Those Bastardly Dastards - Part Seven

The sound was violent. And it certainly was terrifying to Ezra, but the thing about it that was most startling was the way it brought the reality of everything down into painfully stark visibility.

It cracked the air and he hit the ground. There was no slide, no skid on the gravel of the sidewalk; just up then down, like a flip book with all the between-frames taken out. He had a moment to lie with the side of his face against the side walk, dim wounds from yesterday lighting up again and think aloud, "Goddamn, this crashing thing is getting redundant," before rough hands grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him up off the ground.

"Get up! Come on, are you retarded?"

"Seriously, this is what should definitely come naturally, right? Oh hey, I hear a gunshot--let's lay down on the fuggin' ground and think about it for a while."

Ezra cranked his neck around and took in his captors. The first speaker was a severely overweight man in a snug leather jacket, black sweat pants and dirty white sneakers. The second was taller and pale and wore his fading black hair in a greased-back ponytail which descended just past the collar of his black raincoat. Ezra dazedly tried to get his footing back as he was pushed roughly through the doors of a building and deposited into a small and rickety elevator.

"So, uh...what's the deal with all this? What's going on?" said a nervous Ezra, mostly to the gate of the elevator.

"Why do they always gotta ask? I mean, he's gonna find out sooner or later, right?"

"Yeah, it'd be pretty funny though if nobody told him."

"Well don't say that. You'll make him all nervous, and then he'll start thinkin' he's never gonna find out why we're takin' him here. Then he'll keep asking. And then we have to kill him."

Ezra's eyes popped open. "No you don't! I won't ask again! I ummm...I don't even care what happens, really!"

Both men laughed stickily. "Well stop goin' on like that or we will have to kill you!" said the fat one.

The tall one wiped the corner of his eye with a fingerless glove and said, "Well, we need your assistance, so we've gotta keep you around a while longer, so I wouldn't worry too much yet."

Ezra breathed a sigh of relief as the rusty gate slid open and they walked him into the room. He whipped his head around, shouting, "Wait, what do you mean, 'yet'?!"

***TO BE CONTINUED***

Those Bastardly Dastards - Part Six

The only thing he would remember clearly from that morning was the gunshot.

***TO BE CONTINUED***

Those Bastardly Dastards - Part Five

He had six hours of night left. His face twitched and his eyes squinted at the ceiling.

He had five hours and eleven minutes now. He rubbed the air-dried leather of his tongue against the roof of his mouth and scratched his elbow. Blinked.

Four hours and three minutes. "I should get a drink," he said to the ceiling.

Three hours and thirty-three minutes. He got a drink. And paused to appreciate the synchronicity of the numbers on his digital watch face.

When he had three hours and four minutes left, he tapped his fingers against his sheets and cleared his throat. He closed his eyes tightly and begged the shadows in his room for sleep and opened them to the sun glaring through the blinds in his window. He coughed his surprise and looked at his watch: 6:54

"Hm," he said aloud, staring at the numbers another moment. "Shit!" he said louder.

He jumped into his jeans and ran out the front door of the apartment complex, lugging his bike behind him. He flung his weight on the seat and pounded down the street, pedals and chain screaming their protests.

***TO BE CONTINUED***

Those Bastardly Dastards - Part Four

The man stopped in front of Ezra and put out his hand. Ezra, after staring at it, confused, for a moment, took it in his own and shook it hesitantly. The man was not one of the two that had followed him. He seemed to walk with an air of authority they lacked and was somewhat better dressed. His hat was neat and his suit and jacket were less wrinkled. He withdrew his other hand from his pocket and Ezra winced, that night's imagined 5 o'clock news headlines flashing through his mind: "Young man shot in face at point-blank range at the museum today. Details after the commercial break." He handed him a business card and buttoned up his jacket.

"Call me if you decide to help us out," he said in a barely audible, but intense whisper. "Or don't call, whatever. You'll be helping us either way. One will just be a little easier than the other." He pushed his hat down on his head and walked calmly out the door.

Ezra's eyes followed him out to his car and watched until he pulled out of the parking lot and slid down the street, out of sight. He seemed to notice the card between his fingertips for the first time, staring without comprehending the words before rubbing his eyes and reading it. Its only print was the name, "Upton Behringer" and a phone number printed neatly in the center of the plain white card. He shook his unease out of his shoulders and slid the card into his back pocket.

"Hi Dave, I'm sorry I'm so late. I had..." he looked down at his chewed-up hands and his disheveled clothing. "I had a pretty bad crash on my bike."

