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Post by Mister Buch on Sept 3, 2011 22:58:34 GMT 1
Well bugger them. I'll start the ball rolling over here, anyway. I sent an error report sucessfully, for the record. This is strange for them, but we'll see how it goes. At any rate, I've been writing too. I'd recommend this word counter if you're writing, seems sturdy- www.wordcounter.net/1.Two kids I don't know pull my legs, Gary Fry of all people has my wrists in his sweaty, year-five-sized grip and Scott is getting ready to... I don't even know. This traditionalism is new to me. My bullies have always been the modern, rumour-spreading kind. My legs are running an automatic flight response; I can't even feel them. My best bet is with Gary. I struggle three times and realise that it absolutely will not help. So I stop. Gary laughs, my wrists get really hot, like a Chinese burn, and I'm crying. It's all over. 2.People who are cleverer than you get carried away with it. I don't mean they rub your nose in it, just that they forget how far, or how short, the reach of their intelligence extends. See, they make little jokes - even the nicest, best-meaning ones - make little jokes that they know you won't get, and they chuckle about how they get it and you don't. And they're aware that you don't get the joke, but what they forget is that you're aware of that too. They get carried away. And we roll our eyes. And they never even know.
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Post by Cali on Sept 3, 2011 23:41:22 GMT 1
1. Retired MI-6 agent Dirk G. Dangermouth had a bit of a tiff with his wife before finally coercing himself to be as distant as possible from her until seperation made the heart grow fonder. Only issue was that they still shared the same cottage in the East Midlands. During the night when gathering firewood he had a close encounter with a feral skunk by the pier. Using his training, he pulled out his 9mm pistol and unsuccessfully attempted to ambush the skunk. Thus the (former) best gun in the agency was defeated and his wife scolded him once again.
2. During my stint in Cartersworth for embezzlement, I found myself spending half my sentence in the kitchen with a pissed off Jamaican gangster who I knew only by his nickname, Jitters. In an aforementioned deal he had with the mess supervisor, he was distressed that the man never paid him back. Proper revenge would require to take a dump into a steam wash machine, but it was physically impossible. I told him to use a tray and just slide it in there. Eventually, we both squeezed one out into a tray, and thus a lifelong alliance was formed.
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Post by MarianneClaus on Sept 4, 2011 5:50:11 GMT 1
1
I'm trying not to cry. I keep telling myself that crying is nothing to be ashamed of, that it's only my body's reaction to a stressful situation, that all of the women in my family cry when they're angry, that they can't help it, that crying is not a sign of weakness.
I don't believe me yet.
Looking into the green-brown eyes of my one-time friend, one-time something else, now all-time... enemy -there is no other word -I see my reflection in the mirror of his dilated pupil. I look desperate. That's probably because I am.
2
My grandmother Annemarie kept birds in a cage. She claimed that they sung more sweetly for the darkness of her room. Maybe that was true; no one else wanted to go into a room where the sickly sweet scent of death and slow decay lingered in dark corners and lace curtains.
When Annemarie died, my mother took the songbirds and loosed them into the open sky. They weren’t ready for the shock of the light. They had been bathed in perpetual darkness for so long that even the dank twilight sky burned their eyes. Was freedom truly so kind?
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Post by Mister Buch on Sept 4, 2011 23:18:41 GMT 1
I loved all four of those - partiularly the name 'Dirk G. Dangermouth'.
3.
You're finally here, doing the thing you've been wanting to do for years. The thing that has wrenched your ambitions in its direction, twisting the squealing steel they were made of, permanently colouring how you appear to everyone who knows you. You did it. You're there.
Don't you dare. Don't you feel underwhelmed now! Don't feel like you need a new target because this one was no good. I know your tricks. Fucking enjoy this.
Actually the view is kind of crazy. Looks very different to the photos. Hell, looks better. Maybe just two minutes of silence.
Ah.
Ahhh.
Good.
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Post by MarianneClaus on Sept 5, 2011 7:58:35 GMT 1
That last one was intense, Buch. Also completely universal. We tell ourselves that we're going to love something and then that something never quite lives up to it.
