understand. Well, that’s a unique way to do it. And on your computer?
JAMES: Well, originally, it was going to be a clean document that I was doctoring up to look like a corrupt one. You know, part of my heading, my title, a couple brilliant sentences comprising my introduction, then a bunch of broken-up computer code jargon, interspersed with words like disassociate and, you know, just—a very elaborate hoax.
WEINSKART: And now?
JAMES: Well, I only got as far as the heading, title, brilliant introduction, and…
James shows Weinskart the screen, who surveys it with wide, happy eyes. Angela peers momentarily from behind her hands, then resumes her previous actions. Jeremy approaches with a large ceramic mug, which he sets in front of Weinskart. Jeremy then takes a step back and looks at the computer screen as well.
WEINSKART: There is only one ‘c’ in disassociate. Doesn’t that have spell check?
===
There you have it! And now, friends, it is time for dinner.
What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window. -Burton Rascoe
Don't...don't not...more better...yeah.
Okay, the title for this one is The Unfinished Paper. It tells the story of James Evans as he sits in Jeremy Noy's coffee shop on the campus of the University of Minnesota. He is skipping class and they get visited by James' classmate Angela, his roommate Colin and the Professor Weinskart, who's last assigned paper James is valiantly ignoring. We join the action as it happens!
===
from The Unfinished Paper, 12/06-1/07
JAMES: This place reminds me of home.
JEREMY: Is that why you’re in here all the time?
JAMES: That, and it’s close to all the classes I’m skipping.
Jeremy smiles and turns his attention to goings-on outside the window, while James stares thoughtfully at nothing, warming his hands with his coffee mug. He sets it down gently.
JAMES: Bike shop slash coffee shop.
JEREMY: Excuse me?
JAMES: That’s my idea. There’s a bookstore attached to my parents’ coffee shop. I want a bike shop with a coffee shop in it.
JEREMY: Is that really your dream?
JAMES: Well, mostly my roommate’s. It would be open twenty four hours. But it’s just a pipe dream. Good name for it, though.
JEREMY: Oh yes?
JAMES: Either way we go. The Vicious Cycle or Gear Grinders. (he resumes his search through the newspaper) Although the second one sounds like a bike shop slash hoagie vendor.
JEREMY: I take it that’s not really your plan, though.
JAMES: Colin has all of these grandiose ideas, but almost no follow through. That’s why he’s going to be a journalist, so he can report on things and never have to actually do things.
JEREMY: (glances at the door) Here comes another friendly face.
The door opens again and Angela Grable walks in. She is average height, blond hair, blue eyes, the look of the Swede about her. She is bundled against the cold with a heavy coat, gloves, and hat. She is carrying a messenger bag.)
JEREMY: (checking his watch) Good morning, Ang.
ANGELA: (shaking off the cold) Hi Jeremy, um, I’ll have a—
JEREMY: Hot cocoa and a chocolate chip cookie?
ANGELA: (smiling warmly) Yes, thank you Jeremy.
JEREMY: Four dollars and three and a half dimes. (she digs in her purse and throws a five dollar bill on the counter) Be right up.
ANGELA: Keep the change, Jeremy, and I’ll be over here with James. (pause) Oh, how long has he been here?
JEREMY: I opened at 7, and he’s been here since about, oh…six.
(Jeremy winks and gets to work while Angela walks over to the table where James sits, oblivious to her presence. She slams her bag on top of his paper just as he is about to take a sip of his coffee, causing him to spill a little.)
JAMES: Holy, Shit, Angela, what are you doing? (he wipes some coffee from his chin with his left hand)
ANGELA: (angrily) What the hell are you doing, James? (he continues to shake the coffee from his hand) You missed another one of Weinskart’s classes. Do you know that our paper was due a week and a half ago?
JAMES: (pushes her bag to the floor, where it lands with a dull thud) Relax, I asked him for an extension. (Jeremy brings her cocoa and cookie) Have a seat, Angela.
ANGELA: (sitting heavily) How long of an extension did he give you? Thank you, Jeremy.
JAMES: (reluctantly) I guess it was kind of…open ended, you’d say. (Angela is bringing her drink to her lips as he says this, but stops, brings the drink back down and stares fixedly in James’ eyes) I asked the class period before it was due if I could have an extension and, well, he said that was okay. The next class period, I asked if he wanted me to e-mail it to him and he said to just, you know, give it to him the next time I saw him.
ANGELA: Oh, James. You know he meant the next class period.