The short, round man strolled up to him, shaking his head. "Well, judging by your appearance, I'd say you aren't making it up. Just get into your work clothes and get on the floor. The new exhibit isn't going to set itself up."

"Thanks!" Ezra said sincerely and jogged into the employee lounge. He was very grateful that Dave Sandoval's extensive education had, among other things, seemed to have taught him boundless patience with his employees, allowing him to be incredibly understanding in almost all circumstances. Ezra promised himself gravely he would never be late again and pulled his shirt over his head. He looked in the full-length mirror on the inside of the door and took note of the vicious bruising up his side and on his chest. He then slipped his pants off and donned the humorless black and white uniform characteristic of the museum, punched his time card and walked out to begin his belated work day.

He ducked into the low-lit and roped off section of the museum set aside for the new exhibit and began pulling things from boxes and organizing the room. He began with small things, sliding glass cases, temporary wall partitions, tables and display boards into the places allotted for them according to the blueprint Dave had scribbled on a napkin the night before for him. He then moved on to the actual display objects, setting them in their places according to relative importance, value and fragility, beginning with the least. He put the Aztec personal computer near the entrance as a welcoming piece, UFO remnants in the rear center, Sasquatch footprint casts near the rear entrance, a few scattered objects of interest and, in the very middle of the exhibit, in front of a bulletproof glass case, a sign which read, "The Pharaoh's Glory: The world's largest diamond! Boasting an astonishing 50,000 carats and weighing in at almost 25 pounds, the Pharaoh's Glory is truly a sight to behold! Originally retrieved from the deep and treacherous caves of South Africa, this truly dazzling piece..." and continued for a paragraph of broad history and wild descriptions. Lastly, he placed at the entrance to the exhibit and at the front door of the museum identical signs which read, "WONDERS OF OUR HISTORY. For a limited time only! Come see the attraction everyone's raving about! Dozens of much sought-after and priceless artifacts you never thought you'd get to see right here in your backyard. Admission Price: $8.00 for students, children and seniors, $10.00 otherwise. Only available for viewing on April First."

By the time he'd put the second sign up, it was dark outside and Dave had already left for home, so he clocked out, locked up the building and unchained his bike, suddenly aware of how tired and broken his body felt. He stiffly peddled out of the parking lot and peddled for a few minutes, but was grateful when his cell phone went off, allowing him a moment to lean his bike against a fence and take a rest. His caller ID told him the call was from an unavailable number, but he answered it anyway, giving a tired, monotone greeting: "This is Ezra."

"Ezra? Ezra McNeil?"

"Yup. Who's calling?"

"My name's not really the question right now. Just know I'm with Mr. Behringer and we're very disappointed you haven't contacted us yet."

"What? What do you mean? I was at work so I couldn't call you. What is with you people? Who are you?"

"Not important. What is important is that you bike your bashed up ass to the top-floor loft in the artist's lofts over off Eighth and Priory Drive tomorrow morning at seven."

"And why would I want to do that?"

"Because if you don't, you'll have a much harder time getting around on that bike."

***TO BE CONTINUED***

Those Bastardly Dastards - Part Three

"What?"

"Why you lookin' so worried for? I thought you—"

"What did they look like?"

"Well, I dunno...they were just here for a second."

"Just tell me what they were wearing!"

"Okay, okay. Like ummm...long trenchcoat lookin' jackets and those gangster hats, you know, the ones they wear crooked?"

"Jesus Christ!" he shouted and jumped out of his chair.

"Whoa! What's wrong?"

"Those are the guys I said were following me this morning."

"But I thought you said you were just imagining it 'cause you're so tired?"

"Yeah, um, it seems like I was wrong, doncha think?" he said with an angry roll of his eyes and ran toward the door.

"Oh, okay, well I hope everything works out...put some Neosporin on those hands, okay?" she shouted after him, even as he and his bike shot past the space in the closing doorway.

"Come on, think!" Ezra shouted at himself as he flew down the street in front of the diner. "Why are they following you? You've never done ANYTHING to make somebody point a gun at you, have you? What-the-hell what-the-hell what-the-hell! What do I do?! What if they just give up?They might just stop. No, they're not gonna just STOP! Come on! Should I buy a gun? I don't want to be a guy who owns a gun...that seems a little over the top. Well come on, Ezra, this is over the top!"

