2006 | ☂

Runion Island

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Today’s Writing Prompt: You’ve been stranded on an island with only three things: a bowling trophy, a vacuum cleaner and a mystery item (which you must reveal). How did you get on the island, and why do you have these particular items?

        Raj laid motionless, eyes still closed, desperately thinking of how he could get the man in the apartment next door to turn down his television without Raj actually having to get out of bed, or move, or speak, or really do anything at all. He briefly considered rapping on the wall in morse code, hopeing that somehow his neighbor would hear the sound over the nature documentary he was watching, but Raj quickly rejected this notion when he realized that he didn’t really know any morse code other than SOS and shave and a haircut, which he didn’t think was really morse code in the first place, but it didn’t really seem to matter.
        As the rhythm played over and over in his head, the sounds of rushing water and sea birds got louder and louder, as if the man next door was somehow receiving Raj’s psychic message and turning up the volume to spite him. At the same time, Raj slowly became aware of an odd tickling sensation starting at his feet and slowly making it way up the length of his body. As an almost instinctual reaction he reached out for his blanket, but finding only an odd gritty absence Raj slowly opened his eyes, blinked several times, and screamed at the top of his lungs.
        As his vision slowly came into focus Raj could just make out two pearl black eyes on the ends of long bony stalks, and a large white shield as it flitted across his filed of view. Raj sat up with a start to see that small white crabs were slowly dancing back and forth across a sandy beach into which he seemed to be half buried. When he screamed all of the crabs suddenly froze in position, as if someone was about to take a photo. Raj looked at the crabs, and screamed again, and then once more – starting to enjoy the sensation – and then stopped. One crab, near where his big toe was sticking out of the sand made a slight twitch, and then all the other crabs went back to their little back and forth dances, occasionally pausing to scrape something up off the sand with their claw.
        Raj pushed himself up at the waste, hoisting himself up out of the hole formed by the sand and then immediately wished he hadn’t. Inside the sand he had been warm and cosy, but now Raj could feel the cold air blowing against his wet clothes and a shiver ran through his body. He looked up and down the beach, surveying the scenery, and slowly the events of the previous night came back.

        Raj worked as a teaching assistant at the college, splitting his time between grading journalism assignments and working on layouts for the Runion, the campus newspaper. It was mid October and the paper’s namesake, s small inedible fish, were beginning to make their way back up the local rivers and streams to their spawning grounds. In the late 18 and early 1900’s the event was usually marked by joyous celebrations held by local fishermen who spent the nights in small boats trying to scoop up as many of the fish as possible. Although the tiny fish could not be eaten it was the fisherman’s hope that by catching them in the fall they would fail to lay eggs and so their young would not clog the fisherman’s net the following spring. More recent studies of the fish’s life-cycle had long since proven this to be a wasted effort, but the tradition lived on, mostly as an excuse for the fisherman and later local students to dress up like pirates, rent small boats, and spend an evening out on the water getting drunk and wet and happy.
        Raj was usually up for a good time, but coming from the heart of India, hundreds of miles from any source of water deeper than a few inches, he had never learned to swim and so generally tired to avoid the network of lakes, rivers, streams, and small islands that criss-crossed through the area. Living in a Pacific Northwest fishing village might seem like a strange idea for someone with no interest in water of any kind, an idea that certainly occurred to Raj’s parents on a regular basis. But Raj’s test scores and a series of articles about traditional farming culture in his home village had earned him a scholarship to the small school and he had been eager to get as far from India as he could, something geographically at least he has succeeded in.
        To mark the occasion of the Runion runs, the Runion newspaper was running a series of themed articles highlighting local groups and businesses that shared the Runion moniker. Just a few dozen years ago the idea of naming something after a fish roughly decried by the local fishermen would have been unthinkable. Among the dock workers the name had come to be a wry euphemism for any number of sinful topics. This was infact the whole point of naming the newspaper Runion, as the paper had started as sort of a tongue-in-cheek subversive jab at the college administration during the 1930’s. However as these things often do, the name slowly became an inside joke in and around the small town; a sort of wink and nod between locals about their shared heritage. When Raj first came to the college the local fascination with the fish had been puzzling, but after a few years he too began to take a silent pride in the local mascot. Local city leader, urged on by advertising firms were quickly turing the Runion into a commodity joke in an effort to attract tourists, but had not yet managed to completely taint the Runion.
        Among the articles for the paper’s series there was one written by Samatha Fanning on the touristy bookshops and antique stores in the town square. Raj and most other locals rarely set foot in any of them but the article was kind enough, highlighting some of the college students who worked as clerks. There was an article about a vacuum cleaner repair shop owned by a former fisherman and his wife. One about a local diner specializing in vegetarian food and catering mostly to college students and their uncomfortable visiting parents. There was also an article by a new student, Jayson Perce, about a local women’s bowling league called the Runions, conspicuously renamed as such just in time for the celebrations.
        As a final piece in the series Jessica Speck was supposed to write an article about the Runion League, a group of mostly elderly fisherman who every year went out into the sound as a fleet of ships and tried to round up as many Runion as possible to commemorate the practice from years ago, and usually to get drunk and rowdy in the process. After a night out on the sound with the League, Jessica had called in to the journalism office. She explained, over a great deal of singling and general revelry in the background, that her story was finished, but she would not be able to deliver it to the paper before the deadline seeing as she was “three sheets to the wind”, a euphemism that elicited a loud cheer from the revelers in the background. Raj agreed to meet the ship at the docks and give her and her story a ride back to campus.
        “Oh Raj too, bring that camera too. We need a shot of this stout crew…”, another cheer, “…for with the article to go with.”

Neighborhood Association

Sunday, July 23, 2006

writing

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Today’s Writing Prompt: You’ve been living a life filled with lies and it’s time for you to come clean. There’s one lie in particular that’s been eating at you and you have to make right. Start off your response with: “I have a confession to make. I never really . . . ” and explain the harm the lie caused and how you intend to rectify it.