JAMES: Details, details. If he had wanted it the next class period, he would have said so.
ANGELA: (head in her hands momentarily) No, James, he wanted it on the due date. He said so, too. An extension is for one class meeting later. Have you read the syllabus?
JAMES: Of course. It told me that before class today, I was supposed to have read the first half of Colonel Chabert, and I did.
ANGELA: But then you didn’t come to class.
JAMES: My paper isn’t done.
ANGELA: Why not?
JAMES: (long pause, several drinks of coffee. Angela sips her cocoa and takes a bite of her cookie) Because in order to finish it, I have to start it. And in order to start it, I have to be interested in one of the topics. Can’t I just sit in a coffee shop for the rest of my life, though? It’s warm, it’s friendly, there are fresh Sudoku puzzles every day in the paper, always somebody new to meet. (he turns and looks at the man in the suit, still sitting near the door) Hi there, I’m James and I’m probably going to fail my Cultural Perspectives class because my professor wants me to write about Oedipus and Phallic symbols. (back to Angela) Seriously, why is Weinskart so obsessed with male genitalia? Have you noticed that in his lectures? The one about Balzac’s statue grasping his erect-
ANGELA: Why can’t you just bullshit a paper, James? Isn’t your roommate a writer?
JAMES: Colin? He’s busy writing cover letters for internships and his own work Oh, but you should read his humor paper, it—
ANGELA: You’d better come up with something, and fast. Weinskart asked me about you after class.
JAMES: (obviously surprised) He did? How about that, he knows who I am.
ANGELA: He asked me if I knew where he could find you. And it just slipped out, and I’m sorry.
JAMES: (stopping in mid drink) What just slipped out, Angela?
ANGELA: I told him you spend a lot of time here.
JAMES: Here where? Here Earth? Here Minneapolis? Here campus?
ANGELA: Noy’s Coffee.
JAMES: So he’s coming here to find me? (Angela nods her head) Well, thanks, Judas.
ANGELA: That’s not fair. Come on, I’m letting you know, you can escape if you want.
JAMES: (drains his coffee mug again. Calls) Jeremy! Another.
JEREMY: Coming up, James.
JAMES: Not today. I’m too comfortable here. What can he do? (stands up, walks to the counter and sets his empty mug next to his new, full mug. He picks up his new drink and turns back to Angela) It’s not too late to drop classes, is it?
ANGELA: (removing her coat) Yes, the withdraw date was sometime last month. You’re only hope would be a medical reason. Or death.
JAMES: (considering) Death, huh? Or a medical reason? Like a broken leg?
ANGELA: Extended hospital stay.
JAMES: (slumping into his chair) Forget it.
ANGELA: Hopeless, James.
Angela sits back and ruminates over her mug of hot chocolate. Jeremy continues working behind the counter. James sits, looking dejected, holding his mug in both hands close under his chin. His demeanor suddenly brightens as he sets his coffee mug on the table and begins rooting through the messenger bag he has brought with him. He pulls out a USB drive and sets it in front of him on the table. He puts his bag back down on the ground with a thud, which gets Angela’s attention. He then stands and takes the USB drive to the door. He opens it and stares outside for a moment, listening to the traffic as it rolls by. Jeremy checks his watch, then quickly puts a fresh pot of coffee on.
JAMES: Oh, the express! (He tosses the USB drive out the door as the sound of a bus goes by. He waits at the door for a moment, then exits)
Angela stands and goes to the door, looking out and cradling her mug of cocoa. She takes a step back as James opens the door and re-enters the shop, carrying what used to be his USB drive before it got run over by a city bus.
ANGELA: James?
JAMES: Angela, I’d like you to meet my excuse. (He hands her the two biggest pieces of his USB drive.) Now, how long do you think it will take Weinskart to get here? (James does not wait for a reply, but instead returns to the table, pulling a laptop computer out of his bag and setting it on the table, opening it, turning it on, etc.) This is better than saying my dog ate it or anything.
ANGELA: (returning to her seat, placing the bits of the USB drive on the table and sitting down heavily) You think Weinskart will believe that the only copy you had was on your jump drive?
JAMES: (working furiously on his computer) No. But when I show him my tragically corrupt document that is on my computer, with only a part of my heading, title, and a few words here and there intact, and the remains of my jump drive, perhaps he will… (trails off)
ANGELA: (pause) Perhaps he will what? Only flunk you a little bit? (pause. James stands again) Do not throw your computer under a bus.