He absentmindedly looked at his watch and shouted, "Ah shit! Dave's gonna kill me!" He abruptly flipped his bike around and wheeled off in the opposite direction. He glanced in all directions compulsively at every intersection, waiting for and hoping against the sight of an old Bentley idling at the crosswalk, shadowy driver and passenger staring him down. He still hadn't seen them when he pulled into the parking lot of the museum and chained his bike to one of the light poles in front of the building. He brushed his hair out of his face and straightened up his clothes, desperately hoping he didn't have sweat spots showing through at his back and armpits. He opened the front door and walked inside, running a lengthy list of possible apologies and excuses past the backs of his eyes.

He stopped moving and let the door close softly behind him, staring ahead in shock. His fingertips tingled and his feet felt like the bottoms of stilts. Dave, the Floor Manager of the Monutropolis Museum of Natural History was smiling and shaking hands with a tall man in a long black raincoat, fedora, skinny tie and sunglasses. The man smiled thinly, glanced away and saw Ezra standing in the doorway watching them. The smile slid off his face and he bid Dave a distracted goodbye with a small pat on the back. He turned and walked purposefully toward Ezra, cracked his neck and began pulling something from his pocket.

***TO BE CONTINUED***

Those Bastardly Dastards - Part Two

The door was yellow. Except it wasn't necessarily yellow per se, more of a brightly florescent shade of indifferent, glaring in his face. Ezra gripped its handle and turned it until it had melted the proper amount, giving him permission to rotate one hundred-eighty degrees counterclockwise and dive headfirst into the pool of thumbtacks eleven thousand feet below him. After he tracked down the remainder of his skin, he finished eating what was left of his neighbor's dog and went back inside from recess.

He opened his eyes and sat up in the alleyway, muttering, "Whathafugwasdat?" through a mouth that felt full of hot glue. He then remembered the Bentley, the fedoras, the raincoat and the gun. With recollection of the last piece of the list, his heart slammed heavily in his chest and he jumped to his feet, skinny arms raised for a fight. He almost felt disappointed when he took in the realization that there was nothing there, not even so much as tire tracks or footprints in the dirty gravel. He dared to hope that all of it had been a dream until he saw his bike's mangled seat post and noticed his body's various aches and the tiny bleeding cuts all over his palms. He looked sadly at his bike, knowing the poor thing couldn't take much more excitement in this vein and began slamming the bent post against the rim of a close-by dumpster until the seat seemed to point in a vaguely comfortable direction. He piled his sagging body on top of it and peddled slowly out of the alley.

Outside, the sky still seemed upset and the wet streets reflected the sentiment, but he could still see the distance the sun had moved from its spot earlier in the morning and knew he had been asleep for at least a few hours. Suddenly finding himself to be in desperate need of fried eggs, he headed instinctively into the parking lot of the near-crumbling Janet's Fine Food and Friendly Feelings Diner (Or, "Effing Janet's," as most people who knew about it called it). He leaned his bike against the back wall and walked through the side door, taking his usual seat by the window.

"Oh, now lookee who caught me on my break," said a voice over his shoulder as a thin blonde girl in an apron walked around his chair and sat down across from him.

"Well I didn't mean to," said Ezra, suddenly losing his appetite.

"Now come on, I know when a guy's trying to get close to me, and you're trying to get close to me. I can feel it in my hips."

"Your hips? What does that mean?"

"I think you know exactly what I mean," she said, leaning across the table and brushing her fingers across the back of his hand.

Her nametag said "Claire," but she usually went by Lily. She had been Ezra's down-the-hall neighbor for the last eight months and had made a point since his move-in day to always make herself as available as possible to him. He had no idea how old she was, where she was from, who her family was or why she liked him so much, but he had always assumed her to be some sort of wannabe black widow serial killer.

She looked at the hand she was stroking and gasped dramatically. "Ezra! What happened to you? My poor man is all cut up," she said with an over-pronounced pout.

"Yeah, crashed my bike. It's okay though, don't—" he was interrupted when she lifted his hand to her lips and drew her face into a cartoonish pucker. "Don't DO that, okay? God...it'll be fine. Anyway, yunno how I haven't been...sleeping very well lately?"

"Yes, you've been losing so much sleep and for all the wrong reasons and I just can't stop worrying about you."

"Sure. Anyway, I had this crazy hallucination or something this morning where these guys were following me and I tried to get away, but I crashed. Next thing I know, I'm lying in the alley over off Cassidy Street, having the craziest dream I've ever had. I just woke up."

"You slept in a gutter?!"

"Well yeah, but not intentionally. I think I passed out when I crashed and my body was so tired it just kept me under for a few hours. I'm fine."

