Jump to content

EleCivil

AD Author
  • Posts

    838
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Posts posted by EleCivil

  1. Hahah, I'll have to try that towel thing.

    And for the record, I don't recommend the chicken/pulley system. Takes a lot of materials and prep time, without that much of a payoff. The car-in-a-pyramid, though, I whole-heartedly endorse. Takes just as long, but that look of desperation they get makes it worth it. Plus, if you explain what you're doing, you can usually get passers-by to help out.

  2. How about writing up your last three months as a story? It has drama, trauma, and a triumphant conclusion!

    Hm...there were some pretty amusing parts to it. Especially the epic in-house prank war between myself and my roommates (who I've been friends with since about 3rd grade). I might as well summarize it here, since it was pretty funny. It went something like this:

    -Roommate 1 pulls the bucket-of-water-on-the-door trick on Roommate 2. It doesn't work (the bucket fell in the wrong direction), but it starts the war.

    -Roommate 2 puts a condom on Roommate 1's car antenna.

    -I forge some legal documents to make Roommate 1 think that he owes a local chain store $3,000.

    -Roommate 1 puts my phone number in a personal ad in the local paper.

    -I encase Roommate 1's car in a giant pyramid of milk crates.

    -Roommate 2 steals Roommate 1's dog, replaces it with a cat tied to a fish.

    -Roommate 1 and I turn Roommate 2's bed into a giant, working replica of a douche, complete with a hand-lettered sign reading "Yes, your bed is indeed a douche." He didn't get home until around 3 in the morning, so he was none too pleased.

    -Roommate 1 photoshops Roommate 2's face onto a picture of a large naked man, coats neighborhood (as well as the interior of Roommate 1's room) with copies.

    -Roommate 2 ties milk crates to Roommate 1's feet while he's asleep, so that he wakes up a foot taller.

    -Roommate 1 slips a smoke bomb into my bag of juggling balls, ends up filling the attic with pink smoke.

    -I rig a series of ropes and pulleys to Roommate 1's door, so that a raw chicken swings from the cieling and hits him in the face as he walks in.

    After that, we had to move, so a (temporary) armistice was signed.

  3. I hope things are going well, EleCivil. Real life can interfere at times, so a simple heads up on what's going on should keep me placated for at least another week.

    Things are going pretty well. Last three months went like this:

    -Moved out

    -Took a summer class

    -Got evicted (turns out my landlord was renting out a place he didn't own)

    -Moved back

    -Turned nineteen

    -Joined a local writer's group

    -Fried a graphics card - a month without a computer

    -Started a new story, which I like a lot more than L&L

    Still, it's been three months already? Jeez, I need to get to work. Alright, to ensure that I actually get some writing done, I'm going to say something that I probably shouldn't:

    Next chapter by this time next week.

    Maybe I'll work better with deadlines.

  4. All-Nighter

    -----------

    Darkness fell, the sun had set,

    When suddenly a panic hit.

    A paper due early next day,

    A paper worth three-fourths a grade.

    Ten pages on Dyslexia.

    APA formatted? Yeah.

    Bolting up to grab my shoes,

    I cursed the course instructor, whose

    Syllabus was quite unclear:

    The dates were from another year.

    ?Twas two a.m., I still had time

    Drove quickly to the five-and-dime

    To buy some liquid inspiration

    Of the caffeine-filled persuasion

    But cruelest world, oh fate assured,

    Just a buck, this kid is poor.

    Then her voice, like angel?s choir

    Graced my ears and soothed my ire

    ?We sell Red Bulls on the cheap

    To those who show college ID.?

    I kneeled down and praised the lord

    Of college-town convenience stores

    And within minutes, head ablaze

    Was racing back to type away

    Wrote and quoted, fingers lurched

    Hours spent in throes of research

    Morning came with roommates, holding

    Plastic cups of Corn Flakes, scolding

    ?Dude, it?s early, you don?t look dead,

    Don?t you know that meth is bad??

    ?Hah!? I laughed, my mind still keen,

    ?No meth here, just sweet Taurine!

    What it is, I couldn?t say,

    But that?s what?s kept me up all day.?

    I was done, my paper finished

    But my pride, it soon diminished

    I looked down, my printer broken,

    No more ink, the fates had spoken

    Transferring to a flash drive

    I grabbed my stuff and ran outside.

    The sunlight came like a boot to the eyes

    But I was late, I hadn?t time

    A forty minute drive to school

    And add to that, no parking, too.

    Printed off in record time -

    No one?s in the lab by nine -

    Stumbled into class, prepared?

    Greeting only empty chairs.

