A World a Day: Telemarketing

He hated it here.  Slumped over one of the the long rowed tables, two more computers to either side of him.  The sound of ringing filled his ear, ended by the voices of people who didn't want to talk to him.  People he didn't want to talk.  He would mumble out the script, trying to raise money for a school that had a billion dollars sitting in a bank.  A school that had potentially lost the social security number etc of every student, applicant and alumni for the past fifteen years.  He suppressed the urge to coat the entire pseudo office with a fine layer of his spit.

Every day he trudged the twenty four blocks to the office building north west of the dorms, sit in an office chair and try and convince parents to give more of their money to the school.  He did his best to marshall enthusiasm, to make the best of each day.  The best he managed was five fake conversations for every real one.

Idea Dump

Desperately trying to to justify 'I thought of that first!' since 2011...

Product/Business
A service/blog that tells you how to achieve a certain lifestyle look with a set amount (Yuppie for two grand, Hipster for two hundred through twenty thousand et al)

Skit/Fiction
Corporate Distopian future where companies sell ad space on employee uniforms (on second thought, this is not fiction. Although I imagine these would be like foll body enclosures with tiny slits for eyes):
Maximum Security Prison brought to you by the Walt Disney corporation (guards dress up as Disney characters with appropriately branded sound effects, contraband includes Looney Tunes DVDs)
Metafiction Novel where an experimental society trains/arms each unit of their military from different military scifi novels (starship troopers, armor, forever war, old man's war et al)
Pimp my D*** the new MTV reality show where lucky contestants genitals are 'pimped' by a team of professionals (I think the 'unveiling' would be the funniest, as they couldn't actually show anything on TV other than a black censor bar, just the contestant freaking the heck out)

A World a Day: Candy

The joke always followed a formula: 'You don't look orange,''How much of your average day is spent singing?' or 'Do you get hazard pay for netting fat kids out of the chocolate river?'  He would smile politely and explain that he really did like working in the candy factory.  Even if he could never quite explain why.

He clocked in with four brown men in a small warehouse in Irvine.  He could barely converse with any of them (cervesa? Cervesa!) but imagined they wouldn't have much to say to him even if there was no language barrier.  Each day had its own rhythms: the passed along trays of vanilla crunch or layered sheets of peppermint bark while the industrial refrigerators thrummed and the four pristine black microwaves beeped. The tinny cd player shifted between Led Zeppelin and Mariachi depending on who's turn it was to pick.

He loved the way pouring bubbling toffee from the three hundred pound copper kettle felt like dropping boiling oil from the ramparts of some besieged fantasy castle.  He loved the eye watering tang of peppermint oil cutting to his nose through the ever present fog of chocolate.  She loved the way he always smelt of sugar, though he had long since stopped noticing.  Most importantly, he loved stumbling to work at 4am in a fog of sleep since it meant he worked a full day's shift plus overtime and was free at 3.

He read a novel a week, went out with friends most nights and kept his thought to himself even as his body moved on autopilot.  Most of all, he liked that this was temporary.  Soon he would be back at school and all the chocolate would be scrubbed out of his pores.  All this would only be so many bricks of memory from which he one day might build a story.

He worked with his hands to make high end confections far beyond the economic reach of his minimum wages, humming snatches of rock songs the whole time.

A World a Day: Radioshack

He wore socks to around work most days.  He was smart enough to wear shoes to work at least, but when he go there he would take them off.  As long as his feet stayed roughly the correct size and color... no one noticed a difference.  And even if they had, what could they possibly say?  He had long ago discovered that people followed scripts to get through their day.   If anything varied from that script, the customers would do their best to ignore the out of sync elements and move on with their day.  So really, he luxuriated in socks as a long running psych experiment.

More importantly, the carpet felt great on his feet.

I would actually watch this Pokemon movie...

