It’s amazing, the ramifications of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This morning, for instance: everything was set for me to leave the house at the appropriate time, to catch the appropriate bus, until I tried to make my lunch. I got two pieces of fifteen-grain bread out of the bag in the cupboard, as usual. I got a knife out of the silverware drawer, as usual. I got the raspberry jelly out of the refrigerator, also as usual. However, instead of getting the vat of peanut butter out of the same cupboard as the bread, which I would have done way back when the bread was extracted from said cupboard, I got a small jar of all-natural peanut butter out of the same refrigerator containing the jelly. To be perfectly clear, I do not condone using all-natural peanut butter. The oil has a nasty habit of separating from the food-paste, and unless you stir it constantly or refrigerate it, it is completely worthless in it’s binary state. But my girlfriend, she insisted that I make the switch from delicious, non-separating Skippy to this new, purportedly healthier demon. She’s pretty cool, but she knows nothing of proper PB&J manufacturing. Anyway, so I have to refrigerate my peanut butter, which keeps it in a terrible, un-spreadable condition, and when I attempt to spread, it pulverizes the bread, rips wide gashes through the fifteen-grain matrix. I try to spread another dollop of the thick paste on the other piece of bread, with similar results. I glance at the stove clock, notice I’m four minutes behind schedule and curse out loud. Furious, I slap the two pieces of ravaged bread together, squeeze them into a ball in my fist, until the thick, un-spreadable peanut butter oozes between my fingers, and hurl the useless mass onto the countertop.
So now I’m on a bus, not the one I should be on, but a later, less timely bus. My hand smells like all-natural peanut butter. In five hours, I know that I will be sitting in the break room at work, angry and hungry. Worse than that, though, are the vampires. I expect them at any time, their pale noses hot on the trail of my peanut buttery flesh.
Based on a true story. I have this and another story in the works right now. Both feature vampires, for whatever reason. Maybe they will become one, or maybe they will spread their wings and fly far from the nest. Excited to be finally producing fiction again in larger amounts.
2.26.2009
2.24.2009
Spacing Issues
My entire life (really since first grade) I've operated under one overriding truth: when starting a new sentence the first word appears two spaces after a period. However, it has been brought to my attention that it is not only acceptable, but in fact commonplace, to start a new sentence one space after a period. My world has been shaken to it's foundation. While I'm hesitant to work against my punctuational programming, I feel that the single space strategy is far superior, from an aesthetical stance. Makes the page more uniform, more balanced. So, I'm struggling to erase seventeen years of typographical habit and embrace the new standard. Except when writing essays, where every extranious blank space adds to the overall volume of the document without any extra work.
Counter-Reality Machine
This weird fog; a need to be focused. Walking through it is like walking randomly through time. To walk through it is to walk (through?) random time. Shadows of people, only outlines or silhouettes, never more visceral than a light fog or mist. I have a counter-reality machine. When I turn it on everything reverses. Dead becomes alive, warm becomes cold, wet becomes dry, dry becomes gaseous, gaseous becomes liquid. Make it clear, though. This is no bizarro world. Nice does not become mean, hello does not become goodbye. No, only something with physicality can be altered. Exist becomes not exist. This fact becomes something of a problem, then. Everything exists. What doesn’t exist? Would some extinct planet be the home for bigfoot and the loch ness monster? Only things that don’t exist? Then how do we decide what doesn’t exist? This conversation is getting out of hand.
Sometimes I write with no goal in mind, in the hopes that some amazing idea will work it's way into my mind. I really liked the sound of 'counter-realty machine,' but the more I wrote about it the less sense it made. Ideas are easy, logistics are not.
Sometimes I write with no goal in mind, in the hopes that some amazing idea will work it's way into my mind. I really liked the sound of 'counter-realty machine,' but the more I wrote about it the less sense it made. Ideas are easy, logistics are not.
2.19.2009
Furry Carnage Locomotion
Church bells and train whistles, the wind grazing over the tops of wheat. Imaginary ropes tied to the couch. Twice blinked. Dark brown / frail earth battery. Charged, broke, rotated spindles. Spinnerets. Bitten toe spider, venomous. Full of sand, inched across the sweltering desert pavement. Black roads 100mph small wire fences on the sides, collected tumbleweeds and roadrunners.
A man, standing in sudden rain. He notices that his feet are liquid, flowing away with the slight current of the minuscule stream. Humorous things happen, as this is meant to be tragic and comedic simultaneously.
