Coogaar

gigglechucklesnortgiggle falls off chair

2006-09-09T15:56:50Z

I watched Stargate SG1's 200th episode (which aired three weeks ago) last night (thanks to the wonders of the internet).

I laughed so hard that it hurt. I laughed so hard I had to pause it a few times because I couldn't do both at once. That is the funniest thing I've seen in a while. That could have been the sleep dep, but even so, it was hilarious. Further proof that they are still having fun with this show, and are still making no attempts to take themselves seriously.

WTF is going on?

2006-08-25T23:26:15Z

And where have I been?

Right now I'm in the computer lab in the basement of Foley, the big library on Gonzaga University's campus. Why am I here? Because I have no internet or telephone in my apartment, and my girlfriend (who is the owner and proprietor of the one cellular phone in our relationship) is in Seattle. So I can't call people to tell them what is going on, and I most definetely can't e-mail/chat/LJ information. Unless I come here or hit up a too-nice-for-his-own-good friend (just kidding :D).

First of all, this keyboard needs to have the insert/home/end/etc keys set up like my keyboard at home. Or even just like ANY COMPUTER I'VE USED BEFORE. Reaching for "end" and hitting the "pause/break" key is not my idea of a good time :P Not that it does anything these days.

Right, what's going on. We got over here to Spokanistan on Sunday, only to find that the "two bedrooms in the upstairs of a house" we were being rented would better be described as "two storage closets in the attic of a "house" at the top of a steep and twisted staircase." I say "house" because, while half the bottom floor looks pretty good, the outside and the other half of the ground floor look rather run down. And the dude next door lit his engine on fire trying to fix his car as we were driving away, so that should tell you something about the neighborhood.

Homeless for 36 hours, crankykitten and I did get ourselves a place, a 2 bedroom apartment at a little bit steeper rent than we wanted, but pretty much what you pay if you want a place in Spokane proper, rather than out in the valley. Don't get me wrong, the valley isn't a bad place, but I don't want to commute 10-15 miles (one way, so 20-30 miles total) a day. The drive would suck, and the gas would add up. And crankykitten can't drive, so the commute would be a tad harder on her.

The place, other than a lack of lights in one room and some oddly not-functioning wall sockets, is fantastic. Second floor of a duplex, in a well made and refurbished older building. Hardwood floors (that were put in a month ago), two balconies (one enclosed), big living room, big kitchen, washer/dryer, big master bedroom, stays cool with only the windows open on a scorching Spokane afternoon, it's fantastic.

So that's what's happening with me right now. Unpacking things, moving them around, setting this place up to be home. I haven't actually moved in, really, to a place in the last four years. I'm determined that I am not going to live half out of packing boxes. I'm moving in to this place and making it home. It's already starting to feel that way.

On a funny note, Lucia (the cat) chased a bird inside today. She kept knocking it down and then waiting for it to get up so she could chase it again. Then I chased it, eventually caught it, and set it free outside. Chasing it was harder than it should have been, because I was laughing so hard for the first few minutes. I also discovered why the cat has been acting so weird. I assumed it was the move, but no, not exactly. She found the catnip that had been buried in one of the bags I hadn't unpacked yet, dragged it out, torn open the bag, and stashed it in a corner. She's been hitting it for three days straight. I caught her dragging it out for a recharge after the bird incident, and hid it in one of the cupboards. She tried to get it out, but so far hasn't figured out how to get the cupboard door open yet :D An hour or two later, she was a LOT calmer than she has been.

That's all from this side of the state. Later dudes.

Hello Spokanistan

2006-08-20T00:21:31Z

Remember me? I'm getting my internet life back, and my brother pointed out that, as many of my friends still use this place to talk about their lives, it would be a good way to stay in touch. So I will. Yay!

I go back to Spokane tomorrow. Before I do, however, I'm going to show up at the GOA tournament at Ravenna partk at noon or 1, sporting chainmail and some scimitars. Show up, you yahoos! This means you, Hawkswift, Raventhon, Shrike, etc. I'll have a bunch of extra swords, so you've got no excuse! Unless you're still sleeping.

Goodbye, rain, hello, other side of the state.

Bathtub Pirates

2005-09-19T23:32:46Z

I know, I know, it’s Talk Like a Pirate day, and that means we should really have a piratey themed challenge. The problem is, this was due last Friday, and I didn’t get around to finishing it until today. Which means that I threw my original plan out and went with the following theme for this week (don’t worry, Hair will return the next time I get to choose one). So this theme? PIRATES!

==========

“Aye matey, give us your booty, or we’ll sink you down to Davey Jones’ locker!” Toby pushed his little plastic boat with his index finger, watching it bob along the little waves in the bathtub towards his little brother. Toby was seven, Jacob six, and although they didn’t always get along, they could be said to be better friends than most young male siblings. Toby had black hair, and already showed that he was going to be a short and stocky man. His eyes were blue. Jacob, on the other hand, had platinum blonde hair, so light it seemed to reflect the sun, and was tall and thin. His eyes were brown.

They were very different boys, but there was one thing they could both agree on: Pirates ruled. Even more than ninjas.

“You’ll never take me cargo!” Jacob said back, squinting his right eye, trying to make it look as if he had lost it in some great battle, at his brother. “I be on my way to Barbados! Where me lads will pillage and plunder the town before we sail back to Spain!”

“You can’t get to Spain from Barbados, dummy. They’re all the way across the world.” Toby said to him, looking up from the little ships.

“Can too! You can sail anywhere!”

“No you can’t, it’s too far away. Your ship would sink.”

“That guy sailed around the world. Marco Polo. And there was that other guy who went around the world in only eighty days! See!”

“That’s just a story dummy!”

“Yeah, well, why do they call it Davey Jones’ locker?” Jacob said back, pushing his little ship along the water.

“Maybe he knocked it overboard and it sunk, and he’d hidden his gold and stuff in it next to his chewing gum.” Toby muttered, pushing his boat after Jacob’s. “I hide chewing gum in my locker. If I dropped mine off a boat, though, I’d get in a lot of trouble and have to go to the principal’s office. Maybe that’s why. ‘cause he got in to so much trouble, that everyone knows who he is. Like Billy Mitchell. He went to the school before I did, and they say the teacher’s locked him up in the basement for a week with only rats to eat and rain to drink ‘cause he threw a snowball at a girl during recess.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Toby’s ship bumped in to Jacob’s.

“Arrrrr!” Toby shouted, splashing water out of the tub and making two fingers on his right hand in to a hook. “Drop the planks! Draw your steel! Leave none of them alive, and any be alive, we’ll make them walk the plank!”

“If you don’t want any of them alive, how can you make any of them walk the plank?” Jacob asked.

There was silence for a second. Then Toby picked up the washcloth, wadded up in the corner of the bathtub, and dropped it in the middle of the two ships. The splash tossed both of the plastic boats in to the air, causing a splash that tossed droplets of water up on to both of their faces.

“What was that?” Jacob asked, staring, dumbfaced at his brother.

“Cannonball.” Toby replied, smiling. “You lose.”

“That’s not fair!” his brother replied.

“Aye, who said life be fair? I be a pirate, I be the great pirate Tobybeard, and I be taking your plunder!”

Smite!

2005-09-08T23:00:31Z

It’s about damn time the writing challenges returned. So I’m a little late on mine for this week. So sue me. Lots of things doing. Crankykitten’s entry can be found here: The Lord Find You and Keep You. She set this week’s theme as “it must take place in a church”, so church it is. She wanted to be serious. She said I didn’t have to.

