everything comes together at 2 a.m.

RockShop

2010-06-08T19:18:00.001-07:00

This blog is more than a year out of date. It still gets linked to sometimes, though, so damn the torpedoes, here is some up-to-date information:

Coming up at the Rickshaw Stop on 6/29 (Tuesday. You have no excuses. What are you doing on a Tuesday.): RockShop. New short musicals. My part of the night will be a medley of new songs, composed by evil genius Ken Flagg, from my upcoming rock musical, The Man of Rock, which is a rock'n'roll adaptation of The Man of Mode set on the Jersey Shore in the 1980's. None of that is a joke, despite the fact that it might sound like one. It will rock, however. Also featuring plays by Ignacio Zulueta, Adam Chanzit, Katie Rubin, and Danielle Levin, and featuring music by The Invisible Cities, Foma, Seventeen Evergreen, and... Hämmer. Here is the facebook event page.

The next two weekends, get down to the Off-Market Theater for Round 6 of Shortlived, where my short play The True Story of How We Met clings to life for a third round. Come hear lies about bees!

That is all for now. More news on The Man of Rock coming soon.

forking in Los Angeles

2009-02-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

Right, so, let me announce this show before it happens this time...

Forking is going to Los Angeles... look for it at the Theatre Asylum from February 20th - March 14th. Live in LA? Buy tickets here.

I had the chance to revise the script after the San Francisco run... After watching all thirteen San Francisco performances (I had to, right? had to see the different vote combinations in action), I had a pretty good idea where the play could be tighter, and which moments could use a little more clarity. So, those of you seeing the show in LA are going to see a better script.

One of the ways in which writing plays is more immediately-gratifying than writing fiction is that you get to participate in the experience by sitting in the audience--you get to see/hear/feel the emotions and reactions of the people around you. It's hugely interesting and also extremely helpful for sharpening your craft. With a voting play, the audience experience is even more transparent--you can hear people applauding and shouting out their hopes and desires for the characters, and you can hear how that changes from night to night.

Thanks to everyone who came to see the show in San Francisco... we sold out every weekend show, as well as a couple of Thursdays and a Tuesday.

fork this.

2009-01-21T22:03:00.000-08:00

Right, so, here are some things that are happening:

First, Forking. Forking is a choose-your-own-adventure play in which the audience determines the outcome of the play by a series of 15-20 votes (it's not always the same number because there are votes that only come up if the play takes certain forks).

You can read the San Francisco Chronicle's preview, and if you're in town, come see the show. It runs through the 31st, and it has been selling out, so get your tickets in advance.

Second, I'm in the Playground writers pool again this year, and I've had a couple of staged readings this season; if you're local, keep an eye on this page to see what the topic is each month and see if I have a script that makes the cut. It's worth coming even if I don't; the shows have been great this season.

Third, I've been commissioned by Playground to write a full-length play (title: Fifty Years Hungry) which just had a table read last Saturday and which will have a staged reading during this year's Best of Playground festival... I'll post a date when I have one. That play is kind of exactly the opposite of Forking in just about every way. Except for there is one scene where they're drinking vodka out of a bottle, but that's it.

Fourth, I just found out the short play that I used as source material to expand to write Fifty Years Hungry has been selected to play at the inspiraTO festival in exotic Toronto, Canada! My first international performance. That's going to be June 4th-13th. They're actually going to post the script on their web site for a few weeks while they do an open call for actors and directors, so you'll be able to stop by and check out the script if you're curious. It's a downer, though, so pick a day when you feel lousy already.

Fifth, I've got a couple of other things coming up, but I'll wait to post about those until the ink is dry. Good stuff, all of it.

With some chagrin I have to admit that lately I've been better about posting events on my um (*cough*facebook*cough*) page, so if you are local and want to stay in the loop on my events, you can, um, friend me.

Happy new President, everyone.

Litquaked

2008-10-12T20:00:00.000-07:00

I love San Francisco.

Yesterday was the last day of Litquake. This year's Litcrawl was awesome, including deadbeat venues that forgot we were coming and forced us onto the streets, and at least one near fist-fight by a couple of dudes so high on literature that they couldn't stop talking shit to one another. This was my first year on the Litquake committee, and I have to say, I've always been amazed at how well this thing comes together on how little money, and watching it happen from the inside out I'm just more impressed, not less.

I curated and emceed a reading during the third phase, at this little clothing store on 21st. The reading was called
Unfit to Print: Writers Read Lost Scenes from Unpublished Writing That Lived Fast, Died Young, & Left a Beautiful Corpse
and the readers did an awesome job.
Kent Zimmerman read from his un-published porn how-to manual that he helped Seymour Butts write.
Kaya Oakes read hilarious out-takes from her promotional materials for her book on Indie culture.
Holly Shumas shared her mis-begotten memoir proposal, and
Literary Deathmatch champion Sam Hurwitt exhumed some half-brilliant, half-awful pages from his novel-in-a-drawer from ten years ago.

If you didn't make it this year, be sure to get out to the Litcrawl next year. If you don't live in San Francisco, move here. There were so many great readings, including but definitely not limited to my friend Kara Platoni at her very first Litquake reading, reading a supremely comic excerpt from the pages of one of her seven nanowrimo novels.

giant rabbit.

2008-09-10T00:53:00.000-07:00

q: what the hell have you been up to?
a: giant rabbit.

(this is my consulting company and it is right now taking up absurd amounts of time. this is our new logo, designed by Jon Adams. we are working on a new web site that uses it instead of just ripping off Durer.)

(we are growing; when we get a little bigger, I will have more time. this sounds like an insane lie, but I believe it to be true, or at least that is what I tell myself.)

PianoFight! Another short play running at ShortLived

2008-05-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

My short play "Twice As Bright" is a 3rd-round replacement play at PianoFight Production's ShortLived:

It's running Fridays and Saturdays at the Off-Market Theater at 965 Mission, and (this is brilliant) you can brown-bag your own booze into the theater.

The way ShortLived works is that the audience votes after every show; the lowest-ranked three plays get the boot and are replaced. "Twice As Bright" will be running for at least one more weekend, but after that, it's subject to the whim of the mob...

May 8th - 25th: catch Leo in Best of Playground

2008-04-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

My short play 'Leo' is going to be included in this year's Best of Playground festival, from May 8th-25th at the Thick House theater in San Francisco.

The other plays in the show are great; here's the lineup:
"O Happy Dagger" by Crish Barth, directed by Tracy Ward
"The Boy Who Did Not Listen To His Mother" by Cass Brayton, directed by Nancy Carlin
"Three Stories" by Garret Jon Groenveld, directed by Lee Sankowich
"Leo" by Daniel Heath, directed by Jessica Heidt
"Panopticon" by Aaron Loeb, directed by Barbara Oliver
"The Known World" by Geetha Reddy, directed by Chris Smith
"Giving Up The Ghost" by Lauren Yee, directed by Jim Kleinmann

(Hey, are you reading this blog b/c of my article over at Script Frenzy? If you live in the Bay Area, you should check out Playground... it's an amazing program that supports new playwrights, it doesn't cost anything, and you get to work with some incredible people. So, if you're local,
a) come see the festival, and
b) apply for the writers pool next year.)

Grandma's Got a Gun

2008-04-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

The valiant men and women of the Office of Letters and Light asked me to write another piece of script-writing advice for this year's Script Frenzy, so I did.

You can check it out here:
Grandma's Got a Gun, or, "Who You Calling a Minor Character, Anyway?"

(And here's the one I wrote last year... that one is all about dialogue.)

Xcalak, Mexico

2008-03-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

new pictures up over at TMIAW:

Leo - a short play at the Berkeley rep, Monday, Feb 18th

2008-02-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

My fourth play of the season, Leo, is going up at this month's Monday Night Playground staged reading series at the Berkeley Rep. Every year Playground has a mathematics-related topic in February; this year it was 'The Ghosts of Departed Quantities,' a phrase from a famous anti-calculus polemic from the early 18th century. My play is about a dead hamster, naturally.

Sorry About the Hurricanes (Sheherezade 2008)

2008-02-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

For those of you who live around the Bay, my short play 'Sorry About the Hurricanes' is running this weekend at Sheherezade 2008 at the Exit Theater in San Francisco:

It's a night of nine short plays about 2007, and 'Hurricanes' closes out the line-up. Because Soumyaa (the director) is a mad genius, the play features a guest appearance by an actual robot. The event is a fund-raiser for PCSF, and there's wine, and you can drink the wine -in the theater- (there should be a state law or something that says that all theater should be that way).

all up in a school bus (a short play about zombies)

2008-01-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

I wrote a fake deleted scene from Night of the Living Dead (1968) for
this play-writing contest.

They're doing a staged reading of it this Friday, 1/25, after the production of Speed the Plow at the A.C.T. The play starts like this:

FIRST ZOMBIE
We should get all up in a school bus or something. I'm sick of this nickle-and-dime shit.

SECOND ZOMBIE
School bus. Yeah. And then we can go to space and get a pony and become president. Keep walking.

