Sick Inspiration

So, Wren and I are home due to the cursed 4 month shots. A fever and fussiness means that I'm back to having a newborn. So it's hanging out on the couch breastfeeding and bouncing and singing...And surfing on the internet.
More and more craft ideas, I just hope these (or at least 1 of these) turns out better than my Christmas voodoo doll.

This is probably going to be added to the list, only it'll be easier and geared towards beebs year 1. I'm thinking large stuff to sift through rather than rice or lentils and probably animals in it.

13,954 words (6,000 behind).

Something struck his head, hard, and rebounded into the snow. It had made a crinkling noise when it hit the side of his head, and Joseph yelped in pain. He spun around and looked at the abandoned train cars, searching for who might have thrown something at him.

Brittni was now getting to her feet, still unsteady from the fall, and brushing snow from her jacket and thighs. Joseph felt a jolt in his stomach as he caught a peek of her bending over, then shook his head to clear it.

Wham! Another hard object crashed into his skull and this time a ballet of fireflies popped into his vision. He raised his hands over his head and shouted, “What the hell?” A third object smacked into his chest, but the ample padding of his winter jacket stopped it completely, letting the thing drop into the snow at his feet. Keeping one arm wrapped around his head, Joseph bent down and retrieved the artillery.

It was a small white circle with red pinwheel stripes, covered in a cellophane wrapper. Someone was assaulting him with peppermint candies.

Day 12 - 18,907. Getting close to caught up!

The customer stopped in front of us and huffed. “I’m hoping you guys can help me.”

“Sure,” Dub said. “How can we be of service?” His entire demeanor changed from a stoner looking for rape spiders to a helpful employee.

The man adjusted his sweatband. “I, uh, I’m looking for a, uh, well, a thing,” he stammered. He kept glancing at Ermina. His face grew red. “I mean, it’s not for me, you know? I’m picking it up for a friend and—“

Dub raised a hand politely to silence the man. “I understand, sir. A lot of people pick up gifts here.”

“Right,” the man nodded. “A gift. See, I’m looking for, uh, well an inflatable pig, I guess.”

“We have a variety of inflatable pigs,” Dub replied. “Is there a certain one you’re looking for? They’re in different aisles.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The guy looked nervously at Ermina again. “I’m, uh, looking for one with vibrating orifices. That, uh, recites portions of the tax code when you thrust into different, you know. Holes.”

Day 11. 16,706...slowly catching up!

The administrative office was a sort of corral behind the cafeteria. Really just a clutch of desks ringed by tall displays acting as makeshift walls. We entered between two racks of neon cats-o-nine-tails. There were about 8 desks, but only one person was in the area. A pale-faced woman with wet-looking black hair spilling down one side of her head like a waterfall.

We approached the desk. As usual, Ermina stood behind me and didn’t speak initially. Before I could speak, in a flat voice the woman asked us to have a seat.

We sat in two chairs in front of her desk and waited. She continued reading for a minute or so after we sat down before she put the screen she was holding on her desk. “I was catching up on the morning porn feed,” she offered as an explanation. “Girls in Buckets 12: Backseat Bitches. Just came out. It was better than Dumpster Hookers, which was on yesterday.” She leaned back in her seat and pressed her fingers together. “I assume you keep up with the pornos?”

I shook my head and Ermina nodded hers. “The Cavern of Infinite Ass is my favorite,” Ermina said.

So bad it hurts. Day 11: 3 days behind...

Joseph strained against the chilly gelatin as his arms dug deeper. “Please, help us!” he cried. “She’s not moving!” He had no idea how this girl had gotten trapped or where the gumdrop had come from, but it had now been minutes since they had heard her scream. How long could someone live without breathing? The poor girl’s time had to be running out. At his side, Brittni was sobbing as she flung green goo from her fingers after each handful she removed from the gumdrop’s side.

Ms. Trell shook her head back at them. “Deviant little shitheads is what they are,” she huffed. “Let’s go call the police and report that we’ve caught the miscreants.”

