Audism

It's dead letter week on Foolish Notions, just because. Here's no. 2:

Dear Mr Editor,

I would like to draw your attention (if you haven’t already noticed their blatant nescience to a large part of our society) to the long running advertising campaign by the breakfast cereal manufacturers, Kellogg’s, for their product, Rice Krispies. They claim that this product ‘snaps’, ‘crackles’ and ‘pops’, but to a congenitally deaf person this means nothing. I would like to call on your readers to boycott this product and the Kellogg’s company as a whole for their contemptuous audist attitude.

Thank you.

Yours

Robert H. Smith

What matters

It's dead letter week on Foolish Notions, just because. Here's no. 1:

Sir,

According to the Law of Conservation of Matter, every atom is continually recycled in the universe and never lost. In other words, we breathe the same atoms as those breathed by Galileo (approx 4.3 x 109 atoms per breath). Similarly, we drink – in every glass of water – some atoms of Adolph Hitler’s urine, while, on a lighter note, we also drink some atoms of Jennifer Lopez’s body fluids (provided they have had sufficient time to disperse). Conversely, Jennifer Lopez is drinking – in every glass of water she swallows – some of my body fluids. I would, therefore, like to ask Jennifer (if, indeed, she is prone to brush over this esteemed organ) if she would like to try the undiluted variety … purely for the purposes of scientific investigation. Of course.

Yours

R.H. Schmitt

Help the medicine go down

Evo used to have a really cool spoon. Like a teaspoon, but with a really long handle. Like something you’d get to scoop out your milk shake. He’d moulded it, curving the handle upwards about the height of a skinny syringe, then shaped the end back flat and horizontal. To make it even easier to hold, he gave it a tight rubber coating so the heat wouldn’t travel up and inconvenience his fingers. Hell, he used to slip it between his lips, heat the bowl and tug on the tourniquet all at the same time.

The closest Evo gets to a spoon these days is when he curls up in a doorway with his dog. And that never lasts long. One of them always stirs to scratch some itch. He cooks his junk in the bottom of an old beer can. And never the same one twice. He can never find them a second time. He works on the premise that the alcohol has kept it clean, even from the old hobo’s lung bugs. Shame really, Evo had a fine gift for bending spoons.

Tammy Woo’s tattoo parlour

Tammy Woo tapped in the last few dots to Rodo’s new tattoo. He was stoked. He stamped the floor with his big flat feet, jangled the joints of his gangling limbs.

‘Does it look cool?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ she said, tidying the needle back into the sewing box.

‘Real cool? Like Robert De Niro cool? You know, like, in Taxi Driver?’

‘What?’ Tammy Woo caught her bubble gum in her molars, she’d've choked if she hadn’t.

‘No, I know.’ Rodo sprayed spit on to his own chin. ‘Is it cool like Nicholson cool? You know, like, “Heeeeere’s Johnneee”. That kinda cool?’

‘What the fuck, Rodo?’

‘No, no.’ Rodo bounced, stressing the bolts in the little Ikea desk chair. ‘Is it Harrison Ford cool? You know, like Han Solo? Or Indiana?’

Tammy Woo stared. ‘What colour is the sky where you live, Rodo?’

His face faded a few shades lighter. ‘Like, Dr Walker in Frantic cool?’

‘Fuck you, Rodo.’ Tammy Woo threw the broken biro into the basket. ‘It’s like, like … I dunno…’ She shrugged. ‘Like Lurch cool, I guess. Look.’

Tammy Woo showed him the little make-up mirror. Rodo looked, angled it to the letters on his forehead. He saw: odor.

‘What the fuck?’ cried Rodo. ‘That’s not my fucking name.’

Tammy Woo sighed, decided she was going to start asking for the money upfront.

Story inspired by the 3WW words: frantic, lurch and odor.

Hurdy gurdy blues

When I came out the offy this morning I saw a guy with one of these hurdy-gurdy things, standing outside the supermarket. A guy about the same age as me. Turning the fucking handle, like he was a wee kid or something. Fucking arsehole. So I laughed. Of course. Then I looked at myself. Shitey thin jacket still soaked through from the rain, feeling rough as fuck, and carrying four bottles of cheap sherry. And then this bird comes from inside the supermarket, walks straight up to the hurdy-gurdy bloke, kisses him and gives him a packet of sandwiches and a can of coke. Fucking lovely she was. Long chestnut-brown, shaggy kind of hair and a gorgeous face. I fucked off towards the bus, but caught the guy looking at me. With his hand still holding the can of coke, he stuck up his middle fucking finger. Twat.