All I can imagine is the Dirty Harry/Clint Eastwood voice saying.  'I want to be the very best, like no one ever was... punk.'  

via http://fuckyeahrandomstupidity.tumblr.com/

A World a Day: Recycling

Far from the blue bins with the white arrow symbol, far from where smiling celebrities made television spots about saving the world stood a series of wharehouses and sorting yards where the actual work was done.  Bottles -flattened into strips- sat in crumbling heaps the size of a two story buildings.  Each strata of plastic had its own color.  Cans and the various other flavors of scrap metal were sorted into their own piles.  Cardboard and paper fluttered about in the breeze, scavengers and multimillio dollar companies brought it here only when the vagaries of the market decided it was worth the hassel to grind, pulp and reshape.  Pickup trucks and heavily laden shopping carts waited in lines around the block.  When their turn came, men in sweat stained shirts unloaded sinks, ovens, barbeques; anything steel, nickel or tin.  The air above was filled with the ever incessant screech of hungry gulls.  This was where Bill choose to make his living these past ten years.

(I think I'm going to do a world a day for each of my previous jobs.  Which will take me another 11 days if I skip over the ones that are too similar to one another.)

Watch a Self Published Author Self Destruct in the Comments Section!

Well, the comment section of a much better blog anyway.  Link.  I know it's tough to take criticisms but this kind of unprofessional ass-hattery is exactly why it will be another decade before people take self publishing seriously.  Please note: self publishing does not equal Jacqueline Howett.

A World a Day: Spiral Knights

Four levels deep, the Spiral Knight Quint peered down the shaft into the darkness below.  No one in the party knew what would be down there.  Old Wassel claimed he had been to past level seven, but even if that was true the world wheels had turned since and no recollections could be trusted.  And to think, only two days ago Quint had crawled from the wreckage of pod.  Now he was leading parties down into the ceaseless levels below to face whatever lurked there.

Quint glanced back at his fellows, all silently waiting for him to make the call.  If he decided to return to haven, spend some crowns and deposit their minerals well, they would be fine with that.  And if he decided that the elevator should take them even deeper well, they would stay and fight by his side.  No matter what came of it.

All around the party, the mile wide gears clacked.  Steam escaped from the endless vent rows, fogging across glass walls.  The ground vibrated under their feet, in tune with some vast engine chugging along deeper than any Spiral Knight had ever ventured.  A noise like a clock filled the little hallway where Quint and his friends stood.  The ticking felt like a timer, a count down urging Quint to hurry up and make a decision.

The blue eyed spiral knight took readied his pickaxe, ordered the elevator down.  Pulleys flexed, metal whined on metal and the party went one step deeper; one step closer to the core.

Quint had a feeling they would be fighting fiends next.  Or maybe constructs... Didn't matter, long as it wasn't slimes.  He still hadn't cleaned his armor from last time.

(Yeah, I played a couple hours of Spiral Knights on Saturday, and this is what came of it.  In case it isn't obvious, I really liked the game.)

A World a Day: Train

The train passed him through alleys, back lots and endless incarnations of abandoned warehouses conquered by street art that grew like lichen upon anything that stood still.  He watched the endless rows of power lines, abstracted men marching beside the train.  He watched the clouds drift away.  He watched the cycle of commercial residential industrial repeat itself like a wallpaper print.  Soon the horizon would swallow the sun and it would be too dark to see anymore.  But for now, he kept his face turned towards the window and let the journey flow over him.

A World a Day: Convention

The space had a smell unlike anything else.  A hundred thousand infrequently washed bodies rubbing, grinding together as arms reached to take snap shots of booth model dressed up as steampunkcyborgvampire Slave Leia.  Haggling, bitching, laughing voice mingling to something akin to a million bees.

'God,' Thought Thomas. 'I've missed this...'

Hipster Survivalist

I thought of a new... thing: Hipster Survivalist.  I made several examples (with my site name, natch) and the blank original so you can roll your own.   Lemme know what you think.

A World a Day: Mistake

1.

“What’s the situation Marc?”

“Sir, we got a problem.”

Mr. Wooten steeled his fingers and waited.  He had decided long ago that, if he didn’t get the answer he wanted, he would simply remain silent.  He would not degrade himself by demanding explanations.  Especially not from an underling.  Marc knew what his employer wanted and needed to get on with it already.

“Well uh, sir, you have to understand.  We just hired on new staff and you see…”

Wooten cleared his throat.  Decorum mattered certainly, but he did not have all day.

“They violated the integrity of the test sample!”  The employee blurted out as though it was all one word.

Mr. Wooten tapped his phone for intercom with the basement labs.  Screams blared out of the phone receiver.  

Oh.  He hadn't realized Marc meant that test sample.  The executive hung up.  He inhaled, considered his options as his finger hovering over the digits of his speed dial.  Finally, he settled on four.  'Yes.' He thought, "I'm going to need Ms. Red on this one.'

