No-Talent Hacks

Ergonomically Speaking

2008-06-14T17:23:00.001-04:00

If your furniture could speak, what story would it tell?

By Steve Mast

I sat, with my fingers caressing my ergonomic keyboard, staring at the computer screen. “If my furniture could speak, what would it say?” What the hell? I bounced up and down on my ergonomic chair, hoping to hear some grinding or grunting that could be mistaken for some sort of language. Nothing – that sucker was lubed up better than Paris Hilton.

I know what you’re thinking: what the hell is up with me and my fixation on ergonomics. Once I was at a store and they were selling ergonomic silverware. I bought every piece they had in stock. I figure it will supply my family for three generations. Why? I don’t plan on getting cancer. Ergonomics is the future.

My stomach rumbled disagreeably. That broccoli and cabbage pesto sauce was not sitting well for some reason. I had to get this assignment written and written fast. When I was boiling my pesto I could have sworn the bubbling sounded a bit like it was laughing at me.

I picked up my scotch glass (currently empty) and flung it at the wall to hear it scream as it died, broken into dangerous pieces. The crash of glass broke the heavy silence and shards rained down on me, as if it were out to get some petty revenge for its destruction. Maybe I should have thrown it at the far wall. But even with the noise I heard no voice. No speaking. Perhaps I threw it too hard and it died on impact.

Godzilla was staring at me, angrily, looking ready to spew a fire that never came. Maybe he was mad cause he was made of plastic and only two inches tall. But I had given him dominion over my computer, to keep it safe and in line while I was out. He should be happy. He was like my second in command. But he never looked happy and he never said thank you. Hell, I couldn’t even consider him furniture anyway, so what good was he for my story?

Nobody has ever created an ergonomic monitor. It’s an idea that’s worth millions. If you make it and get rich you owe me royalties.

The story was going nowhere so I walked over to the couch, careful to avoid the glass. It was time to sit on my couch and relax. It was time to digest. Now I know what you’re thinking: is it an ergonomic couch? It’s fluffy – you can’t get more ergonomic than that.

As I sat down my pesto finally decided to catch up to me and some…well…gaseous formation decided to expel from my lower half. That’s right, people: I farted. It was a boomer. Jim Carrey would have been proud. And while it did make me feel better I wasn’t about to stick around, so I stood up to leave. As I did my old fluffy, rickety couch creaked. And as it did I could have sworn I heard “God Damnit! What an asshole.”

The artist

2008-06-14T13:19:00.001-04:00

You are watching a home makeover show on television, and the homeowners are going in to horrid detail describing the loathsome appearance of one of the rooms of their house. You realize that this house used to be yours, and the design they are tearing apart was your crowning achievement in home improvement! How do you react?

By Steve Mast

I guess the first thing you have to understand about me is that I’m an artist. It’s my sole identifier. It’s what defines me. It’s how other people see me and quantify me. Respect me. It is, in the end, the sole of who I am and what I am and what I do. What I mean how I live and what I live for. Without art I am nothing.
And I am very good. Some of the others, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Dali, Manet and all the rest, I mean they were pretty good, I guess. If somebody asked I would have to say, however minimally, that I was inspired by them. But that would be a half-truth, if I were to be really honest. No student of art would admit otherwise if they wanted to be taken seriously. The real truth is that my own shining brilliance comes to light when I inspire myself. If I wanted to be really truthful with you I would tell you that I would bet those other artists were actually inspired by me, as implausible as that may sound, them being mostly dead and all.
I don’t let anybody else affect who I am and what I am and what I do. How I do it. I don’t like to use the word “Genius” or “Greatest Ever” or any other term that would be used as a pigeon-hole identifier, but the truth is that I would have to admit that this is true. I wouldn’t say it out loud. I wouldn’t confess it even in a memoir to be published at the time of my death. But in my heart of hearts I know that this is true.
The fact is that every other artist in the history of mankind has limited themselves in the mediums that they choose to express themselves in. Paint on this canvas. Carve on that rock. Solder that hunk of metal. How boring. It has its uses, to be sure, and was a necessary evolution in mankind seeing art for its true purpose. I simply refuse to live in a world where everything touched by my hands isn’t, in some powerful form, art.
The walls, the sofa, my car, my home have become the very definition of art. A fulfillment of a promise. My dining room table used to have four legs. But now it only has three and a half. I removed half a leg to symbolize society cutting down people’s ambitions and goals and purpose. How we are crippled. We are hobbled by society’s permutations of expectations. So my dining room table has also been hobbled. And splashed with greens and reds and purples and shades of yellows. And each color meant something different, something important when I splashed it on. Something moving and powerful. I cried. Unfortunately I didn’t write them down and quickly forgot the meaning, but it remains a sweeping epic of our social consciousness non-the-less.
Of course now I am unable to eat on my table, but these are the sacrifices we make to our art. That in itself is symbolic of how a man, removed from his true purpose, becomes a useless shell. So I eat on my sofa.
And this is a sofa I constructed myself out of boards of discarded wood found on people’s lawns. To symbolize how the trash of society and their discarded leavings will support me while I watch my television.
It is not comfortable. There are no cushions. But I shall sit and I shall watch. And I shall eat, too. And my TV has been splashed with reds and a light pink dotted and lined to remind me how society has been consumed and absorbed by violence. And sex. This is fed to us nightly in half-hour and one hour servings. The paint does make it hard to watch, and I don’t really turn it on much anymore, because the wet paint blew out the speakers, but it is art.
There are, of course, no paintings hung in my home. No canvas. My walls are my only canvas. And when the walls dry of the current streams of paint that have been splashed on I paint more: covered thick layers of paint constantly dripping and wet. That didn’t work so well when I tried it on the ceiling. But I have managed to create some stalactites, running down five and six inches, to remind me that I live in a cave. I am sheltered by my home, like a bat, although I find it impossible to get to sleep hanging upside down. Although if I had – if I had! It would have been art.
It is my haven. The one place I can be truly alone, truly myself, and truly an artist. Able to express myself as I need to be expressed, without police interference, like that time at the mall.
Did I mention that I live alone?
I’ve been collecting city warnings. Apparently they have some issue with the van that I have parked on my lawn, spread out in pieces instead of a lawn. Apparently they have a problem with the dripped greens and pinks and reds streaming across the walls and windows of my house. On my roof. Apparently they have a problem with the banana tree in my front yard that I painted black. Apparently I am not allowed to paint the curb purple. Apparently I am not allowed to carve faces into the telephone poles. Apparently the Halloween limbs I have sticking out of the broken bits of van have caused some people concern. Apparently I am supposed to have a lawn, and not just have the empty bits of land painted green. And they don’t like the family of yard gnomes now hanging by hemp string dangling from the power lines.
But all of that means nothing to me. I take their rebuke as a source of pride. I collect their warnings in a scrapbook. It is as close as I will come to a canvas and they are a reminder to me that I am making an impact.
I’m guessing now that I should have paid closer attention to those notices, as one of them may have hinted that I could possibly end up in jail. There was, after all, a knock at the door (and nobody ever knocks on the door, it being wet with fresh coat of dripping black) and I see the police officer outside, looking at his freshly painted hands (a fresh new work of art by yours truly), and holding a pair of handcuffs.
Suddenly he’s yelling at me to open up in the name of the law. And apparently my rights extend to an ability to remain silent, as those handcuffs are getting clicked onto my wrists. And he’s just yammering on about this right and that right, blah blah blah, and how I’m going to jail and blah blah blah. This guy is a serious drag.
But he does start talking briefly about my beautiful home and he mentions that the film crew will be arriving in a couple of hours. I guess they need me out of there so they can get the place ready for them. And I just smile and nod.
Finally a film crew is coming to respect my work. To show the world who and what I am. So he hauls me into his car and I can just smile, a mile wide. But I can’t stick to that silence right. I give that up.
“What’s the TV share?” I ask the cop. “What kind of audience we got playing for this?” He just gives me a long look and drags me off to jail.
Two hours later I’m pacing in front of the jail house TV set watching, wondering when my house will be on display. Suddenly, after a commercial break, there it is, for all the world to see. And the title comes up: “Cops: Home Makeover Edition.”
I wish I was there to explain, to show them what the house meant, what every piece of furniture symbolized and how it defined our society. A microcosm of our world. But they’ll just have to figure that out themselves cause I’m stuck behind these bars. The thrill of excitement comes over me as I watch them pull out sledgehammers and drills, setting out to destroy this home piece by piece and wall by wall. It’s beautiful.
As they drill they take the pieces and set them on these careful piles. Art on art on art on art. How appropriate it is for them to take my dining room table and saw it in half, then in quarters, then shredded to bits, added to the pile. Shards of blue and grey and red. And they take one of the Halloween arms from the lawn, the one holding a Coca-Cola bottle, a symbol of our society’s dependence on marketing and sponsorship and name branding. They throw it into a trash can and I am in awe. It’s exactly right, it’s perfect. I wished like mad I could be there to watch and help and direct the mad destruction.
Then, when it is done, and my house has been destroyed into bits and pieces of colored parcels I turn off the TV and wonder for a long time: why didn’t I think of that?

Patio

2008-06-12T15:43:00.004-04:00

The patio glistened with morning dew. Slim fingers of sunlight reached through the pine shaded back yard and splayed across the weather sealant like spider webs on an abandoned exer-cycle. A coral-breasted nuthatch twittered its morning soliloquy before dropping a graceful string of pearly white excrement across the sky blue Jacuzzi cover.

“Ah, morning.” said the patio table (who liked to think of her self as PT), reveling in her roundness skewered with an adorning umbrella which sheltered its well worn surface from sun and bird-poo alike. “I am queen of the pay-she-oh” she breathed. She pronounced patio as if it rhymed with ratio, which in her wooden mind it should.

The sliding door opened to expel a slipper footed User. It was one of the older ones who held a canister of steaming liquid. PT noted the coaster with approval. Just because she was an outdoor-seater was no reason to risk her finish. With the pay-she-oh door open and the French door to the kitchenette spread apart she could see into the living room. Pt felt her bolts tighten with anger.

There it was. That stuck up, elitist, plastic covered hussy; Couch. PT resented Couch with every splinter of her being; with its prissy woven materials and its plastic cover. What were the Users protecting her from? Rump dent?

PT knew that indoor furniture or softies as they liked to call them were weak and vulnerable, but this was an outrage. They never even Used her!

Deck chair once suggested that Couch might feel a prisoner, locked up in the tower, unUsed and unloved, but PT knew better. Couch was smug and she deserved body fluid stains and termites. Maybe a sleeping smoker - yeah, that would be what she deserved. Smug, bitch.

Then she nearly lost her umbrella. They had finally done it! The Users had removed her plastic. Oh, glorious day! That snob was garage food inside a year. PT settled her wood and turned her attention back to the glorious morning sun. Ahh…

-Brihac

Island Paradise

2008-04-14T09:37:00.001-04:00

Here's another assignment by Laura harkening back to the "Write a story set during your most recent vacation" assignment. Enjoy!

Island Paradise
by Laura Mahoney

A New England September is like a hunk of week-old cheese: cold, clammy, and slightly off-putting. The last vestiges of summer filled with visits to the cape, eating corn on the cob and lobster rolls by the seashore, are but a golden memory, and you begin to brace yourself for the unavoidable onslaught of winter.
At that time of year, I would give anything to hold on to that pure ecstasy of summer for just another week or two. I long for the chance to transport myself to some sunny paradise where I would never be more than a stone’s throw from a beach. So when I learned of the opportunity at my office to win a trip to anywhere in the world, I jumped at the chance.
But which paradise would be my paradise? There were so many to choose from, and as a travel agent, I was all too familiar with their names and resorts: there was the Beachcomber Resort on its own private island off the coast of Fiji, reportedly the best place for snorkeling in the country due to its status as a protected marine wildlife sanctuary. Or perhaps the Secrets Resort in Playa del Carmen Mexico, where an all-inclusive lifestyle would surely give me that sense of luxury I desired.
When faced with so many decisions, it became a bit overwhelming. I finally sat down to write my application essay, and thought about what I loved about traveling in the first place. I began to realize that all of my favorite vacations had involved being on the water in some way. From crossing the Atlantic to Scandinavia aboard a training ship for 2 months on a summer break from college, to the boat I took to a deserted island off the coast of Jamaica. There was also my trip to Costa Rica, where my traveling companion and I made a point of being on the water in some capacity at least once every day.
I flipped through a couple of tour brochures, all glistening with photos of dozens of boat trips. There was a triple-decker wood-paneled passenger boat for drifting lazily down the Amazon in Peru, a majestic-looking tall-ship for a week’s journey from Sao Paolo to Rio de Janeiro, and even a glamorous yacht for island-hopping in Greece.
But the one boat that caught my eye was neither glamorous nor majestic. It looked to me like it had seen one too many tourist seasons. The photos of the cabins looked as though they were peering into the dark cramped space of a closet, rather than a room where you were expected to stow yourself and a week’s worth of luggage.
But all that could be endured, I thought, because the destination this boat would give me the freedom to explore was Croatia.
Not the first place you think of when you think of “beach paradise.” The mere mention of the place most likely conjures of images of a politically unstable, war-ravaged landscape. For me, however, it was just the kind of remote, less traveled place I was looking for.
The trip I took was a 7-day island-hopping excursion. I pored over the tour dossier excitedly, and tried to wrap my mouth around exotic words like Makarska, “Brac” (pronounced Buh-rotch), Hvar (ha-var), and Mljet (still not sure about that one.) We ate, drank, slept, and drank some more while sunbathing on the well-worn decks of our “vintage sailing ship.” Though the sun was almost always shining, sunbathing was something you could only do in spans of about 45 minutes to an hour. Our tight schedule meant we were sailing from about 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day at a fairly high speed, so wind was constantly whipping over the decks, causing the Croatian flag hung proudly at our stern to be nearly ripped to shreds. For respite and to nurse wind-burned faces, it was necessary to gather your things and go indoors to the dining room for a game of cards or to read a book.
Our crewmembers were all Croatian and spoke no English, save the waiter. He was a forty-something guy named Tonchi with lots of lines in his face. There was the cook, a grisly old fellow who we affectionately named “Cook,” in part because his given name was also Tonchi. Moving up in the ranks, there was the first mate: a tall, lanky fellow of few words, who had an unsettling way of sneaking up on you, and who was the son of the Captain, or El Capitan to my raucous Australian boatmates.
The fact that English was a rare commodity among our fearless leaders was something of a challenge. Living on a boat in an unfamiliar country, and traveling from place to place each day, requires at least a rudimentary form of communication between passenger and crew. Take for example the scene that unfolds upon arrival at one of the afore-mentioned unpronounceable islands. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon, and thirty-two young adults, near exhaustion from overexposure to sun, wind, and warm Croatian beer, anxious for some solid ground and a change of scenery, are all clambering to run off the boat and see the sights while there is still a little daylight left. But what is this place? Where is here? And what time is it necessary to be back on the boat to ensure that we don’t get left behind while the rest of the group continues on down the jagged coast? The only information we received in return was Tonchi (the waiter)’s chicken scratch on a chalkboard above the gangway leading off the boat. All that appeared there was an indication of the time we would need to be back on the boat in the morning: 0700. Thank God for the universal language of the 24-hour clock.
All in all it was a fabulous trip, highlighted by the 2-hour walk around the two-story high medieval wall encompassing the UNESCO world-heritage site at Dubrovnik, which affords spectacular views of the ancient stone city and the island-dotted Adriatic sea that crashes up against the wall like an enemy invader. Despite my many adventures along the way, including a pirate theme party on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I don’t think Croatia is the beach paradise I was hoping for. While beaches do abound in a coastline with over 1,000 islands, they’re mostly covered in pebbles and are painful to walk on. Maybe next time I’ll stick to the old standbys, and leave the exploring to someone else.

Moment of Discovery

2008-04-10T18:55:00.000-04:00

Deftly, his practiced fingers unhinged the lock on the large, wooden chest that held the secrets of his origin.

His skin buzzed from the elevated nanobot activity in his veins.

Almost automatically the adrenaline boost activated to increase his heart rate and ensure total focus. “Better than a triple espresso,” he would brag to the cell-based skinners at on Drakmar VI.

The lock wasn’t the real threat. The box contained nano viruses. The NVs would reprogram his ‘bots to kill him. Bad way to go.

Removing a long thin tube, he unraveled a sheet of material so thin it appeared to be two dimensional. Slowly he lowered to horizontal material across and through the chest.

The material singed an ugly dark mottle as he passed it through the box before it self-ignited with a hissing crackle.

Seventeen years he had been searching for this box. All his money, all his time, what was left of his humanity and now it was here in front of him.

Activating the cam inside his ocular implant for posterity he simultaneously reached into the past and into his future…

-Brihac

Next Stop, Haaaaaarvard Square!

2008-04-10T15:14:00.001-04:00

Here's a post from Laura, harkening back to one of our most popular assignments, "Write a Haiku about Pirates Stealing your Lunch."

Ordinary day
Listening to my Ipod
On my way to work.

Stuffed like a sardine
In this tin can subway car
Between two big dudes.

I crank up the sound
Groove out to some old Motown
To drown out the crowd

In my lap rests lunch:
A sandwich of ham and cheese
And a pudding snack.

Painstakingly packed
This morning while I tuned in
To Ellen’s dance moves.

Suddenly I see
Dude 1 looking down at me
Ogling my lunch.

I pretend all’s well
But I can’t avoid his stare.
“Whatcha got there, hmm?”

“Oh, this? It’s nothing.
Just some two-day-old cold cuts,”
I say nervously.

I notice he has
A parrot on his shoulder.
My god a pirate!

As we pull into
The next stop, he drawls “Ay Mate,
This be Harrrrrrrvard Square.”

He gets up, walks out
Leaving me in peace at last.
I breathe a heavy sigh.

Just as the doors close
His parrot swoops back in and
Deftly grabs my lunch.

Before I know what’s what
The parrot and his owner
Are reunited.

They slip from my view
Just beyond the plexiglass.
Enjoy lunch, you fiends!

So I says to my bunkmate

2008-03-18T20:50:00.003-04:00

So I says to my bunkmate, “Fingers, you gots to see dis.”

And Fingers, rolls over in his bunk, which I can hear from below and I am guessing he stares at what I’m eyeballing and all he says is, “that ain’t good.”

So, I prods him a bit for conversation and I says, “Ain’t that your place, where you lived before we was busted last time? Think they are gonna rearrange all them paintings of poker dogs you got up on the walls?”

And I am guessing he was just nodding only I couldn’t see on account of him being in the upper bunk and me being in the lower one. But again he says, “That ain’t good.”

So, I keeps looking at the television and its one of them home turnover shows where they take one guys lousy taste in decorating his walls and picking furniture and trade it for someone else’s, but there’s always some dame screaming as it happens and everyone hugs afterward. Reminds me of a turf war, but I don’t really get it.

Anyways, on this particular eppy-sode they was taking a run down old house offa Mulberry and they was going to gut it, walls and all and turn it into some kind of yuppie-tarium or something.

“Hey, fingers,” I says at this point, “ain’t that your old joint, where you lived before we came to stay at this fine establishment? Waddn’t that the one you was going to fix up with the loot from our haul.”

Then, like a broken record Fingers comes back to me with, “That ain’t good.”

“I thought you stilled owned that place, oh, hey, ain’t that your sister, Fingers? Ain’t that Phyllis? She don’t look so good no more, ever since you broke her nose. That’s old Philly thought ain’t it?”

Fingers does his line again and I can’t get nothing more from him. Then the show changes - like. Not that it ain’t the same show anymore, but they change the speed and the lights and stuff like that and there is this far away kind of look at the house then, Wham! The whole thing goes up inna ball of flame.

Well, I am hooting and hollering and laughing so hard I nearly shits myself and then I get all quiet and I turns to Finger, even though I knows he can’t see me through the bunk. “Wasn’t that house where you stashed the dough from the last job? You said no one would find it, you promised me Phyllis wouldn’t get it ‘cause you booby trapped the hiding place with a big bomb which… ah, shit.

“That ain’t good.”

-Brihac

Trash my Bath!

2008-03-18T14:48:00.002-04:00

I was casually flipping through channels when a familiar pattern of wallpaper caught my eye.

A couple in their early thirties was standing in a fantastic bathroom. The wallpaper was peacock blue and rich Tudor brown and silver leaf, and drawn in intricate Art Nouveau floral designs. The woodworking was dark and rich, and pendant lamps in lapis blown glass hung in delicate drips over the sink and toilet area. The commode and the sink were a royal blue as well - not an easy color to find a toilet in. A rich cobalt tile covered the floor of the bathroom, and extended up the walls of the shower. The whole room was steeped in glimmering glamour. It was stunning. It was decadent.

It was my old house.

My husband and I sold the house two years ago when our kids moved out. We bought a condo and moved south. But I was thrilled to see my design being showcased on this HGTV show and quickly hit the info button on my remote to see why they were highlighting it. I called my husband into the living room and then read the paragraph blurb about the show. As I read, my excitement slowly turned to horror.

The show was called "Trash my Bath!" and it promised demolition of horrid bathroom design and renovation into a new space. Surely they were using my bathroom as a "what to do" on this show. But as I listened to the thirtysomethings in my old house talking about my luxurious bathroom, it became all too clear that it was not praise they were heaping upon my design skills. Adjectives like "hideous" and "nightmarish" and "ghastly" bounced off my beautiful wallpaper - a very expensive paper, mind you - and the thirtysomethings lamented about the "old fashioned" lamps and the "cave-like" darkness of the rich wood in the room.

I was offended. I was aghast. I was horrified when the show's host appeared in a hard hat with a sledgehammer and decimated the beautiful cobalt tiles in the shower. The wood cabinets were gutted and thrown in a dumpster. My pendant lamps were tossed and I nearly cried as I heard the glass break. The wallpaper was scoured and saturated and pulled off, and a blase taupe paint went up where the bold pattern used to be.