    Checked the calendar, dismayed ?

    "Instructor's out of town today,

    Next week classes will resume."

    Tilted head back, cursed the room.

    So much trouble, so much fuss,

    Thanks a lot, old syllabus.

    -----------

    A little different from the kind of stuff I usually post here...mostly because it was written after 40 hours with no sleep. :roll:

  5. Heh, I remember doing those drug/sex surveys in high school. Everyone just answered "yes" to everything, so that we could see "100% of student population admits to toad-licking and sex-orgies - Teachers and parents not surprised" printed in the school paper (man, I wish I still had a copy of that issue). I...wouldn't put too much weight behind any polls of high school kids.

    Back on topic...

    Codey -

    There's absolutely no reason to do/read things that make you feel uncomfortable. Nothing wrong with being "out of the mainstream", as you put it. When has the mainstream ever been any fun?

    And being out of touch with reality? Meh. Reality's overrated. So you're an idealist, a romanticist, an optimist? Nothing wrong with that. After all, you're a poet - that's like a free pass to be as flighty as you want. 8)

  6. I suppose you tried this because you gave up on your idea about riding a horse off the Empire State Building.

    Now that you mention it, if I became mayor of this city, maybe I could eventually become mayor of New York, which just might give me enough swing to get that horse on top of the building in the first place.

  7. I went down to the board of elections to see if I could get on the primary ballot. Mainly because I had nothing better to do. Turns out you have to have signatures and money and some stances on issues or something, so it didn't work out. Oh, and for future reference: "Whatever will get me on the ballot" is not considered an acceptable response to "What political party are you affiliated with?".

    Ah well, so ends my political career.

  8. To EleCivil, I'd suggest reining in on that plan. You should really vote, "neigh!" on it.

    I hate to beat a dead horse, but I'm far too stable to try something like that. Unless a Gallup poll shows that it would be the best move. And of course, I'd have to get written permission from the Mare's office.

  9. Just to let you know, I always thought that drowning in a vat of citric acid would be a neat way to die.

    Personally, I always said "If I'm going to go, it'll be by riding a horse off the Empire State Building." But then I thought, what about travel expenses? How will I get a horse to climb all those stairs? Will I be able to live with a dead horse's blood on my hands? Then again, if I'm going off a building, I won't be doing much living anyway...but if some wires get crossed and I end up in horse-heaven, I'm going to have a lot of explaining to do.

    Er...glad to hear you're alright, AJ.

    8-[

  10. Just a few less steps to the porch from the grass

    When you whispered ?Let?s cut for the shore.

    Let?s whistle songs about seascapes and skylines

    And pretend that we?re marching to war.

    When the sun trickles down like the sweat from our hair

    Leaving puddles of dusk on the sand,

    Then we?ll run back inside and we?ll sleep ?till there?s light

    Then we?ll run out and do it again.?

    Five less months to the day when you took a step back

    And you raised just one hand to the sky.

    Said ?Orion?s alone with his back to the Earth,

    And sometimes, I think, so am I.?

    It looked to me like I?d had nothing to say

    Except ?I don?t know what I should say.

    We?re just lower case letters with Uppercase Eyes.?

    You smiled, said ?Turn the damned page.?

    Couldn?t tell what they were until we got in-

    The sounds were so foreign back then.

    I heard each report crashing cold, static, short

    We just looked at each other and ran.

    Punctuation perforated all through your wall

    Plaster puncture wounds brilliant and screaming

    Each period said ?No, I marked no end,

    But next time? You?d better be leaving.?

    Hope you found seascapes and hope you found Earth

    Hope you found safety in skylines

    Hope you got a window built street-side West

    To watch sunsets and traffic colliding.

    Hope you got out, hope you made it there safe

    With your old name and secrets in hiding

    Hope every night you forget your mistakes

    Hope your Uppercase Eyes keep on shining.

  11. "Hain't" - Ain't. Possibly the opposite of "ham" (Pennsylvania Mountains).

    "That mine hain't more'n ten miles."

    "Hainit" - Confirmation seeker, combining the terms "Hain't" and "it" (Pennsylvania Mountains).

    "Coldern'a ex's attitude t'day, hainit?"

    "Yins" - Comparable with "Y'all" (Eastern Ohio).

    "Yins get out tuh Wal-Mart t'day?"

    "Yinses" - Comparable with "All y'all". Sometimes further accentuated as "all of yinses" (Eastern Ohio).

    "All uh yinses should get tuh the summit b'fore dark."