==========

“It’s been a while since I’ve been in to a church.” Marcy said, looking up over her head at the towering gothic arches. This, she thought, was how you built a church. They didn’t build them like this over in the states. It was a place you could see God residing in, a huge, imposing place that felt like it had the awesome size and power to house an omnipotent being.

“You just went to church last week.” Tony replied, staring up at it as well.

“Yeah, but that was different. Then I was going to church. That was Sunday. Now, I’m going to look at a church. A real church. Not a white-walled building with a cross tacked to the front.”

“I happen to prefer white-walled buildings with crosses tacked to the front.”

“You?” Marcy replied to him, turning and raising an eyebrow. “You’re not even Catholic. Hell, you’re not even religious.”

“Yes I am.” Tony retorted. “I just don’t practice. And I don’t follow any codes. But trust me, I believe in God.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” Marcy crossed her arms at her boyfriend, raising an eyebrow. “Then how come you’ve never talked about it? And how come I’ve never seen you in a church? And how come you didn’t want to come with me today?”

Tony shook his head. “I believe in God enough to know that I shouldn’t go in to a church. Let alone this one. The little white walled ones, those I might feel safe in. Not as much power. Not as much imposing.”

His girlfriend laughed. “What the hell are you talking about? It’s just a church. It’s not like it can hurt you.”

“I don’t know about that, Marcy, I’ve done a lot of bad stuff in my life.”

“Yeah? So what?”

“I step in there, I’m liable to get hit by lightning or something.”

She scoffed at him. “Oh, now that’s nonsense. How often have you heard of someone getting struck by lightning walking in to a church? Murderers walk in to churches all the time. And you don’t here about them getting struck by lightning.”

“I’m sure God has much more insidious ways of making me smited.” Tony replied.

“Get your butt in here. I think you’re just bored. You promised you’d come with me on my vacation to Europe! You promised you’d see the sights with me!”

“I didn’t promise I’d die with you…”

“You big baby.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the door. “Get in here, or I’m breaking up with you, and that’s final.”

“Fine!” He bit back. “Fine! But if I die… you owe me!”

Marcy pulled Tony in through the enormous doors. As he was pulled across the threshold, a piece of masonry gave loose, high up on the outer wall. It dropped, skittering down the side of the cathedral, bouncing off a gargoyle, then off the peak of the wall near the door. It smashed to the ground just where Tony had been standing only a few seconds before.

Tony heard a thud and a crack, and started to turn around to look, but his girlfriend dragged him on.

“Over there!” She said, pointing up at the enormous stained-glass windows and stepping over a ‘Caution: Wet Floor’ sign. “Look at those! They’re beautiful! They definitely don’t make them like they used to!”

Tony, dragged behind her by one protesting wrist, would have turned that in to a bad compliment, but felt his feet start to give out from under him on the wet stone floor. Wouldn’t it be just right if I cracked my skull open, he thought as one foot zipped out from under him and the other whipped to the side. “Marcy…”

“Quit lollygagging!” Marcy gave him a tug on his arm, righting him again, and dragged him off deeper in to the church. Off to their left, the janitor, cleaning the steps, lost control of his mop bucket. It dropped down the stairs, spilling its contents, the mop, still stuck inside, cracked against the wall, cracking off the end and leaving only a sharpened pole. The bucket landed at the bottom of the stairs, on its wheels, and, still carrying a frightening amount of momentum, careened across the wet floor, sharpened pole aimed straight forward, straight through where Tony had been falling, and crashed in to the wall, point first.

Tony stared at it. “Hey Marcy, maybe it isn’t such a good idea for me to be in here.”

She looked back at him. “Oh come on, quit your whining. You are quite honestly the biggest baby I’ve ever met.” Behind her, the baptismal font, old, cracked, split one last, final crack. Water began to dribble out on to the floor, running down the stone steps straight towards them, skipping around her feet and running around Tony’s, who failed to notice the sudden squishiness beneath his soles.

Marcy waved her arms out, connecting with a large workman’s lamp, set up to provide additional light around the edges of the old, and at night rather dark, church. It teetered, loose bulb rattling and tossing a few sparks, when the back of her hand connected with it.

“Ow!” She said, swinging her arm back and holding her wrist.

“You okay?” Tony asked, stepping forward, out of the water, and pulling Marcy aside to a pew. The workman’s light toppled in to the water, bulb coming lose, sparks leaping out, and the open power lead landing straight in the puddle.

As they approached the pew, Tony failed to notice the sign on the side of it. ‘Warning: Floor Unstable. Do Not Use Pew.’ A little old lady, head covered in a white shawl, did, however, and reached out to stop the young man.

“Don’t go there, hon,” she said, pointing at the floor, “the wood under those stones has been rotted for years. They’re afraid it could collapse at any moment.”

Tony stopped and stared down at it, the hamster wheel in his mind turning. Things were just getting weird. Too weird. It was as if the whole church was out to get him. Except, wasn’t that what he’d been expecting? Wasn’t that…

A dove flew in the window and alighted on the edge of the pew. With a roar and a crash, the stone floor gave way, taking the pew and three more just like it down in to the basement of the church. An enormous cloud of dust exploded out from the whole following the noise. The entire process was over in the blink of an eye, but the noise echoed around the church for a long time after it was done.

Tony kept staring at the hole.

“That’s it. I’m out of here.”

Willy Wonka

2005-07-17T05:21:38Z

I went and saw the movie. And it was good. Much good. Other than that, I have one thing to say:

"Yes, Master Wonka requisitioned a clone army from us five years ago, and come see our results..."

OH NOES TEH MEME

2005-07-11T06:30:38Z

Yeah, I'm meming, for one of the first times ever. What can I say, it looked like fun... or something :D

It's the bored song meme. And after my good showing with a few band name messups (Cypress Hill, I'm looking at you...), I feel obligated.
1. Put your playlist on shuffle.
2. Post the first lines to the first 25 songs to come up (along with these instructions).
3. Have people guess the songs and artists in comments to the post.
4. Post the answers to the ones that have been guessed correctly.
5. Eventually, post the answers to the ones that nobody got, because you know that no one's ever gonna get the damn thing.
-I'm adding skip the ones that don't have lyrics 'cause, well, yeah.