I can feel myself sliding down the couch, slowly melting, like a humanoid stick of butter in an upholstered saucepan. So far no sizzling though, only casual melting, skin so smooth. Distant music provides atmospherics. A quick scan for open padlocks reveals judicious chains.
A man, standing in sudden rain. He notices that his feet are liquid, flowing away with the slight current of the minuscule stream. Humorous things happen, as this is meant to be tragic and comedic simultaneously.
I can feel myself sliding down the couch, slowly melting, like a humanoid stick of butter in an upholstered saucepan. So far no sizzling though, only casual melting, skin so smooth. Distant music provides atmospherics. A quick scan for open padlocks reveals judicious chains.
2.17.2009
Carpet
The carpet in my apartment smells old and thick. Not like my grandmother’s house or a nursing home or anything like that. Old just happened to be the first word that came to mind when I inhaled the intricate details of the rarely-vacuumed surface. I hear someone say yes, I use a golden toothbrush. A thousand questions come to mind.
The (hopeful) genesis of a new story. More to come...
The (hopeful) genesis of a new story. More to come...
2.12.2009
2.10.2009
The Sandwich
I sat, staring at the most poorly constructed sandwich I had ever seen. The bread wasn’t cut evenly, turkey and cucumbers were bursting out one side and the whole thing listed drastically to the left. I had to eat it as fast as I could, to avoid total sandwich destruction. The experience was very disappointing. Not worth $5.62 at all.
Never purchase sandwiches made by college students.
Never purchase sandwiches made by college students.
2.05.2009
Unforeseen Circumstances
Dear Professor Quistgard,
I am deeply sorry that I was unable to attend class Wednesday. I understand that our research papers were due and that you do not accept late work, nor do you grant extensions, but I beseech you to give me one more day to turn in my paper. The reason for my absence was far beyond my control, and I think that if you would just hear me out, you wouldn’t hesitate to extend the due date of my paper.
6:20AM. The alarm clock should have gone off, but it didn’t, so now it’s 7:17AM. My eyes opened slowly, the lids breaking free from overnight crusts. I noticed that there is more light in my room than usual. A few seconds later I made the connection and realized it must be far later in the morning than I thought. I looked at the alarm clock. The digital display was blank. With my tired eyes I traced the cord from the clock to the wall socket, where their connection was conspicuously absent. A mild wave of distress washed over me. I slid out of bed and grabbed my cell phone off the floor, where it had been charging overnight. The display came on when I flipped the phone open and revealed the time. What had moments before been a mild wave of distress quickly transformed into a surge of panic, pure electricity racing through my veins, overwhelming my neural processors. In one fluid motion I dropped the phone, cursed and spun on my heel. I made it two steps towards the bathroom before my cat darted out from under the bed and attacked my bare feet. Another curse and a failed attempt at Riverdance deposited me on the floor, with my nose absorbing a majority of the impact. Blood was already soaking into the carpet by the time I could fully grasp what happened. With my right hand pinching my nose closed I rushed into the bathroom to jam a wad of tissue into the leaking nostril.
It was 7:43AM when I tried to leave my apartment. I say tried because when I went to open the door I found there was no doorknob. There wasn’t even a door there anymore. Instead there was an empty wall, like someone had put a layer of white sheet rock over the door. I wasn’t sure how to react to that discovery, so I walked through the kitchen to the window, only to find that it too had been covered. Perplexed, I returned to the kitchen and retrieved a steak knife from a drawer. I didn’t know what else to do so I thrust the knife into the wall where the door used to be. I was operating under the assumption that somehow one of my friends had snuck into my apartment, perhaps after drugging me to ensure my unconsciousness, and put in dry wall over the door and windows. But when the knife made contact with the wall it didn’t punch through like I thought it would. Instead, the knife just stopped, having only penetrated the wall by a few centimeters. I withdrew the knife and looked at the wound it left on the wall. Closer inspection revealed that the mysterious material was not dry wall at all. There were many slender layers of what I guessed to be paper obstructing access to my door and, to confirm my suspicion, I grabbed hold of one of the exposed layers and gave it a hefty tug. A sizable section of the wall peeled off in a wafer-thin sheet. It sounded like tearing an unusually large piece of construction paper. Mystified at the ramifications of this new development, I set to work tearing my way out of my apartment. I took my knife and sliced through several layers of the paper and stripped them back one by one. I did this until the dried blood on my fingers from my nose was washed out by fresh blood seeping through a thousand paper cuts. Whole chunks of flesh were sliced away from my fingertips and hands, and blood saturated the countless layers of paper piled up on the floor.
