All Nighter Hijinks

Sorry for the lack of posts. End of semester crunch. Speaking of, I pulled an all nighter. I think I'm the most hilarious person on the planet in those wee hours. Here are the two things that tickled my fancy today:

1) A friend of mine logged on facebook. Here's what I spammed within forty seconds:

My eyes buuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrnnnnnn

With righteous fuuuurrrrrrrrrryyyyyyy

Of a thousand wintery Christmasesssssssssssssssss

Of outrageous ragggggggggeeeeeeee

The likes of which haven't been seen since the Third Intergalactic Fightin' Space Operrrrraaaaaaaaaaaa

Where Chester MacDougal and his Pugilistic Pachyderms faced off against the Clown Herd known only as Pocketttttssssssss




I really like the idea of a clown organization named Pockets. The idea I had originally was that it was one kind of fat clown with like, a hundred pockets, and each pocket had a tiny, like, six inch clown that lived inside it.


2)This was left on my sister's facebook wall in three installments a few minutes apart:

HANNAH. OH GOD. I'M HOPPED UP ON ENERGY DRINKS. I THINK I'M SICK, I DON'T KNOW. I HAD A FEVER MAYBE LAST NIGHT. MY HEAD FEELS FUNNY, AND THIS PAPER STILL ISN'T DONE. I THINK I HEAR GREMLINS. SEND HELP. MAY NOT RESPOND, SIGNAL GETTING WEA--BEEP, BEEP-BEEP, BEEEEP BEEP-BEEP - ::end morse code::

::Bzzt...Kshhht:: -ERE! We can't hold them out anymore, SOMEONE GAVE THE DAMNED PENGUINS RIFLES! We're going to send Jeeves out there to try to reason with them. Will update on the situation. Wait, does that one have hedge clippers? Damnit, is he going after the power cabl--

::User Logged In: HELPPENGUINSARERAPINGJEE::
HELPPENGUINSARERAPINGJEE: Anyone here? They cut our power and cable lines. The laptop only has a few minutes and the satellite signal is pretty shaky. Look, we need help, penguins are raping Jeeves. He went out there with some fish, and I guess holding fish and not immediately eating it is a rapeable offense in Penguin Culture. Anyway, while they've been busy, we reinforced the door. Battery's dying, will try to find another way here.




...Heeeeeehe.

Oh, I forgot one other thing. This was mid-conversation, but I'm cutting that out.

[09:46] TheAuburnDragon: That spells MATT LEVEL OF LUSHNESSOCITUDE
[09:46] TheAuburnDragon: -5 to Sobriety, +5 to Imagined Sex Appeal
[09:47] TheAuburnDragon: +10 to Hilarity Modulator, +20 to Wiskideek
[09:47] TheAuburnDragon: 0 to Alcohol Tolerance
[09:48] Snuggs1420: But see, I don't get Wiskideek
[09:48] TheAuburnDragon: +Goat
[09:48] Snuggs1420: In fact, drinking gives me +50 to omgIwantya
[09:48] TheAuburnDragon: Ok
[09:48] TheAuburnDragon: Ok, ok ok, so
[09:48] Snuggs1420: It's a girl thing
[09:48] TheAuburnDragon: If I ever create a game or RPG
[09:48] TheAuburnDragon: I'm going to give someone an item that is +Goat
[09:48] TheAuburnDragon: And I won't tell them what it does
[09:48] Snuggs1420: lol
[09:48] TheAuburnDragon: Until the next time they're on a mountain
[09:49] Snuggs1420: Hahahaha
[09:49] TheAuburnDragon: And a mountain goat fucking butts them off the mountain
[09:49] Snuggs1420: oooooo, you know what this reminds me of?
[09:49] TheAuburnDragon: ....What can this possibly remind you of?

She then linked a WoW video with is irrelevant.

You've finished the post! You gain Penguin Battle Armor: +20 to Pockets, +15 to Butlery, +5 to Adorability, +SeaLion.

...I suggest you don't go in the ocean.

You Awaken - First Installment

I'm going to try to at least pretend to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  Here's what I've done today.

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            You awaken several hours later in a daze. The lights are off and you can't see. At your feet you feel something heavy and warm. There is a hard pillow beneath your head. A whirring sound softly emanates from off to your left.

            You reach left and your hand taps into a glitchy lava lamp. The bump causes it to flicker to life, illuminating the room in a red glow. The cat on your feet blinks angrily at the light and moves to under the bed. The door is closed, as are the curtains over the window. You are pretty certain this isn't your room.

            You sit up and open the blinds.  It’s night time and a full moon is out.  You’re on the third floor of this building.  Outside is a narrow, two lane street with cars lining it.  Across the street is an old brick building with a purple neon sign depicting a sultry lady.  A name is on the bottom, but the only letters that work are I, E, and N.

            You try to open the window, but it is jammed.  The cat has emerged from under the bed and is now pawing at the door expectantly.

            You get out of bed to go open the door.  You’re wearing pajama pants and a baggy t-shirt.  The shirt is black with a waving, smiling stick figure on it.  There’s a piece of paper in your right pocket.  It’s a crumpled photograph.  It looks altered, like two different pictures were combined at the center.  Half of it shows a vaguely familiar woman and the other shows a vaguely familiar man.

            You open the door.  Outside the room is a white-wallpapered hallway lit by a series of dingy yellow lights and home to a dark red carpet.  It stretches far to the right, doors lining it at fifteen foot intervals on both sides.  The left has two more doors before it rounds a corner.  Old, tinny music emanates from one of the rooms to the right.  The cat runs to the left and around the corner. 

            You walk toward the music.  You can’t see the end of the hallway.  You pass doors with no discernable labeling order: A37, 1115, 42C, Q. The music seems to be getting closer - Hush, hush, hush, here comes the Bogeyman - but when you turn around, you’re one door down from the room you just left.  The music abruptly fades back into the distance.  A light far in the distance flickers off.

Apologies again!

It's been a busy few weeks.  I'll try to have something substantial up in the next week, promise.

So, I got bored and spammed my status

From my facebook status and my following comments:
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Angst-filled status! I figured I'd spare you, gentle reader, of the particulars and instead tell a story. This is a story about a bridge crossing the Wannuskigi River...

So there I was. Dawn, the third Sunday of September. Standing across the bridge from me was Gerry Spindalphen, the local card shark and my nemesis. Daylight had just broken and the local fish were leaping. Lighthoppers, they were called, and they could take down a duck. Other than their splashes and haunting "Krreeeiii!", the wilderness was quiet, the birds having long ago learned to keep quiet around the Wannuskigi...

I couldn't remember the first time I met Gerry, but my earliest rememberance of him was one of pure hatred. He stole my parking spot at Tamm's Tavern, and on his back bumper was Calvin flipping me off. I keyed his car. This was the height of our friendliness.

We were at odds today for a usual reason. We routinely swapped stealing things from each other. He stole my "Honk If You Like -CENSORED- " bumper sticker. I stole his fuzzy dice. He stole my right hand mirror. I stole his son's motorcycle.  He stole my four wheeler. I stole his wife. Yesterday he kidnapped my dog, which really makes me reconsider terming it "stealing" his wife, but here we were, me trying to barter back for Sergeant Lumpy and him trying to barter back for his son's motorcycle.

Past Future Travesties of Confection and Science Part 3 - The Finale

If you haven't read the previous two installments, go do that.  I'll wait.

Done?  Great.  Here we go.

