Random Writings from a Laced Madwoman

Tumblr...

2011-07-28T21:45:00.001-07:00

This place is going to slowly disappear...and reappear...at http://cloudylissa.tumblr.com/

Like a rip in space time... Swedenborgian space time, that is.

The Dumbest Thing that Happened Today

2010-10-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

The guy who owns my company hired his son as our company's resident graphic designer. Can anyone say NEPOTISM? Iiiiiii caaaaaaan. Anyway, it wouldn't be so bad if he did, oh, I don't know, a little more graphic design work and a little less smoking out back every other five minutes. I've never seen a person get a bigger office for doing virtually no work in my life.

Nepotism. It blows.

So today I ask him if he could please send me a white version of our logo to use in a Publisher doc I'm working on. Seems like a simple request of someone who is supposedly a graphic designer. A white, high-res logo. That's not too hard is it? Should take less than a whole minute of his time.

Should...

I might as well have asked the guy for the Arc of the Covenant wrapped in the pages of the original Diary of Anne Frank. First of all, I realize that taking all those smoke breaks leaves little time in one's schedule for responding to emails in a timely manner (read: at all). I had to call him and bug him instead. After I explained what I needed, he seemed fine with it. Then an hour and like eight smoke breaks later, he emailed me a PDF.

For all you non-graphic arts peoples, a PDF is bad for like eight reasons, the first of which being that it's really hard to glean much more than a screen capture from one without Photoshop or something similar. But second, and actually most important, a PDF flattens everything inside. So, basically, what I ended up with was a WHITE RECTANGLE.

I asked for our logo, and the graphic designer emailed me a blank, compressed, white rectangle.

Nepotism. It's just bad.

Mini-Rant: Stupid Well-Baby Visits

2010-06-09T17:47:00.001-07:00

You out there who have kids know exactly what I mean. Sometimes your child doesn't even need shots, then it’s just all for a fat pile of nothing, such as, "Oh yeah, his heart sounds good (duh) and he looks okay physically (duh)...let’s look in his ears (nothing) and up his nose (boogers) and take a rectal temperature (for no reason other than to piss him off) and weigh him (oh, he’s a little bigger than last time he was here, imagine that, shocking) and you’re done. That’ll be $300, please. You can pay on your way out after you've finished ripping all your hair out. Glad you took off work for this, by the way. Hope that waiting room wait for an hour with a bunch of other people’s crying kids and all those outdated magazines about basket weaving and import car parts and fly fishing in Canada somewhere you have no interest in going were totally awesome for you. Have a nice day and see you in a few months so we can DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.

There's Feces in My News and There's Nothing I Can Do

2009-11-16T03:23:00.001-08:00

Instead of sleeping, we just spent the last hour switching out phrases in famous songs from the last five decades with the phrase "homeless newspaper" and singing them to each other and laughing about it.

Seriously.

I don't think I could even make that up, and I'm a writer.

Poor Cow

2009-04-17T00:40:00.000-07:00

On my way home today, I saw as sorry a sight as I've seen in some time (like that alliteration overkill, do ya?). The main road near my home is bordered by grazing fields. Usually there will be a herd of cow on one side of the street or the other. It has always struck us as odd, considering one side of fields borders the parking lot for a gas station/Mcdonald's.

Anyway, today the field on the right side of my car was filled with cattle, but the field on the left side of the road only held one single solitary cow. And it was standing all the way up to the fence with its head hanging over, staring directly at all the other cows in the other field.

The grass really is greener, isn't it?

Divorce Land

2009-03-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

The long shiny tour tram pulled up to a curb of waiting tourists, cameras in hand and flash-ready. Most of them mulled around, making mundane chatter as they waited. A man in an elaborate plum velvet suit, complete with tails and a top hat, stepped off the front of the tram to welcome people aboard. He looked like a cross between Mark Twain and Colonel Sanders, only with a longer, curlier, whiter moustache and matching eyebrows. The only thing he missed was a monocle. His loud, sing-songy voice seemed to echo off the sunny day.

“Come on folks, welcome, step right aboard! Don’t delay, hurry hurry now, we don’t want to miss anything we could be missing out on right now!”

People crowded into the trams like cattle. The day got progressively hotter with each passing second. The tour guide took his place at the front and switched on a large microphone.

“Testing testing, tra la la.”

People squirmed themselves into place until the tram was full and not one more sweaty body could possibly fit. A few even wondered to themselves how, on such a sweltering hot day as this, the tour guide didn’t melt under his widespread facial hair and material-heavy suit.

“Here we go!”

On go, the tram’s engines came to life with a roar and they pulled away from the curb.

“Welcome welcome one and all, ladies and gentlemen, to DIVORCE LAND.” A few people stirred in their seats, but it could’ve just been because of how suddenly the tour guide’s voice boomed so forcefully loud across the little speakers.

“First a little history… All living things die—people, plants, animals, stars. Other things die too, like relationships. Trust. The soul. Hope. Lots of things die. We’re all here today to find out a little bit about what happens when our spouse leaves us to face the world all alone after promising to love and cherish us in sickness and in health until we were supposed to die—but didn’t.”

Thick blackness fell over the tram as it pulled through a long dark tunnel. People bumped and bobbed silently as the tram came through the bright light at the other end.

“Now ladies and gentle lads, if you look out the tram to your left, sprawled out in the greener grass on the other side is a giant and quite rare flock of pure breed, white DENIAL!” Several tourists scooted closer to the edge of their safety bars for a better look.

