Blog Entries from Iain Aschendale

  1. Things That Annoy Me But Shouldn't

    It's been over a year since I've spoken to any of my regular coworkers face to face. In the last ten months, I've had face to face conversations with only two other native speakers of English. The semester ends soon. I have never seen any of my students face to face. I haven't even seen many of them online. I don't know some of their genders. My mother had a serious stroke in October. She's not really connected to the world anymore. Sometimes I can get answers, often I can't. She...
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  2. Zero dark: Zero Votes

    I was pretty sure it would come to that, but another entry, another zero votes. I'm not going to workshop it because I don't think it's salvageable, but for anyone who was curious: It was a discussion between God (with aspects of both Yahweh and Allah, more on that later) somewhere between Genesis 1:2 and Genesis 1:4. Very early. 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of...
  3. Later Days

    So this girl I dated... Girl? Like me, she's pushing 50 now, but back then we were young and wild and free, with odd bits of our hair shaved off, other bits dyed odder colors, boots and jeans and doing the whirlwind in the pit and pulling skinheads off each other and the one who the bouncers didn't kick out would always grab the other's coat before the long ride home in my rusting hulk of a van and the even longer kiss goodnight in the park and the driveway and the front doorstep, her dad...
  4. Ritual

    Dark, a warm night, the buzz of the insects is still foreign to you after all these years, something that you don't know until making planetfall again and hear the tones that you co-evolved with over those short generations. Streetlights don't buzz anymore, LEDs, boring and constant. Inside the store you point, #72, Marlboro reds. Softpack. It's not a long way back from the store so you flip the pack back and forth in your hands and begin to smack it, filters down, into the palm of your...
  5. The Funeral of My Youth

    Inspired by a recent comment in Random Thoughts. When I was a senior in high school, one of my classmates died. Not through any of the usual teenage shenanigans, not through a random bit of ionizing radiation twisting his DNA. It took a week to find the spot where the flight path had made its abrupt intersection with local geography. His father wasn't certified to fly on instruments alone. But when the funeral came... Ever been to a high school funeral? I wore black jeans, a dark grey...
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  6. Time Travel

    Just a quickie inspired by a friend wondering where the time travelers are and why they aren't helping us out of this foul year of our lord 2020: 2076 Alpha (lost timeline): "Look, Bob, 2000-2008 was a terrible time for America and the world and it lead to the current situation. With this new time machine, I'm going to go back and make sure that black dude, what was his name? Ombaba? Obomo? Anyway, once those past Americans see how beneficial a truly multiracial society can be it'll all get...
  7. Roche Limitations

    I accidentally put something mildly political onto my "safe for everyone" Facebook. Nothing like the howling I do on the other 18 identities I maintain (or is it more? Or less? I'll never tell), but it was spotted by.... ....my father, on one of his twice-annual visits to the page. My father and I aren't on the same page politically. We're not in the same chapter, nor the same book. Not even the same author. The libraries that carry his book wouldn't allow mine and vice versa. But we...
  8. Burnt Toast

    "I saw Duke go upstairs when Jill and I came downstairs, this morning when time to cook breakfast. " Mike added proudly, "I helped cooking. " "That was the last time you saw Duke? " "I am not see Duke since, Jubal. I proudly burned toast. " "I'll bet you did. You'll make some woman a fine husband yet, if you aren't careful. " "Oh, I burned it most carefully. " -Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land To look at things, all I have is a pile of burnt toast. And this isn't a writing...
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  9. You Did Not See This Anywhere

    So yesterday I awoke from this dream where I was in an East German prison, saw a moment when the guards accidentally left both gates of the sally port open, and simply slipped out and started running. The thing is, the production values were really bad and even though I was in a first-person mental POV, the camera angles and POVs kept changing. I ran into a nearby forest and up a hill, more of a small mountain really. It was nighttime, possibly rainy, but I was still trying to avoid...
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  10. Others: A COVID Meditation

    So I saw in the news that someone* did something* bad the other day and I could tell by their name that their grandmother didn't serve the same things for dinner that my grandmother did. Other. And I could make some guesses on what their grandmother might have served, based on that name, and the first thought that sprang to my mind was “Well, of course, what did you expect?” And the second thought that sprang to my mind was “Where the fuck did that come from?” But I know where it came...
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  11. Our Man in Japan Doesn't Know What to Think

    Another coronavirus blog entry. The rate of infection in Japan is quite low. If you believe the government and the Japanese media. No, this isn't a random screed against the mainstream media or government coverups. It has been well-documented for decades that the Japanese media is absolute shit. See, they run on a "press-club" system here. In order to gain access to officials for interviews, news organs and their reporters need to be members of the "Reporters Club," or in Japanese...
  12. That Moment

    That moment when you hear your native language spoken everywhere. That moment when you spend folding green. That moment when your niece reveals her terrifying intelligence while discussing the coronavirus. That moment when you blow through a tollbooth at seventy miles an hour with two factory-made electronic joints, two firearms, and several hundred rounds of ammo in the car. That moment when you didn't even dent any laws in doing so. That moment when the dogs get out and rocket around...
  13. Alternate Endings, Suppressed

    Alternate Endings, Suppressed. I. Resistance The young boy's voice sounded so far away, so very far away. Elsa looked around the cramped space that had been her home for the last six months. The battle was over. Germany had won the war. The roaring in her ears drowned out everything but the sound of her heart pounding in her chest, a pounding so loud that she was certain that the men of the Gestapo would hear it even outside the building, even in their headquarters in the center of...
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  14. Heathers, or Veronica Passing

    I wasn't one of the cool kids. I was an outcast, a freak, and I told myself I liked it that way. Maybe I did. There are words other than depression, although they sometimes come hand in hand. Introversion. Sincerity? Or am I being judgmental? But a decade or so ago, one of the cheerleaders died. Twenty years after high school, twenty years after I last saw her. We weren't friends, but we had a couple classes together. She was blonde and blue-eyed and beautiful and bubbly and fit, and...
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  15. Nothing More

    No idea where this is going, but I wanted to get a version of it down while it was fresh in my head. Names are changed, but the first couple bits are true. There were three of us in that Home Ec class, three guys that is. Kelly knew he was going to die soon anyway, so he hung himself in an attic in New Orleans, and last I heard Rick was downstate doing eight to ten for manslaughter. Me? I guess I'm the winner of the group, tending bar at dive in Hokkaido where we sell rotgut sake,...
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