Plotting

If I was really clever, I’d use the three sections of the bookcase to divide these little plot notes into acts I, II and III, and use the shelves above and below to work out the subplots. Early days yet. And maybe I’ll just keep it simple.

Better ideas…

I was really chuffed when I dropped by on my regular visit to I’m Not Emilio Estevez, Christian Bell’s writing site, and saw he’d given this blog a Circle of Friends Award. Cheers, Christian.

And now, in the Amway way, I get to broaden the pyramid and pick my five faves. Easy. Here you go, blogs from very fine on- and off-line writers:

The Bok Choy

Megan Taylor

Dan Powell

Eric J Krause

Mazz in Leeds

Which reminds me, I really have to update the links on the right. Soon.

1234

She stepped down the stairs in the dark, her hair still wet from the shower. The little laptop balanced on the palm of her hand. It began to glow with its welcome screen, and she stopped in the hallway to tap in her password. A number, not a word. Four digits.

In the kitchen she placed the computer in the middle of the long pine table, leaving space for her breakfast plate and coffee cup. She dropped bread into the toaster, clicked on the espresso machine and switched on her phone. She thumbed in the numbered code, left it next to her laptop to start up.

She took fruit juice from the fridge, poured a glass. Thought about taking the margarine for her toast, but allowed herself chocolate spread instead. Behind her, the phone shook and the laptop beeped. In the hallway the letterbox rattled. The postman must be early.

She checked her work email first, entering the four digit access code while she chewed a corner of chocolate covered toast. As she waited for the list of emails to scroll onto the screen she dialed her voicemail, touched in the PIN number and hash key when asked.

She listened to the messages in the morning stillness, scanned through the most important emails. With breakfast over, she brushed her teeth and came back to the kitchen. She closed the laptop, slid it into the bag, and put the phone in the front pocket. She checked her wallet, bank and credit cards. Saw she had everything she needed, took her jacket.

At the front door she opened the flap for the alarm box, keyed in her code. Then she remembered the postman, looked for the letters. Nothing. She scanned the carpet in the dawning light. Saw nothing. Then…

…a tiny piece of paper, the corner of an envelope perhaps.

She picked it up, turned it round in her hand. Saw nothing. Switched on the hall light.

And there it was, on that tiny piece of paper. Paper from a stranger.

Four digits.

And the alarm started to scream.

James Ellroy

I saw James Ellroy the other day, promoting his ‘great big throbbing motherfucker of a book’, Blood’s a Rover.

He’s a very lively, entertaining speaker. And he had some good advice on public speaking and reading books out loud. Keep it short, he said. No more than 12 – 15 minutes. And don’t read dialogue. Keep it to short pieces of straight prose, ‘throw in some funny shit, some profound shit and some profane shit and you’ll be good’.

Ellroy is no shrinking violet, he didn’t shy away from telling us how fucking brilliant his work is, although he did admit The Cold Six Thousand was ‘flawed’.

About his staccato writing style, he said it came from LA Confidential. It was too long and he had to cut it without killing the story so he just deleted a lot of words. He then developed that style further in White Jazz, although he says there’s less of it in Blood’s a Rover where he uses a more standard sentence structure more often to convey emotion.

Writing process
When he starts a new book, he gets people to research historical, geographical and other facts for him. He then prepares a detailed plot of the book – the outline for Blood’s a Rover ran to more than 400 pages – and then he sits down to write the story with pen and paper. He doesn’t use a typewriter and can’t use a computer – somebody else does his Facebook page.

He told some entertaining stories about Michael Jackson, JF Kennedy and the ‘Jack Whack’,  and J Edgar Hoover – who he insisted should be called Gay Edgar Hoover – and many more dead people who can’t sue him. But I’m still not going to repeat them here, especially the Jacko insinuations, but they did involve his friendships with children. If you know anything about Ellroy you can imagine what he said and how he said it.

He said that Chinatown and Citizen Kane are shit movies. His never-produced screenplay for the remake of Jimmy Cagney’s White Heat is, of course, way better than the original and has none of the ‘Top of the world’ ’shit’ at the end.

Even if you hate his work, or just can’t get through 600 pages of two word sentences, he’s well worth going to see. Although, on this occasion, he only grabbed his balls once and made a wanking motion twice. Quite a calm performance, but it was a Sunday afternoon.

Six sentences

I have a story for today, but it’s not here. It’s over on the very excellent Six Sentences site. It’s a flash fiction website presenting stories written in only – you guessed it – six sentences.

If you’ve arrived here from there, you might like to read some of my character stories, or my post from last Friday – Your dad’s a dick. I wrote it for another great web writing initiative – FridayFlash.

After that, have a look around and let me know what you think.