“Go ahead: wave, scream, yell, stomp your feet even—these majestic denial won’t even acknowledge you in any way that could possibly be confused for you mattering to them in the least!” A middle-aged red-haired lady halfway up from the back snapped a few pictures. The tan line on her ring finger missing its ring stood out white across the black camera it helped steady.

“And don’t look now folks! That’s rhetorical you know. You’re really supposed to look, and you’ll really want to, because we’re coming up on a dirty alley with a surprise guest. Yes, across from the pimps and crack dealers, behind that cliché trash barrel that’s required to be burning to set the atmosphere in alleys like this, it’s the rabid, frothing, cynicismally—is that a word?—diseased monster ANGER!” The tram slowed to a stop at the side of the road. The red-haired lady leaned over the elderly Asian man next to her and forced half her torso across the edge of the tram to get a photo.

“Oh ma’am? Ma’am?? Please keep all body parts inside the tram. No folks, you don’t want to get too close to the anger. It likes to bite hard and once clamped, it tears anything in its maw to tiny bits, leaving nothing but a smear of regret behind.” Oohs and aahs rose and fell through the seats. The tram pulled on. People began to fan themselves as the sun came back out from behind a cloud.

“Yes, but let’s do hurry along—we have a schedule to keep.”

The tram conductor starts to whisper, and the Asian man asks the guy in front of him what difference it makes since he has a microphone.

“Ooh, hush hush now, be very quiet. We’re coming upon the shyest member of our natural community: BARGAINING. Watch closely now, folks. Apparently bargaining wants to keep the heirloom china her grandmother left her and she’s willing to give up the car, yes, the family car, but she won’t let him have the kids on the weekends, no, not if that slut’s gonna be there! It’s so exciting folks! Tears and sweat won’t stop her! Look at her go!” The red-haired woman’s face turned a darker shade than her hair and she put the lens cap back on her camera.

“Now I really must insist you keep all sharp metal objects well-hidden and use caution. Right up ahead is that ruthless and miserable animal DEPRESSION. Don’t be alarmed folks; depression always howls in desperate anguish like that. But please, whatever you do, don’t feed it. It tends to overeat to excess rivaled only by black holes. Again, don’t be alarmed, folks; you knew it would come to this.” A tear slipped down the Asian man’s cheek.

“And that is the end of the tour! I thank you kindly for stopping by this afternoon. Please step off to your left and exit through those red gates ahead. Have a nice day!” With that, he flipped off his microphone switch and was about to step off the tram when he noticed the red-haired lady still seated, rubbing at the lens on her camera absently with a cloth. He came over to see if she needed help off the tram.

“Yes, can I help you?” She didn’t turn to look at him when she answered.

“Well, it’s just that… I thought this tour went all the way to acceptance.”

“ACCEPTANCE? Why no ma’am! Acceptance is truly rare, almost extinct. We’ve yet to capture one. In fact, most of us here have only read about acceptance in books or seen it in movies. Of course if you can always check back…” The lady sighed deeply, then put her camera back in its case and stood up slowly.

“Okay then, buh-bye now. Step down please. Step down.”

Good News - A Short Play

2009-03-19T15:01:00.000-07:00

Jalopy Englebert, an intelligent young albino man in his 20s also known as ‘The Inflammable Iridescent Bob,’ because he is a flame retardant vertically challenged entertainer (in layman’s term’s, he’s a circus midget who doesn’t catch fire) & Malkovich Jr., a full-time pothead in his late teens with negative brain cells, even less common sense, and no other friends or life outside of past issues of Victoria’s Secret catalogs, noontime showings of “The People’s Court,” and his little friend Jalopy, meet in an undisclosed location to discuss very very very very important top secret undisclosed things.

They are standing in the middle of a large room in said undisclosed location.

The lights come on and they begin to speak.

Jalopy:
Why won’t you LISTEN TO ME??? I have to tell you my good news.

Malkovich Jr:
I thought I was... wait, did you speak before now? I thought that was just the buzzing of the hungry fleas living in my ear hair. I’ve named them all.
Hey, did you know that if you eat peaches with Lysol, it makes you fart like a rhino?

Jalopy:
No. But, before tonight, I was also unaware that you owned a key to Martha Stewart’s Basement. Man this place is huge! And so unbelievably clean and neat and smelling of elderberries…
What’s that over there, in the back? What?
No way, an ascot store?? A store dedicated to selling only ascots? ROCK ON!!!
Oh wait, it’s closed.
Bummer.
At least there’s a slip ‘n slide in the corner...

Malkovich Jr:
Yeah. I got the key when I won some sweepstakes on the inside of a cheetos package. Of course, cheetos are good enough on their own with all their orangey goodness, even without special sweepstakes that have prizes including keys to Martha Stewart’s Basement.

Jalopy:
Man, I should really switch to cheetos... the good old days are gone bro. I mean, when did cracker jacks stop giving good prizes?
Malkovich Jr:
Hey dude, don’t diss the Jacks, YO!
I got my driver’s license out of one of those boxes.

Jalopy:
So did I, but I still had to wait in line at the DMV and let that perv with the clipboard and rank halitosis ride around in the van with me all afternoon anyway before he’d give me that box of cracker jacks.

Malkovich Jr:
Awww, MAN! At least YOU got to take the test! I mean, every time a DMV examination dude would get in the car with me, I’d just look at him and say, “Hi. This is my Wednesday face. Wanna dance?” And he’d DIE. Apparently it’s an ancient voodoo curse involving authority figures or rank halitosis or something.

