It’s hard to describe how I feel right now. I’m not in a position to wish the jailer dead, and yet the sound of an obvious scuffle upstairs - maybe that was even a gunshot, don’t know, his car is always backfiring - fills me with a thrill that maybe that part of the nightmare is over. I’ll starve, sure... or no... I’ll die of thirst before I starve. Yeah, that’s how it works, thirst then hunger. But at least I won’t have to deal with him. There’s a moment of catharsis in that. A spurt of endorphin. No one ever admits to that when they’re asked if they’ve ever had suicidal ideation, right? That doesn’t count, right? I mean, it’s not like a plan or anything. It’s barely even a thought, really. Just feeling the release of letting everything go, the worry, the worrying about worrying. We say “fuck it” or “no fucks were given” all the time, but we never really mean it. We’re so full of shit, aren’t we? We usually mean the opposite, because we’re angry or frustrated when we say it. We certainly haven’t “fucked it” and we’re walking around all day “giving fucks” after we’ve said none were given. Most of life is lying. No, a true moment of “no fucks were given” is a beautiful thing. It’s that moment on a swings-set when you get high enough to experience that split second of weightlessness. The scuffle is loud. And it’s ugly. No one sounds like Clint Eastwood or Chuck Norris or Tom Wu in a genuine fight. That’s Hollywood injecting roids into the ass of the script. When it’s really ugly, men don’t sound like that. They sound like nothing at all or like kids, if they’re losing, ready to give up the ghost of feigned masculinity in a whimper and a mewl. They sound like little bitches. I told you I don’t have keys, right? Okay, just making sure you knew that part. We like keys, don’t we? Keys and locks. Locked doors, locked cars, locked buildings, locked minds, locked borders. When did that start happening? How did people deal with their stuff when it was just 20 to 30 of us, butt-naked, no locks to lock, easily noticed from a mile if you were downwind? We had stuff didn’t we? A massive thunk above me loosens some of the popcorn in the ceiling and it drops to the dirty floor. Ever live in a house with a popcorn ceiling? It’s not light and fluffy the way you would think it is. It’s been painted or glued in place, so even though it’s pliant to the touch, it’s heavier than it looks. It drops quick. Don't imagine snow drifting down. It’s the worst. If you have central air that comes through ceiling vents, eventually a dark fan of dusk spreads out along the ceiling from every vent. You’ll never get it off, and if you try, it just looks worse. Yeah, popcorn ceilings are the worst. Drop ceilings with those weird pockmarked gypsum panels come a close second. There's always that one with a corner that's got a water stain that looks like a coffee stain. What's up with that? I wonder if he’s dead. It’s kinda’ quiet now. I hear something. Dragging? Maybe I’m just imagining that. Is there a difference between imagining and fantasizing? Is one just speculative observation and the other is possibly malicious premeditation? Like, if by some miracle I get out of here and I see that his bloody body was indeed dragged off somewhere, does my present adrenaline spike make me somehow complicit? Probably not to a cop or a D.A., but what about God? Is that something I would have to confess? Not that I wouldn’t because, wow, the day I meet my maker and have to account for myself, it’s going to be an all-nighter. It’s still quiet upstairs, but not completely quiet. Something is happening. Something. What if whoever came in also decides to keep me here? I know, what are the chances of that, right? Which is pretty easy for you to think as you’re reading this with keys in your pocket, but remember, I don’t have keys, so I’ve already learned that the chances are not zero. Or what if he just never comes down here and I die anyway? I mean, who goes in the basement? Basements are creepy. You only go down there when the water heater doesn’t work or to get or put away the fake Christmas tree. Other than that… But if what I hear isn’t whoever came in, if it’s the guy who was already here, and I yell, I’m absolutely fucked. That’s a fact. It’s pretty obvious I’m not the first person to sit here without keys, so. Yeah, I’ll just sit here and watch that little piece of ceiling popcorn holding on by a cobweb and wonder what it will taste like to drink my own piss.