The clock on my cell phone read 9:02AM when I tore the final layer of paper away from my front door. The euphoria I felt was in no small way the result of severe blood loss, and I was barely able to turn the doorknob, much less pull the door open. All the torn paper blocked the the door, at it was only with some time and great vigor that I was able to clear a path for the door to swing open. However, when I at last set foot outside my apartment, at 9:33AM, I was overcome with a rush of optimism and renewed sense of vitality. I hobbled down the hallway and out the door to the parking lot. I hobbled to my car and put my key in the lock. It wouldn’t turn. For many furious minutes I attempted to gain access to my vehicle, only to be denied with each try. By now I was already an hour late for class, and had no idea how I might manage to make it to school at a reasonable time. I sat down with my back against the car door, keys swaying gently over my head, suspended from the lock. It was 9:46AM.
At this point my recollection of events gets a bit fuzzy, but I do know that sometime around 9:48AM I was taken on board a Reticulan spacecraft by Reticulan spacemen on their way back to their home planet Reticula. I can’t be sure precisely what time they took me because during our journey to Reticula, the Reticulans revealed to me all the secrets of space and time. As a demonstration of their mastery of the temporal realm they traveled backwards in time and brought me back to my car at the exact moment they originally abducted me. I was impressed with their abilities and asked them to take me to school. I should have asked them to take me back to Tuesday, so that I could have emailed you a copy of my research paper, but the thought slipped my mind. Nevertheless, the Reticulans obliged and dropped me off at school, except they overcompensated for the loss of time we experienced when they took me back to my original abduction and left me at school at 10:55PM.
Needless to say, every building on campus was closed, and anyway I had forgotten my backpack at my apartment. I couldn’t ask the Reticulans to take me home because they had long since returned to Reticula. So I slept on a bench outside the Library. As soon as the building was opened in the morning I raced to the computer lab to send you this email, which brings us to the present, 8:12AM. If you give me this extension I will take the next bus home and bring my paper to class tomorrow. I promise. Please let me know your decision as soon as possible. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Dougan
I am deeply sorry that I was unable to attend class Wednesday. I understand that our research papers were due and that you do not accept late work, nor do you grant extensions, but I beseech you to give me one more day to turn in my paper. The reason for my absence was far beyond my control, and I think that if you would just hear me out, you wouldn’t hesitate to extend the due date of my paper.
6:20AM. The alarm clock should have gone off, but it didn’t, so now it’s 7:17AM. My eyes opened slowly, the lids breaking free from overnight crusts. I noticed that there is more light in my room than usual. A few seconds later I made the connection and realized it must be far later in the morning than I thought. I looked at the alarm clock. The digital display was blank. With my tired eyes I traced the cord from the clock to the wall socket, where their connection was conspicuously absent. A mild wave of distress washed over me. I slid out of bed and grabbed my cell phone off the floor, where it had been charging overnight. The display came on when I flipped the phone open and revealed the time. What had moments before been a mild wave of distress quickly transformed into a surge of panic, pure electricity racing through my veins, overwhelming my neural processors. In one fluid motion I dropped the phone, cursed and spun on my heel. I made it two steps towards the bathroom before my cat darted out from under the bed and attacked my bare feet. Another curse and a failed attempt at Riverdance deposited me on the floor, with my nose absorbing a majority of the impact. Blood was already soaking into the carpet by the time I could fully grasp what happened. With my right hand pinching my nose closed I rushed into the bathroom to jam a wad of tissue into the leaking nostril.
