Indie's Inanities

Democratic Donkeys:

In Soviet Russia road forks you!

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Democratic Donkeys:

Family Guy.


The episode with big fat paulie.

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Veebs in the Mob Rule thread on Old Blue:

100 Donuts:

Uh no. I've never heard of a cereal called my little secret.

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It's the FBI's breakfast treat:

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IndieGirl:

I think that's a sign of the second coming. I'm not sure though. If not, it should be. Clearly.

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It was meant to be a tragic story, one of love lost and the desperate way people interact. And I intended to write it backwards, because that’s how we see them; blue veins of emotion that bleed though the shrug and meh of other days. It’s not until they are once again empty that you look back and realize it was in them, in the grief and the hope and the lust and the echoes that you pulsed, electric, red, alive.

I am used to this. I am used to the pyrite luster of epic intentions. The way they’ll glitter until the time for them is past, and in the aftermath you hold them in your hand. Tacky, they look, ugly and brown. It’s the reflection of yourself that you catch on a smooth side that honestly disgusts you. The Wal-Mart feel of yourself, and not the actual rock. Rocks… intentions are rocks. Intention is a rock and you, the literal you – stripped bare of intention, dreams - are a hard place. And what is between them? What is between them?

Casserole. She had settled for casserole because the cupboard was stripped down to the leavings; the last-picked-in-gym equivalents of the canned food world. All those twenty-five cent, cream of MSG, this might not be real meat…or even food… foods that seem so harmless and even necessary, until you step up to the plate and have to face them as they are. And there she goes, projecting herself once again, onto everything that she touches. Or perhaps, she absorbs it all… takes it in, with some yet unrealized corneal tractor beam of the subconscious and it becomes her. The cream of mushroom soup and her are not two things, they are not similar, they are the same thing. This could be important later. Or it may not. Who are we to say? How does anyone decide the things that are really important?

Frozen chicken breasts. She had those. Rice. The aforementioned soup. Parsley and assorted whatnots of the seasoning variety. Water. Ugh…the sink was overflowing, dishes with remnants now indiscriminate. It was a statement she was making, making herself sick. She was not their mother. She will never be their mother. Does she remember to say thank you when they clean up her dishes? What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?

It would have been a reasonable thing two hours ago, casserole; at this rate she wouldn’t have dinner until 11 and nearly chickened out and tried to convince herself that maybe she was just thirsty, or that she could smuggle a roomie’s popsicle and count that as the only needed caloric intake for the day. Her stomach rallied and internal democracy took over. Very well, she’d cook the dang thing.

It will start out with details like this, and you, you will get used to this. As it continues, less and less of it will feel real and now; it will haze, ripen… it will become ripe, almost too-ripe, the sugar will ferment, and just as you expect it to reach some apex of sweetness the bitter alcohol bite will leave you feeling detached, unsure. You’ll see it through the watercolor washing of time, of dissolving recollections.

I am being too abstract. I should perhaps abandon this line of narrative, and just tell the story…


Frances was coarse. It was not a word to describe her, it was her essence. Her voice: Louis Armstrong, only an octave higher. No one could remember if she’d smoked, but she sounded like it. Her breathing was ragged, even when it was supposed to be quiet, through the nose. She was older than everyone who knew her, but the way no one will admit to their age meant we really didn’t know. Keith Richards, she looked like. Keith Richards all over, only with an extra 30 lbs. of what may, centuries ago, have been some lusciously aerodynamic curves; now flightless, gimp, Frances’s curves had succumbed to gravity at the same time they unyieldingly clung to her frame. It was baggage, she had; Keith Richard, with baggage which had nothing to do with emotional or mental stability. When she moved, her body would have to vote if it was coming with her or not… of course it would always vote yes, but counting the ballots is what held it up, I think.

She and Frances are not the same, at least in the sense that it is not Frances who was making the aforementioned casserole. She was. But you need to know Frances. Frances needs to be a part of this story as much, if not more, than she does. And in that sense, she and Frances are the same. The way she and the soup are the same. And Frances and the soup are the same. It is these similarities that will make the difference, you see.