        Mandrake heard his name called, but didn’t move a muscle. “Maybe they’ll just move on,” he thought to himself, staring intently at the scuff marks on his new shoes. As he continued to look down he could hear his friends and neighbors turning in their chairs, scouring the room for him. “I know he was here a few minutes ago, he was digging though the cob salad,” said Mrs. Grackle. “They’re ready for you,” said John, nudging Mandrake’s foot. Mandrake looked up, feigning ignorance, then took a deep breath and made his way through the Elgar’s crowded great room now stacked with chairs for the neighborhood meeting.
        Mandrake made an effort to examine the floor as he went, and a greater effort to make such an activity seem important. As he reached the front of the room Mr. Elgar handed Mandrake the small PA mic. “Don’t worry, you’ll do fine. If you get stuck start with this.” With that Jerry handed Mandrake a small piece of paper, folded over once. He took another look out at the small audience. The Elgar’s, Jerry and Linda had staked out a corner near the front and sitting around them were Marty and Sam from next door and Mrs. Grackle. As his gaze panned over the rest of the neighbors in attendance the support and good will quickly faded until his eyes met with Mr. Bacchus on the far side of the room. Mandrake cleared his throat and began.
        “Good evening ladies and ahh . . . gentlemen. Yes well.” Sweat began to form on Mandrake’s brow, collecting in his eyebrows and pooling on the top of his glasses. “I suppose I have a confession to make.”
        “Tell the joke,” came Jerry’s voice from somewhere in the back, quickly by a swift rebuke in hushed tones from Mrs. Elgar.
        Mandrake glanced down at the paper, now crumpled in his hand. He unfolded it and glanced over the hastily scribbled words. There was something about a nun and a boat full of ducks and Sigmund Freud. Mandrake quickly though better of it and put the paper in his coat pocket.
        Mr. Bacchus began rising from his seat. “If he’s not going then maybe we’ll just see what the police have to . . .” Before he could finished his threat Mandrake raised his hand and continued.
        “Well like I was saying, I have a confession to make to all of you. I never really know what to say in these situations, but then again I suppose no one does. I’m not sure that anyone has been in this particular situation to begin so I guess this is a first for everyone.” Mandrake began to laugh nervously and pick at the buttons on his coat. “Right, well, suppose the best thing is honesty all ‘round, right. So ahh, well I’ve gone and lost all of your souls. There, I said it.”

—

        The neighborhood meeting lasted well on into the evening, and it was well past midnight by the time Mandrake stumbled back to his front door. He fumbled though his pockets for the key, but found only the crumpled joke Mr. Elgar had slipped him. He held the paper up to the light, and spun in place so that the street lap on the corner cast its dim glow over the messy writing. Now that he finally read through the whole joke it was actually quite funny. Mandrake wondered for a moment if he had told it after all things might have gone better.
        He began thinking back over the series of events, his pronouncement, the derisive laughter from his neighbors, the insults shouted in muddled Greek from Mr. Bacchus, and finally the shower of deviled eggs from the neighborhood boys, that was the worst part. He considered each event and how it would logically have played out differently if he had told the joke. It was a weak argument at best and Mandrake knew it. This was probably why all the mad scientists in moves had secret layers in large castles and hollowed out volcanos, so they didn’t have to deal with all the neighborhood association.
        Mandrake’s head was swimming with the disappointment of the evening. On his way out the door Linda had tried to cheer him up while brushing bits of egg out of his hair and off of his coat. “Up until the egg thing I think it was going pretty well,” she had said, “Just give it a week or so. I’m sure Jerry and I can drum up a few more votes and you’ll get the permit to build your . . . well you know, your little project. Just try and focus on the positive.” Mandrake turned the evening’s events over and over in his mind, but they only seemed to pose further annoying questions. “Why do hors d’œuvre always have to be so easy to throw anyway?”

The Day the Lake Pirates Met the Ocean Pirates

Sunday, July 16, 2006

writing

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Writing Prompt: The country is in dire need of another holiday that everyone can celebrate, and the government has given you the task of picking it. What event will you add to the holiday calendar and why?

