OK, wow. I'm sorry about the month-long blackout on Purple Houses. I'm up and running again, I swear. More later on what I've been up to.
Here's a fun writing assignment from the group I meet with at a local coffee shop. (Thanks, Wade) Confront your neighbor about his/her unusual pet and the damage it has done to your property. For extra credit, don't directly name what kind of pet it is.
Give the assignment a try yourself. Offer it up as a discussion topic at dinner and see how many different pet ideas develop. I ran with my dad's suggestion. Here's the result:
As usual, it took my neighbor several minutes to answer the door. Through the screen, I heard his familiar hacking cough as he walked through a beaded curtain. He poked his bearded face outside.
“I believe this belongs to you,” I said, and handed my neighbor his pet. Its lime green leash dragged on his concrete porch. “The leash doesn’t help, by the way.”
“Oh,” he said, seeming perplexed. “Where did you find him?”
“The same place I found him last time,” I said, and handed him a bill for my new living room window.
“He went through it again?”
“Yes. Again.”
“Who would do that? There’s no love there, man.”
I handed him a bill for a new plasma TV. “This time, he hit the big screen. While I was watching Buffy. And that’s just unacceptable.”
“I’m really sorry,” my neighbor said, holding the bills in a way that would make it easy for me to take them back if I found it in my heart to forgive him. I didn’t.
His arm dropped along with the expression on his face. “It’s not my fault, you know.”
“But he belongs to you. This is what happens when you leave him in your front yard and some jokester decides to through him at our house.”
“I can’t help what someone else decides to do! This world is messed up.”
“Well, if you find ‘someone,’ then you can get reimbursed by ‘someone,’ but in the mean time, that’s your ‘pet,’ and that’s my house, and as you can see, it’s broken.”
He looked down at the pet in his hand. Its sad, painted eyes looked up at him. “But it’s so cute.”
“It was cute in nineteen-seventy. Now, it’s just lame. And while you’re at it, you might want to think about updating your house paint. The psychedelic daisies on your garage door make me look like I’m living next to the frigging Partridge family.”
He took the bills and retreated into his smoke-filled haven. I retreated to my broken window and broken TV, wondering how long it would be before I received another unexpected visit.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Death
Here's a story for Three Word Wednesday. The words are efficient, optimize, treacherous.
He called her Death because that’s all she talked about.
So when Death cooked him eggs for breakfast she always served up a side of murder and mayhem along with them. Lately she’d been on a disease kick.
“There are cancer cells floating around in your body right now,” Death would say, biting into an underdone slice of bacon. “All they need is an excuse.”
She’d discuss the fragility of life with the efficiency and relish of an assassin while she cleared the dishes. A plane crash would bouy her for days. She optimized even the near misses. “The water filled in to their necks,” she’d said. “Their necks!”
Once he caught Death intently examining a small wrinkle around her mouth, as if trying to extract an expiration date from its appearance. After that she went to bed and stayed there for days.
He brought Death dinner but she wouldn’t touch it, mumbling something about treacherous conglomerates loading the food supply with GMOs. Flowers depressed her. So all he could do was turn on CNN and let Death absorb the coverage of one war or another until she felt ready to face the world again.
He called her Death because that’s all she talked about.
So when Death cooked him eggs for breakfast she always served up a side of murder and mayhem along with them. Lately she’d been on a disease kick.
“There are cancer cells floating around in your body right now,” Death would say, biting into an underdone slice of bacon. “All they need is an excuse.”
She’d discuss the fragility of life with the efficiency and relish of an assassin while she cleared the dishes. A plane crash would bouy her for days. She optimized even the near misses. “The water filled in to their necks,” she’d said. “Their necks!”
Once he caught Death intently examining a small wrinkle around her mouth, as if trying to extract an expiration date from its appearance. After that she went to bed and stayed there for days.
He brought Death dinner but she wouldn’t touch it, mumbling something about treacherous conglomerates loading the food supply with GMOs. Flowers depressed her. So all he could do was turn on CNN and let Death absorb the coverage of one war or another until she felt ready to face the world again.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Another round
Many apologies for the hiatus -- this grad school thing is keeping me occupied. Here's another episode of rural digital distortion -- but I think I'll have to cut this out because I'm starting to have dreams about people with faces like this.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Alternate ending
On Saturday I took a great class on microfiction. One of our assignments was to write a new "tail for a tale" in 300 words or fewer, making up new endings for popular films, books or reality. The choices included new endings for any presidential election, World War II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest without the lobotomy, any of the Star Wars films, or what might have happened if Jack lived instead of Rose in Titanic. That's the one I chose. Here it is:
Sometimes, after he settled into his spot on the beach and began drawing the tourists, he would see her walking by – always the young Rose. She never aged in his mind. Once a girl stopped and handed him twenty dollars and when he looked up it was her. Except then he saw that the girl had black hair and not auburn, and she wore one of those flimsy knit tank tops instead of lace. They only ever saw him as an old man. For the longest time he couldn’t go near the water, the waves. Now he couldn’t stay away. He felt the sea pull like he’d felt her pull at his wrist before the deep cold claimed her. They were looking again, for that damned necklace – as if it was the most valuable thing at the bottom of the sea.
He had tried to die that night. He tried to roll himself into the abyss but found he had no strength, or was frozen tight to the wood that bouyed him. The otherworld where she had gone was close enough to touch. He refused to call out when the boats drifted by but they found him anyway. In the daylight on the Carpathia he had seen Hockley searching for her and that was the only thing that kept Jack from jumping up and throttling him on the deck, surrounded by shivering masses in wool blankets – Hockley would never have her. Hockley would live with that as long as he lived, until he offed himself over something ephemeral and meaningless. Jack had much more. He’d had to live with much more.
Sometimes, after he settled into his spot on the beach and began drawing the tourists, he would see her walking by – always the young Rose. She never aged in his mind. Once a girl stopped and handed him twenty dollars and when he looked up it was her. Except then he saw that the girl had black hair and not auburn, and she wore one of those flimsy knit tank tops instead of lace. They only ever saw him as an old man. For the longest time he couldn’t go near the water, the waves. Now he couldn’t stay away. He felt the sea pull like he’d felt her pull at his wrist before the deep cold claimed her. They were looking again, for that damned necklace – as if it was the most valuable thing at the bottom of the sea.
He had tried to die that night. He tried to roll himself into the abyss but found he had no strength, or was frozen tight to the wood that bouyed him. The otherworld where she had gone was close enough to touch. He refused to call out when the boats drifted by but they found him anyway. In the daylight on the Carpathia he had seen Hockley searching for her and that was the only thing that kept Jack from jumping up and throttling him on the deck, surrounded by shivering masses in wool blankets – Hockley would never have her. Hockley would live with that as long as he lived, until he offed himself over something ephemeral and meaningless. Jack had much more. He’d had to live with much more.
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