1. Little salamander, where did you go?/Edge of the yard/I found you, you know/All brown and hard.
2. Return to my own vomit like a dog/rhymes and giggles muffle the dialogue/carve my initials in a tree, I will never leave/maybe one day I'll be royalty
3. This girl's trying to kill me/this girl's trying to kill me/she's my favorite piece of plastic, held to my ear
4. Every time that I cry out/no one ever comes to me/every time that I reach our/no one ever rescues me
5. Scott became famous for freezing to death in Ant-arc-ti-caaaaa/Columbus made history, thinking some island was In-diiiii-aaaa/General Custer's/a national hero/for not knowing when to ruuuuuuun...
6. I light a candle/just blowing in the wind/mist on the water/is still my only friend
7. I can hear you through the silence/talking slowly to the wind/no one ever sees the real you
8. White lights, strange city, mad music (all around)/Midnight, street magic/crazy people crazy sound.
9. Whatsoever I've feared has/come to life/whatsoever I've fought off/became my life
10. One day while I was eating beans (at [title of song])/just sittin' diggin' on the scene (at [title of song])/a chick came walkin' through the door/that I had never seen before/at least I never saw her down (at [title of song])
11. Don't smoke, don't fight, don't light no cigarettes/or else you'll wind up in the can/no jokes, don't write, sit tight, don't fool around/you are a guest of Uncle Sam
12. I take a step to what's real/or at least to what it is I'm chasing/another step to reveal/all the shadows that I keep embracing
13. I'm here to tear down everything around you, and you know what I'm going to replace it with? Something new. God.
14. Last call for Flosten Paradise, hurry up./Wh...wh..what do you want me to do?/Hurry up./Mr. Rod! Oh!
15. You say that you don't/you turn around and do it/you say that you won't/you're first to rush to it
16. Walkin' down this rocky road/wonderin' where my life is leading/rollin' on, to the bitter end.
17. No one dreams in this ol' town no more/they don't look down that windin' road/wonderin' where it goes
18. Blind me, erased what was/[name of song] I have become
19. When I said that I'd be faithful/when I promised I'd be true/when I swore that I would never/be with anyone but you/when I told that I love you, with those tender words I spoke...
20. The premise, basically/a modern tragedy/disdained senility/gore-tempered novelty/an inability/for cold reality
21. We get some rules to follow/that and this/these and those/[title of song]
22. I hurt myself today/to see if I still feel/I focus on the pain/the only thing that's real
23. Though I am made/of titanium/I still feel human like you/copper and tin/and 6 other twins/I left them and came with you
24. Live for yourself, it's a wonderful thing/you can do what you want, you can live in a dream/get in, get up, get the rythm, get down
25. Bite the the thorn that pierce the skin/come back down to earth again/the cold is creeping deep inside/you disconnect the telephone line
26. Like Guns N Roses with Axel Rose spittin'/Ozzie's black eyes and the bats that he's bitten/Big marshall stacks and a broken E-string/These are a few of my favorite things

(# 26 'cause it came next, and I HAD to)

Arrrr!

2005-06-24T18:54:20Z

Yeah, we’ve been bad about the weakly thing. Mostly my fault. More competition abounds, and this week, we compete in the first person! You can find my opponent’s entry here: Can You Guess What it Is? from a number of days ago. Quite a few days ago. Yes, I know.

For this jaunt in to the character’s eye view, I was inspired by an e-mail I just recently read, which gave me an idea. At least the beginnings of one. So strap on your boots, hoist your mainsails, and swash your buckles folks, and get your lungs ready to shout “”

==========

The prow of the ship cut through the waves like a cutlass through a lilly-livered landlubber’s gut, and I felt the spray mist itself across my brow, salty and sweet and tangy, reeking of fish and the open seas. It was good to be back again, back out on the water. We’d been for too long cooped up in that port, and my legs had been aching to feel the swoop and sway of the decks once more.

I turned around, surveying the crew of Reef Dodger, the fastest ship in these parts of the Caribbean. No Pirate Pinnace or Navy Cutter could keep up with her, and no merchant could escape her guns and her grapples. She was a ship of beauty, old and aged and wise, smooth decked and thin-keeled, with three towering masts full of sails to pull the wind.

There was Piccadilly Pete, the Englishman, who had fought a dozen men and lived to tell about it. It had been a late night of gambling, and they had accused him of cheating. Of course he had been. They were all drunk and he had a sword, but that didn’t make Pete any less of a pirate. With a whoop and a grin, he pulled his saber and ran the first one through, leaping up on the table as the other swarmed around him. The rest of us stood back and watched him, laughing and whooping like a banshee as he danced on their skulls.

Loudmouth Tom, who could talk the snout off a dolphin, or at least it would give it to him just to get him to shut up. He was a young man, shaved his head every morning with the rusty axe he wore on his belt. He could chew nails up and spit ‘em out, and probably did, every morning, just to wake himself up. He was always telling stories, about the places he’d been, the men he’d killed, the ship’s he’d fought on, the town’s he’d pillaged, the wenches he’d bedded. So many stories every man on the ship combined couldn’t have lived them all.

He was talking to Woodtooth Mcrory, who had his teeth smashed out by a ship’s boom and had the whole lot replaced with wooden ones. An ornerier cuss you never met, he’d kill you just as soon as look at you, and he could kill you just by looking at you. He had the sharpest eyes of any man I’d met, eyes that could see a seagull at twenty miles. The skin around those eyes was crinkled and cracked from too many days in the crow’s nest, staring out over the sun-stained water.

One-Eyed Jack sauntered up to me, swaggering like the old sea-dog he was, his leather eyepatch stained dark from years of sea and sun. He was the oldest of the ship’s crew, even older than her captain. He stomped his way across the reeking deck planks and looked down at me, a scowl on his face.

“Cabin boy, you better be getting on cleaning them decks, or I’ll be telling the captain, and if he don’t gut you from grin to gizzard and serve you up for dinner, he’ll be putting you under the lash for sure. Now get to work, matey. We got no room for layabouts.”

“Yes sir, Jack, sir.” I replied, stepping down off the prow and grabbing at my mop. I took one last look out over the seas before fetching my rope and bucket and heading back to the main deck.

Over the Wall

2005-05-26T02:54:58Z

We’re back at it again! After weeks of moving out of places, being in the same place and otherwise occupied, and being in intense pain/high on painkillers, the lovely crankykitten and I are back with competitions! This week’s theme is one we abandoned a number of weeks back because it was too serious, and we were in a hilarious mood.

Who says war has to be serious?

==================================

“Alright, men,” Duchovny said, crouched down in front of his troops on the ledge, his shoulders and head just below the edge of the trench wall so that he could see every last one of them, his small squad of men bunched up in the trench beneath him, “in a minute, Peterson is going to attack from that side,” he pointed to the right, “and when he does, we’re going ot go over this wall.”

They all looked up. It was a low wall, and if they had stood up in the trench, the heads of the taller ones would have poked up over the top of the wall built just in front of it. They hadn’t had much time to dig in before the hostilities had begun and the enemy had started their assault.

It had been fast and hectic, friendly and enemy only distinguishable in the coming dusk by where they stood on the battlefield. From where they hunched in the snow, they could all hear the cries of men left in the no-man’s land between the trenches, shouts and whispers, but also silence from some.

Toby Sinatra stared up at his commander, so full of confidence, hunched down to protect his back but still seeming to stand tall. Duchovny didn’t have any fear, he thought, even though that first assault had cost them dear. Duchovny trusted in Peterson’s plan, trusted in his men, in their skill and their aim, and trusted that when they went over that wall, their surprise tactics would win them the day, that the enemy wouldn’t be expecting it.

Toby wished he shared in that confidence. He was cold and tired, and the snow was beginning to fall again, on his shoulders, on his coat, and the half-melted puddle at the bottom of their trench was beginning to seep through his poorly made boots, some having sloshed in the top. He was cold, and tired, and hungry, and, most of all, he wanted his mother.

They had been at it all day, fighting, winning, losing, and this was it, the last big hurrah. Win, lose, or go home. Whoever won it now, the last battle of the war, won it all.

“Are you ready?”

They all nodded. “Ready!”

There was a shout from the other trench, where Peterson had his small squad.

“Let’s go!” Roy Duchovny shouted, waving his arm, spinning around and pulling himself up over the wall. His men followed, all six of them, scrabbling up through the snow and the slush. David lost his footing, sliding down in the snow, back in to the trench, but the rest pushed on. Over the wall. A cry was raised from the other side, and as they began to open fire, heads began to pop up over the walls of the far trenches.

Jerry went down. Roy went down. Still they charged in to fire, scooping up ammunition as they went and flinging it back at their opponents.

They were halfway there, and Toby began to realize they might make it. No matter how many losses they’d suffered, the enemy would be at their mercy once they reached the trenches.

