After seeing this, I've wondered at the strange, wacky, and sordid ideas that were bouncing around in the echo chamber of my skull back then...
( A Piece of Skin )
- Location:The Deep Blue Sea
- Mood:
cheerful - Music:Suite from Captain Blood
I had taken part in a Flash Fiction Carnival late last year and the theme for that particular month was Transformation and we had to write a story in less than 1,200 words. Now that I have a little bit of time to fix it up, the story is a bit longer and fleshed out a bit more. I also followed the advice I received from the other Flash Fiction writers that reviewed the earlier version.
- Location:Miskatonic University
- Mood:
contemplative - Music:Die Walkure
Jason arrived at the theater early enough to not get stuck in the waiting line outside. I guess he made it in right before the staff started to set up a waiting area for the opening night of the film. That left a lot of time for Jason to strategically sit in the exact center of the theater, making sure he would get an unobstructed and not distorted view of the film. He watched the theater fill up with people after the waiting crowd was allowed inside. He told us how almost all of the seats in the central section had been taken, and the aisle seats were filling up quickly. Before the previews started, almost all of the seats in the theater were taken except for two seats. Now these seats were the seats on either side of Jason.
Right before the film started, a couple had come in. They scanned the darkened theater, looking for seats, and when they spied a couple of seats in the center, they headed up the aisles and down the center row. When they finally arrived at where Jason was sitting, they asked politely if he could move over so they could sit next to each other. They were quite nice about it and didn't make a big scene. Jason's answer was a flat "No. I got here early for a reason."
I don't know what sort of reaction the couple had to that, but what I do know is that they spent their time watching the film in separate seats with Jason right between them. We later asked him if he moved one seat over and let them sit together. He said, "Yeah, during the last ten minutes of the film." But he was joking, so we don't know if he ever allowed them to sit together at all.
A few may agree with Jason's actions in the story, but I think the majority would have, as my sister said, "kicked him in the head."
- Location:The Purple Monstrosity
- Mood:Phlegmy
- Music:Something loud and obnoxious in the background
So here we go with the entries:
#1 It's all about family! Jason and the Meatloaf If anything can go wrong through sheer bad luck or (as another friend called it) dumbassitude, then there's this little backwater to our family's gene pool. We love him, but we wouldn't want to be right next to a big fuel tanker while on a busy highway with Jason at the wheel.
#2 It's all about friends (or fiends!) An Old Friend's Mishap This entry has the weird and surreal combination of college, rugby, barbed wire, and mint tooth floss. Sounds like a mess, but the end product is quite, um, well, oh you'll find out!
#3 It's all about boring old me! Well, it was the only one that would fit! It's actually one of those "Tell us 5 things about yourself" or else we start kidnapping your fish eggs or something like it, but it does tell the individual (you know who you are) slightly more about me, and yet it's not enough to blackmail me in the end! Mwahahahahaha!
#4 It's all about that thing I love! Being creative is what I love so this entry includes one of the things I'm quite fond of, namely werewolves. Writing (seriously and not as just a side hobby to my illustration work)) is actually a new endeavor I've started this year, and I owe most of it to the evil mastermind behind Finding Boddie and
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
wave_cannon (I know, I know, I still have to work on Tom's adventures!) Unfortunately, I would have had something with squids and octopus in this entry, but strangely enough, I don't have an entry centered around these fascinating mollusks. This is an oversight that I must correct!#5 It's all about the wildcard entry! Just another day at work speaks for itself.
Well, I guess it's time for me to pass this on. Here goes!
alaena_h, grand_sealink, prairie_fire_83, shalimar79, wave_cannon Archive Meme Instructions--Go back through your archive and post links to your five favorite posts with this catch: the first must be about family, the second about friends, the third about yourself, the fourth about something you love and the fifth is a post of your choice. Once you're done posting, tag five people. At least TWO of them need to be newer readers in order to learn more about them. Then go back through their archived posts and comment on them.
- Location:Beneath the snows in the Cold Wastes
I do have some other stuff that I didn't get the chance to write about before due to the busy holiday season. Christmas Eve was a pleasant night spent with family and friends. We spent most of the evening cooking, but the rest of the night we spent playing that cursed video game Guitar Hero 2.
It wasn't all cooking and video games though; we did have some interesting highlights. One of them was our cousin's broken arm. A few words about my cousin: he's about 5' 6", around 140-150 lbs. and training to be a mixed martial arts fighter. We asked how he broke his forearm and he replied that he broke it during a practice match where he and his opponent were training for a February match. It seems that both had each other in some sort of arm lock, and I guess my cousin tried to get out of it by lifting his arm, but either the weight of his opponent or the levering force was too much, because there was a loud crack, like the sound a wooden bat makes when it breaks. The whole gym went silent. My cousin and his opponent looked around, and when my cousin went to move his right forearm that's when he knew that he broke it. He was saying "Oh it's me!" as he held his arm out.