FIRST ZOMBIE
I'll go right in the front door, you know, it folds, it makes that noise, and everybody's screaming, and when they try to get out the back, you're waiting. It'll be a big yellow box of candy. Only with pigtails.

The play is only three minutes long, so I wouldn't cross any time-zones to see it or anything, but if you're in the neighborhood and you were thinking of going to Speed the Plow anyway...

cenote azul

2008-01-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

a few cenote pictures up next door:

I hate summer

2008-01-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

It was so hot that summer that the dog went nuts. She took to knocking over furniture for no reason. When it got dark, she would go out back and hunt fruit. You could see her out in the moonlight, pouncing on fallen apples like they were trying to go somewhere.

I was convinced, that summer, that eating salty food made you less thirsty. This is obviously bullshit, but my eleven year-old self took his own opinions very seriously, and tended to make sustained efforts to convince everyone else that they were correct. So there I was, sweating like some kind of Saint's relic in my second-hand Lakers jersey, eating salted peanuts, shell and all, while the dog knocked Aunt Betty out of the hammock and I wondered why nobody paid me any attention.

When it was September and the heat hadn't broke yet, my dad buried four whole chickens, bone in, at the four corners of the yard. He said the earth was angry. Couple days later it finally rained. Too late for the yard, though; it was just wet and dead. But I sat out in the rain anyway, burnt grass sharp and wet under my palms. The dog laid down on the porch as if nothing had even happened, and I thought to myself that maybe eating all those salty foods hadn't helped out after all, and that maybe if I never mentioned it again no one would ever remember anything I'd said about it.

the fridge

2008-01-02T01:01:00.000-08:00

"Can't go in that junkyard." Josie walked with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her puffy red coat.

"Why not?" Paul followed after her eating fries out of a bag, five at a time.

"They got a fridge in there. You suffocate."

"Not if you just stay out of it." He hadn't even wanted to get into the junkyard until Josie told him he couldn't. It was dark, and too cold to even think of climbing a fence.

"They had a whole family suffocate in there."

"You mean the kids."

"I mean the whole family."

"Must be a big fridge."

"It's big all right." Josie laced her fingers behind her head and stared over the rusted barbed wire that spiraled along the top of the fence. "Must be something to look at. Must be beautiful."

Paul stepped up behind her. His breath puffed white in the cold. He was eating as fast as he could, but the fries were cold already, and so were his fingers. "You're full of shit, anyway."

"No," Josie said. "Ask anyone."

Paul gave up on the fries and tried to huck them over the fence, but the bag came open, and the fries just scattered lamely over the grass. "Well, what the hell, then?"

"Maybe they wanted to be found together. In a million years. When archaeologists dig up the junkyard, they wanted all four of them there. It might have worked, even. It was only chance somebody found them, you know--it took a couple of weeks."

"They had to have got rid of it by now," Paul said.

"Or maybe they just thought they could get out again." Josie walked up to the fence and pressed a white hand against the chain. "I think it's kind of romantic."

"No way they still got it in there." He walked to the fence, too, and looked through a gap in the plastic slats that ran through the chain links.

Josie moved behind him and covered his mouth with one cold hand. He couldn't talk because of her hand, or he would've said, 'What the fuck?' She pulled his knit hat down over his eyes and pinched his nose shut.

Paul couldn't see, and he couldn't breathe. He could feel Josie's breath on the back of his neck. He tried to turn away from her but she didn't let go. Finally he brought his hands up, grabbed her hands and pulled them off, and turned to face her. She was close to him, nose almost to his. Her eyes were wide, a strange look in them, and she grabbed his arms and kissed him.

Paul froze like a cat lifted by the scruff. Her lips were cold. She covered his eyes with her fingers. He let them close, eyelashes brushing her palm.

"See?" She whispered, close to his ear. "Romantic."

Paul was in no position to argue, not waiting for her to kiss him again like that. But he told himself that he was going back there the next day to find out if the fridge was still there, and if it was, he was going to tear the lid off that thing himself.

The hands that slid under the back of his coat were cold enough to make him gasp.

cozumel mexico - san gervasio ruins

2008-01-01T17:04:00.000-08:00

new pictures over at TMIAW:

Aqua Jesus update - four more days!

2007-12-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

thanks to Dad and Grandmother, we've now got some cheery, wrapped presents to adorn the Yule Tub:

And here's a detail of the excitement under the water (but not very far under water anymore!):

san miguel cemetery, cozumel, mexico

2007-12-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

new images at TMIAW:

the miracle of Aqua Jesus

2007-12-17T20:07:00.000-08:00

when I was growing up, we never lost sight of the reason for the season - the miracle of Aqua Jesus. every year my parents would tell the story of how Jesus would begin to stir at the beginning of December, rising up from the bed of the ocean, and how each and every day he would draw closer and closer to the surface, until on Christmas day he would miraculously spring forth from the bosom of the ocean, reborn once again.

we never got tired of hearing that story. of course, probably all the presents we got on the day when Aqua Jesus burst out of the depths had a lot to do with it, but I like to think that even when we were little, some part of our excitement was spiritual.

anyway, one of my first Christmas memories was our advent calendar, a blue felt ocean, with a little felt Aqua Jesus and sea creatures, and every day you'd move Aqua Jesus one notch closer to the surface, and all the other sea creatures would come out of their specially-marked felt pockets--Eli the Christmas Eel was always my favorite. well, on some move or another that calendar got lost, but this year my mom and my sister got out the old felt and scissors, and made me a new one, just like the one we had when I was growing up. thanks, mom! here it is, on the wall of my apartment.

fifty years hungry - another short play at the Berkeley Rep, Monday, 12/17

2007-12-16T19:54:00.000-08:00

My third play of the season is going up at this month's Monday Night Playground staged reading series at the Berkeley Rep. The topic this month was 'Recipe,' so I wrote about a mother and daughter cooking a funeral meal for the grandmother, and arguing about lard, pie crusts, and vegetarianism.

san miguel, cozumel, mexico

2007-12-16T19:52:00.000-08:00

new pictures up next door:

(and, yeah, I've decided to separate my photos out from this blog again... wait a month or two and I'll change my mind again.)

rewrite - a short play about getting hit on the head, 11/19 at the Berkeley Rep

2007-11-18T14:40:00.000-08:00

Bay Area folks... one more for you. I've got another short play going up as part of this month's Monday Night Playground staged reading series at the Berkeley Rep.
The theme this month was "palimpsest" (which I had to look up). It's a short play about a boy who got hit on the head, and his girlfriend, whom he does not remember. The show starts at 8:00, although I'll also be part of the pre-show panel discussion that starts around 7:15 in the second floor lobby of the Roda theater.

minneapolis, mn

2007-11-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

everybody loves astronauts - a short play Monday 10/15 at the Berkeley Rep

2007-10-12T14:38:00.000-07:00

I don't mean for this blog to get relentlessly local, but for those of you in the area, a short play of mine was chosen as part of this month's Monday Night Playground staged reading series at the Berkeley Rep.
The theme this month was "Launch!" and it's a play about two professional killers and an astronaut. Stop by if you get a chance... The show starts at 8pm.

live, at the Rickshaw Stop, 10/17 at 7pm

2007-10-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

I'll be reading some short stories at the next Inside Storytime reading event at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco next Wednesday, 10/17:
Inside Storytime
I'm reading first. The Rickshaw Stop is here, and they have a full bar, which pretty much guarantees that by the end of the night, everything is awesome.

Golden Gate National Recreation Area

2007-09-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

raised by fish

2007-09-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

"You know a dolphin can kill a man with its tail," he said.

She leaned on the railing, the hot chrome pushing a dent in her copper-colored skin. "They're dolphins. They don't hurt people."

"They can, though. Especially if you threaten, you know, the little dolphins."

"You're so full of shit." She leaned over the railing and watched a gray blur slice through the water near the bottom of the tank. "If babies didn't drown as soon as you drop them in the water, dolphins would raise them." She sucked on her straw. It wheezed futilely among the ice cubes. "They would raise them like wolves."

"My mother would always ask me, 'Were you raised by wolves?'" He ran a hand over the shiny, close-shaved crown of his head. "If anybody was going to know, it should have been her."

"Were you?"

"Nah. If I was raised by wolves I'd be a faster runner, and I probably wouldn't smoke so much."

"I want another lemonade."

"Damn, baby."

"What?"

"They're four dollars."

"I'm thirsty."

"I guess you are."

[FIVE MINUTES LATER]

"You don't have the first idea of what's important," she said.

"Lemonade?"

"Love, stupid."

"What's love got to do with lemonade?"

"If a dolphin's going to kill anyone with his tail it would be you."

"Is this guy bothering you?" asked the guy with the star tattoo on his neck and his pant-legs folded up because he was bull-short and not the kind of guy who would spend a lot of time looking for pants that fit.

"He's bothering me," she said.

The man whose mother ought to have known he had not been raised by wolves had to drop his cigarette to dodge the swing.

[FIVE MINUTES LATER]

He sat in handcuffs behind the hot dog stand. One of his hands hurt like a motherfucker. He had probably busted his knuckles on that guy's face.