It was 7:43AM when I tried to leave my apartment. I say tried because when I went to open the door I found there was no doorknob. There wasn’t even a door there anymore. Instead there was an empty wall, like someone had put a layer of white sheet rock over the door. I wasn’t sure how to react to that discovery, so I walked through the kitchen to the window, only to find that it too had been covered. Perplexed, I returned to the kitchen and retrieved a steak knife from a drawer. I didn’t know what else to do so I thrust the knife into the wall where the door used to be. I was operating under the assumption that somehow one of my friends had snuck into my apartment, perhaps after drugging me to ensure my unconsciousness, and put in dry wall over the door and windows. But when the knife made contact with the wall it didn’t punch through like I thought it would. Instead, the knife just stopped, having only penetrated the wall by a few centimeters. I withdrew the knife and looked at the wound it left on the wall. Closer inspection revealed that the mysterious material was not dry wall at all. There were many slender layers of what I guessed to be paper obstructing access to my door and, to confirm my suspicion, I grabbed hold of one of the exposed layers and gave it a hefty tug. A sizable section of the wall peeled off in a wafer-thin sheet. It sounded like tearing an unusually large piece of construction paper. Mystified at the ramifications of this new development, I set to work tearing my way out of my apartment. I took my knife and sliced through several layers of the paper and stripped them back one by one. I did this until the dried blood on my fingers from my nose was washed out by fresh blood seeping through a thousand paper cuts. Whole chunks of flesh were sliced away from my fingertips and hands, and blood saturated the countless layers of paper piled up on the floor.
The clock on my cell phone read 9:02AM when I tore the final layer of paper away from my front door. The euphoria I felt was in no small way the result of severe blood loss, and I was barely able to turn the doorknob, much less pull the door open. All the torn paper blocked the the door, at it was only with some time and great vigor that I was able to clear a path for the door to swing open. However, when I at last set foot outside my apartment, at 9:33AM, I was overcome with a rush of optimism and renewed sense of vitality. I hobbled down the hallway and out the door to the parking lot. I hobbled to my car and put my key in the lock. It wouldn’t turn. For many furious minutes I attempted to gain access to my vehicle, only to be denied with each try. By now I was already an hour late for class, and had no idea how I might manage to make it to school at a reasonable time. I sat down with my back against the car door, keys swaying gently over my head, suspended from the lock. It was 9:46AM.
At this point my recollection of events gets a bit fuzzy, but I do know that sometime around 9:48AM I was taken on board a Reticulan spacecraft by Reticulan spacemen on their way back to their home planet Reticula. I can’t be sure precisely what time they took me because during our journey to Reticula, the Reticulans revealed to me all the secrets of space and time. As a demonstration of their mastery of the temporal realm they traveled backwards in time and brought me back to my car at the exact moment they originally abducted me. I was impressed with their abilities and asked them to take me to school. I should have asked them to take me back to Tuesday, so that I could have emailed you a copy of my research paper, but the thought slipped my mind. Nevertheless, the Reticulans obliged and dropped me off at school, except they overcompensated for the loss of time we experienced when they took me back to my original abduction and left me at school at 10:55PM.
Needless to say, every building on campus was closed, and anyway I had forgotten my backpack at my apartment. I couldn’t ask the Reticulans to take me home because they had long since returned to Reticula. So I slept on a bench outside the Library. As soon as the building was opened in the morning I raced to the computer lab to send you this email, which brings us to the present, 8:12AM. If you give me this extension I will take the next bus home and bring my paper to class tomorrow. I promise. Please let me know your decision as soon as possible. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Dougan
2.03.2009
Tea
Due to several unforeseen circumstances I was unable to remove the teabag from my Thermos this morning for over an hour. As a result, my usually delicious Irish Breakfast Tea is exceptionally bitter and almost undrinkable. Rage. On the plus side, I ordered a brand new laptop, which I am very excited to receive as this current one has been moments from a total meltdown for several weeks. And, so that this doesn't feel like some journal (which it is, in a sense), a paragraph from (or rather about) the screenplay I'm writing (for class, not out of choice).
One star lights this dim cellar corner part of the Galaxy. Three planets on silent orbits, the light from the star melted over their spherical bodies. Warm, thick light from the star. There is an asteroid belt here that stretches around the solar system like a chain link fence. The planets all orbit behind each other, each one eclipsing the star from the planet behind it. When I reach this solar system, my mission is to drop chains and release Earth into orbit directly opposite the first planet. I am the blind pilot of spaceship Earth.
One star lights this dim cellar corner part of the Galaxy. Three planets on silent orbits, the light from the star melted over their spherical bodies. Warm, thick light from the star. There is an asteroid belt here that stretches around the solar system like a chain link fence. The planets all orbit behind each other, each one eclipsing the star from the planet behind it. When I reach this solar system, my mission is to drop chains and release Earth into orbit directly opposite the first planet. I am the blind pilot of spaceship Earth.
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