He was different. Tiny. When you see him, it’s the first thing you notice, how small, how childlike and fledgling he is. Sitting, in brown wool slacks that are (somehow) too short for him, on a grey pine bench, he folds into himself, drowns in the blue-lined button down shirt that at first glance looks new, so starched and white. You close in; its seams are worn, the shirt is off-white, the blue was brighter some other day. He’s had it since Nixon, he just knows how to use things. You forget to notice that he is missing a finger. You forget to notice the American flag pin near the brass of his suspenders. His tree-root hands rest on a dark varnished cane, the rubber cap on the end of it worn off on one side, at an angle, slowly grated off by cement, asphalt, dirt, the empty tennis court he walks through on his way back to a place we’d assume is home – he walks through them to clean up the trash, the papers, the empty ball cans and Gatorade bottles that everyone else has left during the day.

Laboriously, he sweeps (well, shuffles) his way over the courts in the ochre dusk, collecting, tidying. He cannot hold it all, pieces fall and he fumbles after them. Sometimes he’ll make three or five trips to the giant orange plastic garbage bins. The ones with the disheveled black plastic generic Hefty-equivalent bags; the bins they chain and padlock to the pavilion columns so the delinquents who frequent the park after hours can’t roll them into the street, overturn them.

He breathes, but it’s not breathing, he is talking. You will not understand what he is saying. He is not talking to himself. His panama falls when he reaches for the lemon-lime bottle that has stumbled. A heron, he is precariously balancing, the hat he replaces becomes the same. Like a bonsai, he is tiny, but he is huge in his minutiae; he occupies his space. He is a steward; he is more than the lie of his appearance. You see the very world as it sits on the backs of his shoulder blades. It is this that folds him. You reel in your own tininess. It swallows you.

Better – he is – than she, than Frances, than you. Better, and the same. He is the same. The watery cream of mushroom fills him, is him. He likes it with saltines. The stove and pot he cooks with even older than his shirt. You know this. Like Bubble-yum in your hair, he sticks to you. Like Bubble-yum in your hair, he will make you cry.

Unlike Bubble-yum, he will make you wonder how to fill your spaces. When you remember him, he is tall. When you remember him, he fills you. Like cream of mushroom soup, afloat with soggy saltine ships. He marks you, changes who you are physically, a bit like that compulsory gum-in-the-hair haircut you had to get when you were seven, when you were playing with your Bubble-yum.

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Sydia:

Hey Hun!

Re your story. Speaking writer (ha, I call myself that anyway) to writer and knowing you'd value honest opinion, I think it is in need of the hook, the event, problem, catastrophe or other occurrence to compel the reader and get them sucked in in from the very start. At the moment it's 100% description, nothing wrong with that of course, (especially at the beginning, so I'm probably talking nonsense), still, I kept expecting, well, something to happen. Also - where is it? Other than that, it has a very distinct (in a good way)...well, atmosphere isn't the right word, but you'll know what I meant because you'll have done it purposefully. Your characterisations are suberb, by the way.

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IndieGirl:

Sydia:

Hey Hun!

Re your story. Speaking writer (ha, I call myself that anyway) to writer and knowing you'd value honest opinion, I think it is in need of the hook, the event, problem, catastrophe or other occurrence to compel the reader and get them sucked in in from the very start. At the moment it's 100% description, nothing wrong with that of course, (especially at the beginning, so I'm probably talking nonsense), still, I kept expecting, well, something to happen. Also - where is it? Other than that, it has a very distinct (in a good way)...well, atmosphere isn't the right word, but you'll know what I meant because you'll have done it purposefully. Your characterisations are suberb, by the way.

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Thanks for the feedback, dear Syd. I know it's not much of a book now, or a story for that matter. Mostly I'm just forcing myself to write until I feel like I've stumbled upon the right characters and maybe something that could start a plot. Because I can't just think up a plot and then build characters to fit it, I have to find the people first and then the story, to me, just...happens. And I'm glad you like my distinct tone.