        There is a lake in the kingdom with a river that leads down to the sea. The river is deep enough for some ships to travel up and down for trade, but most are too large except in the spring when the lake is very full and the river gets deeper. The strong current still prevents all but the swiftest ships from coming up the river into the lake.
        There is a group of pirates that sail their ships on the lake. They were started by Captain Rupert Mycroft, though he was not called captain then. Rupert inherited a candy business from his father, an immigrant from Great Britain who brought with him to the kingdom little more than his grandmother’s recipe book and the clothes on his back. Rupert’s father started a small candy shop and confectionary that became a stable landmark of the shopping district. As a child Rupert worked in the shop after school and most summers, saving his money in hopes of traveling the world someday. Rupert’s father was an overbearing man who thought his son a lazy dreamer and took every opportunity to tell him so.
        One day while rupert was tending the front of the shop there was a crash in the back kitchen. Rushing to the back he discovered his father, dead on the floor from a heart attack, and the large pot of candy in the pressure cooker engulfed in flames. Rupert tried to pull his father out of the burning building, but fallen shelves pinned him in place ad throwing Rupert against the back wall, dumping its contents in his lap including the recipe book. The pressure cooker exploded throwing flaming candy in all directions and nearly toppling the building. Rupert was knocked unconscious from the force of the explosion, and was dragged to safety by several people who had seen the flames from the streets. Rupert was clutching his book of recipes, but nothing else survived the explosion.
        Rupert himself was badly burned and lay in the hospital unconscious for nearly a month. Then one night he apparently awoke and snuck away. Some thought that maybe he had retrieved his stash of money on decided to go traveling, though his bank accounts were not depleted, nor the substantial insurance payments for his father and the shop. In his hospital room was found a corner piece of paper, apparently torn from the recipe for Almond la Mond on which someone had scrawled ‘***’. The note was found in a pile of glass, shards from a broken mirror, and some speculated that Rupert had been kidnapped or killed for his recipes by agents of a foreign candy company, though the constabulary were never able to prove anything.
        Nearly 20 years passed. The burned out remains of the candy shop were boarded up though a long dispute over its ownership until a petition was passed around by its loyal former patrons for the township to claim eminent domain and erect a small park, a welcome edition to the crowded shopping district.
        Then one spring at the peak of the thaw, a beautiful wooden sailing ship appeared in the bay, sailing in from the open sea in the middle of the night. The bay was usually bustling with small merchant ships of many types, but the wooden vessel was like something out of a story book, and quickly drew attention. Rather than docking the ship sailed to the middle of the bay and weighed anchor near a small outcropping of rocks usually avoided by the other ships lest they run aground. As the shipped parked for the day there was a buzz on the docks and many dock workers and curious onlookers ran to the bell tower, the top of St. Basil’s, and other high points to try and catch a glimpse of the ship’s crew. Though some claimed to catch sight of men milling about on the deck, no one could give any good description. The clue as to the ship’s origin was the name painted across stern. It read in large letters ‘Hiruko’.
        As night fell ad the fill moon rose in the sky a swift current rushed into the bay from the tide. Coupled with the high temperatures from the day before the level of the river rose some 10 feet, well above the flood stage, and enough to wash out several of the small slat bridges, leaving only the drawbridge with its road deck nearly engulfed by the water. Thankfully the bridge was closed to traffic, scheduled for demolition and replacement by a new bridge able to accommodate wider ships and more road traffic.
        Near midnight a large explosion was heard that rang across the hills above the bay. People looked out to see a brilliant flash from the side of the mysterious ship, some puffs of smoke, and the smoldering remains of the bridge. The Hiruko had fired 3 cannon balls and destroyed the bridge. As the town’s people watched the Hiruko raised her sails and picked up tremendous speed, heading strait for the estuary at the mouth of the river. Sailors at the dock cringed, expecting the ship to tear itself apart on the sand bars at the mouth of the river, but the tide and heavy melt lifted the boat just enough to clear them. It ran up the river at a fantastic speed leaving a large wave in its wake that washed over the flood walls on either bank. Then all but one of the Hiruko’s sails were suddenly released, and the ship quickly slowed in the strong current carrying melt water out into the bay. As they passed though the broken wreckage of the old bridge the ship gently nudged aside the large pilings and debris, passing though unscathed. Once passing the bridge the sails again rose and the ship gained speed again, quickly making it way up the hill, through the narrow valley, and into the open waters of the lake.
        Upon reaching the lake the ship did not slow down, but rather picked up speed as the strong winds blowing across the lake’s smooth surface carried it further out into the expanse of open water. Those living along the shore tracked its progress, but as the temperatures fell the wind died down and a thick fog engulfed the lake at the ships upon it. The Hiruko sailed out into the middle of the sound and vanished.
        The next day a search party was rounded up among the local fishermen, and several ships went out to search for the Hiruko. The propeller driven ships were fast, but the lake is very large, and after 2 days of searching the coastlines and open water they turned up neither hide nor hair. Some speculated that the ship may have sunk somewhere in the middle, run aground on one of the many rocky outcroppings in the dense fog. Others thought that maybe they had continued up one of the tributaries, but few of the sailors and fish crews believed it as most of the rivers were small and shallow, full of rapids and impassable falls even at flood stage. The fishing captains had to return to fishing, lest they miss the salmon coming up through the lakes to spawn, but agreed to keep an eye out for the ship. No evidence of the ship was found, but several vessels reported a strange, sweet odor whenever the fog on the lake got really thick.
        Two years later and the new bridge was on the verge of completion. The bridge was designed by a famous architect who had grown up in the kingdom before leaving to study, and the design was meant as a gift to the people of his homeland. The bridge had a solid and stately look of stone and ornate steal work that belied its high tech design which allowed the bridge to be partially raised for most smaller ships without blocking traffic. Only the largest ships would require the bridge to be closed, and even then the whole operation took only a few minutes.
        As the bridge’s completion approached, someone involved noticed that the date coincided with the destruction of the old bridge by the Hiruko, and even that had quickly become an essential part of local folklore. It was decided that to commemorate the event a large celebration would be held at the bridge on its first raising. Since the bridge’s destruction many local captains and adventurers had tried to make the same journey up the river to the lake above in larger and larger ships. However none but the very smallest could make the journey due to the strong currents and shallow depth of the river. It appeared that such a feat could only be achieved when the river was at its highest, and even then it would take a skilled captain to make the journey without crashing their ship to bits on the rocks. Hearing of the celebration, several local captains approached the organizers and proposed to reenact the Hiruko’s trip, and soon a race was added to the festivities. The celebration would begin the that evening when a fantastic pyrotechnic show would fire rockets from the bay to the bridge. The bridge would then raise for the first time, signaling a handful of antique ships in the harbor to begin their race to the top.
        The festivities were a great success, and although none of the ships managed to make it all the way up the valley and to the lake above, each vowed to try again next year. And so each year there after the race was run again.
        For 6 years no ship could make the goal. The seventh year’s festivities were almost called off. A great spring storm blew in from the open ocean drenching the kingdom and making the fireworks show impossible. Most contestants bowed out, but a few ships decided to go ahead despite the rain and poor visibility. Most of the ships were quickly swept back out to the bay by strong currents and unfavorable winds, but one ship continued on. Just as they came around the last bend of the river before the late above the storm intensified, and the ship’s mast was struck by a bolt of lightening, breaking it in two and tearing the sails to threads. A final gust of wind and the tremendous momentum of the ship carried it to the lake where it became hung up on a rocky sandbar piled up by the runoff.
        The ship lay in the path of the storm and its captain considered what to do. The ship could not be sailed, but leaving in the life rafts was treacherous in these high swells. As he contemplated the men’s fate, one of the crew spotted a light coming towards them in the rain. As it drew near the men could see the ship’s name painted across her bow. It was the Hiruko.
        The Hiruko came up along side the crippled vessel with gang planks and crewmen dressed as pirates helped the captain and his crew aboard. The men were taken below and given blankest warm blankets and tea, and served warm candies.
        Back on shore the people feared the worst. Several captains volunteered to go out into the storm and look for survivors of a wreck but officials decided it was too dangerous to go out into the storm. Soon the storm let up and crews prepared to go out when a small fleet of dingies came paddling into wharf at the edge of the lake. Inside were the men of the wrecked ship, safe and sound, each clutching a large barrel filled with candies with the words ‘congraduations’ written on the side. Ships soon went out to recover the remains of the racer’s vessel, but there was no sign of the Hiruko.

Lark and Sparrow

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

writing

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        ”How is it?”
        *Pop*
        ”Oh, you didn’t open it yet.”
        Lark sniffed the foam on the inside of the bottle cap and then sniffed the opening at the top of the bottle.
        ”We didn’t think it was bad,” said Sparrow, “not great but not bad.”
        ”It’s okay. It tastes like strawberry milk. But kind of weaker.”
        ”Yeah. Jay said it was like expensive strawberry quick.”
        Lark took another sip but started giggling. She reflexively leaned forward trying not to dribble the pale pink concoction on her tee-shirt.
        Sparrow simpered a smile. “You okay? It wasn’t that funny.”
        Lark felt her face turning red. She made a show of effort putting the cap back on the bottle of strawberry stuff and then placed it on the table next to her stack of books. “What time is it anyway?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
        ”I don’t know, I don’t have a watch.” Sparrow glanced around the coffee shop looking for a clock but found none. “They never have a clock up when you need one.”
        ”Yeah, someone told me they do that on purpose. They don’t want you to sit in here and think about how much time your wasting away in a coffee shop. They do the same thing in casinos.”
        ”I think your giving them too much credit. They probably just too cheep to buy one.”
        Lark picked up her drink with the very tips of her fingers and hovered it over the table like a crane placing I-beams. She intentionally bumped it into the small steal cage containing little packets of cream and sugar and then sat back in her chair fiddling with the lid.
        Sparrow stared for a few seconds and then glanced around the room more time. “Oh, so you’ve had some practice at this whiling away the hours stuff huh?”
        Lark shrugged. “I’m gonna go pay for these books. Then we can go.” Lark put on her sarcastic pouty face. “You wana stand in line wif me?”
        ”That’s ok,” replayed Sparrow, transfixed on a small child in a stroller gumming his way through a peach colored blanket.