I've been playing in FanFic land. So many words. Lord. An entire language of words and terms and abbreviations and acronyms. And a history! Oooo! Don't you dare make the mistake of not knowing your history. And also the possible source - possible, not definite - source of why the term Mary Sue means anything and everything and nothing all at once. In FanFic land, Mary Sue is synonymous and 100% interchangeable with the concept of an Original Character (OC for short), and both seem interchangeable with the idea of a Self Insert. In FanFic land there is no pulling the meaning of these things apart. There's begrudged admission that a canon character can also be Mary Sue, but an OC is invariably a Mary Sue, Self Insert, Wish Fulfillment, so these terms may as well all mean the same thing. "Would you read a ship with an OC?" "No, no. I hate Mary Sues." "...and if it's not a Mary Sue?" "How? You said OC, right? OC, Mary Sue, schlemiel schlimazel. Same thing." "No... An OC is just a character not in the canon. A Mary Sue is something else entirely." *smug eyeroll at the insufferable newbie, walks away to talk to the people who actually know what's going on.* I'm totally picking wildebeest or dugong for my next incarnation....
... and why you should laugh right in their faces. Let's get the biggest one out of the way first, shall we? Those fucking smiles! Who the fuck do they think they are, the Thai? You can't go anywhere in America without their 50,000 watt smiles, recently whitened to a near blue-white, blinding you like a bloody searchlight. FUCKING ANNOYING! Why can't they do it right and just be grumpy and grim on a constant basis? This is how it's done, America: Ted - "Morning, Bill." Bill - "Piss off, Ted. What right do you have to be such a cheery cunt. We're British." Ted - "Right you are, Bill. Sod you, and your wife, and your manky house." Bill - "Much better. Sounded like a fucking Yank there for a minute." The way they say "great", "brilliant", and "awesome" and actually mean great, brilliant, and awesome. When the fuck are they going to learn proper sarcasm and irony? If you want to intone those sentiments, America, the proper way is to say "naff", "bellend", and "cunt". That's how it's done. Someone please explain it to them because I just can't be arsed anymore. Their spelling. Where to begin? It's honour, valour, and splendour. When you drop the U like a bunch of idiots trying to spell things the way they sound, you're disrespecting the longstanding, totally toxic, completely co-dependent relationship we've had with France since the beginning of buggery. Didn't they bail you lot out during your little tea party? Right, learn proper respect and spell things the way our French invaders taught us. Their food. Actually, their food is a bit of all right and they certainly know how to fill a plate, but I'm still going to slag them for it. They've got the words for jelly and jam completely cocked up, and where are all the different kinds of sweet creams? Huh? Where are they? Oh, wait... I just remembered, their chocolate! Yeah! I swear it's like they repackaged actual feces and stamped HERSHEY on it. Give me a second while I spread some Marmite on my toast before putting beans on it. Mmmm. Tastes like actual ass. The way mum used to make. Now where was I? Oh, yeah! Shit chocolate, innit! Their complete lack of knowledge concerning the Royal Family. Actually, I'm an antiroyalist, so that lot can piss right off, but that's no excuse for not understanding why they should piss right off. One little revolution and la-di-da, they're too good to know Who's Who in Royal Society. (Seriously, though, that Harry is a ginger wanker. What were you thinking, Meghan?) Fuck you, America, for undoing our proper, left-side-of-the-road driving. That's all I've got to say there. Fuck you. School is 1 to 13. What the fuck are Freshmen? Why are the Men Fresh? Are there Stalemen? And why do you want More Sopho? Is that another cocked up name for jam? And shouldn't Junior be the first year of high school? At least Senior makes some sense, but fuck the rest of this shit. They don't have electric kettles! This alone should mean they have to give the entire country back to us! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING??? HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR 75 CUPS OF TEA A DAY?? If you say microwave or stove, I'm killing you. All right? You've been warned. Don't even. How do Americans not have Bubble & Squeak? What do they do with their leftovers!?!? Fucking barmy! I've saved this one for last because it's a bit subtle and you know yanks. Thick as two short planks. Here's how it works. Get this part into your heads and maybe some of the above will rectify itself. The entire world is 100% at its leisure to criticize you and offer you totally unsolicited lists of how/why you do pretty much everything wrong, from waking up in the morning, to the last flush of your strange toilettes before bed. But that's a one-way contract. You Yanks are not allowed to even mention or comment things you notice about other countries or cultures. We can do it to you; that's fine. You can't do it to us; that is not on at all, and we will keep shoving these kinds of lists into your face until you understand that fact. .... sigh. Sorry. One of those stupid lists came up in a different slice of the digital piece, and frankly, that's pretty much how it always reads to me. I don't mean to offend, honestly. I hold our British members dear in my heart, and I'm sure they all know I'm a painfully pining, totally obvious, not-so-secret Anglophile. Also, we actually do have electric kettles. We just don't treat them as though they were religious artifacts. Variety of Electric Kettles Available at Walmart, the most "America, FUCK YEAH!" of mega-stores. (click the above link)
Stop serving us garbage and maybe good shows would actually last to their finish. Maybe audiences would actually watch the shows, on the platforms you provide, which would let you know what's actually being watched, and we would remain faithful, not look for other venues, like PirateBay. Just found out you canceled The Expanse. No surprise there! You aired the show on SyFy in the U.S. as its first run. You gave us all the build-up and teasers and all that good jazz that left us drooling. You gave us decent actors (Some better than decent. Shohreh Aghdashloo, you are a goddess!) You gave us great production values. You actually stuck to the story from the books pretty well, all things considered. And after spending all that money and hype, you fucking boned it by giving us a painfully obvious "Edited for Content" version of the show. What the entire fuck? From the first example of a voiceover to turn a fuck into a frig, I knew we were being served the sanitized version, and if you had to sanitize it, that meant there was an unsanitized version to be had. So yes, of course I went looking for the Canadian version that airs on Space instead of your SyFy kindergarten version. Of course I did. And apparently, so did every other person who liked the show. Bad enough you stuck a fucking bar of soap into Chrisjen Avasarala's mouth, but the few times you actually let her speak the way her character actually speaks in the books, which is a HUGE part of her character, you bleach even that to the fucking bone. Wake the fuck up and smell the mother-fucking coffee already. Who the fuck are you even pandering too? The troggs watching Rosanne, masturbating themselves bloody to the meaningless, pointless fake nostalgia? This is why I'm this close to simply canceling regular cable altogether and just going with online providers like Netflix, who don't treat me like a 9 year-old boy growing up in some ridiculous household where a simple Fuck! because of a coffee-table-banged-toe is a fucking felony.
In other climes someone posted this image with the caption "All would be story tellers should take a lesson from nature. Don't let anything stop you from finishing your story...BREAK THROUGH.": Spoiler: Spoiler just to save space Which inspired some silliness from me to the tune of: There was a tree; there was a rock. There was a man in a gingham frock. The man did stroll to yonder tree, and with earnest voice and bended knee, proclaimed his love, beneath these boughs for lovely frocks and kitchen towels. Then thither strolled another man, this one dressed in kilt, tartán. He was bewitched and glamour-struck. Next to the man, himself did tuck. He took his hand, and this he said: "For frocks and towels, we shall be wed." The tree looked down, as did the rock at these two gents of kilt and frock. And finding them both hale and whole, did bless them each, and each their soul. An odd arrangement they may be, But so's a rock who loves a tree. To which the original poster responded: Quite a twist and different spin, for was not the way I did intend. For I saw these two fighting for space, each one trying to the other erase. For life and distractions for the writer does deal, and the tendency to give up often appeals. So one battles the other, at peace they never be, yet the story demands it's time and will not be stop until it is free. To which I replied: Then you and I, each in our way, have come to show and come to say the spark that burns within one's chest must be fanned, not laid to rest. It must be given voice and love. T'was what I saw in the post above. A mortal duel, a lover's embrace, It is for us to set the the pace, the tone, the spin, the gentle lean, that brings forth the tale from hearts unseen. Giving rise to that connection of parted souls, lost in introspection. So I say to thee, O forum friend, and just in case I did offend, On different paths we surely walk, (Mine bedecked with kilt and frock) But the goal of you and the goal of me is to reconcile that rock and tree.
