A World a Day: Differentiation

(I wrote this story back when I thought I had a 'writing partner.'  Turns out he belongs to that legion of 'writers' who never quite seem to get around to -you know- actually writing...  The idea was, we would both write a story a story where someone was surrounded by identical instances of him/herself and they would have to become different.  As you can probably tell, our bull sessions were epic.  I love this story because I literally use the ticking clock trope.  Written early 2006 I think.  I'm about 2 more rejections away from giving up on getting this published.)


I looked at me. Me's I guess. I looked at we... us maybe? No, that wasn't right, I was me and they were someones else who looked like me. Exactly like me.  They sat cross legged in a circle around me.  Nine of them, barefoot and dressed in gray sweats.  I looked down to see that I was dressed the same.
I lifted my head, saw that they were all looking up with me. I faked looking down, snapped my face back up. They mirrored my movements exactly.  Did I really have the same puzzled, stupid look on my face?  Probably.

"Puppets." I said, one voice in a choir of ten. Their didin’t even sound like the false-self voice you get from recordings, they were the same voice I heard when I spoke.

"You are not a puppet." said a voice from the no particular direction. I looked left and right and behind me, glimpsed the others doing the same. Nothing existed around me, only a dull white expanse in every direction.  Where was the voice coming from?

"You are all exactly the same. You may do anything. You are given thirty minutes to differentiate yourself, any way you can."  A black plastic quartz wrist watch appeared on my wrist, a thing that would have cost no more than 5.000 in the store.  The screen read 30:00.

(http://www.strugglingwordguy.com/)

A World a Day: The Fly Prayer

(This is the entirety of my prose poem thing 'The Fly Prayer' which is the first story I got 'published' ie, I let someone put it on their website for free.  Good ol' Microhorror.  This began a preoccupation with me writing flash fiction, as it is so much easier to get published.  I noticed I used the word 'alighted'... oh 22 year old John, who did you think you were?  Written in late 2005 I think...) 

The screen blared as I sat and waited for my two quarter ounces of machine-killed, machine-pressed, machine warmed beef. There were wars and rumors of wars. Floods and waves, fires and winds swallowing and gnawing on the timbers and foundations of lives. And I asked why should it be so?

A fly alighted on a red drop of something across the table. Through some facility of the oracle I can’t claim to understand I could see it clearly, alive and up close. It was every bit as monstrous to me as I would have been to it if it could see me beyond its bottle-cap hundred-eye blur. Black-bodied, hairy for grasping to things, but with wings like a clear poem and eyes like oil scum rainbows. But before it vomited all over the piddle of hypothetical tomatoes, corn syrup, and red #29; before it could pour acid and enzymes out the hole below its eyes to transform a little piece of my world into an external tendril of its stomach it paused. It put its little chitinous, hoary, black paws together to rub out a prayer before its meal.

What would a fly pray for? It would not plead its polite thank yous, its soul too small to dream of gratitude. It would not threaten us or think of its kin, some manner of insect jihad to replace and supplant us. No, the flies pray for paradise. A place of bounty. For heavy bellies to spew eggs and the maggots to grow fat and numerous and squirm in wriggling white tides as the setting sun. A land where all the holes and pipes reverse and spew excrement and blood. A world that will rot forever and ever amen.

If they don’t pray with our earnestness, then at least they pray more reliably. What they may lack in sentience they make up in numbers. My burger and fries were brought to me, and I gave thanks as up and down inside me all manner of gland and pore leaked all manner of fluid so I could eat. If this world was the middle path between their heaven and ours, then I should rejoice that we had it so good.

(http://www.strugglingwordguy.com/)

A World a Day: Mortal Song

(Mortal Song is my first novel which -unfortunately- reads like a first novel.  The story came about in scene bursts that I struggled to stitch together, begininng with a fight I envisioned to System of a Down's 'Chop Suey.'  After tenatively starting when I was 19, I got serious and wrote it my junior and senior year.  I feel like I really got to my bloody, don't give a shit high school roots with this... I wrote some seriously messed up stuff in this book.  The consensus is that there is a good story hiding behind some terrible writing.  I'll see about a resurrection after I start querying CHEMO and finish the first draft of Burrowed like Ticks.  I think I wrote this late 2005 maybe, and then rewrote it many many times even though my luckless beta readers probably didn't see that.)