In the end, my old bathroom looked like every other bathroom these days - a dull, taupe box with white trim and boring white porcelain fixtures. No imagination, no escapism, no luxury. I could hardly bear it. I snapped off the television and grabbed my purse. There was decorating to be done. I needed to set things right. My husband didn't even blink as I headed out the door to the nearest showroom, in search of new design heights to combat the unimaginative designs of today. I already had a palette in mind - dusty rose, mint green, and gold leaf. And lots of whitewashed wicker. It would be decadent and lush and most certainly not taupe. And then I would have the last laugh.

2008-02-26T16:24:00.005-05:00

STAND UP EGG

Eggbert was a very normal egg. Sure, he was smooth and white and shined a little bit in the morning sun, but mostly he was incredibly normal.

Eggbert’s one true wish was to be something special. He watched all the other folks going about their days, happy and content and he told himself that he should be happier too. But he wasn’t.

One day, out of a desperate need to do something, he decided to place a large red dot on the top of his shell. This, he knew, would mark him as someone special, someone important.

All day long Eggbert waited for someone to notice his special red dot. But, no one did.

Finally, tired and frustrated he went to see his mother Eggdwina and when she saw him she opened her arms to give him a big hug, but before Eggbert could reach his mother’s comforting shell, she flicked the red dot from his head and said, “Oh, Eggbert. You’ve got some schmutz.”

Eggbert endured the hug and quickly left for home. On his long unhappy walk he saw a flyer on a telephone poll, it read, “Open Mike Night at Ye Olde Muffin bar and stand up club, tomorrow night.”

Eggbert felt his insides churn, this was it. He was going to be a stand up comedian and everyone would see how special he was. Running at full speed, he stopped at the book store, bought a joke book and ran home.

Eggbert stayed up all night reading the jokes and all day memorizing them for the show.

When the time came to go to the club, Eggbert was bleary eyed, but excited. This was going to be the big day!

After the first two acts finished, Eggbert took the stage. In a small and almost whiny voice he recited the first joke from his book. “Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?” he asked the audience.

He was met with utter quiet. No one in the audience responded. “Um, because he didn’t have the guts!” Eggbert said all at once. Again, no reaction from the audience.

Eggbert continued, unable to bare the silence, “You see, skeletons have no body, and so they literally have no guts and guts also means bravery, like being brave enough to cross the road…”

Someone in the back of the crowd let out a huge, “Boo!!! Get off the stage! You stink!”

Eggbert tried to continue, stammering, his hands shaking he began again, “What goes stomp, stomp, stomp, squish?” He looked out into the crowd for a friendly face.

“You do!” a woman shouted from the left side of the audience. Then the first spit wad sailed up on to the stage and splattered against Eggbert’s side.

His confidence failing, Eggbert slunk off stage to a nearby bar stool.

****

After his first drink he heard a warm and mellow voice at his side, “Hey there, Mate. Hang in there.”

“The name’s Toasters. I am the English Muffin who owns this comedy club.”

Eggbert looked over at the source of the voice, and sure enough, a distinguished looking English Muffin sat perched upon the bar stool to his left.

“Hello, Toasters,” Eggbert mentioned without any enthusiasm.

“Open microphone night not up to snuff for you, eh?” Toaster asked, his buttery shine glimmering with mischief.

“I was horrible,” Eggbert said, his tone indicating that his state of horribleness was what always was and what always will be.

“Chin up, Mate. All you did was get it wrong the first try, who doesn’t? You got to see it as one step in the overall process, not as failure.”

“You think I’m a failure?” Eggbert whined.

“Not unless you sit on the stool for the rest of your life whining about how you stink. See here. The trick with the comedy is to talk about stuff which is very much about you. Not just reading jokes out of a book. What works for me might now work for you.”

Dragging the words out of some deep place in his soul Eggbert asked, “What works for you?”

“What works for me, is being me! Think about it. What kind of jokes do you think I did when I was doing stand up?”

“Knock-knock jokes,” Eggbert asked cautiously.

“No, of course not! I’m an English muffin, so I come out on stage and tell them that it’s easy to be a comic, there’s muffin to it.”

Eggbert smiled a bit. “I get it, Muffin to it and you are a muffin.”

“That’s right.”

“And your name is Toasters!”

“Because I am a muffin and because I own a bar.”

Eggbert’s voice gained a note of excitement, “Two jokes!”

“Yes, but sadly being an English muffin does not provide as much material as I would have hoped.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be, I own the bar and am very happy, but you my friend, are an egg!”

Eggbert stared at Toasters without comprehension. “You mean I have to be a muffin to be funny?”

“No, you are an egg and when you find the humor in being an egg…”

“I’ll really be funny!”

“That’s right. Will you come back and try next week?”

“But I don’t know what I will say; I don’t know what the jokes will be.”

Toaster slid off the bar stool and began to walk away, “You’ll think of it. See you next week, kid.”

Eggbert felt the beginnings of excitement as he raced home to discover the jokes that came with being an egg.

****

And Eggbert thought about it until he thought he would explode. He thought about jokes which would be right for him in the morning when he showered. He thought about jokes during lunch. He thought about jokes when he drove around to get his shell polished and he thought about jokes all night long in his dreams.

Every time he thought he had the right kind of joke he would decide that it wasn’t exactly what he wanted.

****

Finally the day of the show arrived and Eggbert nervously got himself to the club, he wanted his jokes to be exactly the right kind. Even his mother Eggdwina was in the audience this time. He could not have possible been more nervous.

The act before him was a real ham and the audience looked angry. Carefully, with slow and deliberate movement Eggbert approached the microphone. The sharp whine of amplified feedback nearly caused him to run from the stage, but he held his ground.

Nervously he began, “Hello, folks. My name is Eggbert.”

The audience quieted with expectation and Eggbert was sure he remembered a few people from the week before. No one smiled.

“My name is Eggbert, and I am here to CRACK you up!” Eggbert yelled into the microphone. His last word echoed into the silence as the audience stared at him without expression.

Eggbert felt his heart drop to the floor and was about to continue when he heard someone in the audience yell out, “Oh, I get it. You are an egg and you are going to crack us up!”

Someone else in the audience laughed. “It’s a joke.”

Eggbert wasn’t sure if this was working, so he decided to charge on ahead.

“Anyway, I am so EGG-cited to be here tonight!”

Again, it was quiet for a moment and then a small group of folks in the audience laughed. “He’s an egg and he’s egg-cited!” one of them said through his chuckles.

“You guessed it,” Eggbert replied, “I guess the YOLK is on me!”

At this half of the audience began to laugh.

“Hmm,” Eggbert said, pretended to not know what to say, “What SHELL I say next?”

Now the other half of the audience began to laugh.

“Seriously,” Eggbert continued, getting exited, “I am SCRAMBLING for another joke!”

Now the audience was howling with laughter. They were falling out of their chairs and slapping each other on the back with delight.

Eggbert yelled to the audience’s delight. “Hey you guys are great, I wasn’t sure that I would like you, but you won me OVER EASY!”

The audience was in a frenzy now, chanting, “Eggbert! Eggbert! Eggbert!”

Toaster joined Eggbert on the stage and took the microphone, “Brilliant. How about a big hand for Eggbert everybody!” and the applause was deafening.

As Eggbert made his way off the stage, Toaster called to him, “You did it kid, you looked deep inside and you found your very own voice!”

Eggbert smiled and called over his shoulder, “EGG-zactly.”

Oh, Reality

2008-02-20T22:07:00.006-05:00

by Marcy

Everyone was sick and tired of Eddie Glug, but try as they might they could not get him to trip up and do something stupid. Annoying he was, and rank smelly, but he was a smart player with no scruples. He was made for reality television, and he was the person on the show that everyone - on the show with him or at home watching - loved to hate.

Eddie was manipulative. He wooed Charice in the first three episodes just to turn on her when she lost the mud race challenge in episode four. And you would think that his betrayal of Charice would have set off alarms for Bran and Alyssa, his closest cohorts in the tribe, but he outsmarted each of them in turn to win immunity and eventually lead to their being voted off. The others tried to gain his trust in an attempt to figure out his motives, but he cut them down with his strategies week by week, one by one. They had been on the deserted island twenty-five days, and Eddie still had yet to take a bath or shower. Rhonda was convinced he had something growing out of his toes. She never got the chance to investigate it, as she was booted off the island on the fifteenth day.

On day thirty one there were three people left; Eddie, Martin, and Kataya. In an unprecedented three-way tie, all three had immunity necklaces and therefore could not be voted off. The rules of the game stated that should a stalemate like this occur, the remaining contestants must stay on the island as long as possible, and the last one to leave the island would be crowned the victor. Kataya was sunburned and starving, and Martin had sprained his ankle in the last challenge wherein he won his immunity. Eddie, aside from his toe fungus, was still intact and completely convinced of his victory. After fifty-four days, Kataya finally gave in to the elements and begged to be removed from the island. Martin and Eddie were the only ones left.

The viewers at home were rapt with attention as the show moved into day fifty-four. How long would they last? And who were they rooting for at this point? Eddie had played an incredible game, and the viewers at home had seen his masterful manipulation of the game unfold from the comfort of their own couches. But Martin had played true. He was the good guy. But still, Eddie was captivating.

Week seventy-two finally saw a victor, in the form of a poisonous marple snake who took both Eddie and Martin in their sleep. It was the highest rated and most critically panned episode of reality television to date. Until next season when Bret Michaels attempts the same game on the same island with a group of crazy half naked former strippers in search of attention and 15 minutes of fame.

2008-02-19T19:25:00.002-05:00

Everyone was sick and tired of Eddie Glug, but try as they might they could not get him to stop giving honest answers when asked how he was doing. You see, Eddie always had one tragedy or another hanging over his head and he was always just moments away from turning it all around. When innocently asked how he was doing he would invariably come back with” Horrible. But…” and fill in some grand plan for turning his life around.

Now, Eddie’s four best friends from growing up would never dream of making him leave their little group. They had all been friends since the kindergarten, when Eddie had thrown up from eating too much paste and stuck the five of them together, quite literally, for the first time.

But Edie, Nora, Jeff, 'Cisco and Andrea were all in the mid forties now and at least 80% of the paste friends had long ago tired of Eddie’s neurotic compulsion to tell everyone exactly how bad things were and how great they were going to be. Eddies plans never turned out and the lamentation of their failure was utterly draining to endure.

When Eddie was 27 he was made manager of the video store where he worked. He was convinced that he had finally turned a corner. Then, of course, his store shut down because no one rented videos from a store any more and Eddie was laid off. Everyone got an ear full on that one for about a million years.

So, it was with some surprise that non long after the four friends were about to retire and slow down to a rather modest and fixes income that their fifth friend, good old Eddie Glug bough himself a winning lottery ticket; 24 million dollars after taxes.

It came to pass that for the next two years everyone was sick and tired o Eddie Glug because you could not get him to stop answering the question, “How you doing?” With the answer, Fantastic! But…” and then he would drone on endlessly about taxes and solicitors hitting him up for donations and how much stress he was under from having his new mansion renovated.

So the paste friends killed him.

They made it look like an accident. They convinced Eddie that he should leave all his money to them in equal parts because they were his only and best life long friends. And they killed him.

Which of course was a huge mistake, because within a month everyone was sick and tired of Eddie Glug’s ghost because they could not get him to stop haunting them every moment of every day and whining about how he was killed by his friends just as things were finally turning around for him. But… just as soon as he was done haunting them, he would get to go to heaven and then everything would finally be great.

-Brihac

Make Mine Rare

2008-02-19T15:03:00.001-05:00

By Steve Mast

Belinda Budge was as stubborn as her last name implied, and on this particular day she was resolute in refusing to eat her dinner. Melinda Budge, the porky fiend’s mother, was staring in disbelief at her husband, who was, apparently, allowing their daughter to misbehave.
Melinda’s arms were crossed and she kicked the thin, shrunken and balding man under the table. There was a loud “THUMP” and a tiny cry of pain emanated from what looked to be more of a corpse than a man. “DO something about your daughter,” the woman growled, and tilted her head at the girl, who was sitting in a cross armed imitation of her mother, her lower lip stuck out, staring at her food.
The corpse gave a hint of a consolatory smile and glanced back and forth between mother and daughter, as if trying to decide which was the lesser evil to talk to. “Now sweetie,” he said, settling on the daughter, “Why don’t you at least try your ham?”
The little girl raised her pudgy eyebrows to her father and said, “I don’t LIKE this ham. I don’t WANT this ham! I want PIE!” Her voice raised in volume and pitch with every phrase.
“But honey-pumpkin – you asked for the ham – you LIKE ham.”
“This ham is OVERCOOKED! I want RARE ham!”
“But lubby-hunkins – nobody eats ham rare – you have to cook it to be sure it’s…”
“I’ll eat a WHOLE FUCKING PIG ALIVE if I want to – I won’t eat this overcooked processed FILTH!” The mammoth child was shouting. She picked up a fistful of peas and mashed potatoes and flung it at her father. Half the food stuck to his chest and face and the other half splattered around the room.
Melinda, seeing the scene begin to get out of hand, grabbed her purse and swung it at the corpse’s head. He ducked but too late and there was the noise of glass breaking as it struck him solidly in the ear. Her own shouting matched her daughter’s. “Why are you doing this to her? Just order her some GOD DAMNED PIE, you GOD DAMNED IDIOT!”
The corpse looked down at the table but put a hand up until he had somebody’s attention. “Waiter, we’d like to order some desert now.”

LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD

2008-01-19T02:09:00.001-05:00

By L. David Wheeler

Belinda Budge was as stubborn as her last name implied, and on this particular day she was resolute in refusing to fulfill her duties. As she was a guardian angel, this left her charge, Darrah Rongweld, in something of an awkward situation, as she was marked for humiliation, desecration and ultimate annihilation by the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence.

Why Darrah Rongweld was marked by said Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence as their particular repository of wrath, why they feared her as they had few others – the Galilean, certainly; Merlin, quite possibly; Gary Cooper, most definitely, for the magic was strong within him – is obscure. For Darrah Rongweld was a file clerk. In a third-string American city named Rochester, New York. Who collected Snoopy figures and played piano badly and made decent chili and occasionally gave bums a dollar. She grew up in the thickest suburbs and lived a thickest-suburban life. She had a boyfriend named Murray who sold advertising for a free shoppers’-rag and had a rockabilly band named The Burnin' Beulahs. She named her two cats after Jane Austen characters. She was smart but not brilliant, cute but not beautiful, steady but not resolute, strong but not steeled. She was, in other words, perfectly ordinary.

Belinda Budge figured, rather, she knew in her sinews that she was made for grander things than to guard the perfectly ordinary Belinda Budge. She had guarded Winston Churchill! Miguel de Cervantes! Abigail Adams! Joan of Arc – well, that hadn’t turned out all that well, but it was quite a gig while it lasted. Just because the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence had apparently made some appalling clerical error didn’t mean she had to waste however many decades the wretched creature would live, just because the Secret Lords of Lofty Luminescence said so. Just because they said Darrah Rongweld was this era’s Chosen One Who Beats Back The Forces of Entropy Simply By Existing. What did they know? (And what kind of title was that, anyway?) They weren’t real archangels, any more than she was a real angel or the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence were real demons. Those folks existed, but traveled in different circles, it seemed. No, the Secret Lords and their associates – once Malcolm Mudge called her and, she supposed, himself, “minions,” and she disemboweled him extra disembowely for the affront – were free-lancers in the field of Meddling in the Affairs of Mortals. And subject to the occasional lapse in intelligence gathering, it seemed.

Let Darrah Rongweld get hit by a truck today. No, a bus! A train! A cruise ship! The space shuttle! Let her get eaten alive by mad dogs – cows, bears, kangaroos, dinosaurs, basilisks! Let her Diet Dr. Pepper turn to arsenic, hemlock, Drano, acid, even that foul draught they call Mello Yello! The Earth would continue to spin. Evil would not run rampant over the cosmos. Both the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence and the Secret Lords of Lofty Luminescence would sheepishly realize their error and root around for the real Chosen One.

And maybe Mudge would finally shut up.

“Hey, come on, Belinda, the day’s half-over and we haven’t even started.”

She was sitting on the Court Street bridge over the Genesee River, welcoming the meaty fumes from the nearby Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, wishing her kind were corporeal enough to eat. He was standing behind her on the sidewalk, nervously stroking his moustache and making entreating eyebrow motions even though she had her back to him, because that was his way. This is the kind of demon the stupid Secret Dark Etcetera send to stay the Chosen One? Stupidity and folly.

She’d done battle with some of those Teutonic hunks of virile vileness that hovered around Hitler and his posse. Malcolm Mudge just ... sucked.

“What we?” Belinda asked, never taking eyes from the river. “Do whatever you want. Shoot her. Stab her. Lase her, tase her. Boil her blood and bake her bones. Toss her off the Xerox tower. Force-feed her Garbage Plates til her heart ignites. Feed her to the zebra mussels. The choice is yours.” She hopped down to the sidewalk and looked Mudge in the eye. “The day lies spread before you, and it’s all yours. I won’t stop you, 'cause I quit. Abdicate. Surrender. Hit the road. Shuffle off to Buffalo. Bet I can make it in an hour.” She smirked. “You’ve won – or you will if you quit bugging me and destroy her already. She’s a Chosen One” – she poured as much bitter irony into the term as she could – “your promotion is assured. You’ll get out of Rochester! Just cowboy up and do it. Be a man!”

“I’m not a man, Belinda, I’m ...”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“... an Incorporeal Spectral Personified Entity. Just like you. And you know it doesn’t work that way.”

“Who says? You try to kill Rongweld. I try to stop you. Today I stop trying. Ball’s in your court, Mudge.”

“It’s in our court. Because I can’t do anything to her unless you resist. The victory isn’t won unless it’s taken. That’s the rule.”

“Rule? What rule?” She had never heard of such a rule – but then again, she had never heard of any Incorporeal Spectral Personified Entity, on either side, refusing to do her or his duty. She was, as far as she knew, the first, for she was as stubborn as her last name implied.

“The Deepest, Truest Canticle from the Well of Portentious Power Ere Eternity’s Onset Decreeing Ever Matched and Met Combat O’er Reality’s Covert Hinges, of course.” He crossed his arms. “Really, Belinda, you should study up on this stuff.”

“The Deepest, Truest ...” she muttered the litany to herself, trying to recall the ponderous title, than stopped short at “Onset.” She jabbed a finger in Mudge’s face. “You made that up!”

“I most certainly did not!”

“You made it up just now!”

“All right, all right. What gave it away?”

“What didn’t give it away? What the hell is wrong with you?”

He was silent for a moment, but his face was moving, various shadows passing across his eyes while his lips ... trembled, they truly did. Then he spoke, looking her square in the eye. “I don’t want it to end.”

“What to end?” she snapped.

“This. Well, not this, but that. The fight. The battle. The sparring. The parrying.”

“What are you talking about? The sparring and parrying don’t stop when one of the mortals does. Your bosses will find another alleged Chosen One for you to harass, and my bosses will send someone out to stop you. And you can fight and battle and spar and parry to your heart’s content.”

“I don’t want to fight anyone else. I’ve got my heart’s content.”

Belinda’s confusion and honest curiosity had almost overwhelmed her anger and annoyance. Her gaze softened, if only a mite. “Mudge. Malcolm. What are you saying?”

Malcolm Mudge looked more miserable than Belinda had ever seen a free-lance nondemon look. “I’m saying I love you, Belinda. I’ve loved you for years – since Darrah Rongweld was in preschool.”

She didn’t know what to say. So she pushed him off the bridge. And hoped that didn’t turn him on.

And she cursed Darrah Rongweld, while getting back to work protecting her worthless but possibly pivotal life. She preferred Malcolm as ardent adversary to whiny stalker, so Darrah would get her guardian angel back.

Belinda perched her incorporeal, invisible body atop Darrah’s cubicle wall, watching her nibble on Lean Cuisine fettucine as she worked her way through her lunch break. She leaned forward and stared into unseeing eyes, addressing her charge’s unhearing ears. “Bitch, all I can say is you’d better save the whole damn cosmos.”

And, as they drew swords, Malcolm Mudge smiled. Someday she’d come around.

Closing in

2008-01-08T21:42:00.001-05:00

By Bryan M.

When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was, he was behind in the polls by 13 points and now he watched his lead plummet like mercury in a New England winter.

His left foot took the last step before he'd be at his podium. The sea swelled. Arms and flags and signs with his name undulated in a powerful heave all around him. Red, white, blue sparks danced around him. They were good, he thought, to stick with me to the end. But a wounded animal knows when it's licked. Would Max play dead and hope his predator had mercy? He had a chance to go out graciously, to tell the masses of New Hampshire voters to back Barack or huzzah Hillary.

No, the instincts told him otherwise. Go out swinging, his conscience said. Take 'em all down. Make them believe you were their last, great ... white ... hope. Make them regret their doubts. Make them guilty for being suckered in by slick ads and shiny propoganda. Make them second-guess, don't make yourself the second choice.

Max raised his arms. The crowd hushed. His eyes lowered.

They waited for a speech that never came.

He raised his arms because his suit was stifling, and he needed his arms free. The crowd hushed - it saw something in him it hadn't seen before, and for the first time their confidence wavered. His eyes lowered to take one last look at the speech he'd never give, and to make sure the podium wasn't bolted to the floor.

In one motion he lifted his leg and sent the wood podium flying. His hands went to his waist, and fluidly his belt was off. Before the heavy box crashed to the convention floor, flattening a widow in the process, his back was turned. His pants were down.