The man in the suit drinks the last of his coffee and stands up. James watches him put on his coat, gloves, hat and scarf. The man walks to the door and opens it.
COLIN: (offstage) Hold the door, gang way! (The man jumps aside, holding the door open and Colin rides his bicycle into the shop, causing everyone to turn their attention to the door. Colin is tall and he gangles. He is wearing jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt under a windbreaker. He has a schoolbag slung behind his back) Thank you, sir. (The man gives Colin a bewildered look, then exits as Colin himself dismounts from his bike and busies himself in his bag, which he swings around to his side) The usual, Jeremy. (He digs out his wallet and a thermos)
JEREMY: Coming up, Colin. (He sets a small mug on the counter) Here’s your espresso, coffee’s brewing.
COLIN: (walking over to the counter with his bicycle) Thanks a million. (He sets a wad of cash on the counter along with the thermos and picks up the drink. He cools it with his breath, then turns on the coffee shop) James, Angela, nice to see you both.
***
COLIN: Thanks, Jeremy. Time for an epic battle with sleepiness. I’ve got a class with Garrison Keeler next. Great class, great man, but that voice of his! My parents used to play Prairie Home Companion tapes to put me to sleep, and his voice still makes me…(wiggles his hand back and forth while making a strange sound. He swings his bicycle around to face the door, and swings his leg over it) Could somebody grab the door for me?
At that moment, Professor Weinskart enters the coffee shop, looking thoroughly windswept. He is in his late fifties, wearing a long black overcoat and a yarmulke. He straightens this and his coat as he walks in, looking around.
COLIN: Pardon me, could you just hold that door for me a second please? Thank you.
WEINSKART: Oh, yes, sure, go right ahead, son.
Weinskart stands aside and holds the door for Colin who, with a wave of his hand, is off and out into the cold. Weinskart lets the door close and makes his way to Jeremy at the counter.
WEINSKART: This place used to be a Subway, right?
JEREMY: Yes, it was.
James has been staring at Weinskart since he entered, though Weinskart has not acknowledged either Angela or James. Through the next exchange, Angela snaps her fingers in front of James’ face in an effort to get his attention, but James continues staring at Weinskart with silent fear.
WEINSKART: Your prices are a bit higher than Starbucks, hmm. What’s the advantage?
JEREMY: Personality. Warmth. My wife bakes the cookies and the coffee is Fair Trade.
WEINSKART: You’ve just made a lifelong customer, my friend.
James finally reacts to Angela’s snapping fingers. She points towards the door and silently urges him to make a run for it. He shakes his head no, and stoically brings his coffee mug to his lips.
JEREMY: That’s probably the best news I’ve heard all day, sir. Was it the cookies or the Fair Trade that caught you?
WEINSKART: I haven’t tasted the cookies yet. I think I’ll take a large cappuccino and the biggest chocolate chip cookie you’ve got.
JEREMY: (ringing up the register) Six dollars and twenty three cents if you would be so kind. (Weinskart hands over a bill and waits while Jeremy makes change) Here’s your change and just take a seat, I’ll bring you the coffee. Here’s the cookie.
WEINSKART: Thank you, very much.
Jeremy busies himself as Weinskart turns from the counter. He casually wanders from the counter to the newspaper stands, to the center of the shop, where James and Angela sit. James has been watching him over the rim of his coffee mug. Without a look in James’ direction, Weinskart takes a seat at their table.
WEINSKART: You don’t mind, do you? (pause, no answer or movement from either James or Angela) Good. This place has a nice feel to it. It’s probably just the fair trade coffee, you know, those hard-working, underpaid—oh, but I didn’t come here to lecture you, Miss Grable, sorry. (Angela hides her head in her hands and, over the next few minutes, shakes her head slightly. Weinskart takes a bite of his cookie, from which he obviously derives great pleasure) Exquisite. No, I apologize for the lecture, Miss Grable. (Turns to James, who noticeably shrinks at the following words) You, on the other hand, Mr. Evans.
JAMES: Professor, I—
WEINSKART: I’ve heard it all, trust me. What’s this?
He picks up pieces of the jump drive.
JAMES: Um, my USB drive. I threw it under a bus.
WEINSKART: Ah, I understand. Well, that’s a unique way to do it. And on your computer?
JAMES: Well, originally, it was going to be a clean document that I was doctoring up to look like a corrupt one. You know, part of my heading, my title, a couple brilliant sentences comprising my introduction, then a bunch of broken-up computer code jargon, interspersed with words like disassociate and, you know, just—a very elaborate hoax.