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            Cautiously, Llewellan made his way up the stairs, the door held up like a giant tower shield and bag of candy corn tied to his belt.  He had attempted to recruit Jerebiah to the exploration effort, but the scruffy marketer had refused, offered to watch the base, stayed in his seat, and pulled out a piece of wood and a carving knife.  The man wouldn’t budge, and Jerebiah had found within himself a sense of adventure, so venture he did.

            He emerged in an idyllic glade.  Idling past the basement entrance was a small creek filled with dazzling fish, all nipping at the surface of the water.  Beautiful trees containing fruits known and unknown flourished, their plump banquets weighing down the boughs.  Timid deer watched from the edges of the clearing, and an oblivious rabbit hopped by.

            In the center of the clearing was a lone tree bearing apples.  Lazing beneath it was a humanoid snake.

            His body was covered in tiny scales and his tongue forked.  Curled around his sleeping form was a lengthy tail.  As Llewellan grew near, the snakeman’s eyes flitted open, revealing a piercing gaze that chilled Llewellan’s spine.  The creature stood and began circling Llewellan, sizing him up.

            “A newcomer, yesss?  You ssshouldn’t be in the Garden, no… Doesss He know?  Or do I need to remove you?”

            Llewellan set the door down and held it with one hand while he untied the candy corn with the other.  Fumbling and stuttering, he recited the speech he had practiced during the initial sales attempts of the candy.  “S-S-Sir, do you have a c-craving for a sweet candy that is good for your skin, too?”  The snakeman hissed.  “Scales!  Great for scales!  And a tongue like yours surely has a fine array of taste buds!”  He proffered the bag of candy.  “And I’m sure we can work out a wonderful deal on pricing!  This land looks fabulously wealthy.  Whose garden did you say you were guarding?”

            The reptile hesitantly grabbed the bag and examined a piece of candy corn.  He sniffed it.  Just as he put it in his mouth, a shimmering Being, the Universal Mechanist, emerged from the woods and made its way over, a puzzled expression on its face.

            “You are not one of my creations.  What are you doing here?”

            Words abandoned Llewellan.  The snakeman looked at the Being and offered the bag.  “You sssshould try one of thesse.  They’re not half bad.”

            The Being looked into the bag, and then quickly looked at Llewellan.  “YOU!  You brought those abominations into my world!  You are the reason I had to redesign this planet!”  It spun toward the snakeman.  “Did you eat one?  Did you?!”

            The snakeman swallowed the last of the offending candy.  “…Yeah?”

            The Being was taken aback.  “And… you are ok?  No side effects?  No mutating into a mime?”  The snakeman shook his head.  “Perhaps it was not the candy after all.  Regardless, you wayward vagabond, you have intruded upon my Garden.  Leave before you corrupt its purity!”

            Llewellan was becoming better at taking hints, so he took his door and went back to the basement.  The snakeman and the Being watched the basement stairway and, a short minute later, it fizzled out of existence as time seemed to—

                                                                          –stop.

            And start again.  Llewellan heard from outside the basement the unmistakable sounds of city life.

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

            While Cosgrove and Jack were hurtling to their unknown destination through a series of quick blips through millions of points in time, Jack suddenly had an epiphany.  Epiphanies usually resulted in dismissal from the bureaucratic side of the Ministry of Shenanigans because they were often paired with requests for more raises and more funding for the Science Department.

            Jack’s epiphany: Is our presence here changing the timeline?  Should we go back and stop ourselves?  Should we go back and stop the Scientist and the Yokel?

            Jack’s bureaucratic sense of survival immediately quashed his epiphany. 

They soon arrived on the outskirts of an idyllic glade.  The sound of an argument was pervading the once tranquil air and the birds had fled for more serene locales.  Jack and Cosgrove dismounted their temporal cart and hid behind a cluster of blackberry bushes to watch the heated debate beneath the tree.  Cosgrove started picking blackberries.

“I ssstill sssay you’re doing it wrong.  Free will isss the way to go.  More interessting, yesss?”

“Take a look at what free will accomplished for you.  You ate that accursed junk and will not stop arguing with me.  You are fired.”

The snakeman stuttered and sputtered.  “Y-you can’t fire me!  I’m your sssecond!”

The Universal Mechanist dismissively waved.  “I made you imperfectly.  I will simply have to do better next time.  You know where the exit is.  Live your life freely out of my garden.”  It turned and began walking out of the glade.

The snakeman stood there, dumbstruck, for a few seconds.  Finally shaking himself out of it, a snarl crept onto his face and he took a running leap toward the Mechanist.  The Being faded and reappeared three feet to the side and pointed at the snakeman.

“You DARE attack me?  Be dust.” A white light shot out of the pointing finger and engulfed the snakeman, who writhed and smoked and disintegrated, leaving a small pile of dust.  A shimmering tear fell to the ground as he turned and left the glade.

Cosgrove had missed most of these proceedings, so occupied was he with the bush loaded down with blackberries.  Jack caught it all.  Waiting a few minutes to ensure the Being was gone, he eventually picked his way across the clearing to the pile of dust.  Sitting atop it was a single piece of candy corn, except it had turned green instead of the usual orangish-white color.  He knelt down to pick it up, but as he reached for it, it cracked and broke, and out slithered a small green snake.  It hastily made its way to the apple tree and climbed it, leaving a confused Jack to wander back to Cosgrove and the machine and prepare their departure.

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

            Llewellan ascended the stairs once again and found himself on the busy streets of a major city, with the basement once again acting as the basement for an apartment building.  He quickly replaced the door and instructed Jerebiah to lock it until he returned and took a walk around.  Finding a boy selling a newspaper, he traded a few pieces of candy corn to the receptive youngster and found out a number of facts about where he was.

            Philadelphia, 1880.  The paper bragged of its size rivaling even London, mentioned the boon of the economy, the availability of public transit, and the growth of both sea and railroad trading.  Factories billowing smoke dotted the horizon.  But the most important thing that Llewellan took away from his experience on the streets?  The boy enjoyed the candy corn.

            Llewellan’s heart almost burst with happiness.  He returned to his marketing agent and they began working on a strategy to start up their business.

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

            Cosgrove was in the passenger seat now, devouring blackberries.  Jack decided to return to the Ministry, since the trail had grown cold.  Too many detours and wrong jumps had lost the trail.

            But as they arrived back in the future, they found a ravaged, unfamiliar landscape.  Vegetation was scarce and cities little more than shells.  Basic geography was a stranger to Jack, and it took multiple attempts to find Harmony Square before he felt confident enough to break the news to Cosgrove, the severity of his voice causing Cosgrove to pause in his feast.

            “…Everything changed, Cosgrove.  History was changed and the present was altered.”

            Cosgrove nodded thoughtfully and popped a blackberry.  Jack slapped the basket of blackberries out of the cart.

            “This is serious!  We don’t have a home.  We don’t have a time!  We shouldn’t exist!  We never were!”

            “Well, then, let’s enjoy it.  Want to go find Paris again?”

            Jack sighed.  “Why not?  I don’t know how long this buggy will last, and that slap you gave the machine when we were in the mountains cleared out the old numbers, so we couldn’t even find where all this mess started.”  He glared at Cosgrove, who was still looking mournfully at the splattered basket of blackberries.  Jack gave up.

            “Fine, let’s find Paris.”  He flipped a few knobs, twisted a few switches, and hit the Button.

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

            Production boomed.  Sales were high.  Llewellan, who had since adopted the new, more period appropriate name of George Renninger, was producing the bulk of the candy corn for the Wunderlee Candy Company.  The ownership of a time machine made eliminating both potential threats and competitors a simply act of turning back a day, and the evils of the corn continued.  Even today, the vast conspiracy behind candy corn continues, although with the death of Llewellan in the early 1930s, who still lies in a vast, hidden mausoleum beneath Illinois’ corn fields, the business has started a slow slump.  Perhaps one day the world will be rid of the evil that has so corrupted it.  While the wretched abomination has already altered the very foundations of our existence, we can only hope that determination and the iron stomachs of loyal patriots of the species will prevail.