And the last thing they'd remember was Max. The great white hope.

And his butt.

Glub Glub

2008-01-08T14:41:00.000-05:00

By Kris Dreessen

When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was, Max lived underwater in a new, fancy aquarium in India. He was one of the first visitors, leaned over a little too much to get a better gander at the clown fish and fell in. Instead of letting him out the staff was excited at the prospect of a "larger" exhibit. They tossed him a regulator and scuba mask, placed a new lid on tight and have held him captive for 2 years. He gets fed through an opening in the wall. But no one knows this because when he speaks, only gurgles come out.

That's the Spirit

2008-01-08T13:55:00.000-05:00

by Marcy

When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was that Max had been dead for 15 years, and he was tired of talking to people. He tried to tell the latest group of ghost hunters this on their EVP recording device, but what he had said as “leave me the Hell alone” had turned up on their recordings as “give me the telephone.”

They then brought in an old school rotary phone and swore that it would ring when not even plugged into the wall because the entity in this dwelling was so powerful. Frustrated, Max instead made one of their cell phones ring just to spite them, and the energy his spirit had to draw from the room sapped the battery in their video camera so they couldn’t get it on tape. That would show them.

But it didn’t. When people hear that things happen in the apartment building at 105 Franklin Street, every ghost hunter team, psychic, clairvoyant, and hack show up just to have a piece of the easy proof. Max used to enjoy it, but after 15 years it had gotten old.

The only person Max wanted to talk to these days was Andrea, a clairvoyant who had lived on the fifth floor of the apartment building he lingered in. She was quiet, and funny, and oh, would that he were still alive … well, it couldn’t be. But at least she could hear him, and talk back. When she had first moved into the apartment she had sensed him right away. Other tenants had burned sage – a smell that Max abhorred – and filled their apartments with crucifixes. Others held séances and begged Max to tell them things from the beyond. Max avoided their apartments, as they seemed the most likely to try and either raise him from the dead or have him exorcized.

But when Andrea had moved in, she did none of these things. Instead, she casually acknowledged him over her shoulder while unpacking dishes in the kitchen. She said “I know you are there. And I don’t mind, as long as you don’t try to harm me.” Max tested the water by speaking, asking her how she knew. “I sensed you,” she said, without looking away from her task.

Max lingered a while and she told him little things, like where she got this particular painting she was hanging, or how her great-grandmother knitted the afghan she was unpacking. Each day, when Max’s travels around the building brought him back to her apartment, she greeted him kindly, said a few things, and went on about her day. It made the ghost hunters and cuckoo psychics that visited the building at the landlord’s whim more bearable, back then.

She stayed in the building for two years, but fate took her elsewhere. The day she moved out she said goodbye to Max and thanked him for being a good roommate. Max hadn’t seen her since, but his travels never really took him out of the building so that was no surprise. What was a surprise is how sad he felt. He missed her. And now he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but more came to find him than ever before.

So sometimes he played their games, and sometimes he avoided them. And still other times he tried to make them go away. But they still listened when he spoke. They recorded it and catalogued it and chalked it up to evidence of life after death. When Max spoke, people listened.
But no one had talked to him like Andrea.

Hacky New Year!

2008-01-08T12:05:00.000-05:00

Greetings, 2008!

The No-Talent Hacks welcome you.

Our Hack resolution, though challenged by distance, time, and workloads, is to try and have more Hack posts on this here blog than we did for 2007. So here goes.

Write on!

Happy Hacksgiving!

2007-11-27T14:02:00.000-05:00

Greetings Hacks Fans!

Props to Brian, our faithful west coast Hack, for keeping content on the Hack site over the last few months. A Hack-laden wedding sort of got in the way of our postings for a bit, plus it is commonly known that we hacks tend to take a blog-hiatus during the summer. But fear not, we have returned! Stay tuned for new and exciting Hack literature from your favorite slacker hacks!

- Hack Central Command

DUCKED UP

2007-10-08T13:18:00.000-04:00

If I were a duck, he thought to himself, then I probably would not spend my time imagining I was a person.

The logic of this assertion was reassuring given the utter reckless chaos that his life had become in the last week or three.

As long as I know that as a duck I would not wonder about being a person that I can handle the rest of it.

The problem with the rest of it was that he knew, deep in his gut that the rest of it was completely ducked up. But he had an enormous difficulty describing the exact nature of the problem to anyone else. Idly he wondered if perhaps the ducks would understand, and then abandoned that line of reasoning. Too much duck-think could get a guy lost just when he was about to hang on to something tangible. Like apples or Slinkies.

Everyone seemed so cool with it. The it which he could not describe but knew was wrong. Wrong in the way that kept him up at night, wrong in the way that none of his heroes of the screen or written word would have accepted for a second.

The heroes would have not only called out the wrongness, but been able to clearly and articulately explain the exact nature of wrongitude to the audience at large. Then, suffering for their beliefs, they would launch a campaign of right-setting which would cost them everything, but vindicate them in the end. It would be worth it they would gasp with their dramatically compelling but dying quack.

He wondered if waddling more would make him feel duckier and allow him some relief. The heroes always knew how to talk about the dragon – they never wallowed in abstract duck wondering or frustrated mumblings. He would need to take action. Action needed to be taken. He just needed to put his words to the world and come out with the thing which was the matter with the stuff.

Maybe tomorrow. After TV and games and internet and stuff.

The big it had something to do with goals or values or the confusing of the two, he was sure of that. But any time he mentioned it to someone, they would nod and smile and talk about their goals and values. Usually skewing the two together which was the whole problem. Could he make the M-noise with a duck bill? What if he was a duck and had to explain that the whole problem hinged on making money or milking monotonous moments? Might he, at that point, as a duck, wonder if he could be a person, if only to speak those bill-forbidden consonants?

M-m-must m-m-make m-m-money. Yeah. That might be something. Got to pay the bills, but you can’t say money with a bill… hmmm… getting closer.

He should share this with his friend. Tomorrow he would have to make one. Then he would share it. Then he could get rid of his friend because friends just expected things from people and that dragged down the whole glow of friendship thing. Bastards. Why couldn’t they leave a guy alone? Mallards probably never crowd each other. Expecting things. Of course they can’t even say what they are. “Hello, I be an ‘allard. Quack.”

Totally ducked up.

-Brihac

2007-08-04T13:18:00.000-04:00

Write a page from a travelogue of a space adventurer.

Dear Diary.

Cletus and me were playing zap-the-cleaner today and I got banished from the rec room for three shifts. What’s a kid supposed to do for fun around here? I mean, we go to class during the sun shift and we sleep during the second space exposure and that leaves a whole shift with nothing to do.

I read the earthside stories from before the great travel. They go one and on about the majesty of space and the way it makes you understand your insignificance in the sweep and scope of infinity. I done that too, but it don’t take but about half an hour. That’s like only one sixteenth of a shift! That’s right, I know my numbers. Fat lot of good that does when you got nothing to do.

Maybe we shouldn’ta played zap the cleaner, but it is the only thing which means something when you play. See the cleaner drones were made earthside a whole long time ago and they have this self repair thing about which works mostly, but not all the way. Anyway they repair the parts of themselves what keep them cleaning, but there is this kind of energy leak on ‘em that if you touch one it shocks you so bad your hair stands up and you can’t breath for like three breaths. So me and Cletus, we play a kind of tag ball with the cleaners zipping around and if you don’t pay super attention to where you are, ZAP! Man, I laughed so hard when Cletus was flopping around on the ground, how was I to know he was going to be an idiot and whack his head on the bulwark?

He got himself a new synth-plate in his head and they say the hair will grow back eventually. Maybe we’ll get attacked by space pirates who fly flaming asteroid destroyer ships. They could take me prisoner and raise me as a pirate. I’d make a good pirate… boy-howdie, space travel is boring. I bet I could get Drucilla to play Zap the cleaner with me tomorrow…

-Brihack

Rat-Formers: the musical

2007-07-21T14:55:00.000-04:00

Write a synopsis of the perfect summer blockbuster. (not an EXISTING movie, mind you, but a short story of mashing all the elements of what makes a blockbuster great, like Titanic meets LOTR or something.)

Everybody rush down to the theater for the biggest comedy blockbuster of the summer. The Rat-formers! Remy Potter grew up in the southern arm of the Andromeda galaxy, but he always wanted to cook - no opportunity on a world without any organic life forms, but a stray TV signal zipping through space changed everything.

Can Remy work his way into the elite kitchens of France without a human realizing that he is really an alien robot who can transform into any shape he chooses?

Will he be able to convince immigration that his gay love affair with Sioux Chef Adam Sandler is real? After all- he’s supposed to be gay, not a transformer-sexual!

Will Garcon Snape kick him out for his violation of the rules of defense the dark culinary arts? They say he cooks like magic, but can they prove it?

You laugh as Remy consoles his new earth friend who gets a sexy woman pregnant and lacks the emotional maturity to deal with it, you’ll cry when Remy gets locked in room 1408 and struggles to overcome supernatural forces and you’ll be on the edge of your seat as you watch Remy challenge social and sexual convention in a hilarious send up of Cecil De Mille’s Blazing Cans of Ham - his last project before his death which was never released.

This film has a running time of 400 minutes and is not yet rated.

One week

2007-07-05T14:29:00.000-04:00

Write a story set during your most recent vacation.

by Bryan

The cordless phone crackles a bit and pushes sound through cheesecloth, but it's the intent that matters. Never mind the Fs that sound like S and forget the pop of the Ps. If you can catch the drift of the disembodied voice on the other end, no one comes out the wiser. This is Communication 101 at Mahoney U.

For the better part of the year I was stuck to that black hunk of wires and metal and hard-to-kill plastic (proven through countless dropped calls - the ones that fall 10 feet per second after gliding away from the wedge you create with shoulder and ear). Always I was searching, looking, pining for employment opportunities from the comfort of the wood chair in my then-girlfriend's living room. The process intensified those last six months after moving far enough away from home to obliterate any thoughts of the weekend visits with Mom and Dad, venturing to make my fortunes monetarily and metaphysically in a city ripe for my taking.

It was then, at the end, that the phone granted one call of clarity and I could peacefully lay it back in its cradle. It somehow knew that this call was important - It rang a little louder and a little longer this time, as if to say this was the call I was waiting for. "Put the resume away," it seemed to say, "and settle in."

A brief conversation. Crystal clear. No hisses or pops. And I sat it down once the call ended, and I looked around the living room. Six months I'd been on again, off again. Six months not knowing where my next paycheck was going to be, or from whom. But now I knew. I had a week before I started the job.I had a week of vacation.

The Gold Coast

2007-07-05T13:50:00.000-04:00

Write a story set during your most recent vacation.

By Marcy

A heron stood by the shore.

I have of course seen herons in my lifetime, but never one so close. Even as I stepped near it, it stood its ground, gazing out over the horizon of the Atlantic. Two long tendrils of – what? Feathers? Hair? – waved in the breeze like a topknot on its head. It seemed rooted in the sand, and but for the occasional slight turn of its head, one would think it to be a statue.

I managed to get within three feet of the heron before it lifted one of its long legs and took a step aside. I stopped, and slowly sat down where I was. The heron rooted itself back into the sand and regarded me briefly with a quizzical gaze – as if I were the curiosity on the beach.

It wasn’t a glorious beach day by any means. It was overcast, and the ceiling of clouds undulated like a grey mirror of the green glass water below it. I watched the white caps on the water in the distance. Who knew what wonders nature could whip up from one moment to the next in such an environment? Behind me, above the beach, houses stood, still nursing wounds from Hurricane Ivan. That had been nearly a year ago, but the damage was still evident.

With thoughts of raging wind and spraying salt water in mind, my eyes searched the horizon for bigger waves, lightning, tall masts in the hazy distance. This was, after all, Florida’s treasure coast, and many a galleon had disappeared beneath the waves of the Atlantic. The host at the treasure museum said that frequently, after a storm, it was not uncommon to find the chance doubloon mixed in with the sand dollars after the tide went out.

But today was just a gloomy day, unthreatening, maybe heralding a drizzle or sprinkle or mist. I sincerely doubted that the chilly breeze coming off the Atlantic at the moment was going to bring me gold. I looked up at the heron from my spot nearby and wondered what he was watching the waves for. It looked back at me as if to ask me the same thing.

SEMI PROFESSIONALS JOURNAL

2007-07-01T18:23:00.000-04:00

Write a story set during your most recent vacation.

TRAVEL SECTION

This time of year a majority of the Semi-professionals are traveling to the GEIGE convention in the Midwest. GEIGE or Good Enough Is Good Enough is entering its tenth year (no one is really sure, but it’s definitely more than eighth) and it shows no signs of changing. Founded by a group of semi professionals who already lived in the area, GEIGE has become a unique blend of vacation destination and political hot bed.

This year, the Grand Marshall of the GEIGE parade is Hans Vaguersonton, whose tenure as the Grand Marshall has mirrored the time the parade has been held is, in his own words, "just about ready."

What makes this year different is that the OCD (Organization for Complete Dedication) is on hand to protest the ideology of the parade and tempers on the OCD side are running high. GEIGEs on the other hand tend toward vague resentment rather than outright anger and you can bet the resentment is stewing briskly about now.

What has existed over the last decade as mere ideological differences between two stylistically different factions has erupted into what this Freelance Journalist would call a full-scale-holy-war. Both sides not only abhor the beliefs of the other, but further contend that the other leaves a larger carbon footprint than the other while simultaneously embodying the root of all evil.

Spokesperson for OCD, Regina Grabnofski has these heated words about the parade.

“The GEIGE are lazy, self indulgent shits; they flaunt their apathetic ignorance as if it was a belief system to be admired by real professionals. Get real. And by the way this has nothing to do with Hans and I dating in the late 80s.”

Vaygerson, who was finally reached for comment replied, “The OCDs comments are not entirely true, y’know. She is looking at it a very specific way. Besides she is so uptight, I mean, really. Its no wonder we broke up.”

Supporters of both OCD and GEIGE will be flooding into Circlet Square come Monday to witness the debate between these two mighty philosophs.

Look for continued coverage on this event in the next issue of Semi Professional Journal - coming to news stands some time in summer. Probably.

Tanks for Nothing

2007-06-22T14:01:00.000-04:00

Assignment: What is life like in a fish tank?

(A lament from an alcoholic goldfish named Bruce who used to work at a radio station)

By Bryan

This is the dawning of the age of aquarium,
where love is thicker than water.

But I've got those backwater blues
In my neighbor's garden in the shade.

They say you never miss the water
But as any little fish will attest,

I can't feel at home in this world anymore.Won't someone change the filter?

Getting Tanked

2007-06-22T10:17:00.000-04:00

Assignment: What is life like in a fish tank?

So, I belly up to the Sand Bar like I always do when the light begins to settle down through the Great Tommy’s blinds. I order my usual Herring Wallbanger with a twist of brine and try to make sense of my life.

I drink to forget my evil twin. The one who always lurks at the edge of the glass, pretending not to meet my gaze with his big bulbous eyes, man is he ugly! Curse him and his ghastly visage. Who does he think he is?

One more drink as I try to set my mind to the larger questions in life. Like, is there life after the great swirl? Why do some scalers go belly up and others float on? Oh, who am kidding? I’m just looking for some tail to chase.

Bubbles was looking good a little earlier today, but that massive turd that’s been trailing out her back side since noon is a little disturbing. Its not that I’m coy or anything, but... yick! Use the aerator for Tom’s sake.

Ah, here he comes; Angelo, my buddy. He’s kind of a froofie in the looks department, but the soul of a bottom feeder. Drinks for both of us!

Tonight we need a plan. I suspect that our plan will involve snagging the food as it floats – it’s what we usually do. Don’t get me wrong, when we were younger and we would grab grub on the surface, but I can’t do that anymore, the gas that causes at my age! You know the old saying, “he who burped and darted really just lied and farted.”

Any-hoo probably grab some grub on the drop and then suck some rocks. There is some new gravel over by the diver I’ve been meaning to sample. Maybe if I see my twin I will give him a nasty head butt – then maybe he’ll swim off, the lousy algae-eating clam-tard! I need another drink.

Whoo! What a great plan! I can’t remember what we did last night, but that sounds like a great plan. Where’d my drink go?

-Brihack

Changing Mind

2007-06-20T10:57:00.000-04:00

by Marcy
You have been given the power to change one thing in the world. What is it, and what are the ramifications?

Change.

The word emboldens some, strikes fear into others. Change is as inevitable as death, which in itself is a change. There is no escaping change, though you can change change thanks to free will. Change is equal opportunity – everyone can make it, no-one can escape it. Change is a stalker, a constant companion, a catalyst, and a destroyer. Change brings new life, new discoveries, new disaster. Change is fair, balanced, cruel and kind. Change is everything, and is human, and is life, and is death.

They tell me I have the power to change one thing in the world. As a human being I have always had the power to change many things, even before they bestowed this on me. But they’ve given me more power – enhanced power. With this power I could stop wars. I could end hunger and poverty. I could change the foundations of the church – any church. I could change history, reverse global warming, make it so the holocaust and inquisitions never happened. But I can only do one of these. They’ve only given me the power to make one big change. What would you change, with ultimate power?

And if I made that one big change, what would come of it? Millions of little changes, none of which guaranteeing the original change I’ve made will stay changed. I could throw a boulder into a stream and alter its course, but the water will still flow. Was their experiment on me so that they could see the grandiose result, or did they simply to see what I would change? The power has paralyzed my mind – of course I should be philanthropic, humanitarian. Of course I should help - the good of the many outweighs the good of the one. But what good will I do?

I take the choice very seriously. I have pondered it for years. I have seen horrors in this world, global, national, personal. Would I change any of them? What should I change? This choice is too much for a human to bear. This choice should belong to the universe, the Great Spirit, The Goddess, God, whoever is in charge, not me.

What would I change, if I could change one thing?

I wait, and I weigh my choice, and when I one day reach a decision, I hope it will be a wise choice. Becuase after I choose, I can't change my mind. That's the one thing I can't change.

Friday Afternoon

2007-06-13T09:27:00.000-04:00

by Steve Mast

I’m starting to tense up again, just thinking about it. “Do me a favor, hun,” she had said, last week, as if adding “hun” automatically nullified the crap she was about to dump on me. “Next week when you do that report, could ya add some graphs? Bar graphs, not pie. I’ve always hated pie graphs. They make me hungry. Some nice bar graphs. Reading all those numbers without graphs gives me a headache.”
“Sure, hun” I had answered. It was either that or Atilla, which probably would have gotten me into trouble.
Graphs? Damnit all, I wasn’t her damn secretary. I was a salesman, and it was my sales that let her buy that damn BMW she’s started driving. A bright red sporty car. Her husband had drawn flames on the side. Dark puke-green things that looked like they were drawn in crayon.
So what had started as a simple sales summary had turned into a massive company-encompassing project detailing every sales detail for the past year, and now she wanted charts! I was already going on hour six of putting this thing together and I figured I had at least a few more before I’d be done.
But fuming about the problem and wishing pain and suffering on my boss wasn’t going to get the report done. Instead I looked out the window to imagine myself going home. Good ol’ “Atilla” had gone to lunch hours ago and had never come back. She was probably at home with a beer in hand. Damn her anyway!
Never mind – I guess she wasn’t at home cause as I looked out I saw her car zooming up the street back toward work. She seemed to be going a bit fast and I wondered if it was too much car for her to handle.
Apparently it was, as she hit a bump, veered to the right, and planted her car, and herself, directly into a parked car.
Startled, I jumped up out of my seat and wondered briefly if she was all right. It was only briefly because one, or perhaps both, of the cars burst into a huge fireball.
I gasped and was flooded with questions. What should I do? Should I feel bad cause I was just thinking bad thoughts about her? Should I feel sorry that she was gone?
I sat down again and looked at my screen. The report glared back at me, menacing. I grinned back. Turning off the computer I decided it was time to go home and have that beer after all.

Greetings, Hack Fans!

2007-05-31T13:12:00.001-04:00

(A note from your friendly neighborhood Marcy)

The Hacks are back after a brief lapse. It's been busy for everyone here in Hackdom, and with summer approaching, who knows how much we'll get written ... Hack Summers tend to involve us northeasterners getting out into the sun and air as much as we can before the snow returns. But we'll put up a valliant attempt to get words on the blog nonetheless, so stay tuned.

To quote one of my favorite writers, Brian Arnold:

"Write on!"

Surprise report

2007-05-06T09:41:00.000-04:00

by Bryan

Her Royal Highness, at 0800 hours our time this morning, a warship in the gulf reported a ball of fire hit the southern zone of Abu Dhabi.
How do I confirm the worst? The absolute worst. The kind of thing we laugh about in strategy meetings, when there's that one general in the corner who's the only one not laughing. I wish I'd listened to him.
Have to be strong. Can't let emotion interfere here. I was prepared when we went to war. Hell, I could have handled the second coming of the Dark Ages. God I don't want to go out like this. Not like this.
HMS Surprise deployed at 0802 on 4 January, YOL 1809; first report at 0922.
Capt. S. Aubrey writes: "Bosun's watch first reported; given orders at 0830 sailed north to Persia from east Africa. Officer on deck reported seeing flash, Ship's Crew all report seeing fireball falling from sky. Some report dark center, as if large object was on fire. Did not report seeing impact.
My House will not fall. It will be remembered for getting us out of this. We will do what needs to be done. But how?
Upon investigation Capt. Aubrey reports a large Engine, made of a metal he nor his crew have seen, created a crater on coast. At 40 metres out engine stirred, and 'stood up,' according to Capt. Aubrey.
NEXT PAGE FOR QUEEN'S EYES ONLY
And here we come to it. I wouldn't have believed it myself, though my advisers needed more convincing. Aubrey's one of the best men in the admiralty, but his report left even his staunchest supporters questioning the man.
It was then that the engine stood on two legs. It had two arms, and what appeared to be a head that "looked" at the crew before bending over and "transforming" into what appeared to Capt. Aubrey and his crew as the HMS Surprise.
And now, well, now no one needs his report. Now they need me more than ever. They need to know why the unmanned HMS Surprise is here, on the Thames, changing into a giant man and walking toward the House of Lords.