        Sparrow put his key in the ignition and turned it one click so the radio would come on. He glanced once more at the entrance to the book store and then punched through the station presets looking for something to kill a few minutes with. Rock, some country, some old bible guy, news, news, news… Sparrow rarely listened to the radio so most of the presets were still locked in to the stations set by the previous owner, an anthropology major with frizzy hair.
        The hatch in the back unlatched and Lark tossed a canvas bag full of books onto the pile of forgotten clothing returns and out of season winter gear. She shut the hatch door again, sending a pulse of compressed air up towards Sparrow in the front row. He could hear her humming as she walked around the side and hopped in.
        ”Miss me?”
        ”Doesn’t it feel weird carrying that sack around all the time to put your stuff in?”
        ”No.” Lark smiled.
        ”When I carry a bag around like that I always feel like they’re watching me.”
        ”Why, because your eco-conscience?”
        ”Eco-conscience? Who says that?”
        ”I do.”
        ”No I mean like they’re watching me to make sure I don’t steal anything and put it in the bag. It doesn’t matter what the bag is made of.”
        ”Well don’t steal anything and you won’t have anything to worry about.”
        ”I don’t.”
        ”Then what’s the problem?”
        ”They still look.”
        ”So what? They can look, it’s a free country. Anyway how do you know that’s why they’re looking? Maybe they think your cute?”
        Sparrow considered how to respond, but came up with nothing.
        Lark giggled and reached over Sparrow’s head to rummage through her bag of purchases. “Here,” she said, tossing a square of chocolate into Sparrow’s lap.
        ”Oh, thanks. What’s this for?”
        Lark shrugged.
        Sparrow shrugged, then started the car.

Coincidences

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

writing

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children

        Sara never believed in fate. The whole idea of it seemed sort of lazy to her. Like it didn’t matter what kind of effort you put into your life because everything was just going to turn out, or not, no matter what you do. Her mother could not disagree more, which was probably the second reason why Sara found the topic of fate so distasteful. When she was just 4 years old, Sara and her mother were running errands in downtown Hanover when they were in a terrible car accident. While driving past the park a man dashed out of a cluster of high hedges near the road, and her mother ran the station-wagon head long into the brick edifice of an old dry-cleaner. Truthfully Sara remembered very little about the incident other than the chinese owner of the dry-cleaning shop cutting away her seat-belt with a pair of pinking shears, and his wife hugging her and saying things in chinese, obviously distressed that Sara wouldn’t stop crying. Thankfully neither Sara nor her mother were hurt other than a few bumps and bruises, but it was soon after that her mother began talking about fate.
        At first it was little things. Sara’s mother would lose her car keys and then find find them in a drawer sitting on top the bank statement she had been looking everywhere for. Or the motor in the refrigerator would break down, spoiling all the food inside, and on the trip to the mini-mart to pick up a small carton of milk to last through the next morning Sara and her mother would happen to see a rainbow, or an owl, or a salamander.
        ”Pay attention,” Sara’s mother would say, “the Fates are putting on a show for you.” She talked about fate like this often. She got the idea from a book they often read together at night about the Gods of Ancient Greece. On page 13, just after the picture of Apollo driving a chariot pulling the sun, but before the picture of the 9 muses where Calliope looks like a witch, there’s a picture of the three Fates, sisters who decided what your life would be like before you even started living it.
        The whole idea that three little old women were orchestrating her life never sat right with Sara. Sometimes Sara and her mother would go to visit a strange old woman and her fiends at the big park near her school.

After all, as far as she could tell Sara had never met these people, never talked to them or given any hint as to what she was supposed to be doing. But then again, Sara never gave much thought to what she was supposed to be doing.
Sara mulled these ideas over from time to time when her mother would point out another coincidence, but never gave them much thought until she started school.

The Captain was Stymied

Sunday, February 5, 2006

writing

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        The Captain was stymied. Bloodthirsty cut-throats were one thing, but the bitter teasing of Ms. Walling’s 2nd grade class was more than he could take.
        ”Class, please, is that any way to treat a new friend!” Ms. Walling snapped at the children, standing from behind her desk to rap her knuckles against the chalkboard over her students stifled laughter. “Now William, your doing just fine, please continue.”
        The Captain nervously adjusted himself in the tiny seat he had been given. Though he wasn’t a large may by any respect, the chairs, desk, pencil sharpener, even the door knobs in the entire building were obviously built with someone of a much smaller stature in mind. He swallowed hard and, wiping the sweat from his brow, he cleared his throat and began again reading from his essay.
        It had been a long time since the Captain had written something. Sure there was the occasional letter to be passed along when the ship reached port, and of course the daily entries in the ship’s log, but compared to the writing he had done in school as a boy it hardly seemed like writing at all, at least at first. Ms. Walling had asked for everyone to write a three page story about something they had done on vacation. While most of the other students described trips they took with their parents to some place called the Grand Canyon, apparently quite different from the Grand Cayman’s from the sound of it, or to a strange country in the West ruled by a Mouse, the Captain decided to write of the three weeks he spent marooned on Easter Island. He described how the 5 new crewman he had picked up in Gibraltar had locked his senior men in the hold, and insight them men to mutiny. And how they dropped the Captain along with his mates on the Island to die in the sun.
        His story seemed to be going over well until he mentioned the giant stone heads sprouting about the island like huge plants. Despite his instances to the contrary, Susan Jerkins rejected the whole idea of giant heads outright, and her resolve seemed to spread through the ranks with astonishing speed. Questions quickly precipitated into jeering rhymes from a group of boys in the back corner next to the globe. It was all very strange after all. How was an island full of giant stone heads any less believable than an Kingdom of Magic with giant spinning tea cups.
        When the Captain finished, Ms. Walling lead everyone in a short round of clapping, and then she called the next student’s name, Tommy Larch, to read his essay aloud to the class. As Tommy spoke, Summer, the little black haired girl with the the desk next to the Captain’s tugged on his sleeve. As the Captain looked down, she handed him a drawing in crayon of a small green island with big red heads like tomatoes lining its edge, and a small bearded figure with a red scarf and a captain’s hat standing besides them.
        ”That’s you,” whispered Summer as she pointed at the page, “Did the heads look look that? Red like the Grand Canyon?”
        The Captain smiled. “Aye, tis a fine render’n of the ol’ Captain lassie. A, no, the great heads were tall and thin, like, like an egg plant. And as grey and cold as weather worn wood of a ships hull.”
        Summer passed the Captain a sheet of her paper and a package of crayons.

