something i can't remember about zero

Being for the Benefit of Ms. Kite 2

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:27:18 GMT

Also at her request, for ease of reference.

Title: The Up Side of Sex

Fandom: Dexter (book or show, it’s a little influenced by each)
Characters: Dexter/Rita
Word Count: 1047 words

Spoilers: Just a few early episodes of season 1, maybe.
Rating: Let’s say R just to be safe, but probably more PG.
Author's Notes: Takes place somewhere in the mid to latter part of season one, I suppose. I have to give credit to </b></a>for doing something similar and giving me the idea for this.

She arcs her back slightly and I know it’s time.

The last half an hour of gentle, careful touches and a slow progression of whispers and moans have gotten her ready. She’s laying with her neck against my arm and giving me a look of expectation I’d usually find easy to deal with.

Easy to deal with, except that I know what she wants. I’m tempted to startle her with a sudden movement, or grab her firmly by the shoulders and push her down, pressing her into the mattress. To kiss her hard and rough, jamming my tongue in her mouth. She still remembers her ex-husband, and if I did that, I wouldn’t be asked to do this for at least a week. Maybe two.

But I don’t want to scare her right now, and I’d rather save that for when I really need to avoid this. Some distant part of me enjoys the taste of her skin, the feel of her body. And even if I didn’t, part of my perfect disguise is a healthy sex drive. So I move slowly, pealing her clothes off like wet newspaper, a careful inch at a time. Soon, she’s almost naked with a shy hand making a half-hearted attempt to cover her breasts in a gesture that would probably look endearing and modest to a flesh-and-blood human being.

I could pull her hand away right now, and push my face into her breasts, licking and biting, and the night would be over. Half an hour of silent, ignorable tension, then sleep. But I don’t. Instead, I lean down and begin kissing her neck again, along the tendon where she’s sensitive. I’m careful to lay on my stomach next to her, and hold her nearest hand when I can reach. She’s less likely then to reach inside my pants and discover how very little this all does for me. I still don’t know how to ease her when she’s feeling insecure.

I kiss her shoulders, and pet her hair, and do all the other things I’ve learned that don’t remind her of being raped. My list is extensive, and very effective. She barely even blinks back tears when I’m on my game.

I pull my shirt off and stare blankly at her. I fake a quiet grunt- I know she’ll read into this the lust I can’t feel or understand in any direct way, and as I slide my hands down her body, I close my eyes and take in a breath. I enjoy how she smells; her perfume is soft and clean, like cold air.

I pause and rub my face into her stomach. She thinks I’m overwhelmed, or savoring her skin, and, in truth, that’s not entirely untrue. But Dexter’s mind is somewhere quiet and unexplainable, somewhere Diligent and Dutiful Dexter found to get himself ready. Some thoughtless, warm void that’s a mix of first touches and unfathomable half-urges. The panic of the first unexpected time Rita slid her hand under my waistband. The strange, foreign urge to grab her vulva the night of the first Ice Truck Killing. These thoughts flow over me, and by the time I’ve curled my fingers under the fabric of her underwear and began pulling them off her, I’m ready.

Condoms help. A lot. Not only does it ensure I won’t have to explain any fluids I fail to produce by the end, but there’s something comforting and antiseptic in the barrier between us. Not that I mind touching her, but the diminished sensation makes it easier to concentrate. And, like the feeling of latex gloves when I’m working, it brings me into focus on the task at hand. A play-acting lover’s uniform.

I stare, wide-eyed, and moan as I enter her, and she stares back, insinuating the vulnerable soul she imagines behind my eyes. I move quickly, to make her close her eyes. It’s a careful balance, keeping her eyes shut enough of the time that she doesn’t notice any flaws in my performance, any tell-tale lack of overplayed affect, but not moving so fast or hard as to ruin the whole effort and leave her shaking or crying. This would be so much easier if Paul hadn’t ruined doggy style for her.

I wonder sometimes how much of what everyone else does in bed is as artificial as my performance. The moaning, screaming, swearing, and thrashing. I suppose there must be something I don’t understand deeply hidden in the ritual. After all, sex has so often given me away, broken my carefully crafted disguise.

She pulls her nails across my lower back and I think of when we started sleeping together. I’d considered confessing to Rita some sort of childhood trauma with a clergy member or trusted family friend. Something I could use as a cover for when she eventually realized that something was wrong in bed- an easy way to explain when Dexter couldn’t find that warm, quiet somewhere. But Harry Morgan gave his children, even the synthetic one, better than that. Besides, a troubled childhood is a red flag, not a disguise. So instead I watch her face, and listen to her breath; it’s almost as good.

Like I said, the condoms are good for hiding the lack of evidence. When I do finish, I don’t think it’s what everyone else experiences. This can’t be what people ruin careers, marriages, and lives for: a dizzy, shaking sensation and a jerky feeling in my dick. It’s kind of like spitting, and kind of like fainting. Mostly, it’s a cough. Rita enjoys it, and she expects so little afterwards that a practiced arm around her is all the acting necessary.

She falls asleep, and I watch her for a while. I wonder if she questions how rarely I initiate things, and I try futilely to calculate how often I should just to keep her at ease. I don’t mind doing this for her, even if it’s more work than bringing waffles or an early morning bear claw. Not everything is about satisfaction. In fact, for Deliberate and Distant Dexter, only one thing is about release, and neither Rita nor sex is a part of that world.

All in all, sex isn’t special, but it lets me get away with murder.

Being for the Benefit of Ms. Kite

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:59:01 GMT

As per Ms. J's request, I'm posting this here.