... because the number of fucks to be given = zero Where I live, in my culture, I am entitled to the quaintly polite title of licenciado (Lcdo.) because of my education and my certification with the federal court. I would never use it. I can't imagine being so crass and full of myself as to demand it. Ridiculous. I get an email a little bit ago from some waste-of-space who can't be bothered to read rules or warnings, who signs his final email to me: Dickhole McNutsack*, MBA. MBA? Really? Where shall I leave the tithings, my liege. *bows extravagantly* MBA. Give me a fucking break. *Names changed to protect privacy.
Yesterday was my B-Day. 48 years on this spinning rock. It was a quiet day. I worked most of the morning and then gave myself permission to do not a damned thing but veg with some old DVDs. Lots of people wished me well on Facebook and that's always really nice. One person did something that knocked my feet out from under me. He sent me a photo, circa 1990. It's the most nondescript photo you could ever imagine, not even very good resolution, but it shook me. It's from when I lived in Berlin, something I talk about often here in the forum because it was my Halcyon Days of Youth. I didn't just visit; I lived there for several years. The nature of the job I did while living there made being a shutterbug something that many of us subconsciously shied away from, and cellphones where still science fiction in those days, let alone ones with cameras, so I have barely any photographic evidence of my time in Berlin. Seeing that image was like an archeological find. Until yesterday I didn't know it even existed. It's just me walking on a street. My pals and I would go to the place in the photo to turn Deutschemarks into dollars or widdershins likewise depending on what the exchange rate was, trading for whatever was more favorable. The photo opened a file drawer in my mind that had been rusted shut for decades, one filled with memories of finding little hole-in-the wall pubs with my buddies, ones where GIs didn't go (we hated the "typical haunts") and meeting the people who went to those neighborhood bars, making friends with people our own age, and listening to stories from older Germans about the war and the things they saw, always amazed at how well the older folks spoke English, and how eager they were to share with you. It's funny how a casual gift can seem like nothing yet mean so much. View attachment 22975
About a week ago I had to register in the SAM system for government contractors. Up to now I've been just a freelance independent contractor regularly contracted by the USDOJ in PR, and I liked that status. I was just me, an entity apart and separate from this increasingly insane paradigm that is my government. Registering and answering all the myriad questions (page after page after page) felt like taking off my clothing, piece by piece, until I was floating naked in the cold, the history of the years I've lived marked upon a body that no longer has the carefree beauty of youth. All up for inspection, for review. Muscle tone: acceptable. Body fat: increasing. Skin tone: decreasing. Height: lower than average. Vision: decreasing Hearing: decreasing Genitals: respectable but no need to call Guinness. The same government that many years ago told me it wasn't interested in my services simply because of the gender of my prefered bedmates. Annerving, to say the least.
It happened It was We did We thought We said We espoused We tolerated We understood We made space for And I will not pretend otherwise just to appease your modern delicacy
Remember when you were in 8th grade and had a report or assignment due the next day at school? An assignment you knew about for weeks and you (of course) left it to the last minute. And it's 8:00 pm, and the feeling of "oh, I've got time" gets supplanted by the cold, sick feeling of "fuck me, it's getting late and I don't think I even have paper to write this thing on". And you start bargaining in your head and thinking of excuses to make. You do everything but actually start writing it because then that means acknowledging it and facing the situation you've created for yourself. Lately that's how I feel about my WIP. Why?