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Fulhead Land:

completely of topic but IG, have you heard B.U.R.M.A by dirty pretty things?

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Raed had recently lost his only son.  Crushed by the unweight of such a tremendous release, Raed was not him. Unlike him, Raed expanded in emptiness, was made of it. Like a sponge, he was completely holed. And Raed's hole seemed boundless; it surrounded him in a hollow presence that was nearly tangible.

In contrast to him, initially you are disheveled by the enormity of Raed; your instinct saying to give him a wide berth. When people pass him on the sidewalk, though the sidewalk is wide and few are traversing it (and though Raed likes to stay close to the buildings, the walls, finding comfort on the edges of things,) they will step into the gutter, or the street. Already Raed had stopped noticing this. Perhaps he never noticed it.

Have you ever noticed how the emptiness of people is often the only thing that keeps them from falling apart? Raed wore buttons: dark shirts with buttons, and a large navy blue coat with more buttons. The smallest of points can still hold things together. The reprimanding 10 am glare off the cement and the buildings rendered his coat unnecessary, but Raed was used to wearing it; had once been used to walking to work in the dark and the damp of the day.  That had changed. His long navy coat, that looked like wool but probably wasn't, had not changed. How could you not cling to familiarity in the places where it doesn't burn you?

A big man, Raed still was not as big as the berth–unscrupulously gifted from the rest of us beyond him–would lead you to believe. Big is the wrong word. Raed was broad; his chest and shoulders, his hands, his feet. In high school (in his other life) they called him The Wall. It fit him. Raed was a vast and stubborn bastion of impassibility.  What he was, he was. What he felt, he was. What he thought, he was. And he was unchangeable; always convinced of the right, the truth in his ways of thinking.

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me: WoW, eh?
  I was playing that this morning.
8:19 AM
  Or you fell asleep. lol. And that's cool too.
  Or your music is up loud and you can't hear this.
  Or you're playing on your xbox because WoW inevitably got boring.
  I could hypothesize about your current state of affairs all morning!
8:21 AM
  You were caught by gremlins.
  And dragged off to their secret lair
  which is underground, in the seedy sewage tunnels of Canberra.
  Where all the notorious mythical creature gangs hang out.
  And they're interrogating you on the baboon mafia in Melbourne.
8:22 AM
  Oh noes! Someone must save you!
  him: LOL. you are insane
  me: Yes. Yes I am.
  And you love it.
  him: clearly its the mandrill/gorilla syndicate that runs melbourne
  jeez
  how could you not know that?
8:23 AM
  me: Of course, but the baboons are trying to increase their territory and influence.
  And the gremlins are connected to the Gorilla yakuza gang and have been contracted out for merc work on recon info about said babboons.
8:24 AM
  Clearly you had to be brought in for interrogation.
  him: lol. dang, arent i in a precarious sutuation then
  explains how Jan got her name as well
8:25 AM
  me: You must be. If only I had **** or ****'s number. Then I'd send out my own squadron to rescue you. All that video game experience of theirs would come in handy in a situation like this.
  Allegedly.
8:26 AM
  him: t'would, unless you expected them to use guns. far better with mallets and sparkly little sticks those two
  and sporting implements
  me: Naturally they'd never use guns. Too much chance of ricochet in the sewers. Can't risk a stray bullet.
8:27 AM
  him: good point
  especially in the inch wide sewers we have around here
  sigh i wish we did have a proper sewer system though. just for the monsters
  me: You were magically shrunk. They ARE gremlins, after all.
8:28 AM
  Tiny gremlins - nanogremlins, if you will.
  him: its not really fair on them making them shrink like that all the time
  me: It's why they're so effective.

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Sydia:

Don't worry hun, I still love you. And you're nothing like Cthulu...Cluthlu...Clthulhu...Chulhuluthu...er...that old racist Lovecraft's octopus-god thing.

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