There’s Never Enough Math

One plus one equals two, Reid thinks. It’s always 1+1=2 on these cases, or any case. Everything he’s learned since then, since he could barely form single words but he noticed the way the cheerios his mother would put in a cup for him group and add up into numbers, even before he had words for those numbers, all of that has been 1+1. Advanced calculus, quantum physics, and profiling. It’s all just math with fuzzy numbers, making you wonder if what you’re seeing is a one or a seven.

The difference between 1+1, 7+1, 1+7, and 7+7 is still two or eight or fourteen, depending on which is which. Fifty percent chance the answer is eight, with a quarter going to either two or fourteen. Add in a fuzzy plus symbol that could be multiplication’s “x” and you have 1x1, 7x1, 1x7, and 7x7. One, seven, seven, and forty-nine. But that plus sign could as easily be a divided-by “ ÷ ” sign. One, seven, 0.142857 (more accurately preserved with the fraction 1/7 for later formulation), or one again.

One, one, one, two, seven, seven, eight, eight, fourteen, forty-nine, and the irrational 1/7. Easy, simple. Smart odds are on one and seven, with a safety on eight. The rest are Just In Case. Easy, simple, smart except for one thing: is it more likely that it’s really a plus? Is it more likely it’s a “÷” than an “x?” How much more? A 68% chance of it being a + with a 22% of a ÷ and a 9% of an x and a 1% chance of something else, maybe an unlikely -? Crunch those numbers, fine. Add in how likely it’s either 1+1 or 7+7, based on both ambiguous numbers being the same.

But what if the few studies done on visual perception of mathematical symbols are wrong, or flawed, or sloppily conducted? What percentage chance of that? Does he use the mathematical mean of errors in mathematics studies, or in perceptional sciences studies? And what about the individual publisher of those studies?

And what about handwriting analysis? How do those figures factor to a world where so many people use asterisks and midline dots to denote multiplication? It all becomes complicated so easily. What percentage of people use a midline dot? Percentages on percentages. Conditional averages based on unreliable information. There’s not enough time to write down all the numbers.

Reid shakes his head confused, because he hasn’t read enough. He doesn’t know enough. He never does.

But still, the smart choice is on one or seven, so he knocks on El’s door, cautious of the eight.

Wed, 10 May 2006 07:56:42 GMT

New story up here. I'm not sure if technically it counts as rps, since it's me getting slashy with food, but there's sausage involved.

Well, sausage patties.

Also, I posted something at diaryland here. I'm probably going to be posting more regularly there. I don't know if I'll post stuff both here and there- seems unnecessary.

mic

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 01:05:17 GMT

I posted something here.

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 23:41:02 GMT

Snape: hi
t_riddle420: what's up?
Snape: aren't you ever going to change your screen name?
Snape: not much, giving potter dentention
t_riddle420: yeha i keep meaning to you know? but i just don't want to deal with redoing my contacts list, esp all those people i added back in school, don't talk to, but you never know right?
t_riddle420: potter's still alive? :(
Snape: nice horcrux, btw.

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 17:54:58 GMT

Jane's birthday present, which she prodded me to post. It's a Harry Potter fic. No slash (sorry miss).

No Surprises

Young minds, so eager for knowledge. Yearning to absorb, like sponges, the vast secrets of magic. Each year they come, eyes bright, hearts aflutter. Many of them have never even heard of the wonderful world of magic before!

“Please,” Snape muttered, tossing the Hogwarts Professor Orientation Manual back into the “useless” drawer of his desk. The drawer was overflowing.

“I’m sorry, sir?” came a familiar, if unwelcome, voice. Potter.

Snape looked up to see Hermione Granger and one of the Weasley brood, Ron, all standing around one of the desks. Had they been here since class ended?

“Students aren’t to loiter in the classrooms after class,” Snape said crossly. “Give points from Gryffindor.”

“But Sir,” Hermione began. Insufferable git. “For EACH of you, Miss Granger. Now leave.” The three left promptly, without a word.

Snape loathed Hermione. And Potter. And the Weasleys. All for their own reasons, but in the end, all for pretty much the same reason- Snape saw them for what they were.

Snape sat back in his chair, looking over the desks in his dank classroom. On an impulse, he opened the drawer he’d just closed, and pulled out the orientation manual again. Snape flipped open to the introduction- it’d been years since he’d looked at the book.

Think of each student as a seed, a lump of clay, to be nurtured and molded by your instruction.

Snape rolled his eyes and paused to consider how many alchemical compounds in this room alone could reduce plant matter to clay. “Three, without heating,” he said, a bit louder than he’d intended.

“Three, Sir?” came another voice. Snape looked up sharply, and saw Draco Malfoy. He liked Malfoy, well, as much as he liked any of his students.

“What is it, Mister Malfoy?” Snape said in as pleasant a voice as he could manage.

“I heard Potter, Granger, and that Weasley talking about sneaking out tonight,” Draco said, smiling. “I thought you should know.”

“Thank you,” Snape said.

“Are you-” Draco began.

“THAT will be all, Mister Malfoy.” Snape liked Malfoy, but wasn’t about to accept questions. “You should be moving along, yes?”

“Yes, Sir.” Draco left.

Snape’s eyes turned back to his book. Seeds. Snape knew the truth. Children, the “young people” other professors went on about, weren’t seeds. They had no potential. The course of people’s lives, almost without fail, were as predictable as the chemistry of alchemical processes. Few surprises- the course was set by early puberty, at the latest.