WEINSKART: And now?
JAMES: Well, I only got as far as the heading, title, brilliant introduction, and…
James shows Weinskart the screen, who surveys it with wide, happy eyes. Angela peers momentarily from behind her hands, then resumes her previous actions. Jeremy approaches with a large ceramic mug, which he sets in front of Weinskart. Jeremy then takes a step back and looks at the computer screen as well.
WEINSKART: There is only one ‘c’ in disassociate. Doesn’t that have spell check?
===
There you have it! And now, friends, it is time for dinner.
What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window. -Burton Rascoe
Monday, July 30, 2007
Last Monday
Today was my last Monday working at Target.
I feel like flying. And also, I liked Gerald's comment on my last FWF, and I think I may take him up on it.
Alrighty folks, not much of a blog today as I am fairly exhausted and going to try and sneak in a quick nap here before heading off to the Muny to catch a show this evening. Hopefully it doesn't rain on us.
This weekend is my "Your Questions Answered" weekend, as it will be the first full weekend in August. So, what are your questions? I have the answers! And...coming next week, a book review of a book I have read recently. Will it be Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows or will it be The Ministry of Special Cases? Only time will tell. So check back next week. And check back tomorrow, when I promise there really will for real be a really real Tuesday Excerpt for real really. Seriously. For real.
I feel like flying. And also, I liked Gerald's comment on my last FWF, and I think I may take him up on it.
Alrighty folks, not much of a blog today as I am fairly exhausted and going to try and sneak in a quick nap here before heading off to the Muny to catch a show this evening. Hopefully it doesn't rain on us.
This weekend is my "Your Questions Answered" weekend, as it will be the first full weekend in August. So, what are your questions? I have the answers! And...coming next week, a book review of a book I have read recently. Will it be Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows or will it be The Ministry of Special Cases? Only time will tell. So check back next week. And check back tomorrow, when I promise there really will for real be a really real Tuesday Excerpt for real really. Seriously. For real.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Free Write Friday
Okay, in the forty minutes I have left of my Friday...
This week's winner is last week's winner, because I skived off last week for whatever reason. Harry Potter, I think, and visiting out-of-town friends. Also, the dog ate it.
Becca wins a very intense discussion on the outcome of the latest Harry Potter novel for the following suggestion:
"Sam - 23 - finds a magic 8 ball that is actually magic and will tell the future. Anything he asks it. Yes it works..."
And from now on, no more italics. It's just easier on the eyes this way.
===
Sam had almost always been superstitious. Never stepped under a ladder. Always threw salt over his shoulder and never once broke a mirror. He also never caught his reflection in a broken mirror, for the problems that may cause. For his key chain, he carried a lucky rabbit's foot, despite the obvious problem of it having held no good luck for the rabbit to which it was previously attached. He ran from black cats. He never went anywhere on Friday the thirteenth and never set foot on the thirteenth floor of a building. So it was no big surprise when, on his 23rd birthday, all of his co-workers at his brand new job pitched in to buy him...
"A Magic 8 Ball?" He looked the thing over, still in its purplish box with the swirls, the instructions. He had received several dozen of them over the years, always from people who thought it was a laugh, just what he needed. He felt as predictable as they must have found him.
"Yeah, well, you know, for when you need help making decisions...you're so superstitious you may need some sort of guidance." This from a man who orders pens based on the color jersey his favorite sports team of the moment happens to be wearing.
"Well, thanks, Heath," Sam said. He didn't mean it. "I guess I could use some guidance from a fifteen dollar toy." This struck him as odd; not the fact that they had clearly left the price tag on the box, a symbol of how little they truly cared, how this birthday present was merely a team building gimmick created by the HR people at Vanderheyden Financial Services, the company for which he was an office drone. This was how he described his job to himself; his business card said he was an accounts management representative. No, the price tag didn't make him frown. The price did. Certainly he had seen these, even at the novelty shops where prices are usually higher than the box retailers, for less than ten bucks.
"Ask it a question!" Meredith tittered, eager to watch Sam use this toy, the same way she seemed eager for everything; even watching Merle, the intern, replacing the jug in the water cooler made Meredith giggle. Not appeasing her would have brought immeasurable pleasure to Sam, but then again, as her last name was Brown, that gave her thirteen letters in her name. She held some power that Sam registered on a very deep subconscious level.