She shouted as a rent-a-cop hauled her by one arm toward the back exit. "At least a wolf knows who it belongs to."

"Raised by fish!" He shouted after her. "You were raised by fish!"

"Dolphins are mammals, you asshole!" She shouted, and then she was gone.

that one day at marine world

2007-08-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

<overheard>

walking by a bus stop in Oakland, a skinny white guy is stepping in and out of the gutter and talking to his friend:

"We built a relationship together, in that short period of time.

Then, all of a sudden, fuckin' that one day at Marine World..."

</overheard>

on stage again: Someplace Nice at Short Leaps 2007

2007-08-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

<histrionics>
The Three Wise Monkeys theater company is doing a staged reading of my 10-minute play 'Someplace Nice' at Short Leaps 2007.

If you live in the Bay Area, you should come catch the show. My play is pretty light fare--it's a little noir set in Oakland, at a crossroads, at midnight.
</histrionics>

harvest time

2007-08-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

why the MPAA is the greatest institution ever in the history of time and space

2007-07-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

<print>
for those of you who are e.c.t.@.2.a.m. completists, I've got an essay in the latest (and, sadly, last) issue of Kitchen Sink magazine, issue 16. it's an essay about how unspeakably awesome the MPAA is, huddled in the dark tallying instances of the f-word so we don't have to.
</print>

crumbs.

2007-07-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

<actually>
so I was thinking, 'hm, maybe I'll take a break from the burritos and get me a burger today,' so I was going to walk across the street to the burger shack (the one with the giant sign rendered illegible by the rigors of time) and get myself a burger.

but, the place was all roped off with police line tape and there was a cop with rubber gloves picking up shell casings in the parking lot.

dang, burritos again.
</actually>

Chiang Mai, Thailand

2007-07-24T10:38:00.001-07:00

booby traps: three dialogues

2007-07-23T17:31:00.000-07:00

here are three dialogues about booby traps.

I.

"Your keyboard has an extra key."

"No it doesn't."

"Yes it does. Right there, next to the little apple key."

II.

"Hath God said, 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'"

"We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, 'Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.'"

"Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

III.

"Huh. You think Ed's gonna finish that sandwich?"

"I don't know, man, Ed's pretty serious about his footlongs."

"He's not gonna finish that sandwich. Wouldn't've left it if he was gonna finish it."

scratch fiction topic tag: booby trap!

2007-07-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

a scratch fiction tag has been requested--so, here we go:
booby trap!

(you know, like this:

or completely different)

(I've never done an illustration of a topic tag before because I didn't want my awesome artistic skills to irrevocably fix everyone's imagination.)

have at it.

(to those of you who are new to this site, here's how this works... you write something vaguely related to the tag, then let me know in the comments, and I'll link you up.)

------------------

who's first? Chemical Billy, and she baits her trap with slushies and Funyons
I couldn't pick, so here's three.

Portland, Oregon

2007-07-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

I was in Portland over the weekend. We went to eat bacon near the mountains. Then we drove around and saw:

a waterfall

children appearing as if they had been dropped from a great height although they had not

some trees

this dude

ten steps closer to T.G.I. Friday's (Claire pt. 2)

2007-07-17T00:14:00.000-07:00

(a continuation of this.)

       She'd drunk more than she meant. And she'd switched to rum after her third beer--never a good idea. But the world had actually stepped up and tried something, and she'd run it off, martini unfinished. It made her feel like lingering on the field of victory. If she was a dog she would've pissed on the seat.
       Unsteady as she was, she shouldn't have been driving. But it was a short trip home, just a few blocks, and she didn't feel like walking.
       The man was sitting in the parking lot, leaning against the door of her car. He had his head in his hands.
       Claire stopped. This was a new one.
       "What?" she demanded.
       The man looked up. His face was a pale oval in the hard light of the streetlamp. Streaks of tears sparkled on his cheeks.
       "What happened to your ladyfriend?"
       "She can't stand me when I'm like this."
       "Like what?"
       "How can you do this to people?"
       "Do you have any idea what the world would be like if we didn't enforce parking regulations?" Claire didn't see why this wasn't obvious to people. Humans were vicious, self-interested hyenas. "Some people would park on a baby's head to be ten steps closer to T.G.I. Friday's."
       "It was just a parking meter. I was running up the street. Running. People were laughing at me."
       "But what about the things you got away with?"
       "I always get a ticket!" The man jumped up; gravel pattered from his clothes.
       "Ever cheat on your wife?"
       The man took a step away from her.
       "Ever lie? Ever make someone cry?"
       "I'm a good person," he said.
       "How good?"
       "I'm not like you," he said.
       "I care ten times more about the human race than you do."
       "You spread hate and misery and get paid for it."
       "You stand here and cry about the one time in your life when you're caught, the one time you're punished. Why don't you cry about all the times you had someone in your power and you chose to be cruel?"
       "You do it every day," he said.
       "So do you, you son-of-a-bitch."
       The man fell to his knees in front of her. "Are you happy?"
       "No. I drank too much rum."
       "Is this what you want?"
       "I want you to pay your forty-eight dollars and stop parking on the wrong side of the street on street-sweeping days."
       The man reached for her shoe. She felt his fingers close on her foot through the leather; his thumb pressed against her big toe. "I need pity. Why can't you be sorry?"
       "Go home to your wife."
       "She doesn't understand. She thinks it's about the money."
       "Isn't it?"
       The man looked up at her.
       "No," she said. "No, I guess it isn't."
       "Are you going to drive?" the man asked.
       "What the fuck do you think?"
       "I think you're drunk."
       "Oh, Christ."
       "I'm sober," he said.
       "The hell you are"
       "I am now. I've been out here three hours."
       "You're weeping in a parking lot at midnight."
       "My life is screwed. My marriage is going to hell." The man ran a hand through his hair, already standing in awkward points from mousse mis-aligned. "I'll drive you."
       "Get out of my way."
       "I'll drive you. You'll see. It's called kindness."
       "Is that what you call it?"
       "Give me your keys."
       Claire squinted at the man's face. His tears were dry. "Fine." She handed the keys over. When the universe put something in front of her, she was never one to back down.
       The man went around to her side and opened her door for her. She got in.
       He seated himself behind the wheel and started the engine. "Where?"
       Claire directed him, one turn at a time. He drove her carefully and directly home, not saying a word. When they arrived, he turned off the engine, handed her the keys, then went around to open her door.
       "I repay cruelty with kindness," he said. "That's the kind of man I am."
       "Sometimes," she said. "Sometimes you throw peanuts at strangers."
       The man's face was in shadow, his head outlined in light from the streetlamp.
       "You know what?" Claire stepped sideways, trying to see his face. "I don't care. I don't care how you were earlier, or what you were like this morning, what you had for breakfast, or if you're good to your wife or you're a shit. My job is about what people do right now, and if your sweet grandma is double-parked and Dick Cheney has seven minutes left on his meter, she gets a ticket and he doesn't." She triggered the lock on her car; the alarm chirped loud on the quiet street. "So, I don't care if you're that kind of man all the time, of if you'll be that man ten minutes from now. You drove me home. Thanks."
       The man put his hands in his pockets and didn't say anything. She still couldn't see his face well enough to read his expression.
       "Get home safe. And feed your meter." Claire walked the narrow cement steps up to her apartment.

the meter is expired or it isn't.

2007-06-26T12:38:00.000-07:00

After a bad day at work, Claire sometimes wore her uniform to the bar. It was a dare to the universe. Go ahead. I know you're thinking it. Say it.

Usually the universe sat on its hands like most kids who talk tough.

That night, though, she was only halfway through her beer when a drunk at a table behind her threw a handful of peanuts at her head. "Cockroach," he said.

She swiveled on her stool.

The man wore a wrinkled blazer. He leaned forward, hands on his knees. Next to him, a thin woman in a green scarf shrank back in her seat. "Tunnel rat," the man said. "Milk spider."

"He got a parking ticket," the woman with him explained, her words running fast together. "He was just in the store for a minute."

"The meter is either expired or not," Claire said. She brushed peanuts from her hair.

"You think you're doing good, but you're not," the man said. "Everyone hates you. You make everyone hate themselves. Every time I see a ticket on my car I want to kill myself. Or somebody."

"Don't complain about the one part of life where the rules are actually written down," Claire said.

The woman in the green scarf clutched her purse. "He's awful when he comes home. How can you live with yourself?"

"She doesn't care," the man said. "Or she likes it. Which is it?"

"I like it." Claire turned back to her beer.

It was more complicated than that, but the universe didn't go in for nuance. She dealt with strangers' hatred all day long--that and their total disregard for human decency and for the most basic parking regulations. When she was a rookie she used to try to explain, but now she knew it was pointless. All she was interested in doing was punching back.

It would be hard for them to finish their drinks. The woman in the green scarf would be mortified and squirming. Claire took a long pull of her beer. How did she live with herself? Easily.

making strong men weep

2007-06-11T17:34:00.000-07:00

script frenzy.