Take Weasley. He’d spend his time at Hogwarts clinging pitifully to Potter, subsisting like a dog off Potter’s leftovers. He would dwell each day under the unspoken dread that his dear friend Harry would realize how much better he could do than this bottom-feeder, this lamprey. Weasley would graduate with mid to low marks, and get a job much like his father’s. He would breed, probably, and send another generation of dim-witted underachievers into the already crowded world of wizardry.

All this spread out before Snape’s mind’s eye with no more effort than it took to remember the formula for the Draught of Living Death (wormwood and asphodel). Certainly, the small events would be up to chance, but the only major question left in the young boys life was this: would he be expelled? If so, then rather than mediocrity, Weasley would dwell in useless poverty. Tut tut.

Ah, but Malfoy. Malfoy was a smug little prat. Flatterer. Fortunately, Malfoy had the cleverness and talent to one day grow into his pride, to become worthy of it. He had little more room for change, for deviation that any other student at this school, but for him, that was a merit.

Snape headed to his quarters that night. He took out at a bottle, filled with his own personal concoction. Twenty different herbs, five minerals, two incantations (to give it the exact right proportions- impossible with a scale) and three heating phases. He took a sip- it tasted of peppermint and garlic.

His tongue immediately felt heavy and thick. The potion had a touch, just a touch, of swelling solution in it. No one but a true potions master would probably be able to notice the difference.

Snape took another drink, and open a canister filled with parchment scrolls. Student homework to be graded. He rolled open the first one. Neville Longbottom. Useless squib with a mediocre mind. Snape scanned down his paper, already knowing the laundry list of obvious conclusions and unimaginative ideas Longbottom had strewn unartfully about the parchment.

Snape took another drink and muttered, “So this is what Hogwarts has come to.” He lifted his quill and dragged it across the assignment, writing a large “D” at the top. At the bottom, he wrote, “Work on your penmanship Longbottom- may as well focus on something you might have the ability to actually improve on.”

He rolled the parchment back up quickly, not waiting for the ink to dry. He looked at the large canister and winced- he knew what was coming. All the papers- they would all be just what he expected. One of the tragedies of Snape’s life was the lack of surprise in matters of his fellow man.

Snape downed several more draughts of the intoxicating potion. He felt light and fluid, and his eyes brought everything into sharp relief.

A sudden crash from above snapped him to attention. Of course! Malfoy’s warning about Potter and his ilk sneaking out tonight. He finished his glass in one gulp and sped out of his quarters towards the noise. Snape heard footsteps that stopped abruptly as he rounded the corner.

He narrowed his eyes, searching for any sign of movement. “Lumos,” he said, taking out his wand. The hall lit up, and no one was to be seen, but Snape could swear he heard breathing for a moment.

“I know you’re here, Potter,” he said. “And Mr. Weasley, I suspect.” No response came.

“You’d do well to come forward now,” Snape continued. “Better to reveal yourself and accept punishment than be accidentally injured if I come upon you.

“Besides,” Snape swished his wand, focusing the light spell into a beam that he searched the hallway with, “if might be for the best. Save us all the trouble you eventually being caught.

“You know you will, Potter. Sooner or later your transgressions will catch up with you, and all this time will have been for naught.”

Snape pointed the beam into a cubby, but it was empty. He was sure the breathing had come from there. “Would it not,” he continued, “be better to stand up and choose the time of your departure, rather than have it force upon you by one wrong move? To be a man, the sort of man your father was?”

Snape heard a rustle behind him. He turned and pointed his wand into an unpleasant and surprised face. Filch.

“Is something wrong, Professor Snape?” Filch asked.

Snape scowled, the pleasant lightness he’d been feeling was utterly gone. “Students about after hours,” he said, watching Filch’s face light up with the closest thing to joy that ever appeared there.

“Right,” Filch said, “Me and Mrs. Norris will get on it.”

“You do that,” Snape said, turning away. He wondered which of his dim-witted students would be the next Filch. The next Hagrid. Snape’s face drew sour at the thought of that vestigial oaf.

He turned and looked at Filch walking the other way, swinging his lantern from side to side.

“Weasley,” he said quietly. “Expelled and discarded by his friends, would turn bitter and petty. In no time he’d be the next Filch.”

Once Filch was out of sight, Snape turned back to the area he’d been searching. “You know, Potter,” he said, extinguishing his light spell, “how this will end.” Snape searched the darkness for breath.

“You’ll be expelled or, barring that, die.” Snape could almost feel the tension in the air. “Do you know how I know this, Potter?” He took a step forward.

“Because you don’t have a future after Hogwarts. I see nothing for you. No predetermined path. You’re nothing special, you’re just a young man living on borrowed time. Sooner or later, inevitability and your own recklessness will catch up with you.”

Snape raised his wand and motioned, but incanted no spell. He was lying, of course, trying to flush Potter out. He knew very well that Harry would never leave Hogwarts, and that was the very reason Snape wanted him expelled so badly. Snape knew about his miserable muggle life, and how dearly he treasured the school. As soon as he could, Harry Potter would become a Hogwarts teacher, hiding away in the mountains here, afraid of the real world with its big, bad Dark Lord and its neglectful relatives.

He’d have celebrity and that contemptible “aw, shucks” humility to win him the affections of faculty and students alike. He’d string his happy memories of this place around his head and become another bumbling Dumbledore, powerful but squandered, letting the world of wizardry be lessened by petty sentiment. Harry Potter would be another waste of a wizard, just like his classmates. But Harry Potter would be a waste of a wizard in the same building as Snape, and that was unacceptable. Only one variable remained- expulsion.