He opened the box and removed the eight ball. It felt slightly heavier than he remembered the Magic 8 Ball to be, but perhaps it was because over time, the only one he ever really used, the one originally given to him on his seventh birthday by his grandfather, had leaked a little of the magic blue fluid. Or perhaps, Sam reflected as he faced the circled 8 upwards, they were just made out of better stuff these days. "Is this the best birthday present ever?" he asked the Magic 8 Ball. He turned it over and was startled by what he saw.
"What's it say?" asked Edith, Meredith's boss, her identical twin in every way except twenty-six years older. The two of them bounced on the balls of their feet to try and get a look.
Sam stared at the window on his new toy. He had expected a response along the lines of, "It Is Decidedly So" or "Outlook Not So Good." He had trouble processing what he was seeing.
"Well?" asked Heath.
"Um, yes. It says 'Yes,' so it looks like you guys win the best present ever award. Thank you."
"Well, we all picked it out," Edith explained.
"But Ed went and picked it up at the store, so maybe he picked out just the perfect one," Meredith completed. The two twittered again.
"So it would seem," Sam said, this time more to himself. He looked down at the 8 ball, where it still displayed the answer to his question.
"Yes, Sam," the 8 ball said. He turned it back over and smiled at everybody.
Thank you. Now, I guess we should get back to work, huh?" Everybody smiled politely back, and dispersed to their cubicles. They had clustered outside of his own, so Sam had only to turn around and take two steps before he was in his allotted partition of the universe.
He set the 8 Ball on his desk and stared at it. He thought of asking it some more questions, to see if maybe somebody had tampered with it, or if it was so expensive and heavy because it was custom. He picked it up and said, under his breath, "Is someone pulling a joke on me with this 8 ball?"
He turned it over to read the response. "No. No Jokes, Sam."
He turned it back over and asked, "What do you want from me?"
He flipped it for the answer. "What do you want from me?"
"I'm getting a little freaked out," he said, to nobody. He looked back to make sure the 8 Ball had really asked him a question, but he saw that it had changed without him turning it over.
"No Need to Freak Out."
"What?"
"I'm Here to Help."
Sam put the 8 Ball back on his desk and stood up, staring at it, afraid it may start acting more strange if he let it out of his sight. He picked up his phone and dialed the office operator. Shelby answered after two rings, as always.
"Operator," she said, in her flat tone.
"Get me Ben Stevens, please," he said.
She sighed. "Sam, how long will it be before you just dial his extension?"
"Until his extension is no longer star thirteen."
"Aren't you a little old to be superstitious? I mean, should you be superstitious about the number thirteen?"
"Should I be superstitious about the number thirteen?" he asked absent mindedly, not taking his eyes off the 8 Ball. His cubicle neighbor bumped into their adjoining wall, knocked his desk a little and causing the 8 Ball to roll just enough for Sam to see the answer.
"No, But To Each His Own."
But Shelby had obviously taken his repetition of the question to signal the end of their exchange, as Ben Stevens was now answering his phone.
"New Accounts, this is Benjamin." There was faint music coming through the handset.
"Ben, it's Sam."
"Sammy, what up buddy?" The music increased in volume.
"I'm not entirely sure. I have this thing I need to show you..."
"Dude, if this is about the Carlisle account, I know. They adopted and then had a baby of their own, that's why the kids' birthdates are like, three months apart. Nothing to worry about."
"No, it's not that..." Sam trailed off, looking at the display as it turned blank, something he had never seen on any other 8 Ball.
"Are you okay, Big S?" Ben asked.
"Am I okay?"
The 8 Ball display came to life again. "All Signs Point to No, Sam."
Sam abruptly hung up the phone and picked it back up, dialing his supervisor to inform him that he would be taking the rest of the day off.
"I don't understand why you eve came in, Sam," Gary was saying from somewhere in his deep, plush armchair at his desk. "It's a Friday and it's your birthday and most of our clients are on vacation so they probably won't be calling for questions...I would've just taken a three day weekend myself."
"Well, sir, it's just that my horroscope said not to break routine this month, but something's come up."
"Right, your birthday. Take it easy, it's okay, have a great weekend, and we'll see you on Monday. Just don't be late for the meeting with the honchos...they're going over the new procedures for the new 401(k) management program."
"Would I be late for that meeting, Gary?" Sam asked, trying to act like he thought office workers should, with a level of humor he could never really pull off. But then the 8 Ball dereailed him.
"Most Definitely You Will Be Late."
Gary was still chuckling, obviously pleased with Sam's response when Sam spoke again. More to the 8 Ball than Gary, he asked, "Why would I be late?"