The demon had been having a hell of a week, 'she' hadn't had this much fun in a thousand years. Gilded was something between terrible and beautiful, staying closer to angel form than most of her kin.  Gilded looked almost human, almost female if one ignored certain attributes.  All her curves and proportions were without wrinkle or crease, nipple or navel.  Her skin was white as polished bone: the white of a clinical, sterile death.  Her divisionless eyes were the same color as her wings and shock of long hair: deep bloody red.  Like Exelkgen, she had the mark of a womb with embryonic life and talons etched into her midsection.  It was the mark of her order, and she had carried it with her akways for eight hundred years.  It was these lines across her belly that she traced with her fingers now.  Gilded remembered the day she had pledged to her hierarchy and gained her name.  She smiled, revealing a long line of alternating curving, sharp teeth the same color as her eyes.  Each tooth was shoved into a wedge formed by other teeth.

(http://www.strugglingwordguy.com/)

A World a Day: Code Adam

(I wrote Code Adam in early 2004.  For whatever reason *cough* wanting to be respectable *cough*, in my early college years I felt the need to write 'realistic' or 'literary' fiction.  Yeah, not so much anymore.  I think I can see myself succumbing to my own internal gravity towards horror/violence/science fiction and fantasy in this story.   Because guess what: It's not actually the lady's baby and she's crazy!!!  I wrote this in early 2004, and I still remember the disappointment I felt when my friends were not amazed and insisted on pointing out my innumerable typos.  Philistines.)

Julia looked up and was reaching for one of the bigger boxes on the top shelf, in a cereal box canyon surrounded by thousands of cartoon spokesman eyes, all smiling vacant thick lined smiles. She had to hop a little to reach the box and all the characters and posing sports stars and sensible models on the adult cereals continued to watch. Julia came down, box in hand, and could almost imagine the faces murmuring to each other as though the box she had taken was one of them. One that she was taking away from them. Julia got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. The faces started clamoring on about how this wasn't fair and were talking about what they were going to do about it. She could almost feel their eyes turning to watch her as she turned and face down as she quickly put the box in the little blue shopping basket she carried, they were getting ready for something… Julia looked up. She flinched back startled. Her view the stroller was obscured by a bouncy mass of baby talking golden grey curly hair. The woman turned and came up, though she was still hovering over the stroller.

(http://www.strugglingwordguy.com/)

A World a Day: Absolut

(This was the second story I remember finishing that I tried to get published ie that I thought was pretty good.  The first story concerned an anime esque romp where a couple telekinetics came to a school to collect a emerging talent who was 'just an ordinary high school student until he discovers he has powers!!!  I like that first story better, but I can't find it.  So here's a pointless tale of two college dudez sitting, drinking on the beach.  Big twist: one of them is a homosexual!!!  Oh 19 year old John will you ever get it together?  'A Bottle of Absolut' was written in 2003 I think...)

Written in 2003


The vodka burned its merry way down Jack’s throat.  It formed a fiery little stream which Jack intended to bypass his tongue entirely.  Having successfully downed the shot and placing the shotglass in the sand, Jack shook his head a bit and managed to grimace only a little as he suppressed a cough and a gag.  Ryan glanced at him for a moment, and then went back to looking out over the sea, his thoughts far from the moment.
  
Ryan was six foot tall, he had neat trim brown hair and brown eyes and he wore new blue jeans which were immaculate except for being a little faded… as was the style of the time.  He had a red sweatshirt with the letters F. L. A. U. embroidered on it.  He was smiling just a little.  He sat next to Jack on a well manicured little beach, the name he didn’t know.  Jack looked very stern as he concentrated on the very immediate concern of contemplating the bottle, the neck of which fit so neatly into his hand.  It seemed they had printed the words on it just a tad blurry, well mistakes happen Jack surmised.

Jack was five foot ten, he had unkempt dirty blonde hair (which really wasn’t that dirty, except for a little sand here and there) and he wore Khaki shorts, a brandless grey sweatshirt, and one flip-flop (it’s twin being abandoned and then stolen by the ever treacherous waves).  He was leaning back on his elbows, a pose he used whenever sitting on anything that didn’t have a back.  His eyes followed the lines of his fist clasped around a fifth, the pseudo-word “Absolut” prominently featured and centered, Jack had always liked looking at bottles… as an art student he could appreciate the craft that had gone into shaping them.

(http://www.strugglingwordguy.com/)

A World a Day: _

Jimmy didn't know how long the _ had been there, lurking there.  He didn't know what the _ wanted from _.  But _ like the _ was worse, like _ was eating _ and _ of _.  Soon, _ _ be _ _.

_ _ _ _ a _ _.

______________________________  

(Photo Attribution link)

(www.strugglingwordguy.com is a website that occasionally succumbs to the temptation of attempting experimental writing.)

A World a Day: Island of Dolls

Maria sat in the bow of the small boat, the gentle lapping of the nighttime waves barely moving her body.  Rhythmic as a metronome, the man's oars sloshed into to the water to propel the craft forward.  There was a bump and she felt the scraping of sand as they landed on the shore.  With a prayer to the virgin, the man picked her up.  He stepped onto the beach and began to walk inland.  After fifteen minutes of walking, he reached the shack.  Nails bled brown trails of rust down the weather beaten wood. The man opened the door with a creek.