Dialogue Project (2)

Saturday, February 4, 2006

writing

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It’s come to my attention that what I’m writing sounds a bit off. (I haven’t actually read through things recently to check this assertion, but thats the kind of person I am at the moment). To address the situation, I will be working on writing some believable dialogue. We’ll call this experiment number 2.

        ”Write what you know.” said John, with a certain air.
        ”What kind of advice is that.” Susan’s frowned. “Everyone says that, its like saying ‘wash your hands before you eat’.”
        ”Maybe because its good advice.”
        ”Well what do I know anyway,” said Jack, “All I could think of just now is how someone on a sitcom would have to have made a joke about someone never washing their hands right there.”
        ”Maybe that’s what you know,” said John, “you know TV really well.”
        Susan took a sip of her tea and started swishing the ice around with the straw. “Well TV and movies are a dialogue driven medium. Have you ever seen a script before, its almost completely dialogue. They push all the other stuff off into stage directions and stuff, but its very sparse.”
        ”Yeah, maybe thats the problem. Your so used to the way they do it in TV and movies that your mind is set up to see scenes and dialogue rather than long descriptive paragraphs like a novel.”
        ”Well what good is that if I’m trying to write a novel. Well not a novel, but a written story. You can’t write like a movie in a novel. If people wanted to read scripts then they would.”
        ”Why can’t you?” asked Susan. “Just put all that description stuff in dialogue. I mean the formatting would be different than a script. Any anyway when you hit it big it will just be all the more easy to turn the story into a movie.”
        ”Maybe.” Jack looked down at his half filled plate.
        ”If nothing else Jack, you know what you need to work on. That’s the important thing. Practice makes perfect.” John smiled again.
        ”Oh your just full of them today,” said Susan with a wry smile.
        ”Hey, good advice is good advice. It doesn’t lose anything just because Benjamin Franklin or somebody said it.”
        ”You know, really I think its the formatting that’s the problem. I don’t have trouble with the talking part, its all that ‘he said she said’ stuff. If you don’t put any thought into it then it comes out dry because everything is always just like ‘said’, you know? But if you try and get into it then it starts to sound like one of those adventure stories. Like a Tom Swifty.”
        ”Tom Swifty?” said John. “Sounds dirty.”
        Jack rolled his eyes. “No, it’s those little ‘he said she said’ puns they have in old adventure stories, like the hardy boys or the box car children. Like ‘I’ve struck oil, said Tom crudely’.”
        The three friends laughed.
        Susan finally put her drink down. “Well when you think about it, the only point to all of that is to make sure the reader can tell who’s talking. I’ve seen lost of dialogue where they don’t use said at all. You can just tell who’s talking from the context. Its like following an overheard conversation.”
        Jack looked up from his plate. “Right, but that only works with two people.”
        ”Could be three if one has an accent.” said John, “Oh, or a speech impediment!”
        ”I think it would still work with more.”
        ”It would just get confusing on the readers part.”
        ”They’ll figure it out.”
        ”Eventually maybe, but it should be a passive part of reading. If I have to examine every sentence like a puzzle, I’ll just find something else to read.”
        Susan frowned.
        John noticed her expression and gave a nervous laugh, worried he had been too forceful in his argument. “I get what your saying thought. You can keep it to a minimum.”
        ”Thats all I’m saying.”
        ”You have to have some non-dialogue stuff sometimes.” Added John. “I always hate it in movies or TV when they put together some silly scene so that the main guy can have an excuse to explain everything to the audience. That’s what makes books good at somethings. They can just stop the dialogue and talk for a while. You know, set the scene, explain all the people, fill in the back story.”
        ”What about voice over, thats basically the same thing.” said Susan.
        Jack shook his head. “The narrator is a character too. It’s still dialogue. Voice over is a character in the action, but narrators are character too, even thought you never see them.”
        ”Yeah, I guess so.”
        ”They do that scrolling setup text at the beginning sometimes. Especially in Sci-Fi movies.”
        ”Yeah, but you can’t make that very long, it gets boring and it never scrolls at the right speed.” said John.
        As the three friends talked, their waitress arrived and took their plates, leaving a small plastic tray with the bill and three peppermint candies. Susan thanked her and began to examine the bill.
        ”Why do they leave these things anyway?” asked John.
        ”They’re to clean your breath.” said Susan as she perused the charges, figuring the tip in her head. “I don’t like them either, but if they ever forget them, they can kiss their tip goodbye.”
        ”I guess that means you two don’t want yours then.” said Jack. He quickly grabbed up the three mints, deftly pealed them, and popped all three into his mouth.
        ”Don’t do that, what are you 5 years old. We can’t take you anywhere.”
        ”Whuhh?”
        Susan pulled a credit card out from her pocketbook and placed it inside the small folder along with the bill. She placed it near the edge of the table, where it was quickly swept up by the passing waitress who returned a few minutes later to return the card.
        ”Hey,” said John, “Let me pay my share at least. You don’t have…”
        ”Don’t worry, its all on my Boss’s expense account. As long as we talk business it’s cool.”
        ”So howsss bumniss?” mumbled Jack through his mints.
        Susan smiled, “Good, thanks for asking.”
        ”Is that it?”
        ”Sounded likhh bummniss to me.”

ex:Savorer Millisent

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

writing

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PROMPT: Two characters meet in a bar. Write about their meeting without using any dialogue. Now write the same scene using dialogue only.

Milisent had never been in a bar before. Thats not to say she didn’t know anything about them. She had seen them on TV of course, and read about them in books. Probably passed hundreds of them on the streets in her lifetime. She had simply never had reason to actually go in one. Not even in college where most of her classmates had probably first had the experience. Before today it had never really crossed her mind. After all, she had never been in a buddhist temple either, nor a petshop specializing in retiles, but these experiences seemed less omissions, and more a fact of life, and so it was with the bar. So it was until today.
Milisent was a teetotaler.