Gary laughed again, blown away by Sam's unassuming sense of humor. But the 8 Ball just read, "Can Not Predict Now" and promptly turned blank.
===
Okay, sorry, that's all I got for now, it's almost midnight anyway and therefore no longer really Friday.
Sorry for the last few weeks...I'll get back in the swing of things, I promise. Starting...NOW!
This week's winner is last week's winner, because I skived off last week for whatever reason. Harry Potter, I think, and visiting out-of-town friends. Also, the dog ate it.
Becca wins a very intense discussion on the outcome of the latest Harry Potter novel for the following suggestion:
"Sam - 23 - finds a magic 8 ball that is actually magic and will tell the future. Anything he asks it. Yes it works..."
And from now on, no more italics. It's just easier on the eyes this way.
===
Sam had almost always been superstitious. Never stepped under a ladder. Always threw salt over his shoulder and never once broke a mirror. He also never caught his reflection in a broken mirror, for the problems that may cause. For his key chain, he carried a lucky rabbit's foot, despite the obvious problem of it having held no good luck for the rabbit to which it was previously attached. He ran from black cats. He never went anywhere on Friday the thirteenth and never set foot on the thirteenth floor of a building. So it was no big surprise when, on his 23rd birthday, all of his co-workers at his brand new job pitched in to buy him...
"A Magic 8 Ball?" He looked the thing over, still in its purplish box with the swirls, the instructions. He had received several dozen of them over the years, always from people who thought it was a laugh, just what he needed. He felt as predictable as they must have found him.
"Yeah, well, you know, for when you need help making decisions...you're so superstitious you may need some sort of guidance." This from a man who orders pens based on the color jersey his favorite sports team of the moment happens to be wearing.
"Well, thanks, Heath," Sam said. He didn't mean it. "I guess I could use some guidance from a fifteen dollar toy." This struck him as odd; not the fact that they had clearly left the price tag on the box, a symbol of how little they truly cared, how this birthday present was merely a team building gimmick created by the HR people at Vanderheyden Financial Services, the company for which he was an office drone. This was how he described his job to himself; his business card said he was an accounts management representative. No, the price tag didn't make him frown. The price did. Certainly he had seen these, even at the novelty shops where prices are usually higher than the box retailers, for less than ten bucks.
"Ask it a question!" Meredith tittered, eager to watch Sam use this toy, the same way she seemed eager for everything; even watching Merle, the intern, replacing the jug in the water cooler made Meredith giggle. Not appeasing her would have brought immeasurable pleasure to Sam, but then again, as her last name was Brown, that gave her thirteen letters in her name. She held some power that Sam registered on a very deep subconscious level.
He opened the box and removed the eight ball. It felt slightly heavier than he remembered the Magic 8 Ball to be, but perhaps it was because over time, the only one he ever really used, the one originally given to him on his seventh birthday by his grandfather, had leaked a little of the magic blue fluid. Or perhaps, Sam reflected as he faced the circled 8 upwards, they were just made out of better stuff these days. "Is this the best birthday present ever?" he asked the Magic 8 Ball. He turned it over and was startled by what he saw.
"What's it say?" asked Edith, Meredith's boss, her identical twin in every way except twenty-six years older. The two of them bounced on the balls of their feet to try and get a look.
Sam stared at the window on his new toy. He had expected a response along the lines of, "It Is Decidedly So" or "Outlook Not So Good." He had trouble processing what he was seeing.
"Well?" asked Heath.
"Um, yes. It says 'Yes,' so it looks like you guys win the best present ever award. Thank you."
"Well, we all picked it out," Edith explained.
"But Ed went and picked it up at the store, so maybe he picked out just the perfect one," Meredith completed. The two twittered again.
"So it would seem," Sam said, this time more to himself. He looked down at the 8 ball, where it still displayed the answer to his question.
"Yes, Sam," the 8 ball said. He turned it back over and smiled at everybody.
Thank you. Now, I guess we should get back to work, huh?" Everybody smiled politely back, and dispersed to their cubicles. They had clustered outside of his own, so Sam had only to turn around and take two steps before he was in his allotted partition of the universe.
He set the 8 Ball on his desk and stared at it. He thought of asking it some more questions, to see if maybe somebody had tampered with it, or if it was so expensive and heavy because it was custom. He picked it up and said, under his breath, "Is someone pulling a joke on me with this 8 ball?"
He turned it over to read the response. "No. No Jokes, Sam."
He turned it back over and asked, "What do you want from me?"