(No Comment)

via Reddit

A World a Day: Tea

There was an art to this, Jacob knew.  Step one, he needed to get the water to true good boil.  Steep the leaves for just the right amount of time.  Enjoy the scent, let the cup warm your hands.  Most importantly savor the ritual.  If only his damn hands would stop shaking.  The teacup clinked against saucer.  Off brown liquid splashed onto his hands, stinging.

‘Calm down Jacob.’ He thought to himself.  ‘It’s over now.’

He sipped his tea and tried to forget.

A World a Day: Stonepunk

Thrag lifted his mighty club and bellowed out a grunt of exhalation.  His rival for clan leadership had not even had the courage to show.  Uggon was no better than a sniveling cur, whimpering for scraps while skirting about the campfire.

The ground began to shake and hundreds of birds launched into the sky from the surrounding forest.  The air filled with the scent of something like animal musk.  Trees fell and a great elephant shaped beast appeared.  But this was no ordinary hairy animal.  The thing was comprised of hundreds of stone pieces fit together into intricate mechanisms.  The rock gears ground together as the pile of delicately shaped, articulated granite components stomped forward.

No ordinary beast, no.  This some kind of...  "Mechamammoth.  How you like it Thrag?"  Said Uggon, face split in a smile.  Thrag swallowed, thinking life as a cur might not be so bad after all …

The next teen sensation...

If only we had listened to what Dumbledore said about dreams...

...then we wouldn't have Twilight.  

All Twilight hate aside, Stephenie Meyer's tale of glitter crossed lovers has every right to exist.  And I probably shouldn't speak ill of it, as I've never read it...  Actually, screw that.  Monsters -even when you're trying to make them sexy- don't sparkle.  I think one of the unique challenges of trying to write in this day and age is not being paralyzed by the reality that you will never ever make as much money from your writing as she made in one year with hers.  You can hate it all you want, you can call it names and make all your stupid jokes: but she made something people respond to in that next to no one else ever will.

While we are on the subject, I think I have one more related image.

Indeed.

Both images via http://fuckyeahrandomstupidity.tumblr.com/ I think.

A World a Day: Idol

The statue was easy to overlook.  Except, on some level, nearly everyone noticed the thing.  Even if they didn't want to.  The idol was maybe three pounds of stone with a mouthful of square teeth and two black pits for eyes.  The holes seemed to follow you everywhere you went; the face ever smiling, ever amused at some private joke that you just didn't get.  Yet.

The idol couldn't move, couldn't talk but every minute of every day he sat above the fireplace watching the Rivers family.  So every day, he waited on the mantle and plotted.  He could be patient.  The time was soon, all he had to do was wait.  And he had all the time in the world.

A World a Day: Rain

Ten thousand drops fell onto the window.  Water drifted into streams and pools on the glass.  Megan watched them fall, breathing and hugging her pillow tight.  She had her issues, bits of emotional debris that seemed to cling to her always.  But the rain fell all the same, as it had fallen on her mother and grandmother and all the mothers without number since the beginning.  And if she imagined the drops washing away all the dirt and grime and grit from her well... Well then tonight she might get some sleep.

She saw until her eyes closed, heard until sleep lay across her like a blanket.

A World a Day: Patialsnoot

Grant hated scraping the Patialsnoot off his scooter.  He really, really hated the dark green lichen that seemed to get everywhere.  He wiped sweat off his brow, bent his back to push his scraper through the mash that accumulated around the handlebars.  He made sure that the scrapings landed in the bucket.  Otherwise, there was always the risk that it would crawl away and attach itself somewhere else.

Since the war, the authorities were forever broadcasting that the biological weapon had been 'neutered.'  That didn't stop the mold from getting everywhere: rotting plastic, gumming up machinery and -if you weren't- choking you from your lungs on up.  At least Ma knew how to cook the stuff.

(Note: My friend made me base this on the made up word 'Patialsnoot.'  She thought it would be some kind of amusing snobbery... but -as I mentioned previously- I am entirely reliant on genre sleight of hand.)

A World a Day: Meta

For a week, the writer had written his 'World a Day' feature.  Every single entry, he worried he had run out of ideas, that what he wrote would be the worst, most gimmicky thing his fingers could possibly vomit onto the internet . Happily and unhappily, he was always wrong.