Jalopy:
Oh yeah man, that’s too bad. I think I saw something about that on the Discovery Channel.

*a short silence is spent looking around at the utter gloriousness of Martha Stewart’s Basement.*

Malkovich Jr:
So, dude, why did you want me to come here. I’m missing “People’s Court” and today’s case is some guy who is suing because he bought some dandruff shampoo from a small company based in some old chick’s bathroom and it appears his hair has melted off and it’s caused his scalp to be an unsightly shade of neon clear.

Jalopy:
Well, I wrote a letter about my good news to the President.

Malkovich Jr:
You did WHAT to the President? You haven’t even told ME your good news yet!!

Jalopy:
I’m afraid to now. I mean, after those burly secret service men wrestled me and a nearby chicken to the ground and intercepted my well thought out letter and burned it in a ritualistic fashion, complete with costumes and campfire songs, and I—

Malkovich Jr:
Man, I’m horny.

Jalopy:
Did you hear anything I just said?

Malkovich Jr:
Yeah. It was all like, “Malkovich, Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich. Malkovich Malkovich. Malkovich. Tonguing a platypus, Malkovich.”

Jalopy:
Fine, be that way, see if I really care!!! It was more traumatic than you’ll ever know, you MEAT SNEEZE!

*Jalopy crosses his little arms, stomps his little foot and turns away, miffed. More silence ensues. Finally Malkovich speaks again as if the outburst never happened.*

Malkovich Jr:
Every time I go swimming, kids laugh, LAUGH at my giant pink bunny suit and high heels. Don’t they know that sunscreen doesn’t always prevent the everlasting damage done by harmful UV rays penetrating the earth’s atmosphere? Don’t they watch Schoolhouse Rock and infomercials about clearing up zits and dehydrating meat?
Man I’m deep.

Jalopy:
Oh yeah? Beat this. I knew a lady once. She had rubies on her lips and when she spoke they drooled down her chin like the tears we all shed in the war. And I can say that too because I had two uncles that died in the war and
THIS IS AMERICA DAMMIT!

Malkovich Jr:
What??

Jalopy:
*sighs*

Oh nothin’.

Malkovich Jr:
(out of nowhere) I can’t take this space-filling witty banter anymore!
I have to KNOW what your good news is!! TELL ME! TELL ME NOW!!!

Jalopy:
I just don’t know if you can handle it… if your fragile psyche is truly ready… Are you suuuuure you wanna know?

Malkovich Jr:
We’re in Martha Stewart’s Basement aren’t we? What is it huh? The answer to a conundrum? The secret files of Bea Arthur and Brittney Spears shemale porn? The meaning of life according to Dr. Phil’s psychiatrist? A shave and a haircut, two bits??
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?

*holds breath during a moment of dramatic pause just as someone would during a moment of dramatic pause *

Jalopy:
No, none of those things. It’s bet-ter.

*More overuse of dramatic pauses until the Dramatic Pause Company, Inc. starts to complain of abuse and threatens litigation. Finally, Jalopy says what he came to say.*

Jalopy:
I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.

*more silence. The crickets off of Bugs Bunny cartoons begin to chirp in the background. Time passes.*

Malkovich Jr:
Dude...
I’m still horny.
Turn over, dammit!

Jalopy:
ARRRGGGGGHHHH!
Down baby, good boy, take a treat.

Lights dim.
Canned Laughter and Clapping.
Curtain.

Walking It Off.

2009-03-02T22:48:00.000-08:00

We were watching on those televangelist shows in the middle of the other night and some lady was on there talking about how bad her cancer is. She stood up and walked around a bit (though presumably the cancer wasn't in her legs) and the preacher man goes, "Gooooood has heeeealed her cancer, ladies and gentlemen!"

Seth said, "Nuh uh, she's just walked it off."

What Seth Said.

2009-01-14T02:16:00.000-08:00

"Yum!" I chirped as I drained the bottle of Drano. "Tastes like chicken...chicken that cleans a clogged toilet." Then I died all like 'bleh.'

The End.

An Old Rant.

2009-01-10T23:50:00.000-08:00

(I thought it time to pull this bad boy off the virtual shelf from '03 considering we're about to maybe move to the boonies...)

DO YOU KNOW HOW FRUSTRATING IT IS when you are sick, lying in bed with cramps and a headache that had to be caused by getting hit with a very large and heavy brick when you weren’t looking and someone offers to go to the store and get something for you? You feel like one of the few members living on a remote island and one man is making a journey to the mainland in his makeshift coconut shell boat that may or may not make it for supplies that your tribe desperately needs so you must tell him everything you personally have been um, desperately needing before he leaves and you will never get the chance ever EVER again (until tomorrow or Tuesday.)