He flipped it for the answer. "What do you want from me?"
"I'm getting a little freaked out," he said, to nobody. He looked back to make sure the 8 Ball had really asked him a question, but he saw that it had changed without him turning it over.
"No Need to Freak Out."
"What?"
"I'm Here to Help."
Sam put the 8 Ball back on his desk and stood up, staring at it, afraid it may start acting more strange if he let it out of his sight. He picked up his phone and dialed the office operator. Shelby answered after two rings, as always.
"Operator," she said, in her flat tone.
"Get me Ben Stevens, please," he said.
She sighed. "Sam, how long will it be before you just dial his extension?"
"Until his extension is no longer star thirteen."
"Aren't you a little old to be superstitious? I mean, should you be superstitious about the number thirteen?"
"Should I be superstitious about the number thirteen?" he asked absent mindedly, not taking his eyes off the 8 Ball. His cubicle neighbor bumped into their adjoining wall, knocked his desk a little and causing the 8 Ball to roll just enough for Sam to see the answer.
"No, But To Each His Own."
But Shelby had obviously taken his repetition of the question to signal the end of their exchange, as Ben Stevens was now answering his phone.
"New Accounts, this is Benjamin." There was faint music coming through the handset.
"Ben, it's Sam."
"Sammy, what up buddy?" The music increased in volume.
"I'm not entirely sure. I have this thing I need to show you..."
"Dude, if this is about the Carlisle account, I know. They adopted and then had a baby of their own, that's why the kids' birthdates are like, three months apart. Nothing to worry about."
"No, it's not that..." Sam trailed off, looking at the display as it turned blank, something he had never seen on any other 8 Ball.
"Are you okay, Big S?" Ben asked.
"Am I okay?"
The 8 Ball display came to life again. "All Signs Point to No, Sam."
Sam abruptly hung up the phone and picked it back up, dialing his supervisor to inform him that he would be taking the rest of the day off.
"I don't understand why you eve came in, Sam," Gary was saying from somewhere in his deep, plush armchair at his desk. "It's a Friday and it's your birthday and most of our clients are on vacation so they probably won't be calling for questions...I would've just taken a three day weekend myself."
"Well, sir, it's just that my horroscope said not to break routine this month, but something's come up."
"Right, your birthday. Take it easy, it's okay, have a great weekend, and we'll see you on Monday. Just don't be late for the meeting with the honchos...they're going over the new procedures for the new 401(k) management program."
"Would I be late for that meeting, Gary?" Sam asked, trying to act like he thought office workers should, with a level of humor he could never really pull off. But then the 8 Ball dereailed him.
"Most Definitely You Will Be Late."
Gary was still chuckling, obviously pleased with Sam's response when Sam spoke again. More to the 8 Ball than Gary, he asked, "Why would I be late?"
Gary laughed again, blown away by Sam's unassuming sense of humor. But the 8 Ball just read, "Can Not Predict Now" and promptly turned blank.
===
Okay, sorry, that's all I got for now, it's almost midnight anyway and therefore no longer really Friday.
Sorry for the last few weeks...I'll get back in the swing of things, I promise. Starting...NOW!
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Dissidents
Alrighty then, Restless Readers, you're right. I have been a bad blogger. But you must understand that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out last weekend.
What's not to understand? You shouldn't be reading my blog, you should be reading that book!
Okay, no suggestions this week. Instead, I will look over last week's suggestions and use one of them. I do apologize. Geez-o.
What's not to understand? You shouldn't be reading my blog, you should be reading that book!
Okay, no suggestions this week. Instead, I will look over last week's suggestions and use one of them. I do apologize. Geez-o.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Very Quickly
Tour de France, out-of-town guests, kinda sick and Harry Potter 7. That's why there hasn't been a blog in a few days. Look forward to a Tuesday Excerpt later today.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Call For Ideas, and This Job Works For Me
Today, I went out on my own. As in, for my job, I was out and about without someone to watch over me. And it worked out well. I went to St. Louis City and did a search, then went to St. Louis County and did two more, and what's great is that the people who work in the office know me now because I've been in there a few times. Now that's normal, because I have to interact with them anyway, but it's sweet that people I interact with on my job who I don't actually work with know my name. And don't treat me like garbage.
Also, I went out to Lincoln County, to Troy, MO, to the courthouse to get copies out of a court case file. This is the other part of my job, the one that I will do as needed. This will help immensely, learning how to navigate my way around the local courts, in case I do someday land a job as a roving journalist.