Twenty sets of eyes watched the moonlit pair standing in the entryway.  The dolls lay on slanting shelves or leaned against the walls.  The man sat Maria down and -without turning his back on the gleeming faces all around him- he backed out into the darkness and ran for the boat.

Maria was left with the other dolls.
 
(There really is an island of the dolls, and it is much creepier than this little attempt to capture the sense of the place.  http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/mexicos-island-of-the-dolls-is-beyond-creepy.html)

Photo Attrubution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/citoyen_du_monde_inc/4551054959/in/photostream/

Thankfully, www.strugglingwordguy.com is a website that is not currently infested with hundreds of terrifying dolls...

Light Paintings

via this flickr stream and reddit

These are my two favorite from the set.  Feels like they are covers for a comic series I want read or a couple of books I want to write...

A World a Day: Navigation

"Dave, honey, do you know where you're going?"

"Yeah, ok."

"This neighborhood doesn't look very familiar."

"I had to swerve to avoid the landmines the 53ers set up.  But I can get us back to the route."

"Just turn on the navigation already!"

"Alright fine!"

Dave pushed the button on the side, smacked at the duct taped corner for good measure.  Sixty seconds passed as machine booted and looked for updates from the nearest jury rigged military satellite.  By the time the device managed to bleat its alert, he had already noticed the spray painted skull insignias.  He fumbled for the shotgun as the GPS said -in that passive, oh so calm voice that always pissed him off- 'Warning.  You are now entering Harvest Clan territory.  Evasive maneuvers suggested.'

I try not to be this way...

via Reddit

A World a Day: Haunted Wood

The trees twisted their way up to the sky.  They spread their thick gnarls of branches into a canopy, spiting the ground out of even the smallest dribble of light.  The signs from the government read "Your life is precious" and "Please reconsider" of course, the signs were all slowly being covered in brown gray lichen.  Justin stomped through the underbrush, making as much noise as he could.  He didn't want to hear the whispers anymore.

As he'd been told to, he kept his eyes looking straight down at the trail, did nothing more than to continue to plod forward.

After four hours of hiking, he reached the circle.  The place was only supposed to be maybe a mile into the forest... but he figured something had turned him around half a dozen times while he had been walking.  Exactly what they had warned him would happen.  But it didn't matter, he was here now.  He tromped forward and sat in the middle of the lifeless center of the woods.  Nothing grew here, and the rocks below seemed to force cold up into him.  He took the three jars from out his pack, placed them around his body.  The sun was almost down.  At least he wouldn't have to wait long.

He did his best not to hear the muffled voices mumbling secrets and warnings from the tree line.  If he started listening to them now, he wouldn't be able to finish this and everything would be for not.  When the sky finally changed from pale red to black blue, they began to arrive.

(note this story is this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aokigahara
plus this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reportedly_haunted_locations_in_the_world#Romania)

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A World a Day: It Only Works Once...

Michelle walked down the street, worrying.  She needed two hundred bucks to make rent.  She began to trace along the marks on her arm, considering selling one of her onsies.  She could make some quick money for one of the more in demand magics... astrology or palm reading maybe.  But someday, she might need them for herself.  If she traded them away now, she would just hate herself later.  Below the star and the hand, she noticed the little glyph of the bumpy head and sighed.  If only she had been diligent enough to get her phrenology certificate when she was back in high school.  She hadn't bothered to master what seemed like a fairly useless skill (most the pseudosciences were) but Skull reading was in huge demand nowadays as verification during corporate interviews.  Of course, there was always a chance that a new mark might appear on her arm, some discredited science or mystical system could be officially added to her inventory of onesies at any time.  But how would she even know how to use it if it did appear?

Not for the first time in her life, she wished that there was still a lottery, like when she was a little girl.  If that were the case, she could have simply touched the clairvoyance glyph and known that week's powerball numbers.  She envied the lucky few who had seized the opportunity when the glyphs first appeared twenty years ago when people didn't understand this stuff.  Of course, the fact that clairvoyance was so common is the whole reason they didn't do lotteries anymore...

Distracted, she almost ran into a pole.  Stepping back, she noticed the flyer. 'Do you have this glyph?' The advertisement showed a picture of the bee tattoo that had appeared on her 9th birthday.  'Join an exciting research study to understand this unknown system and get paid 400 dollars!!!'  Melissa took one of the little detachable paper flaps from the bottom of the flyer.  She would call the 800 number when she got home.  If nothing else, she might get some more information on the unknown glyphs.  More than anything, it sucked having a power you could never use.