So the guy heads out the door and you hear it click shut like the boom of thunder in your mind and you think you’ve told him every single even minutely essential thing possible that you could even maybe sort of possibly need but then it dawns on you like DOOM laughing and you remember one last actually important thing last minute like super absorbent Tampax that you might get low on even though you already have a box and a half sitting under the bathroom sink or a thing of Crangrape juice or something and so you run a mad dash like a banshee out of hell down a flight of stairs and through the entire house (which feels like traipsing leisurely through the state of Rhode Island because of the hurry you are in to catch him before he leaves) to the back door only to find them just getting in the car so you do everything you can to get his attention including jumping up and down like an angry Chihuahua in heat and screaming “HEY” at the top of your lungs like an American Idol reject while waiving your arms up and down so fast you are surprised you haven’t taken off like a damn dodo bird or Superman and just flown your sorry ass to the store but you keep trying, even throwing a trash can lid turned frisbee at the vehicle HARD, probably denting it, to NO AVAIL, the whole time NOT realizing you are in your UNDERWEAR because, well, you have been sick but the dude STILL doesn’t recognize your presence and so he goes to the store without the one thing you needed like ONE POSTAGE STAMP or a small bottle of bottled water because it really DOES taste better than the tap and as they round the corner away from your house they leave you standing on the porch stomping your feet like a five year old throwing a temper tantrum over Captain Crunch cereal while the neighbors look on in wonder and enjoyment, laughing, putrid VULTURES they ARE, eating popcorn and sitting their fat asses in lawn chairs so droopy in the middle from BUTT that you can’t believe they don’t just fall through to the pavement looking like a fat sloppy human turd being flushed down the toilet...

Anyway, so you quickly run your half dressed booty back inside and go back up the stairs to call the supermarket and some middle aged whiny CLOVEN OF HOOF guy with an anxiety complex on the other end of the line acts as if simply by the tone of your voice you’ve called in a bomb threat on the freakin’ GROCERY STORE, and you are completely INSANE and should be straight-jacketed that very instant but he says he’ll relay the message if he can find the guy which shouldn’t be hard unless he is BLIND since the OBVIOUSLY DEAF guy in question will be the only one coming into the store wearing flame patterned orange and black pajama pants in JULY and when the phone does finally ring you run to pick it up and your guy barely has time to wearily utter “hello” in a barely audible and frightened whisper because the phone jack is broken and the little cord that hooks to the wall has fallen out because you have a cheap piece of SH*T Wal-Mart five dollar NOT cordless phone upstairs because you decided to put the good expensive ($15) cordless HELPFUL phone downstairs which is stupid because you aren’t ever even down there for anything anyway except when Head Start daycare does a house visit and you have to sit and offer them tea somewhere...

So you just usually hang out upstairs which is what caused this problem in the first place and so you hang up on him accidentally because FATE that stupid HO find this all VERY amusing and by the time your guy does call back, you pick up the phone and have to hold it speshul so all the pieces don’t fall out of the bottom, so you are standing in this awkward position looking quite SPESHUL yourself and you are so farking frustrated that you don’t even say hello when you pick up the extension but instead you just let out a demonic Satan possessed shriek of DEATH into the phone so ear-splitting that you might as well buy the guy a hearing aid now to avoid the messy civil suit he will no doubt be bringing against you in the near future when he realizes that just because you couldn’t LIVE WITHOUT some Dannon FRUIT ON THE F-CKING BOTTOM STRAWBERRY BANANA YOGURT you are now having a full scale “adjective for being cheese-grated over a cactus naked” mental breakdown on the other end of the line causing him to lose 90% of his hearing ability for the rest of his life which wouldn’t have been very long had he been there with you at that exact moment anyway.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens??

Yeah. I thought so.

Murder in a Gray Room.

2009-01-09T00:49:00.000-08:00

(This is the first ever exercise I did in the first ever creative writing class I ever took in college. Something about how a setting can be a character, if I recall correctly, which I probably don't. Came across the file and thought I'd toss it up here. You know. For guffaws.)

Murder in a Gray Room

Truth is, one can only be the "giver" for so long anyway before feeling they are only being taken.

The room felt smaller by the second. It was as if each moment ticked and fell away from the flat little clock while the walls moved inward, forcing the focus of everything into the center of the room, where we now stood. Light trickled in through a single window, smoldering enough to illuminate our faces but shadowing everything else in shades of pale gray. We could still see each other. Sometime during five minutes of silence that felt like a few lifetimes, even the oxygen in the space began to weigh more. It took a struggle to breath it in, causing lungs to feel overworked and chests to get tight with force and effort.

There were enough chairs, but no one sat. The pressure of the room kept us upright.

So we stood there, air heavy and burning with stale breath and heated tension, like a thousand pounds of callous air hung around our necks from a short thick string. Troy said nothing, head bowed in a coagulated silence, staring intently at the carpet until his eyes must have hurt to be in his head. He was rubbing a groove into the floor, smooth and flat underneath his dark boot. A small sense of dark irony tapped me as I realized the carpet and my heart were both being crushed in much the same manner at the very same moment.

“Honestly, it’s not you, it’s me. I know that sounds so cliché but...” Troy trailed off, still refusing to look up at my face.

I had heard that sentence before, but only as the butt of a joke on some poorly written sitcom. These are not things real people say to one another in real life when one purposely breaks the other’s heart like so many other everyday detached actions.

I glared at him, into him, trying hard to find those sweet things about him that made me invite him into my life and my bed in the first place. I had snuggled into a warm fuzzy blanket of the words he said, covering myself up, wanting desperately to believe he meant all that was whispered softly into my ear so many lovely nights before this one. He worked a slight of hand, a magic trick of making the world sound so good, simply to snatch those dreams away before I had a chance to really grasp them in my shaky, wanting hands.

When I could find nothing there except a film of cold selfishness squirming and writhing in the face I once adored, my tears stopped falling. I knew he did not love me, could not protect me. I stopped wanting to be with him. I stopped needing him to stay.

Instead, in this microscopic lifeless room, I began thinking of all the ways I could kill Troy.