Then he felt a thump in his gut, and new that his dreams and hopes were over. He slipped in the snow, falling on his face, clutching his hands to his chest. His fingers felt wet. He looked down at it, opening his hands.

He’d been hit, all right. He held the snowball in his hands, staring at it. He looked up in time to see the three Burkowsky boys stand up behind their snow fort, flinging snowballs in unison, all of them hitting Roy just as he was scooping up another handful to throw back.

“Ha ha!” Zach Norris, the oldest of the boys on the enemy’s side and therefore their leader, said, jumping up and down behind his wall. “We win! We win!”

A little black light lights up on black on a black background to let you know you've done it!

2005-05-23T22:51:28Z

Today, on the way back from Olympia, I saw a car that was blacker than black. Actually, it was this dark grey, but its rear lights were also some shade of red that made them look black, and overall the effect was of a vehicle that was, well, blacker than any black I've ever seen.

Also, the woman's show went rather well, and my teeth are almost fine.

mattstp @ 2005-05-15T23:21:00

2005-05-16T06:22:42Z

Wisdom teeth out last Thursday. Hurt for a couple days. Possible damage to jaw nerve. Hurts. More later.

Three Things

2005-05-05T01:04:53Z

1) That was the best "weekend" ever. Ever.
2) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a fantastic movie, and you should see it.
3) "Robocop the Musical"

Something's Cooking

2005-04-28T03:24:44Z

The theme for this week’s competition: Cooking Disasters. Of course, it wasn’t quite specified what had to be cooking, where it had to be cooked, or that what was cooking was even food. Silly me, maybe I should have specified :)?

Anywho, for todays dive in to the depraved, the Coogman productions brings you a lesson in the horrors of college cooking by the male persuasion. I give you:

==========

“What the hell is that gawdawful smell?” I came stumbling out of my room, looking around all bleary-eyed. I’d woken up from my nap early, making me even less coherent then usual. And it hadn’t been noise or light that had woken me up, it had been this sick, oily reek that clawed its way in under my door, crawled across the floor, hunched up the dies of the bed, and frolicked, gibbering and screeching, over my face, shoving itself in to my nostrils like a badly aimed nasal inhaler.

Max didn’t reply. He had his headphones in, I could tell because I could hear it from there. I shouted louder, or at least tried to, but the noise made my head spin. Instead I just stumbled over to him, kicking him in the ankle because I didn’t have the energy to lift my arm. He looked over.

“Yo!” His voice was very, very loud, but he reached up to pop his headphones off.

“What in the name of every god of cookery that ever did exist in past, is existing now, or will exist in future, are you attempting to concoct out here?” At least I’m pretty sure he was trying to cook. There were bags, boxes, and bottles of ingredients everywhere, most of them still open, and a splashing of just about everything on the counter or the floor. There were two mixing bowls. There were spoons and spatulas and a beater.

“Huh?” He stared at me blankly.

“What are you cooking? It smells like roadkill.”

“Some of it.” He replied, nodding.

“What else you got in there? It looks like you pulled out everything in the… some of it?” It took me a second to catch what he’d said. “You’ve got ROADKILL in there?”

He was still nodding. “It’s fresh. I killed it on the way in. Damn possum ran right in front of the car. So I figured why not, save me a couple bucks, clean up the street.”

“You at least skinned it first?” I bumbled. I dug around for a mug with one hand, trying to get my grip on the coffee pot with the other. It wasn’t working, of course.

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

I was way too not awake enough for this. And the coffeemaker wasn’t on. I jammed the pot back in, flicking the machine to “percolate”, and it started doing just that with a click and a bubble and a boil noise, that special noise that means that beautiful black tar is coming my way.

Inside the oven, something made a thumping noise.

“Wuzzat?” I asked, looking over at it. Oven looked fine. There was a thin oily smoke coming out the heat vent, but when Max tried to bake, cook, or fry anything, hell, when he tried to boil water, he managed to burn something in a bad way.

“What was what?” he said, still nodding. I guess maybe he could still hear the music in his head.

“In the oven…” I said.

”Didn’t hear nothing.” He replied.

“And what the hell is that smell already…”

“I kinda like it.” He said, taking a deep whiff. I coughed and gagged just imagining taking that much of that stench in to my lungs.

There was another thump. This one louder.

“That!” I replied, stabbing a finger towards the oven. “That right there!”

He stared at the oven, not surprised, not excited, not scared, just… Max. “Happens. Probably a fat bubble or something exploding.”

“Fat bubbles pop, they don’t explode.”

“Same thing.”

“They don’t sound like that…” The coffee was dripping.

The oven groaned, a guttural noise like a file being dragged across the corner of a table. At first I thought it was the coffee pot. I was used to strange noises coming from it. Or maybe it was Max, I was really used to weird noises coming from him, although most of them were produced by his GI tract and came out one end or the other.

“That didn’t sound right…” Max said. Something seemed to make it through the pot and techno induced haze that his mind operated under perpetually. He stared at the oven. It groaned again. I looked up from my empty coffee mug to intersect his line of sight with my own. That thick oily smoke was coming out from around the edges of the door as well.

“We are so not going to get our security deposit back on this one.” I mumbled. I didn’t think it would cover blowing up the oven, and I was almost assured that it wasn’t going to cover burning down the whole apartment building. This is what we get for moving off campus and getting our own room with our own kitchen. Or at least, this is what I get for rooming with Max again. Great guy, but he’s got all the mental faculties of an elderly lemming with terminal brain cancer.

The oven rattled, squeaked, and then the door slammed down like the portal to the fridge of Gozer. The smoke belched out, oozing out on to the floor and seeping across it. I shied away, trying not to let it, whatever the hell it was, touch my unprotected skin.

“Cool…” Max mumbled. He turned his music back on, leaving his headphones off, and I could hear the bass thumping through them, polluting the air almost as thickly as the smoke.

The oven made another noise, although this time, it was more of a growl than a groan, an angry noise, a hungry noise.

Then something else reached out of the oven, grabbed ahold of the edge of the door, and began to pull its way out of the thick black. The smoke billowed, covering it up for a few seconds more. My coffee mug slipped from my fingers. The coffeemaker beeped, done.

Two beady red eyesglowed through the smoke, casting a light, beams that cut through the smoke and threw a red glow through all of it and on the nearby walls. The head finally parted the obscuration, and it was all thick, wrinkled, black, leathery skin, sharp glittery teeth, and writhing tentacles.

“What did you put in that?” I asked.

“You know, just what was lying around…” Max said, still bobbing his head, still grinning, staring as the whatever it was slithered out of the oven and dropped on to the floor with a wet thud only a few feet from him. “I didn’t take any of your stuff, man, it was all group stuff, or mine…”

“You summoned a demon in to our kitchen…”

“Only a small one.”

“Grth yanki croosh tabaya noshowta maribi!” The demon said, dripping slime from its jaws on to the tile floor.

“We are so not getting our deposit back.” I mumbled, shaking my head. I reached for another mug and the coffeepot.

PORCELAIN!

2005-04-26T01:18:57Z

*takes a deep breath*

THE TEACHER GAVE ME PORCELAIN TO PLAY WITH IN CERAMICS TODAY AND IT WAS AS IF I HAD TOUCHED THE BUILDING BLOCKS THAT GOD HIMSELF (should you believe in him/her/it) USED TO CREATE ALL THAT WE SEE AROUND US.

Or something.