            No one knows what happened to Jerebiah or the basement, but he was heard saying that he wanted “t’git [himself] onna dem pups”, and, shortly after, time seemed to—

                                                                          –stop.

            And he and the basement were gone.

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

            “This place is just like the Ministry!”  Jack beamed from behind his outrageously large desk in his plush office, fifteen stories underground in a secret CIA bunker.  “Laser watches, a gun that fires sharks, and a mechanical twenty-story goat?  We never had stuff this cool back in that stuffy peaceland!”  He took aim at a dartboard with his watch.  As always, he missed.

            Cosgrove sat in a chair on the other side.  He was growing increasingly jealous of having his subordinate as a higher rank than him, and was wondering what the company policy of offing your superior was.  He took two mints from Jack’s desk (“Hah.  Take that!”) and plotted before his mind returned to those heavenly blackberries.

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

            Jerebiah finished putting up the last of the barbed wire atop his steel-reinforced concrete walls.  The fortress surrounded the quaint little log cabin he had built over the basement, and helped protect him from assault by incredibly large ‘dogs’.  Inside the compound was a supply of foodstuffs, especially peanuts and dog food, and his kennel, where he was trying to domesticate those dogs.  By his count it would be about a hundred years before he and Llewellan first appeared in this hazardous land.  He was curious what would change when the basement appeared inside a fortified compound.  He didn’t have to be a scientist or particularly smart to know that things would change again.

            He chuckled, and ate a peanut as he rocked steadily on his front porch, watching as the prehistoric sun lit up the smoky sky.

Past Future Travesties of Confection and Science Part 2

If you haven't read part one, it is directly below this one.  Stop being lazy and scroll down lest the Ministry find out your actions.

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            “Sir, we have reports of Shenanigans.”  The young man in the suit handed a dossier to the older man in the exact same suit who sat behind an unnecessarily large oak desk.  The Ministry of Shenanigans was full of expensive, beautiful rooms stuffed with cheap, inefficient bureaucrats.

            The old man sighed.  “Shenanigans, in this day and age.  Well, let’s have a look-see.”  He opened the file.  Inside was a single sheet of grey paper.  “…What is this?”

            “Well, sir, it used to be a photograph of the Peacerary in Harmony Square.  It’s since faded, and our top scientists are detecting some sort of scientific stuff happening in the space time thing.  I don’t really know what they said; I’m a bureaucrat, not a physicist.”

            The old man nodded.  “Mhm, mhm.  Right.  Well, what do they suggest?”

            “Their exact words were, ‘Take this up to that idiot, Jack.  And when Cosgrove asks what we suggest, tell him we have the tools he’ll need down here.’  Also, they said something about a time machine and the destruction of the world as we know it, but I was feeding a banana to a monkey.”  Jack smiled a faint smile and chuckled as Cosgrove grunted his way to his feet.  “Been sittin’ in that chair too long, boss.  It’s about time we got some action again!  Get to Peace Ray some jokers!”  Cosgrove groaned and left towards the Science Department, a terribly underfunded department filled with the most brilliant minds in the world.

            Twenty minutes later, Cosgrove and Jack were in an empty basement millions of years ago.

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            “Looks like you hit some poor feller’s dawg, Leeland.”  Jerebiah was still munching on peanuts as he looked at the unconscious raptor.  He nudged it with his foot and it reflexively moved its foot.  “Aww, it’s havin’ a little dawg dream.”

            Llewellan was less idiotic than Jerebiah, but his education was overshadowed by the human brain’s ability to adapt to impossible situations by ignoring them.  “Where’s my kitchen?”

            “Huh.  Dunno.”  Jerebiah looked the entire part of the slightly bored spectator.

            It would be helpful to explain their view.  Behind them, the basement descended into the grassy earth, with only a small ramp of brickwork and a wooden door breaching the surface.  Next to the door was an unconscious raptor.  Off in the distance was a smoking volcano being circled by pterodactyls, and, significantly closer, was a pair of larger raptors charging out of a tree line a few hundred feet away.

            They fled inside.  Jerebiah rescued the dog.  Llewellan placed it back outside before closing the door and locking it.

            “That wasn’t my house or my neighborhood.  That wasn’t my wonderful corn state!  And I still can’t get reception!  What is going on here?!”  Llewellan’s hysterics were interrupted with a loud thump on the door.  He ran down the stairs, grabbed a chair, and used it to brace the door.  Jerebiah was, for some reason, cautiously waving his hand around a corner of the basement.

            Llewellan ran over to the Device.  “I don’t think this worked, Jerebiah.  I think I teleported us or something, I don’t know.”  He started hitting buttons and turning dials, but stopped when a loud crash resounded from the top of the stairs and a raptor fell down into the basement.  Both of the humans froze as the raptor rose to its feet, and a standoff ensued.

            A long uncomfortable moment passed before being broken with the sound of struggle and a voice shouting out of the ether, “I keep telling you that I saw somethin’ back here!  We shoulda checked out that basement before you went pushin’ more buttons!”

            A deeper voice responded as a golf-cart sized shape began to emerge from nowhere in particular and materialize in the basement corner.  “I’ve never traveled through space and time before!  I just wanted to see what all our options were!  And I really think that Paris is just a lot nicer place than some crummy old basem— Is that a raptor?  Is he here to fill out a report on the case already?”

            Cosgrove and Jack climbed out of the Science Brand Time Machine and walked over to the very confused raptor.  It backed away, snarling.  Llewellan and Jerebiah stayed frozen in their respective corners, Llewellan wishing to be invisible and Jerebiah wishing for another peanut.  He decided to eat one anyway.

            The raptor had apparently had enough of Cosgrove and Jack’s disrespectful attitude toward what it saw as the Proper Order of Things.  Snarling once more, it leapt toward them, almost making it off the ground before the other raptor fell down the stairs on top of it.  As they struggled to disentangle from each other, Llewellan ran to the nearest flingable object and started launching it in the direction of the raptor pile, which had been joined at this point by the baby raptor.  The baby had the benefit of separating the parent raptors, however, they were still annoyed, terrified, and suddenly being hit with a rain of candy corn.  This battle lost, they fled up the stairs.

            Llewellan, body pumping with adrenaline, grabbed a sack of the sweet missiles and dashed up the stairs, yelling an assortment of different types of corn (“Sweet corn!  Golden kernels!  Crispy cobs!  Blue maize!  Popped corn!”) with each toss.  Cosgrove and Jack watched, dumbfounded, before turning to Jerebiah, who was shaking his empty peanut bag.

            “Hey, you!” Cosgrove shouted.

            Jack looked at him.  “That… really wasn’t very striking, sir.  Let’s try this again.”  He turned to Jerebiah and aimed his Peaceful Ray.  “Stop what you’re doing!”

            Jerebiah looked at them and dropped the bag.  “’Kay?”

            The silence that overtook the basement was occasionally broken with another type of corn being shouted from above and the haunting cry of a baby raptor weeping in the distance.  Cosgrove and Jack kept glancing at one another, and, finally having enough, Cosgrove stepped forward.

            “What’s your friend doing attacking those businessmen?!”

            Jerebiah shrugged as Jack leaned in to whisper, “I think those were prehistoric dinos, sir.  Remember, time travel?”

            “Right.  What’s your friend doing attacking those dinosaurs?!”