“But not tonight,” he finished his thinking aloud with a sigh.

Snape went back to his room and finished grading the papers. No surprises.

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:33:15 GMT

Me: "Hey, I'm subbing for your paraprofessional today."
Some Dude: "Okay, first you need to check in with Mrs. Somethingerother in room 111, then head back here."
Me: "Okay."

(one sexy walk to room 111 later)

Me: "Hi, I'm subbing for Nichole, and I guess I was supposed to check in with you first."
Some Lady: "Oh, yes, actually, I wanted to get you here because I'm Justin's mom."
Me: "... erm?"
Some Lady With a Kid Named Justin: "Justin Porier."
Me: "Oh, heh, hi. Nice to meet you."
Totally Justin's Mom: "I saw your name on the substitute list and told Garry to send you my way."
Me: "Nice to meet you."
Totally Justin's Mom: "So, have you met Jenna?"
Me: "No."
Just Justin's Mom: "We all think she's made up."
Me: "Probably. As a testament to his vanity, he probably just photoshopped his eyes onto some girls picture or something."

Justin's mom is ridiculously pleasing.

not a xaoiboing

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 17:22:34 GMT

I get spells on occasion. Usually late at night, and always when I’m typing. I’ll be sitting and then at once feel as though everything is out of place. I feel some acute awareness of space that’s been compromised. My hands are far away, and the room is just, well, off in some way. Like Alice when she just barely licked the mushroom.

Dizzy. Sudden. Sudden and I'm so far above the keyboard. My arms are longer than they could possibly be. How does it even work? I get tired just thinking about sending electricity down the length of my arms.

A line is the shortest distance between two points. The line from my hands typing on the keyboard to my eyes would be short enough to imagine, but still daunting. That line doesn't exist though. It's all just traveling down down down my arms, dropping to my elbows. How can it be so far? Then upupup the incline of my forearms to reach my hands, which seem to occupy a single point in space. My hands have no surface area. And my head. How can thoughts survive at this altitude? My eyes ache just from the assumption that the atmosphere is thinner up here. I put my feet flat on the floor and things sort themselves out, more or less.

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 07:01:45 GMT

Everything should really be something. Everything should be really something. Everything should be something, really. I took a walk about in the snow.

I stumbled, here and there. My arms are tired and my eyes don't want to do the work needed to read what I'm typing. Struggle through. Everything is climbing a mountain, except watching television.

But I'm here, and that's something. Really something. Something, really. I've gotten to thinking about my future lately. Not by my own volition- well, not entirely. January is around the time graduate schools take admissions in, and law schools also.

A lawyer. I like arguing and persuading and making a point and all the different ways to say "showing my brain and tongue off" and I like logic and practice and ethics and all the other means of saying "I'm right because of my tongue and brain," and that's at the heart of lawyery.

The prospective heaps of money don't hurt either.

But tonight, outside in the snow, I put my umbrella down. I took off my hat. With nothing on or above my head, I could really see the snow falling. All of it at once, overwhelming in its unyielding uniform descent. I thought about sitting on an old railroad bridge, and watching traffic below. I thought about ponds and words and a lot of other things I like. I thought about the nameless apprehension that grasps me every now and then, when nothing bad is around.

Sometimes, without irony, I can just look up and say, "it's this miraculous love that i have for the world, miraculous," over and over, like a mantra, and everything becomes something more. It becomes really something. And I think that, if I could keep that, then nothing else exists to me, and I could all but starve and still be sustained by leaves, or snowfall, and that the unnecessary shelter of a pine tree is as much encouragement as I need.

And, you know, sometimes I can't see a lawyer doing that.

finals = joy antithesis

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 04:19:51 GMT

The beginning of my history final paper. It's probably going to be painfully suck by the time it's done. If not, I'll post it. As it stands, its not unlike my earlier political bitching columns. Kinda sorta.

Benjamin Franklin described democracy as “two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.” Ambrose Bierce defined politics as “A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” Kurt Vonnegut explained the study of history as “merely a list of surprises” which can “only prepare us to be surprised yet again.” For my own part, much of history is an attempt to catelogue and cross-reference the exceedingly ugly, the mindlessly absurd, and the hopelessly brutal record of human experience into some semblance of cause and effect. But with every effect being a cause, and every cause open to debate about whether it came before or after the effect, we often lose ourselves in the complexities of trends, patterns, and statistics. The addage that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” shines momentarily as a beacon giving deeper humanistic purpose to the whole unseemly mess, but one cannot escape the creeping suspicion that those who learn from history are likewise doomed to repeat it by those who either did not learn, or learned and did not care.

Delving through the twentieth century, we encounter what Poe called “much of Madness, and more of Sin, / and Horror the soul of the plot.” Genocide. Torture. The decay of the founding principals of liberty. One hardly need but turn to the foreign (and occasionally domestic press) to find examples of extraordinary rendition (a polite euphamism for outsourced torture), unlawful imprisonment, and illegal monitoring of the citizenry. The blood twentieth century is all we’ve known, and its horror mount like a writ at a demon’s summons. Surely, the nightmare is a new invention a world grown more wicked and corrupt.

Sadly, such a pleasant apocalypse is not the reality. In most areas, we humans continue to fulfill our potential. With each passing generation, we refine our technology, our arts, and our sciences. We grow slowly, though the computerization of the past decade or two would seem to suggest a geometric, if not exponential growth pattern. That said, we long ago exhausted our genius in the field of atrocity. This is not due to any inability or ineptness; rather, human depravity simply exhausted virtually every option long before we even invented the steam engine.