It's really, really nice. It's stiff, but very malleable, responding to your lightest touches but maintaining a shape even when extremely thin. And this batch of porcelain was three years old... it was almost a religious experience.

They're all right. If they'd given us that stuff to work with, instead of shop clay, it would have been like cheating.

mattstp @ 2005-04-24T18:16:00

2005-04-26T01:15:10Z

[18:15] Coogaar: I hate some of the people who live here
[18:15] Coogaar: on campus, I mean
[18:15] Mike: you just hate people :P
[18:15] Coogaar: ...
[18:15] Coogaar: this is true.

Spring has Sprung

2005-04-22T17:07:26Z

Yeah, it's cliche, that title. But it has. Outside right now, it's the type of spring morning that makes you happy you got out of bed in the morning. It's warm but not hot, damp, a few white fluffy clouds in the sky, a cool breeze, and the smell of flowers on the air. It reminds me of mornings walking home from swim team practice with my brother and the Seetins. It reminds me of waterfights in the backyard. It reminds me of laying on the grass with a book, or of climbing a tree, or of lemonade on the front porch, watching the neighbors walk their dog past.

Boba the Fett

2005-04-21T01:30:32Z

And here it is, the silliness that I promised, the response to The Backpack with Jets,

==============

Class hadn’t so much been hell, but it was just one of those days. My Thursdays have never been good, they always start too early, and even the high I’d gotten from teaching was beginning to wear off. And then I’d dozed off in Ed, and spent three hours in ceramics. Even so, I could feel my heart starting to race again, my neurons starting to go in to overdrive, my step starting to quicken and, dare I say it, even skip as I hit the stairs up to my apartment. It was six, that meant only six hours to go, and I’d be at the bus station, and she would be in my arms.

My keys clicked over in the lock, and I kicked the door open with my foot, the door showing dirt and rubber marks from eight months of such abuse.

“YO!”

Of course no one answered. This hour of the day, they would both be out. I pushed in to my room, dropping my bag on the floor, dropping down in to my chair probably a bit harder than was healthy for it. A blinking red light caught my eye. “Hey,” I mumbled to no one in particular, picking up my phone and poking in a few digits, “I’ve got voicemail.”

Listen. Listen. Listen. I gritted my teeth, the profanity almost making it out. I stabbed another couple of numbers. Listen. Listen. Listen.

“Fuck.”

I slammed the phone down, grabbing at my wallet, fishing for my phone card, the whole time muttering curses and slanders against Greyhound. They’d screwed me four of the five times I’d taken them, and now it seemed their practices were extending to others, as well. You’ve got to hate the private transit system.

“Ravenna McQuill, pissed off writer, at your service.”

She sounded upset, but she also sounded… vengeful? “Ravenna, its Matt, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Bus crashed into a truck, back hurts…” she certainly didn’t SOUND like her back hurt, although there was a bit of discomfort in there somewhere. Actually, she rather sounded like she was about to laugh. I began to relax. That last message said she’d missed her bus, but maybe something else had come along? I heard a noise in the background, metal on metal, that chalkboard noise that makes me want to scream in pain whenever it touches the tympanic membrane.

“What are you doing? It sounds like you’re keying a bus or something…” I wouldn’t put it past her. Hell, I’d be surprised if she hadn’t decked the driver.

“Oh. No. I’m not quite that angry, but… I found these jets…” Wait, what? She sounded like she’d just said…

“Ravenna, what are you doing?”

“I’ll see you in Spokane, love.”

“No, Ravenna, talk to me, wha… doggammit.” I stared at the phone. One hell of a time to get disconnected. She sounded like she had it all in control, though, like everything was fine. Still, I couldn’t help being worried. Most people would be scared if someone mentioned they’d found “jets”, me… well, this was her, after all. I was downright terrified.

I sat back in my chair. If she could, she’d call back, and if not, calling her wouldn’t do any good. The phone would be dead. I turned the music up, felt the bass against my feet, and slowly stripped off my shoes. She would get back to me when she found a phone.

A few hours later, of course, one of those little parts of me that I got from my Mom, the part that asks “what if they’re dead in a ditch somewhere?” was really starting to gnaw at my insides like a puppy who’s getting his teeth and who has just discovered that chewing on hands makes the hurt go away. I pulled my phone card out again and dialed.

“Yes…?” There was a hiss and a constant booming in the background, and what sounded like the roar of wind. Where was she, a wind tunnel, or maybe the wing of a 747? I hear those are cheap seats out there, if you can stand bugs in your teeth and no complimentary peanuts.

“Ravenna, Where are you? What are you doing?” I shouted as loud as I could. My roommate pounded on the door, asking if I was alright. I shouted back just as I heard a voice come through the white noise on the line.

“I’m on my way. Where do you live again?” It was her, and she sounded like she was laughing.

“Apartments, across the street from campus, second floor…. Why? Don’t you need me to pick you up?” Top of a bus, maybe? Perhaps she’d caught a ride with a biker gang passing through? That would explain the booming and the wind, and she certainly knew the right kinds of people to make that happen. I could picture her on the back of a motorcycle, trenchcoat flapping in the wind behind her, arms wrapped around… I could feel my eyes turning green. I started to speak again.

I could barely make out her next words through the noise. “Eh, nah. I got it covered.” Then all the sound cut off again as she hung up. I guess if you’re on a motorcycle, you’ve got to keep your hands free, but… damn it, where was she? I liked mysteries, and damn if she didn’t throw enough my way, but this was getting ridiculous!

I sat back in the chair, turned the music higher. I was hungry, my stomach advising me of this by taking a chunk of my spine between its jaws and whittling for a little bit. I wandered out to the kitchen. I’d planned to have something light, maybe have some leftovers depending on the catling’s hunger level when she showed up. I filled a pot with some water, threw some pasta in to it. I wasn’t in the mood to cook.

I was in the kitchen again, pouring the pasta out of the pot in to the strainer, trying to decide if I wanted to go to the trouble to do something to it, trying to ignore the worry in my gut, and the strange excitement that was sitting next to it. She’d had that tone in her voice she got when she was planning something, plotting, scheming, plans and plots and schemes that I had always, invariably, enjoyed. And for some reason, I’d had “Fett’s Vette” running through my head for the last three hours.

There was a knock on my window.

I knew it was my window because it came from my room. I’m on the second floor, though, and come on, who’s going to get that high? You can get to the balcony, sure, and knock there, but my window… you’d have to be able to fly.

There was a second knock on my window.

Okay, I definitely heard it that time. I set the pasta down in the sink, the pot, still hot, on the stove, and strode in to my room on bare feet. “What the hell…”

There was a third knock as I pulled the blinds and the sheet aside, shoving the slider open and sticking my head up against the jury-rigged screen.

My mind did overtime, and the only words I could think of were “You’re shitting me…”

She was sitting, looking a bit windswept, a few feet outside my window, her duffel bag between her legs like she was riding a horse. On the sides of it, four jets, aimed at the ground, emitting tongues of orange flame, roaring like a New Zealand Rugby team coming out of the scrum, keeping her aloft on the fabric of that bag.

“You got a backpack. With jets.” I blinked a few times. There was no way I was that hungry. I should have eaten dinner when my gut first started barking.

“Yeah, well that’s what I get when I look closely in alleyways.”

I shook my head. That was definitely her. My mind couldn’t make up that smile, that voice, those words. “Woman,” I said, “you flew here on a duffel bag with jets.”

Her grin grew wider, threatening to endanger the structural integrity of her face, and she nodded to make her ponytail bob.