The Serpent and the Rainbow

2007-04-25T10:31:00.001-04:00

A bedtime story by Marcy

Above the trees and in the breeze the rainbow spanned the sky,
An arc of color, pure and bright, she sparkled way up high.
And in the grass along the dirt the serpent slithered through,
Looking for his noontime lunch - perhaps a bug or two.

But when he made it to the stream he saw the bow above,
Her shining colors waved hello, and the serpent fell in love
He followed her for miles and miles but never could get close,
The colors dance and laugh and shine, but the serpent felt morose.

It was late and far from home, and the serpent stopped his quest,
He felt a fool for chasing a dream, but at least he tried his best
The rainbow started to fade away with the waning sun,
The serpent would not make it home before the day was done.

He stared up at the sky in vain, the rainbow finally gone,
And just before he looked away, he began to hear a song.
From over there, yes - through that grass, he came upon a pond,
With all the crickets a snake could eat forever and beyond!

And singing on a flat top rock a serpentess so fair,
With scales of green and red and gold that shimmered in the air.
The serpent knew now that his quest had not at all been wrong,
The rainbow had been showing him where his heart was all along.

They lived together by the pond and sang their songs in love,
And once in a while the rainbow appeared and listened from above.
The serpent thanked the rainbow when he finally had a say,
For showing him his one true love who sang for him each day.

So if you find you’re chasing a rainbow you can’t catch,
And you feel it’s all in vain and you’re a sorry wretch,
Just remember what you need isn’t always what you bid,
Trust your heart and take your quest and you’ll be glad you did.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI (Take 30)

2007-04-19T00:22:00.001-04:00

by L. David Wheeler, who's silly enough to admit to writing the following.

SCENE OPENS in INTERIOR OF SMALL HOTEL ROOM, lit dimly by BEDSIDE LAMP. Camera pans to BACK OF MAN, face unseen. Removes COAT, drapes over CHAIR. Loosens TIE. Camera zooms to head/chest view, pans to view FACE. Man YAWNS, then SUCKS IN AIR, revealing TELLTALE BRIDGEWORK.

JAWS continues loosening tie. RAPT KNOCKING at door. JAWS, startled, GLANCES QUICKLY AROUND, grabs REVOLVER from under PILLOW, then STARES MENACINGLY at DOOR. Slight, nearly noiseless GROWL escapes his lips. JAWS slowly walks to DOOR, OPENS it ajar to length that CHAIN allows. Camera frames to JAWS' view: YOUNG WOMAN with long, wavy SCARLET HAIR whose body appears to be constructed ENTIRELY OUT OF CLEAVAGE.

SCARLET WOMAN (uttering breathily): Hello -- Mr. Jaws?

JAWS (suspiciously yet intriguedly): Mmm, yahs?

SCARLET WOMAN: I'm Bambi. Mr. Scaratelli from the agency sent me over. (one beat) He said you were past due for a bite.

(SLIGHT SMILE crosses JAWS' FACE as he reaches to UNFASTEN CHAIN and SET-FRAMING MUSIC BEGI --

No!

Nonononononononono!!!!

Jaws-Bambi porn?!? Have I sunk this low? Apparently my muse is a crack whore.

Every night for a month, every night, I stare at the laptop screen or the blank paper before me. Do I start my Crimean War epic? Do I work up my sitcom treatment about a midget cop from the Hood and his partner the Evangelical Druid? Do I even write Lara a damned poem?

No. Because every night for a month, I'm bidden, inexplicably, irrevocably to heed the voices, the incessant, keening, insistent voices that shriek three words, ever and ever: Jaws meets Bambi. Jaws meets Bambi! JAWS MEETS BAMBI!!!!

I thought writing a little trifle about the fawn lapping water at the stream only to be eviscerated by the killer shark from Hell would be enough. A little exercise to be worked out and tossed aside. But the next night, the voices were back. Louder, more insistent.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI!!!

Some of them weren't too bad. I was kind of fond of my story about the aged buck and shark meeting up at a Home for the Aged Anthropomorphic Non-Humanoid Fictional Characters, where the crueler residents like Cujo called the shark "Gums." And my psychological think piece about Bambi the deer's dreams haunted by visions of a tireless, vicious killer of the depths -- and Jaws' dreams likewise haunted by visions of a little deer wobbling about on an icy pond. A touch meta, but it worked ...

No, it didn't. Because I hear it still.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI! JAWS MEETS BAMBI!

Jaws has been the Spielberg shark -- and that's a lawsuit and a half waiting to happen -- as well as a young, soulful street-gang second-in-command with braces; an office worker who never shuts up with graphic stories about her fiance (untrue) and her medical conditions (all too true); and a sled. (We'd only learn Jaws was a sled in the final scene. Of course I realize it's been done before, do you think I'm an idiot? It's never going to be published or released, it's a damned EXORCISM, don't you GET IT ... who am I talking to? Ummm, no one. myself. ummm ...

Bambi's been the Disney deer -- and that's a lawsuit and six halves waiting to happen -- and all manner of nubile young women of loose virtues, because, quite frankly, if your name's "Bambi" and you're not a nubile young woman of loose virtue, you'd better be a deer. Well, to change it up, I threw in an utterly nonconvincing drag queen.

I even tried to play with it a bit: "Jawas meet Babar." Because Lucasfilm would never sue anyone, of course.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI!!!

But a porn movie following the illicit adventures of a minor henchmen from a couple of the more forgettable James Bond movies? (Nobody liked "Moonraker," right? I mean, come on.) That's a couple lawsuits and halves waiting to happen: the Fleming estate AND MGM. Whoopee!

I can't take it anymore. I think I'll need a bigger boat.

Kinda wobbly, aren't I?

And again, it starts.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI ......

Bambi Vs. Jaws

2007-04-16T15:39:00.000-04:00

By Marcy

EXT – FOREST POND – TWILIGHT

It is winter, and Bambi’s friends are laughing at him as he attempts to walk across a frozen pond. His limbs are splaying about as he struggles to keep his footing. Below the surface, a dark shadow follows the fawn’s every slip-slidey move.

BAMBI
Hey Thumper! Watch This!

Bambi attempts to do a triple Salchow. His hoof cracks the ice.

That’s al the shadow needs.

A great white shark explodes through the ice, gobbling Bambi in one gigantic chomp. The bunnies and skunks run screaming for the shelter of the forest.

The shark descends back into the pond.

JAWS
Mmm … Venison.

(scene)

Director Commentary: “I felt that the original versions of these two movies weren’t fully realizing the vision I had in my head. So we went back in with CG and completely redid the scenes to better reflect what I would have wanted these movies to be, had I actually directed them. We also took out much of the original dialogue and replaced it with stilted, cliché dialogue, and made sure the actors had absolutely no chemistry through my directing. I realize there may be legions of fans whose very lives and imaginations were forever altered by the original versions of these films, but that’s just not good enough for me. Our next project will be the prequel to “Jaws vs. Bambi” – “Spawn of the Fawn” – in which we will discover what Bambi’s father, the king of the forest, was like as a snot-nosed kid. He’ll be befriended by a strange, obnoxious, completely superfluous character who will be sure to annoy the hell out of loyal fans of the original films. Oh – and there will be a lame scientific excuse for how Bambi and his father acquired their ‘powers.’ So stay tuned!”

- George Lucas

Bastille, my sunshine

2007-04-12T14:24:00.000-04:00

A parody of “Steal my sunshine” by Len
By Marcy

I was lying in my cell on Sunday morning of last week
Indulging in some rancid meat
It’s a dank and stony room, and it feels like it’s gonna be my tomb
The walls are stone and three feet deep
I’ve been here for a year, though my sentence wasn’t very clear but
The aristocrats think I’m a creep
All I did was make a pun in a pamphlet about the King’s latest fun
Now I’m in Bastille sitting on my bum

I know they’ve got it in for me
(Bastille, my sunshine)
Calling me a revolutionary
(Bastille, my sunshine)
Got flea bites on my knees
(Bastille, my sunshine)

I was lying on the bench that serves as a bed in my suite
L-A-T-E-R that week
The stale baguette I ate was starting to dissipate
And hunger crept back into me
I heard shouting at the gates and someone yelled “no, no please wait!”
(But in French, of course, that’s what we speak)
And outside I heard the guns, but I was locked up and couldn’t run
So I missed a million miles of fun

And now, I’ve got to flee
(Bastille, my sunshine)
It’s been a lovely stay but I must leave
(Bastille, my sunshine)
Wonder what they’ll do with me
(Bastille, my sunshine)
I know they’ve got it in for me
(Bastille, my sunshine)
Calling me a revolutionary
(Bastille, my sunshine)
Got flea bites on both my feet
(Bastille, my sunshine)

Steel Bass

2007-04-07T19:34:00.000-04:00

Now, it ain’t like I ain’t woke up in some strange place afore. I mean one time me and Zeke got into some bad shine and we both woked up so far down the Mississippi that they ain’t never heard of Canada! Had to work the river boat all year to get back to my shack.

Well it’s a looking like that weren’t nothing. See me and Zeke was pitching woo with these two gals at the inn who spoke all this strange gibberish, but they was purty as all get out and next thing I know Zeke is saying we should follow them to this boat. Me, I like boats and I like the purty gals so I says to Zeke that that was a fine idear.

It was not.

So this was about the time I met Peter. He said his name all funny, but he’s a Peter. I knowd it right off. So, Peter was on the boat what the purty girls took us too and his job was to clobber us something awful so that we was asleep when the boat leaved for far away. Peter is a big guy and he clobbered me good, but he clobbered Zeke better and Zeke never woked up. I could tell Peter was all broke up about it, which did nothing to bring Zeke back, but you gotta give a fella a little break if he feels broke up about making a mistake like that. I hurt a fella or two in my time and felt a lot of hurt on the inside about it.

So we all had this boat trip for a long time which wasn’t too bad. There was other bodies aboard that there boat, but they mostly kept to themselves. Work on the boat was damn near a holiday compared to working on the river! And one of them pretty girls spent a night or two with me which made the whole thing a damn site better. Oh, she smelled purty.

When the boat gets close to land I started to scratch my head cause the beach don’t look right. The two purty girls and Peter have a long chin wag about something in their gibberish and the girls looks ascared of something.

I ain't one to drag a tale on too long, so lets just say that a lot of these gibberers pull up in another big boat - they all weared the same color coat like they was in the army, but the colors was all wrong. They grabbed us all and they was yelling and shouting and pushing and one them laid a hand on my purty girl which made me fly all into a rage of course.

Now I live in this cage that they call the steel bass or something like that. It don’t look like a fish, but its sure got plenty of iron in the bars. Now I been in the pokey before, the thing of it is they usually feed you pretty regular. This place ain’t run so good. Plus there’s all this gibberish yelling outside which keep me from sleeping regular.

All that being said, I think things are settling down for me now. I am behind bars and that don’t usually change too fast. The crazy folks outside are all yelling about turning things or revolutions or something, but I don’t much care. I’m just gonna settle in and relax for a while, maybe Peter will teach me some gibberish to pass the time.

Brihack

Feliz Cumpleanos!!!

2007-04-06T13:32:00.000-04:00

Here's a big, joyous (sadly belated because I suck)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

to two of our fellow Hacks:
Matt (March 30) and Brian (March 31)

(Had I not been in Scranton painting doors and walls last weekend I might have been more on top of that ... sorry ...)

posted by Marcy

(who does not claim ownership of this photo, the credit is on the photo)

Lunch bullies

2007-04-05T12:58:00.001-04:00

By Matt

Arrrgh! Be that a word?
'Tis a question immortal
No answer have I

A ship be sighted
White sails the horizon show
So hungry a crew we

Life be tough at sea
The English be hearty fed
Their food we will take

Aside their ship drawn
Our swords at the ready be
Plunder their corned beef

A battle won, we retire
To our fortunate repast
Pirates we always be

Rum we now consume
Fat and happy we rest
Our next fight soon comes

Till that time cometh
Hearty lunch we shall consume
Hark, there be more sails

Arrrgh! Be that a word?
'Tis a question immortal
No answer have I

AVAST

2007-04-05T03:14:00.000-04:00

The town's in ruins,
treas'ry looted, coffers gone;
but what really hurts:

Seared into my brain,
pumpernickel, ham and Swiss
impaled on cruel blade.

Weep for ravaged lives
and savage, stark injustice.
I miss my sammich.

-LDW

Corn costs a buccaneer

2007-04-04T16:01:00.000-04:00

By Bryan

Green peas on flat spoon
Rolling lazily around
above the soup bowl

An eye-patched man comes
ill tidings he brings under
a flourescent sky

Guarding the deep bowl
I stand with scabbard to fight
Alas I'm run through

Woe, My Salad Has Sailed

2007-04-03T12:42:00.000-04:00

by Marcy

Spinach and Romaine
Carrots and Garbanzo Beans
And lots of Feta

Baby Corns so sweet
Crispy Noodles and Almonds
Mandarin Oranges

Grilled Chicken slices
Kidney Beans and Black Olives
Sunflower Seeds Too

A hint of dressing
A masterpiece of texture
A balance of taste

This leafy salad
My pride and my lunchtime joy
Stolen from the fridge

The void is dreadful
My stomach longs for my lunch
Fridge pirates will pay

They with no morals
Stealing others' sustenance
Will be hunted down

I mourn my salad
And I send doom upon them
I called the Cracken.

Pirated

2007-04-02T17:12:00.000-04:00

Pirates stole my lunch
The absolute greatest lunch
The lunch I ne’er ate

It was truly queer
When a newbie Buccaneer
Stole it with a sneer

Deep personal loss…
Bandits bamboozled my stuff
May they burn in hell

No eye patch had they
No parrot shoulder sitting
Just malevolence

I like’ed my lunch
My lunch is my life time bliss
Bliss takers should choke

My lunch program was
My first application wrote
Software pirates suck

-Brihack Arrrrgh!

The Great Sage

2007-03-28T14:17:00.000-04:00

A lady in a grocery store once told me “your garden is a reflection of your heart.” How could I know I would, in the cereal isle, meet one of the great sages of our day? Well, of course I wanted to have a beautiful heart so ever since I have been devoted to my garden, turning up the hardened rocky soil, the thorny weeds, and the disarray and replacing them with a supple grass, grapes, tomatoes, plums, peaches, strawberries, bright flowers, and figs. (In a side note I always stayed away from the lemons and limes – nobody could accuse me of a sour heart) I even tore down the apple tree when it refused, on threat of death, to produce a sweet fruit.

So you can understand my embarrassment for my neighbor who has more of a barren wasteland than a garden. What a sad sad glimpse into the poor man’s heart. I could bore you with the details of his life, bemoan you with the reasons why he has turned into such a miserable and slovenly man. Instead I will merely give you a glimpse of his garden and allow you to see all that for yourself. Do you see the way his only tree, some wild oak that was standing when he bought the place, has a mold growing on the north side? It’s that greenish-blue hue. The fallen branches lying on the ground like forgotten soldiers. Dandelion springs shooting up like metaphors in a short story. I walked out this morning and saw three tumbleweeds lying about, as if attracted to this mess and needing to be a part of it. I have no doubt that they rolled there on their own free will.

My kingdom for a brick! Or at least a stack of bricks that could separate me from this abomination. Bricks and maybe some cement to glue them together. And some guy (or gal) willing to form those bricks into a wall.

Instead the chain link fence allows me perfect view into his heart of hearts. Take this morning for example. I walk out into my garden and he’s out there with his dog (I won’t go into details about what his dog adds to his garden) and a Frisbee. I’m pruning and shearing and picking and weeding. He’s jumping and laughing and playing and the dog is running and jumping and chasing.

“Hay Richard!” I shout over the fence. I’ll use “Richard” because I want to protect his identity, cause his actual name is Dick.

“What’s up, my man?” he stops what he is doing and walks over to the fence.

He’s never listened to me about this before but I try and try again. “The yard is looking a little bit ratty today. Starting a Tumbleweed collection?” I figure humor may be the best route.

“No, man,” he says, “but ain’t they cool look’n? All round and brown and ready to roll. Say, you wouldn’t happen to have some extra plums, would ya?” I hand him a basket from over the fence that has a little bit of everything. Maybe it will inspire him. “Hay man, I’m super surprised that you don’t own a dog.”

I’d never owned a dog. I told him so.

“But a dog completes you man. A dog is what can make a person whole.”

I ran these words through my head. A…dog…completes…you. I’d never thought about it before. I had a great heart but I knew I was missing something.

Suddenly I was bitter, resentful, and envious. Here was my neighbor, who had been complete this whole time, even if he had such an ugly heart, and there I was, next to him, incomplete, not even a whole man. I felt ashamed.

Nobody would be able to accuse me of being incomplete. The great sage has spoken. It was time to get a dog.

-Steven Mast

Drunk Neighbor Rick

2007-03-28T10:24:00.000-04:00

By Marcy

It was early, I was grumpy, and there was my loud, usually drunk neighbor. This morning he looked like Hangover Man, the archnemesis of Party Dude. But I had to ask just to make sure my apartment wasn’t an isolated incident.

“Hey Rick – you have hot water this morning?”

Rick shrugged at me as he ambled to his dirty pickup. “Didn’t check. I shower at night.”

I know, because the pipes squeal and keep me awake. And usually he’s hammered, and can’t hold onto shampoo bottles. They fall from his soapy hands to the tub floor with hollow thuds at regular intervals. Or at least, I’m guessing what the noise is as I lie in bed below his apartment. I’ve never been in the shower with Rick. UGH - I shudder to think about it.

Rick threw a garbage bag into the back of his truck and nodded in my direction. “You should call the landlord if your hot water’s out.”

Thank you, State The Obvious Man. “Yeah, if it’s not fixed by the time I get home from work, I will.” I opened my car door and retrieved my coffee from the roof where I’d set it. At least it was a gorgeous spring day. I could eat my lunch outside, with a book, and no-one would bother me except bugs. And it might even be too early for bugs.

Rick opened his truck door and it creaked with a metallic groan. Some rust fell off of the hinges and clinked onto the pavement. “Wellp, have a good day there, Chad.” He hopped in and turned the motor over, and the door slammed with the falling of more rust.

My name isn’t Chad. It’d Brad. Stupid moron.

His truck backed out of the parking spot and nearly hit my Honda. I thought about yelling for him to watch it but he threw the car into drive just in time and pulled away, peeling out of the parking lot like he was at the start of a drag race. The garbage bag rolled out of the open truck bed and fell to the ground in a cloud of muffler smoke, and a female arm dangled from the opening.

I puked. And then I called the cops. And then I called work to tell them I’d be late.

The cops stayed at our building until it was dark and had sent out an APB on Rick’s truck. They think when he got to wherever he was going to dump her he realized the bag was gone, and he had skipped town. They didn’t think he’d come back – likely set up in another town and start over there. They’d have to wait until he started leaving another trail – apparently they’d been looking for a serial killer who had been dumping women’s bodies in garbage bags all around the city.

That night I curled up in my bed and couldn’t sleep. The fear that Rick would return and come after me for blowing him in was too great. One undercover guy, on lookout, was supposedly parked out front of our building. It didn’t reassure me. But somehow I managed to drift off to sleep, weary from the shock and fear of the day.

I awoke, hours later, to squealing pipes and intermittent hollow thumps from the apartment above me.

Last day

2007-03-27T20:36:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the departure from the assignment. I had thoroughly intended to follow it. But this story came out. I think it's because I'm writing full-time again, so Existential Bryan reared his ugly, confusing head.
By Bryan
On the last day of your life, the world moves with you. Thump thump. Sometimes it has to catch up.
The guy next door goes for his paper. Yours is already on the table, spewing stock quotes and personal injury ads in one dusty breath staring dead at the burnt-out kitchen light. The phone rings. Pops. Leave it. Thump thump.
On the last day of your life, seven forks are left in your drawer. You will use four. Drop one on the floor thump thump. You will use three.
The song on the radio has played at the same time every day for the past week but there's an extra note this time, somewhere between losing the love and getting her back. Thump thump.
You lost an argument in your head once, something about washing your feet in the shower and debating the merits and abilities of the washwater to adequately perform its function solo, or does it need the cloth? The vice presidency of bathroom politics is lost to you on the last day of thump thump your life.
And it is then, pausing rigid with spatula under the heat lamp of the stove as your eggs fog over, that you begin to doubt the most-improved singer award from chorus you earned was really yours to own. Pity is fickle, which worked in your favor, but talents need definition or else you'd still be proud you learned to blow smoke rings in college. All this you'd learn in a week but it is the last day of your life and the eggs need salt.
Thump thump. A brick comes through the window. It has two words on the small sides: One is written in a different language and you shouldn't understand it but you can; the other is "hint." And your fork drops because all the blood in your body hurries to your brain where everyone's working overtime; your brain is opening up and someone's in there flipping switches. And it makes sense, that poem you read in 11th grade written by the old dead dude. It was rather insightful but you could write it much better now.
Thump thump. A brick comes through the window. That's the third time this week, but the offending vaulters' parents don't care. You speak in non sequitirs to no one who'll listen. On the last day of your life the parents don't care. Much like yesterday, neither do you.
Thump.
Th

The face of change

2007-03-23T14:18:00.000-04:00

Philip grabbed his chipped Caribou mug from his night stand and jabbed it under Mr. Coffee’s nasal drip without bothering to wash out yesterday’s black ring. The mindless drip grew into a weak stream that felt like a mocking indictment, as if it were his life’s blood leaking through the beans - being strained of any value. Phil was not a fan on Mondays.