The shattered buildings and bodies in Iraq today echo the South Africans who suffered under arptheid, echo the bloody bodies of the massacred Tutsi, echo the inestimatable Native Americans killed by gunfire and smallpox, echo the countless central American tribes killed by the conquistadors. They echo all the way back to the cities that ran red with blood during the Crusades. Those held without charge at Guantanamo Bay, or at CIA “black sites” remind us, guilty or innocent, of those who fell to the Committee of Public Safety, of those burned by the inquisition, of those taken away by the Schutzstaffel in Nazi Germany. The parallels are imperfect; history never truly, precisely repeats itself. But they are close enough to give us much warrented pause and ask “what has been happening all along?”

The first illusion we must relinquish with a heavy heart is the exclusivity of the rise of democracy with either the rise of “conservative authoritarianism” or genocide/mass destruction. Indeed, even the idea that libery does not slake its prenatal thirst on the blood of thousands cannot be left a foregone conclusion. These are bold, rude claims, but claims rooted at deeply in our history as our freedom is rooted on a mindless past supporting an oblivious present.

Let us turn now to England.

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 20:09:29 GMT

Maybe they're not right when they say, whoever they are and whenever and wherever they say it, them with their fashionably chaffed lips wrapped around twenty-dollar singles sitting late on a thursday night complaining about some asshole named Dennis to the Peruvian waitresses who nod "si si" and wait for a moment to break away and get back to the kitchen for their other orders, maybe they're not right when they say that indifference is this year's black. If they aren't, them I'm out $1200 dollars for this Saint Bernard I have no use for, and I don't even know what I'm doing with all this salt.

I mean, fuck.

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 01:01:45 GMT

I weigh two teeth less than I did this morning. The worst part about the pain of having your “impacted” wisdom teeth pulled is that you can’t make faces. You can’t grumble and mutter your discontent at the pointlessness of wisdom teeth, nor can you yawn or chat or parole or, most tragically of all, verbally speculate.

I speak in a fake accent sometimes that ranges between German and something else I can’t quite identify. A couple other things. I don’t actively recognize when I do it; only when someone who isn’t used to me notices it. I speak with my hands a great deal too, but once again I overlook that until someone unfamiliar comments.

And now, with a recently unnumbed and terribly sore lower yaw, I realize how readily I contort my face, even while remaining silient. Opening your mouth can be a luxury, as it turns out. Treasure it, my wealth friends.

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:48:24 GMT

One of my brothers, who I will refer to as the sad clown, got remarried this weekend. Short notice. Pond. I took some time before they got there, when it was just me by the pond, to leave a little message.

The wind was cold, as was it. The ceremony was short, and sans ritual. Justice of the peace who conveniently worked in the marriage license office. The bride’s family dog was silent, until the couple kissed, at which point she went the least frightening sort of crazy a dog can go. The dog would perk up all photogenic-like when someone said the word “cookies.”

The reception was at Bub’s Barbecue, an establishment with perhaps the most apt name I’ve even heard. The food was tastey, but I think they would have been better served stuffing people full of chicken from here. The wedding cake was easily worth the two miners who were lost unearthing it from it’s tomb beneith was is now Cairo. I’m not sure what that means.

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 05:39:19 GMT

CUT

The director is perpetually shouting. Not constantly, since that would defeat the whole purpose of the order. Just when I stumble over a line, or the lighting's off, or he doesn't like how a piece of dialogue sounds.

The writer fucking hates it when it's about the dialogue.

CUT

Makeup. Cameras set. Lighting change. Like they can't just fix it in post. I didn't sign on for this. Fucking hack.

CUT

What now? We didn't even start the damn tape. The stupid black and white clacker thing hadn't even snapped. How long is this scene going to take?

It feels like we've been shooting forever. I can't even remember the last movie I was in this late in the day. How sad is that?

We filmed this one part a while ago that must have been a ten minute continuous shot. No cuts. No repositioning the cameras. Just me and the stage and the others, for ten minutes, speaking, doing. Acting. Like magic. One take. Even when Brian dropped the envelop, the director didn't yell cut.

The drop just became part of the scene. But that was then, and this is now.

CUT

He's gone nuts. This isn't even the same film we were working on before. The words are all yibberish on every even numbered page, and the producers have changed. They all smell like Rye when they show up on the set. The writer looks anemic, and my trailer is bolted to the asfault.

I saw the director, one time, crying to himself. He was just sitting behind camera 2, holding a roll of celuloid. Was it blank? I couldn't tell, and I didn't want him to see me.

CUT

For the love of God, why doesn't someone say something? Why don't any of us leave?

CUT
ROLL
PRINT

glimpse (inspired by socioecomics reading)

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 06:15:16 GMT

"don't make me hurt you," he said. nonchalant to a fault. always so cool, he thought to himself.

"there are a million girls in a million allies, just waiting for a guy like me," he said. "you're just not anybody, though, or i wouldn't be grinning this much."

she backed up, slower than old blood, and twice as smooth.

"yeah, like that baby. so soft, looming under my shadow. you little nightmare," he paused to produce his blade.

*flick*

"smooth action. i almost can't believe how perfect this is."

again, she backed up, her back touching the wall now in the most natural of ways.

"you're amazing, really. i'm sorry to beat this like a horse, but the way you move. wow," he said, momentary fluttering his eyelids- a nervous habit for years.

"sigh." the first sound she'd made since he appeared.

"i mean, seriously, here i am. alley wet with rain, but my shoes are dry. you in that perfect little red number. amazing baby. and your skin, it's like liquid leather."

she raised one eyebrow, her posture maintaining itself, but a mood began to creep over her form.