            Jerebiah shrugged again, sending the two agents into a frenzy of discussion.  In the meantime, a now empty-handed Llewellan dashed down the stairs, dove over the recently fallen podium boxes, and slammed the same big, square, blinking, green button in the center of the control panel from the first trip.  The humming stopped and lightning began tracing its way up the machine a second time and eventually the room was once again filled with disco and electricity.  The Ministry agents panicked, dove into their own machine, and quickly disappeared, back to Paris if Cosgrove had his way.  Worriedly watching the doorless exit, Llewellan muttered wishes for the machine to hurry up as Jerebiah pulled a chair over to his corner and took a seat.  Mid-sit, time seemed to—

               – stop.

            And once again it was over.  The hum returned, revealing the replacement of a wailing baby raptor with the soft bubbling of a stream and the chirp of birds.

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            People have always wondered what happened to the dinosaurs in our time.

            At the dawn of time, the Universal Mechanist was employed to create, repair, and maintain Life and the Universe.  Even for a universal being, this was a large task.  In fact, the task was so large that eventually it quit, roughly four thousand years ago, and retired, eventually rejoining the workforce in Hollywood under the assumed name of Bruce Willis.

            And everyone knows Bruce Willis’ stance on candy corn.

            This hatred originated during the Clean-Up of the Dinosaurs.  After the departure of the time travelers, the bags of candy corn that Llewellan had left above ground before fleeing from a particularly large herd of raptors were opened.  It turns out the vile rocks were just radioactive enough to alter the evolution of dinosaurs, resulting in a change from middle-class businessmen/hippies as the two forks in the evolutionary tree to a finale of malpractice lawyers/mimes.  The Universal Mechanist tried, but the evil contained in the candy corn was too terrible to be altered, and so it did the only thing it could: it destroyed the dinosaurs.

            This led to a series of drastic changes in the world, and was the first act of slaughter that the Mechanist had to do, but not the last, and certainly not the last due to candy corn.  While it may have been buried beneath the rubble on Earth, it continued to reappear through time…

            This is also why Bruce Willis donates one-fifth of his income to the annihilation of Candy Corn Producers.

-------

            “Paris looks different.  A lot less buildings, a lot more mountain peaks and angry yeti.  I kind of like what they did with the place.”  Jack was leaning out of the time machine, which was leaning precariously over a ledge deep in the Himalayas.  Cosgrove was very silent and very still, but his eyes were both loud and active.  “It’s pretty cold, too.  Did Paris ever get this cold?  Cosgrove?” He turned around and sat back down, causing the cart to wobble disconcertingly.  Cosgrove panicked, reached forward, and, as the cart began falling forward, he hit the Button, resulting in the plummeting vehicle disappearing.

Past Future Travesties of Confection and Science Part 1

This thing's almost 20 pages double spaced, so I'm not going to load that on you, my loyal possible two readers, so instead I'm splittin' it into segments.  Here's part one:
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            A wise man once told me, “You know, I like candy, and I like corn, but fuck that.”  Thorough research revealed an intricate story behind the history of candy corn – that monstrous culinary mistake – that can only be described as convoluted.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me start from the beginning.

            Mad science is a hilarious sport.  No, wait, that’s not the right place to start, either. 

This story starts with Gareth Llewellan Garbesmond, a Welshman who did a stint in Germany, Japan, and the American Midwest.  Some people later claimed that Germany turned him evil, but those in the know understand that the American Midwest can corrupt a man’s soul faster than a shady fast food joint can serve you a slab of brown meat.  Llewellan – that’s what he went by, claiming his Welsh ancestry as a minority scholarship – traveled around mostly for scholastic reasons.  He was an engineer, a scientist, and a writer.  He wasn’t very good at the last one, but the evil genius’s always feel a need to record their vile deeds.

            Did I mention that this is the future?  Well, not our future.  A future.  You could maybe consider it our past.

            Llewellan was evil in a time/place/universe that didn’t really do evil.  Sure, they had scary movies (But not the Scary Movie series), haunted houses, and Asian martial arts, but war was unheard of.  Nations formed and split usually over a nice glass of Miracle Juice (“The Only Way to Imbibe Immortality!”), children played without bullying, and it was possible to get through the Department of Motor Vehicles in less than half an hour and, occasionally, with a smile on your face.

            This place was so peaceful that it was still just one, giant continent – Pangaea, if you will.  Even the planet didn’t fight.  The dinosaurs never died out.  It turns out that given just a few more generations of evolution, they evolve directly into either middle class businessmen or hippies.  They’re still the size of a two story house, but given a big enough keyboard, they’re still able to fill out reports, TPS coversheets and all.  Carnivores?  Cultivated tofu.  That’s right, lions started farming.  The continent that would have been known as Africa was the breadbasket for the world.  Sounds great, huh?  I might have lied about that tofu bit, but who knows what happens deep in the darkest parts of the Congo.

            Anyway, Llewellan became evil.  What caused this?  I’m glad you asked.

            Llewellan styled himself an inventor.  He was not, however, particularly skilled nor was he particularly scrupulous.  Stealing ideas from other inventors, though, was the work of the unimaginative.  Llewellan stole his ideas in plain sight – from the very things around him.  After redesigning a toaster to always burn toast, creating a mechanical bed/alarm clock that launched the occupant out the window, and creating a bathtub-safe hair dryer (It wasn’t bathtub safe), Llewellan began to feel a little discriminated against.  But he still had one last hope.

            During his stay in the American Midwest – Towns don’t matter, this is the futurepast, remember? – Llewellan became obsessed with the corn farms that stretched for miles throughout Possible Illinois.  For a short time he considered dropping his failing Invention Racket in order to pick up a career in Corning, but a marathon showing of the Children of the Corn movies gave him a phobia of farms as well as a nervous tic around children.  Wrenched away from his most desired calling, Llewellan began plotting.

            Llewellan wanted everyone to know the joy of corn.  Little kids, old folks, guys going through midlife crises, housewives, Siamese twins, and fanatical faux meat enthusiasts were all his target audience.  “But corn doesn’t market,” he would brood over a fine cup of corn-off-the-cob.  “I need to get it to the people.”

            Enter Jerebiah Dangall Crumps.  Once a farm boy, he left the homestead to pursue his true calling in marketing, a profession that had thus far been avoided in this serene, happy world.  Switzerland collapsed when these two gentlemen met up, heralding a significant number of our Norse mythology – Fenrir would swallow the sun and the world would be bathed in blood and battle – but all it signified in this alternate Norse mythology was that rabbits would breed especially well in the coming spring and the wise hunters would set up traps that preserved the integrity of the pelt.  Jerebiah had never quite hit his stride, always attempting to candy up his items.  The motto on his business card read, “If Candy Cain’t Fixit, People’re Dum!”  Llewellan was a poor judge of character and an even worse judge of talent.

            The resulting mixture was a kernel of corn coated in candy.  “It’ll be the chocolate covered cherry of the vegetable world!” they exclaimed.

            It wasn’t.

            The second attempt was candy coated popcorn.  The result was no better.  Finally they resorted to trickery.

            The pair realized that making a corn syrup worked, allowing the sugar and honey flavoring to mix in, creating something that doesn’t quite taste like any of the ingredients and causing people who haven’t wounded their tongue to make a slightly unpleasant face.  It turns out that Jerebiah was inbred enough to have a wonky taste structure and Llewellan burned his tongue during his trial phase of the bathtub-safe hair dryer.  They saw themselves as master chefs.