He didn’t hold it against the Mondays, it wasn’t their fault that they were followed by four other mind numbing week days, just like it wasn’t his fault that he was always followed around by four mind numbing nitwits who called themselves CPAs, but probably couldn’t spell it. King Philip the 1st, emperor of a raindrop called the auditing department of Logicons R&D division.

Oooh-rah.

Mr. Coffee gave a last wet gasp and Phil pulled out his cup wondering if its stimulating effect might be heightened by skipping the part where he dumped it down his throat and simply poured it down his pants. Could he get disability for that and stay home? Phil knew he needed a change.

Attempting to button up his white collar with one hand, Phil wondered if change was possible; real change, not just changing from Dentine to Juicy Fruit, but genuine, paradigm shifting, earth shattering change. Hand slipping, Phil sloshed a wave of coffee onto his clean-ish white shirt.

At least I get to change my shirt; he thought bitterly and began the process of one hand unbuttoning. The coffee stayed in the hand, it was a rule.

Phil was about half way to work before he realized that his neighbor Ron had clearly possessed two heads. Not like, a mannequin head under one arm or some kind of two faced makeup, but genuinely had two heads, each just off center of the top of his torso, each with its own neck, each with its own goatee.

It was not until Phil raced into his office to share this startling observation with his newly two-headed coworkers that Phil felt deep down in his soul that change, real change, was possible. Holy crap.

-Brihack

Song of the Sea Serpent

2007-03-21T14:52:00.000-04:00

By Marcy

I wrecked my car, and it’s all that sea serpent’s fault.

I was driving to the beach, north of Salem. The sun was bright off the water and my sunglasses weren’t cutting it. Last time I buy aqua-tinted lenses just to match one outfit. It’s all about polarized lenses for me from now on.

Anyway, I was reaching up to adjust the visor when I saw it. It looked like a dragon – but with no wings. Just a huge scaly body, the color of basalt and ocean glass, its eyes as bright and yellow-white as the sun that was reflecting off the water behind it. Steam churned from its nostrils and rose from its back. It arced into the sky, the bottom half of it still submerged.

And it sang.

I will never forget the sound of its voice. It was clear, crystalline, pure. It sang to the sun, wavering there above the surface, treading water with a hidden tail. Its voice rang through the summer air, swirling in the clouds and drifting on the salty ocean breeze. I closed my eyes and fell into the melody.

I awoke, my car halfway submerged in the tide, tire tracks stretching behind me through the sand back to the road. The serpent was gone, replaced by flashing lights and freaked-out beachgoers.

And I hummed the song the serpent sang all the way to the asylum.

Everyone knows Minotaurs can’t drive.

2007-03-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows that Minotaur’s can’t drive. It’s more than just the hoofs and the horn-to-head-room issue; it’s a mental possessing thing. Minotaur’s are natural maze dwellers, so the linear progression involved in most driving trips messes with their heads. Straight lines and Minotaur’s do not mix. This all pales in light of their overwhelming instinct to lurk and then jump out and scare people – this hard wired reflect does not translate well when these bull headed beast get behind the wheel.

But it was late, and I’d had one too many and, to be honest when you have been friends as long as Stan and I, you stop seeing the horns, hairy legs and the washboard stomach- you just see your buddy. Personally I blame the designated driver campaigns you see on TV all the time. They never tell you the real deal, like buzzed driving is drunk driving, but it’s always better than letting your friend Stan the Minotaur drive. PSAs are never big with details or particulars.

Pity.

Now don’t get me wrong, the arresting Orc made a lot of sense when he pointed out that Stan had polished off a barrel or two all by himself. But we all know that wasn’t the real problem. I tried to make a case for racial profiling, but the judge wouldn’t go for it. Stinking elves, always so logical and calm and focused on facts. He can pretend to be impartial but he was just made because Stan ran over his son. I mean the kid was already 600 years old, what more did he want from life?

Anyway, that’s why I lost my license. And my freedom. And my skin. Oh, yeah the loss of skin hurts, but luckily the magic keeps me from dying of infections or passing out from the pain. So, it’s only another year or two and Stan says he’s really sorry. He’s going to traffic school next weekend. That Stan… what a guy.

-Brihack

Writing Assignment: Pesky troll

2007-03-18T19:34:00.000-04:00

By Matt

“Honest officer, it wasn’t my fault.”

How many times has that line been used over the years to get out of a ticket or explain an accident? Well in my case it was true, it wasn’t my fault. Sit back and you’ll hear the tale of the time a troll wrecked my car.

It was late winter, March in fact. I’d just gotten some bad news at work. I work at a word factory, see, and I’d just found out I’d have to work 16 hour days, six days a week. Now if that’s not a killer schedule, I’m not sure I understand what a killer schedule is.

Now as you can imagine, as I left the factory, I was in a pretty rotten mood. I mean, it was a two hour drive home and now I only had eight hours to drive home, get some dinner, go to bed, and then get up and start all over again. That meant I was going to about 3 hours sleep a night at best.

So there I was on the freeway, humming along at a cool 75 miles an hour, listening to the afternoon DJ on the radio make some of some poor drunken unfortunate. It was snowing a bit, but the roads were just wet. It was a pretty easy drive, all things considered for late March. I was in the last half-hour of the trip as I hit the city and I was getting pretty groggy. That’s why when the troll appeared, I thought it was just a paranoid delusion. Little did I know…

The troll appeared as I was passing a one of the massive tractor-trailers with two trailers hooked up to it. I pulled alongside the behemoth, hauling food for the local uber-super-duper mart. That’s when I heard it…

From somewhere in the back there was this low growl, which sounded suspiciously like my cat, who I knew wasn’t in the back seat. Just the same I glanced back through the rear view mirror. Seeing nothing, I passed it off as being a product of my weary mind.

I punched the accelerator and my car's 250 horses pulled it past the lumbering semi. As I pulled in the right lane again, I heard it again. That same low growl. This time, it seemed a bit closer. Again I looked in the rear view mirror. Nothing. I turned my attention back to the road. That’s when it happened.

The growl came again. This time it sounded as if it had come from the seat next to me. I looked over and saw it. The troll was about five feet tall, with coffee- colored skin covered in festering boils. His face was dominated by a massive nose and fat, ugly lips. His eyes, mere slits were like looking into the soul of darkness itself. Most strange, though was what came out of its mouth.

“I say, chap, nice of you to notice me. Might you give me a lift to Eleron? I’m frightfully late for a pillaging seminar, and if I don’t arrive soon, I just might be sacked. Couldn’t have that now, could we? I’m afraid my people’s idea of sacking is quite unpleasant.”

At this point, an odd feeling came over me. My stomach grew tight, my breath coming in gasps. As I tried to focus on the wheel, the road started growing more indistinct, until there was nothing but blackness.

When I awoke, I was surrounded by firefighters and policemen. My car cocooned around me, I was unable to move more than a few inches. There was no sign of the troll. After about an hour of frantic work by the rescue workers I was freed and taken to a waiting ambulance. As I was being put inside, I noticed a street sign. Eleron Boulevard.

The Big Wrinkle

2007-03-15T11:35:00.000-04:00

Tim was small for his age. He was skinny with bumpy knees and sharp elbows. His eyes were like two big pools of milk with bright round plums in the middle. Tim liked to have fun. He loved to run around a lot and play games and pull on pigtails and trip smaller kids in the hall and splash water all over the place from the water fountain.

Tim had a smile on his face most of the day and half of the night. He would stay up late to read books about good guys and bad guys and dragons and pirates and hunters. Tim loved to imagine that he was a hero from one of the books he read late at night, deep under the bed covers.

If Tim had the idea to ask one of the other kids at school which character they though he was like they would have said the annoying side kick or the villain. This would have been true, but hurt Tim’s feelings - so it was best that he never asked. Tim was loud, Tim was fast and Tim made every day about Tim. Tim was the king of Mondays to Saturdays.

But Sunday was another story. On Sundays Tim spent time with “The Wrinkle!” Four whole hours every single Sunday was unfair, Tim knew this was true from the bottom of his toes to the top of his sandy blonde hair. He felt like he was being punished for something he never did. The Wrinkle was the worst! The wrinkle was all about the “creepy smell” and the “quiet”. If Tim could just watch cartoons or bring his video games or listen to the radio or throw a ball around the room or just not go at all things would be better. Being at school would have been better. But Sundays were Wrinkle days. Mom would drop him off at the Old People Home for the Aging to spend time with Uncle Oliver. Oliver the Wrinkle! Tim knew that Uncle Oliver not his real uncle, Uncle Oliver was some kind of great uncle or cousin or something.

If his mom had asked, Tim would have told her that he was sure that Uncle Oliver was part elephant. His ears were huge! They hung off the sides of his head like a pair of melted candles. And the hair that came out of them! The Wrinkle had no hair on his head, but there was enough hair spraying out of his elephant ears to cover a large rat!

Sunday was always about being bored and stinky and gross. Sunday felt like it lasted a whole week!

* * *

Tim watched the cartoon cat get pulled from a chair and out the window, screaming down the street. He was pretty sure real cats would not do that, but he would check next time he saw one.

Mom called him from the other room, “Timmy!”

Tim pretended not to hear her. He could probably watch another cartoon if he just ignored her for a few more minutes.

“Timmy, time to go. Uncle Oliver is waiting!”

No he isn’t, thought Timmy. Uncle Oliver doesn’t even know when I am there in the room with him. Uncle Oliver does not care if I come or not. The Big Wrinkle is just getting extra stinky so that he smells extra weird when I get there. Maybe his ears will block the door to his room so we can’t get in.

“Timmy!”

“I’m doing it!” Timmy called back, sliding off the sofa and clicking the TV off. He felt like all of his energy clicked off with the TV. Today was going to take forever.

…to be continued

-Brihack

Cleaning Up

2007-03-14T15:11:00.000-04:00

By Bryan

NOTE: I don't know if this is a beginning, a middle, or an end. I write stories like that sometimes, and rarely do I go back to them. I guess I'm satisfied in letting people guess what it is, and let them draw their own conclusions. Here, you'll find yourself asking who, what, and where, and the only real question answered is why, but it's only partially answered.
ALSO: I begin my new job as editor of the Lexington Minuteman tomorrow. I'll let y'all know of the Web site once I get me some stories posted.

“Sorry,” he said as he picked his three remaining teeth. “Ain’t goin’.”
This makes it easy. As a last resort I’d planned to knock those last three chompers clean off his gums. He had his chance. And when I say join us or die, men usually listen. Usually.
This summer makes me sweat at bad times, like when you got to keep it all in and not show anything. The wrong soggy spot or wet forehead can give the impression you got something to hide. Maybe that’s what he’s thinking. Jesus it’s hot.
He’s gone back to his beer, and the two goons with me just keep staring at him. They don’t know what else to do. The bar’s dark but I know he sees them, even as he stares at the busted TV on the wall leaking a basketball game through the static. He probably thinks I’m going to make the last move. He’s right.
“Hawk isn’t takin’ no for an answer, Smokey. You and I both know the Demons are on their way out anyway. Heard just last week they split from the house on Route 30. Got no money, no prospects, and the last three robberies put most of you in jail.”
He’s listening still. Didn’t know I found out about that house, did you? In their heyday the Demons had some 50 or 60 of ‘em across the Midwest. Three were always kept top secret, where their treasuries were. But even those dried up like dust, and I’m the wind blowin’.
He’s looking at me again. Neither of those glassy eyes look like they got much smarts behind them. But even a dumbass like this one knows when he’s beat.
I remember when a guy like this – arms thick as trees, tattoos all over, and leather to match them – could shake down a liquor store owner just by lookin’ at him. The backing he had could open the floods of Hell on you if he wanted. He scared kids like me. But you get older, you start seeing things the way they really are. They operate like a machine, these guys. But you loosen enough of the screws and the whole damn thing falls apart. Maybe that’ll happen to us Angels one day. I’ll be long gone before then.
“Nope,” he says. “Ain’t goin’.”
That’s too bad. You’re already gone.

Souls of Men

2007-03-13T14:57:00.000-04:00

This week's Assignment
By Marcy

I don’t remember a whole lot from before when I fell. My earliest memories have been taken over by darkness now. But I vaguely remember light; very bright light … brighter than sunlight, and radiant. Sometimes when the heat from the stone floors around the magma pools splits and blisters the pads on my feet, I think about that light. When I am alone at night in my chambers, I imagine that light like cool water washing rock chips and dried blood from my cracked, bleeding feet. I meditate on the light. It engulfs me from toe to head, cooling the blood in my veins, calming the agony in my heart, drowning the cries of the tortured from my ears. I hold the light around me for as long as I can, before I have to go back to work. It helps me through the day, through my work, torturing souls eternally.

I try often to think about how I got here; it’s fuzzy in my memory, like much before my fall. I remember nothing of what I did, which I find ironic, as the whole point of this place is supposed to be about suffering for one’s ills for eternity. Whatever I did, He must have been justified in sending me here. His forgiveness only applies to the souls of men; not a luxury afforded to those of us who were part of his host.

Others have fallen, probably none more famous than our Master down here. And some of those others are nearly as twisted as the Master. But some of us aren’t. We do our jobs because we have to, we can’t remember why, and we hope that someday He sees fit to grant forgiveness to those of us without souls of men, who have no recollection what crimes we’re atoning for, but will spend eternity doing just that. In the meantime, I think about the light as I drift to sleep at the end of my shift. And I try never to forget it.

Crossover Bloggage

2007-03-11T20:05:00.000-04:00

Howdy Hack Fans!
Marcy Here.
Here's an old Hacks post that originated on my blog, Playtime at Hazmat. I meant to post this on the Hack blog a long time ago and never got around to it. Dave, Bryan, and I were playing Lego Star Wars and somehow managed to write this story at the same time. Enjoy!

We'll meet the ninjas at the Barbary Coast

This post brought to you by:
Marcy, the Media Ninja
Dave, Lord Ledley the Ravager and
Bryan, Hooch the Destroyer

I just asked two guys playing video games in the same room as me to give me a sentence to start this story with. Then I made them write it with me off the top of our heads, each of us trading off a sentence at a time. Here's the pathetic but entertaining result:

"We'll meet the ninjas at the Barbary Coast."
"No, we shall not; have you so soon forgotten the Black Ninja Eradication of 2023?"
Halsom shook his head and pounded his fist into the wooden plank table, toppling Mardon's ale jug.
Truly, it was a strange conversation to be having at Wal-Mart but the furniture delivery was late and the stock clerks were restless.
And Myron the assistant manager was nowhere to be seen; they suspected he and Marge from layaway were off somewhere, uh, laying away.
"I assure you, the ninjas will be there, and they will be bringing with them the lost cheese of Zandlar," said Mardon, scratching his head and tossing the twelve sided dice aimlessly as he was thinking.
Before Halsom's reply, a bay door creaked to life and light flooded the room, casting gold sparkles atop the ale.
"Crap," Mardon hissed, "so much for cheese."
"I thought I told you morons no roleplaying on the job," bellowed Dan Yonker, the wall-eyed night shift manager as he strode through the goldish haze of the loading dock security lights.
And before the clerks could pick up their board, before their last thoughts could return to the loving crush of their mothers' arms, two ninja stars pierced their hearts, thrown from the able and mastered wrists of Dan Yonker, the last remaining ninja of Sheboygan and lone survivor of the Black Ninja Eradication of 2023.

Uncle Lou

2007-03-10T19:40:00.000-05:00

A: Earliest? That’s a toughie. No… wait-a-minute I can tell you. Yeah- definitely. I was only like 2 or 3 decades old at the time when my uncle Lou came to visit and he told me something I will never forget. He says to me, and I quote here, “Being evil ain’t got nothin’ to do with doing bad stuff.” He actually bent down and looked me right between the horns at this point, one hand on my wing spike and he said, “Being evil ain’t about doin bad stuff. It’s all about bein’ unpredictable.”

Q: Then what did he do?

A: Well, you know Lou. Lead by example is his thing, so he kissed me gently on the forehead and then threw me down three rings on hell into some fiery acid.

Q: Quite an example.

A: You mocking me?

Q: Goodness, gracious, no. Wouldn’t think of it.

A: That’s what I thought. Anyway what a sense of humor that guy had, huh? I nearly regretted it when I disintegrated him a few centuries later.

Q: Surely... we all grieved his passing. So, this, your earliest memory, is to what you attribute all of your success?

A: You are mocking me you little white winged wuss. Look, we done here?

Q: By all means. Thank you for your time and is there anything else you would like the viewers at home to know?

A: Well, I got no more words for them, but lean over here I wanna give you a kiss on the forehead.

-Brihack

Marcy's Hill Story

2007-03-08T13:12:00.000-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canisteo_(village),_New_York

There was definitely something wrong.

My eyes felt swollen, and my pulse throbbed in my temples. Something was stinging the skin on the back of my neck. It took all of my strength just to push myself up to sitting. Below me I could see the elementary school grounds and the houses that spread out between Greenwood Street and the Canisteo River. I knew where I was sitting - smack in the middle of the “C” on the world-famous living Canisteo sign.

I reached back and gingerly touched the spot on my neck that was stinging and found it raised, scabbed over. There was something hard under the surface of my skin. Then last night’s events came flooding back to me. Bright light … floating … pain … large black eyes staring down at me surrounded by light.

Damn aliens had tagged me again.

I forced myself to stand, my wobbly knees protesting the walk downhill through the cross-country trails I ran when on the team as a teenager. I had to get back home, get out the exacto knife, and remove the tag. Not that it would help, they’ve tagged me three times before. But why make their job easier, right?

Dave's Hill Story

2007-03-08T00:52:00.000-05:00

There it is. My city. The humble skyline, such as it is, of its business district, such as it is. The sleepy streetlights that don't illuminate all that much action -- this isn't Chicago, or even Cleveland. The steeples -- United Methodist, First Presbyterian, the Missionary Baptist on the west side next to Uncle Fran's BBQ. Ribs were top-notch, but Fran's brisket truly was to die for ... if you pardon the expression. Focus focus focus. Immediately below, at hill's bottom, the bypass. The truest route to elsewhere. Second-truest.

Heh. There's old Van Buren, where I didn't learn algebra or Earth science. Learned plenty about Darwinism, though, which is what middle school's for: Only the strong survive, or at least pass on their genes. Yep, it's still got the old-school jungle-gym, the metal monstrosity that marks a real playground -- none of these lawyer-approved mazes of nets and chutes and ladders. Cold, hard metal. Heh. When Randy Larsch got the upper hand during that fight over -- over something, I guess, middle school fights don't need to be about anything -- and smashed my nose into the third rung three times in rapid succession, the important thing at the time was that it was hard. Now, the thing that stays with me is how cold it was. Must've been one of those November afternoons that precede the first snowfall but see it coming on the horizon. Gave as good as I got, though -- a few weeks later, it was his blood on the jungle-gym. Heh. Ended up becoming friends, sort of -- in fact, these days Randy's my CPA. Was.

There's the old A&P -- or there it would be, were a Wal-Mart Supercenter not feeding off its bones. Three years of wearing aprons and Mr. Kelly's store of spare striped woeful ties, weilding the cunning pricing gun and stocking the shelves -- the bane of stock clerks, if you've ever wondered: tiny cat food tins of the Fancy Feast variety, which never stack quite straight thanks to their pull top and always seem to fall over and tilt and look slovenly and occasionally roll down the aisle. Heh. Blizzard of eighty-eight, we closed up and waited out the storm, and tapped an Old Milwaukee keg from the dairy cooler. Kelly didn't say anything other than he didn't want to know -- then he'd send us out to the front end for some pretext of another and pour himself a healthy draught himself. A&P's to thank, or blame, for Amy the unbelievable redhead and that one unforgettable summer -- and that one unbearable autumn. She was running register, I was bagging. Heh. Hey, everyone -- double entendre. We spent our share of time up here -- well, okay, not right here at the bluff but back there where the woods begin, exploring whatever we'd care to explore. It was like that old Seger song about mysteries without any clues. Sometimes I think my whole adolescence was scored by Bob Seger. Everyone's adolescence was scored by Bob Seger. Still the same.

Yup, there's the channel-13 affiliate I interned at back in '91, after taking one broadcast class and figuring to give it a real-world whirl. (Didn't take.) And my favored comics shop, World of Krypton, where Mike kept the old Curt Swan Superman designs in the windows, even in periods where the market was all big-gun-toting, big-vest-with-way-too-many-pocket-wearing, big-we-scoff-at-basic-rules-of-human-anatomy characters. And there's Martinez's place -- mecca for hot pastrami and cigars and racing forms and five card stud (red queens tended to be wild, just like real life, but enough about Amy). and, when Marty was of a mood, free shots of bourbon. You could spend enough time in his place and forget that women even existed, if it weren't for the calendars from his brother Oscar's garage. And there's Pine Haven ...

Yep. Down there are thirty-some years of memories and twenty-some thousand souls. And twenty-some thousand bodies.

Plus one. Mine. In Pine Haven, as of ten-thirty this morning. Or elevenish, if you want to go by when they shoveled in the last of the dirt. My family was there. Randy was there. So were Mike and Martinez and his brother Oscar. I suppose Uncle Fran would've been there too, if I'd known him other than to order brisket -- I guess I always felt too dilletanishly white in that place to strike up a conversation. And I suppose Mr. Kelly would, too, but he'd been otherwise occupied in an urn on Mrs. Kelly's mantle three years now.

I make my way downhill, not all that gingerly. Like what, I'm gonna fall?

Twenty-some thousand souls.

I clench my fists of ether.

And one's a killer.