"no, not like bad leather. like your skin looks smooth, but thick. like i'd have to saw at it for a while, like cutting a tire or something. but hot."

her eyes flitted to the back of her head for a brief second. he didn't see.

"shit anyway, yeah. mmm... no one's hear to help you babe. time to meet mister midnight..."

"oh jesus," she said.

"um, huh?"

“that's it. i'm through. you fucked it up. i was totally gonna let you kill the fuck out of me and do whatever with my body, but you wrecked it."

"no, what the fuck?"

"i mean, what was this that 'mister midnight' shit? that's so 1984. and those similes? mother of cockfuck, man."

he put his hand to his head, taken aback by her sudden outburst.

"you know the worst part? you had it okay it the beginning. you'd found me, you know, like i wasn't waiting for someone to again. but you just kept on getting more and more fanboy on me..."

"well, yeah," he said, finding his tongue. "you're kinda an icon or whatever. niche celebrity, like an indie singer or whatever. i felt like letting you know how much this meant to me."

"fine, yeah, but don't do it right when it'll break the mood. whisper it as you’re fucking my slowly cooling corpse with a hunting knife or whatever."

"okay, so maybe i botched the transition. but fuck you on the 1984 shit. i'm sorry i'm not so cookie-cutter po’mo’ or gothic about this shit. i took a risk, went with the moment, and said some stuff from the heart that, yeah, sounded stupid. but it was fucking earnest. when's the last time you got an unrehearsed line?"

"oh please. if your sincerity is 'no one's here to help you' then stick to a script."

"you know what? that's it. what a fucking disappointment. maybe i broke character a bit, but you've fucking ruined your archetype for me. now every bitch i slice is gonna be a bitter, sarcastic gum-chewer like you. thanks a lot." and with that, he stormed off.

"jeez, some guys just have no rapetiquette."

months later, she realized that she loved him, too.

-fader

my first blackout

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 04:49:56 GMT

i appearantly wrote this on my birthday; i don't remember it:

Poolhall sierra because it’s easy. The flow. The rush. how do you rush the flow, since the flow is, by nature, an invariable motion. A progression like the reccession of stone on the slopes of a frozen mountain. Rock covered in ice, politely receeding at the most meaningless of paces. Meaningless for anything that wasn’t a stone, and, indeed, a big boy stone not to be tossed around and shattered. Covered in ice and snow what’s more. Constantly cold. If you’d have cracked you would have already, you solid, boring bastard. Like a shameful secret the coldest of the upper bits just sit, not even waiting. Waiting denoted expectation, and there’s nothing of that sort in this sort. Just the malevolence of an apathy impossible for thinking beings, couple with a thusness that only things thought unblasphemous to hate would be so maligned.

In this, we agree. And by “we” I mean "you and I," and by "agree," I mean "both have read this," which is, itself, but a step away from assent in the broader scale.

This is what liquor does to me. I don’t know if I like it, or what it does to me. Neither. Both. One or the other. All possibilities left banal examined in so few lines. How horrific.

Do you think God would like to be me every once in a while? You?

-fader

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 02:13:27 GMT

You can add yourself to your friends list. That's a little bit happy and a little bit sad.

-fader

Romantic Dinosaurs

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:15:40 GMT

At this moment, a comet the size of the recently formed Yucatan peninsula is drifting towards our planet. With its impact, all life larger than an egg will vanish. Men, women, children, pets- all dead.

At this moment, the candles are burning steadily on the table I’ve set up here in my lab. Their flames lean to the left, an enchanting effect brought about by the circulation vent on the rightmost wall.

Spinning through space, the massive ball of ice and rock is older than mountains, and, indeed, probably has mountains on it. Having circled our yellow sun for ages beyond reason, our path through space and its own have finally come into synch.

The food is almost ready; I make some last arrangements to the table. Salad fork, diner fork. Three spoons. Two knives. I hope I did this right- I know how much details matter to you.

I fold your clothe napkin into a swan and place it atop your empty water glass. I hope you find it charming, or at least cute.

It wasn’t easy getting a formal dining table in the lab, what with it being a Sunday and no one but me still being in the facility. But my work needs me, and I can spare little time away. Our world needs me. You need me.

But I wouldn’t miss our anniversary, my dear. Never.

Until tonight, I’d hardly ever used the kitchen area out back. I’d subsisted on preprocessed snacks and whatever you brought me during my work.

I hope I chose the right wine for the meal. You chill white and serve red warm, right?

My thoughts drift towards the comet. Spinning as it is, we have to time a missile strike perfectly to knock it off course, rather than blowing it to countless pieces that would rain down upon our wor- enough about work. I have time still for calculations. Tonight is our own.

I’m wearing a suit. The only suit I have. I love watching you stifle laughter when you see me in it. My tail always pulls my shirt up in the sides when it moves for balance. Whoever designed men’s formalwear wasn’t a velociraptor.

The food is ready.

* * *

I hear the elevator descending; you’re here. I quickly remove my spectacles and put them in my breast pocket. I want to take them out and snap them open when you come in the room. You always say I look sexy putting on my glasses.

The doors open and out you step. My, you’re a vision. A sweeping gown that seems to lay on you like a cobweb sheet. Cobweb, because you always hated the word “gossamer.”

Your hands, tucked up against your chest, both hold on to the handle of your purse. Adorable. Your shoes are simple and elegant, with your slicing claw resting daintily atop them.

I have no words to tell you how much better you look than this explains. I simply stare as you enter the room, looking at me. I take a step forward and stumble over a chair. You laugh.