           No one else did.  This world was good, pure, and decent, and their Creation was evil, corrupt, and disgusting.  Switzerland, just getting back on its feet after the first collapse, recollapsed, sending the investors of the rebuilding effort into bankruptcy and destroying one third of the world’s sitcom producing countries.  Llewellan was unapologetic.  His genius deserved recognition, and this world wouldn’t give it to him.

            Delving deep into his old calling, Llewellan began crafting a machine capable of altering the world.  He wanted brains to be changed, electrons to be rerouted, and his glory to be a naturally known fact amongst his fellow beings.  Late nights in his basement became routine, and the candy corn stockpile continued to grow, the ever increasing mountain of orangish-yellow coal acting as fuel to his passion.  The Candy Cornium, the factory producing the substance, was raided and shut down by a newly formed group, Dinosaurs for the Ethical Treatment of Humans (D.E.T.H.), and Jerebiah fled to the basement sanctuary with his colleague.

            Months passed and the world tried to recover, and the sounds of hard work echoed throughout Llewellan’s basement.  Finally, the Day of the Great Reckoning, as it was marked on Llewellan’s Corn of the World calendar, came.  His work finished, he retired upstairs to clean himself up before being raised to the pinnacle of humanity.

            “Shock!” he exclaimed. “What has science done?!”  Llewellan’s months in darkness, lack of sleep and nutrition, and complete avoidance of basic sanitation had resulted in a gaunt, pasty, bespotted skeleton of a man with thin, wispy white hair and few teeth.  His eyes spoke depths of insanity, finally catching up with his brain and mouth in their insanity producing capacity.

            Llewellan wept, but his resolve hardened.

            “This world will pay for what it has forced me to become!” he shouted, shaking his fist at the mirror.  “They will hail me as their king! Ha!  Ha ha!  Gwa ha ha ha ha-hurk, cough, sputter!”  Popping a quick lozenge, Llewellan once again descended into his basement.

           

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

           

            “Distinguished Gentlemen, I am about to unveil to you my masterpiece.  The machine that will change everything!”  Llewellan stood behind a makeshift podium, lovingly crafted out of three boxes of his mother’s Wishin’ Trolls, and had one hand grasping a dirty white sheet that hung from the rafters, concealing said masterpiece.

            Jerebiah was sitting in one of eight chairs, the rest taken up with elegantly written “Reserved” notices, one for each of the seven members of the World Council.  “But Lellan, I seen the machine.  I hepped bild it!”  Llewellan quickly shushed him and yanked the sheet down, showering himself in dust and dirt.

            Unveiled was a contraption that looked remarkably similar to a Tesla coil.  It was a seven foot tall tower with what might have been a disco ball on the top.  Circling the main pole below the ball were metal rings, slightly alive with the hum of electricity.  At the base was a control panel that would have looked at home in any science fiction B-movie.  From somewhere, Llewellan had donned a derby hat which did little other than to fluff his hair out horizontally.

            Llewellan gestured grandly toward the device.  “Behold!” 

Jerebiah beheld, and waited.  And waited.  Llewellan held his pose expectantly.  Jerebiah shuffled in his seat a little bit and cleared his throat.  Llewellan’s arm drooped a little bit as he grew more and more tired, but he troopered on.  Jerebiah pulled out a small packet of peanuts from a pocket and began to open them.  Finally Llewellan straightened up in a huff.  “Well?  Where’s the applause?”

“Oh.  Uh, I was gunna wait fer ye t’fire up that ma-chine.”  He popped a peanut in his mouth.  “But I can clap fer ya now, if it’s whatcha want.”

Llewellan sighed and hit a big, square, blinking, green button in the center of the control panel.  The humming stopped and was replaced with a crackle.  The rings leading up the pole began to emit tiny bolts of lightning a few inches long, eventually growing to connect each ring in a bridge of electricity.  The bridges expanded further and further up until reaching the ball at the top.  Once powered, aside from emitting disco lights, it began to spin, bathing the room in electricity and the ‘70s.  Time seemed to—

          – stop.

            And then it was over.  The electricity cut off, the lights stopped, and the gentle hum resumed.

            Jerebiah popped another peanut and clapped.  Llewellan tried to tame his frizzled hair and bowed.

            “Now, gentlemen, I shall call up the head of Candy Heaven Candy Stores, and let’s see just what he has to say about our corn now!”  Llewellan spun around and grabbed his phone from the podium.  Hitting number two on speed dial, he waited.  He made an impatient face.  He checked his phone for reception.  “Damn basement, ok, let’s reconvene… outside!”  He dramatically swooshed to the stairs and huffed his way up them.

            As he opened the door to his kitchen, his nose was assaulted with a foul stench.  Cursing the cryptic garbage pickup schedule and vowing to hire someone to take care of it after his rise to power, Llewellan slammed open the door and hit a baby raptor.

The Creative Process

They say that behind every good man is a woman and behind every good writer is a vicious, carniverous editor.  Actually, I said that.  Just now.  Take notes, I'm making history.

Anyway, I've been told I need to post some of the conversations I have while trying to brainstorm my stories.  So uh, here's the first installment.

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

[17:46] TheAuburnDragon: I can't stop playing Tales of Monkey Island.  My story is not getting written.
[17:46] M4573rF4c70r3r: Dammit.
[17:46] M4573rF4c70r3r: This makes me sad.
[17:47] M4573rF4c70r3r: C'mon! You had so many ideas yesterday!
[17:48] TheAuburnDragon: Here, I'll give you a paragraph snippet
[17:48] TheAuburnDragon:      Enter Jerebiah Dangall Crumps.  Once a farmboy, he left the homestead to pursue his true calling in marketing, a profession that had thus far been avoided in this serene, happy world.  Switzerland collapsed when these two gentlemen met up, heralding a significant number of our Norse mythology – Fenrir would swallow the sun and the world would be bathed in blood and battle – but all it signified in this alternate Norse mythology was that rabbits would breed especially well in the coming spring and the wise hunters would set up traps that preserved the integrity of the pelt.  Jerebiah had never quite hit his stride, always attempting to candy up his items.  The motto on his business card read, “If Candy Cain’t Fixit, People’re Dum!”  Llewellan was a poor judge of character and an even worse judge of talent.
[17:49] M4573rF4c70r3r: Hmm.
[17:50] TheAuburnDragon: That's actually going to be my motto.
[17:52] M4573rF4c70r3r: Has candy corn been invented yet?
[17:52] M4573rF4c70r3r: Make it a vegetable marketing ploy.
[17:52] TheAuburnDragon: Llewellan has a corn fetish
[17:54] M4573rF4c70r3r: Aha.
[17:54] M4573rF4c70r3r: A strange subsect of foot fetii.
[17:55] TheAuburnDragon: During his stay in the American Midwest – Towns don’t matter, this is the futurepast, remember? – Llewellan became obsessed with the corn farms that stretched for miles throughout Possible Illinois.  For a short time he considered dropping his failing Invention Racket in order to pick up a career in Corning (I cannot believe spell check isn’t busting me for that word), but a marathon showing of the Children of the Corn movies gave him a phobia of farms.  Wrenched away from his most desired calling, Llewellan began plotting.
      Llewellan wanted everyone to know the joy of corn.  Little kids, old folks, guys going through midlife crises, housewives, Siamese twins, and fanatical faux meat enthusiasts were all his target audience.  “But corn doesn’t market,” he would brood over a fine cup of corn-off-the-cob.  “I need to get it to the people.”