--Dave W., 3-8-07

Lyle Koontz Jr.

2007-03-02T11:07:00.000-05:00

Journal Entry #1, fifth try, day one of the weirdness

You know the guy. The exposed beer belly with a huge team colored letter blanketing its sweaty girth, drunk out of his mind and screaming incoherent accolades over the top of his sloshing plastic cup. The dude, who posts video of himself mixing a brew of Mentos and Diet Coke in his own mouth, then tries to sweet talk the ladies while foaming at the mouth. The guy who proves that the idiot with the loudest voice makes the poorest choice? You know that sociopath. Of course, I know him too. Lyle Koontz Jr.; he’s me.

Why am I writing this down instead of talking to my fellow Chino townies? Good question! Good question. Funny thing about that… So, last night after a six glasses of whatever was on tap and on special followed by a dare from one of my gang of fellow idiots at the Lush Pub I found myself on the bluff overlooking the sprawling town of Chino. To be honest I blacked out when I got to the top of the water tower, but I woke up with a hundred feet of bungee cord a gallon of white glue and a pink frilly dress stuffed in a paper grocery bag. Not a big deal, at least this time there were no animals. What I think woke me was the silence.

You never notice the little sounds of the city. The hundreds of car engines running, feet walking, doors closing, conversations, construction work – even the hum of the lights – it all makes noise and the absence of it – the totally unexpected and hortastically awful overwhelmingly absoluteness of it. I could hear myself breathe and the sound felt like trespassing. I have to go down there and find out what happened. I can’t just eat the glue; I tried, loses its appeal after kindergarten. So, here I go. Gonna head down and see just what the hell happened last night. Yup. Gonna go. Any minute now.

Soon.

-Brihack

A Note Found in a Bottle That Washed up on Shore in Oceanside, CA.

2007-02-26T16:30:00.000-05:00

The note was scratched onto palm tree bark with a stick or some other such object.

To whomever finds this:

Contact customer service at Daegon Teleporters Inc.

Tell them customer Geraldine Mackovic from Wren Falls, MO is stranded on an island somwhere thanks to their lousy product. I can't remember the order number. I was only transporting to Chicago to help my daugter with her new baby.

I have no sunblock and I'm sick of eating fish and coconuts.

(Posted by Marcy)

Polyports Sucks!

2007-02-24T22:26:00.000-05:00

To: Polyports Corporate office – Terran Industries division

From: One pissed off Mutha F****-er

Hey you big genital lesions, you suck! I would come down there and rearrange your face right now but I can’t, you know why? ‘cause my teleporter don’t work for shit and my face got rearranged. My nose is upside down you worthless sons of rats. It rained yesterday and I nearly drowned!

One of my eyes is in the back of my head and I wake up every morning with a black eye. I can’t see in 3D any more you spawn of the oozing pus from a diseased yak scrotum!

If I ever get my hands on you I am going to do to you what you did to my dog. The front half of him juts out of the front of my house and the back half of him sticks out into the living room. That’s the wrong end facing inside, let me tell you and he barks at the neighbors all day long. I have to tear down my house to get him out!

You sons of a motherless goat deserve to die. I tried to get to one of your stores on Io, but you need a teleporter to get there! How can you sell a product like this which does not work? Don’t send me a new one, come here and fix all of your mistakes! Then when you are done I am going to teleport a big steaming pile of massive Nerf poop into your intestines and watch you squirm!

You are the embodiment of evil.

You deserve to die.

Respectfully,

Turrets Mosley III

In the matter of your transporter, model number 08746

2007-02-22T15:10:00.000-05:00

TO: Satish Mahalzat
c/o Syntech Transports

FROM: Cletus B.

RE: Transporter model 08746

Dear Mr. Mahalzat:

I purchased your home model of the E-Z Tranz personal transporter 30 days ago. I am writing to express my utter disappointment with your product and demand a full refund after your company puts my head back where it was.

I was using your product Wednesday to go from my house here in Farmington, N.Y. to the racetrack in Watkins Glen, N.Y. Previously I used the E-Z Tranz to make trips to the store, the lake, and Ghana, and after this week I would have used it to go to the doctor. But my sister drove me there in her pickup, as I can no longer sit in my own car. That’s because your product put my head where my rear should be, and vice versa.

Do you know what it’s like to fart burps? I don’t think you do, because if you did you would clearly put a warning on the box that this product may induce head and butt reversal, and as such make it difficult for users to sit or wear hats. As it is, I’ve had to endure taunts from the neighborhood kids who call me assface.

I sincerely hope you have a compensation plan in place for me, as I will undoubtedly sue you and your company until I’m blue in the face. Which, may I remind you, is just below my back.

My terms are thus: Make my body the way it was, plus compensate me for the anguish your product has caused. My lawyers and I determine that price is $1,000,000,000,000. Any less and I will see you in court. That is, unless you’re in front of me.

Thank you for your urgent attention to this matter.

Yours,

Cletus Buttheadski

Green blues

2007-02-20T19:12:00.000-05:00

By Bryan

You are sixteen, prom time is nigh, and
your moss suit needs watering.
The way the light catches it, you swear
there are gold flecks in it. But it's been
getting browner since you first hung it
in the downstairs shower, away from the creeping
soap scum blanketing the bath between your room
and your sister's.
You've been spending all your time trying
to care for it but what the hell do you know
about horticulture?

Prom Transportation

2007-02-20T12:13:00.000-05:00

By Marcy, who has been watching way too much "Super Sweet Sixteen" latey and thinks those spoiled girls need a dose of reality.

Rick Masters asked me to the prom – I was floored! I of course said yes and I skipped school the very next day to find a dress. Daddy gave me his credit card and told me to get whatever I want – like I wouldn’t anyway! I found the most awesome dress ever – it was deep purple satin with a barely there neckline by some designer I can’t pronounce. And I don’t care – I just loved it. It perfectly shows off my new boobs that Daddy gave me for Christmas. I found the perfect shoes to go with it – only $750, a real steal. And the jewelry – oh, god, the jewelry. Diamonds, that’s all I can say. $15,000 worth of sparkle, all on me! I wanted to wear something that would match the tiara when I won prom queen. And I knew they were going to vote me prom queen because I had thrown the most amazing Sweet Sixteen party and invited the entire school earlier that year. They owed me prom queen.

So prom night came, and I was getting dressed after a luxurious spa day to relax from school that week. Daddy had arranged for a Hummer Limo to pick up me and my friends - I was so stoked!! I put on my dress and my amazing jewelry, and my cheap shoes, and checked my hair one last time – making sure the updo had enough room for a tiara in front of it. And when I opened the door to my room …

…I don’t know how to describe it. It was like the house wasn’t even there. Instead there was a dark, torch lit cave. I looked back into my room, which looked perfectly normal. I thought maybe Daddy was playing some kind of practical joke on me, so I walked out and closed the door behind me. I called for him, but nothing changed. And when I turned around to go back in my room, the door was gone. It was just solid rock. I walked through the cave, crying off my mascara in the process. My heel broke on my cheap-ass shoes. I had to find the way out. And I didn’t get any cell phone reception wherever I was. But I have to say, my diamonds sparkled amazingly in the torchlight.

At last I found the mouth of the cave, and there were a group of scummy looking guys sitting around a fire. Three of them wore furs, and had large weapons sitting next to them. One of them wore a grey cloak, and looked at me as if he had seen a ghost. I told them who I was, that I was lost, and that I don’t know how to get home. They spoke in some sort of guttural language I didn’t understand. The scummy guys with the weapons looked like they were going to attack me, but the guy in the grey hood stopped them.

That was 5 years ago. I’m now 20 years old, and I don’t think I’ll ever make it home again. The tribe that adopted me claims I’m some sort of good luck omen. They feed me well and shelter me. I even understand their language now, mostly. But I miss Daddy, and my friends, and I wonder if Rick Masters thinks I stood him up. He had the prettiest green eyes.

Nobody means maybe

2007-02-17T11:43:00.000-05:00

When Lisa Hunt had politely told him maybe, he was sure that it meant no. It wasn’t just that he woke up thinking about her every day, day dreamed about her during all of his classes, thought of her before he went to sleep and then dreamed about her all night. It was that nobody said maybe unless they meant, “No, but don’t make a scene.” Why would she want to go with him any way? She was perfect and he was lame.

So he had agreed to DJ the dance. Looking at Senior Prom as a gig took some of the sting out of it. Instead of spending all of his money of corsages, overpriced dinners and a shared limo he would rake in a sizable bundle of cash which he could put toward that used Pontiac in the Autotrader. He might be able to snag the car just after he passed his drivers test. It wasn’t a complete disaster. He might even sneak in some Goth or Acid rock and freak out the yuppie clones.

The theme song from Trailer Park Boys wafted up from his hip and he looked down at his cell Text message? Who sent him text messages? Thumbing a few buttons he pulled it up. “Maybe = Yes!” he read with a bolt of adrenaline. She said yes! The girl of his dreams was going with him to Prom, this was the best day – his elation incinerated instantly – and I’m the DJ!

Shit!

-BriHack

Compound Eyes

2007-02-12T11:51:00.000-05:00

A parody of Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes
By Marcy

Bugs, we get so lost, sometimes
I’m stuck, in an office with only one door
though I want to fly away
I wound up on this wall
There’s a spider to my left
And a guy with a swatter down the hall

All my instincts, they return
A gazillion lights, in my eyes they burn
without a noise, without my pride
I stick to the wall’s side

Compound eyes
Fluorescent lights
Compound eyes
They burn so bright
Compound eyes
I see the doorway and a thousand doorknobs
Compound eyes
the resolution is so high definition
Compound eyes
If I look, I have a thousand feet
Compound eyes
oh, I want to make my retreat
Everywhere I look I have to see
With compound eyes

Lights, they cause me to see so much pain
I get so tired of working so hard for my survival
It’s all my fault for reading Kafka before going to sleep

All my instincts, they return
A gazillion lights, in my eyes they burn
without a noise, without my pride
I stick to the wall’s side

Compound eyes
Fluorescent lights
Compound eyes
They burn so bright
Compound eyes
I see the doorway and a thousand doorknobs
Compound eyes
the resolution is so high definition
Compound eyes
If I look, I have a thousand feet
Compound eyes
oh, I want to make my retreat
Everywhere I look I have to see
With compound eyes

Fly on the wall

2007-02-12T11:21:00.000-05:00

By Bryan

ZZZhit! Why’s it so FRIGGIN cold in here?! Is it me? It must be me. Gotta get my wings de-iced. What’s this thermostat say? Crap! I can’t read! Gotta get someone to turn it up. Ooh – who’s that? The new guy? He’ll do. Now to buzz his ear – Whoa! He’s a quick one! Not to worry – the ol’ Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge trick evades ‘em every time. Better back off just in case.
Look up here, dude! Look! The thermostat! You know you wanna turn it up. You’re cold, man! You’re already rolling down your sleeves. Crank that heat! Crank it! Uh oh. Who’s this now? The blonde from accounting? Man, she works fast! She’s got him smiling now, though … good … now make some small talk … the weather … good, man – you’re almost there … How cold is it out? Cold enough to TURN UP THE HEAT! C’mon – be the man! Turn it up for her! Hurry! She’s walking away! Ugh. You blew it, dude.
Aha – you’ve go the temp on your computer screen! Look at your screen, man! No – not your folder – over here! I’ll just land on the weather report here … uh oh … my feet won’t stick … slipping … slipping … Aw nuts! I’m on a coffee ad?!? Wait … he’s getting up. Good! Now just go over to the – NO! Not the coffee machine!!! Wings .. frozen shut … can’t move … I’ll just have to rub my hands and try to stay warm. Gotta get off this screen. Too … cold … must move wings …

Thunk.

2007-02-08T18:36:00.000-05:00

Fly 007

Have you heard the latest buzz? He’s back! The Lord of the Flies, agent double-Oh-Wingus himself, Ormia Ochracea. As we catch up with our hero he clings precariously to a wall, listening in on the delicate negotiations between the Umboogoo tribe of lower Drekthia and the lung people from the planet sneeze. Apparently the Sneezians have great need of the special leaves grown only in the Drekthians coastal regions. The Drekthians are happy to trade their leaves; they just think that the Lungians are rude and hostile. To the Umboogoo wheezing is a sign of disrespect, similar to probing the inner lining of your nose in public or drinking from a stranger’s mocha-chino. Lungians sound like they are wheezing all the time, its just what happens when most of your body is composed on lung. Needless to say, negotiations are tense.

Man, I would kill for stucco, and I can, I have the license. Not on me, it’s too big, but at home I have a license to kill and I would totally use it right now… Good old irregular stucco, you don’t even have to cling to it, you just find a nice spot and settle in, but no… these negotiations always take place in rooms walled with smooth marble or a ba-zillion mirrors. Even some knotted pine would be OK. When I was a maggot we lived in some knotted pine, good stuff. It’s still decorative, yet easy to cling to. No one is impressed by marble and mirrors any more. Oh, crap, I’m slipping. What were they saying down there?

Tune in next week when we find out the thrilling conclusion to the adventures of our favorite fly guy. Will he learn the critical information? Will he be spotted? Will he find a rough surface which is easier to adhere to? Will we see the return of his arch nemesis Archibald C. Swatter? Stay tuned!

-BriHack

Bryan's contribution to this week's assignment

2007-02-06T12:18:00.001-05:00

Having been hit by a preposterous proposal from one Samuel J. Ledley of Cambridge, who in his desire to explore the fashion trends of the Franco-Prussian war illuminated the many arguments of historians seeking to unearth the origins of buckled shoes (and whether the soles of which could be entirely fabricated from the cartilaginous gristle of discarded tendons found wholly in subsidized Scottish lowland farms), I was forced to promote a matrix within the relatively small social circle of Merovingian scholars at Saxonbury that directly correlated four points: that Portugese bluebills could, in fact, be indirectly related to sandpipers and as such prove a land link through evolution to exist much in the way some Galapagos species are thought to have similar lineage to more pedestrian mainland creatures; that the study of said species’ biology could also prove some link between cultures of the Andean foothills and their counterparts in other parts of Europe as they relate to how these animals were hunted and gathered; that the bird is, indeed, the word; and that subcutaneous ridges in their lower sedimenta and just below bluebills’ ankles could in fact prove that the utilization of these appendages could justify the cultures of 1650-1820s Prussia’s use of spats.

Marcy's Assignment for This Week

2007-02-05T10:20:00.000-05:00

A poem by Sir Marcus Hambone Muzzlefoot
On the first day of spring
1602

Awakening with the dawn I sigh.
My eyes protest the intrusion of sun’s essence.
It is warm and golden,
But still I drag winter in my bones.

I step out into the morning
And in an instant I am Illuminated.
The equinox is upon the world.
The air smells of wet earth,
A muddy gristle of dirt and worms,
And a faint waft of hyacinths.

I walk to the beach, the sun stirring movement,
I can feel the blood of the trees slowly beginning
To move within their bark encrusted shells,
Sap flowing through soft plant matrix
I feel it too, as my bones warm.

A sandpiper chirps, my shoes sink in the wet sand.
Tide has moved out, and the sea has revealed
The morning’s treasures.
I pick up a seashell, pink and orange
Something’s home it was.
I breathe in the sun as the waves lap at my ankle.

And I thaw.

GOLLY

2007-02-02T16:38:00.000-05:00

GOLLY

CHAPTER 1

Once upon a time – when we say once upon a time we are normally telling the reader that they are about to experience a fairy tale. That is misleading here because this is not a fairy tale, but the tale of a fairy. Um, it’s complicated by you’ll see. Where was I? Oh, yes. Once upon a time there was a little girl named Golly. Golly wasn’t exactly like other little girls her age. The difference between her and the others was always the source of her greatest happiness and her deepest disappointments.

In truth, her real name wasn’t Golly. Golly was just her nickname. In the place where she was born - and had lived up until yesterday - her full name was Galadreilea-bella-drucilla-bodilla-pickle-tumbler-bright-infinity- star, but both her mom and her dad had known that the kind of people she would meet in her new neighborhood would prefer calling her Golly.
Despite the vague fear all things new, Golly was excited to move into her new home. This was because of what she hoped to find in a new place and what she hoped to escape from the old. Despite being a happy and outgoing child, Golly had not fit in so well in her old neighborhood, but she had high hopes of fitting in better in her new one. That’s just how Golly was, always full of hope that things would turn out for the best. Golly managed to hope for the best, no matter what.

At least once a week Golly’s mother Goldie would say in her in a high melodious voice, “Galadreilea-bella-drucilla-bodilla-pickle-tumbler-bright-infinity- star you would honestly hope for a sun tan in a snow storm.” To which Golly would reply, “You never know!”

Golly’s father, Gordon who -at the best of times - only slightly distracted by his work would smile and pat Golly on the head saying, “That’s my girl.”

Golly made a big show of protesting when her father patted her on the head, “How rude!” She would mutter under her breath. But secretly Golly would imagine that she was a sleek black cat and enjoyed the pat on the head.

Wait a moment you might say at this point. Being the shrewd and thoughtful reader that you doubtlessly are, are Golly’s Mom and Dad really named Goldie and Gordon? Do they have longer real names too? Well done! Children are so smart these days. You are quite correct to be suspicious. In fact Goldie and Gordon are not their real names; however for the purpose of conserving paper and getting to sleep some time tonight, we will not spell them out here. Let’s just say that when Gordon proposed to Goldie using both their formal names it took three full days. Gordon squawked for over a week afterward his throat was so dry, but they were blissfully happy squawks for Goldie has agreed to marry him.

Soon after their marriage Gordon had thrown himself into his work, hoping to provide a good home for his new bride and before too long, his daughter. His job was a unique mix of sociologist, research scientist and explorer. His work often took him away from home and this pained Gordon in the extreme. He loved his family more than anything in the world, yet in order to provide for them he was constantly away. What was he to do?

It was Goldie who first suggested the wild idea. What if the family moved to where he worked? What if they came with him, then they would always be together. Gordon was stunned. It was audacious, preposterous, and ridiculous! It was dangerous, reckless and senseless. It was… perfect. They would move together.

That pretty much brings us up to now. The point where Golly, hopeful about her new neighborhood and anxious to begin her new life sits patiently on her family’s magic carpet as it speeds over the boundaries between worlds and circles lazily toward the track houses of South Urbaton. Oh, did I mention that Golly and her parents were pixies moving to a human community? Then I must not have told you that they were giant pixies! Goodness, how thoughtless of me. My sincere apologies. I shall fill in the gaps as we progress, but the carpet is coming in for a landing now and we need to move on to the next chapter.

-BRIHACK

This Week's Writing Assignment

2007-02-01T17:56:00.000-05:00

By Brian - AKA - "BriHack"

The wrinkled vellum of the illuminated scroll, matched the skin texture of the ancient man's gnarled hands painstakingly unfolding it. Would the old relic live to read the prophecy it contained?

How much could a boy pretending to be the musty mage's apprentices take?

Wilted greens and roast-beast shot through with gristle matrixes every day broken up by the weekend when the shriveled monks served up some kind of sandpiper jerky.

I ask you, would you eat it? It's enough to make me want to string the palate-dead cooks up by their ankles and roast them for dinner. Well, there would be time enough for that when all this was over. For now it was time to read the prophecy.

Green War Part 3

2007-01-30T10:19:00.001-05:00

(By Bryan)

The duke was met with confused stares and rumblings amongst the folk – a dark rumor spread among them, it was madness they said—and a few of the younger men spoke up, willing to fight at their duke’s side. At their offers the duke rebutted; no man was to stay save him. And after a morning full of the duke’s urging, every family was packed and off just after noon.
A quiet sank the valley, a dim hush that seemed to breathe in its walls and inhabit the dust on the streets. There the duke stood, between two of the larger houses, sword sheathed and fists clenched. He slowly spun about himself once, taking in the sight one last time, as he walked toward the edge of town. It ended in the center of each hill where two great brown-green hills sloped steeply up into white snowcaps. It was under these caps that the duke now saw dark forms. They started small, then grew quickly. They were the armies of the Podrain and the Draymoor, and they descended quickly now down the hills. The duke could see each form clearer now; one was brighter and sparkled slightly more than the other. He saw glints of metal, of pikes and shields made of metals long lost to the peoples of the duke’s race.
Whether this truly was madness the duke could not say. He prayed to his father and to all the men of his race who had kept the valley before him, prayed for strength and bravery and constitution. For too long his people lived under this invisible threat, a prevailing wind that ever blew through the valley. Too long did they go unaware, playing the part of prisoner and captor. No more.
The armies were close to the bottom now, and the duke could see their strange faces screwed up and battle-ready. Some had war-paint, others bore little or no clothes. They chanted as they descended in a language not ever heard in the valley. It was a battle chant, and it grew louder as they approached. But the duke saw each side slowing now, curbing their trots until they were at a slow walk, and as each side approached the duke he saw faces changing. Gone were their bloodthirsty expressions, gone was the hatred. They looked bewildered, confused at the sight of the lone soldier standing before them. They took to murmuring to each other in a common tongue, and soon a hush fell over the valley.
The one that led the Podrain, the one called Clamagh, walked ahead of his clan toward the duke.
“What say you, duke,” he shouted while still some paces away. “Are your people prepared to defend against these rogues, will they stand up and fight this menace?”
“Hallo,” came a cry from the opposing side. It was Dramhain of the Draymoor, now a few paces ahead of his people. “Come to hear more lies, ah duke? Shall we set to rights this scourge?”
The duke raised his hands, an impressive showing as he stood a few heads above both armies.
“Nay, listen to me, people of the hills. My folk have fled this place, gone far away and I am all there is left.” More whispers and cries of betrayal came from both camps. “And before they are summoned back, if ever, I entreat you sirs to sit with me a moment before you let your blades fly.”
The Draymoor were first to respond.
“And what, brave duke? Talk ye of truce?” cried Dramhain. “What business is it of yours to belay this quarrel? I had given yeh chance enough to side with the victors this day, but now we fight and shall roll ye down with the braggards!”
At this the army roared. They flashed their spears and shields, their eyes shone in the dimming light. Again the duke raised his arms, and let a cry so fierce it rumbled the very hilltops. It shook each man in turn, sending ripples through both sides and they were quiet again.
“What man silences armies such as this?” said Clamagh of the Podrain, who until then shared a thought with his enemy, that if the duke shall not choose he should be mowed like the grass of the hillside. “What man indeed? Perhaps we shall entertain him.”
The duke let down his arms and motioned for each leader to come closer to him. From under his breastplate he produced a haggard cloth of green and grey. It was wound tight around something, though what neither enemy could say. When Clamagh and Dramhain were but a few paces from each other, the duke stepped away and spoke to the armies.
“People of the hills,” he spoke, and as he did the hush over the armies grew, as neither realm had ever spoken to the people of the valley except for their chiefs. “I have been visited twice under this moon, first by the Podrain then by the Draymoor. I have been given reason to take up arms against both your peoples, and so I shall. But first I will ask ye: Who is invading whom?”