I closed my eyes and shut out the threatening darkness of the room to the welcoming darkness of my mind. Behind my fiercely clenched eyelids, I longed for a nuclear weapon, scaled down to size, a tiny piece of mass destruction complete with a little red button to turn him into a pile of ash and dust easily scattered to the wind and forgotten. I wished hard for a knife, a crossbow, a hammer, a large rock, a small petry dish with the tiniest drop of Bubonic plague, a rabid tiger who hadn’t eaten for several days, a virus-infected mosquito, a Satan-possessed twelve-year-old with a temper disorder, a noose, a gun, a really big high-powered automatic gun, a stick, a straw; even a KFC spork would’ve easily sufficed at that moment.

I thought of all the ways to make his heart ache as mine did, to wash him in pain and agony, to burn out his eyes with the misery of having happiness dangled just out of reach in front of one’s craving body like so many shining silver trinkets.

Troy lifted his eyes from the enthralling sight that was the floor and stared at me, still wanting something of me, not done with his special brand of torment yet. He clearly had no idea of the thoughts flashing in my mind; I was purely hoping he’d drop dead at that very moment. What else do I have that you have not taken? At once it hit me, slapping me hard – he wanted my permission to treat me like trash, to use me up, to keep me here in this little gray room and be his emotionless toy.

“Can I still come by some night? You might get lonely.” Even in the dark, the smirk forming at the corners of his mouth was unmistakably confident. Somehow the sound of his voice managed an echo, resonant even in this small vacuum of a room.

Troy and his smile oozed slime and pestilence equally. The air temperature continued to heat, seemingly causing slick sweat to form on the surface of everything. At any moment the grayness would start to wash off of the walls and furniture and mix with the dripping sweat, flooding at our feet in puddles, submerging us until we drowned in it.

It was then I realized the only way I could genuinely murder Troy, to slaughter and have any true sense of justice done.

I turned around, taking away from him the sight of my face, the place where my smile for him had been. I stole myself back. I left him in the dark place where the love in my eyes would no longer shine to light the world as I gazed upon him. I shut Troy out, left him behind and standing in that gloom-filled place, letting him drown in shades of sadness and the sickly sweat of death and decay that reside in the stifling heat of a little gray room.

I walked out. I left him there. And I shut the door hard behind me.

I'm Ageist but You're Old.

2009-01-06T23:41:00.001-08:00

So, Trojan is trying to sell these finger vibrators on TV like that's just a normal thing to do. It's at least slightly better than those nasty Girls Gone Wild videos, but wow if that's not saying much. Here's what I'm talking about:

What really bothers me though is the commercial, not the product. See that old lady with the red hair and comical overacting via her continuous sighing and cartoony disapproving facial expressions? Every time I see this commercial, which is eighty billion times a night because I watch Comedy Central after midnight, I just want ninjas to jump onscreen and drop her for ruining something that's supposed to make me happy, dammit.

Or maybe at some point, one of those two girls could just turn and uppercut her out of the chair for being a nosy bitch.

But more than anything and though I know it is completely ageist, when she tells the girls where to get the vibrator online, I just want so badly for them to go, "EW! You're OLD!!!" and then run away.

Screaming.

Because that lady is scary, dude. Scary.

Walking In.

2008-12-30T19:03:00.000-08:00

I’m standing outside, several strangers and I huddled around this white door and no one’s ringing the doorbell and I need to go inside but I don’t want to go inside because I don’t like the guy inside somewhere, the one I’m here to, ahem, visit. My arm is stretched and my finger pointing but before it makes contact with the doorbell button some girl with bleach blonde hair and a drunken slur opens the door, scaring everyone on the porch who want to go in but don’t really want to go in. There are things I could tell her but I know she wouldn’t listen.

I hesitate but someone behind me pushes someone else who forces me forward. I go in and pass a collage of faces, many of which are interchangeable in my mind for the walking clichés people expect at parties like this: the E-tripping raver without the rave, the drunk blonde wearing her clothes painfully small, some guy smashing beer cans into his friend’s forehead in front of a television playing Wizard of Oz, probably because someone hours ago wanted to see if it could sync up to Dark Side of the Moon even though Pink Floyd swears it’s unintentional. At least I hope I don’t personally know anyone here, but I’m not stopping to find out. I’m moving through shadows and ignoring everything in them. Someone suddenly blocks my way and tries to hand me a bowl of something. I throw my arms up like I’m being mugged but keep walking, leaving them in the sea behind me.

I’m crossing the kitchen floor and it click clicks under my shoes, reminding me of junior high school hallways and the awkwardness of bathroom breaks in the middle of class. There’s a bedroom in the back and I can smell it before I can find the door. The guy I came here to see is standing in the doorway, watching two girls twenty years his junior take turns snorting lines on a futon turned bed. He’s sweating profusely and the sour stench coming off him makes me want to gag.

“You want a dime?” He’s asking me without taking his eyes off the pair who could be his daughters. It’s about the drug I’m here to collect and for a second I don’t hear him because I’m too busy wondering how I ended up here in the first place. I didn’t even get a chance to ring the doorbell on my own. Where, again, was my choice?

Grinch.

2008-12-17T23:14:00.000-08:00

Christmas at Walmart. Yay. I was there today and I noticed an abundance of people being entirely shitty to one another. Like shopping at Christmas already makes people snap at each other, but being in Walmart draws that feeling out to the nth degree and then takes kerosene and a match--make that a blowtorch--to it.