My own smile was probably pushing a few engineering boundaries itself, however, and I could feel a number of different emotions, all good, beginning to bubble their way up from somewhere in my chest (and this time I knew it wasn’t hunger).

I pointed at the ground beneath us with one hand. “I’ll meet you downstairs, and then I will make it clear to you just how amused I am by this.”

Hamster Wheel

2005-04-20T23:25:04Z

The subject for this week: Transportation, or, more specifically, broken transportation. Yes, I know, it was supposed to be War, but both of us were feeling far too happy and silly to do something serious. We did two this week, one (which I'll get to posting later today) in rememberance of the comedy of errors that was her attempt to visit me two weeks ago, and the other, "more serious", the competition. You can see her rememberance: The Backpack with Jets, and her "more serious" story is here. For now, though, I give you…

========

“Oh you have GOT to be shitting me!” Mark slammed his palms down against the dashboard as the sound of a dying engine filled the cab of the small car, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, grrrr, thump.

“No.” He put his foot on the brakes, slowing the car and pulling it over to the side of the highway. “God damn it, no!” He pulled off the concrete in to the dirt and dust, kicking up a dry cloud all around the car. As far as the eye could see in both directions, there was nothing but dirt, and rock, and some low scrub brush, cut in half by the two lane highway, straight as a line on a map, rolling over the horizon in front of and behind the car. There were no other vehicles, no other people, hell, no other animals anywhere. An eerie silence but for the blowing of wind and dust against the car filled the air.

“Maybe it just died. Give it another shot.” Luke said, trying to calm his friend down. When Mark got mad, he tended to start throwing things, and inside the small confines of the car, that might not be such a good idea.

“No.” Mark replied. “No, I know exactly what the god damned problem is. I know EXACTLY.” He undid his seatbelt, yanking on it so hard he nearly broke it rather than release it. He tossed it up against the door, pried up the hood release, then popped the portal open and stepped out in to the stinging wind.

“Show those little bastards.” He was muttering. “Show ‘em good.” He pried open the hood and stared down in to it.

Luke shoved his door open, but since he was on the windward side, he had to work hard to shove it back against the driving force of mother nature. “Calm down, man, you know getting mad at them isn’t going to help you at all. If they’re acting this way, yelling…”

“WHAT DO YOU LITTLE GREEN-SKINNED BASTARDS THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Luke cringed as Mark let the full force of his anger out in to the confines of the car’s engine. “YOU’RE UNDER CONTRACT! YOU HEAR ME?” He reached in to his pocket, pulling out a very folded and rather grimy piece of paper. “CONTRACT!”

Luke came around the front of the car and grabbed his friend by the paper-wielding arm. “Come on, man, that’s not going to help…”

From beneath the hood of the car, a chittering noise came, like little clicks and squeaks. The driver turned his head, glaring down in to it, and the passenger side. “Oh, great, now you’ve done it.”

“Why? What did they say?”

The engine of the car was constructed of a large metal cage of some sort, and mounted in to this cage, like a series of disks in a tumbler lock, were devices that looked like mechanized hamster wheels of some sort, attached to little pistons, pumps, wheels and gears, like the overly complicated insides of some ancient clock. Standing in, around, and on top of these wheels and contraptions, little green creatures, only as tall as your thumb, stared up through the cage at them. Many of them carried little signs, chicken-scratch writing all over them.

“They said, um, they said they’re on strike.”

“You’re kidding me? Strike?” Mark asked.

The creatures that powered the car screeched back loudly; at least, as loudly as creatures no bigger than a sharpie can.

“They say that they want better working conditions. All they get is old bread and lukewarm water, and now you’re making them work in this weather. You think it’s bad in there?” Luke pointed at the cab of the car. “Try working down here where all the dust from the road gets thrown up off the tires in to your face.”

Mark stared dumbfounded.

“They’re wet weather creatures. They’re not that far removed from their amphibious ancestors who used to live in the swamp. This weather has to be drying them out pretty bad.”

“They’re GREMLINS, Luke…”

“Well, yes. Don’t we have any more water in the car?”

“We’ve got some Mountain Dew…”

“No, that will just dry them up even more.”

Down beneath them the screeching rose higher, and the creatures were beginning to line up in little rows in front of the hamster-wheel engine, waving their signs and chanting in unison.

“Oh for pete’s sake.” Mark said, gritting his teeth down at them and stuffing the contract back in his pocket. “I knew I should have paid the extra five hundred bucks for the whip-wielding slave-driver. But no, I had to get the two year warranty, with optional Gremlin maternity package. And now look what I’ve got?” He wiped the sweat off his brow, groaning.

“Unions.”

The Watch

2005-04-13T23:30:43Z

For this week’s writing competition, the theme is mine, and I do declare it to be “Time Travel.” My opponent has been spending much time on her addition to this week’s battle of wits, and has promised hilarity on her end. As for me, I tried a number of things, comedy, serious, none of them seemed to come out quite right. Although I really did like the title “What Has Going to Have Happening”, I didn’t end up using that story (it didn’t go anywhere).

As for this one… I had a great idea, but the further I got, the more it seemed to break down. I could have gone back and rewritten parts of it to make it work, but… well, paper and all that. I got lazy, in short, and started it too late, which is really unfortunate. Hopefully I got the point of the story across.

==============================

“It’s weird, you know?” Trevor stared over the pitcher of beer at the man sitting across from him. “A bunch of different religions believe we’ve got some kind of God or spirits watching over us, or a guardian angel or whatever.” He shook his head, the room spinning slightly. “Me, though? I don’t believe it, I know it.”

The man across from him looked to be twice his age, and since Trevor was stepping in to his early forties, this was quite an age indeed. He had thin gray hair above a wrinkled face, two blue eyes staring out of it. He had a scar on his chin, a little one that looked more like just another wrinkle. Trevor fingered his own chin, where there was a scar from when he’d fallen off his bike as a child.

“Take this scar, for instance,” he said. “When I was seven, thirty-five years ago, 1970, I was riding my bike out on the main street outside my house. Now, my mom always told me, never ride your bike out on the main street, it’s not safe. There are a lot of cars, and they drive way too fast. It was the middle of the day, though, and no one drives that street in the middle of the day, they’re all off at work. I was riding, fast, and I hit a big stick, and I lost control, fell off my bike, hit the ground shoulder and chin first. I can still remember how much that hurt.”

The man across from him was just listening, had been for the past half hour, not saying much. Trevor didn’t know the man. Hell, come to think of it, he hadn’t even heard the man’s name. He had just been sitting alone at the table, getting a beer before heading home after a long day at work. The other guys had stated excuses for not showing, mostly good ones. So he’d been alone, until this old guy had come over and offered to buy him a pitcher of booze. Sure, thought Trevor. He lived alone, there was no one at home waiting and worrying. And he wouldn’t mind the company.

“Anyway, I’m lying there, dazed, and this car comes around the corner. It’s coming pretty fast, and I’m not sure the guy in the car could see me. Or guys. It was a couple of teenagers, and I guess maybe they were drinking or partying or something. So they were rushing down on me, and suddenly, out of nowhere, this guy comes running across the street, grabs me up just in time. Car nearly gets both of us, but he’d snatched me away just in time.”

“You remember something from that far back in your life?” The man across from him asked before taking another sip of his beer. His voice was gravelly and bass. The two of them sounded like they could do a duet together, if the other man was just a bit younger and had smoked a few less cancer sticks in his life. Trevor glanced down at the cigarette, nearly burnt down to the butt, that he clutched in his own hand. He should really quit, he kept telling himself.

