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Writings

As you can probably gather, I like to write. However, did you know I actually sometimes write stories? Neither did I. Anyway, this is where they go.

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Four: George

Chapter One – George

"Why is it so cold?" George exclaimed. It was the middle of summer yet he found himself for the fifth day in a row, walking home in the chilliest of winds from his job at the deli. At twenty seven years old, he wasn’t sure what had brought him to waste the past five years at such a dead-end job; one which didn’t even let him have the day off at Christmas. Instead, he’d always end up working the noon to 8pm shift, serving those people who forgot to buy more tomato sauce prior to their barbeque, or who didn’t foresee the popularity of the one bottle of soft drink they purchased.
He’d just finished such a shift and was making the long trek to the bus stop. Normally, he’d arrive, and end up waiting 30 minutes for the bus that was due an hour previous. Today though, the buses were on time and George was on the bus straight away. This made him uneasy; change wasn’t exactly something a man like him enjoyed, even a positive change like this. Because the buses were running on schedule, he ended up on bus 112, instead of his usual bus which had the faulty display and only ever displayed “Off Duty”. George took a moment to glance around, hoping he wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone, lest he’d have to make awkward conversation with them about how bad public transport is, or how odd the weather had been this week.
Luckily for him, the whole bus was, for the most part, empty. Towards the back was a scruffy middle-aged man, the sort that others avoid sitting next to for fear the alcohol-saturated air around him would suffocate them. George was that sort of person, so he was glad he’d sat down close to the front. The ride, though as bumpy as it could be, was going to be far less annoying without some irritable drunk yelling about how awesome his hometown is, spitting all over George in the process.
The bus was about to reach a traffic light, when suddenly the bus screeched to a halt, throwing George face first into the back of the seat in front of him. Rubbing his jaw and getting back to his feet, George turned to the bus driver, who was sitting straight up, fixated on something on the road. “What just happened?” George asked, shaking a little from the shock of the bus stopping.
”I think I hit that guy!” The bus driver who as George observed, wore a nametag with the name ‘Brian’ stuck on it, opened the bus doors and jumped up to go outside, “I’m sorry guys, but you need to get off the bus while we sort this out.”
”NO!” Came a shout from the back of the bus, and the drunk man crossed his arms stubbornly, staring straight at the front of the bus.
”Fine, stay inside then!” The bus driver sighed and waved his hand apathetically, “I have to check on the guy on the road.”
The drunk man got to his feet, yelled, “NO!” again, and ran outside waving a half opened bottle of vodka wildly. George shook his head, and joined them outside. By now, a small group of people had congregated to help the person on the road; a teenage boy with ginger hair. There was a large graze on his forearm and he appeared dazed, but was busy reassuring everyone he was fine. George knew he couldn’t do anything to help that everyone else wasn’t already, so he walked over to the sidewalk and have a cigarette.
Now, when it came to smoking, George tried to avoid it wherever possible. However, he always carried a pack on him for when he really needed it. Being he just finished an 8 hour Christmas shift at the deli, he really needed it. The barrage of customers he had to cope with inane questions and abuse over the fact that there was no salad dressing left when they clearly needed it right there and then.
Pulling out his lighter, George went to light his cigarette, only to have it knocked out of his hands by the drunken man from the bus. “YOU CAN’T DO ‘AT! DON’T YOU KNOW ‘AT FIRE IS DANGEROUSH? YOU COULD KILL US ALL!” He yelled as loud as he could at George, his gruff voice making pronouncing ‘that’ an impossible task for him. As the yelling continued with references to bushfires, flammable substances and issues from his hometown, George tried to shift, dodging the alcohol that splashed out of the bottle. Despite his best efforts though, most of it ended up on his shirt.
When the drunk finished his ranting, he paused and looked at George, “Wait, did you take my drink?” He demanded, pointing at the now drenched shirt.
”No, you spilled it on me,” George replied monotonously, the strong liquorice smell from the alcohol getting up his nose, “you were waving it around and it got everywhere.”
”NO! You took my drink! YOU BASTARD!” As his face got red with anger, some passers by pulled the drunk away from George and attempted to calm him down, in the end offering him a whole dollar to move on.
”Are you alright man?” One of them asked George with a worried expression on his face.
George was picking up his lighter from the ground which as his bad luck would have it, had ended up in a puddle of the alcohol which George reckoned must be sambuka or some other other strong cleaning fluid. “Yeah, I’m okay man. Just a little shaken, I’ll be good once I’ve had a smoke.”
George wiped the lighter on his shirt, and flicked it alight. Raising it to his lips, he lit a cigarette, taking a long drag. Out of nowhere, just as he was ready to take the lighter away from his lips, he jerked forward, a hit to his back knocking him.
”Hey guy, turns out he’s okay. I’m giving him a lift to his house, bu-” The bus driver didn’t have time to finish, as the hard pat on the back made George slip, and seconds later, he was engulfed in flames. George started jumping up and down screaming, hoping to god someone would help him. He fell to the ground in pain, still screaming as loud as his lung would let him. George could feel people trying to put him out, but the pain was too excruciating and this was little comfort for him; all that mattered was the burning. It hurt beyond recognition, and he wasn’t sure if it would ever stop; that he would never be able to stop screaming. He kept going as he felt his energy draining, until everything faded to  black, and he finally stopped.