And when you aren't running into people being ho-ho-hateful to each other up and down the aisles, you're passing someone on a cell phone calling someone else in a huff, sarcasm spewing forth, muttering, "Hey, what did what's-her-name want for Christmas? Oh yeah?! Well I'm here and I need to get something because I'm not going back out, dammit! I don't care what it is, just tell me something to get!!!" Talk about the spirit of giving...more like the spirit of not giving a shit. Are we all just saving face? Has Christmas become a hollow gesture which amounts to a little more than keeping up appearances for the sake of the season?

Then, of course, there's the Black Friday horror story. Some young clerk at a Walmart got trampled and killed when he went to open up the doors the day after Thanksgiving. He was a temp even, hired specifically to work the event! And an eight-month pregnant lady in the crowd lost her baby in the madness. I say madness because two people died and when the officials at Walmart tried to go through and kick everyone out to close the store down and oh, I don't know, investigate a freaking MURDER, people got angry because they stood in line, dammit, and Walmart owed them a discounted flat screen!!

I remember one year I worked at Toys-R-Us and I about wanted to slit my own wrists by the time I quit. People would bring in their young children and do Christmas shopping for other family members, then not buy their own child anything. Recipe for disaster much? Then they'd get really pissed off at their kid for crying or throwing a fit because he or she wasn't getting a toy. What the HELL do you expect? Your six-year-old isn't the paragon of self-control! You can't pull a little child into the Heaven on Earth of Toydom and somehow expect them to keep it together when you buy all kinds of crap for everyone and don't get them one measly little toy. Uh, duh.

Anyway, some lady actually bit another lady's hand to get the last Barbie from her. She BIT her. Hard enough to draw blood. Forget entirely that we live in a society where biting someone can give you a disease, but for Christ's sake (pun intended), WHAT THE HELL? Who wants to give their kid a gift they had to physically assault someone else to get? "Here sweetie! I know how much you wanted this Barbie. Be careful though, there might be a little AIDS on it..." That chick was arrested, by the way. Can you imagine having to tell your child you got arrested for that? Has everyone lost their damn minds???

If there is anything religious or spiritual or good still tied to this holiday, someone (many someones) has (have) apparently forgotten it. The point isn't buying shit and making sure everyone gets some shit so they'll STFU. At least, that's not what I thought the point was...

And when I went to check out at the grocery store (not Walmart), I noticed myself getting snappy with my husband, too. Perhaps it was the general tension in the air finally osmosing into my bones. After that, we had to make a pact with each other to be respectful no matter how annoyed we got. Who has to make promises like that when they do something so simple as go to a store in December?

We haven't just lost sight of what is important; we've replaced it with something so terribly unimportant, all it can do is piss us all off.

So about 92.6 percent of my shopping this year was done online...come to think of it, this is probably why a lot of things can now be done online--ordering pizza, refilling prescriptions, getting photo prints made--so we can remove the 'dealing with other people' part of the equation. Pretty soon we won't have to make physical contact with anyone else ever. I can't decide if I'm sad about the way things are headed in our society or not, truthfully. Thank God's brother Bob we don't slather any other holidays with our putrid "spirit of giving"...

My father hasn't celebrated Christmas for about six years now. I used to think he was some kind of Grinch. It hurts me to say this, but today I think I finally understood him.

The Beam.

2008-12-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

I had the most unusual dream last night, and I woke up feeling ashamed that I was in it. (Don't you hate it when that happens?)

I lived in this self-contained tower--an entire self-contained society inside a large skyscraper type building. Near the apex, beginning on the 84th floor (yes, 84th!) were special penthouse floors where all the snooty rich assholes living in this tower resided. Just below the 84th down to the 64th were hospital floors, and that's where all the rich people worked. The hierarchy just worked backwards from there, with the poor dredges working on the bottom-most floors (closest to the actual ground, the actual world...ironic, no?)

Anyway, these smarmy people lived in what was called the "beam"...that denoted all floors above 84. That part of the building formed what, I swear to God, looked like a gleaming white douche nozzle. The Beamers (yes, like the freakin' BMW even) were so bored with the monotony of life and living inside a self-contained tower society that pretty much owned, so they found ways to do really awful things to all the other people residing inside the tower on all levels...playing with life and death. Evil things. Horrible things. I guess you could call my dream a nightmare, really.

I lived in the beam, and I was trying to kill some other chick who lived there because we were in love with the same man. How petty can it get? She was trying to kill me too. So that was our existence...trying to kill each other inside of a beam shooting straight up to heaven.

To bad we were all going to burn in hell.

Then I woke up.

Watch the Pretty Flowers.

2008-12-11T15:28:00.000-08:00

(Something from before but recently updated...thought this would be a good place for it. © Melissa Melton '08)

It's all about watching the flowers for now.

From here, I cannot see them yet. The alarm clock's incessant beeping, signaling my last day in this shitty room just went off and my eyes won’t fully adjust for five minutes yet. I haven’t yet reached the cracked, weatherworn leather chair I sit in from five to five everyday. Not yet. Five more minutes.

I used to hate the daily torture I have inflicted upon myself for so long in that ugly, abused chair. The maid doesn't even bother knocking anymore. The place is a wreck, I know, and the thought makes me smile every time. I take my place in the chair I've come to know so well, still smiling.