"That's terrible. You look absolutely disgusting, no offense. I know your washer's broken, so you'll just have to come over to my place and wash your clothes. Don't worry, I have a robe I'll let you use."

"Aaaaand that's where this conversation ends. Buh bye."

"Oh come on, baby! Don't go! I forgot about something I was supposed to tell you yesterday."

"Fine," Ezra said, slumping his shoulders in resignation. "What was it?"

"Okay, " she started. "These two old fashion lookin' guys came over yesterday and asked where you were. They seemed pretty ticked."

***TO BE CONTINUED***

Those Bastardly Dastards - Part One

The bicycle slid down the rain-dampened street, its rider taking in the early morning light. A blank-windowed building cast in gray within a puddle was briefly split in half by its kinked wheel. The rain had stopped sometime before now, and a fickle sun was beginning to shine on a newly washed city.

It was a new day.

And on this wanly dreary example, Ezra McNeil was trying very hard not to crash his bike. It was a beat up old thing, and both tires were worn completely bald so that their traction on the wet asphalt of the streets was less than wonderful and more than worrisome. He wore no helmet, which he knew put him in danger of splashing his brains all over the pavement, but as far as he could tell, there wasn't a whole lot of anything contained in said brains that would make their loss a particularly tragic event.

He glanced at his watch, which told him it was 4:44AM. He had gotten it in a clearance bin at the discount store a block from his house, and it had told him nothing but bad news since: "You're late for your interview!" it would say. "Class starts in seven minutes!" it would also say. Sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, it would ask, "Hey, it's four o'clock in the morning. Why haven't you fallen asleep yet?" and would repeat similar messages until he would eventually give up on ever getting to sleep, drag his bike out from under his bed and go for a ride. On such mornings, after seemingly endless sleepless nights, he craved the simple exhilaration of the virginal morning air whipping around his face, drying out his eyes, making his nose run. With almost no one out on the streets at that magical time, he felt as if he belonged to a small, elite group, comprised mostly of shop owners, workaholics, police officers, a few scattered homeless people and fellow insomniacs, and they ruled the world.

This morning, however, something was different in this sleepless corner of the city. A pervasive sense of déjà vu had accompanied him throughout his ride, as he spotted the same pair of shabbily dressed men in the same beaten up old Bentley at nearly every stoplight he passed. At every intersection, he'd glance up, see the car and peddle a little faster, attempt to remain calm and remind himself of the strange things a person's mind can do when provided with little rest.

He was sure he was being irrational, but after the fourth appearance, he put all his weight and leg strength into his pedals and pounded down the road, passing dreamily slow-moving traffic and turning the city into a smudgy tunnel of watered down shades of gray. His heart pounded somewhere directly behind his adam's apple and the veins in his forehead tightened their grip on his skull.

He clung sweatily to the handlebars as he bore a hard right into the still air, skidded into an alleyway and slammed his shoulder and side into a brick protrusion on the wall, sending his sprawling body into the gravel floor of the alley. The air in his lungs exploded out his mouth and his eyes filled with water, blurring his vision. He jerked a shaky palm to his face and tried to clear his eyes as he peered up into the bewildering sky, trying to catch his breath. He was just aware enough to hear the chugging of a tired engine as the Bentley rolled up next to him and stopped. A tall raincoat topped with a crumpled fedora stepped out, straightened its tie and leveled a grimy pistol at his quaking chest.

***TO BE CONTINUED***

Brainstorming

Enough!

I've spent a week posting blogs about the random things that fight each other for prominence and screen time. It's been good for the creative juices and other nonexistent hormones, but I love to write fiction. It's my greatest aspiration. I don't want to write a 300+ page book about my feelings toward belly button lint and the clouds' thoughts and feelings (Note to self: Future blogs?). I want to write stories about people who don't exist doing things that will never be done whose stories can affect real people who will do real things. So, at the behest of a very right friend who read the blog and made a suggestion, I will post some fiction on here.

The plan is to write a full-length short story (probably three to fifteen pages) and post it serially on the blog. Every day I'll post a different section of the story, thereby forcing me to do the sort of writing that is the ultimate goal of this. Needless to say, I am quite excited.

But how to do it? Months layered upon months of frustrated writer's blog can't be broken overnight. I'm not a very good brainstormer, but I've heard it helps other people, and we're all basically part of the same gigantic neural network, right? So here goes. This brainstorming thing.