Damn presbyopia. My glasses, I need my glasses. Flustered, I pull them out and put them on. Why did I take them off?

Then I look up, and see one delicately clawed hand covering your mouth, holding in a torrent of hysterics. But your eyes. Your eyes smolder with longing. We’ve had so, so little time for each other.

Vision restored, I continue forward, and you come to meet me by the table. I take your hand in both of mine and gaze upon your soft, leathery scales.

“I’ve missed you, my Mireille. I wish every night could be like this,” I say.

“If only,” you say, drawing yourself close to me. “Your work will be done soon enough, my four-eyed claw foot. And then we can always be together.”

I hold you close. Tomorrow, I will wrestle an ice giant from his celestial trajectory, and throw him helplessly into the blackness of outermost space. For you, I am strong enough to do this.

But this night is our own. The food on the table is warm, the candles are lit, and a pack of dino-condoms awaits. Tonight belongs to us.

There's only a future for Algeria

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 04:13:29 GMT

I get tunnel vision when I'm at the computer. Everyone does, probably. That's the great thing about there being so many people: unless you can only get an erection while singing "cat scratch fevah, i've got cat scratch feeevvvaaahhh!" and drowing a baby elephant, then you're probably not the only one who does something.

But this is the reddest desk I've ever sat it. Here, in the library, my arms rest comfortably on a smooth computer desk whose color and shape remind me of sickle-cell anemia.

A tiny catwalk, big enough only perhaps for cats, holds up bundles on ethernet wires that run overhead to all the computer stations. This section of the library's computer lab, called the "new writing center" is gloriously inefficient in its use of space. Spinning, tumbling, jumping. All these naughty, illicite activities are possible here. I dare say we could hold a cockfight with live internet feed here. Several cockfights. Online betting.

You know, roosters are kind of dicks when you think about it.

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:42:23 GMT

Ten-thirty pm, Tuesday, September 27, 2005. Look at the 10:30 on the computer screen. Glance away. It’s 10:31 when you look back, as though vast, formless things behind the scenes shape an elusive world half made of misremembered song lyrics and the rest a perpetually snickering joke that you’re not privy to.

Personal jokes are the micromedia of that insufferable blasé way we go about our ceaselessly examined lives.

But time marches on. Drags on. Rolls on like the great tides of some primordial ocean. Whatever. Time moves, however we want to imagine it. T = f(V) if you prefer. It’s all the same only because we’re all the same.

There will be minimal pauses, and no interruptions. Just a continual stream of remarked, if not remarkable me. Vanity is the laziest sin, requiring no imagination, just presence.

I spoke to a man on the bus today. Short, short, scouringly short hair. Friction hair. He spoke to me, really. The bus was taking forever. We traded odd jabs and gripes about minor inconveniences, and were generally perfunctory and alien to each other.

Politeness is the essence of inhumanity.

I almost spoke to a man in the 7-11 today. “Excuse me,” I’d say, “but is your name Josh? I ask because your voice sounds like someone I once went to school with, I’m am partially face blind so I can’t tell if I know you.” He had a gamer’s voice.

I’m most certainly full of shit about the face blindness. It’s more uncertainty than non-recognition. Usually.

* * *

I simply cannot see the romantic appeal in the cowboy’s life, or in drifting through the American southwest. I just don’t get it. I’m sorry.

There are certain moments of my life I’d truly love to relive. Not to get a second chance, but rather to experience the same moment again.

Several years ago, my friends and I decided to hold a gathering. Something along the lines of the SCA meets Dungeons and Dragons. The details aren’t important, only distracting. Suffice to say we needed a woodsy area with nearby parking and maybe a couple short walking paths in the forest.

So we’d tried almost everywhere we could think of. State parks. Private parks. Some land owned by the power company(?).

Just as hope was all but given up, we found, not far from out various homes, Wendell State Forest. The park manager/ranger/helpful itinerate bum even had a daughter who was into similar stuff. So I went there and scouted the place out. It was perfect, or at least “really good.”

Later that day, or maybe the next, I was sitting at the pink room table telling Justin all about it.

“There’s a main area raised up an incline where people can park out of sight, then walk down to the main field here,” I said, sketching out a map on a pad in my lap.

“There’s a pavilion around here, and two paths on the other side of the field, leading in a loop.” Justin was tuning out, just waiting for my to finish the map of the event site so he could look at it.

“We could build the PVC pipe maze near the cars, and have a little tunnel leading to it like so. What do you think?” I said, handing him the pad.

If you know us, you know this is what was really on the pad. But you weren’t there, and you can’t know the satisfaction I got out of that joke, so for the last nine paragraphs I’ve just been wasting your time.

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:38:10 GMT

I take the bus in the morning. Three times a week.

First the small, strange-shape bus that costs a dollar and is driven by a heavyset woman who has found the perfect medium between gruff and grandma-ish. She's not terribly endearing, but I respect people who can find a nice balance.

The people on that bus occasionally make my skin crawl.

I get a connection to a free Umass bus at a little commune of shops. A pizza place. A Spirit Shoppe. A 7-11. Griffon Games. Some restaurant that, I suspect, serves Dove exclusively.

That would be a hell of a thing, eating the international symbol for peace. Every day. You'd start smelling like patchouli.

The bus is large and heavy. Flat-faced with the engine underneath. Much more expensive that way. These buses cost 1/3 of a million dollars each.

People are over packed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Standing in the isles. The bus moves slowly once we're in Amherst. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. We're passed by pedestrians who drink bottled water that was, until recently, more expensive than gasoline.