Now, near the end, I’ve finally learned to admire the flowers my hotel room window's view affords me. Flowers only ask for sun and rain from the sky and a bee to come along and rub up against their petals every now and then. They don’t want for bigger and better than that. They don’t suddenly uproot and interrupt the pattern and flow of life. They don’t ask for fifty percent of another flower’s stuff and the garden all to themselves to put that stuff in. They don’t suddenly want to grow life-threateningly close to other species of flowers. It takes the whole world to stop turning before a flower’s petal will wilt before its time. Courageous and trustworthy, that’s what flowers are.

Outside the glossy, overdone picture window in front of my thrift store chair, a whole garden of exotic flowers stand strong in their claim for air. When he isn’t out, there isn’t any diversion to take. When I'm free of mind-murdering diversions, I have time to stare at the flowers and blank out the whole disgusting world around me. Roses are my favorite, but not for the reason everyone says roses are their favorite. Roses win what's left of my dying heart because they have both sides: beautiful, majestic softness in red ruby velvet that arcs and dips just so; but underneath those lush petals sprout the thorns, just waiting for thin skin to come and try to pluck. Smaller thorns hurt worse than the bigger, more obvious daggers, but only because the victim doesn’t even realize he’s been cut until he tries to pull his fingers away. Once a rose had been held, it’s the pulling away that makes its captor bleed. I spent so many hours staring through a lens at this man that I deserve to stare at the flowers for a little while longer in peace. The flowers don’t ask for much and they don’t take anything either. I have ten minutes left.

When my wife left me for Bag, at first I was so angry I couldn’t see anything straight for days. Drinking only made the effect worse, so I stopped before I fully opened that Pandora’s Box. These are the times when thinking straight is so much more important than blind anger, but it hurts to focus this hard. Motivation is so much more important than heated revenge. I just have to keep it in the forefront.

I watch them everyday. From five to five, me and the flowers. And them.

It’s funny the details I catch through my lens. Like the sleek scar Bag attempts, badly, to cover with some kind of makeup on his right cheek. The scar is perfect in its own way—almost as if he bought a scar appliqué at a Halloween supply store to build fake character. Too bad his scar isn’t jagged, ugly, and discolored in some shade of plum purple or red, standing out awkwardly against the rest of his faux-tanned skin. I’m sure I could come up with a better nickname for him than Bag if it was. What pisses me off most is the knowledge that his scar wasn’t engraved in anger. It’s too seamless for that. No one tried to hurt Bag on purpose. He probably just had some meaningless accident.

I call the man Bag because he always wears a fanny pack. Never fails to forget it. So far it’s his only flaw. From the way he saunters down the sidewalk, I can tell he honestly believes he is legitimately okay in adorning the brown leather pouch at his waist. I really doubt such a thing can be considered 80s retro, if that is what he’s going for. Fanny packs just do not look right on anybody. Not ever. Not even on country-western city tourists over the age of 70 who never leave the house without a windbreaker and a pair of looming black cataract glasses. There’s no justifiable reason for such a thing. It does not matter if the only item he totes in that pack is a note scribbled with the hotline number of God’s personal assistant or a pack of tissues or a container of aspirin or his house keys and credit cards. Fanny packs are a sign of ignorance, mental decrepitude, and a distaste for society at the very least. Bag has never even opened that stupid ancient waist hugger in all this time as I have watched him, either. But not knowing what’s inside doesn’t bother me at all. Only one question claws at my insides like a rabid animal in the dark: how can she fuck a man who wears a fanny pack?

When Shanna left me, she took everything but some residual carpet lint and the faint scent of her strawberry shampoo with her. If she had a crowbar and one more bad day, she would have been able to get the kitchen sink in with that order too. Luckily, water faucets were not something as close to her heart as scarred, tanned men who wear fanny packs. Either that, or Shanna remembered she will get half of the kitchen sink court ordered to her door in a few months anyway.

At first I was so intimidated by his too tan, well-beyond-chiseled shoulders, I thought to myself that I’d leave me for him to. I could never pull off that $5 paperback romance Latin lover look. I cannot pull off the light leisure suits over ice cream-colored shirts and boat shoes in the fall look. I can't even wear a pair of white pants without spilling something of a spaghetti sauce-red origin on them, rendering them useless for anything other than car wash rags or ghetto Halloween costume pieces. Unfortunately, common grace, even in small doses for men, cannot be purchased at a department store.

As I have watched the roses bloom and die and bloom again from this chair, I wonder if it’s because I could have given Shanna more flowers. I tried to do so many other things, but none of it would please her. I know she knew there weren’t any other, more pressing tasks for me to accomplish. I could have brought her bundles and vases of so many varieties; she never would have even had time to smell them all—to appreciate them all properly. I could have told her I loved her every single day. I would only have been lying half the time.

But it’s a conundrum. I don’t want to let someone else give her the flowers I never did. And she never got close enough to me to appreciate my scent. Or check for thorns.

Like the one I hold now in my lap, loaded, for 12 hours every day. If I hadn’t bought the one with the telescopic lens, I never would have noticed the scar and the fanny pack Bag wears, and in my opinion, it’s just one more reason he needs to die anyway. Maybe he doesn’t deserve death for stealing the woman I only half-loved; maybe he has to die just because…

Ten minutes are up.

Prologue: Working Title Forthcoming.

2008-12-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

(This is something I've been turning in my head for a bit now...not sure exactly where I'm going with it past the first two chapters and this prologue. I guess we shall see. © Melissa Melton 2008 like every other random thing on this blog...)