* note here an interesting divergence to look up tee-totaler (note not tea), and an interesting synonym ‘nephalism’ *

        Millisent was a teetotaler though not on any particular moral grounds. She simply didn’t like the taste of the stuff, a trait her college friends assured her she would eventually grow out of, but despite her late blooming in most respects this proclivity had not yet bit the dust like her childhood dislike of cheese that aren’t yellow and grape juice before. Today was not to be that day, but perhaps one new experience per day was more to her taste.
        Millisent often described herself as a savorer. A categorization of her own design referring to her tendency to latch on, leach like, to a new experience, draining it of its essential newness until nothing was left, and then moving on to the next, rarely sustaining even a passing interest there after. It was a trait that often baffled her friends, frustrated by her near obsession with something for a week or two quickly replaced by utter boredom and even dislike the next, but to Millisent it was the artist in her. She couldn’t help but take in every detail of a new experience. She couldn’t hope to understand something until every angle, every aspect, every incarnation was observed and enjoyed, and then, once complete, why waste time any further. Once an understanding is reached, after all, what more is there to be gained in dwelling on something. Best to save your energy for the next big thing.
        Todays outing was no different. Infact, the series of seemingly random connections of interest that lead to the very threshold of the bar boiled through Millisent’s brain as she stood mere paces down the street, examining the entrance from behind the safety of a large blue public mailbox. Being so early in the morning, Millisent had expected little activity, but was surprised to see a steady stream of people, mostly young to middle aged men moving in and out of the bar in their heavy winter coats.

* note here that its not mear nor meer but mere. Also archaic meaning a small lake, or a boundary between geographic objects *

Millisent stood, examining the scene for a long while. What does one do when they enter a bar? Is there a look? A protocol for entry? There was little information to go on, but images of cowboys waltzing into a saloon, only to have its occupants all turn to face the outsider in a tense hush flashed through her mind. Did all bars have a piano player? No, that’s just silly, think of Cheers. Still… Millisent took a deep breath, hands in pockets where they could cling to familiar objects, and stepped for the door.
Determined not to stand just beyond the threshold in a dumbfounded gaze, Millisent rushed the entrance nearly careening into an exiting patron, but once inside the dark and unfamiliar atmosphere was too much, and Millisent found herself not six paces from the shoe mat, frozen like a squirrel staring down a sedan.

Super-villains, on the whole, are a very superstitious lot.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

writing

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super villainy

Super-villains, on the whole, are a very superstitious lot. If you really think about it, that’s not really much of a surprise. After all, most super-villains are also riddled with neurosis of verging on one personality disorder or the other. The super-villain mind is practically a breeding ground for this kind of stuff. There are several folklore researchers who even claim they can trace the roots of many common superstitions back to specific historical super-villians, predominately in the late middle ages.

Super-villains, as a whole, are a very superstitious lot. At least in my own experience. You would be too. Having the best laid plans foiled over and over. And its always some silly thing that does it too. It never that the hero was just too powerful, that the foreign government had obvious air superiority during the invasion, that the security system computer on the vault had a redundant backup of the passcode files, no. Its always something small, some insignificant detail that no one would ever think of until of course the Monday morning quarterbacks on CNN get a hold of it and put the security camera video against the Baby Elephant Walk and add sound effects. I mean you try building a gigantic secret laboratory inside a hollowed out volcano and not have ventilation shafts and see how your scientists like working in those temperatures. And then there’s these hero characters. I mean, have you ever seen a luckier bunch of fools in your life? It’s like an army of Mr. Magoo’s. How am I supposed to deal with that kind of kismet? They come crashing in, snooping around in dangerous places, and then when the whole place blows up, it’s somehow my fault. There’s a reason we have a shield system, and computers monitoring the core temperature. What did they think would happen when they turned them off? Oh, and crashing the helicopters into the mountain face so the avalanche would block all the fire exits, that didn’t contribute the losses, no. Maybe if you’d read the giant read lighted signs you’d know they were fire exits and not ‘secret escape tunnles’.

Super-villains, as a whole, are a very superstitious bunch. It’s a common reaction for such a high stress job. A lot of people see super-villians on TV making their demands, or hear them over the loud speakers of their giant robot as they’re fleeing and they they think it’s a pretty care free job. After all, you get to do whatever you want, you don’t take orders from anyone. There’s certainly a creative and fulfilling aspect to. That’s probably what draws people to the job in the first place – other than the whole revenge, madness, playing god thing of course.

Low-Intellegence Models

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

writing

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        The Grand Galactic Pan-Universal Reference Treaty recognizes slightly more than 24 thousand individual and distinct types of robots currently in production or widespread use. The vast majority of these robots fall under the designation of low-intelligence models, and are used for menial labor tasks such as cleaning and watching third rate movies to determine if they are dangerous. These robots are specifically designed with a limited capacity. Such a design may seem cruel to the casual observer, but this practice is for their benefit. Early robot models designed and produced for these tasks found the work to be unpleasant and uninteresting. Like their human predecessors, they struggled to find something to occupy their minds. Unfortunately for their tenders, several games of chance derived using human bones grew in popularity among the robot workers. An unfortunate circumstance due to the high cost of human bones, and inevitable repercussions of degenerate gambling.
        To deal with these issues, the robot manufacturers developed a lower class of robot operating system which placed far more emphasis on superficial attributes and arbitrary knowledge storage and retrieval. These changes resulted in robots with a keen interest in their assigned professions, and in compiling an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia which they endlessly transfer between each other and analyze. At the time, many theoreticians felt that such a pastime would not hold the robots attention for very long. After all, they surmised, there is only a limited amount of trivia, and given their calculation capacity they would likely exhaust the supply in no time at all. Despite these early fears, the robots were able to recognize what had previously only been known to the socially inept the world over. Trivia is in fact a self propagating and ever expanding source of information.
        Although many robots currently function in this manner, there is a secondary class of robots designated the high-intelligence models. These robots posses intellects far surpassing even…

A widespread belief in the intelligence of some species of bananas in the late 24th century sparked a revolution in technology development in the field of human to non-human communication. Unfortunately for the banana faithful, it was soon determined that bananas harbor little if any intelligent thought. However, with the introduction of the device, and the dedicated work of research testing and cataloguing representative samples of each species, some remarkably intelligent entities were discovered.

