EleCivil

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.

What he said. And if it makes you feel any better, my mom's had glaucoma for 10+ years, and she can still out-read me.

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:

Good luck, James.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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-[

Haha, love it. Murders every 10th-grade-love-poem cliche ever written.

I'm a bit late in saying so, but I thought "Mote" was awesome.

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.

"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."

I love PA, specifically for facial expressions like that. http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date...003-01-01&res=l

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.

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. Yeah, "intensely geeky" sounds about right.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

Yeah, good work, Codey. Like Jaime said, your prose is as good as your poetry. Keep it up.

A week, huh? Well, it's getting close to the end of the semester, and all my big projects are due shortly, followed by finals...and I am always looking for an excuse to procrastinate . Still, seeing as I can only really write when no one else is around (shared computer in an open space) it'll probably take a bit longer than that. Oh, here's something that I added in the intro/disclaimer on Nifty that got clipped off here: I learned from a reader that there is, in fact, a Gordon, OH. It's some small town in Southern Ohio, much smaller than the one in L&L. So, uh...apologies to all the real-life Gordonites for my assumtion that your town was fictional.

Seconded. The characters, the language, the drama, even the lyric/script excerpts - it all works. It's rare to see something come together so well.

I like this story. This newest chapter especially reminds me a lot of Robert Cormier.