2007-06-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

<meta>

Kara has been after me to do nanowrimo practically since it started, but I've always got some nonsense about how I'm working on some other novel and don't want to start a new one and blah blah blah. But she got me with script frenzy this year, because I -do- want to write a full-length stage play (one of my short plays just finished a two-week run at the '07 Playground festival), and I haven't yet.

So, yeah, I'm still putting the finishing touches on that novel, but I'm going to try and write a full-length stage play this month as well.

You should sign up, too.

Then you should visit my profile and we can be friends. It'll be great. It'll be just like a slumber party. Or like a whole bunch of us are locked in a barn by some lunatic whose intentions are unclear, and every sixteen hours he throws in -less- food and water than the time before, and weapons. Which is to say, awesome.

'Course, I'm off to a super-extra-great start here on the first day, with zero words written. I just moved. My belongings are all in boxes, with the exception of things that are in bags. (Moan, moan, bitch, bitch, talk to CJ Ware about your problems.)

PS - If you go here and click on the little thumbnail image of the two guys in orange jumpsuits, you can watch a short clip from my play Seagull. You can even buy a copy of the book with all the plays from this year's festival in it, including mine. The ending has a zebra in it.

</meta>

You don't have to know what water is to be thirsty.

2007-05-09T17:53:00.000-07:00

at the last retreat undertaken by my writers' group (the trip that took me to Aptos), we had a bunch to drink and then put five topics in a hat and pulled them out, and had 20 minutes to write something. my topic was "abstract pestilence."

Abstract Pestilence

"A plague of..."
"What?"
"It was totally a plague of..."
"What?"
"Well, really it was more of an abstract pestilence."
"That's some bullshit."
"No, it was pestilential as all get-out, it was just, you couldn't pin it down to anything specific, it wasn't like, a plague of monkeys--"
"What kind of plague would that even be, man? You can't have a plague of monkeys."
"You ever have a monkey try to take shit from you, man?"
"No."
"You could have a plague of monkeys."
"Whatever; you could not have an abstract pestilence. Pestilence is by its nature a thing of this world. You've got oozing sores or you don't."
Joseph kicked a can off the overpass and into the blur of traffic below. He wasn't getting his point across. "I'm telling you, the Lord marked my people."
"You don't even have a people."
"I got seven sisters. You telling me that's not people? I'll introduce you some day."
"That's people, but it's not a people."
"'Fuck's the difference? You some kind of article-Nazi all of a sudden? I'm just saying, my people were afflicted with a pestilence that was not of this earth, and it affected my upbringing."
"You're upbringing."
"That's right."
"So you're saying that's why you were late to work today."
"Not in so many words, you know, but, um, yeah."
Joseph leaned against the chain-link fence along the overpass, and felt as if something terrible would happen if he didn't convince Hector that there was a divine first cause for his failure to show up to hustle corn dogs in a timely fashion. Hector was having a cigarette break, and Joseph has this feeling that when his cigarette was done, Joseph was going to get fired.
It wasn't that Joseph wanted to keep his job. It wasn't that at all, because the job selling corn dogs pretty much sucked. It was more like he thought it would've been all for nothing, everything he went through when he was a kid, with the frogs that weren't really frogs and the blood river that wasn't really there and everything, it was more like that would've all been for nothing if he didn't get Hector to understand that sometimes the worst things in the world didn't have bodies, and that they could leave a mark on a man that might last for his whole life.
"This one time, my sister Janice, she went on a date with this guy and he tried to convince her to dress up like Joan of Arc and have sex with his friend."
Hector blew smoke into the air.
"My dad kept finding cockroaches in his sock drawer. Two, three a day."
"Then that's a plague of cockroaches, dip-shit."
"It was more than that, though. The cockroaches were the best of it."
Hector's cigarette was burning close to his fingers.
"It was like my whole family, you know, my whole family they only wanted one thing--"
"What?"
"None of them knew, that was the bitch of it."
"How do you know they wanted it?"
"You don't have to know what water is to be thirsty."
Hector flipped the glowing cigarette butt through a diamond gap in the chain-link; it spiraled down into traffic.
"One of my sisters woke up crying every morning," Joseph said.
"That's just girls," Hector said.
"Yeah?"
"My sister cried all the fuckin' time. No reason. My girlfriend, too."
"Maybe we all got it," Joseph said, even though that wouldn't help him keep his job. Even though what he meant was he was special, maybe what was really true was that he wasn't.
"Yeah," Hector said. "Maybe we all got the fuckin' plague."
Below them, the bellow of a semi's air horn blasted, changing pitch as it disappeared beneath the overpass.
"Don't be fuckin' late," Hector said. "Don't be fuckin' late tomorrow."

CJ Ware is not interested in excuses.

2007-04-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

This is my great-great-grandfather, CJ Ware. He was a self-taught undertaker in Chillicothe Ohio. I would tell you some stuff about why I haven't posted and so on and so forth, but Mr. Ware is not interested in my bullshit. As you see.

aptos, california

2007-02-26T17:43:00.000-08:00

taipei temples

2007-02-13T23:57:00.000-08:00

where was I?

2007-02-12T01:51:00.000-08:00

oh, yeah, Ohio.

Washington Courthouse, Ohio, to be specific.

test pattern

2007-01-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

monkey 0 will resume regularly scheduled programming soon.

taipei street art

2006-12-18T23:59:00.000-08:00

taipei, taiwan

2006-12-14T23:53:00.000-08:00

what schoolgirl fetishists see in their nightmares

2006-12-14T23:50:00.000-08:00

Bangkok international airport

2006-12-13T23:56:00.000-08:00

christ hospital, cincinatti, ohio - leaving

2006-12-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

christ hospital, cincinnati, ohio - waiting

2006-12-03T19:21:00.000-08:00

back again.

2006-11-30T08:33:00.000-08:00

I was in Columbus

and Washington Courthouse

Ohio.

a.f.k. again, so I'll leave you with a nice puppy

2006-11-20T22:38:00.000-08:00

I have to jet off again in a couple of days to visit family, and there's a lot to do before then, so it will be a while before I get more pictures up. however, since things have been a little harsh around here lately, I'll leave you with a puppy.

this little guy lived at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center. he hung out with us during meals.

Thai Elephant Conservation Center, Lampang - Pazzo

2006-11-19T22:22:00.000-08:00

This guy works as a taxi elephant at the conservation center. Don't know his real name; we called him Pazzo.

He spent a lot of time eating and hitting himself in the head with his food.

phuket vegetarian festival

2006-11-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

if you aren't in the mood for pictures that will make your face hurt, you might want to skip this post. observe the scar on this gentleman's cheek:

about an inch and a half long, curving up from the corner of his mouth. if you scroll down, you'll see how he got it.

these lines intentionally left blank.

I am having trouble identifying what these objects are.

as the procession moved through the streets, a lot of people were just trying to get to work, or get home with their families. their motorbikes cut through at polite intervals.

meanwhile, hacksaws.

q. a speargun?
a. a speargun.

ko phi phi

2006-11-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

from ko phi phi to phuket town

2006-11-17T23:06:00.000-08:00

the way back:

from phuket town to ko phi phi

2006-11-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

the way there:

phuket vegetarian festival

2006-11-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

the Phuket vegetarian festival is a week of fasting and self-mortification in Phuket Town. when Thai vegetarians self-mortify, they do not mess around.

we were in town for several days. every morning there was a long procession that wound through town. some people would set up shrines in front of their stores or homes to burn incense and offer fruit and watch the processions; others just cut through the procession on their motorbikes on their way to work.

this gentleman is just walking with his posse of white-shirted helpers; he has not started mortifying himself yet.

this woman has a thick skewer through both cheeks. as you look at this picture and wonder if you are seeing it wrong, no, you are not, she has a skewer through both cheeks. there is a grape on one end of the skewer and a tassel on the other.

in each procession, which would go for an hour or so, there would be scores of people with piercings.

phuket town, thailand

2006-11-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

Phuket Town is on the east side of the island of Phuket.

on the west side are the beaches. this is kata noi, a popular site for white people to carbonize themselves.

back.

2006-11-14T17:26:00.000-08:00

more soon.

a.f.k.

2006-10-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be out of town for a few weeks; I trust you'll all keep the internet going 'till I get back.

effortless

2006-10-19T22:55:00.000-07:00

"I am not especially good-looking." She slid her glass idly across the bar, leaving a swirl of water on the polished wood.

"Are too," the man said, leaning over his drink.

"I am not." She was, however, a little drunk. That was okay. The only inhibitions she needed ran deeper than language. A little whisky was just a convenience. "My nose is too sharp. My cheeks are indifferent."

"I'll kiss you."

"My forehead is too high, and if you look carefully, you will see that my ears are slightly protuberant."

"You have beautiful ears."

"You don't even know what beautiful ears would look like."

"Your ears."

She put her hand on his cheek. One nice thing about the booze was that it let her appreciate him a little. He, also, was not especially good looking. But he had a strong jaw, a little rough to the touch, and lips to think about. And she was drunk enough to let her contempt retreat.

