Most humble apologies. Between finals, graduation, Christmas, New Years/My Birthday, the parties and get togethers that accompany all of those things, and the hopelessness of looking for a job that is ok with me not having 5+ years in disco ball repair kind of put a damper on my blog updating/awesome writing talent. I'll try to get on that. It's not like I haven't been writing ANYTHING, just nothing long enough to warrant posting. Though I suppose that something is better than nothing, so... blah. I'll try and be better. Though if you're really pumped, let me know you miss my smarm and I'll be much more likely to indulge you!
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'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.
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.
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.
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“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.
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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.
I'm a mid-twenties college grad with a bachelors degree in history. I've been in three majors, two minors, worked a respectable number of different jobs, and really just want to travel a lot. I'm a gamer, a geek, a recently awoken social butterfly, a prolific drinker, and love to tell stories. One day, I'm going to open up a geeky bar.