Dave's Costume Story

2007-01-30T10:06:00.001-05:00

NOTE: By way of explanation, sort of: I haven't dressed for Halloween for years, sad to say, so I thought back to the last time I wore a costume: a trip to the Sterling Renaissance Festival, when many Hacks and I dressed as warrior Celts. Ah, but what if an actual warrior Celt woke in my body?

The world’s an inky blur and me tongue is furry and ten thousand shileleighs be pummeling me head. Arrrgghhh. Metaphors aside, that last part may actually have happened.

Not quite sure where I am, other than the cool grass under me back, and the inky blur has yet to uncloud. But I hear voices.

“Dave? Dave? Hey, is he OK?”
“Ehhh. No surprise – he’s not a big drinker and he had like eight honey meads.”
“Uh, no, babe, YOU had like eight honey meads.”
“Oh. Yeah. Need more.”

English. They’re speaking English. When was I captured? How was I captured? How many did I take with me? Why have I no memory of anything since departing County C....

Mmmmm .... honey mead ...

The dark cloud is partin' from me eyes. Tis a sunny, warm day – and I’m clearly on no battlefield. There is no carrion strewn about – just paths and buildings and smiling people milling about in mingled, strange garb – some almost normal yet off just a bit, some garbed as if they came from some far-distant century. The buildings – an ale house, a leatherworker, a potter, a luthier – all look just a touch off, as if they’re not quite real. Not false fronts, quite, but contrived nonetheless ...

Tis a false village. No doubt intended to lure their enemies – my people – into a deceptive security, then set upon them. Such is obvious to one of my unquestioned cunning and sophistication. I no doubt must have let meself be captured to spy out the land. Now all I must do is shake off the effects of whatever treacherous draught they’ve poisoned me with, slay a couple hundred English, and make me way back to the kindred. Such is stark simplicity to one of my unmatchable might and ...

Where’s me broadax?
Where in all the hells is me BROADAX?

Begorrah. Slaying a couple hundred English shall be a mite harder. A mite, mind. Aye ... two mites.

For the first time, I glance around at my band of captors. Two scarlet-tressed wenches, two men dressed, as I, in furs and tartan – like they think they’re fooling anyone – with a third watching an artisan make a bodhran. Ehhh – that drum doesn’t even look like it has ANY human flesh in it. Fools and knaves. He leaves the bodhran-maker and approaches, and I squint at his features – clearly a Hibernian. This “Mahooch,” as his drunken colleague calls him, is clearly a turncoat whose demise shall be slow and brutish. Argghh. Me poor broadax.

A wench speaks. “Ally and I are hunting down the ladies’ room. Stay out of too much trouble.”

“Hey, Dave’s awake.”

I say something in my native speech, but by the time it gets from me bowels to me tongue, it comes outsounding simply like, “Bee–hheeeerr.”

“Always a fine idea,” says Mahooch, and for that he canna be faulted. “Kiosk across the path.”

I know not what a kee-osch is, but the men and I approach a small lean-to of sorts, a makeshift pub with one long slab of wood covered with bottles and glasses and the heaving bosoms of two heaving wenches. What satanic crafter carved their corsets? Not that I complain, mind.

They pour us something that call Whore’s Garden or some like, a sweet yet tangy confection that warms me gullet and eases the pounding in me skull. I set the glass down, and another appears as if by sorcery. The wenches clearly are paying little attention to me; they haven’t registered I’m the same man they just served. They’re clearly entranced by the turncoat Mahooch, their eyelashes fluttering and their fingersa twistin’ their locks as they stare lustfully into his visage. I shan’t tell the ladies that by dawn on the morrow I’ll be lacing me boots with Mahooch’s entrails. Not as long as they keep feeding me Whore’s Garden. A third! A fourth!

“So yeah, this Ren-Faire thing will end up covering board, but it doesn’t dent tuition. So on Tuesdays and Thursdays I dance over at Knockers Pub outside Trumansburg.” Flutters eyelashes and manages to shift her weight so that even more, dangerously more, of herbosom protrudes from her bodice. “Any plans forTuesday?”

I gulp my seventh Whore’s Garden and see the crimson-tressed ladies approaching from a distance. Not yet, not yet – I need another Guard’s Whoredom! Er, Horde’s Gargoyle? Hard Gorgon? I’m finding it hard to care all much about me broadax ...

The one lass – Krull, they call her and sure as that’s a worthy warrior’s name that – returns and links her arm in Mahooch’s. The wenches at the bar contemplate vile acts of torture and homicide – then they look at me and realize they’ve fed me fourteen Hog’s Gargles. Gore’s Wardens. Hoegarten. Whate’er. Sure an it’s been a pleasure, lassies.

We head off lookin’ for turkey legs. And I’m thinkin’ the massacre can wait a day or two. Or five. Must gather intelligence and all. May even spare Mahoochs’ entrails, as twas his sorcery that filled me gullet with Horny Gollum.

I begin to bellow a heartfelt paean to Eire. But instead, I belch.
Tis close enough.

Green War, Part 2

2007-01-29T12:54:00.000-05:00

By Bryan M.

The rest did not last. He was awoken again by a presence, a different face than that of the previous night. This man was smaller and older, and his clothes were darker and more earthy. He smoked a long brown pipe, and its scent was unlike those of the pipes of the duke’s land. It was sweeter and yet somehow more bitter. He guessed from the little man’s posture that he’d been staring at the duke a long while, and he continued to do so even as the duke sat up in his bed and lit a candle by his bedside.
“You are one of the hillfolk,” said the duke, though whether it was a statement or question even the duke was not sure. “Why have you come?”
The man took another puff of his pipe and exhaled a long, deep breath. He cocked an eye toward the duke.
“You’ve been visited by the Podrain, haven’t ye?” said the man. “And a lyin’ folk they be. I am Dramhain of the Draymoor.”
The duke sat straighter, trying to muster all the royal blood that pumped in him. The effect worked, for he looked wiser and more powerful than he had in the moments before, and Dramhain took notice.
“I know of your people,” said the duke. “I know what is to be done in two nights’ time. Your people seek to undo what has been done here for generations of my family’s history. You seek to crush the peace we’ve upheld like a boat on the wave. You have drawn us in your war and no it is I who must decide what role our folk play.”
The little man smiled a little, but it was not out of malice or delight. He emptied the bowl of his pipe onto the floor and repacked it with a strange weed before speaking.
“Is that what they’ve got yeh believing? We’re to war on them in two nights?” The man stopped smiling and stood before the duke, mustering all the height he could. “This is the mark of the Podrain, my man. They would conjure a story to make an ally of you and your land, only to turn on all of you in the end and take all of it – the hills, the valley – all of it for themselves. In truth it is they who will strike first. They will waylay our walls with the help of your people, they will tear down our homes and our land. Then they will consume what they can and leave it bare, and rape your land next until nothing is left. That is why you must stand with us. You and your people must be at the ready at dusk the day-after-tomorrow, to fight for your—and our—very lives.”
The smoke grew thicker, and when it faded so did the man, and again the duke was alone. He sat upright until the dawn, when the town below his windows awoke and the wheels of the day began to turn.
That day he walked his streets. He watched as children played at their mothers’ and fathers’ sides, as mothers and fathers worked and laughed with each other indoors and out. He drank each moment in as if it were his last, and the weight of what was to come became too great to bear.
That night he’d reached his decision. He had just one last day before war, though which side was in the right he still could not say. On this night he did not sleep, awaiting another visitor though none came. He greeted the dawn in the same way he greeted nightfall—alone. And cold.
But this day did not start like the others. There was no lazy retreat from slumber for the folk of the valley. Today the duke burst from the doors of his home, clad in the armor of his people. It shone under the winter sun and reflected each house, each door and chimney of the homes of the valley. He came out in force, beating his chest so the clanging scrapes of metal on metal awoke each man, woman and child.
“Arise ye and stand! Arise! Leave your homes and be gone from this place! Arise!”
His shouts continued until every family was out their doors, some still rubbing their eyes from sleep. The clamor woke the livestock as well, and now the duke was shouting over a din of confused animals and people.
“We have lived here long,” the duke said, “and for many years have seen peace in our lands. But a new day comes, and with it a new life for all of us. Long have I hid from you the truth of these hills, for within them live two dark and mysterious peoples; long have they known me and my family, and have enjoyed the peace that we have upheld. But the peace has run its course, and before war brings ruin upon you I ask—nay, I demand—you leave this place and your belongings. Head for the next town where you might stay until it is safe to return. If it is ever safe.”

Green War, Part 1

2007-01-29T11:50:00.000-05:00

By Bryan M.

Long ago, long before engines of industry drove magic away from Ireland’s shores and hills, before the webbing of our memories was stretched too thin, there lived a duke who sat upon a satin throne. His lands stretched far between two hills; they were cut by his domain and all who lived there lived in peace. In his many days he sat watching out a narrow window, looking out on the long crevasse, thinking of those who dwelt between those hills and of those who lived within, unknown to the people under his care.
They were the hillfolk, as was their name whispered in the streets of the duke’s place. Never to be seen nor heard, they lived as two kingdoms, on their own, in constant hatred of the other. Where the source of the strife existed no one could say, and they lived apart from the outer land of the valley, spending their days buttressing their defenses in the event the other should ever choose to wander across. This was known only to the duke, the only outsider to ever have met the hillfolk, and he was disturbed by their warmongering and hateful ways. Their appearance to him was strange; they wore clothes of green sewn from the hillsides, and ate nothing but the grasses and mushrooms that grew there. As such their hair and most elements of their likenesses were kissed with a green hue, yet their faces were pale and fair as the moon’s reflection on a river. Indeed, they seemed to sparkle as if imbued with the stars’ light itself.
On the coldest night of winter one of the hillfolk set to visit the duke. He came to his bedside at midnight, waking the duke with a touch to his hand. The duke awoke quickly, angered by the intrusion.
“Who comes to my chamber!?” he spoke to the dark, and to the face that seemed lit from within.
“It is Clamagh from the hill,” said the stranger. “I come to you this night to impart a warning from my people. The folk of the Other Hill, the Draymoor, are to descend upon us three dusks from this. We Podrain do not wish to fight but will defend our home tooth to nail to keep it. We tell this to you, leader of the land between, in hopes that your people might help belay our conflict—that your folk would take up arms against the Draymoor and help drive them back so that the peace might be preserved.”
The duke’s grey face showed more years than it possessed, for he knew that such a time would come under his watch of his family’s lands. He did not wish for his people to turn to war; theirs was a peaceful clan whose lives were given to tending of flocks and sowing of fields. Once a year they cleared their storehouses of leftover grains for the brewing of fine ales and stouts, which would produce such yields that they had enough for a year and more, the surplus of which they traded with neighboring lands. The duke sought to preserve that life, without armaments, and so told the stranger at his bedside.
But the creature responded, “We must have your people ready to stand at the third dusk, else they are run over in the fray and all peace wracked for ever.”
Whether the figure slinked away silently or simply faded, the duke could not ascertain in the dim light. He was again alone, and no quilt could belay the chill now set on his skin. He laid awake for some hours, transfixed on the words, and he spent much of the next day the same as he performed his duties. He had thought of little else when he laid to rest the following night, when his eyes and bones finally succumbed to weariness.

Undecided Voter

2007-01-26T22:56:00.000-05:00

By Matt

Man, this president thing is haaarrdd. I didn’t know when is said I was a decider, I’d have to make so many … well … decisions. I thought this war stuff was gonna be easy. Least that’s what Dick and Condi and Rummy said.

“Just go in there and kick a little wimpy dictator butt and you’ll be a hero,” they said. I shoulda listeneded to Colin.

“Now people are makin’fun of me, sayin I talk funny an I’m dumb. It’s the difficultest thing in the world bein’president, but people don’ seem ta care. I tell ya, ma brain hurts …

Whoa wait a minute ... what’s going on here, I fell funny, like some East Coast liberial’s takin over mah body … Oh no, not him!!!!

This wah is a fahlly. Ah nevah shouldah voted fah it.

Now Kahl Rove’s slandering me all ovah the ahrwaves and the Swift Boaters are teahrin apaht my Vietnam Wah recahrd. Whay ah evah say I voted fahr the money bafahr ah voted against it? Whay does everyone say ah look like Lurch? Who is this Lurch fellah anywhay?

Oh look aht tha time. I need to get mah Botox and and mah haih done …

(OK- This probably deserves a little perspective. My last Halloween costume was as an undecided voter in the 2004 election. I took some license with that and entered the bodies of W and John Kerry.)

NTH #1 from NewbieHack Brian

2007-01-26T17:27:00.000-05:00

Re: High five?

So here I am, fresh off the long and gritty trail of writing fiction into the void, when I spot an oasis up ahead. Could it be? Is it too good to be true? Can the appearance of witty, casual competence be real?

A heartbeat and I am closer. I lose myself to the timelessly eternal moment meeting someone who I know will become a great friend. The rich aroma of lush green feedback and the glistening pool of refreshing perspective draw me in. “I’m here!” Shout I; belly-flopping into the unknown waters.

And then… immersion in the cooling pool? Or am I suddenly thirteen, awkwardly awaiting the mate to my high-five which never comes?

Clear as mud right? So I probably mixed a few metaphors back there, but this is my way of saying “Hi,” and asking if there are some folks out there who are prepared to give feedback on my fiction. If you post your work I promise to be honest an only bite if that’s what you want.

Please post a comment so that I know where and with whom my writing will land.

Write on.

Brian Arnold
Playonwards@ca.rr.com

Leprechaun Lament

2007-01-26T11:30:00.000-05:00

This week’s assignment, by Marcy
(I was a Leprechaun for Halloween ’06)

I stand, leaning against the cast iron pot, in the shimmering light of the end of the rainbow. It’s freezing in the meadow this morning. All I want is a cup of coffee and some warm soda bread, with butter and honey. But the rainbow appeared in the sky and I was next on the list. At least I have a week off before the list cycles through again.

There are only seven of us in County Cork now. The rest moved on to other jobs or other places. A group struck off for the new world a hundred years ago they’ve been doing quite well for themselves. One of them even landed a few TV spots as a cereal spokesperson. None of that’s for me. I could never leave my homeland. I’m perfectly content among the meadows and the bluebells and the forests. Let someone else hock marshmallow treats shaped like shamrocks.

It’s been forever and a day since someone actually found me. When the rainbow calls and my number is up, I go and stand with the gold, and wait for someone to come along. Used to be that three or four folks at a time would fight each other for it. Now I stand alone with an unclaimed prize, waiting for the sun to pass so that I can go get some coffee. I guess people have more options for fortune these days.

The light shifts, the rainbow weakens. I look up to the sky to see the clouds passing. My time is up. I bury the gold back under the earth, sprouting up some bluebells so I know where to find it next time.

Warming my cold hands with my breath, I trudge toward an inn.

Howdy Hack Fans!

2007-01-25T16:25:00.000-05:00

Marcy here.

It's the new year, and we Hacks are done hibernating. Our site has a new look and a new purpose. So stay tuned ... there's going to be a lot more activity in The No-Talent Hacks Writers' Den starting today!

El Tiro

2006-11-12T09:40:00.000-05:00

It's been forever since I posted something here. Here's a short one. - Matt

"Want to go up? I'd been expecting the question, but it still surprised me. "Sure."

A few minutes of preparation and I was strapped in. We were connected to the plane in front of us by a simple rope. A few hand signals and the plane was on its way. The desert ground was rough, we took a few strong bumps. Then it was smooth. Airborne.

We stayed with our lifeline for several minutes. A pull of the release and we were free. And everything changed.

The wind has the power. Without it, I'd be staring up at the peaks, instead of eye-to-eye with their tops. The world is nearly silent, my benefactor nearly silent.

The wind can be violent, ripping apart trees and homes. Today it is my friend, letting me see the world in unencumbered beauty. The Earth is magnificent, I am insignificant against it.

Yeah, so its summer...

2006-08-14T19:16:00.000-04:00

And the hacks have been caught up in other hackish things. We didn't make it to the Ren Faire this summer, alas. But our lack of bloggishness has meant (at least in the cases of some) more writing on our actual projects. This is a good thing. Here's a picture of Dave on his birthday.

In the meantime, and until we can get back into meetings after our summer break, we leave you with these thoughts:

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is the bomb diggity.
Coffee is also the bomb diggity.
Cheese is good.

Many happinesses to you and may Vikings never pillage your home.

-The Hacks

Crocs with tools

2006-06-30T19:17:00.000-04:00

By Matt

A cuddly saltwater croc swung the sledgehammer with a vengeance while getting his freak on.

Now if you think this is the result of a mad hallucination brought about by some Australian wacky weed, you're wrong. It's actually a well-know fact that saltwater crocs love getting their freak on. Crocs DID invent the leisure suit.

This in contrast to freshwater crocs who spend all day wallowing in shallows waiting for errant dingoes. They're really dull - and mean.

But what about the sledgehammer you ask? Isn't it unusual to see crocs using tools? Not really, if you think about it. After all, don't they need to build places to live too. Despit their prehistoric appearance, saltwater crocs are quite skilled in the building trades. Why some of the world's finest stonemasons are actually crocodiles.

And the cuddly part? Well, who doesn't find a 15-foot, scaly predator with razor-sharp teeth, cute? Now go have some more of that wacky weed. Maybe you'll hallucinate about Jimmy Hoffa next. Maybe there'll be some teenagers.

Meeting Minutes

2006-06-29T09:48:00.000-04:00

And now, the minutes from last night's No-Talent Hacks Meeting
(As remembered by Marcy the next morning over coffee...)

Date: June 28
Location: Allison's Abode
Hacks present: Allison, Matt, Dave, Marcy, Bryan
On The Menu: Baked Ziti, garlic bread, salad, peach pie, and of course, Guac.

First, we discussed Allison's pieces written for a writing contest. They had number-of-word limitations, but despite the rush induced into a story by a number-of-word limitation, they were nuggets of goodness. We all agreed that she is faboo and wanted to read the revised versions when she revises them for other contests with less constricting number-of-word limitations.

Oliver the cat joined us and soaked up a lot of attention.

We then discussed the coming year of Hackdom, and outlined a plan of attack. Expect to see new things on this blog; the Hacks have tested the waters of blogdom since the creation of this blog, and now we're ready to jump into the pool and play Marco Polo.

We finished off the meeting with an in-class writing assignment that created much hilarity... some of which will be appearing here on the blog. We picked out of three envelopes; one had subjects, the next had an action, and the last had a 'result'. These three sentence fragments formed the first sentence of our stories. Look for these stories in subsequent posts.

That's all for this meetin' folks...stay tuned for great new things on this blog...

Why, Teela?

2006-06-04T16:00:00.000-04:00

By Marcy

(I will warn our fearless Hack readers right now – this post is riddled with geekdom. Read at your own risk!)

When I was a kid, I was the only girl in my class who liked He-Man and Star Wars. At recess, I always got to be either Princess Leia or Teela, depending on what the boys wanted to play that day. All of the other girls hung out at the swing sets - not me. The jungle gym was the Millennium Falcon, or Castle Greyskull. And I was the token female. It was the good life.

Princess Leia was my absolute idol. She was feisty, fearless, and a cosmic beauty. I still want to be her every time I watch the Star Wars Trilogy. (There’s only one trilogy in my book. And there’s no such thing as Midichlorians, and Greedo most CERTAINLY did not shoot first. But I digress…) And Teela was the coolest too - she fought along side He-man and Man-At-Arms. She kicked butt with a staff, and a sword, and a blaster. She was the red-head captain of the guard in underoos and a tiara, who never backed down to Skeletor and his goons.

Or so I thought.

Fast-forward to this weekend, with birthday money well spent on the whole first season of He-Man on DVD. I’m re-living my childhood as I’m sketching out my own graphic novel from the comfort of my couch. And as the shows progress, it comes to my attention that Teela – the ass-kicking chick of my memory – is a complete fraud!!

Yes, she’s strong-willed. She trash talks Skeletor and Beast Man. She never obeys when Man-At-Arms or He-man tell her to stay put. But when there’s a fight – she does nothing!! My childhood self remembers her being more like Xena, or Leia – fierce with a weapon. In the frey of every battle. But having watched the first two discs (there are twelve total – 68 episodes!!) of this first season collection, I’m feeling like Teela has let me down. Every fight she’s been in so far, she’s been disarmed, and she spends the rest of the fight on the fringes with a worried look on her face, yelling “He-Man – look out!”