"You're too smart for your own good," he said.

"For yours, maybe."

"No," he said. "No, I mean for you."

She ran her fingers through his hair, short and coarse. Not as stupid as he looked, either. She thought about kissing him, and the thought made her laugh.

"What?" he asked.

"You make me laugh."

"Is that a good thing?"

She kissed him instead of answering. A dizzy half-kiss before she really noticed what she was doing, and maybe that whisky had caught up with her more than she thought. Somewhere in there was a taste of his mouth, savory and not unpleasant, but when he put his hand on the back of her head it woke her up and she pushed him away.

"What?"

"Take it easy, tiger."

"I'm easy."

El Cerrito hills

2006-09-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

riding BART through Oakland

2006-09-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

kauai, hawaii - waimea canyon

2006-09-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

kauai, hawaii - north coast at sunset

2006-09-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

racing chickens

2006-09-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

"I remember when all this was just farms," Neville said.

Jock grunted, and hucked a rock at a kid on a skateboard.

"I remember when there was nothing out here but five hundred cows. Dr. Jake raising them racing chickens."

The kid got off his skateboard and threw a rock back at them. Fell short.

"Kids nowadays can't throw for shit," Neville said.

"Doc Jake never raised no racing chickens."

"That's what he said."

"He was lyin'. Couldn't you see the man was lyin'?"

The kid was coming closer, yelling something, so Jock hucked another rock and pegged him again, and he took off.

"That big old dog he had was ornery, though," Jock said. "Bit off two of Shelly's fingers."

"No shit."

"You believe anything, don't you?"

"You lyin'?"

"No, I'm telling the truth. You call her up; she got three fingers on her left hand. Still, it's a hell of a thing. You ought to be a little skeptical."

"No harm in believing the best of things."

"Plenty of harm."

"No harm in believing that." Neville looked along the row of houses and wondered if the kid was going to come back. They had a few rocks yet. "Always did like that dog."

"He was a good dog," Jock said.

"Never liked Shelly."

"No, sir. Never liked her one bit."

kauai, hawaii: bamboo forest near hanalei

2006-08-21T13:21:00.000-07:00

kauai, hawaii: hanalei valley taro fields

2006-08-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

we're going to be in here for a while.

2006-07-21T00:03:00.000-07:00

Eric was not stuffed in the trunk so much as pitched--the car was a Lincoln Continental. In the space between being thrown and landing, Eric had the thought that he should have known better, that this was what he got for heading over to Angelique's apartment one last time.

Not that the men who had grabbed him had anything to do with Angelique. She was a slightly-heavyset French translator staying for the summer in San Jose while she did a project for some hard drive manufacturer. She did not consort with large men of the sort who had grabbed Eric purposefully as soon as he'd stepped out of his car, tied his hands, and then thrown him--

The impact of his forehead against the rough fibers of the trunk lining thudded him back to the present. In the next instant, he perceived three things:

1) the trunk door rapidly closing over him,
2) that he had landed painfully on his face and shoulder, and
3) that he was not alone in the trunk.

The trunk closed with a gust of air, a thump, and the click of a latch engaging. There was no light. His feet were resting on someone's head.

"Ouch," said a woman's voice, close and irritable.

"Sorry."

"Move your feet," she said.

"I don't think I can."

"You can."

"I can't."

Eric heard a breath drawn, then felt a row of sharp teeth clamp down on his Achilles tendon. He yelped and wrenched his feet forward; the violent movement pitched him off the woman and onto his face.

"I told you," she said.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Some assholes grabbed me when I was getting out of my car."

"Oh." Some help she was. At least she was a girl. "I was thinking."

"Uh oh."

"I was thinking that maybe this is some kind of punishment, for me."

"What have I got to do with punishing you?" she asked.

"You tell me."

"What did you do?"

"It's like," his hands were trying to gesture, but they were bound with rope, so only his fingers could move in the darkness. "It's like this is a metaphor."

"It's not a fucking metaphor. We're in a real trunk."

"Ever since I was a kid, I had the same relationship patterns," Eric said. "Started with my big sister, then my cousin Anne, then my best friend Richard."

"Will you stop moving your fingers?"

"I over commit. Get needy and paranoid, then alienate, then, you know, lurk and moon around and refuse to get over them until--"

"If I can get my hands loose I'm going to strangle you."

"It's, like, an emotional trunk. And you're, I don't know, like some kind of punishment, too, like a lesion, or a boil--nothing personal, I mean, I just met you, and--"

She kicked him in the back of the head, and his forehead knocked against the trunk wall. "Ow."

"I'll tell you what it's a metaphor for," she said.

"What?" he asked, perking up.

"Oh, Jesus Christ, no I won't."

"What? Come on. I have a feeling we're going to be in here for a while."

The car's engine started, and the floor of the trunk began to vibrate. Below them, the exhaust pipe huffed as the car pitched backward, stopped, and then raced forward with a roar from the engine and squealing tires.

kauai, hawaii: na pali coast, 82 and counting

2006-07-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

it's about to get a lot more colorful around here

2006-07-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

"Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick."

2006-07-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

Jonah was out back, trying to get Marty to wear his tie. Marty was part wolfhound, about as big as Jonah, and kept biting him in the head. Jonah's hair was kind of wet and messed up, but he kept trying. Marty was into it. He was wagging his tail the whole time.

"Been looking for you," Trey said. He sat down on the cement steps. He folded his dad's suit jacket across his legs. It was too big for him. Made him sweat.

Trey looked around the small gravel parking lot behind the funeral home. He liked it better back there than anywhere else. There were useful things, like a ladder, a coil of hose, and a dumpster. Everything inside was so goddamn clean, like if anyone in there brushed up against anything even remotely real, they'd bust down in another crying jag. It made him tense. I'm not that fragile, he wanted to say.

"What's taking them so long?" Jonah asked.

"Everybody got to hear the same thing over and over again, you know? That's what we came here for, right?"

"That what you came for?"

Trey reached for his smokes. When the pocket flattened out under his hand he remembered he didn't bring them. "I got no idea why I came. I hate this stuff."

"You could've stayed home. "

"Didn't want to do that either."

Jonah tried to get the tie over the dog's head again. Marty head-butted him and knocked his glasses off.

"You know what pisses me off?" Trey asked.

"Death? "

"Aside from that, man."

"What? "

"Bible shit."

"What do you expect? It's a funeral. " Jonah fished up his glasses from beside the step and put them on again.

"That story they read, man. It pissed me off."

"They read a story? "

"Yeah, didn't you hear?"

"I wasn't listening. "

"It was about how Jesus raised his friend from the dead. And there was that whole part about how it was for God's glory and shit, but wasn't it just mighty convenient that the one guy he decides to raise from the dead happens to be his buddy? You know what I'm saying?"

"I got no idea what you're saying. "

"I'm saying come on, you fuckers. Jesus, God, and the holy-whatsit-thing."

"You're Jewish. And you don't believe in God. "

"The story still pisses me off. Listen. They make the rules, and you and I got to play by them. We all do. She did." Trey looked back at the closed screen door behind him. "Now she's gone. You don't see Jesus calling her out of the cave. Motherfucker can dish it out, but he can't take it."

"He's just a guy. "

"He made the rules."

"You would do the same thing. You'd call her out of there if you could. "

"I'd call everyone out. I'd say, 'fuck death,' and that would be that."

"There's not room in the world for everybody that ever lived. "

"I'd make room."

"People are messed up as it is, man. Let us live forever, you got no idea what we'll do to each other. "

"I'd make it work. If it was me, I'd make it better. Fix it. Fix us. Fix her." Trey laid back on the rough cement landing and looked up at the sky.

"Yeah, well, you want to run for God, I'll vote for you. "

Marty's shaggy head interposed itself between Trey and the sky. The dog was wearing Jonah's yellow tie.

"Thanks, man."

'bye, Jenn.

2006-06-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

Jenn See died. She was 26.

no pain no strain; right back, right back, right back.

2006-06-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

when I am at work, the universe sends me messages through my headphones. I am not making this up. it does not matter if I am playing music or not; it does not matter what volume I've set for my computer output. I hear faint, staticky voices, mostly incoherent, but today they were exceptionally clear.

"When you're walking through Oaktown, they take you down. When you're walking through Oaktown, they take you out, real good in the 'hood."

Some minutes later,

"No pain no strain; right back, right back, right back."

I await further instructions.

stranded on a ship. like, in the ocean.

2006-06-14T00:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm stranded on a ship. You know. Just floating? Like, in the ocean?
Dude.
You know what I mean?
Dude.
You know?
You are. We are. We're stranded on a goddamn ship.
Yeah, I know. But sometimes I really feel that way.
How the hell do you feel the rest of the time?
I don't know. It's not so bad. We got, you know, we got enough grape juice for--
Don't tell me.
No, no, I did the math.
I don't want to hear how much grape juice we got.
We got enough grape juice for six hundred and eighteen years and seven months. Twelve days. And that's just in that one container. We haven't even got that other one open yet.
Most of the time I just sit here trying to decide which one of us I'm going to kill first.
I don't mind it so much, you know? Fresh air. And I like you just fine. You've got good hands.
Don't touch me.
I'm just saying. Sea air, sunshine. Grape juice. Beats working, don't you think? Beats the hell out of Chicago in the summertime, all that humidity, dogs everywhere. Phone ringing. Out here, a man can hear himself think, and just pee off the side of the boat if he feels like it.