Mrs. Jaboney said, “I think that we should probably call the FBI to report these sick individuals.”

“Maybe there will be a reward?” said Ms. Trell.

“I think for animal murderers, they sometimes will give the death penalty,” replied Mrs. Jaboney.

“A nice reward would definitely make up for the crap salaries they pay around here,” reported Ms. Trell.

“Did you hear that, children?” sang Mrs. Jaboney. “The state might give you the chair. I bet you didn’t imagine that your little brains might get fried for your little pranks, huh? I will be there laughing as your little murderous butts melt to the wooden seat!”

More behind: Day 10, 10,500 words and going...

“Yes,” said Brittni. Her lips pressed together thin and pale, then continued. “And No. At least, not according to my grandmother. Peter asked that same question, and you could tell from his voice that he was extremely disappointed to find out that a Gypsy Santa he could finally relate to had met his demise just as he had finally heard of the fellow. My grandmother explained to Peter that in the gypsy world, there was a difference between dead and gone, and dead and still here. Remember, Raba Kas only showed up during the coldest, most desolate of nights. That just so happens to be great preservation weather."

Day 9, 12,682...behind, behind!!!!

“You actually think there are rivers and lakes and valleys under the floor?” It seemed crazy. The floor was the floor.

“There’d have to be plenty of room for those dick spiders to creep around,” Dub speculated. “Things are big, cust.”

“I don’t buy it. Wouldn’t we hear about people, I don’t know, seeing stuff?”

“Like on the news?” Ermina asked. “The news is just a bunch of commercials.”

I shrugged.

Ermina pressed on. “And anyway, you do hear rumors sometimes. A few anyway. Like people seeing deer.”

“Cust. Or dick spiders.” Dub was nodding.

“Okay, I can almost believe there are lakes under the floor, but not giant arachnids with dicks on their legs. I mean, come on, it's just stupid.”

“No cust, for real,” Dub shouted excitedly. “We get a few sightings a month. Job Jorgenson, right? This janitor who works the back aisles where the big water pipes start, he fucking fought one of them. It attacked him over near the fuckable teddy bears. Tried to fuckin' rape him, cust, for real. Like eight-way rape. He fought it and chopped off one of its dick feet. That's where I got my specimen.”

I looked at the gnarled, black spider dick in the bag I was holding. Its bristles stood up defiantly, daring me to doubt its existence.

Nanowrimo Update ~ 6500 words

No one said anything for a moment, and then Mr. Connolly stood up and puffed out his chest. He looked around at each member of the family with his jaw set and his brow furrowed. He spoke up to start the family meeting.
“As you boys know,” he began, “your mother and I love you very much. We have done everything in our power to bring you up right, with proper morals, and a proper sense of dignity.” Mr. Connolly placed his hands behind his back and looked up at the ceiling. “But tonight it is apparent that we failed in our duties as good parents.”
Mrs. Connolly let out a wail and put her hands up to her face. She snivelled into her palms and shook her head. Mr. Connolly lifted his chin and pursed his lips.
“Yesterday we were informed by the lawn keeper at the Rockport Eternal Peace Funeral Home,” he continued, and the words came out high and strained, “that their cameras had caught a most disturbing activity.”
Joseph turned to look at Peter, who stared blankly ahead at nothing. Peter was remaining stoic before his family firing squad. Mrs. Connolly kept shaking her head, muttering “No, no no no.”
“Yes, it is true." said Mr. Connolly. "We have a grave robber in the house.”

Na20wri10!

The teachers were toning down their lessons with only a couple weeks to go before the Christmas break began. In first period English, Joseph and his classmates spent the entire time making Christmas cards based on literary themes. Joseph cut a sled and Christmas tree out of cardboard, used glue and glitter to accent a snowy incline, and pasted the sled against the tree. He titled the card “Silas Night, Holy Night.”

In second period History, their teacher had them get into groups and work on a worksheet asking questions about the three branches of government, while he played old Bing Crosby records on an ancient phonograph machine. The record sped up and slowed down, and Joseph daydreamed about being caught in a time warp. A time warp created by Peter, of course. He was always the disturbance creator.