The trick, he decided, was that he needed to learn to rely on the prose itself... instead of using elements stolen from fast food B-Movies as a crutch.  The sentences needed to gleam, the words themselves had to be enough to seduce, to entrance.  Somehow, he needed to elevate the recycled emotional minutiae of life into something transcendent.  If he wanted to be a writer, he would have stop using genre sleight of hand to distract from a barren patch of soil where talent should be flowering.  And he did want to be a writer, the paid kind.  He had no other options than to grow.

He began to write, hesitant fingers pecking away at the keyboard.  It was agonizing.  It was slow.  But it was honest...

Just then, the window exploded inward.  He shielded his face with his forearm as a thousand glimmering knives of glass shot into the coffee shop. Outside, Battle-Emperor Yugdab -Alien Warlord of the Esnesnon Empire- floated two and half feet above the concrete glowering at the pathetic human with the laptop.  He smiled his multijawed grin; hungry and feral.  

The air seemed to crackle between the two.  

'Oh no.'  The writer thought.  'He's fully powered the Eh-Cilc!'

The alien bellowed. "Worm! Let this be our final battle!"

Summoning all his strength, the writer threw himself at Yugdab.  Only time would tell if he had learned well enough in those months training under Master Rotnem.  He would fight till he could no longer move to revenge his fallen mentor.  Although, in it's own way, this was all for the best.  The writer hadn't really wanted to write about writing anyway. 

The Monkey Doesn't want you to Touch his Dog

Pretty self explanatory really...

A World a Day: Pot of Gold

Jeremy had done it.  The rainbow ended within a couple feet and he could see the large iron pot.  There would be a pot of gold at the end and he would be set for life.  Tired, footsore and more than a little out of his head after so much chasing a prismatic splitting of sunlight, Jeremy slowly -slowly- lifted the lid to see the coins gleaming back at him.

As quickly as it had appeared, his smile evaporated.  This wasn't gold it was... copper?  The hell?  Apparently, not even Leperchauns were immune to inflation.  The economic downturn had been especially harsh to fantasy creatures.

Fashionable Gentlemen of Yesterday had Excellent Priorities...

Via Historic Lols

A World a Day: Bowling

The hardest part was rounding them up.  Which -coincidentally- was also the most dangerous part.  Honestly, the game probably wasn't worth the prep time/risk of death.  But he couldn't argue that it wasn't fun.  And they did have a lot of free time now that none of the televisions worked.

He took aim, and swung his arm just right.  The twelve pound bowling ball managed a near perfect spin to clip the center left zombie in the leg.  It stumbled, fell into the others.  Seven fell immediately and an eight wobbled, swayed and fell in the heap of revenant corpses.  "Ok."  He thought, readying another ball.  "Let's pick up the spare."

Idea Dump

Fiction/Skit Ideas with Two Viable  Product Ideas Tacked on at the End...

A man who makes his living by setting up shacks on random public lots and charging for parking.

A TMZ style 'before and now' expose on dead celebrities... mix in still live celebrities at random.

50 Groups looking to replace M.A.D.D. in the popular imagination (M.A.R.T. Mothers Against Reality Television, M.A.S.P. Mothers Against Softcore Pornography, M.A.A. Mothers Against Acronyms, et al  I have no idea what I could use this for, but I find it hilarious.  As usual, I make jokes about things I find incredibly sad.)

A parody fetish as an alternative to the French Maid - The Pepper Wench, dressed up in a skimpy, speckled black and white skirt outfit, goes about with a pepper grinder saying things like 'OOh, it looks like you need a touch more *beathily* pepper.' and then proceeds to apply it to the gentleman's eyes.

Movie Monsters in Love - a book of Haikus (actually writing this)

SitcomCon - a convention focused on sitcoms

A World a Day: Concrete

When Lucy got out of the airport the jetlag made all the light and activity seem... wrong somehow.  She began to look around, and vertigo threatened to engulf her.  All the signs printed in a language she couldn't understand, the air heavy with unidentifieable 'foreign' spices, all the, the... the everything.  Her lungs began to pump, readying her for a fight or flight that wasn't coming.  She had to relax or this would be a bad one.  She squinted, looked and managed a long, relaxing exhale.  At least the concrete was the same.  You could fly halfway around the world and you could still count on that.