But you know.

Sometimes, I got to say. Sometimes it gets to me, a little bit. Sometimes it feels sort of like I'm stranded on a ship. Like, in the ocean.

the mark of the beast: forty-one months

2006-06-06T01:15:00.000-07:00

Revelation 13:5 The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months.

Did you see the thing? With the seven heads? And the horns and he was all... BRAAAA! And the dude was all, like, Ahh! And it was all, crunch-crunch-crunch, and that lady was all, Ahh! And it was all--
I saw it.
And did you see all those damn horns? With the crowns? It must've had fifteen!
Ten.
No, come on, I think there was more like--
There were ten.
Yea, okay, okay, whatever, ten, but then he was all, like, talking and shit, and he ate that lady, and he had all those mouths. He must've had, like, thirty.
Forty-two.
What's wrong with you?
I'm just telling you. He had forty-two mouths.
Did you hear what he said? That thing about Jesus' mom? And the donkey? And did you hear--
Will you shut up?
Damn, what is with you?
You're such an asshole, Eddie, you know that?
What? You got the mark now. You got it, too, and now you can buy food again, you know--
You're a child.
Well did you see--
If the beast was gone tomorrow, you'd forget him. If another creature came, dangled some amusement in front of you, you'd be babbling about that instead.
I thought you got the mark, Alice. Why are you busting my balls?
Because it's beautiful, and you don't understand anything.
I said it was cool.
Idiot.
What?
My life was dedicated to God.
Damn, Alice, don't say that so loud.
It was dedicated to God, and all my life, do you know how many times he revealed himself to me?
You're going to get us in trouble. Come on.
Not once. Never. Zero.
Yeah, yeah, I know, come on, let's go out back. I think I hear him eating somebody.
When the dragon came, I did not worship him, and I did not worship the first beast. And when the second beast came, with his mark, I starved for him. All around me my brothers and sisters took up the mark--
I got the mark.
I know, Eddie.
I got it right away.
I know. But I starved for twelve months, and then for twelve more, and then for twelve more after that, then three, then two. It has been forty-one months, Eddie. Forty-one months that the dragon has been among us, and the beast, and now this second beast has come.
He made fire shoot down out of the clouds, like, FWOOSH!
And now I have his mark at last.
You're still too skinny.
No true God would let the beast say the things he said. Blasphemies, blasphemies, blasphemies. Unless they aren't really blasphemies, because there is no God. Unless the beast is the beginning and the end, and there he stands, among us, in the flesh.
Yeah, okay, Alice, you know, maybe after this we can go out and get some burgers or something.
It's beautiful. Even if this really is the end, like everyone is saying. It's worth it. It's beautiful.

scratch fiction topic tag: June 6, 2006.

2006-06-01T00:43:00.000-07:00

from the Revelation of St. John:
13:11 Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon.
...
13:16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads,
13:17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
13:18 Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.

I'll start. (5/31)
bones is up next. the devil wears body spray. (6/1)
mongo drops DCXLVI. (6/3)
let me have another go. forty-one months. (6/6)

the mark of the beast: fighting the good fight

2006-05-31T23:45:00.000-07:00

a little something for the June 6, 2006 topic tag.

"Give me one of those, you know, those yellow--"
"Charleston Chew?"
"Yeah, give me one of those, and a pack of Lucky Strikes, and two of them scratch-off's."
"You want NFL Head-to-Head or Four-Leaf Kaboom?"
"How 'bout Rainy Day Specials? You got any of them left?"
"Got a couple. That'll be eight bucks even."
[hands over cash]
"Hey."
"What?"
"Your mark."
"Come on..."
"You know the rules man, I got to see your mark."
"I got one."
"So let me see it."
"I got it."
"So why don't you just show it to me?"
"I don't even want your stupid scratch-offs anyway."
"I'm supposed to report this."
"You don't got to do that."
"Why don't you just go get the mark? You're going to break down sooner or later."
"Don't even need them Lucky Strikes. I'm out of here."

scratch fiction. no apologies.

2006-05-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

succubus (pt 3)

2006-05-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

the last bit on Frank, and a continuation of this and this.

"He came back from California in the Spring," Barnard said. The wicker chair wheezed beneath him as he shifted. "California was no place for a white man, back in those days. It was Mexican country, Mexicans and Indians, they could handle the sun, and the space."

Lucy was screwing up her little mouth in that sour-milk way she did whenever he talked about Mexicans and Indians or Blacks or Japs or whatever. Kids these days didn't know anything. You'd think they'd never been out of the house.

"He came home with that cough," Barnard said. "He never really shook it. He had the cough, and, well, you see the picture."

Lucy held the picture close. "What?"

Barnard approached the door of the woodshed; in the light from the house he could see steam seeping out of the cracks, a white plume drifting up into the night air.

"Uncle Frank?" He called his Uncle's name twice more, then eased open the door.

Steam and heat hit him.

"In or out," Frank said, voice low and scratchy.

Barnard stepped in and closed the door behind him. He was instantly sweating, shirt and pants sticking to him, the air thick with steam. In the corner, hot embers glowed. Frank stood. He was naked; the reddish light of the coals cast deep shadows over his body. He poured water over a dark trough of stones; steam hissed into the air.

"Good for your lungs," he said. "I learned the trick from a Chinaman."

"Aunt Margaret told me to come and--"

"Not here," Frank said. "Don't say her name in here."

Barnard looked at his niece. She really didn't know anything. It wasn't so much what you saw in the picture--which he admitted wasn't much. It was how you felt when you looked at it. The difference on the inside of the man in the picture was so obvious that just the sight of it brought back the smell of smoking cedar and the heat of steam.

Barnard kept one hand on his coarse pants, folded next to him, comforted by the presence of his clothes, even though he was naked, now, the pine bench rough on his thighs. Frank was deep in the shadows of the corner, only his shins and feet, and sometimes the gleam of his eyes visible.

"I almost didn't come back," he was saying. "I thought she wouldn't come with me. But she came to me in a dream, that night, and she bit my lip, and told me she would never leave me as long as I was true to her."

"She's here now?" Barnard asked, covering himself with his hands.

"Can't you tell for yourself?"

Barnard peered into the steam, and suddenly it was unmistakable. He dug his fingernails into the soft inner flesh of his thigh.

There was nothing to see, not with his eyes, but there was something in the darkness, heat, and steam, something that had come back from California. Barnard's breath quickened, and he was suddenly envious, almost to weeping. "Yes," he said. "Yes."

"I'm just messing around," Barnard said. "Give me that."

Lucy looked up at him, and at least she wasn't stupid enough to believe him. She looked suspicious as she handed back the pictures, and Barnard wiped his eye with the back of his hand. His eyes teared up for no reason lately; something about his prescriptions, he thought.

"How old were you?" Lucy asked.

"I was thirteen when he came back from California," Barnard said, slipping the photos into a stack of newspapers next to the bed. "He stayed here for three days, had that picture taken, and then he went back to Chillicothe, and that was the last time I saw them."

scratch fiction topic tag: Frank

2006-05-16T23:56:00.000-07:00

Anne is first off the blocks once again. But he's not grandpa... (5/11)
fence brings us another Frank, some dude who is probably dead. (5/12)
suzanna is up next. Frank is going to make everything new. (5/12)
it's my turn. this is part one. (5/12)
chemical billy brings us a handful of blueberries. (5/16)
here's my part two. (5/16)
mongo's Frank is straight gangsta. (5/22)
and I finally wrap up. (5/24)

I found Frank browsing old photos at the white elephant sale in Oakland.

succubus (pt 2.)

2006-05-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

Exhibit 09334, Boca Raton museum of the occult. Succubus, 1907. Compare top (March, 1905) and bottom (October, 1907) photo. Ectoplasm evident on right side, with characteristic scorching. More striking and more unusual for photos of this period (c.f., Robertson 1972) is the half-formed apparition on left side of image, next to subject's right upper arm. Partial outline of face evident. Apparition itself inconclusive in type, but details from contemporary medical reports (Graham and Peasley, 1974) suggests, and image characteristics are consistent with, partial visual manifestation of Succubus (Type IV, again Graham and Peasley).

succubus (pt 1)

2006-05-12T19:47:00.000-07:00

this is the first bit of my contribution to the discussion of Frank. to be continued.

"So this is Frank," Lucy said, leaning close to look at the yellowed photograph, one hand holding her blonde hair back from her face. "He doesn't look as bad as all that."

"He wasn't." Barnard leaned back in his wicker chair. It creaked as he folded his spotted arms across his chest, careful not to dislodge his oxygen tube.

"But everyone says--"

"People like to talk."

"But the fire."