A World a Day: Karma

Gavin sipped his premium latte, a luxury he couldn't really afford if he wasn't on Melissa's Karma tab.  He was afraid, afraid that this could all go wrong.  He tapped his foot on the ground, wishing he could quit.  But -he reminded himself- the whole reason he had begun this process of re-branding himself was because he'd grown tried of subsisting on fortified rice and public domain entertainment; living like a one of the innumerable seniors not supported by one of his hip grandkid's dole.  Much as he hated it sometimes, he wanted to be part of the gift economy... the only economy that mattered.  Her advice sounded like madness to him.  But she was the brand consultant... except of course  she would take 10% of his upvotes if this worked and would walk away free and clear if it didn't.

Frigging aye, he should have studied to be brand consultant.

"Isn't there some other way?"  He asked.  "Maybe I can write a short story, or paint some nostalgia charged video game character.  Start building an audience, a fanbase that can support some larger purchases.  That seems a lot safer..."  The consultant scoffed.  "You know how many 'writers' are out there?  How many painters?  How much karma do you think is leftover for a hack like you?"

Gavin had to concede Melissa had a point.  She continued.  "No Gavin it's just like I told you.  The karma network rewards introduction of what they don't have of what's rare to them.  We don't need and hence won't reward someone who is just another artist.  What our too nice world of endless sucking up for upvotes needs... is an asshole, a critic a first class wit that's gonna put all your enemies in their place."

She pushed the folder back over to him in case he wanted to review the figures she had prepared.  But of course he didn't, they'd all looked solid the first time.  "Gavin, I'm going to teach you to be that asshole.  And more importantly, I'm going to teach you to make them love you as you're telling them off."

Gavin gulped, something shark like about Melissa's smile made him even more afraid.

photo attribution

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A World a Day: Knife

Knives are meant to cut.  Some knives are especially suited to slice at meat, meant to loosen blood from it's pools and streams beneath the meat.  And some knives enjoy this sort of work, or more than enjoy their work.  Mack was one such knife.

Potential origins shimmered in their abundance: Perhaps the blacksmith had knicked himself as he'd forged the thing, letting one tiny drop of life fall and hiss off the still glowing metal and thus awakening a hunger in the fresh borne blade.  Maybe some dark deed... some succession of violence had been performed with Mack in the distant past, till now it seemed only natural that more atrocities should be performed.  Could have been that some hungry spirit had been bound to metal with the alphabet of the ether, remaking the entity and the weapon into some new, hungry amalgamation.  Mack didn't know, nor did he care.  All he knew was that he  hungered as he had hungered for as long as he could remember.

Mack could recall every incident, crisp and sensuous.  The way the needle point of him slipped into the musky pit below the merchant's arm, back when his wielder had needed gold four generations ago.  The silk smoothness as he had been drawn slowly, almost gently across the pale throat of the sleeping woman while his wielder suppressed the sobs of jealousy and paranoia.  And on and on and on in the endless other remambrances.  But he had gone too long without satiation, without release.  Every ticking second of the city's central rune dial made the need press that much deeper on Mack, made the need that much more urgent.

The knife overflowed, aching with lust for the taste of flesh and what coursed below and through the flesh.  And that need spilled out of Mack, seeping through his sheath into the thief's thigh.  Other men called the thief Gran, a no-one petty pincher who had stolen Mack from the hedge lord's family crypt two seasons ago.  Gran woke every evening to watch the sunset and prepare himself for the night's work.  But he was growing on edge, it seemed he could hear every clack and hiss of the rune works that kept time for the city of Riverfork.  And every ticking second, more of Mack leaked into Gran.  Every passing moment, the thief came closer to becoming something more; something worse than just another burgleman.

So the knife hungered, the thief twitched to some internalized itch as they both waited for something to break in the warm, humid fogs that filled the city's back alleys each night.

A World a Day: Office Superstore

One summer, he worked for a red office superstore.  They spent his first week trying to fire him.  He had made the mistake during the hiring process of pitting two staples into a bidding war.  The manager who lost the competition bitched to district manager and dm told his other store to lose him.  They made him spend his days -alone and seemingly unobserved- in the locked backroom where no one was supposed to be alone, organizing all the things employees loved to steal.  The dumbed down trance he used to function in retail environments didn't allow him the creativity to consider crime.  So they fired him for being a slow learner.  He had been called many things: stubborn, lazy and pretentious... but no one had ever before or would ever again accuse him of being a slow learner.  This was the first time he had ever been fired and it in no way diminished his ambition to work retail in the competitive field of office supplies.

The next interstitial summer, he went to work with his brother for the blue office supply store.  