NaNoWriMo 2010!!!!! An Excerpt!

The oldest looking guy knelt in front of the netting. He pulled out a tazer and tazed the raccoon over and over again. The little animal twitched and made weird shrieking hissing sounds and started smoking.

“Yee fucking haw,” the rookie whooped.

It was only when the smoldering raccoon stopped twitching that one of them noticed me.

“Damn,” I said. “Criminal animal?”

The oldest guy—I’d guess he was the seasoned veteran—stood and holstered his tazer. He kicked the dead raccoon. “You got no idea.”

“Shoplifter,” the rookie sneered. He flipped off the dead, netted animal.

“How does an animal shoplift?” I asked.

The veteran answered. “They got very agile hands, these guys. They’re grabby as hell. Open garbage cans and what not.” He kicked the raccoon again. “Garbage is still property of the US of A.”

NaNo 2010!

Post stuff!

(o)_(o)

so, who has read my story so far? i am waiting.

waiting.

I'm stalled out on my NaNoNovel, so I've started a diversion.

I think it's fun. I've decided to write an old-school Narnia-type children's book where the children neither talk nor behave like real children. Here's the opening. (Special shout-out to Andrew Najberg for the idea of people suddenly finding a lot of blood in their house.)

Chapter One, In which There is a Great Deal of Blood.

Thomas and Zooey tromped from the school bus with their usual end-of-the-day lack of verve and pluck. They scuffed gracelessly up the walk to the front door and, in his usual manner, Thomas shoved the door open unceremoniously. The school day was over, and laziness could at last begin.

Except that the living room was completely covered in blood.

"Oh my," Zooey remarked.

"That is quite a lot of blood," Thomas said.

Zooey nodded in agreement. "It does appear to be a great deal of blood."

Thomas and Zooey stared in silence at the gory tableau. The walls were spattered in crimson; the floors were puddled in scarlet. Unidentifiable chunks of macabre red clung to suede couch and the cream-colored venetian blinds. It was, indeed, a great deal of blood.

"I confess that the presence of so much blood and the apparent lack of our parents does not sit well with me," Zooey said at last. She twisted one of her auburn curls nervously around her slender index finger and frowned.

"It troubles me as well, sister of mine." Thomas strained his ears. "And the house is much quieter than normal."

"Perhaps eerily so?" Zooey suggested.

"Eerily, yes. Like a horror movie," Thomas admitted.

Neither one of them moved.

"Oh!" Thomas said brightly, as if a cheerful idea just occurred to him. Oftentimes the greatest comfort in the face of the unknown comes from within one's own mind, and it was so in this case. "I bet this is fake blood," Thomas explained. "This situation is so like a horror movie because it is a trick put on by our parents. After all, it is uncommon to come home to a room covered in blood."

Zooey looked at the room doubtfully, her brow furrowed. "It looks awfully real." She pinched her nose. "And it smells weird. Coppery."

this is pretty neat: you paste in as much text as you want, and it gives back a graphical representation of the word frequencies, minus common words like "the" and "of", and you can even turn these on if you want. it also, when you run it yourself, gives a tabulated list of all the word frequencies. here's one derived from Part 1 of my story, "Automatic for the People!"

50,484 words! Victory!

i've done it! five months and 50,000 words!

two more short chapters (32 done already) and Part 1 will be finished, basically. one chapter of Part 2 is already written.

i've figured out most of the rest of the story. i think it's all downhill from here, at least in figuring out what happens next. sitting and writing it is the hard part. i estimate 25,000 words for Part 2? i wish it were less...

i think it's a good story. if no one ever reads it, i'm still glad to have done it. it's at least as fun as actually reading a book; even better i think.

anyway.