Barnard nodded. "There was the fire." He felt his hand reaching for a cigarette. Hadn't smoked in two years, but still, it was the first thing he reached for when he didn't know what to say. "Killed him, too, you know."

"He was your cousin?"

"Uncle."

"But did he really--"

"There's worse things, you know, then dying. Worse things than--" and he was going to say, 'killing,' but she was too young for that. He just let himself cough, instead. Spit into his handkerchief. Frank was well out of it.

"Here's another." Lucy held up the two pictures, side by side. "Taken on the same day, I guess."

"Eighteen months apart."

"But--"

"Can't you see?"

"See what?"

"Can't you see her?"

"Who?"

"Come back tomorrow."

the way is shut

2006-04-28T17:37:00.000-07:00

monkey is going to be a.f.k. for a bit. cheap plane tickets forced my hand. be back the second week in May.

until then.
-m0

telescopes are gay

2006-04-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

The telescope was the gayest thing ever.

Seemed so cool, in its long white box, when he snagged it from the Walmart. (Store security thinks they're all that. Better put three guys on me next time, because I got out of your store with a two-foot telescope, even with those two sad old bastards shuffling around after me trying to pretend like they were checking stock.) But, shit, up there on the garage roof, all the windows he could see had curtains, or old people. But that wasn't even the real disappointment. That was just what he told his buddies, that he got it for the girls.

He turned that thing up toward the night sky, and it was cold up on the roof, and dew stuck to everything, and all you saw was darkness. Swing it around, looking for something, nebulas, whatever, he wasn't a kid, he didn't expect rocket-ships, but man, there should've been something. Planets or comets or something.

But it was just dots, man. Stupid little stars. Same pointless crap you could see with your plain old eyes.

He got a running start, heaved the telescope into the night, and heard it splash into the neighbors' pool.

scratch fiction topic tag: police blotter

2006-04-26T01:02:00.000-07:00

alert reader and sometime commenter Graymalkin suggested
this aggregate police blotter
as a scratch fiction topic tag.

king mongo strikes first. “The Jiggler” could flat bench six hundred and fifty-five pounds. (4/7)
no damn doctor's keeping chemical billy down. the monkey was moved. (4/8)
my turn. monkey suit. (4/14)
though I was done, but I couldn't pass this one up. a white male, covered in lotion, was throwing things. (4/14)
chemical billy returns to tell us about the man on the porch. (4/14)
psychedelicate girl brings us a knight in shining armor. (4/17)
bones clues us in to some strange goings-on on Transit Road. (4/20)
mysfit awakens to bring us the story of the mailbox gang. (4/24)
mysfit inspired Jayaprakash Satyamurthy to drop a nice place to take a nap. (4/25)

BEST TAG EVER: this tag has more repsonses than any other tag in scratch fiction history.

some samples:

A health aide at an Eggertsville address said she believed her patient had just died but when emergency personnel arrived, the aide refused to let them in, claiming it was a "mistake."

A Cheektowaga child whose head was stuck in the railing on his front steps was freed using petroleum jelly.

A Lake Avenue resident received a suspicious package. It turned out to be Easter candy.

A Bussendorfer Road resident said a large wolf-like dog was in his backyard killing chickens.

A woman claiming to be an upstairs neighbor called the police and said her neighbor had been assaulted by her son. Upon arrival to the home, officers observed what appeared to be blood on the side of the victim's mouth, chin and clothing. The victim stated her son had hit her during an argument. On closer examination the officers noticed that the blood was actually lipstick. Officers spoke with her son and he stated his mother was always trying to get him in trouble with the police.

Before the beginning or after the ending of your story, please include the specific police blotter item, that we may all be edified.

I normally refrain from editorializing on the tags, but since this was suggested by someone other than me, I feel at liberty to say that that this vein runs deep, yea, deep as our very souls. If skillfully digged, I feel that it may just hold the resolutions to all human mysteries.

analog scratch fiction 2: granola sort

2006-04-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

check this post for an explanation of the analog scratch fiction series.

Mr. Banks awoke with a need to sort the granola. He woke up his three daughters, made a game of it, all of them in their pajamas around the dining room table, laughing and picking apart the clusters to sort the oats from almonds, raisins, and mysterious crunchy things.

Piles grew on the glass table, the oldest daughter in charge of double-checking, but the girls, being girls, lost focus, grew difficult, and wandered off, with recriminations.

Mr. Banks remained awake long after midnight, squinting under the yellow desk lamp.

police blotter: white male covered in lotion

2006-04-14T02:16:00.000-07:00

A white male covered in lotion was throwing things on Harlem Road.

Tripp hucked the oilcan at the Myer lady's chain-link fence. She shouted at him through her screen door.

Yeah. That's right. How do you like me now?

Tripp gripped the pop bottle by the neck, tested the weight.

He was slicked up, slippery and cool, cutting through the air like a seal, a dolphin, a shark. Nothing but his cut-off camo shorts and his combat boots, and thirty-six fluid ounces of Nutrogena Extra for Oily to Medium Skin.

How do you like me now?

He whipped that bottle at Eddie's Pinto. Pegged it, man. Pegged it.

police blotter: monkey suit

2006-04-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

A woman reported seeing a man wearing a monkey suit riding a bicycle on East Grand Blvd.

Officer James Crumb felt torn between his two masters: the laws that he served, in mind and body, and his spiritual calling as an advisor, non-denominational, but an old soul nonetheless.

He met the woman halfway up East Grand, her hair wild around her face and flannel nightgown trailing open, stained long underwear underneath. "That way!" she shouted, pointing. "He went that way!"

"Ma'am."

"I saw him!"

"Ma'am."

"You should've seen it. Blue and brown and white hair like a crazy-thing."

"Ma'am," he said for the third time. He was patient. He could repeat an honorific for an hour, calmly stating his presence, knocking at the door of the mind and asking to be let in.

"I've never seen anything like it in my life I swear I haven't." She suddenly noticed her robe hanging open and snatched it shut. "I swear."

"How does it make you feel?"

"I don't know. I don't know. That was why I had to call. I had to call because I saw it and I felt... What do you say to something like that? Biggest damn monkey suit I ever seen, and that white fur blowing, tail twitching, I swear I saw a dog walk into a post he was so confused by it."

"A post?"

"That post over there." She pointed a long white fingernail. "What am I supposed to think about a thing like that?"

"Are you asking me?"

"Why do you think I called?"

"You can't ask me to tell you a thing like that. That's asking me to tell you who you are." Officer Crumb believed, sometimes, that he had the ability to tell who a person was, but he did not believe he had the right.

"Who am I?"

"You tell me."

"What do you do when a man rides down the street in a monkey suit like that?"

"I don't know."

"I think if he does it again I'm going to kill him."

Officer Crumb hooked his fingers into his belt and looked off up East Grand, where the houses kept going as far as he could see. Times like that were the worst--his duty as a policeman, or his duty as a spiritual guide? The man in the suit had hit a nerve with the woman and left her raw and trembling in the street. Who was James Crumb to tell her she should deny that, and slouch back to her sagging couch and unwashed dishes?

"That may be your way, Ma'am," he said. "And it may lead you to destruction, but it will be your destruction, and if that's the way you got to go, you got to go."

The woman looked at him, hair stirring in the breeze.

She clutched her robe to her chest and ran back to her house, bare feet flapping on the asphalt.

scratch fiction topic tag: chastity

2006-04-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

az was complaining that it's been a while, but I was just waiting until she wrote this. now that she has, here's a now topic:

chastity.

anne is first. chastity is the answer. (3/22)
bones steps up next. chastity doesn't suit my kind. (3/22)
chemical billy wakes up. the devil has been speaking in her ear. (3/27)
check the comments for Suzanne's mention of my new favorite imaginary publication... "Up with America! Straight Talk for Teens." (3/24)
meanwhile, I was stuck on a plane over the weekend, so you finally get my take on this. and yes, this is the sort of thing I think about on long plane rides. (3/28)
king mongo brings us a three-sentence take on it. (3/29)
azuremonkey says it's all about the accessories. (4/04)

for those of you who are new to this (and there are a few new readers out there, all of whom are invited to play), here's how it goes: write something on this topic, let me know in the comments, and I'll update this post to link you up. our goal is to create the fictional equivalent of that wall in the preschool where they hang the finger paintings done by the inmates. visitors to the site will walk by saying things like, "Ooooh! That's adorable! Is it a beaver or a schoolbus?"

my brother vs. death

2006-04-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

my brother is in his last semester of nursing school. this means he's working as a nurse's assistant and having the first of what will be a long, long series of encounters with the icy hand of death. and plus he's running down respiratory therapists with gurneys. I recommend you check his blog.

analog scratch fiction: fruits of a mandatory meeting

2006-03-31T23:46:00.000-08:00

I wrote six one-page stories during the course of a single mandatory meeting. They aren't that good, but then, the meeting was slightly distracting. I will present them in order. If you want to read the original, click the image for a larger version. I will be correcting obvious errors (including spelling errors; e.g., Kalashnakov for Kalashnikov, somellier for sommelier) in the transcriptions.