Four days a week he came into the store in his light blue, carefully branded collared shirt.  He would nod at the alcoholic 40 something, wave to his brother and his girl before finally settling into his station for the shift.

They paid him to mill about in the ink cul de sac, matching customers to their proper cartridges.  The internet told him the pigment he mongered was priced higher per ounce than gold.  He couldn't never stop acquiring trivia, even if he had finally learned to stop spouting the stuff into any unguarded ear.  He spent most of his largely unsupervised workdays sucking what entertainment he could out the hobbled internet connection.  That is to say, he spent the empty minimum wage hours reading word definitions from dictionary.com  This is a horribly inefficient way to increase your vocabulary... but it does work, instruct, function, facilitate language acquisition, produce results and so forth and so on and etc.

He spent that summer on autopilot, his mind 90 miles south.  He was obsessed with a girl in San Diego, but didn't know when or if he'd get to return.  He'd almost flunked out of school -which is a different story- and hadn't much cared as it was happening.  But now he finally had a reason to return.  He spent his mornings restocking the number HPs 1-146, spent his blue cool cricket song evenings on the phone... longing to be somewhere he wasn't.

A World a Day: Consultant

His fingers ran the checkered silk of his tie around and in the loop.  Pleasant muscle memory guided his hands.  Preparation autopilot was a reminder that -whatever else change- there were certain things you did not lose.  He looked himself up and down in the mirror.  He smiled at the reflection of his conservative gray suit.  He felt good in a sports jacket: camouflaged and armored for commerce.  Business attire is the antithesis of bumwear, of slackerwear.  Of spending the whole day in pajamas.

He had a gig teaching a the administrative staff of a church the differences between Office 03 and Office 2010.  Being ideologically and economically inclined towards free software he had never used the software himself.  That didn't matter.  He was twenty something with powerful googlefu and enough savvy to use hotkeys on a regular basis.  He had researched the subject till he could have spoken for a week.

Other Secrets: This was the first thing he had ever made in powerpoint. His laser pointer was in fact a mouse shaped cat toy he had borrowed from a friend.  In high school he had won metals in forensics, but he only ever cared for or excelled at was improvised speeches.  That's why he hadn't scripted this overmuch.  He did his home work and arranged for the stripped bones of knowledges to be projected against the wall.  That way he could dance around the bullet points without risk of losing his way.

He went over the presentation again in his head.  What he would say.  Rehearsed the subtle, scrubbed down carefully neutered jokes he had managed to slip in.  He took a deep breath.  He was ready.

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A World a Day: Unemployment/Writing

(And now I'm back to talking about myself.  I have this and one more job to add to the world a day series before I can rededicate myself once again to making shit up.)

His curse was that he always got what he really wished for.

You didn't appreciate anything, he decided, until you were deprived of it.  Even the things you hate, the things you loathe, the things you feel are antithetical to your being... sometimes you miss those things most of all.

The afternoon light fought through the slits between the mini-blinds.  He had to keep the sun off his screen.  He took another pull of his cheap El Salvadorian beer, pushed the bowl of sugar cereal remnants into the least cluttered corner of his desk.  He rolled his wrists in small circles before replacing his fingers on his keyboard.

Sometimes, he missed the things he used to define himself against: Order. A schedule to give a framework to his days, give him leisure and labor that didn't blur and slurry together. A corporate super-structure.  Most of all, he missed having an excuse for why he wasn't living the life he wanted.

Each day yawned out in front of him, a shallow abyss.  If he wasn't careful, he could lose himself to the endless constellations of fascinating pixels.  True, a single day would be no great loss; no deep pit to sink into.  But each wasted hour would dig him a little deeper.  He could fall so far in the wallowing dark that he could no longer see the pale stars of his better lights.

At least he always had things to do.  A house to clean.  A dinner to cook.  He had to apply for work every week, and fill out a report about it every other week.  The system was horrible enough to make simply reporting and collecting his check feel like major victory some weeks.  And always, there was writing to be done.  More importantly, he had to make believe that the writing mattered.

Fingers constipated, he took his dog out to piss and listened to the street noise.

Settling back in his chair, he reminded himself of the plan.  He'd keep typing full time till he got another job or unemployment ran out.  And when some new employer claimed the best of his hours then he would keep writing around the margins of the days he traded away.  He'd keep pretending to take himself seriously until he did.  He would keep working and submitting and getting rejected till someone paid him or he died.

That had to be enough.

He took the last swallow of his beer, scanned over the document one last time and hit save.  Before he got up to make himself a sandwich, he opened a new document and wrote half a paragraph.  This one would be about a bunch of dudes in power armor.

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www.strugglingwordguy.com is a great site you should share with your friends.