November 30, 2017 From a distance, the trees that survived the storm, which had seemed like platoons of bare popsicle sticks along the mountainside, have now grown strangely green. In an effort to survive they have sprouted dense layers of leaves along their trunks where leaves would typically never be found. I thought at first that it was surely just vines taking advantage of the cleared canopy - and in some cases it certainly is that - but the vast majority of it is the trees themselves making use of some hidden subroutine to stay alive. They look like dead branches under water, draped in algae, and I am a little fish hiding in the roots of the mangroves. It feels much like I imagine it would be to live inside a river. The medium resists. There is a viscosity to communication and travel. One direction pushes you along; the other direction is a slog. Just staying in place requires an effort unknown to those creatures that inhabit the air. I am neither colorful nor flashy. I am small and brown and stout, but my fins are strong and I have learned the currents well. Here in my Caribbean river I swim with other stout brown fish amongst the strange green trees and we reminisce of our time on the land. We're not dead. Far from it. And for now we swim.
Unless I stipulate otherwise, anything I post is just my opinion. Say it with me now: /əˈpinyən/. Writing is a creative endeavor; thus, most of the conversations in which we engage in this forum are made of opinions. Opinions are not facts. You believe in an opinion. You know a fact. Don't get it twisted. If you disagree with my opinion, that's perfectly fine. When I don't come back as though I've accepted some kind of "two men enter, one man leaves" Thunderdome Epic Battle to the Death Because It's 2018 Muthafuqa! arrangement, try not to be too disappointed. Unless we're married, boning, or you gave birth to me, I don't care enough about your opinion to get all glassy-eyed, hovering over the keyboard, waiting for your next post so I can pounce and post something epic at you. The me who would have engaged you in that kind of tragic stupidity is many years in the past.
Begs the question has nothing to do with causing a question to arise in one's mind. It refers instead to a logical fallacy wherein the desired conclusion is assumed as correct in the original argument or question, usually in a hidden or disingenuous fashion.
Trigger Finger It holds the pen above the page. Turns the key to endless rage. On lands of gender, race, and thought. Conversations tied in a knot. Sputter, spit, fall to the floor. Causes, pauses, ire galore. Boredom guides the trollish hand. Lemming-like, we join the band. We dance and follow, you and me, over the cliff and into the sea.
So wide. It splays and spreads. And it's hot. So hot. Puerto Rico is hot, but it's a different hot. It's a living hot, a jungle hot, a green hot. This is a brown hot made of winds that are hotter than the standing air and are what you think of as desert winds. So many highways. The highways have highways in their highways. So, so wide. Huge loops leading on to perpendicular highways. Whole municipalities in Puerto Rico could fit in the dead space of these loops. A land made for giants and we are tiny ants on the sidewalk. I spent the day looking for used bookstores after the sterile disappointment of Barnes & Noble. I found a little place in the old downtown area of Ocoee. The forgotten downtown. Little stores in a row in a low brick building made of real brick, not stucco, nestled in an area of Florida bungalows with jalousie windows from the 20's and 30's. An older blond lady runs the place. I don't know her name, but she's Patty in my mind. She looks like a Patty. She was nice. She laughed a lot. Her eyes were mostly crow's feet behind thick glasses. I bought a book because I didn't want to be another looker and not a buyer. Maybe she does alright, maybe not. Who knows. We chat for a little while. She knows her Sci-Fi. The old stuff. The good stuff. She's fun. We dork out for about half an hour. I get the feeling that a half an hour of dorking out is more important to her than the four dollars I paid for the book. Back in my rental car, in the layer-cake of heat, and back to the hotel. Maybe some of the Brits will have ceded a corner of the pool area. Two kids per family, but seven lounge chairs? Even if we set aside one lounge chair per family to house the copious alcohol and cigarettes, still, the maths must be different in the U.K. Later I'll look for a thread about American tourists and think ironic thoughts. Vacation. Yay!