I saw my cousin again today and the cast was off, but now he has a medium size scar, about 5", on the inside of his forearm. I could have sworn it still had stitches, but I didn't get close enough to study it because I was too busy playing that blasted video game Rock Band, which is another addicting game.
Christmas Day was fun. I received a few books to keep me occupied for the next couple of weeks. At least I won't have to ransack the local public library or lurk at the bookstore for the time being. My sister's friend gave me The Zombie Survival Guide; now I don't have to throw my countless first cousins and second cousins at the shambling undead during a zombie apocalypse. I also received an omnibus of Predator vs. Alien comics (yeah, I'm quite fond of psychotic extra-terrestrials) and The Big Bathroom Book of the History of the World from my sister. I have no idea why she gave me the bathroom book, but I guess she was having a laugh at my expense.
- Location:In a wooden crate from a long forgotten expedition.
- Mood:Tired
Well then, here's the story. I have no explanation for the reader about this tale; all I remember is that I wrote it for a friend many years ago during the dark ages of high school. I've since reworked it and ironed out some spots, but it's basically a story from the time I discovered and joined the sordid ranks of authors who write humorous fantasy.
( Calabash )
- Location:Miskatonic University
- Mood:insane
- Music:The Winner Takes It All by ABBA
The food was quite decent this year, except for the sweet and sour pork that was mainly sweet and sour bones. I think some family members were surprised by the shards of bone that hid beneath the thin layer of meat. Another cousin brought in a Banana Nut Loaf, and here's where Jason comes in. Now Jason is allergic to a lot of things, but nuts are quite nasty for him, yet there have been times when he has eaten them unknowingly; only later does he realize that he's eaten something harmful when his tongue starts to itch and swell along with his throat. I swear, it's happened before. This time wasn't so different.
If you're familiar with a Banana Nut Loaf, you know what it looks like, yet my dear cousin Jason mistook it for meatloaf! I have no idea how or why Jason thought it was meatloaf, but he did, and he served himself a few slices. Now who brings meatloaf to Thanksgiving dinner? He told me that he could see the onions and what looked like mushrooms in it; he even thought about putting some ketchup on the loaf. The minute he took a bite out of the loaf, he felt his tongue start to itch then swell, and soon the rest of the cousins found out what had happened. Well, the guy was prepared for such an emergency: he walked to his car where he kept his bottle of pills all the while accompanied by laughing relatives.
Yes, he's our Jason, and as his father would say, "Typical Jason."
- Location:Yuggoth
- Mood:Indigo
The strange thing about all of this is that this could be a creative reaction to a mild case of food poisoning I experienced a while back during one family Thanksgiving. I don't know the particular food item that started it, but my digestive system wasn't the same after that. It's only now that my system is getting back to normal. I've made a note to myself to watch what sort of dishes my relatives bring to the Thanksgiving buffet, and if it looks dubious then leave it alone. It still doesn't quell the anxiety I feel though. Any food item could be suspect, and since our background is Filipino, most of the dishes aren't your typical/traditional Thanksgiving entrée or side dish. Some of our family members are still trying to erase the memory of a dessert one of my uncles brought in. I don't think I'm capable of describing it, but its horror was the benchmark to which the unsavory dessert of each subsequent Thanksgiving would be compared.
- Location:Gallivanting outside Sarnath
- Mood:zombified
- Music:Märchenmusik
xXx
Recently, I was going through a file drawer of various art implements when I came upon a packet of surgical thread and needles. They brough back great memories of times spent as an intern at a wildlife rescue place a few years back. They also brought back memories of times cursing the darn European starlings for all the chaos they caused; one volunteer jokingly placed a sign on their cages with the title The Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
But it also conjured one memory that brings a smile to my face. I once had a classmate in college who told us about an injury he sustained after rugby practice. He had climbed over a chain link fence that had those barbed ends at the top where the wires cross over each other like a row of Xs. The tips are quite sharp, and if one isn't careful there's the chance of getting a bloody hand. Our friend wasn't careful, and when he climbed over, he managed to catch the palm of his hand ( I can't remember if it was his right or left hand) on the points. The cut was deep enough to require some stitches, so he headed for the nearest emergency room.
At the emergency room, our friend waited and waited; he waited for about 2-3 hours until, fed up, he left and went home where he decided to do the surgical work himself. He found a needle alright, but for the surgical thread, he used mint-flavored tooth floss. He did a good job stitching himself back up, and when he finally went to see a doctor some days later, his handiwork was praised by the doctor.