Monday, I went out and bought grown up clothes. I wear khakis and polos to work at Target, but the pants are baggy cargo pants because they are slightly more comfortable to work in when you're lifting and whatnot, and the polos get kind of dirty. Also, as I took some freebie Target polos and the sizes they get tend to run a little big, they are mostly a little big for me. So, I went out and bought me some flat-front dress pants that are fit very well, some nicer socks and a couple polos that are very nice indeed. Kathy says I look more like a grownup in these clothes. So good for me, right?
I am absolutely signing up for the Three Day Novel this year. No two ways about it. I have been writing it up with the blog, I feel more ready than I did the last time around in 2004. And that's part of what the blog is about...giving me a reason to write as often as possible. Starting next week (not on the blog), I will be doing some creative exercises in my free time to flex my brain out a bit.
I'm going to go ahead and plug something here: Next Friday night, at Affton High School in Affton, MO, the Affton Community Band will be performing in the Auditorium. This isn't in itself that exciting, but what is exciting is that I will be playing Timpani. If that's not exciting enough for you, and you don't feel like coming and supporting me, then come and support my father. He wrote a piece of music for concert band last year, and he is close to getting it published. The last little bit that has to fall into place is a recording and a public performance by a real band. Music publishers will look at and evaluate an unpublished manuscript, and they will even listen to a .midi file if you've got it, but they won't publish until it's proven that a real band can play the piece. So, Friday, July 27th, 2007 in the Affton High School Auditorium, I think at 8 pm but it might be 7:30, the World Premiere of Gene P. Rauscher's composition Spirit Wind.
Alright. Sorry for the lax blog week, it's been hectic with something going on every night this week and friends coming in to visit tomorrow...but even with that being said, I am officially asking for your Free Write Friday suggestions. So, let me know what you've got in mind and I'll make my pick and it'll be fun. And...GO!
Also, I went out to Lincoln County, to Troy, MO, to the courthouse to get copies out of a court case file. This is the other part of my job, the one that I will do as needed. This will help immensely, learning how to navigate my way around the local courts, in case I do someday land a job as a roving journalist.
Monday, I went out and bought grown up clothes. I wear khakis and polos to work at Target, but the pants are baggy cargo pants because they are slightly more comfortable to work in when you're lifting and whatnot, and the polos get kind of dirty. Also, as I took some freebie Target polos and the sizes they get tend to run a little big, they are mostly a little big for me. So, I went out and bought me some flat-front dress pants that are fit very well, some nicer socks and a couple polos that are very nice indeed. Kathy says I look more like a grownup in these clothes. So good for me, right?
I am absolutely signing up for the Three Day Novel this year. No two ways about it. I have been writing it up with the blog, I feel more ready than I did the last time around in 2004. And that's part of what the blog is about...giving me a reason to write as often as possible. Starting next week (not on the blog), I will be doing some creative exercises in my free time to flex my brain out a bit.
I'm going to go ahead and plug something here: Next Friday night, at Affton High School in Affton, MO, the Affton Community Band will be performing in the Auditorium. This isn't in itself that exciting, but what is exciting is that I will be playing Timpani. If that's not exciting enough for you, and you don't feel like coming and supporting me, then come and support my father. He wrote a piece of music for concert band last year, and he is close to getting it published. The last little bit that has to fall into place is a recording and a public performance by a real band. Music publishers will look at and evaluate an unpublished manuscript, and they will even listen to a .midi file if you've got it, but they won't publish until it's proven that a real band can play the piece. So, Friday, July 27th, 2007 in the Affton High School Auditorium, I think at 8 pm but it might be 7:30, the World Premiere of Gene P. Rauscher's composition Spirit Wind.
Alright. Sorry for the lax blog week, it's been hectic with something going on every night this week and friends coming in to visit tomorrow...but even with that being said, I am officially asking for your Free Write Friday suggestions. So, let me know what you've got in mind and I'll make my pick and it'll be fun. And...GO!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Tuesday Excerpts Will Return Next Week
...so that we may bring you this special presentation of Elliot Rauscher and Katherine Weier's third anniversary.
Went to dinner and a show (Lion King, awesome but better when I saw it in London in 2001) and then to Ted Drewes. Now, it's after Tuesday, so it's time for bed. Goodnight everybody.
Went to dinner and a show (Lion King, awesome but better when I saw it in London in 2001) and then to Ted Drewes. Now, it's after Tuesday, so it's time for bed. Goodnight everybody.
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