Bathing Fish

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

writing

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children

Susie – Age 8
        Jeremy says the fish in my classroom are dirty. He say they swim around in the same water all the time, so they can never get clean. I told this to Ms. Greenly, but she said that’s what the filter is for. That’s the noisy thing that is sitting on the back of the tank. She says that the filter cleans the water, so its like the fish are always taking a bath, and so they’re always clean every day.
        I wish there was a filter like that in my bedroom. Then it would filter the air, and I would always be taking an air bath and I would never have to take one in the bath tub again. But I bet it would be kind of loud. The filter I mean. The one on the fish tank makes noise all the time. I wonder if it makes it hard for the fish to sleep. I never see them sleep, not once. Even though one time I was there really late at night. There was an open house and mom and me and Jeremy went when it was dark out. Mr. Greenly hanged up all our art projects and the picture of the two horses I drew and the one that Tammy drew that was a copy of mine. They had cookies and stinky coffee in the gym, but I don’t like that stuff. Daddy says its a grownup drink. Grownups like gross things. I went down to the classroom and looked at the fish, but they weren’t asleep at all, they didn’t even look tired. They just swimmed around like always. The filter must be keeping them up at night. But then how come they don’t get sleepy and swim really slow stuff? Maybe they just have a really late bedtime like Stephanie. She said sometimes her mom lets her stay up and watch TV until its really late, but she said that the TV at night is bad and people use swears all the time. Sometimes Stephanie uses swears too and she gets into big trouble. I hope that’s not what the fish are doing.
        The fish must be really clean if they stay in the bath all the time. When I stay in the bath for a really really long time, my fingers and toes get wrinkly, but the fish don’t because they don’t have fingers and toes, just fins.

Maneuvers!

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

writing

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        ”You didn’t really read all these books did you?”
        ”Most of them” John said with a simper.
        ”Yeah right, so what’s this one about then?” Alice pointed to a thick leather bound volume with the quizzical title ‘Twenty-forths and One-half the Total’. It was a lucky selection. One of the few books John had actually gotten around to reading.
        ”Statistics,” he said, trying to stifle his now growing smirk, “it’s all about how you can use statistics and probabilities to do better in battles and war and the like. It was kind of interesting actually.”
        ”War? You planning an invasion I should know about.”
        ”Maybe.” John set his eyebrows askew and gave his best knowing look, but Alice couldn’t hold back her giggles when she saw it.
        ”Oh, I get it.” Alice threw herself into a full blown theatrical drama queen affect. She cast her arms over her face and swooned towards John, forcing him to catch her against the bookcase. “These times of war are so trying my love. I thank the heavens that fate has brought such a strong man to see me through the times of strife and confusion that confound the true hearts of men.”
        John was a little startled by her swoon. He tried to summon a similar act, but all he could come up with was, “Ahh, I ah, well mlady, fear not the, ahh.”
        Alice righted herself. “‘mlady’?”
        ”Oh come on. ‘confound the true hearts of men’ and I’m over the top?”
        ”No, you just didn’t sell it. You have to have more confidence in yourself.” Alice glanced around the room. “Instead of spending all your time down here with these books.”
        ”I just don’t think that fast on my feet. Anyway, the books have only been here since October when we closed on the house. I wish we could have kept it up, you would have liked that place. It looked just like a haunted mansion. Big wrought iron gate, dead scraggly trees. Plus the house was full of stuff. The moving guys said it looked just like something from Scoobie Doo. I was lucky I could save all this stuff from the library.”
        ”If you ask me you’re the one who needs saving.” Alice started weaving her way through the stacks and shelves. “You’re practically drowning in here. Where do you sleep? How do you even get around?”
        ”It’ll work out. Plus all the kids on the street think I’m some kind of crazy wizard now. They’ve been writing magic spells to seal me in the house in chalk on the sidewalk out front.”
        ”You mean all those dogs and hearts and power-rangers?”
        ”They have limited imaginations. I think it’s too much TV.”
        ”You’re actually enjoying this aren’t you?”
        ”Why shouldn’t I? They don’t ask me to buy their cookie and magazine subscriptions anymore, I don’t have to shell out for Halloween candy. It’s great.”
        Alice crossed her arms. “You don’t really mean that do you?”
        ”Come on, I put the book I found in the kitchen.”

Super-Villain King (1)

Tuesday, January 3, 2006

writing

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        Being a super villain involves an astonishing amount of long division. It was one of the aspects of the job that surprised Bascom when he first got into the business. There’s swag, collected from raids the night before―that has to be assessed and divided among coconspirators. There’s booty, collected from heists, which has to be divided into its fencable and non-fencabe components, and sometimes divided again among several laundering operations so as not to raise suspicions. There’s protection funds, goods, loot, spoils of war, graft, haul, misappropriated government cheese, take, skimmed profits, accrued squeeze, and a wide assortment of items falling off of trucks, and each of them has to be apportioned appropriately to everyone involved. Bascom often thought had Mrs. Klester simply mentioned you could use long division for something more useful, maybe he would have paid a little more attention.
        It was a valid criticism, but Bascom knew this wouldn’t have made a difference. Not in his case anyway. Villainy was something he had sort of fallen into. Not like Dock. Dock had a true mind for it, for as long as Bascom could remember.
        Even when Dock was little, when they were in school together, he already had that look in his eye. It wasn’t that he really wanted an insurance policy on the school gymnasium, it was the the entertainment of convincing the salesmen to sell one to a 12 year old. And after he had it, well burning down the gym so he could collect the payout and steal the claims adjusters identity, the way it came together, it was like the gods were egging him on. His mind just worked that way. Bascom often thought it was that kind of predictable perfidy that made them friends in the first place. With Dock you knew where you stood, because it was always relative to Dock.
        It wasn’t that Bascom didn’t like life as a super villain. Sure it was a little lower on the glamor side and higher on the long division side then he had expected, but at least it was steady. “A good stepping stone career,” he had said to his firends. But as time when on, Bascom could tell that his crimes, what few of them there were, just didn’t have the same shine as the other’s.
        Having a mind like Dock was out of the question, but he was not the only role model. Gideon worked in the same building, just down the hall. She and her assistant Dante had a big office. Bascom had only been in it once, in fact it was his first day in the office and he was stumbling around looking for more paper for the copy machine. The entrance looked like all the other office, but inside Gideon had obviously had some work done. At the time Bascom couldn’t help being a little jealous. After a small front office with inlayed wood and stone walls was Gideon’s office, or was it chamber? Two-story ceilings, walls draped with heavy curtains and painted rich burgundies and deep velvety greens, an immense wooden desk that looked as if it had its own gravitational pull, a high-backed leather chair, and behind it all a gigantic open fireplace that would bring a fire-martial to tears.
        Bascom’s visit was a brief one. Before he could even set foot in the room a command voice barked “Interloper! Seize him!”, and a half-dozen guards in smart matching coveralls and dark visored face masks stepped out from the walls. Bascom’s feet didn’t touch the floor once on the way out, it was just like a movie he had seen. A few minutes later sitting in a heap in the hall where the goons had left him a small balding man in a similar uniform tottered by and reached heading for the door when he noticed Bascom.
        “Oh hi. You must be Bascom, Dock’s new friend right?” he said with a cheerful smile, “I’m Dante, Gideon’s assistant. Oh dear, she didn’t have you thrown out did she?” The little man huffed and stamped his foot. “I’m trying to get her to meet new people, but I keep telling her, your never going to meet anyone if you just keep throwing them into the hallway. Thats not why we hired the goons in the first place. They’re really very nice guys you know, the goons,” he began to chuckle to himself, “don’t tell Gideon I told you, but their all dance majors from the city college. Good lower body strength you know.”
        Bascom later learned his intuition had been right. Gideon built the whole office out of set pieces from her favorite film, ‘Captain Stockwell and the Stones of Doom’. She kidnapped the entire cast and crew of some TV teen drama and ransomed the studio for the movie sets and costumes. Dante said she was even going to force the studio to bring in the actor that played Stockwell so she could reenact the fight between Stockewell and the super villain, but the night before she saw a program on the Science Channel about rock climbing and lost all interest. “All she could talk about for days was how she was going to steal Mt. Rushmore for her garden so she could go rock climbing on Teddy Roosevelt’s mustache.” Dante said, “And get this, the next day, all the henchmen came in clean-shaven. I’ve got a great picture of all of us in the gym in front of our old pictures. We put them on the christmas cards that year.”