~49,700 words

almost there!

two more little chapters, and a little more editing, and i will declare Part 1 (really, i think, about 80% of the total story) of "Automatic for the People!" to be fit for human consumption. this should push it past 50,000 words, and then i can take a break and not open the file for a while. i hope.

i do use correct capitalization in the main text.

also, some footnotes.

i'm afraid it's kind of boring. and confusing. and that i don't write dialogue very well, and most of it is dialogue. and i'm worried that figuring out how to get to the ending will be harder than i think. but so what, right? i like it!

no excerpt, since i'm in my office now.

day 100 something: 41,026 words

(I'm closing in on 50,000!)

“You believe anything! We don’t know what just happened, but I know that he started it. He kicked the first guy, and then knocked them all out, and then he hit the last one, even though he knew what would happen!”

“Wait,” said Zunzhen, staring ahead, turning right, then left, leading the girls over a little wooden bridge over an ornamental creek. Ann noticed how yellow all the apartment lights were, and yet how dim were their surroundings. She noticed how Zunzhen made each turn without hesitation, as if he had been through these paths many times before. “We’ll get to a safer place, then we can talk about this. I’m taking over for Momoko. I’ll get you to your mother, whom I know, and who knows me. Trust me for ten more minutes, okay?”

“Ann, we should run away! If you don’t I will!” Ezi pleaded through the feed to her sister, who along with Zunzhen was the only person she could positively identify, despite that she knew she must be surrounded by hundreds or thousands of others.

“Where would you go? You want to be arrested by a bunch of Medna goons?” Ann’s private tone, over the feed, was more worried and uncertain than she betrayed physically. “Momoko knows him, and I trusted her, didn’t you?”

“Mom told us to find Momoko, not this crazy wushu stooge. Whatever the Mednans do, they won’t hurt us.”

“If he does anything, I have Alvi’s knife.”

Ezi laughed out loud, and wailed, “We’re going to die!”, then silently, “If you can beat him with a pocketknife, then you could beat a hundred peacemen, you stupid pig.”

Ann, still pulling her sister along, stopped short, turned, and kicked Ezi hard in the shin. “Quiet!” she spat. Ezi squealed and shook off her sister’s grip, and tried to kick back, but Zunzhen was there, pushing the two apart. “Come here,” he said. He walked ahead a few steps, to a corner in the path, and stood beneath a dim amber park lamp. He jabbed an index finger at the ground just in front of him. “What’s he going to do?” thought Ezi, glaring at her sister, fists clenched. Ann went and stood a few steps from where he was pointing. Ezi went to stand a few paces again behind her sister.

day 90 something: 32,141 words

(still working on it. here is a sample:)

“The feed is being emptied. I see what’s happening now,” said Venn. The magtruck slowed to a halt at the station platform, and Bede’s body stirred back to life. His head turned to face Venn, slowed by a rapid, helical oscillation. Bede’s eyes glowed a dim red, and he messaged Venn: “There’s another feed. The city is being transferred to other control. Probably the same in Nidehal. Where are the other librarians?”

“Churchland will meet us above.” Venn leaned forward, inspecting Bede’s exposed neck and shoulders. “What is that new oscillation in your movement? Can you exit by yourself?”

“Some charge drawn from the truck. Damage is severe, but under control. A few more seconds.” Bede withdrew his hand from the truck panel. Venn nodded, opened the nearby hatch, stepped out onto the platform, and looked around. The station lights were out, but he could see by the trucklight. Along the length of the platform, a sign named the location as West Medna Station. At the end of the platform, he could see stairs and escalators.

79,120 words (Strange sex jokes by Felix...)