[18:02] M4573rF4c70r3r: Hmhm...
[18:02] M4573rF4c70r3r: Where does the time travel come in?
[18:02] TheAuburnDragon: After they invent candy corn and it is SHUNNED by this good, decent world.
[18:03] M4573rF4c70r3r: Hmhm...
[18:03] TheAuburnDragon: So probably in another page.
[18:03] M4573rF4c70r3r: Get thee to writing!
[18:03] TheAuburnDragon: But there's a kitty in my lap.  And a cat on facebook to annoy.  And I'm huuuungry  :(
[18:03] M4573rF4c70r3r: Solution: Eat kitty, shun cat.
[18:04] TheAuburnDragon: Cannibalution:  Reverse that.

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

[22:01] M4573rF4c70r3r: AHOY, MATEY!
[22:01] TheAuburnDragon: Avast
[22:01] M4573rF4c70r3r: Progress?
[22:01] TheAuburnDragon: I had some soup!
[22:02] M4573rF4c70r3r: Hurray!
[22:03] M4573rF4c70r3r: ...story?
[22:03] TheAuburnDragon: What stor--oh.
[22:04] TheAuburnDragon: I knew I forgot something today
[22:04] M4573rF4c70r3r: Hah.

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

Unfortunately, facebook doesn't save chat, so here's the little bit from today.  This switches immediately into the next chat segment, we just switched to trillian.

Adam

So, what's down, homie?

9:52pmMatt

Well, I went to the store and bought five bottles of juice, some beer, and a packet of cat toys. Then I came home and ate soup for an hour and fifteen minutes while watching House and Family Guy, then I came here and I'm playing with my cat.

9:52pmAdam

Kitty!

KITTY!

KIIITTYYYY!!!

9:53pmMatt

Yeah, she really likes playing Games.

9:54pmAdam

Cats, however, cannot lose them.

CATS ARE OUR ONLY SALVATION.

10:31pmMatt

HOOOBESSS

PROGRESS IS NOT COMING

ALSO I MAY BE DRUNK

I'm not, but I can never be sure.

10:31pmAdam

You're always dunk.

drunk.

Okay, what is the last thing that happened?

10:32pmMatt

Well, I sat on facebook for 45 minutes and chatted with people.

Also, my cat keeps making me go get her toys.

10:35pmAdam

Okay, last story thing that happened.

10:36pmMatt

Oh

I saved it and went to Iaido.

10:36pmAdam

...and what had you written about, again?

10:37pmMatt

That pooooor baby raptor. Also, the Ministry of Shenanigans.

10:39pmAdam

Right!

Okay, so, he killed a baby raptor.

10:40pmMatt

I never said killed

He hit it with a door

10:40pmAdam

He sees it. He's insane, what does he think.

Right, not killed.

10:40pmMatt

"Where's my kitchen?"

10:40pmAdam

Priorities.

He has 'em.

10:40pmMatt

"Looks like you just hit sumbody's dawg, Sarge."

"That's a zerglin', Lester. Smaller type o' zerg. But they wouldn't be around here unless--...Oh shiyit."

10:42pmAdam

Starcraftastic.

10:44pmMatt

I'm currently in the Ministry of Shenanigans.

10:44pmAdam

Alright.

Ministry.

Who runs them?

Why?

10:45pmMatt

Who cares who runs them. It's an international organization designed to prevent shenanigans. It's kind of like the U.N., but in a place that doesn't have warfare.

But what we DO know is that there are two agents hot on the case of the Bastards Who Went Back In Time With Candy Corn.

Designated Case Number C.

10:48pmAdam

Cool.

Did they just get the case?

10:48pmMatt

Yeah, let me show you what I've got.

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

[22:50] TheAuburnDragon: Ok, this is the entire little chapter bit I have on the Ministry so far, haha
[22:50] M4573rF4c70r3r: THANK YOU, YES.
[22:50] TheAuburnDragon:      “Sir, we have reports of Shenanigans.”  The young man in the suit handed a dossier to the older man in the exact same suit who sat behind an unnecessarily large oak desk.
      The old man sighed.  “Shenanigans, in this day and age.  Well, let’s have a look-see.”  He opened the file.  Inside was a single sheet of grey paper.  “…What is this?”
      “Well, sir, it used to be a photograph of the Peacerary in Harmony Square.  It’s since faded, and our top scientists are detecting some sort of scientific stuff happening in the space time thing.  I don’t really know what they said, I’m a bureaucrat, not a physicist.”

[22:52] M4573rF4c70r3r: How much power does this organization have? What resources do you have at your disposal.
[22:52] TheAuburnDragon: So, you know the power that the theoretical Masons have?
[22:53] M4573rF4c70r3r: Yes. Elaborate. I want to know about the Ministry of Shenanigans.
[22:54] TheAuburnDragon: The Ministry of Shenanigans employs the top Scientists and the bottom level Bureaucrats.
[22:54] M4573rF4c70r3r: Haha
[22:54] TheAuburnDragon: They have fabulous amounts of wealth that is terribly mishandled.

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

Man, this is even more hilarious than I remember it being!

We Apologize For the Interruption in Your Service...

I planned to have another story up here yesterday, but I was really unhappy with it.  Hopefully I'll be more pleased with the final product due Tuesday.

DNA Warfare

My Nemesis appears to have been correct.  A third party lurks in the shadows, taking loyal Fangers and disillusioned Tuskers and performing Mad Science on them.  A warning - The image below is a  grotesque mockery of Denistry.  Behold:

The Tusker is trying to communicate with it through a series of grunts and obscene hand gestures in the hopes that one day it will learn to speak again.  Perhaps the grizzly truthes that it will unveil will lead us to this Monster Maker 3000.

Laugher Strike

As of yet not turned in, so no chance for professional suggestions, haha.  I just thought it was funny.

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

            “Ringmaster, we uh, have a problem…” The man in the dirty tuxedo fidgeted with the brim of his top hat as he stood in front of the Ringmaster’s oak desk.  He was sweating profusely.

            “What is it now?” The Ringmaster didn’t even look up from the stack of paperwork sitting in front of him. “Trapeze artist fall again?  Tent collapse?  Lion kill another tamer?”

            Top Hat tugged at his collar.  “No sir, it’s a bit… more dire.”

            The Ringmaster finally looked up, tapping his pen against the desk.  “What can it possibly be, Stenson?”

            “Um, Winston, sir.”

            “Whatever.  What’s happening?”

            Winston wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist.  “It’s the clowns, sir.”

            “…The clowns.  What about the clowns?  Who cares about the damned clowns?”

            “Sir, they’re… well, they say they’re on strike, but-“

            “Great!  Finally a way around that stupid performer’s union.  I’ve been trying to get rid of the fucking clowns for years.  Where’s the problem, Winlow?”

            “W-Winston, sir.  It’s uh, well, they aren’t striking right.  Uh, y’know?”  He gave up waiting on an invitation to sit and took a seat anyway before his shaking knees gave out.

            The Ringmaster just stared.  “What do you mean ‘not striking right’?”

            Winston gulped.  “They… won’t stop performing, sir…”

            There was a pause.

            “Won’t… stop… You said they were striking, Longstein.  That’s not striking.”  The Ringmaster’s voice was calmly terrifying.

            Winston switched arms to wipe his brow with, his right sleeve soaked through.  “They… they know you want them gone, sir.  It’s, uh, still Winston, by the way.  But they said they’re going to keep performing until you uh… you uh…”  He fidgeted for a good, disarming word.

            “Until I what, Newston?”

            Another gulp.  “Until you… err, give in to their demands, sir.”

            The Ringmaster’s fist slammed down on the table, causing papers to tumble over.  “CLOWNS are making DEMANDS?!”  He stood to his feet, his rolling chair flying out behind him and crashing against the wall.  “What do they even WANT?  We just got done with them fighting for equal show time!”  The Ringmaster pulled out a small, unlabelled bottle of brown liquid from his desk and began pouring it into a glass.