Except, she realized, the sidewalk wasn't the same.  Where she came from, any underfoot surface was poxed with innumerable smears of what had once been gum in ages past.  But on every square inch (centimeter, some anal part of her brain tried to correct) of the ground glistened without a single smudge or stain.  What in had she gotten herself into?

A World a Day: Fantasy

Gerald always knew that someday, somehow he would meet the girl of his dreams.  She would be into comic books, video games and violent horror movies.  In the meantime, he felt no need to do any of that phony bullshit: work out, feign interest in the passions of others or even -you know- talk to representatives of the gender he was supposedly such a secret diamond in the rough sort of catch for. Someday she would come, all he had to do was wait.

Thus, it was no surprise that when Gerald changed, it was not due to some epiphany.  No, Gerald changed because the Del-Riva forced him to.

Literature doesn't like Reality Television

via a friend's semi-secret tumblr

A World a Day: Procrastination

"Son, it's not who he is when everybody's around that defines a man... it's who he is when nobody's around."
Frank thought of those words as he moved the tarp away and stared into Devon's dead eyes.  He didn't want to do this, the ground would be frost hard and Frank felt like his nipples could break off like glass.  But the longer he delayed, the worse it was gonna be.  Still, it probably wouldn't hurt none to go in the cab and warm his hands a bit.

Course, he changed his mind when the state trooper pulled up.

A World a Day: Library

Of the thousand thousand volumes in Master Librarian Vackorey's care, none was more dangerous than the one he held in his hands.  There were books that could summon storms, books that skewed the known laws of this world even books that could bite or sting or whisper dark secrets into your ear.  But this slim little volume -weighing no more than a pound if you weren't counting the chains and locks and all the rest- made Vackorey quake in a way that the other endless stacks of fell bestiaries and dark grimores simply did not.

And he had to entrust it to an apprentice.  An apprentice!  For the index's sake, what was the world coming to? The librarian clucked his tongue and kept walking.  He had a tendency to lose his way in the meandering corners of his own thoughts and when he did so he would often stop mid step.  And now was certainly not the time to dawdle.

A World a Day: Pizzeria

The persistent media glyph in the bottom right hand corner of the translucent sell screen mocked Thomas, as it had been mocking him for the past five months.  When the suits from advernet had visited him six months ago they'd never mentioned that a dancing obscenity would squat in the corner of the display.  In their defense, Thomas was elbow deep in dough when they were yammering.  He might have missed some pertinent details... like how to properly manage the antihack software.  So some punk kid from one of the anonymous forums had wormed an animated obscenity into the system.  They'd even gone so far as to program the thing to scroll out one star reviews of the restaurant every five minutes.  For the twelf time, Thomas wanted to throw up his hands and go back to the old systems of bands taping up promo papers to the window.  And for the twelf time, he thought about the ad revenue percentage he saw inputted into his account every other week.  He couldn't afford a tech to come scrub the thing so he would just have to learn to live with it...

At least they hadn't managed to gain access to the sound system yet.  If the digital troll ever started talking, he probably would go back to photocopied paper.  Ad revenue be damned.

A Word a Day: Red

(In my quest to build an audience and become a better writer, I'm going to try and create a world/story seed a day.  I wrote this while thinking about the color red.)

Tyrone sat on the hood of his car.  He slumped backward, his half drunk bottle of Khajit threatening to slip from his fingers.  One foot dangled near the bumper edge.  As he looked up at the red, noonday sky he wondered if his Bonds-Father was looking up at the same sky... thinking about him.

Someday, Tyrone thought, someday he would ask him.  Someday soon.  But in order to do that, he needed to get back to preparing for the exams.  He took a final swig of the drink and hopped off his car.  He tossed the bottle away and assumed the stance; allowed his mind to assume the proper shape.

As the calm and the fury and the self beyond the self settled upon him, he smiled.  Tyrone knew he would pass the exams this year.

Since I'm Apparently only Posting Captioned Photos that feature the word Bitch...

Here's a pug saying it to a small asian child.  via / follow fuckyeahalbuquerque

Cows love Ludacris

via http://fuckyeahalbuquerque.tumblr.com/

What the hell?

Oh monkey barbie, you're going to haunt my dreams FOREVER.  And now you can haunt my friends' dreams too!