An idea

It’s been awhile since I wrote anything that really belonged in the Writings section, and sadly this still doesn’t count.

I’m writing this because I want to bounce an idea off of you. Yes you; you’re reading this aren’t you? I have an idea of a story to write. I was going to write it for NaNoWriMo, but time hasn’t been on my side for it. So instead I was thinking of writing it slowly, and posting it bit by bit online.
The trick with the story, is in it’s current form (which still needs a little refining), it doesn’t have an ending. As it is right now, the story is a continuous series of shorter stories, all joined by the same thing. As such, it goes indefinitely. I like that idea, and with a little refining I will be making it.

I was wondering, as you’re reading this, what are your thoughts on the matter? I’d like to know.

NaNoWriMo

It’s almost that time of year again.

For those that don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. From November 1st to the 30th, the objective is to write a whole 50,000 word novel. No editting or anything like that, just writing.
Why? To get creative juices flowing. And I know a few people who have been planning and writing novels for years, and being a complete asshole I feel the need to belittle their work by doing this.

Last year I attempted it for the first time with a zombie story (of course). I’d worked it out that I’d need to clear roughly 1700 words a day to reach the deadline for the month, and a little extra. I was way ahead by the end of the second week when disaster happened. Scene: I’m at my laptop, fresh cup of coffee next to it, and finishing a DVD. When it finishes I decide to grab another to use as background noise while I type away. My bed is parallel to my desk, and my DVDs on the other side, so I lay across it to reach them. After a couple moments deliberation I settled on a movie, and flipped onto my back. That’s when I heard the ominous shut down noise of the computer and leapt up. The entire cup of coffee had fallen and poured over the laptop, killing it. No more novel, no more work, and a lot of coffee everywhere. It was a terrifying day for me.

After a few days mourning, I sat on a rusty old desktop from probably five years ago, and tried to start another novel. In the few days I had left before the end of NaNoWriMo, I managed to write 11,000 words of utter nothingness. Of course, that novel never got finished. All that’s left of it is the blurb, which I posted to DeviantArt in case anyone ever wants to see it.

This year I plan to actually finish the 50,000 words, and maybe even finish the novel itself. To be able to say I wrote a whole novel is nothing short of fantastic in my mind. As a plus, some years the organizers have a prize for winners. Last year every winner got a single copy of their novel published for personal ownership. Even without the prize though, it’s a fun even to participate in, provided you have the time.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo as well, add me as a Writing Buddy or something, because I’m awesome.

Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins

So I posted my story piece by piece over the past week, and as I typed it up from what I wrote I realized, I was a really bad writer. I swapped from past tense to present tense, flipped on character identities, and couldn’t compile sentences correctly. Thinking about it, I still can’t. But be that as it may I believe I’ve gotten better at writing. I’ll leave that judgement for yourself.
Reading the story as I typed it up, I loved the minor and major references to inside jokes (I did edit a couple out, for example the fat woman and man had the names of real people, but I omitted them in the name of making sense) and while the story was fracture and incomplete I did thoroughly enjoy it.
As for the extremely subtle open ended nature of the end of the story, I’d explained that I did plan to write sequels of the stories, and who knows, I might. But for now, I reckon I’ll leave such sleeping dogs lie.

Here’s the chronological listing of the story’s posts:

• I want to tell a story (Introduction)
• Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 1)
• Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 2)
• Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 3)
• Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 4)
• Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 5)

Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 5)

Loochaquableycharbingbing lucelpiorkajaflor quack quak quaserfickleshichegurulee quing cheklepil.
Ok, I’m back. For those that didn’t understand what he just said, it was something along the lines of “Dead pies littered the streets of the town who’s name I still can’t remember, but he still hadn’t defeated their leader, the microwave accident.”