The only question we asked our friend was why did he use mint-flavored tooth floss. His reply was that he liked it better than the cinnamon-flavored kind.
- Location:Gormenghast
- Mood:
awake - Music:Hasta Manana by ABBA
It was innocent enough, but let's just say I was caught with the wrong end of the stick. This happened a few years back while I was working in the garden of a children's museum. I had just relieved a coworker for the afternoon, and I was sitting at the table, writing in the garden journal and thinking of things to do if I ever encountered caterpillars (I'd probably run away, gibbering in terror.)
Earlier that day, the previous coworker had cut a few bunches of fresh anise as samples for visitors to taste; he even made a sign calling attention to them. I didn't notice the sign until the supervisor came out for a breath of fresh air. We got to chat a little bit, and then she looked at the sign, then she looked at me.
Supervisor: "How do you spell 'anise'?"
Me: "A-n-i-s-e. Why do you ask?"
She turned the sign around and it read: Come taste the sweet anus.
I was sitting behind that sign for nearly an hour.
- Location:Ultima Thule
- Mood:
amused - Music:I Do I Do I Do I Do by ABBA
Gee, it's been a while since I wrote in this journal.
- Location:In a tidepool
- Music:Swan Lake by P. Tchaikovsky
The long jump course was in a field adjacent to the track, and we were wondering how far we could jump. Here is where the guinea pig comes in, namely me. They had me run down the runway, and just before the line I leaped and landed in the sand feet first, except my momentum carried me forward onto my knees since the place I landed in had been scooped out by the kids that were in the sand pit earlier.
Well, my feet didn't move from the depression, and as my knees landed, my upper body followed suit and I found myself face down in the sand. My sister, her friend, and my cousin burst out laughing. I jumped up, trying to brush the sand off from my forehead all the while asking "Do I have sand on my forehead? Do I have sand on my forehead?" And my sister yelling at me to shut up because she couldn't breathe and her Russian friend trying not to pee in her pants. Ah, the joys of exercising.
Sunday was an interesting day. I turned a year older, but not wiser since my sister plied me with two tequila shots before I blew out the birthday candle on the brownie. We were having a birthday lunch and the very same work out sadists had been invited, along with my aunt, my mom, my other sister, and our cousin's hubby. It was a pleasant time, and the topics of conversation ranged from family gossip and stuff about the recent family get together where we ended up playing a wild game of Taboo and making our uncle swear more than usual after penalizing him on points. At a certain point in the Taboo game conversation, we heard our Aunt blurt out something we would never have heard in polite conversation, especially during a pleasant Sunday lunch at the local steakhouse. From her end of the table, she said, "Oh, like KY Jelly?" We all went "Ewww!" and after that, we saw our 60-something Aunt in a new, albeit strange, light.
The rest of the day was spent trying to digest the food, then my friend called to ask if I wanted to go out for a birthday drink, and I said sure, why not. I ended up at a downtown bar drinking long island iced teas and a shot of vodka my friend handed to me. We then sat at the bar, admiring the stickers plastered all over the bar, and listening to the growl of motorcycles at the entrance while one of the patrons in the bar swore at the bikers to either leave or turn off their bike engines since the exhaust was entering the bar and stinking up the whole place along with the cigarettes.
The bikers left, but everything was so quiet afterwards, except for the sound of the billiard balls striking each other at the pool tables. I managed to finish my drinks while conversing with my friend about lost loves and long ago crushes on boys. We ended up reading about astrological signs and trying to figure out who we were compatible with, then we left for the nearest sushi bar. That's where the sake stepped in. After all that, my friend and I headed back home where she dropped me off, but guess what was waiting for me when I got home? My sadistic work out sister had another shot of vodka for me. I do not fully remember what else I did after downing that last shot, but I do know I ended up sleeping on the living room couch while listening to opera, and then waking up at about 2-2:30 am to help my sister file her income taxes. I couldn't sleep after that so I stayed up till 6:30 until sleep came again.
Today, my sisters told me that I'm brutally honest when inebriated.
- Location:An Innsmouth Bar
- Mood:wacky
- Music:Dornroschen
- Location:The IHOP in R'lyeh
- Mood:
bouncy - Music:Sleeping Beauty Ballet Music
( More thoughts... )
The second part of the story The Lioness from the previous post:
- Location:Erehwon
- Mood:
weird - Music:Cinderella (ballet) by S. Prokofiev
- Location:Plateau of Leng
- Mood:
indescribable - Music:Symphony #5 by P. Tchaikovsky
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