The Idea

A surprisingly fast idea has occurred to me with this story. I've always wanted to do a good, old-fashioned crime caper. Jewel heists, that kind of thing. That's it: Crime Caper.

The Setting

Some city. Nondescript. In fact, let's make one up. Monutropolis. Sounds big and important. "The streets of Monutropolis are alive with traffic, regardless of which end of 24 hours you find it in." That sounds about right.

The Characters

Ummm...somebody basically my age...ish. A dude. Always easier to write your own gender. Poor. Then there's some reason for him to be involved in a jewel heist. But he has to be basically a good guy--easier to root for. He gets in with the wrong people. The "wrong people" can be a group of hapless Reservoir Dogs wannabes about to do the biggest job of their lives. (Their previous biggest should be something not horribly daring, like stealing all the candy in a 7/11 or something.)

The Plot

This is where I draw a line. I like the idea of posting my brainstorming process on here, but really, I'd like to keep the real plot details to myself until they're all posted on here. It will involve kidnap, priceless possessions, probably some sort of twist ending and lots of discreet trench coats and fedoras.

Oh, and cliffhangers! Lots of cliffhangers!

Well, there we go. My next blog post will be the first part of the story. I hope you'll hang in there with me, as I haven't ever written a short story in a serialized format and, more hazardously, this is basically me grabbing Writer's Block around its slippery neck and squeezing as hard as I can, aiming to pop the little bastard's head clean off. I know the image is violent, but it's okay--I'll make it quick and mostly painless.

Flies

I wish I were a fly,

So easily crumpled,

Yet happily unaware.

My eyes would always see

A thousand things at once,

None of them making any more sense

Than what I see right now.

Similar to myself,

Living for the sake of living.

Constantly confused about

The things the giants do.

Except I could fly.

And my diet would be simple.

Need-based; no overconsumption.

I, like my babies' babies,

Would be born in shit.

No fanfare.

No parades for simple miracles.

I'd have simple fears.

A part of a chain,

Is a nice thing to be.

Even below my predators.

I could taste the air.

Plus I'd have a short life-span.

And never outlast my welcome.

Every Goddamn Day.

Today I have discovered what will likely be the biggest obstacle in the life of this blog. Posting something new every single day. That means every. Single. Day. Rain, snow, sleet or hail...like a mailman, except at least mailmen get vacations, sick days and Sundays off. This means I'm getting the message out EVERY DAY and am, therefore, more badass than a mailman (plus I don't wear those shorts and socks, so thusly the badass points grow). Unfortunately the weather isn't the biggest problem. It's dealing with all the things that come in the Living packaged deal--and writing a blog EVERY. GODDAMN. DAY. No matter what happens. No matter which raincloud hates my parade.

It's part of the experience that I really wanted to get from this, though. As an author with deadlines, I wouldn't be allowed to let my personal life affect my work, unless it influences it and makes the emotionality of it stronger...but I digress (I've always wanted to say "I digress" in something! Goal #3,737 out of the way!). The point is, every, every, every, every day is a day to get work done, and with goals, one must be single-minded to do so. I still will do anything for the ones I love and calamities always happen, so sick days must be allotted, but work needs to be worked.

Anyway, "Every Goddamn Day" is so much more than my little self-involved blog. It's a way of life. We have to be on, we have to be lucid, we have to work, love, eat, clean, fight and live every goddamn day, unfortunate though it may seem at times. There is never a true day off. A disservice that a childhood with a Gameboy did me was cause me to wax quixotic about life with a pause button. I am not alone in wishing one could just hold up one's arms and say, "Okay, everything stop! I need a time-out!" How fervently we wish we could pause the game. Who hasn't prayed to the Coach to bench us for just a little while so we could at least take a breather?

Let everybody else play for a little while, I'm tired.

.

.

.

.

That was going to be the end of this post. But in the interest of keeping my chin up, let's end this differently.

This doesn't have to be all about how frustrating the days are. It can be an exuberant, "Every goddamn day I get to do what I need and want to do!"

I use it in terms of amazement of my loved ones still putting up with me: "These people are here with me...every goddamn day. Holy wow."

My favorite, though, is when one changes the inflection to that of a battle cry, a stubborn insistence to accept happily all the good stuff and make the bad stuff get the hell out of the way: "THIS IS MY LIFE!! EVERY GODDAMN DAY!!!"

That's the go-getter attitude. Cue the troops. Let's do battle.