Oh, and the September batch is up and running.
3
There are chandelier earrings dangling above the tube that is keeping her alive.
They're pearls -I doubt that they're actual pearls, not when they're trying to raise money for a million dollar transplant -hanging in a diamond shape just below her earlobes. The tubes wrap around the curve of her ears, winding around the sides of her face to barely dip into her nostrils. She's standing there, telling us all how much she loves us, and I can't focus on anything but those earrings swaying in the air that isn't enough for her survival.
I've never loved breathing so much.
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Post by Mister Buch on Sept 5, 2011 22:45:41 GMT 1
Thanks for the heads-up, Bennet.
And thanks for the compliment too. I was going for universal! I really like the descriptions in your new entry there.
Here's two more of mine.
4.
Catharine stared and wept for hours before she finally made a shaking V-sign with her fingers and dropped it onto the skin just above Jane's eyes. She dragged the eyelids down with far too much force, jamming them shut and pressing slightly into the pupils, like holes in a pair of bowling balls meant for someone more slender. She had expected less give, some kind of stretching sensation.
'Are you still a--wake?' Catharine was going to say 'alive' but caught it just in time. She already knew the answer, but she didn't see any need to rush it.
5.
When you're at school your every emotion is timetabled, and it's marvellous. You get happiness at a set time every week for an hour, games for two, double-boredom one afternoon, monotony for mornings, of course. The people sat next to you are chosen for you and stay, for a year. And you crave freedom, and you never knew it.
And when you get lost, you start learning that you never knew your way. And you make little plans, little timetables. Sunday we have a roast. And it gets worse. Seven thirty, Coronation Street. And then somebody makes you a fresh one, or you wait for the bell.
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Post by MarianneClaus on Sept 6, 2011 1:32:57 GMT 1
I'm glad you liked it. I was actually for once writing about something I'd seen that day. Am thoroughly depressed.
4
You could say I'm in love.
I'm not in love like girls crushing on boys across schoolyards. I'm in love like a baby opening ocean eyes and seeing her mother's face, rising from underwater and ears breaking the surface.
You see, I'm in love with living.
I love the oxygen. I love the chase; I love knowing that every moment won't ever happen again, that sunlight will never again hit that leaf in just that way, hearing the swan song of raindrops.
You could also say I'm in love with dying.
5
We're all dying. She's just better at it than the rest of us.
I've never prayed outright. I don't do the "getting on one's knees and looking up" very well. Never have. But I find that I do pray, in my own way. I like to think of it as little "asides," like thinking "Please let this happen" and then going back to thinking whatever I had been thinking before. Never too often, never too long. But things change.
I think of her. All of the time. Same as always.
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Post by Cali on Sept 6, 2011 2:17:18 GMT 1
3. They've come to disturb me yet again.
They hold no citizenship to any nation, but are barbarians within my skull. Demons from the past that unraveled evolved and have embodied some ghastly alternate reality. They take many forms: Visions of my loved ones dying, my horrid faults and my affliction with a mental pestilence that some deem to be false. Chauvinistic men who sought to hector me, and the passive aggressive women who eschewed me at the height of my confusion.
I know I have no one to blame but myself, but do these abhorrent, taxing visions count as myself?
4. Horace brought in his electric guitar into the job interview, hoping it could either intimidate his future employees or bedazzle them. Either of these could be in his favor.
The interview manager at Cowpens Real Estate was an exotic looking woman with tanned skin, mascara and shoulder length black hair. But that was hardly was Horace was lusting after. He desired to solicit fame, and was too much of a shrinking violet to start a rock band.
So then Horace did begin to play "Highway Star" by Deep Purple before the first question was even uttered. Few were amused.
5. "Okay kids, it's time for a little rap!" Old man Reynolds shouted as his oaths of grandchildren sprawled 'neath his rocking chair.
"Grandpa, you're white and elderly. You're no good at this." Lenora, the gifted, pigtailed daughter of his second son piped.
"I can be good." He gasped, tapping his cane firmly onto the hard wood floor. "I can be good as that Zee Jay fellah, lemme tell ya."