Holding his butterfly net defensively, Morton watched as the accident who we will name Lucy, approached.
Ripping out it’s teddy bear, Lucy launched himself at Morton, but Morton quickly dodged. After several failed attacks, Lucy started to become frustrated. He threw his arm back, and with an almighty swing, launched the teddy bear at Morton, but once again Morton moved around it with ease. “Soochyvartion budater!” This is what Morton said, roughly translated “Your attempts are futile, I will end your evil now!”
While he said this, the teddy was still sailing through town, and flew into a restaurant. Not just any restaurant mind you, but the McDonalds Family Restaurant. It flew in there and his something, or someone in this case. It hit a massive guy, who was busy filling up on double quarter pounders, fries and chocolate thick shakes.
Now when he was hit by the bear, he didn’t even notice and just continued stuffing his face. But it had a ricochet effect, sending the back back in the direction of Lucy at 60km/h at an upward angle of 10° and a horizontal angle of 3°. What does this mean? Absolutely nothing except that it hurt when it hit Morton in the back of the head!
With Morton now unconscious it looked as though Lucy would win and that we would be doomed. Stepping over a trolley boy who was having an epileptic seizure, he moved in to the kill. Pulling a series of sharpened swizzle sticks from it’s chest, Lucy dove, weapon pointed down, to deliver the final blow. But something stopped him. It was an empty coke bottle that was possessed by the ghost of Jay Leno. This annoyed Lucy, who was just about to knock it out of the way when he was hit in the guy with a paint ball. Wherever the gut is.
Now a little history on paint growers. Paint growing is a gardening sport. Plant a paint seed, water it, watch it grow, then pick the ripened paintballs. Now the plant can grow up to 1.25 metres high on average, with the record being 1.56 metres (currently held by Mark Whitcomb [he was my maths teacher who gained notoriety among my friends when he found me not doing work and asked me what it was like to watch paint grow, mixing up “grass grow” and “paint dry”. Hilarity]), and the balls are generally 12cm in diameter. So when one is thrown and hits you, it hurts!
So the paintballs rained down into Lucy, as Tom (the paint grower) continued to shoot them at it [anyone notice that I wrote Lucy as both a “he” and an “it” at various times? CONTINUITY PEOPLE.], using a gun made from bark chips, rice bubbles and an assortment of crayons and paddle pop sticks.
Lucy was knocked to the ground, and Morton had gained consciousness again [notice how everything is starting to fall into place? Almost as if the writer were trying to end the story as effortlessly as possible…]. So picking up his butterfly net, he killed Lucy in a way that would never be shown in a children’s picture book [and therefore wouldn’t have to be explained in detail].
Ok I’m sorry, I lied. Lucy did not die from something involving vacuum cleaner attachments and a sausage dog. But hey, it sounded funny.
So the town as saved. Since Jay Leno, Morton, and the marshmallow were foreigners, they didn’t stay for the inevitable party that was held. We were safe once again…

But for how long? [obligatory open ended sentence]

Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 4)

This we can be sure. In one hand, the creature held a crude guitar made from a sorbent tissue box and rubber bands, and in the other he held a massive butterfly net. It was…the hippy version of the Easter Bunny! Yes, it took me over half a page to say, but there you go. Now the penguin, after putting his tuba away, started speaking to the rabbit who we will name ‘Morton’. Now, I’m not fluent in Jibberish, but I believe their conversation went something like this:
”Heya Morton, how’s things?”
”Good, and you?”
”I feel like I am half a dozen poppy seeds hanging from a peanut butter sandwich tree.”
”Look, a possum driving a bowling ball to Octopus school!”
”Ya know, I went to that school, they serve excellent pancakes…”
“Hey, why’d you call on me anyway?”
”Wah? Oh yeah, pies are attacking our village and we need you to stop them.”
Ok. What sort of pies? Meat?”
”Vegetarian.”
”YECH! You mean pasties?”
”Hell no! They’ve been extinct since next week. These are vegetarian pies led by an evil microwave accident.”
”Ok, I’ll try and stop them.”
”Thanks Morton. Will you go out with me?”
”I think not. I have too many problems. I’m already in two relationships, one with my left hand and the other with the right.”
”Well they don’t need to kno-“
”SHHH! My feet are listening in on this conversation.”
”Sorry, just go fight.”
”I LIKE CHEESE!!!”
Of course, all we could hear was “Scoobachuskeebalalabuchiraspull,” and similar. Hey, that sounds a bit like John Paul II, doesn’t it? Anyway, I just realized something about this story; not many creatures, human and chicken alike go to the bathroom. I thought I might clear this up before continuing. The secret is we wear nappies made from chewed up newspaper and recycled toilet paper. It’s highly absorbent, and only has to be changed every so often. Yes I know it sounds uncomfortable but it’s necessary. If one of the characters disappear for a page or two they’re probably changing the nappy.
Now as I, the paint grower, the penguin, chickens, undercooked muffin, few villagers and a little ten foot tall French-German marshmallow called Fifi who speaks English with a Puerto Rican accent, spoken with a Chekeslovakian accent, who also likes polka music, looked towards the village and the stampeding hippy. Running in through the gap created by the fat woman, the Easter Bunny quickly dispatched the pies, much to his disgust. Now, I must go change my nappy  so the penguin will take over for a little bit.

Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 3)

A shadow was cast across the town; across the valley and beyond. It seemed some villagers had actually escaped. They got to the top of the hill and prepared their fiercest weapon; the largest person in the town. The villagers around her aimed, then gave an almighty push, sending her rolling towards the town and the evil pies. She rolled at such great speeds that she smashed through the village wall as though it were an extremely thin piece of bread cut by an extra thin knife that is stainless steel, wielded by a robot baker who has microscopic vision as such he can cut a one nanometre thick slice of bread accurately. Speaking of which, I always wonder if Helgas Bread is made by robots. I once found a microchip in my sandwich, which explains why I think this. Anyway, she rolled through the wall, into the midst of the battle.
Many pies were squashed, in the end resembling that of the contents of my toilet after a big party. Although she took out many, she didn’t kill them all. Many shielded themselves in the two places a fat woman would never roll to; Subway and Jenny Craig.
Then, something even sillier happened, something so silly it hurts me to think about it. If you do not think you can last, please stop reading. For those that choose to continue reading, you have been warned.

Wait a second while I turn on my suspense music CD…wait, I forgot you won’t be able to hear it. I guess I’ll have to attempt to write it then. Here goes…dum dum DUM! Yes that looks about right.

Anyway, the silliest thing yet. The penguin next to me pulled out a miniature tuba, about fifty centimetres high, and made an attempt to play it, but all that came out was a noise that vaguely resembled someone relieving themselves in a pair of jeans. This then caused small tremors, as something furry and white ran towards us at a speed even faster than the rolling woman.
When the creature got to us, it stopped and let us see what it looked like, and what it was. Black dreadlocks, each with a  plastic flower on the end. Two long ears protruded from within the clump of hair, each with a  number of piercings. A pair of purple tinted sunglasses hid his stoned expression as he took a long drag from his cigarette. He wore a denim vest over a white long sleeved shirt, which hade messages such as “Make love not war,” “Free the loonies!” and “Fish are shoes, not food.”
Of course, these sayings could not be seen behind the massive peace sign necklace, which was made of tin foil and held together with blue tack. His pants were quite a sight to behold; incredibly bright fluro pink parachute pants. These weren’t your normal parachute pants either, they were actually made from a stolen parachute. Somewhere in the world, someone is skydiving, then moving to pull the ripcord, and out will fly a pair of cheese coloured jeans.

Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 2)

Then just when you thought things could not get sillier, someone burped and a penguin fell out of his shoe. Do not ask me how it got there, or why the shoe was on his head, but this set the pies off. For a few seconds all that could be heard was a toilet water-curdling screech, which meant “charge!”

Please turn tape to side B…

The villagers readied their Dicks to meat pies head on (get it? meat pies?) [GOD I WAS HILARIOUS IN YEAR NINE]. Many stood their ground, smacking the pies over and over with their dicks, while others ran inside to grab forks. Of course, being the coward I am, I hid in an corner and dreamed of wild mice that ate parmesan cheese made from the souls of little children. This dream reminded me of out children. I remember that they were in child car, and hoped to god that their carer Michael Jackson, had gotten them to safety. I remember how once, Mr Jackson slept with a heap of kids. No, not children, kids as in goats. He’s very ‘into’ animals.
Anyway, no one stood much of a chance against the army. When the remaining villagers realised their dicks were useless, they tried to use new tactics. One tried eating them, but accidently ingested a poison gland. This caused him to trip out, chase imaginary butterflies, then eventually run into a tree and get knocked unconscious.
Things were becoming hopeless. People started to look for means of escape. Oh my god, I’ve reached paged four [obviously the handwritten version], who would’ve guessed I could stretch a story this far? Especially one that resembles the gunk on the bottom of my shoes, after its put through a mulcher, lawn mower, digested by a dozen cats, Razy’s mum, then lit on fire by rubbing two Chihuahuas together. I mean c’mon, pies? Penguins? Get real. Oh, I guess you want to continue. I don’t see why, but okay.
Some locked themselves in their houses, but were killed anyway because they left their windows open. Others sought refuge with the village elder, John Paul II. Of course, that was useless, as the only audible sounds from the elder were “rer-rer-rer,” “erg,” and, “argh,” due to his throat disorder.
The few that weren’t fighting or doing what I stated above, were attempting to evacuate the town. I was one of them, and as we escaped we had to defend ourselves with whatever we had at hand. I picked up a penguin and used him like a sword. It worked! Some used fish, wood, chickens, and their dicks, but we could only hold them back so long. In  the end only me, the penguin, a few battered chickens, the village paint grower, and an undercooked muffin managed to get to safety.
As we viewed the terror that engulfed the town, something happened. This something that happened, happened so somethingly that to continue talking about how this something happened would be pointless. But since the whole story is in fact pointless, I will tell you of the something that happened.

Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins (Page 1)

All was as should be in the town of a name I am too stoned to remember. Children played with their pet chickens on the snow covered footpaths, wearing shorts as it was a forty degree day. Parents sat in the kitchen sipping hot cups of mustard pudding and reading the local newspaper called the Decipherer, but called the Dick for short. Life was good, that was, before the pies attacked.
They marched over the hill, armed with their poison-tipped teeth and hunger for blood. As the villagers looked, it became apparent that these weren’t your ordinary three-bucks-with-sauce meat pies, but something much more dangerous; vegetarian pies. Oh yes, as this discovery came into each villagers mind, they thought of the horrible peas, corn, cauliflower, and slight traces of meat that filled the disgusting creatures. For those that did not realise, the pies had a leader… T’was not pie, chicken, or eskimo, but a hideous microwave accident gone wrong.
Later on, upon it’s death, I got a good look at it. Part cheap-sliced cheese, part toast, part egg white, and a bit of melted plastic, the creature was obviously someone’s breakfast. My guess was that the creator had put it in a 240 volt microwave oven on high for one minute too long, causing it to fuse and form this creature of pure evil. Too disgusting to eat and too tasty to give to his mother in law, it was cast out into the garbage forever, journeying around being known as ‘pre-chewed crap’.
It was this sad life that drove it to a life of killing. Watching it during the battle, I saw what I thought was a leg of ham as it’s weapon of choice. When I got to look closely I found it was actually a pink and green teddy bear which appeared to be made from breath mints and half cooked pancakes. You know I had pancakes breakfast yesterday, with maple syrup and ice cream. It was really nice and…oh sorry, back on with the story then.
So there they were, hundreds of then, waiting on that hill. Mostly soldiers, but a few medics were spread out, just in case. I discovered afterwards that each medic was carrying a tub of pastry and some sachets of sauce plasma. What is sauce plasma you ask? It’s a combination of tomato, gravy, barbecue, soy, mint, apple, and worchestorshire sauce that will replicate any pie’s ‘blood type’. The villagers, holding their rolled up Dicks, stood waiting for the inevitable attack.
Moment, minutes, even a car whose owner forgot to apply the handbrake on, rolled by, but still no attack. It appeared as though the army of gas station meals were waiting for something; but what?

I want to tell a story

Rubenerd, I hope the picture below proves it did happen.

A document from my high school life constantly finds it’s way back into my possession, and I just encountered it tonight after a brief period away.

In what I believe was Year 9, our English teacher gave us a creative writing project with virtually no barriers. I took this as a chance to go rampant. I did no planning, no thinking, nothing you’re really meant to do in relation to school work (but then again, who among us can say they ever did?); I just wrote.

What came out of it was 11 hand written pages encompassing all the retardation I had contained inside my thick skull at the time; appropriately titled “Meaningless Crap: The Shit Begins”. The story got me an A for that assignment, and I’ve since spread it around a few places. If you look on the interwebs, you might find it somewhere on a random blog I’ve forgotten about, or shared on a forum. However, I find this as adequate posting material for this blog. So I plan to, day by day, post a page from this thing. A page in my writing back then isn’t much, especially when you scrunch up the page (you can squish this paper real small to the point it could probably fit up your nose…though I don’t know why you’d want to put it up there.), so it’s not going to be too big a strain on your concentration.

As an extra bit of trivia, the story was called “The Shit Begins”, because I wanted to do two sequels, just so the third story could be called “The Shit Hits The Fan”. I have the beginning of the second story “Meaningless Crap II: The Shit Continues” somewhere, which I do mean to finish one day. Who knows.