Cop-Out

Instead of posting an all new blog entry with all that time-consuming original writing stuff, I think I'll just post a selection of things I've already written and have had a great deal of trouble trying to figure out what to do with. So here you go, first a brief little blurb I wrote while living in the dorms at the University or Nevada, Reno last year:

I live in a dorm room. It’s small and there’s a half bathroom area with a little shaving sink and a mirror. Directly across the room is another, full-length mirror on a door that separates the half-bathroom from the half-bedroom so that when I open the door to make it a whole room, it creates sort of an eternal hallway strung between the two mirrors. I have a tattoo on my back, a two inch exclamation mark juxtaposed between my shoulder blades that’s supposed to be some sort of statement of my love for writing or literature or exuberance or something. It occurred to me recently, while brushing my teeth in my mirror hallway after a hasty shower, that my shoulder blades formed a set of parentheses around my exclamation mark, and the mirrors in front of and behind me formed another set of parentheses around me. I then began to think about writing the thought down, and how I would word it, and what sort of punctuation I would use, at which point it came to mind that my entire world is governed by punctuation.

I can’t decide if that makes my life hollow or just very thoroughly described.

And here's a poem I wrote to a girl in an Education class (repetitively redundant, I know) for future English teachers who incessantly read over my shoulder anytime my fingers even grazed the keyboard of my laptop. One day during class, I was so fed up with her bullcrap that I wrote an entire six-stanza poem comprised of AB couplets while she was reading, completely dedicated to her:

Poem for the Over-the-Shoulder Looker

This is for you,
Oh, snoopiest of snoops.
You who sit idly,
And must stare at the groups,

Of words on my page,
That have nothing to do
(Except in this case),
With you.

This is for you,
The person who keeps,
An eye on my page,
And whose listless brain creeps,

Over all of the things,
Which are privately mine,
Though they be unimportant,
With the passage of time.

This is for you,
The person who smashes,
With great haste and exactness,
My mind’s hidden caches.

And they’re mine, goddammit!
So get out now, get out,
Of these virtual pages,
Before I verbally shout,

At the top of my lungs,
And instead of quietly writing,
Over-the-Shoulder Looker,
I’ll be un-quietly fighting.

When I decided to write about cop-outs, I knew the best way to do it would be to just post a series of writings I'd already done and try and pass them off as a viable blog entry, which they of course cannot be, at least within the subject bounds of this particular blog. Besides all the copying, pasting and reformatting being terribly annoying, this was beginning to feel like one of those clip show episodes sitcoms have when their writers don't want to think of anything new for a week.

A cop-out is the lowest form of bullshitting. Instead of making stuff up to get through requirements the importance of which is somewhat debatable (Core Humanities? Yeah, UNR/TMCC people?), you're actually faking art. You're taking something that's meant to be used as an artistic means and simplifying it for the sake of making it easier. So it made sense to me to use old pieces as my cop-out piece, but its being a cop-out was, while being what seems a pretty good joke to me, pretty crass. So here's something completely new and original (also, a Nudist Nightmares first, wherein I will go against the subject to make a final point on it) limerick:

There once was this guy who sat,

At his computer, growing quite fat,

He blogged all day long,

About how not to live wrong,

And wore the irony like a hat.

So, it has to be pretty evident to anybody reading this that sometimes raw, unadulterated, broadband, hi-definition, organic original stuff can, well, suck in a raw, hi-definition sort of way, but in the end, while the bullshitters and cop-outters are laughing their ways to the bank with fistfuls of money, you can self-righteously sneer toward the First National Bank of the Soul with your tender-loving armfuls of integrity.

Besides, once the American dollar bottoms out, integrity might be worth something!

Jelly Beans

Dear Jelly Bean,

I am well aware that you have enjoyed a fairly long period of popularity, but I am writing you to call attention to your flaws and question your integrity. The Christian church and the Hallmark company have certainly been very good to you, but I know what you're hiding.

First of all, you are not what you say you are. Your name is nothing but a misleading mess of inappropriate comparisons. You are neither jelly nor bean, but you are just close enough to confuse people. How dastardly dare you be? Jelly you are not. You are similarly sweet and often fruit flavored, but spreading you is woefully difficult. You are certainly no bean, either. You are similar in size and shape to a bean, but you weren't grown on a stalk and you taste nothing like any legume I've ever eaten. Also, putting you in a burrito is a catastrophic mistake.