A World a Day: Trackers

Quincy stared at his precious stacks.  Covers in their endless colors.  The work of thousands of artists, writers and editors all trying to craft knew worlds and stories to catch his attention and a wallet.  Hundreds of conversations with great men, small men and men long dead.

He sighed.  There was no helping it, the trackers would soon be hear.  Quincy uncapped the bottle of brandy, the whiff of the fine amber liquor made made him thirsty for just one more glass.  But there was no time.  He began to splash the spirits on his most treasured possessions, cringing at the wetness that would warp cardboard and cardstock.  He opened his lighter.  He had to ensure he burned every single page.

A World a Day: Wolf

(Note: I still have a couple more jobs to write about to finish my series about jobs I've had, but I've honestly become bored writing about myself.  Please keep in mind that I've never been a wolf.)

The female did not get to feel blood of prey dribbling down the sides of her muzzle every day, but she felt it there often enough to stay strong.  She and her mate were good hunters.  Like all wolves, she was nearly always hungry.  But she never felt weakened by the emptiness in her middle, only invigorated by it.  All was right.

A cold powder fell onto her nose.  She licked her chops, shook the frost from her fut.  She knew the snow wouldn't stick... yet.  But she also knew winter stalked the land the way she stalked elk.  Her pack would need to grow fatter still to weather the long, lean months ahead.

A World a Day: American Bank

The position they hired him into did not exist.  'Assistant Manager Associate' was the Region's way of mollifying the demands of the corporate lords in North Carolina for an exciting new program.  The district settled on using him to plug whatever holes they had: generally, reassigning him at any manager who complained about being short staffed... who needs training anyway?

His first day, no one informed his new branch that he starting; that they were getting a new employee.  He sat at his first Manager's desk for two hours as she called into the downtown offices to confirm that yes, he did in fact work for the bank.  He kept a smile on his face the whole time.  He cycled through six managers in his almost three years.

Microcuts: 'You need to sell a second account as part of every bundle' four months before the 'final warning' for selling too many second accounts, listening to the endless overdraft lies, the final warning for taking eight of his ten sick days in the course of a year etc.

Every day, he worked to keep the fear out of his gut.  Before, if he lost his job he could eat Top Ramen for a month and bounce back.  Before, he was always planning on getting a new job soon anyway.  Before, he was a child.  But now, adult debts were due.  He accepted personal deprivation, but could not abide it touching people he loved.  So he worked.

Every day, they reminded he could be fired for his mistake.  Or a mistake someone else made while he was around.  Every couple months, they gave him another final warning.  His coworkers tried to soothe him, admitting that they all had half a dozen each.

He wasn't perfect.  He made his fair share of errors.  He pushed back at times: refusing to work unpaid, unrecorded overtime.  Questioning policies.  But he tried.  Banker was the first job he agonized over, the first job he pushed through to the other side of misery.  Most his customers and half his managers loved him.  He bonused regularly, ranked high and always passed his audits.

They fired him because his final manager -a woman skilled in covering her ass above all else- thought he had done something he hadn't.  She didn't bother to ask him, she called HR when he was out of the branch opening Checking Accounts for Buramese Refugees at the event he had organized.  When he came in the next day, she asked him if he wanted to quit or be fired.  He opted for the latter.

They fought him, keeping the unemployment  money away.  He worked where he could, cashed out his 401k, learned to bake, to cook and to get by on less.  His manager sat opposite him the day of his Unemployment hearing.  She told the judge how terrible he had been at his job.

He won.

A World a Day: Technical Writer

He endlessly overthought how to dumb down the material.  No matter how simple he made the tutorial, he always worried that the ingenuity of complete fools would overcome his hard wrought idiot proofing.  Still, he had a deadline.  He was paid by the hour, but he didn't want to take advantage of the employer/friend who had subcontracted him into this great paying gig.  So he sat, blinking at the sallow glow of the computer monitor, ignoring the thousand glittering promises of electronic distraction and proof read yet again.

A World a Day: Cafeteria

If one were to be generous, they would call him a mediocre employee of the college cafeteria.  But he was rarely generous, especially when it came to his younger self.  He would say he sucked at his job.

The biggest hurdle was the 8am Tuesday shifts.  He didn't know what devil of imbecility had possessed  him when he agreed to begin work two hours after his graveyard shift at the hotel ended, but it had surely been some archfiend of dumb-fuckery.  More often than not, he would simply call out sick and sink into oblivion on his ambiguously stained, thirty year old University issued mattress.  If he actually showed up for his shift, he would stand behind the pasta counter; bleary eyed and with at least a five second delay for any external stimuli.  Sleep deprived and ravenous, he was prone to sneaking food when he thought no one was looking.  He would not have blamed his Tuesday shift managers for thinking him on elephantine quantities of narcotics.