Alfredo was whispering to Felix, who instantly stood up pushing his chair over in the process. “That is a great idea. I will speak to Brohm about it.”
“Shh! He doesn’t go by that at all, Felix. You aren’t going to try it out now, are you?”
“Now is the time, dear Alfredo,” Felix said as he braced himself from swaying and leapt on the table on top the pile of coins.
Just as Felix was about to speak, Timothy DeCloud and Jeremiah Ulysses came through a door over the kitchen, bright sunlight gleamed inside the darken saloon. Timothy closed the door. Both men’s shirts and hair were soaked with sweat. Ulysses eyes went wide as the Jester stood atop the table.
Before he could be admonished the Jester spoke. “I purpose a great idea that Alfredo and I have cooked up for when the dark times are over. I call it Make Sex, not Abstinence. It will be a show where I do standup making light of all the freaky things, that I am sure filled with a room of rough and rowdy sky-pirates, that we all love to do in and out of the bedroom.”
Felix gyrated his hips when he said the words in and out and began laughing to himself. Timothy and Ulysses could only watch the horror unfold.
Felix continued, “But there are so many taboos with sex even in this day and age. We need to clear those taboos and make sex a safe subject. Of course, Rub hers are allowed, but not rubbers!”
“Do you think he has a disorder. Can we get him some help?” Ulysses asked.
“You remember even when we were in the Guild together, he has always been obsessed with sex.
“I think he is a whore,” Ulysses said as he scratched his head.
“Thank you dear Ulysses,” Felix said with a wink. “Speaking of whores, a whore who has removable teeth is just an artist who is suffering to be the best at her job. We should not make fun of those artists.”
Alfredo, tugged at the Jester’s leg and said, “You keep talking about women. I thought you played it both ways, Felix.”
Felix looked down at Alfredo and leapt off the table. “Mage, toss my hat!”
Erikson who was blushed a deep scarlet, grabbed the red hat with the seven bells and threw it at Felix. Felix placed it on top of his head. “My dear, Alfredo, I have always wanted my bells rung by a Sky-Pirate.”
Everyone watched as Alfredo and Felix went through the saloon and up to the hotel next door.
“Well, I never knew Felix was so good an engendering camaraderie,” Timothy said as he slapped the jaw dropped Ulysses on the back. “Let’s explain the plan to the guys. We got some work to do and it seems we will be two men short for a while.”
“Oh, brother,” Ulysses mumbled.

25718: day 36+

**
I have 20 chapters, with four separate storylines/sets of characters (two with pairs of characters, two with single characters, and one character who has moved between two lines as of last night), and they're finally beginning to cross with eachother. Two of them will merge soon, and I will declare an end to Novel Part 1. Each chapter is ~1000 words, and I try to make each one a self-contained scene, usually with the characters arriving at and then departing from some locale. I am writing a sort of travel novel?
**

“I don’t eat pork,” said Ezi, frowning.

Momoko smiled approvingly. “No meat at all?” She pulled the cabbage out and closed the cabinet, and started peeling leaves off and stacking them on the counter.

“Not if I can help it. Especially not pork.”

“Why not?” Momoko asked, producing a knife from a slotted container attached to the cabinet.

“I like pigs. They have nice personalities. I went to an animal psychology retreat last month, and we talked with some pigs directly over the feed, but we were right there with them at the same time.” Ezi was getting excited. Momoko laid the cabbage out and started slicing, and waited for the girl to finish her story. “They told us that they like to eat, and they liked rubbing up against things, and that they didn’t mind people because we brought them things to eat, and that they wondered sometimes why things are the way they are.”

“They really wonder that?” asked Momoko, smiling as she watched the knife slicing through the cabbage leaves.

“That’s what they said. Two different pigs said it, the same thing. We tried to explain that we were students, and that we were there to learn about pigs and other animals, and how they thought, but they didn’t understand at all. We asked them some questions, but mostly they didn’t get it, and sometimes they gave dumb answers. Dr Levitz was able to get them to give better answers, because he could give them other types of commands, since he works with them all the time. But they were nice, so I don’t think we should be eating them.”

“I guess that’s reasonable. Look in there,” Momoko pointed at a cabinet, “get some noodles and boil some water.”

Ezi complied, and kept talking. “I haven’t gotten to talk to any other animals yet, except for dogs and cats and horses of course, but no one wants to eat them at all. Dr Levitz said you could talk to cows too, but he said chickens were hard, and didn’t have much to say anyways. He said the pigs can talk to each other over their feeds, and that they mostly talk about smells and food and needing to shit. He didn’t say if a pig could talk to a dog, I didn’t think of that until later.” She was filling a pot, also pointed to by Momoko, with water, when a cry arose from the other end of the room.