LuAnn wanted to make a pastry globe to create world peace. It would be so beautiful and so delicious that warring factions would lay down their arms and admire, then feast upon, creation in its fullness.

She began with whipped cream and a block of Trinitario chocolate, envisioning Kalashnikovs slipping from sticky, chocolaty fingers.

As she began, however, she found herself folded with the confectioner's sugar into the stony channel of a fjord, trailing eroded scars down to foaming white water, distracted by a slope, a boulder, a pebble, sinking sweetly into chocolate detail, until even her own lofty goals were lost, as she had known all human goals would be, in the rich mirror of delicious chocolate.

chastity

2006-03-28T19:13:00.000-08:00

my take on chastity.

The new boy's name was Dean. He was pale, and tall, and the other boys instantly labeled him a fag. It wasn't the way he dressed, exactly--although he dressed well, subtly well, as someone to whom it came naturally. It wasn't his voice, either, although there was a husky quality, too smooth, somehow, to belong to a boy. It wasn't the way the girls seemed to drop whatever they were doing and fawn discretely (or indiscretely) on him when he entered the room, or the way he seemed to walk, stand, and breathe like a slow-moving snake. That word "fag," or "faggot," or, to the especially dazzled, "fucking faggot," welled spontaneously from a sensation so low and libidinal that it did not take shape in words or images, just a stirring of feeling that burst forth in an epithet.

To the girls, there was no such sublimation; they wanted him instantly. The girls who wore the silver bracelets passed out by the Teen Abstinence Society put up the most fight, lasting a good six or eight hours before they came to accept the fact that they would sell their parents' organs for a chance to drag Dean by his hair into the locker room and have their way with him. They put up a good front, of course. Collectively, the effort was impressive, as it was nearly a week into the school year before Emily lost her head and simply made a lunge for him behind the Coke machines.

Incredibly, tragically, unbelievably, he told her that he was chaste. That he wasn't even dating. That he was sorry, that she was a beautiful, beautiful girl (and lest anyone doubt him, he spoke the words slowly, a little unsteadily, as he traced the line of her cheek with a long finger), but that he simply could not be with her, then or ever. He urged her to bestow her attentions elsewhere.

Broken-hearted, she was out of school for a week, but her phone was seldom quiet, friends calling, "Did he really touch you?" Yes, he had. Yes, it was wonderful. No, no he could not be gay. Or perhaps he was also gay. But the touch of his finger on her cheek was better than sex with ordinary boys.

Emily's experience did not dissuade other girls; if anything, it broke the floodgates, and one by one they tried their hand, the most beautiful, the most shy, the most flamboyant, the most chaste. There were even some awkward overtures from the boys in the locker room, clumsier and more violent, but met with the same firm yet tender refusal.

Sadly, however, Dean was after all a boy of flesh and blood, and not at all insensible to the pleasures he was day after day refusing. It was, finally, Moira, an unappreciated beauty, religious and bookish, but with a lean young body Dean could sense at a hundred yards. She had sidled up to him one day in the back of the bus, and she had not asked or hesitated, but planted a perfect, gentle kiss on his lips, and he was hers. They were both absent from school for three days, and citizens of the town noticed that some irregularity in the power grid caused the lights to flicker unpredictably throughout the day and night.

When Moira returned to school she seemed to glow, gliding down the halls, humble as a saint, cheeks flushed, hair curlier than before. Demurely and without pretense she avoided questions and conversation alike, slipping to her desk with a look of profound satisfaction.

During fifth period, she fell from her chair to the floor, and was dead before the ambulance arrived.

There was an outcry, and inquest, and Dean was absent for some days. The autopsy provided no answers. When Dean returned to school, students kept away from him. His head was lowered more than usual, and the melancholy that had always been a part of his disposition was more pronounced, but he said nothing, and no one asked, and school went on.

It was another month before Dean broke his vow of chastity once more. In the boys' shower room he was confronted with the slick and gleaming young body of Gregory, the forward on the varsity basketball team.

Affairs of that nature would not normally have become public knowledge, but so extreme was the change in Gregory's demeanor that his friends instantly suspected something. Gregory, languid almost to the point of stumbling, could not recall the shame and horror that would have once surrounded such an act in his mind, and told the truth openly.

It was three days later that he collapsed on the basketball court, dead before he hit the ground.

Dean did not return to school after that, and it was said around town that his family would move, once more, to a town far away.

It was Emily, the first and the last, who went to his window that night, rapped urgently on the glass, and would not leave until he came to her. "What is it?" she asked. "What's killing them?"

"I don't know," Dean said.

"Does that always happen?"

"I try," Dean said. "I try to be chaste."

Emily caught him by the shirt, for she was quick, and strong, and she kissed him. He tried to pull away, but she held him, and soon he surrendered to her, and she held the kiss for as long as she dared, felt his tongue on hers, currents of heat raging through her, but as he raised his hands to touch her she released him at last, stumbled back, and rushed home.

The next day Emily walked to school. Heat radiated from her footprints on the cold concrete sidewalk. A boy caught her by the arm, desperate, on the way to lunch, but she shook him free. "I am sorry," she said, "I must be chaste." He was beautiful, young bones glowing beneath youthful muscle and skin. She touched him on the cheek, then walked away.

score one for Total Information Awareness

2006-03-20T00:42:00.000-08:00

A: There's got to be a way to rig this thing so it will explode.
B: It's a skateboard, man.
A: Yeah.
B: So, like, there's nothing to rig. Not a lot of B.T.U.'s, you know? What, you going to harness the enormous destructive power of Tony's fat ass scooting down 17th at like three miles an hour?
A: Yeah, but we could put something on it that would make it blow up.
B: You get Homeland Security on your ass for that. You're going to wake up naked in Cuba with some dude pissing on you.
A: They'd never catch me.
B: They would, though, dude. They're probably pulling an audio feed from your cell phone, and they've got some poor sucker in Bangladesh getting paid a quarter a day to transcribe this shit and highlight the parts about bombs.
A: They'd give me the medal of congressional frickin' honor if I vaporized Tony Higgins.
B: I don't know, man, you better ask yourself, is this man worth your future? Think how, you know, you'll be sitting over there in Cuba eating freeze-dried curry.
A: I like curry.
B: Not the kind of curry they feed you in Guantanamo.
A: I'm saying it's worth it.
B: Yeah? Tony probably won't even be dead, or even if he is, his friends will be all, 'He was so great.' You know how somebody dies and all the sudden he's the man? Everyone will be all, 'Tony saved my grandma from drowning' and shit.
A: That's deep.
B: That's what I'm telling you.
A: I guess I better turn my life around and do something positive.
B: That's what I'm saying.
A: Guess I'll put my natural industriousness and attention to detail into a productive job strengthening the economy. We got a trade deficit, you know. We all got to do our part.
A: That's right. Let Tony fat-ass buy your epidermal-implant .MP3 player, or whatever shit you invent.
B: For America.
A: That's right, man, for America.

13 March 2006 1307-1311Z 8EG
I.S.A.S. 0000 307.00mhz SCH 25JA77 B-02
transcription by Muzaffar Ahmed, Narayanganj

the cutting room floor

2006-03-11T00:21:00.000-08:00

if I had a hammer

2006-03-08T23:57:00.000-08:00

"If I had a hammer--"

"No one's giving you a damn hammer."

"Yeah, but if I had one--"

"No one in his right mind would give you one."

"Maybe a crazy."

"No crazy man's that crazy."

"I read once in the paper about a man bit off his own fingers because he thought they were antennae his mother used to control him with her TV remote."

"And did that man give you a hammer?"

"He never met me."

"That ain't my question. Did that man give you a hammer?"

"'Course not. Otherwise I'd be saying, now I got me a hammer, I'll--"

"Yeah but you ain't. Because no one's ever giving you a damn hammer."

thy need is yet greater than mine

2006-03-07T22:49:00.000-08:00

To a stranger, I said, "No bullshit, I swear, I need seventy-two cents so I can get on the bus over there and ride it to where I'm staying," and the stranger stopped, and she opened her purse shaped like an angel with black leather wings and she gave me a dollar.

I started for the bus but it was going so well I stopped, and turned back. "And you know what?"

"I already gave you a dollar," she said. "If you ask me for any more you'll make me feel like a sucker."

"No, it's just that I lost my car keys. I wonder if you know where they are."

"They took your car, didn't they?"

"Yeah, they took my car."

"So your car keys won't do you any good."

"I know. But I would feel better if I could find them."

"Usually it doesn't help, living in the past."

So then I started for the bus again, but you know, I really didn't want to give up on a good thing, so I stopped again and said, "Sometimes I'm afraid there's a God and he's doing all this on purpose."

She reached into her purse again and took out a red lollipop, half-gone, stuck back in its clear plastic wrapper. "Here," she said. "I think you need this more than I do."

That time I really did head for the bus, because I was going to miss it. It wasn't easy, getting that plastic off because it was all stuck to the lollipop. But let me tell you, it tasted good, like cherry and sugar and lipstick.