His other shifts, he functioned somewhere towards the middling range of competent.  Occasionally, his suburban rebellious and his semidigested sense of entitlement got in the way.  He resented the old, glaring man who supervised him when he worked in the dish room, resented the semiregularity of the cafeteria importing half a dozen developmently impaired adults to splash scalding hot water on plates and cups with him.  A lifetime of being told he was smart made him unwilling to associate with Deltas as he was firmly a Beta verging towards Beta+.  His mom chided him for complaining about folding pizza boxes, something he didn't remember doing but fit with who he was when he was at his worst.  He would ignore the scale and load sandwiches with bonus ounces of the 'precious' spit roasted deli meat when he worked the carving station , a tiny prick of 'sticking it to the man'... the spiritual seed of the sort of things he would do years later at the bank.

There were two things he truly disliked about his employment: the smell and his envy.  His nose wrinkled at the food service stink.  The sweet rot smell wafted from the never quite dry anti-fatigue mats on the kitchen floor, from the caked in black drippings trails that ran from the kitchen trash to the dumpster.  He pouted as he watched the other students who didn't have to work, or the peers who made smoothies ten hours a week 'just to have a little extra spending money.'  He resented everyone who didn't have to work just to learn.  It would take years before the undigested entitlement would stop roiling in his gut, years before he finally let that shit pass out of his system.

A World a Day: Home Depot

He worked for Home Depot for a summer and an unconnected fall.  He spent the June through August months pushing the outgoing tide of carts back towards the store, spent the fall as a 'Sales Associate' in buildings materials.  Both times, his primary occupation was muscling heavy, dirty things into vehicles.

One of his few scars came from when a stray corner of chicken wire sliced away three inches of him between his bicep and his elbow, far above the coarse brown gloves he wore.  His days were filled sticky black smell of asphalt, the water of the misters mingling with his sweat and the incessant beeps of the forklifts.  Eventually, tossing bag after bag of concrete didn't tire him anymore.

He noticed the war raging for the soul of the place: the competing philosophies of contractors and housewives.  Women tended to remind him how to lift ('with your legs') as they stood to one side and watched him struggle and grunt.  The men with something to prove would create titanic f*** ups at every opportunity: demanding their truck be loaded with pallets of cement till their axel snapped with a crunch, spilling a dozen sheets of unsecured drywall into the parking lot access road or pulling down an hail of merchandise after clambering up the metal shelving.

For the rest of his working career, his emotional suppression would matter.  He would need to grin even if he felt like spitting, especially if he felt like spitting.  Here though, no one ever told him to smile.  True, six figure consultants and their trickle down of instructional videos tried to engender the same Disney on-stage standard of lies that had conquered every other corner of available retail space in America. But the million dollar initiatives could never quite take hold; the company grunts were too fascinated by the surly/ass scratching/cat calling independence of the construction industry.  So they called a truce and fired anyone who crossed the line got fired: like the crusty Vietnam vet who called a Japanese man a Gook.

For a few months before and after his Freshman year of college he was paid to be nothing more than able bodied teenage meat.  The fact that his mass connected to a brain and a heart was incidental to his paycheck.  He found this liberating.  He spent his lunches hunched over one of the red plastic tables in the burger place, filling the notebook with terrible poetry.  He thought maybe he only had a certain number of words to use each day.  If he didn't have to toss them away at the inanities of his job he could save more of them for the blank page.  He never quite stopped believing that...

Three Pitches to Improve 'Sucker Punch'

I watched Sucker Punch and actually enjoyed it despite the movie's best efforts.  The wannabe Shutter Island/Brazil/Bubblegum action movie was crippled by its desire to tout the awesomeness of its 'message.'  As such, I have developed a list of pitches that could have improved the movie.  Note, they get closer to the spirit of the original as they progress.

The Ever War

When the gates opened, everything changed.  Entire nations, tribes, and cities were scooped up from their worlds to be unceremoniously ported here, to this place known only as 'the nexus.'  And the gates haven't stopped dumping new arrivals for the past three thousand years.  Societies that can best jury rig the disparate sources of power into serviceability triumph over those that fail to adapt to this new world.  An aliance of Diesel Punk Imperial Germany, Oni infested Feudal Japan and an assortment of fantasy creatures led by the mysterious 'Blue' threaten to finally defeat their enemies and seize control of the Nexus and the gates.  If they succeed, they will spread the ever war throughout the multiverse.

Wise Man is an enigmatic figure who -years ago- formed the elite unit 'Sucker Punch' by enlisting, training and leading four cyborg strippers from the 25th century.  The movie begins as he guides the group to enlist their newest member: Baby Doll, a seemingly ordinary girl from the 1960s.  If they can retrieve the gate map, the dragon's breath, the sword of Kaizan and the ever key from Blue and his allies they can finally heal the Nexus and end the Ever War.