She sits so perfectly still in the frozen grass, snow swirling around her almost in slow motion, somehow never actually finding purchase on her pale skin. It could be midday…it could be much later.

The sun provides light from somewhere entirely hidden, tucked away securely behind a gray wall of clouds, forcing dim rays down at odd angles that wash everything else out against its will. The gray, now almost brooding, threatens to take the scene over if not for the two spots of color too powerful for it to engulf: the lush red velvet of the girl's flowing cape draped like a curtain over the ground around her and the tiny specks of a much darker red dripping from her ashen lips. Her shoulders pitch forward and seem to heave against the wind every now and then, but her sobs make no sound. Only the wind calls, trying to pull the frail bodies of trees along with it as it blows over her small frame, raking through her silver hair, leaving nothing but more misguided snowflakes and urgent silence burning in its wake.

"Why can't I find him?" she suddenly asks aloud, accusing the retreating wind. "What have I done?" Her purring voice trails off into a barely audible whisper.

The wind does not reply; it simply grates over her numb skin again. Her frame trembles slightly as she is met with more disparaging silence between gusts.

Suddenly, I feel it. The fear. It comes on fast, shooting a sick, hot tingle up my spine that explodes at the nape of my neck.

In the trees at the edge of this clearing before us, something watched her. Something waited. Something hungry.

Go! I want to yell at her. Run! I want so badly to scream, to grab her shoulders and snatch her up from the ground if she won't get up on her own, to warn her of the deadly threat stalking her from the dark tree bank less than twenty feet away, but I can't. I'm frozen like the grass, silent like the snow, helpless against the cold wind. Thick sadness clings to the air around her body like an aura. She mumbles something once more about the man she cannot find.

Please, oh please, run, RUN! But she doesn't hear the begging trapped inside my head, caught deep in the prison of my throat.

A sound claws at me, the cavernous low rumble of a growl from somewhere in those trees. I hear a forceful snap, a dead branch breaking under heavy weight…

RunrunrunRUNRUNRUN!!

But she doesn't move an inch. Only the wind and the tiny snowflakes and the waning light in its haphazard descent seem to realize the danger.

And now it's too late.

My screams rake their way up my throat and catch in my mouth as it rips through the trees, coming for her.

Seth's Writing Exercise Scars My Fingertips.

2008-12-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

Gist: A room has one large window, from which a nosy neighbor constantly glares. It's the middle of December in Antarctica with temperatures below human living conditions. It's 12:30 in the afternoon on Friday the 13th. These objects are in the room:

* jarred porcupine fetus
* a mentally challenged left handed gorilla wearing a gold tuxedo
* baby's first alphabet book
* gateway to another dimension
* soap box derby racer WITH windows
* Kleenex box with one remaining tissue
* a mentally unstable cockeyed hobo who is lonely. He has a "wandering eye"...his good one

*****

"God, can't you just tear yourself away from the window for one shiny second, assface? The view hasn't changed in hours since that old lady checked her mail this morning, which wasn't exactly a life-changing event. Aren't your legs getting the least bit tired? That's what you get for nailing your feet to the floor in front of the window, stupid."

I hate that guy. I wish he'd leave already, but I guess he can't since it's Antarctica and people can't just go walking around in temperatures that fair below human living conditions. I don't even remember his name, but he's been here since November. Just showed up like that happens all the time in some Antarctica. I'm about to brick over the window just to spite him, but it's the only one in the room and I don't want to be left in the dark with this guy...you know...just in case.

Bobo, the mentally challenged left-handed gorilla in the gold tuxedo, tries to hand me another copy of Baby's First Alphabet Book, but I quickly snatch it from his fat, stinky fingers and fling it through the gateway to another dimension in the corner. "A is for assface, assface." I hate that damn book. Where did this gorilla get 2,587 copies of it anyway? Was the Ruin My Life Bookstore having a sale? That's hardly fair to actual babies who suffer from a real yearning to learn the alphabet and who posses the ability to do so, you know...

Stupid nosy neighbor. Stupid monkey, literally. I've become so much more sensitive ever since my entire bottom half turned into a hippo. That's what I get for eating all that pie I guess but still. I grit my teeth together until they make an audible noise, torn between wanting more pie regardless and the territorial feeling creeping over me regarding the last tissue in the Kleenex box lying on the coffee table. Oh great. The stupid soap box derby racer just got back. He left his car blocking my driveway, again, not that I could fit into my car now even if I wanted to and I don't have anywhere to go anyway unless I decide to try and locate some more pie like there are so many places to just get pie on a whim in some Antarctica. Anyway, I told him soap box derby cars aren't supposed to have windows, but he doesn't listen. He'll probably steal my tissue, too. Douchebag.

The only thing missing from this picture is a mentally unstable cockeyed hobo with a wondering eye and then...Armageddon. That was Bob, but he got lonely and left. I don't blame him. Nothing here but a bunch of gold tuxedo wearing, baby book reading, nosy assholes who put windows on things that aren't supposed to have windows and steal my last tissue. Douchebags, the lot of them.

Bobo tries to hand me another copy of Baby's First Alphabet Book. This time I snatch the jarred porcupine fetus off the shelf of random jarred animal fetuses next to my television stand and chuck it at his head. It glances off and bounces across the floor into the gateway to another dimension. Damn. Lost another one. Now I feel sorry for the dimension. I wish with every fiber in my half-hippo being some pie would come out of it.

"Hurr Durrrrr!"

Shut up, Bobo. Douchebag.