"Grandpa, please do-"
"Here's a little ditty 'bout yer ma and pa, who we took on a road trip to Witchita-"
His audience abandoned him, no intention of reuniting until supper.
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Post by Battlechantress on Sept 6, 2011 16:01:01 GMT 1
September's finally up and running. Their front page offers no explanation as to why it was messed up to begin with, but at least it works now.
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Post by Mister Buch on Sept 6, 2011 16:57:19 GMT 1
It started working yesterday. I emailed the admins actually. Apparently they forgot to activate this month. But they were very nice about it.
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Post by Battlechantress on Sept 6, 2011 17:04:46 GMT 1
Funny, I sent a bug report on the 2nd and they didn't reply. I guess the long holiday weekend threw them off.
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Post by Mister Buch on Sept 6, 2011 21:13:59 GMT 1
You're just not as cool and charming as I am.
--
6.
-If you could just... y'know, give this a try? -I don't understand anything you've said so far. -We're only three pages in! -What is it ABOUT? Where the hell is it SET? -Middle-Earth. -What's that? -It... I dont know. -The middle-east, do you mean? -No, no. -Because it seems like Somerset, so far. -It's along those lines. -Indian Somerset. -No! No, not middle-eastern, middle EARTH. -The middle of the Earth? I think that's nickel. -Like the middle-ages. -Back when we were all midgets. -Are you deliberately doing this? -I wasn't at first. This is really frustrating.
7.
Erik wiped the blood off his leather jacket, pulled his hat down a touch and grinned like a maniac. He twisted the door handle without leaving fingerprints and breathed fresh, sun-warmed air.
The sense of freedom was incredible. There was guilt, too, a rising heat at his neck, but so what? He was free now. None of it mattered: his money trouble, the divorce, his concerto. All moot points. Now that he would have to go into hiding, none of it mattered a scratch. Someone else would fix those.
His one problem was that he was a murderer.
One!
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Post by Cali on Sept 6, 2011 21:43:17 GMT 1
6. Use your head, those New Age fucks tell me. Think good thoughts, believe and you can achieve. It's all in the head, all in the thoughts.
My thoughts must have dysentery.
I know: they contracted it by drinking from this terrible chaotic maelstrom we call modern society. They say "Oh the water is safe only if you believe it is!". Pardon me, but that's not how bacterial infections work, dumbass. That's exactly why African children are starving, because they aren't thinking good thoughts, right?
Between this and numerous other cerebral fuckery, I'd say my sanity is slowly perishing from leprosy.
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Post by Battlechantress on Sept 7, 2011 0:00:57 GMT 1
I've got a couple more posts to edit and I'll be good.
1 September 2011
We in the Drought Belt are used to the 100+ degrees now, 60 days and counting. Dead and stunted crops can be found in all directions, and the brown grass crunches like kindling when you walk on it. There is no talk of planting, only surviving. We get nervous when the south wind comes up strong. Grass and timber burned in seconds. 33 homes and a church now gone. "Maybe Katia will bring us rain," a neighbor mumbles as we watch black smoke rise. It's repeated among ourselves like a fervent prayer, unheeded.
Edit: I'm caught up on posts, but I ended up writing about Annie's sandal stealing ways for today since I have a headache that won't quit. We'll see what I come up with for tomorrow.
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Post by MarianneClaus on Sept 7, 2011 5:12:15 GMT 1
6
It's hot. It's also muggy, which isn't something I'm used to. It's the kind of humidity that makes you want to peel off your skin and stand in the walk-in freezer at Smart and Final. Did I write that?
It's the heat that makes looking at my cat unbearable. How can she stand it? Their bodies must be better equipped in the temperature regulation department. Just another reminder that some people are better for some situations. It's not their fault; they're just wired that way.
7
Two days. This isn't good. I'm not ready. But when will I ever be?
The dog keeps trying to eat the cat's food. My cat keeps trying to run outside and roll around in the grass. The tiny bugs are making miniature webs in my rosebush. To quote the poet Rumi, "Fish want linen shirts." I did a report on that poem. I didn't understand it but got the A anyway.
The meaning has never been clearer: Nobody wants what they've got.
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