Furthermore, your flavors are misleadingly attractive. Upon reading your enclosed list of flavors, I was enticed and excited by the vast and varied selection of what you claimed to be realistic and true-to-life "taste sensations". WRONG. Even after the incredible difficulty one has with choosing flavors correctly according to the pictures on the guide, the array of problems only grows. I was aware that 98% of your ingredients are sugar, corn syrup, maltodextrin and modified food starch, but I vainly hoped for a miracle in edible technology. Unfortunately, as soon as I bit into one of your "Sizzling Cinnamon" beans, I realized just how deeply the corruption runs. Sizzle did my tongue? Nay. I was moved to remove it from my mouth to recheck the flavor chart, just to be sure it was truly "Sizzling Cinnamon". I did not choose incorrectly. Sadly, though, the lunacy continues. "Strawberry Daiquiri" has little to no discernible alcohol content, "Juicy Pear" contained absolutely no juice, "Wild Blackberry" was quite docile, and who in their right mind willingly eats the "Buttered Popcorn" flavor is a mystery to me. Besides its tasting nothing like butter or popcorn, why that particular flavor is regularly being eaten and manufactured is absolutely beyond me. Honestly, why?

What is certainly not my final quarrel with your product, but will be for the purpose of this letter, is that your suggested flavor combinations are a frustrating mess. As I careened down the laundry chute of dismay, chewing on the truth of edible misery, my plunge was slowed by the glimmer of hope presented by the beguilingly brilliant idea of combining two or more of your initially godawful flavors into something better. Perhaps, I thought, the combination of jelly beans will be greater than the sum of jelly beans' parts. Much to my chagrin, said combinations only make for a multiplicity of abhorrent flavor mutations. Adding the peanut butter and strawberry jam "flavored" beans together to create what was promised to be the flavor experience of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich only left me wishing for a bread flavored bean to add to the mix, because, after all, the only thing sadder than misery is incomplete misery. I would continue with explanations of why each flavor combination only leads the taster closer and closer to broad nihilism, but reliving the experience is a burden large than any I care to shoulder.

Please, unless your manufacturers suddenly discover the ability to grow genetically modified beans that are spreadable like jelly and usable in Mexican cuisine, I must request an end to this jelly bean madness. Because madness is what it is, and although easy to package and apparently quite profitable, even during times of economic recession, madness is still almost always socially irresponsible.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen

Topic-less

Here I am, attempting to write my second blog in my series of hopeful writing exercises and, true to my nature, I can't think of a single thing to write about. I was supposed to have a different subject for every day, but today I have nothing. However, when I thought about it, it seemed to me nothing is something, if only a negative noun, so I will write about Nothing.

Nothing is, oddly enough, a lot of things. "Nothing," is what we say when something is wrong but we don't want to admit it. Nothing is a scarier afterlife fate than Hell. And nothing is what I have to write tonight.

It's worth mentioning that the whole reason this blog exists is to combat writer's block, and here, on the second entry, I have--not writer's block, mind you--nothing to write about. At first they seemed to me to be the same things, lack of subject material and creative constipation, but they aren't. It's like the difference between being tired and being sleepy. I've had insomnia, and one can be monumentally tired but never fall asleep. It can be the same way with writing: I have quite a collection of ideas and subjects to draw from in my book and story projects; I just have insomnia of the written word.

I'm tired as hell but can't get to sleep.

Realism

Realism is not often very funny. To illustrate my point, here's a joke:

What did one duck say to the other duck?

Nothing, because it was a duck.

As with any question, to get a different (and possibly better) answer, one must change the parameters:

What did one duck quack at the other duck?

Unfortunately, the resulting punchline is similarly uninteresting:

"Quack."

Realism can be interesting sometimes, though. Usually you have to go into more detail than is necessary with a quick question-punchline joke. For instance:

A couple of years ago, I was an applicant for a job in the technology nook at the bookstore of my campus. After several phone calls, I managed to secure a job interview and, in desperate need of income, I put the interview at a level of very high priority. I spent the morning of the scheduled day readying myself, rearranging my wardrobe choices at least six times. My roommates watched me as I walked out of my room repeatedly, asking questions a guy less secure in his masculinity would be too embarrassed to ask. "Should I wear the tie or not?" "Blue shirt or white shirt?" "It's definitely too warm for the jacket, but I think it looks nice, doesn't it?" "Do these shoes go with this belt? Because I know that the shoes are supposed to match the belt, but I think sometimes they don't have to." Needless to say, they didn't have much to add to the situation.