  12. Also that shitty guide to the galaxy movie or whatever...fell asleep during that.

    Heh. I saw that one on opening day with a small group...and we took our towels along. No one hardcore enough to go in a bathrobe, though.

    We didn't think it was too great, either. Pity, that. At least it led to a few days of furious book-quoting.

  13. I don't ever see anything by that jerk who did Waterboy, he just makes me shudder when I so much as see his face that I could never bear it, I know.

    I'll admit, I liked Waterboy. Happy Gilmore, too. They're basically the same joke - Adam Sandler plays a sport in a nontraditional way and people get hit in the face with things - but still...guilty pleasures, I guess.

    I think Elecivil is revealing here, with his detailed plot and dialogue, an intensely geeky side that is incredibly endearing and adorable.

    Yeah, "intensely geeky" sounds about right.

  14. And WTF was that damned evil bunny rabbit about anyway?

    He wasn't evil, he was a Manipulated Dead - a ghost that can travel through time, setting ensurance traps to make sure that all of space-time doesn't collapse in on itself. Of course, that's never mentioned once in the movie (except in some quick flashes of text in the director's cut version).

    (spoilers)

    He was dressed like that because he died during a Halloween party. He ran over Donnie's girlfriend, causing Donnie to momentarilly flip out and shoot him in the face. From that point on, he was able to travel through time - back to the beginning of the movie, where you first see him.

    /End spoilers

    Donnie Darko was...different. Nearly the entire "plot" takes place off-screen, and you have to read the Philosophy of Time Travel (or ask someone who has) to have any clue as to what the plot really is.

  15. I haven't seen either of the aforementioned movies, but if we're talking bad films in general, Parasite Eve was downright horrible. Mind if I spoil an old, rare, Japanese import?

    *spoilers*

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    Quick summary:

    Scientist: "My wife has died in a car crash. I know! I'll save part of her kidney, cultivate it, and grow a new wife!"

    Pile of cultivated kidney-goo: *transforms into clone of wife*

    Scientist: "Hmm...having sex with this lab-grown pile of goo would certainly be a good idea."

    Pile of goo: "Haha, you fell for my evil scheme! Now I can use your semen to impregnate the little girl who recived your wife's kidney transplant in order to bring awareness to all mitochondria so that we may rise up and enslave the humans!"

    Scientist: "...Totally didn't see that one coming."

    Hospital employee: "AHHH!" *Bursts into flames*

    Scientist: "No, pile of goo, stop! I love you!"

    *Scientist and pile of goo hug each other, burst into flames, and die.*

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    /End spoilers

    So, yeah, bad movie. Really bad.

  16. Graeme already nailed the question about Mr. H - word got out about the new teacher being an ex-guard, which the middle school rumor mill developed into ex-prison guard, which developed into ex-any number of "badass" professions.

    Nathan's father,after being told his son is gay, appears to be acting politically correct - even clinical - and I was wondering if this is intended.

    Yeah, that was intentional. He was rather blindsided by the issue, and didn't know how to handle it. He still feels like he has to make up for letting his son down in the past - he's trying his best to be a good father, which leads to him being nervous about saying anything less-than-PC that could get his son upset. He falls back on a stiffly delievered "don't subscribe to labels" speech - the kind of issue-skirting form-letter approach that, while still solid advice, never really gets to the point. Basically, I wanted it to sound as forced and awkward as possible.

  17. Interupting the editing talk for a second, I just want to swing through and say hi to the new guy. Hey, Naiilo.

    And Jamie - de-gallbladified, eh? Get well soon, dude.

    Bah, I've got to work on getting lower-case "dude" out of my AD forums lexicon. Gets confusing.

  18. A few people have mentioned this now, so I just want to clear this up: I'm not some holier-than-thou straightedger. Some of my best friends smoke pot and drink now and then. It's not for me, sure, but I don't have a problem with it. Nor do I have a problem reading a story with such elements now and then. In fact, I'm currently reading Infinite Jest by D.F. Wallace - a book with TONS of casual drug use (and, on a side note, both the best and most difficult book I've ever read).

    On the other hand, I've known a lot of people completely screwed over by drug abuse. Just some really bad stuff that I prefer not to dwell on. That's why I occasionally bail on stories with drug use - they bring to mind all those images, and sometimes I'd rather just not think about it. It's not because I hate drug users, it's not because I don't think the issue should be covered in fiction, it's just a personal thing, you know?

    Now that that subject's done with, on to a lighter note:

    Thanks for the encouragement, Bloke and Blue. Hopefully, I'll get another chapter done before the end of the month. I'm currently in the process of moving out, so I may be kind of scarce around here for a while.

×
×
  • Create New...