Three (plus+) Interviews About Zombies

Monday, January 2, 2006

writing

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Zombies
        It probably seems strange to like something as unpleasant as a zombie. They aren’t exactly lovable by most means, first of all. And really, compared to other well-known monsters, the archetypal zombie has far less suave than your average Count Dracula, far less charm than Dracula as well. There’s no raging strength or fierceness like a werwolf. There’s no iconic backstroke like the Mummy or Mr. Hyde. You might even be tempted to say the zombie is the monster equivalent to the clean slate. But the zombie is not without his or her characteristics, and I suppose there are some historical and religious roots if one chooses to go down that road. But maybe the zombie, in his or her phlegmatic lurching menace, has a certain humor. Or maybe I’m over analyzing things.
                                                                                                –
        What do zombies make you think of? Aside from the campy movies I mean. Try hard. Imagine that zombies were an actual part of everyday society. Can you picture it? Maybe one lives down the street from you. That’s right, right down the street in that big house, the one with all the trees out front. Would you be scared of the zombie? I sure would, I can tell you that much. I mean, honestly, he’s a zombie right? What’s stopping him from lurching and lumbering down the street one day, smashing through your front window, and eating your brains? That’s right, nothing. That’s what they eat you know, brains. I’m not really sure why. I’ve never really had brains. Well first of all I don’t go around eating people, that one goes without saying. But I’ve never really had brains from animals either. Have you? They’re probably not that good. I mean, if they were, don’t you think we’d all be eating them? Everyone but Andy, he won’t eat anything, not even good things like pizza.

(Did you notice that the tone of that last sentence does not agree with the first?)

                                                                                                –
        Zombies huh? So what is this exactly? You just ask something like that and get everyone’s silly reactions on camera right? So right, zombies. Well. I saw one once. Yeah, sure, you look surprised. I saw when I was about thirteen years old. Me and my mamma were out shopping and we were driving around downtown looking for the mall. This was back before the Town Circle, that hadn’t been built yet. Heh, I guess I’m giving away my age here a little bit. Yeah, right, so anyways, we’re driving around down town looking for this mall because the main entrance to the parking structure was undergoing some kind of repair or constructions or something, so it was closed off and you had to drive around to the other side to come in this other entrance. We was on the way around and we drove down Franklin street, right out there in front of the county court house, and we were stopped at the traffic light. And out there on the lawn was this group of em. Zombies, all just standing out there. It was the damnedest thing. Can I say that? ‘Damnedest’? Aw heck, ya’ll can just bleep it right. Well yeah, see, first I thought they was just people, but they weren’t moving much at all. And so then I thought maybe they was statues, you know, like those ones they’ve got up at Ridgeview park that look like parents and kids and stuff that just got frozen in place. But boy was they ugly. Tattered clothes, messed up skin, not much hair to speak of, even on the woman ones. Looked like a salvation army truck had exploded. Anyway, I thought it was strange that they’d make such ugly statues, and besides that, when you looked really close you could seem them twitching every once any a while. You know, like someone who’s trying to stand still but has an itch. I don’t know about you, but that always gets me. I had to have this cat scan once and the nurse says to me you’re going to have to sit still for 20 minutes while we do the scan, and wouldn’t you know it by nose gets this itch.
        Well yeah, thats what my mamma thought, performance artists. But then this guy on a bicycle goes buy, riding through the park, and all of a sudden one of those things just springs to life. It was like on one of those nature shows. Just tackled the guy to the ground, they wrestle for a second, and then the zombie stands up with the guys head in his hands. Ripped it clean off. That’s about when the light turned. What’s that? Well no, I mean there’s not much you can do for them at that point anyway. They always say don’t try and take a catch from the zombies. I’d say that’s good advice. But that bicycle guy had the last laugh. When we drove back by an hour later that zombie was still trying to bite through his helmet.
                                                                                                –
        A lot of people will tell you to fear the zombies. I bet you’ve got a lot of that already. But what we have to understand is that the zombies are just a part of the natural world. Yes the zombie attacks are increasing, and yes, they are making incursions further and further away from their traditional home territories of grave yards, toxic waste zones, and condemned suburban malls, but this is only because we’re driving them to it. By squeezing them into smaller and smaller spaces, what did we expect would happen.
        Now I know the politicians are making a lot of noise about zombie control, and zombie preserves… You know, this is the way of nature. You see zombies on those nature programs or in the movies and you think they all cute and cuddly and majestic. But you get one film on the news of a pack of zombies taking down some little tricker-treaters that shouldn’t have been in that neighborhood in the first place and well… I don’t know what to tell you.

Runion Island

Neighborhood Association

The Day the Lake Pirates Met the Ocean Pirates

Lark and Sparrow

Coincidences

The Captain was Stymied

Dialogue Project (2)

ex:Savorer Millisent

Super-villains, on the whole, are a very superstitious lot.

Low-Intellegence Models

Bathing Fish

Maneuvers!

Super-Villain King (1)

Three (plus+) Interviews About Zombies

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