            Winston fumbled for a folded piece of multicolored paper in his inner tux pocket.  Clearing his throat, he spoke, “T-They gave me this.  For you, sir.  They wanted you to, uh, to know their… demands.  Here…” He handed the paper to the Ringmaster, who started reading it.

            “…What is this?  ‘Equal Pies for All Clownes’?  ‘More Compact Clowne Cars’?  ‘More Honky Noses for Clowne Brothers’?  Is this a joke?  And they want an elephant?”

            “Uh, read the footnote, sir… they uh, they’ll accept a giraffe, if the elephant is uh…” He gestured unhelpfully. “Is uh, too much?”

            The Ringmaster just stared for a full five seconds.  “No.  I don’t bargain with clowns.”  He ripped up the colorful paper into confetti.  “They want to play hard, we’ll play hard.  There’s a reason I keep those mime freaks employed.  Round them up for me, Stanislaw.  They’re going to break this strike.”

            Winston started stammering.  “Sir, but… the mimes… they’re as bad as the clowns, sir.  Without the clowns to keep them in check… sir, they’ll… they’ll try to take over!”

            The Ringmaster smiled a sinister smile.  “I’ve dealt with the clowns before.  They’ll call in their backup.  The clown mafia – the Hahfia.  Dr. Bonzo riding in on his unicycle, troops loaded with water balloons and squirt flowers… But the mimes will be armed with invisible lassoes and weaponry.  It’ll be a massacre of cartoonish proportions, and whoever survives will be easily kept under thumb.  Now, get those mimes ready, Winburgh.”  

            As Winston stepped out of the office, muttering under his breath, the Ringmaster turned to the window behind him and stared, untouched drink in hand, already imagining the Looney Tunes level of carnage that would soon take place.

            He took a sip of the brown liquid, a home-brewed root beer, and a genuine smile touched his face.  "God I love the circus."

On Luck.

Rachel - 13 minutes!

Matt - You pointed out the unlucky number!

Rachel - lol thats my favorite number
because i believe we make our own luck
or, rather, i do
=)=)

Matt - I believe we make each other's luck. Like, your luck is made by a Guatemalan kid who lives in a hut deep in South America. My luck is made by the alternate reality Donald Trump. All movie stars have their luck made by Brian Dennehy.

Rachel - hey, i like that one too
anything other than it being random

Matt - Well, I know that the kid just rolls dice. Alternate Reality Donald Trump just hits people until they spout a number. And Brian Dennehy bases it on the number of cheesecakes that room service will deliver to his room in any given day.

Airships, Urchins, and Dashing Captains, oh my!

Here's another assignment for my creative writing class.

Edit: I don't know why the font is so wonky.  I hope you can deal with it alright.
---------------------------------------

            Maigel rounded the corner and fell against the wall, breathing ragged and heart pounding.  His latest haul of stolen fruit slowly slipped out of his grip as he gave himself over to recovering from the chase.  He had lost the bazaar soldiers, but he had also lost contact with the other orphans during their raid.  He momentarily prayed for their safety, but then closed his eyes as his mind emptied of everything except his next breath.

            A dull roar from high above interrupted his reverie.  Looking up between the multistory, plaster-and-wood apartments was the sky, little glimmers of blue visible between the criss-crossed laundry lines and nationalist propaganda banners announcing the glory of the Imperial Parade (“See Your Armed Forces, the Pride of Pellaria, and the Spoils of Righteous Victory!”).  He needed a better vantage point.

            Breath still ragged, he ran through crowded street after crowded street, pushing, shoving, and dodging his way through the mid afternoon crowd, heading first to the roofs and then to the Docklands.  He knew what the sound above meant – airships.  Ten years ago, the last time the Fleet passed through, he had been too young to witness the conquest of Oren.  While the war raged on, even though the front became more and more distant, the “newly conquered” territories were still banned from forming militia or using airships.    News arrived six months ago that Narsket, the last holdout of resistance, had finally fallen.  The Emperor’s “honored heroes” were to return with a token escort after the area was fully under control, and many trading magnates immediately began construction on ships to accompany the military escort while major cities constructed “harbors” for the new trade routes.

            The Docklands was Oren’s harbor – A tall spire jutting out of the waterfront docks.  Piers, supported by suspension cables and buttresses, jutted out in all directions.  A constant groan of the clockwork operating the lifts, pullies, and secret machine inside the technological wonder permeated the port district.  Steam billowed from the top as if it was the smokestack for the entire city.

            Clamped onto the piers were three ships of the Imperial Armada, and docking around them were the tagalong traders, the first in what would become staples plying the skies of Oren.

            The full catalogue of Imperial technology and, some whispered, hidden magics had begun arriving along with the end of the war.

            During the construction, Maigel had often snuck into the Docklands, eager to catch a glimpse of the sheer foreignness of this monument to technology.  Knowing that security would multiply when ships started arriving, he had convinced the orphans to help him make sure there would be a few secret entrances – A weakened wall here, a tunnel there.  The preparation paid off, allowing Maigel to quickly dismantle a small section of wall, climb inside, and reseal it behind him.  Making his way through the steamworks housed in the basement of the Docklands, he arrived into the tower proper.

            Slipping into the hustle and bustle of the Docklands was easy, and he began making his way up the lifts and stairs to the piers.  He spied foreign merchants dressed in all manner of exotic clothes and smelling of aromatic spices and foodstuffs.  Laborers moved crates and milled about, looking half as likely to cut as carry.  Cargo cranes swung with precision that bordered on recklessness as they convoyed cargo down and supplies up.  Maigel watched with wide, glassy eyes.  He changed lifts three times before reaching the first pier, the people at the bottom of the tower now simply dots in the haze that permeated the structure.  As he stepped out from the inside of the tower, he blinked before the light glinting off the metal of the military airship.

            Trade ships were primarily wooden, and many had only basic steamworks in which to keep them afloat, relying mainly on the cheaper and easy to repair system of propellers for movement.  This ship, very obviously military, was encased in metal, wings a mixture of steam and wind power.  The cannon doors were closed, but the outline allowed Maigel to easily imagine the similarity between this metal beauty and a porcupine.  The other big difference between the trade ships and the military ships was easily observed as well – Soldiers were guarding the gangplank to the Imperial airship.

            He sat on a nearby crate, eyes devouring every inch of the wonder.  So awestruck was he that he did not notice the man in the casually undone uniform sit next to him.

            “A true beaut, isn’t she?”

            Shocked out of his daydreams, Maigel fell off the crate, scrambled to his feet, and stared at the now laughing soldier.

            “Now, I can’t imagine why a kid like you would be here.  Although, you walk with the confidence of someone who belongs, I don’t think you do.”  The soldier’s grin got wider as Maigel’s jaw set in silence.  “Well, how about I show you around this ship?  A tour from Pellaria’s ‘greatest hero’ should give you a story to tell to the other kids, yeah?”  He stood and walked toward the ship, Maigel hesitating for only a second before following.

            He watched the soldier as they walked along the pier.  Unkempt uniform, shaggy red hair under an uncentered hat, and a swagger that told of too much time spent in the sky.  “…Who are you?” he half-whispered as they approached the gangplank.

            The grinning man spun around in front of the guards watching the plank.  “If these gentlemen have done their jobs right, you and everyone else in this city will have that answer before the day’s over!” He turned back to the guards.  “Gentlemen?”  The two guards nodded, unsuccessfully trying to hide smirks of their own.  “Excellent!  Well, boy, shall we begin your tour during the preparations for departure?”