“Yeah. I remember them all, actually. It’s kind of odd. Every time something bad was about to happen, and some guy saved me. Just some random guy on the street. Like when I was fifteen, some guy tried to rob me in an alley. I don’t know what he thought he’d get off a fifteen year old, my lunch money? He wasn’t much older than me, probably the only person he could mug, I wasn’t very big. But he shoved me in to this alley and started acting tough, yelling at me to give him my wallet, or he’d cut me. I was scared out of my mind. Then he just crumples like a log, just like that, and there’s this guy behind him with a two by four, or something. I try to thank the guy, but he leaves.”

“Sounds like you’ve led a blessed life, then.” The man said. He had reached in to his pocket and removed a pocket watch, was reading the time, as he sipped his beer again. He had a bit of foam in his moustache.

“Hey,” Trevor said, looking at the watch. It was a pocket watch, sure enough, a little ring on top, two little knobs on the side, hanging from a gold chain around the man’s neck. “Hey, what time is it?”

The old man shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“But you’re looking at your watch…”

“It’s not that kind of watch.”

“What kind of watch?” Trevor was confused. He knew he hadn’t had that many beers, and was pretty sure there was only really one kind of watch, the kind that told the time.

The old man stared off in to space for a while, seeming to think. “It’s the kind of watch that tells how much time you’ve got until you need to do something, instead of how much time it has been since something.”

Trevor shook his head. “That didn’t make sense.”

“It will soon.” The man said.

“So how long do you have until you’ve got to do something?” Trevor asked.

“Not long now. A few minutes.” He replied.

“I best not keep you, then. I mean, you’ve probably got a lot of your own things to do, instead of listening to a rather inebriated man go on about his past.”

“How many more incidents like that do you remember?” The old man asked. He had put the pocket watch down on the table. He started chewing his nails, and Trevor found himself watching the old man gnaw on them. It was a nasty habit, or at least that’s what Trevor’s mother had always told him, and a few of his girlfriends. He did it too, when he was nervous, or anxious about something.

“A lot of them.” Trevor replied. “When I was seventeen, and learning to drive, some guy stepped out in front of my car as I was gonna go in to an intersection. I slammed on the brakes, nearly hit him, started to yell, then this car runs the red, goes straight through, real fast, where I would have been if this dude hadn’t gotten in front of the car.

“Another time, when I was twenty-seven. I got in to a fight outside of a bar. Didn’t realize the guys I was fighting were a couple of skinheads, real bad dudes, jailhouse tats on their cheeks and all. And one of them pulled a knife. And this guy came out of the bar, pulled a gun, and told them they’d best move along. Move along.” He chuckled. “I’ve always liked that phrase. Like in old westerns.”

“That’s it, then?” The old man asked. “The only times you remember?”

“Oh, hell no, I can think of others. Half a dozen more.”

“Like the time at the airport?” The old man asked.

“Airport?” Trevor replied, stumped. That was weird. What time at the airport? And how could some guy he’d never met ask that?

“When you were supposed to get on a plane, and didn’t, and the plane crashed.”

“Oh, right, that time. When I was thirty five? Yeah. That was weird. I was in the bathroom, using the John, and when I got up to leave, the door was all locked up. I couldn’t get out. I missed my flight, but it crashed on takeoff. Everyone on board was killed, it was horrible. And I was trapped in a bathroom.”

Thoughts were seeping through Trevor’s beer-sodden mind. That was odd, wasn’t it? How could this guy know about the plane? Maybe he saw it on the news. “But wait, how’d you know about that?”

The man was staring at his watch again. “Did I tell you how I got this watch?”

“Huh?” Trevor was having trouble seeing straight. He must have drunk a lot more than he thought. Actually, come to think of it, that beer pitcher was looking pretty empty.

“I was getting drunk in a bar one night, after a hard day at work. Just minding my own business. This old man walked up to me, sat down, offered to buy me a pitcher in exchange for a chat. I thought hell, why not, I could use a few free brews, and besides, the old guy seemed rather familiar.” He was getting up from the table.

“And what?” Trevor asked. “He just gave you his watch at the end of the whole thing?”

The man nodded. “Something like that.” He pulled his coat on over his shoulders. “It’s been nice talking to you.”

“Hey, wait a second!” Trevor started to get up, didn’t quite make it. “Where are you going? It was nice talking to you, if a little weird. I don’t even know your name!”

The man glanced back. “Same as yours. Trevor.”

Trevor smiled. “That’s one hell of a coincidence. That why you came over, then, you heard the bartender call me Trevor?”

The old man nodded as he turned away. “Something like that.”

Trevor watched him go. That had been one of the weirdest conversations of his life. Especially the end there. Why all the focus on his life? Especially all those weird guardian angel moments. He glanced around, bringing himself back to the present. Must be the beer, he thought. His head was starting to pound. How much had he drunk? He felt like his body was moving like he was buried in molasses. Then he spotted it on the table, glinting next to the old man’s beer glass.

“Hey, old man! Uh, Trevor, hey!” He stumbled over, picking up the old man’s watch off the table. “Hey! You forgot your watch!”

He glanced down at the watch, which had opened in his hands when he picked it up. That was weird. The watch had multiple layers, each with its own little hand. And they were labeled. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Wow, Trevor thought, this is one hell of a watch.

“Old man! Trevor! Hey!” The old man wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He must have left the bar in a real hurry, the drunk thought. Hmm. How much could he get for a watch like this at a pawn shop? Must be a real antique, something real special.

“Except that’s not right,” Trevor thought, “it’s counting backwards.”

And indeed, it was. Zero years, zero days, zero hours, zero minutes, and three seconds. Two seconds. One second. Zero seconds.

Trevor looked up. Okay, he thought. Maybe he’d had a few… too… many. Had he passed out, maybe? Blacked out, or just had enough that his memory was shot to hell? Either way, he didn’t know how he’d ended up in the middle of this field in the middle of nowhere, standing next to a dirt road. He glanced down at the watch, which was, miraculously, still in his hand, in the same position as he last remembered it.

It read forty-two years, thirty-seven days, four hours, three minutes, and fifty-seven seconds.

"Richard Cory", by Edwin Arlington Robinson

2005-04-11T06:22:50Z

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrated,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
-Edwin Arlington Robinson

A little creepy. But someone used it in a teaching lesson in class on Thursday, and I thought "WOW, that's a good poem..."

mattstp @ 2005-04-10T20:57:00

2005-04-11T03:55:24Z

Great weekend. Fantastic weekend. And I am so... damn... tired :D

mattstp @ 2005-04-08T08:45:00

2005-04-08T15:46:21Z

In the words of John Crichton:

"It's supposed to be easy. How come it's never easy?"

mattstp @ 2005-04-06T22:30:00

2005-04-07T05:30:45Z

*twitches* Hello, next semester, I'd like to introduce you to suck. Suck, this is next semester. Next semester, this is suck.

...except that I got in to ALL MY CLASSES, with one secondary choice over a primary (new time conflict), without having to fill out a jot of paperwork. For the first time. Ever. This makes me happy.

Don't Say Goodbye

2005-04-07T04:59:22Z

Competition continues! This week’s theme: Romance, as decided by crankykitten (her story can be found here: Oscar Wilde Didn't Mean It This Way), and while she designed hers to make you laugh, my plan is to make you cry. So here goes.