Now we're the cost-effective ones, percolating on this shaking metal death machine hurled down a great paved river at 7 miles an hour.

I exit near the campus center, which is a couple minutes walk from my classes. It's close enough though that I don't feel to fiscally irresponsible for walking.

Also, water fountains.

I spend time in the campus center reading and sometimes getting food. The main corridor on the ground floor is always lined with college associations. Hobbyists Guide. Fencing Club. Campus Democrats/Republicans. Free Tibet. Join Alpha-Omega-Epsilon. Join Eye-Atea-Pi.

The top of the campus center is a hotel that stretches up ten floors above, like a gridded honeycomb over the more public areas. A grim grey tower of concrete where our lords and masters watch over us.

By "lords and masters" I mean "other students who couldn't get into dorms."

By "watch over us" I mean "masturbate while crying."

And I go on, after I'm done with this building. Sometimes I wander about. Sometimes I read in an unused classroom in one of the countless actual school buildings at Umass. Sometimes I sleep in the lowest floor of the Campus Center, on some happy subterranean couch, surrounded by my ostensible peers.

Class comes. Class goes. I catch a free bus to North Hampton whose only discernable feature from the second bus I ride in the morning is that it's piloted by Santa Claus' less prolific brother.

He never married, also.

Catch a second bus, just like the tiny one I catch so early in the morning. One-fifty and an unduly long ride touring the countryside and I'm home. Most days.

But today, I decided to stay on past my stop. Did this bus turn into the main loop they call a "mall" where all the other buses stop?

No, it doesn't. I get off at the next stop, maybe seven minutes' hike past that loop where every other bus stops. Feet start moving, after a fashion.

"Boy, you must really not want to get to class," comes a voice behind me. I look back, I think.

"You're meandering along, taking your time."

"Oh, I don't have class until four, so I'm in no rush."

I can't remember much of the specifics of the conversation. A few couplets of dialogue. English major me. She's environmental studies. Mount Holyoke. Taking a couple classes here though. the conversation is good mostly for it's unexpectedness.

"This fills my quota of random conversation for the day," she says as we approach the library.

"That's an important quota to fill."

and,

"Look at those trees. They look like they're water colored."

"Why don't I have trees like that near my house?" I figure it would be difficult to convey my tree fixation without trying to top her observation, and there's no reason for that. It's a nice day out, by the way.

I find myself wondering if I'm supposed to ask for her number or some such. I don't particularly want it; the incident of this conversation is really all I'm interested in. It's strange to feel obligated towards something like that, neh?

At the library she goes downstairs to research North Adams, a dreadful little town that sucks life out of all those fool enough to enter. I go upstairs many floors to use the computers.

In the end, there's nothing much in the way of a moral tying it all in to a unified whole; it's just some stuff that happens every day followed by some stuff that happened this one time.

I guess that's everything.

-fader

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 02:17:25 GMT

I really, really like looking at people.

Walking by classroom. Oh, look. People. I like people. Aesthetically, of course. Conceptually, too. That’s it, though.

I like people though. So I walk by classrooms, full of their classes, and smile at everyone I can see from the door. I give myself one point for every person who looks up and makes eye contact.

I do the same when I walk by people at school. Two points if they break eye contact and I don’t.

I don’t do this if it’s a girl, and there’s no one else around. I don’t want her to think I’m a rapist, and I can’t very well run up to her and scream “I’m not after your gully-hole, I just like looking at people.”

That wouldn’t work out well, you see.

I don’t do it if the guy looks like he’s hiding deep-seated emotional conflicts, because eyecontact = fag = violence.

Interestingly enough, this means that violence + eye contact = zero*2.

But I like people. With their hands and legs-ending-in-feet and sitting behind desks telling me to swipe my card. Their mouth-holes for active breathing. Their fingers, clicking away away in an endless procession throughout the computer lab.

I like people, with their ersatz drama and their mostly liquid eyes. Their pita bread and anal fixations and constant construction. Their buildings and puns and “no cell phones” signs. Their gum-chewing, left-turn-making, spackle-applying selves. I like them.

/fader

Tit

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 05:36:29 GMT

So, what relaxing lists do you make while listening to songs?
I don't make lists.

Fantastic. About how many?
You don't listen very well.

Loaves?
There's no way you just got "loaves" from what I said.

The songs, fast or slow?
Um, er, yes. Slow mostly, althought there's this billy bragg communist song I downloaded earlier.

I see.
Congratulations.

I enjoy jazz.
I can respect that.

Early.
Snob, are we? Well, what's the point of liking music if you're not a little elitist about it.

Indeed. Now, for the actual meme:

(1.) Which do you like better, green eyes or bleary eyes?
Green, bleary eyes.

(2.) Wigs or deviled eggs?
Mohawk wigs or nothing.

(3.) Petunias or roller coasters?
Okay, so are you asking what I'd prefer to sit on or look at?

(4.) Do you enjoy receiving joke gifts?
Politely.

(5.) Forks or giants?
Really, whichever one (see 3) you're asking, giants.

(6.)I see.
You're not very good at this, are you?

(7.)No, it was fine.
Don't assume that four sociology classes makes you entitled to ask me questions, you pencil-neck hippy with your petchuly stink and dirty armpits. You're dirty, and you're going in THE FUCKING WASH TAPE. YEAH YOU LIKE THAT DON'T YOU. YOU LOVE TAPE ALL THE TIME! NIGHT NIGHT MR. HATETAPE.

Fri, 13 May 2005 22:59:28 GMT

This is my word finger touches.