            Uncertain of the soldier’s meaning, Maigel nodded and followed as he was given a full walkthrough of the ship.  The deck, almost empty, hid the bustle of the blowdecks.  The machine room was undergoing a full repair and the cargo hold was brimming with supplies and men checking off lists.  The crew quarters were almost empty, with the crew hustling around the ship, but the cannonry was almost too full to pass through, with cannons being cleaned, supplies being checked, and drills being run.  When the tour brought them to the captain’s quarters, three men bent over a table hushed, eyeing Maigel distrustfully until the soldier laughed and told them to continue.  The men started talking, but in forced tones that told of false conversation.

            As the tour progressed, Maigel noticed that the people still boarding the ship were merchants and laborers dropping off cargo and then disappearing further into the ship.  The few soldiers on board were keeping a watch outside the ship on the deck or the gangplank, not inside.  And as the tour wound to a close back at the end of the gangplank, the eccentric soldier received a whispered message from one of the guards.  Nodding, he turned back to Maigel.

            “I fear this concludes our tour, as this ship will be departing in mere seconds.  It was a pleasure meeting you, young thief,” he grabbed Maigel’s arm and shook a small pilot’s handbook and navigational chart out of the loose, baggy sleeve, “I hope your dreams are fulfilled as much as mine are about to be.  Remember this: nothing will happen if you don’t make it happen.” He left Maigel standing on the pier and stepped back aboard the ship.  “I’m sure we’ll be making a name for ourselves, so keep up with the rumors!” He was now shouting over the roar of the engines starting and the whirring of propellers.  “Maybe you can use our bad example to learn some tips about what not to do when you get your own ship!”  Laughing, he took off the military jacket, swung it over his head, and threw it toward the pier before turning and disappearing into the ship as it disengaged itself from the pier and, dipping only slightly, turned and set off.

            Maigel picked up the jacket and watched dumbfounded, not entirely certain of what just happened.  The ship made it’s intentions clear a few seconds later when it unleashed a volley of cannon fire into the Imperial ship on the next pier up.  As it disappeared into the smoke still billowing from the Docklands, Maigel heard the sound of whistles and shouts from further down the pier, alerting Maigel to the immediacy of his need to not be here when they arrived.  Shimmying down the side of the pier, he crawled along the support beams that criss-crossed the underside like laundry lines, slowly making his way down the pier and to his own, less glorious, escape.

Back to the original purpose...

While in no way forfeiting this war, I refuse to allow it to fully disrupt the noble origins of this blog.  In order to accomplish this, I'm posting a creative writing assignment I turned in today.

The assignment had two parts.  The first was to describe a place that had some kind of significance to you.  Not to tell a story, just describe it.  The second part was to actually tell the story in this now fleshed out area.  While the options for places that are important to me are countless, this is what I picked.


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Part One

I grew up in a cabin in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  My parents lived there, tucked away about a mile off East Brainerd Road, until they got divorced when I was six.  My mom decided to move to a townhouse in a neighborhood a few miles closer to the actual hub of civilization.  Whereas before we had one family that lived nearby (About five minutes of hiking through woods), we were now surrounded by other families.

The neighborhood was a short drive from Hamilton Place Mall, an area that was just entering a phase of what continues to be a constantly expanding part of town, and a slightly longer drive to downtown Chattanooga.  Across the street was a church with a terrifying (to a little kid) depiction of Jesus hanging from the cross.  Next door was a Subway, and the ultimate responsibility to the adventurous 9 year old was to ride a bike all the way down there, buy subs for my mom, sister and myself, and make it back without tipping over.

My mom chose the neighborhood because it had a lot of kids for my sister and I to play with.  This was true, but it was also a “stopping point” type of neighborhood.  People rented for a year or two and moved on.  We didn’t.  We lived there for around six years, and by the time we left, it was almost devoid of playmates.

When we moved in, next door was a forest.  The road continued, and on the left side were apartments, but the right was all forest.  It was later cut down to build more cheap homes, but for a few years, it was the place where kids shoes were muddied and imagined adventures played out.  Deep within was a lake.  A swamp, really, but we called it a lake.  In the winter it would freeze over just enough to give the impression that it was solid enough to slide across.  It wasn’t, although my mom’s mood to my frozen pants and chattering teeth was fiery enough to make up for my fall.

There was a cat that roamed the neighborhood.  An outdoor, grey striped warrior named Boo-boo due to the constant marks of battle on him.  He was there before we arrived as a sort of neighborhood cat.  There were about five families that kept food, water, and a bed out for him.  My mom, a lover of cats, joined the cause.  When we left, we were the only family still feeding him, so we formally adopted him and took him with us.  Probably the toughest, most capable, most loving cat I’ve ever seen, I always imagined him as a noble warrior or samurai: intelligent, composed, confident, and fully able to take care of himself in any situation.  The entire neighborhood was his domain and he knew it.

 

Part Two

This neighborhood, unnamed but residing on Stratton Place, drastically changed during our stay there.  The place changed, the people changed, and the atmosphere changed.  The changes, be they for better or worse, it taught a lesson to me about treasuring memories.

I already mentioned the forest next to my mom’s townhouse.  It wasn’t a terribly attractive forest filled with tall trees, pine needles carpeting the soil, and a soft, green light permeating.  It was a scraggly, dense cluster of thin, wispy trees, bushes, weeds, and ivy.  Demolishing it, as the neighborhood owner eventually did, was removing an eyesore and a great business move.  As kids, we hated them for it.

The denseness of the forest made it a fortress.  The trees and bushes worked together to build walls surrounding it.  There was an easy path in, but even for seven to ten year old kids, we had to hunch over to get through.  A winding path led us to a clearing in the center, where there was, inexplicably, a decaying old tool bench.  The sky opened up above letting in light, and we kids would gather around the table and plan things we would build in the forest with our rusty screwdriver and brittle hammer.  While the actual construction never got further than me ruining a steak knife from my mom’s kitchen while trying to cut a limb out of a tree, the idea and knowledge that when we got older we’d have an awesome tree fort filled us with excitement.  This was our base; our war room.

And then, one day, a sneak attack destroyed our base.  It seemed to happen overnight.  One day we were playing in our forest and the next day over half of it was being loaded into a truck to be sent for scrap lumber.  I remember very clearly watching as some of the larger trees, the foundations of legitimacy for this forest, were sawed down.  Flocks of birds fled, squirrels were displaced, and I sympathized with them.  I had lost half of my home, too.  My mom tells me I cried, but I refuse to admit it.

Construction started within a week.  Initially it was nothing special, mostly just bulldozing and digging for a while.  But this was also the origins of our guerrilla movement.  We took to organized resistance, waiting until after they got off work to abscond with the little marker flags, write angry notes in cement, and carve curses on the wood.  We thought we were really getting to them, although there was no evidence to support that.

Construction finished months later.  The neighborhood of townhouses and apartments now had full fledged houses, although they didn’t fit with the rest of the neighborhood.  Cookie cutter design, no trees in (very small) yards, and a sense of permanence that the rest of the neighborhood lacked characterized them.  People moved into those homes to settle down, and that divided them from the rest of us.  I remember this period as the time when the other kids started moving away, and I never met any kids, if there were any, from the new houses.

I don’t know what ever happened to the decaying old tool bench.  It disappeared in the first day or two of construction, probably just dumped off at a landfill.  I really hope that the marker notes, a splash of color on the dilapidated old wood, caused someone to think about what that place meant to us.  The loss of our headquarters heralded the destruction of the club of neighborhood kids.