Now, Sucker Punch will have to use their cyborg augmentations, high and low tech weaponry and Baby Doll's unknown powers to defeat the seemingly insurmountable forces Blue has set against them.

The Layers

The movie begins with Baby Doll thrown into a padded cell.  Her face is bruised, and her arms are locked painfully behind her by dirty straight jacket.  The door behind her is locked, and darkness fills the screen.

That night, she calls for help.  She hears whispers from the girls in the cells next to hers who try desperately to comfort one another.  Then, a male voice begins to speak.  The wise man informs the girls about the layers, realms they can reach to effect change in their current situation.

From here, the movie is almost identical to the original with one important difference: every layer is real and has effects on the layer above it.  Armies destroyed in the battle scape rearrange Power Dynamics in the brothel.  Power dynamics shifted in the brothel opens locks in the assylum, loosens restraints.

In the end, Baby Doll sacrifices herself to lobotomy to ensure the escape of her four friends.  However, in the last moment before the ice pick enters the flesh below her eye, she lives out a complete, happy life in each of the other layers.

The Stinger

The movie is exactly the same with one, tiny difference.  As the credits roll they minimize to one side of the screen.  Text appears that asks: 'Do you want to see Baby Doll dance?  Well, here you go.'

What follows is thirty seconds of Baby Doll silently dancing like this.

(Note: if you are seeing this on Facebook click here to go to my blog and see the dance in all its glory as  Zuckerberg has banned gifs from his domain to avoid succumbing to myspace aesthetics.  By the by, I loved the soundtrack and have had 'Army of Me' stuck in my head for the last couple days.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyEJxzQM24Q )

  

A World a Day: Night Houseman

He worked the ten pm to six am shift as a night houseman for a 'residence inn.'   The Marriott was a cluster of buildings that looked like apartments but functioned as a hotel.  Every Sunday and Monday night his job was to handle everything that didn't involve the front desk.

The night had its own rhythms and eventually he would learn them all.  Everything that happened shone in his mind, framed by the stars and the chill of the after dark.  He remembered the room full of seven foot tall bearded African men who garnered a noise complaint simply by speaking gently in their everyday bass rumbles, the 5 am deliveries of inadequate woefully tea to the Indian professors and the 10:30 rounds to kick sexually frustrated teenagers out of the bubbling, grope obscuring Jacuzzis.

Every shift, he filled the laundry room with hard rock and DJ blather.  Since he'd never heard of an MP3 player, he stuffed his backpack with his much abused laptop and carted his music around as he replaced towels and emptied the bathroom trash.  He started to write at night, whenever he managed to sit still and stay awake.

When morning came, he'd walk past the blooming waffle buffet back towards his dorm, trudge the grass and asphalt hills in a liminal state.  Deprivation made every bit of experience thrum with meaning that would be lost later, after he got some sleep.  Bird song filled every dawn.  He wondered if they kept singing all day street noise would drown them out the rest of the daylight hours.

Two months after he quit, one of the other security guards that worked his shift would be shot breaking up a party.

A World a Day: Online Education

In San Diego, shopping tends to be outdoor experience.  Case in point, Horton Plaza: a bastion of corporate retail squatting in the downtown of an gently schizophrenic city.  In the middle of the mall, pleasant sun shines down into a multileveled z shape of central courtyards.  Customers enjoy the daylight as they stroll about buying things they don't need.  360 days of the year this arrangement works.  But for five days when the annual rains come, everything is a soggy mess staffed by minimum wagers who don't understand the point of pretending to be ready for commerce when the umbrellaless masses are busy huddling warm at home and filling the interstates with automobile wreckage.

Well, maybe that was projection.  He certainly didn't understand why he was here.

Technically, he was here to sign people up for online college; the half baked dream of a serial entrepreneurial who had dropped out of high school.  This activity not allowed without prior permission of the mall, and he spent the damp, dismal day juking the security guards and trying to keep his stack of flyers and legal pad sign up sheet out of the rain and out of the sight of mall management.  Wet, miserable and selling a product he didn't believe in... he struggled to remember why he was out he he even bothered to be out here.  Then he remembered his wife, swallowed another inch of his pride and walked into the coffee place to proposition a brace of Batistas in the name overpriced GE courses delivered over the internet.

A World a Day: Reception Desk

Engineers sat at their cubicles, tapping away at their CAD software.  They responded to minutiae of code and road standards of which he had only the vaguest awareness.  But he was learning, hoping to turn this temporary assignment into a full time job.  Dressed in casual clothes surrounded by his music and -most importantly- trusted to just get the job done; he was happy.