I ended up wearing a sky blue dress shirt and brown slacks, which happened to be the exact uniform the gazillions of high school kids swarming the Student Union were wearing as my interview was on the same day as the school district's jazz festival. Because of this, every time I asked where my interview was to be held, the annoyingly customer-service oriented staff continually tried to direct me to the auditorium with all of "my classmates." I finally extricated myself from the swarms of children and made it to the interview, huffing and puffing and adjusting my shirt. I took several breaths and told myself the morning's mantra: "Don't worry. This will be fine. Half of an interview is your appearance and you look good. You look professional. Don't worry."

I was then directed to my interviewer, the manager of the technology nook, who, after shaking my hand vigorously and looking fixedly over my left shoulder, picked up his walking stick and slowly found his way to his office, bumping into two people on the way. Lacking the appearance fifty percent of the interview, my confidence faltered and I didn't get the job.

The problem with making realistic stories entertaining, though, is keeping them believable. This really did happen. It seems that after a certain point in our adolescence (later for some, of course), we become disconnected with reality in that we begin to believe that it is incapable of producing anything interesting. In order for anything to retain a feeling of verisimilitude, it seems it has to have a certain amount of drabness. It must reflect the dreary tones we've come to associate with day to day life. Henry David Thoreau said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." He was right when he wrote it next to Walden Pond in Massachusetts in the early 1850s, and we've made it an American tradition to uphold the classic phrase's truth.

Believing the realism inherent in our lives to cause them to be boring, we instead focus on the lives of others we find to be less realistic, and therefore, more interesting. We sift through movies and television shows. We live vicariously through the characters in romance novels and soap operas. We update ourselves on the lives of celebrities with whom we have no connection and will not notice or care when we die (because, after all, celebrities are those whose dreams have been realized, and that's just not realistic).

It doesn't have to be like this, though. Write a story about your life down. Use interesting language and embellish the text with detailed descriptions and beautiful pictures. The duck quacked. Okay, but what did it do when it quacked? Throw in a pond covered in duck shit, a gleeful toddler and a bag of cheap gas station white bread and you've got a great story.

Let the duck quack. But make it good.

These Will Be Writing Exercises

I am an aspiring writer. My goal is to remove the "aspiring" from that self-prescribed moniker and get some real writing done, a fairly silly statement coming from a person who is writing a blog, I know. It is a fairly well-known fact that blogs are one of the most devastatingly effective time and productivity suckers in the known universe, aside from Wikipedia article hopping, Facebook and Seinfeld reruns. Taking into account the fact that the average person spends roughly one-third of his life sleeping and probably another third (or more likely some larger fraction, depending on the person) doing a wide and ranging assortment of things he'd rather not do, including but not limited to sitting in traffic, teeth brushing, evacuating body waste, paying bills, working, dealing with stupid people, breaking things, fixing things, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Once all of Life's taxation is extracted, the tiny sliver of net time a person still has, the stuff he uses to chase dreams, find love, have fun, fornicate, create and relax becomes indescribably important. Time is—literally and metaphorically—money.

So why then, would blogging be a useful expenditure of a hopeful writer's time? Honestly, I'm still trying to convince myself that it is. My reasoning revolves around the frustratingly dense creative stagnation I've found myself in for...let's just say it's been long enough so that the only things I seem able to write are beginnings. No middles. No ends. Just hopeful little roads that branch off from my porch and promptly drop off into their own, private abysses. Despite the geographical ridiculousness of there being multiple bottomless chasms all grouped together within the same metaphorical neighborhood, the problem is a miserable one, and I have become desperate for a solution, thus bringing me to the point of my rambling.

I have always read that writing exercises are good ways to polish and refine a person's writing style and jumpstart a stalling creative engine, but have always run into the same problem when beginning a writing exercise I've encountered when beginning full writing projects: I'm all beginnings. Recently, I thought back to creative writing classes I've had, during which I have been shockingly productive, and realized the reason for those brief patches of creative fertility is the combination of due date and expectant teacher. I need accountability. So, the reason I am choosing to spend my ever-precious net time on tossing meandering blog entries out into the void of this seemingly endless series of tubes is to get my brain working again. Starting a blog holds me accountable to the handful of imaginary readers I've invented for the purpose, and forces my brain to think creatively.

I will write a blog entry about a different subject every day. I will make a definitive point on each subject-of-the-day in a form that lends itself to the material. During this process, I will use many of said forms, such as various poetry types, playwriting, journal entry, short stories and anything else that comes to mind. If you happen upon my little corner of the internet, take a look if you like. You might find something to think about, laugh at, get angry over or just shake your head in sad bewilderment at. Regardless, garnering an audience of readers isn't a major concern in this endeavor; I just want to learn to write again.