“Last call! Last boarding call for the Earnest Moncrieff!” The suited and moustached man checked his pocket watch again, looking at the time. The steamboat was already thirty minutes late, with the repairs going on in her belly, and at the rate the passengers were moving, it was going to take at least another half hour before they could even think about moving. It was going to be dark soon. The U-Boats always operated more at night, and it had been a long time since one had attacked a passenger boat, but the difference between a passenger ship and a supply ship was probably hard to tell.

“That’s your boat.” Lieutenant Daniel Hopper stood on the raised platform above the docks, looking down below, across the long piers, the nearest of which housed the old and barnacled Earnest Moncrieff, already building up a head of steam in preparation to leave.

“It is.” Alexandra Baker, standing beside him, her woolen gloved hands on the rail, replied to his statement. “But look at the line of people. It will be a while before they finish boarding. We still have a little bit of time.”

“I wouldn’t want you to miss your boat…”

“I would.” She interrupted, turning to him. “I want to miss my boat more than I’ve wanted anything else in the world.”

Daniel turned towards her, and she turned as well, looking up to meet his eyes.

“War is coming, Alexandra. The Germans have rolled over France, and they are on their way here. Rumors are the Luftwaffe is already preparing airfields to launch bombers against us. It isn’t safe here anymore.”

She reached out, taking his hands in hers. “There is nowhere safer than beside you, my dear Daniel.”

He shook his head. “There are a thousand places safer than at my side, and where I am going, you can not follow, and I would not have you do so. War is not…” he started to say, but cut himself short, knowing what her reaction would be.

“War is not a woman’s place?” She replied, arching one eyebrow until it became an inverse V on her forehead. “If a man can fight to preserve what he believes in, than why not a woman? If a man can carry a rifle, then why not a woman? If a man can kill another man to protect his homeland, than why not…”

She shut up. Not of her own desire, but because it is very difficult to speak when you are being kissed.

“Your parents sold nearly all they could spare to get you this ticket to the United States, Alexandra. Your mother even sold her clock, her great-great-grandmother’s clock, to help pay for your passage.”

She shook her head. “Do not bring them in to this, Daniel.”

“Then I won’t.” He squeezed her gloved hands in his. “I want you to go, my darling. I want you to go to a place where you do not have to worry about being bombed, or shot, or burned, or invaded. To a place where you do not fear a tank rolling up the street outside your house, and Schutzstaffel kicking down your door.”

“I don’t worry for my own safety, I worry for yours…”

He pushed their intertwined hands against her lips. “I know. And I do not worry for my own, but worry for yours. And knowing that you are safe will put my heart at rest.”

She would not cry, she told herself, she would not. Bought tears begin to burn at the edges of her eyes anyway, and she refused to blink to brush them away. She did not want to shut out what could be her last look at her beloved. She tried one last plea: “Come with me, then! We can both be safe, we can…”

“No, I can’t, and you know it. I was called to serve, to defend England, and perhaps the world, from a madman who believes himself to be the king of all creation. It is a true war we fight, beloved, a war of good against evil. And I must stay here and fight it.”

“Final boarding!” The call came from below, in a rather agitated voice. “Repeat, final boarding for the Earnest Moncrieff, bound for the United States, New York! If you are not on the boat in two minutes, we leave without you!”

“It’s not fair.”

He shook his head.

“There isn’t enough time.”

He shook his head again.

They stared into one another’s eyes. The seconds ticked by.

“You don’t make me want to go.”

“I’ve done all I could.” He said, not wanting to say more. He knew if he continued speaking, it would come out, how little he really wanted her to go. How she could just stay here with him. Or how he could stow away aboard, anywhere, the engine room, her steamer trunk, anywhere, just so they would not have to say…

“Good…” she began, but he kissed her again, interrupting the farewell in mid word.

“Don’t say it.” He said.

“But I want to…” she replied.

“No, you don’t. And besides, it is not. It never is when the two will see each other again. And we will see each other again, I promise you. We will see each other again when this is all over. I will come to the United States, and I will come looking for you, my love. Now go.” He let go of her hands pushing her away. “Your chariot awaits.”

“Daniel…”

“I love you.”

She nodded. “I love you.”

The last she saw of him was the smudge of a Lieutenant’s uniform, dark against the dark walls of the port buildings, blurred by the rain, as she stood at the rail of the boat. By then, he had lost track of her, had only a few seconds after she finished climbing the gangplank in front of a very irritated and hurried sailor. He still believed he could see her, though, standing at the side of the boat. She was that one… or was she that one? No, she was that one. He recognized the brown coat, even at this distance.

60 years later

“It’s been a long time.” Alexandra said, letting her cane take most of the weight as she walked. She took a few more steps and came to a halt. “A long, long time.”

“I got older, of course. People do that over the years. Not quite as pretty, either, although I’m sure you’ll disagree. My womanly figure is gone. More wrinkles. More,” she played with her long tresses, “gray hair. Although you don’t look much better.” She smiled a little, and she arched one eyebrow until it became an inverse V on her forehead. “I should say, you look a damn sight worse.”

“I watched the papers every day, looking for your name. Over there in the States, though, they didn’t tend to have much coverage on the British soldiers, not by name at least, mostly just their own. My Aunt and Uncle met me at the docks, took me back to their place. Found me a job running the printing press, and so I got most of the news before everyone else did, and I pored over it every day looking for you.”

“You’re probably wondering what else I did over the years.” She continued. Her eyes glanced around, found a bench a few feet away, and she advanced towards it. She smoothed her skirts out before slowly descending in to it, letting out a quiet sigh as her back touched the cool wood.

“All that time working on the paper, I became a writer. A movie critic, actually. You remember how we used to go to the cinema? The motion picture shows? They’ve come a long way since then. Oh yes, they have. But those movies that we used to go to back in England, they are still my favorites.”

She waited.

“I never got married.” She finally said, holding up her hand, showing her bare fingers. “Never got married. I never… Daniel. There was never any other man in my life. Never any other man but you. I thought about you every day, dreamed about you every night when I fell asleep. I still do. My Aunt and Uncle used to joke about it. Use to wonder about me and worry about me behind my back. They tried to set me up, a few times, with the sons of friends. But it wasn’t the same.” She shook her head. “There was never any man for me but you.”

“You didn’t keep your promise.” She continued after a while. “You told me you would come looking for me. In the end, it was I who had to come looking for you.” She smiled slightly. “I’m not mad at you. No. I know that you would have found me, if you could have. I just found you first, so to speak. It took a long time, a long, long time. But I would have kept searching until the day I died, if need be”

She stood again, using the arm of the bench and her cane to put herself on her feet. “I do not hate you for putting me on that boat that day. I love you even more for it. I just wish sometimes, oh how I wish sometimes, that you had come with me. But that would not have been the man I fell in love with. And you stayed. And I love you all the more for that, too.”

She had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry, but there were the tears, burning at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away. She was not ashamed of them, but they made it hard for her to see.

“You were right, Daniel,” she said, her voice choked slightly, “we did not need to say goodbye. Because I saw you, every night, in my dreams, and felt you, every day, in my heart.” She touched her fingers to her lips, then brought them down, pushing them against the cold stone in front of her.

“I love you Daniel Hopper.”

Then she turned slowly away, walking off through the well-trimmed grass of the cemetery, putting her weight on her cane as she stepped. A few tears dripped in to the grass by her feet as she walked.

The stone behind her read: “Daniel Hopper: 1920-1943.”

mattstp @ 2005-04-05T20:59:00

2005-04-06T03:59:32Z

Some music is meant to be played very, very loudly. There is no other way to play it. Normally, this music is already loud, so turning up the volume makes the loudness peak. This is a good thing.