Granted, this is early ‘80’s animation. The backgrounds are looped, and lets get real for a second: He-Man wears fur underwear and rides a cat with a saddle. I am fully aware that the show is dated and doofy. But it holds up for me in entertainment value, if sentimentally. I still can’t help but feel, however, that Teela has let me down after all these years. Hopefully I will be proven wrong in the next few discs.

Maybe this letdown is because I started reading Tamora Pierce’s “Protector of the Small” books, in which the heroine is a ten-year-old girl who stands her own ground in training to be a knight. I can’t help think what Teela would do in Kel’s situation…stand on the sidelines and cry for He-man? Food for thought, as I continue to watch the DVD’s and read book two of the “Protector of the Small series.”

Which leads me to ask this question of our Hack fans (if any) – as female readers, what is it you look for in a heroine? And what heroines from your childhood still hold up for you today? Let me know in comments on this blog.

Over and out.
Marcy

Flight 827 - Part 3

2006-05-27T22:50:00.000-04:00

Here's the final part of the story - enjoy.

By Matt

Now silver wings carried the glimmer of hope. He was back, if only for a while. He’d vowed to return when the Mariners opened their new stadium. Following that magical year had been one of his greatest joys. The miracle comeback, Randy reaching for the heavens, Dave Niehaus’s “grand salami” call on an Edgar Martinez home run and Junior’s exuberant dive across home to beat the Yankees.

The houses grew more numerous, the green landscape giving way to yet more shades of grey as concrete replaced evergreens. The plane whirred and thunked as flaps hung out and landing gear came down. The pressure grew on sensitive ears as the plane drew nearer to sea level.

Suddenly a thump and a screech as rubber met runway, the noise increasing as powerful engines reversed their thrust.

12B waited patiently as the other 86 people around him gathered their belongings and exited. He came to his feet and pulled his carryon from the bin. Shuffling along the aisle, he bade the flight crew a friendly farewell and thanked them for the flight. Excitement growing, he picked up the pace down the Jetway and burst into the busy, familiar terminal. It was exactly as he’d remembered, not particularly beautiful, and under a seemingly perpetual state of construction.

A short wait at the baggage claim later, and he had a heavy bag slung over his shoulder and was on his way to the ground transportation area. An airport shuttle bus would be along soon to take him to the hotel downtown, a real deal at $39 a night.

Stepping outside, he took in the sights and sounds of the airport. The air was cool and heavy. It smelled of rain, pine and jet fuel. He found it rather pleasant. The frequent sounds of jets taking off drowned out the cacophony of cars, taxis, and buses swirling around the terminal. Across International Boulevard he could see the twin towers of the Airport Plaza with the familiar 13 Coins restaurant sign. He’d never eaten there. Too expensive on $7.00 an hour, but it was one of the best restaurants in the area.

Around him people headed in all sorts of directions. He wondered where they were going. Did they have families here? Business? Pleasure?

The blue and yellow Dodge van approached. The usual mix of tourists piled in with him. Typically they were the only ones who used the Airporter.

Passengers around him called out their destinations. Soon he was alone with the driver. He gave the name of a hotel on Sixth Avenue, not far from the TV station whose offer he turned down two years earlier. “King’s Inn”, he said. He made no small talk with the driver, not wanting to miss the sights of the familiar city.

The van pulled into the lot of the hotel and the man’s heart sank. There was a reason the place was so cheap. It was a place more for the furtive, furious rendezvous of strangers than tourists.

He went to the grimy desk, to a disinterested clerk and gave his reservation. The clerk seemed surprised anyone wanted to actually stay the entire night, but dutifully gave him a key to a first-floor room.

As rooms went, he had seen better garbage dumps. A tiny lamp with a 45-watt bulb provided the only light. The ancient TV had cable in name only. A twin bed had more lumps than bad gravy. As if to punctuate his miserable situation, the rain outside picked up. Fatigue beginning to set in, he set down his suitcase. The room had an unmistakable chill. A worn-out heater provided no relief, blowing only cold air, and even then with a protest of noise louder than the plane he’d left shortly before.

At least the room had a working phone and phone book. He didn’t have much money, but that didn’t mean he had to stay in this dive any longer than necessary. A scan through the book located a Motel 6 back down by the airport. He made a reservation for the next day. Another call arranged for a van to pick him up and take him to his new hotel. He hadn’t rented a car for this trip, not really believing he’d need one. He’d fix that tomorrow.

Satisfied his living arrangements would only be temporary, the man settled into the bed. A new feeling settled over him, one he hadn’t felt in years. The miserable room did nothing to contain it. He was happy.

The dim surroundings, the lumpy bed, the lack of heat couldn’t diminish the feeling. Here, amongst the trees and mountains, water, concrete and rain was something more. Here was home.

Flight 827 - Part 2

2006-05-25T18:57:00.000-04:00

Part 2 of my story Flight 827. There will be one more addition. To my fellow hacks - You've read this story before, but not in this expanded version.

By Matt

Not seeing Annette anymore pained him the most. He longed to see her on a more serious level, but his timidity prevented that. If only he could have brought himself to ask.It was a regret he carried still, one he’d probably always carry.

The downfall was swift. He didn’t qualify for unemployment. “You haven’t worked enough,” the grey-haired woman told him. She seemed truly apologetic. But she couldn’t know what the news meant.

The job market was tight; recession had once again struck the area. A visit to a job fair had been particularly disastrous. He’d gotten lost among the buildings at the Seattle Center and never even made it there.

Once again in tears, he called his parents, told them he was coming come, that he was failure on his own.

Resigned to his fate, he visited the TV station where he’d interned before needing to get a paying job. He said he was leaving town and said his goodbyes. His supervisors had tried to get him hired before, to no avail.

The phone call a few days later had caught him by surprise. Was he interested in a job? The night assignment editor was leaving. Perhaps they could convince the news director he was the right person.

Of course he was interested, this was what he wanted. "We’ll get back to you," they said. When they did, it was the day before he was leaving. He’d made the arrangements to go. The landlord expected him to move out. The utilities were shut off, cable cancelled, train tickets in hand and the airline was coming to pick up his stuff to ship back to New York.

“Too late,” he told them. “If only you’d called yesterday.” He could have said yes, but he was too afraid, again too timid, to change his plans.

He’d still be here if he’d taken a chance, but chances weren’t what he was good at.

Solarainne 2

2006-05-22T10:16:00.000-04:00

(For an explanation of this project, please see the note on the post entitled "Solarainne 1." Thanks!)
(And sorry - for some reason this won't let me indent paragraphs.)

By Marcy and Bryan

The class filed out quickly, mumbling to each other about the absurdly short class. Connall looked at none of them. He fixed his eyes on the floor, making a line for his professor's desk. He wanted to know what the note meant, or what he should do. This guy says one thing to me and I'm going to deck him. He straightened himself up just in time to see Mary McCrary, a pretty girl that sat in the front, head him off. She was focused on Mr. Durst, and opened her mouth to speak.
"Mr. Durst, this is by far the most outrageous form of sexual harassment I have encountered at this school, and I hang out with rugby players, so that is saying a lot!" Mary said, her green eyes flashing with anger. She held up her essay, which had the same blue-inked message on it as Connall's did.
Mr. Durst laughed.
Connall's brow furrowed. "What is going on here? Is this some kind of joke?"
"Well, at least you both took offense to my little experiment," Mr. Durst said. "That's a good sign."
"A good sign of what? That we're human beings? And that we don't like being treated as objects by a professor who uses his assignments for his own personal agenda?" Mary retorted hotly.
"Exactly, Miss McCrary. That you are humans. And humans with some shred of moral character to boot. It's taken me half a semester to root you out of the crop of this year's pathetic hybrids. Our kind are rarities anymore."
"What the hell are you talking about? Hybrids? Are you on crack?" Connall asked, and then realized that he was simply asking questions that the good professor was already about to explain.
But Mr. Durst simply handed them a small business card. "Go to this address, at precisely four o'clock. Show this card to no-one, do you understand? I will meet you there and show you exactly what I am talking about. I'm afraid this classroom, even this campus, is not the place to discuss such subjects."
"Why should we trust you?" Connall asked.
"Do me a favor," Mr. Durst said. "Go to the coffee shop. Sit down with a mocha and observe your fellow college mates. Really observe them. And imagine that you are watching a cosmic science experiment. You'll be surprised what you see."
He gathered his things and headed for the door, leaving Mary and Connall completely baffled. Before he exited, he turned to them again. "Stay together until you meet me later. It's not as safe for you out there anymore; you're in the know."
He left.
Connall looked at Mary. She said:
"Do you have any clue what he's talking about? I've got another class at four. What's he talking about? He's not getting off that easy..."
But something in the way he said cosmic science experiment didn't sit right with Connall. He had heard those words once before, but where exactly he couldn't recall. Clearly, though, this professor had a plan for them. And it didn't involve wine and cheese in his dining room followed by gladiator movies in the bedroom.
"Look, it's a little weird, but maybe we should do this," Connall said. "And I know you don't know me and I don't know you, but it's probably just part of some lesson he's trying to teach."
Mary's breathing slowed a little. Curiosity began to take over.
"Well, he can't rape us both, can he?" she said, wishing instantly she hadn't. I don't even know this guy, hope he's not offended. His smile told her he wasn't.
"Well, I hope not. Here's what's really wrong: I left my money in my dorm room, so if we're supposed to hang out for the next three hours, I guess you're coming too. What do you think?"
Half an hour later, after money was fetched and more cold braved, Mary and Connall were sitting in the coffee shop, each with a mocha and a chocolate chocolate-chip muffin. They kicked back in a booth and began their people watching experiment, oblivious to what they were actually looking for.
"I can't believe I'm skipping Chem to sit here and ingest carbs with a stranger at the request of a perverted, demented professor." Mary said through a bite of muffin.
"Tell us how you really feel," Connall countered.
"What are we supposed to be looking for, anyway."
Connall sipped his mocha, then wiped whipped cream from the tip of his nose. "A cosmic science project."
"This whole thing is a cosmic science project." Mary mumbled.
Connall scanned the crowd, a regular mix of coffe shop patrons. The punks, the goths, the poets, the preps, and the average joes all mingled and gorged on treats. He watched them for weirdness, but spoke to Mary as he did.
"So where are you from, Mary McCrary?"
"Ohio. You?"
"Buffalo."
"You came a long way for school then." She huffed.
"That's original."
Mary sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm frustrated. None of this makes any logical sense, but it seems to be the right thing to do here."
Connall smirked, and was about to speak, when something caught his eye...
He found himself staring back at an iguana with a pearl necklace sitting atop Ben Ngyuen's shoulder.
Ben took a poetry class with Connall, and Connall remembered his was particularly bad, not just for the writing but because Ben came from Korea, and his r's were sometimes lost in the shuffle. Even with the public readings in class, up until now Connall never saw Ben communicate much with anybody, let alone a pet lizard. Yet here he was, feeding cracker crumbs to it as he read a bike manual in a far corner of the room. And the lizard looked at Connall like it was waiting for him to look away, but he didn't.
Mary saw the confusion smattered on Connall's face.
"What is it? What's the matter?" But before he could answer, she turned around to look at the lizard, which was now whispering into Ben's ear.
Ben's head snapped around to look directly at Connall and Mary. Connall swore he thought he saw Ben's eyes flare a brilliant yellow, and then fade back to normal. Ben pulled the lizard off of his shoulder and carefully placed her inside his backpack. He shouldered the bag, and with a cold glare, turned his back on the two observers and left the coffee shop. The backpack rustled, and the lizard peeked out of the bag, flipping off Mary and Connall.
"Did you see -"
"Oh yes, I saw," Mary replied before Connall could finish.
"How soon until four o'clock?"
Mary looked at her cell phone's time display. "Thirty-five minutes. Should we go? A trained lizard doesn't necessarily constitute a cosmic science experiment."
"But a Korean poet's eyes glowing yellow might." Connall stood and donned his jacket. "Safety in numbers. Let's go."
"How reassuring," mumbled Mary, but she followed Connall out to the bus stop.

Flight 827

2006-05-19T23:00:00.000-04:00

This was one of the few stories to survive my computer crash. It began life as one of our assignments. The goal was to think of a story in the time you were stopped at a red light. What came out was this. This is the first installment.

By Matt

Flight 827, a 737 from Pittsburgh with 87 people on board broke through the clouds at 6,000 feet. Below, a lush green landscape unfolded, punctuated by the occasional dot of houses. Ahead, the sky showed the first hints of gathering twilight amongst the leaden grey. Mountains were barely visible amongst the haze. Streaks of liquid formed against Plexiglas.

For the passenger in 12B, these were sights he’d thought he’d not see again. Sights last seen that miserable St. Patrick’s Day when screeching, protesting rails carried him out of King Street Station on a slow journey back to the monotony of a life he thought he’d left behind. The journey then had left him too much time to reflect on missed opportunities. His time in the city had been the happiest of his life. He’d thought he’d spend the rest of his life there. Sure, he had a cheap apartment, and made way too little money. He’d had no need to change his driver’s license since he had been to poor to own a car, even a cheap old beater.

The city had suited him. On days off he take the bus to Discovery Park and walk among the wooded trails, stopping at the occasional clearing to take in the view of the sound. He found he enjoyed the view most when his favorite mountain poked its head out from the frequent mists. Or maybe he’d go to the waterfront and watch the bustle on the sound and the city around him.

He loved the city’s quirks; the troll under the Aurora Bridge; Hammering Man at the SAM. He loved how rain made the city seem alive, one with its surroundings. Espresso stands in dry cleaners, tanning salons and grimy gas stations. He missed good coffee.

His job had been nothing special. Selling computers at store in a suburban strip mall was as far away from TV journalism as he could get. Still it had paid the bills.

It was a shock losing his job. He was the store’s top seller. This couldn’t happen to him. He cried in the manager’s office. The job wasn’t much but it had been everything to him. His co-workers were the closest thing he had to friends. Without them he was alone.

The cup

2006-05-19T22:56:00.000-04:00

By Matt

Grown men will cry. Men who wouldn’t cry at the ending of “Old Yeller” will weep uncontrollably. They won’t be tears of pain, but of joy. Young and old alike will join together in celebration. The eyes of a continent will turn to them. And a city and region around them will find out once what it feels like to be on top of the world, if just for a fleeting moment.

A city that has been the butt of jokes and dealing with crushing poverty, lost opportunity, and heartbreak will discover that that hard work and belief in a common goal can take them to the top of the world. Even if the rest of the world says it impossible and so-called experts say it’s a pipe dream, it can happen. Redemption and renaissance ARE possible.

This lesson won’t be taught by any professor in a classroom. It will be taught by a group of men from all over the world holding a trophy. A simple game will be the cause. The city will feel joy once again. That’s something that can never be taken away.

It may just be a silver chalice, purchased for a few dollars in 1893, but it symbolizes the hopes and dreams of everyone touched by its presence. It symbolizes spirit.

Solarainne 1

2006-05-18T17:39:00.000-04:00

Hello Hack fans!

It's your friendly neighborhood Marcy here.

As you can tell, our writers' group is still warming up to this blog thing. So as we continue to work on our individual pieces, we will present some of our creative outlet assignments from meetings and such on this blog. (Some of which you have seen already.
This particular post is an unfinished, ongoing story that Bryan and I started writing last summer as a stress reliever at work. We've been e-mailing paragraphs back and forth, and letting it meander to see where it goes. So for the Blog, we're going to post a couple paragraphs at a time.

It is rough, cheesey, and random. Like my feet. So, I guess we'll call it a serial, because that sounds cooler that rough, cheesy, random and unfinished story.

Here's the first installment of Solarainne:

Connall threw his jacket on and zipped it as far as it would go. He could hear the wind screaming outside of the walls, and lamented that he had to leave the warmth of his dorm room to brave the winter chill. But alas, he thought, Mr. Durst's fiction writing class waits for no-one. While donning his fleece ski cap, he glanced at the calendar picture hanging by the door. Palm trees waved in sunshine over white sandy beaches. A margarita in hand, and steel drum music drifting on the air, he dreamed of digging his bare toes into warm sand. A Jimmy Buffet song worked its way into his brain, and the refrain would be stuck in his head the rest of the day. Heaving a huge sigh, Connall grabbed his bag and gloves and headed out into what was most definitely not Margaritaville.
No, this was indeed Williamsville, where sombreros are traded for stocking caps and a bite of wind can hurt more than the worm in tequila. There was at least one good bit of news awaiting him before he hit his professor's door at the University of Buffalo campus. He had to pick up his paycheck at Hooters around the block, and spend a few minutes basking in the glow of deep fryers and a woman named Pamela.
"UUUhhhhh... Pamela..." he drooled in his best Homer Simpson voice as the lock of the dorm room clicked. With a hop he shouldered his bookbag, stuffed his wallet in his coat, and dreamed of Hooters.
Glancing at his watch, he decided that suffering through class and then seeing Pamela would be a better course of action; it gave him something to look forward to. So he re-routed his steps to class and dreamed. Hooters and the beach. Somehow those two thoughts seemed to meld in Connall's mind, and kept him warm throughout the rest of his trek to class.
When he reached the warm building, he stripped a few of his layers off on the chair, and felt slightly overheated, despite the cold he had just come in from. He wondered why the brass heated class buildings to the high seventies or eighties. They knew that students overbundled for the upstate NY cold, and then huffed their way around campus. The insta-heat would most certainly put them to sleep. Didn't that seem rather counterproductive to classtime?
Mr. Durst began his review of the previous assignments he had graded and was handing back to his students. It was the same speech as always; "You all are capable of better writing than this. Why is it that you insist on not living up to your potential?" He passed by Connall on his way to hand Mandy Marco her essay. As he walked by, Connall noticed the familiar odor of his professor; stale coffee and minestrone soup. Why did this guy always smell like minestrone soup?
The smell intensified as Mr. Durst stopped in front of Connall, essay in hand. In scrawling blue ballpoint pen, there was a message on the top of the page, and Mr. Durst looked at Connall pointedly. The message said "I love you, sweetie." The last word was underlined twice.
Connall looked back at his teacher, who only shot a fleeting smile and a look out the corner of his eye before turning to the next desk, making his rounds. Connall's arm drooped and his pen fell to the floor. He could only shake his head, dumbfounded. The professor resumed his place behind his desk.
"Now class, this abomination of an assignment has left me utterly defeated," he said as each student held their breath for the hammer to fall. "You are all dismissed. Except for Connall. You stay."

Bad Poetry Night in Hackland!

2006-05-12T16:18:00.000-04:00

Hello Hack Fans!
Here it is - as promised. The No-Talent Hacks take a swing at pretend teenage poetry!
Keep in mind the youngest member of the Hacks is 27.
(Bonus points to whomever guesses which one of us is 27!!)
(Pete - you don’t count, you know the answer. Thanks for playing though!)

Sunshine and Light
By Matt

Why does school have to be so crass?
My entire life ruled by the hall pass.

Across the street the slackers smoke
I envy them their lives without care

My parents are always in my hair
I’m just not good enough
Does anyone here care?

My soul is ripped.
My mind a waste.

Why’d you leave?
I hate you

Grounded
By Marcy

No one listens to me
It's like I'm not even here
A voice in the dark
Faceless
Formless
Sound from everywhere
So loud it becomes nothing
Background noise
I am static
I am wind
I am the grinding screech of a dot matrix printer
Annoying
Repetitive
Obsolete
And they tune me out
Nothing I say is important
So I hide in the dark
Soundless
Barely breathing
And I scream

SOUL SQUISHER
By Dave

Crippled cockroach climbing
warily, gingerly, erratically
up the basement wall
hanging on with
furious insectoid desperation shrieking
I am more than vermin
I am life
I am your soul
Suddenly it topples
dead as a dead bug
How do I pay it due tribute?
Choking back a sob
I squish my soul

Angst
By Allison

No one understands
the dark
I'm here alone
without him

I felt the fear
of losing
I tried to fight
it won

Now my life
gray, torn
No one understands
I'm trapped

There is time
now for
breaking free from
the dark

Title: Combustible
By Bryan

The universe has swallowed me
wallowing in the haze
Shut me out don't let me in
shout at me my name
Am I girl? not yet a woman
Mother of the cosmos, speak
I will hear you and come
the class bell rings but I wait
to hear you speak once more
Shut them out don't let them in
My mind is yours, my womb is mine
The universe spits me back out

A snippet from a love poem
By Kris

"Watch me and take it
as I extend my love.
I'll only give it once."

The meeting
By Matt

You said meet behind the bleachers
I was there for hours
You never came
My tears were fertilizer

You were my idol
For you I'd do anything
Did it make feel good,
Your little prank?

My dreams were crushed
Life is over

I hope you enjoy the flowers

You Know What You've Done
By Dave

You've put it all behind you.
Such a luxury.
Such effrontery.

Breakup Haiku
By Marcy

Back of the school bus
Track meet races on outside
I cry tears alone

Waring souls
By Marcy

Who will win the long battle
Chuck Norris or Screech
Only Pete can tell

AND NOW, Hacks of all ages...

2006-05-11T10:45:00.000-04:00

The minutes from last night's Hack Meeting (as remembered the next morning by Marcy):

Tonight's Meeting Attendees: Marcy, Bryan, Matt, Dave
Location: Marcy's apartment
Time: 7:30 pm EST

We began our meeting as always - by gorging ourselves on Dave's Guacamole. This brought about a quote from Matt:

"Dave, I could live at the bottom of a bowl of your Guac."

While consuming Dave's Guac and Marcy's Spinach Artichoke Dip, we viewed a tape of the film "Covert Operatives" - a stop-motion GI Joe film made by friends of Marcy's from college. Hilarity ensued.

After the viewing, we discussed Matt's "The Traveler" piece. Much insight was shared - both literary and metaphysical. Matt's setting - an Arizona desert - and his symbolism with animals led Marcy to bring up the point that he should check into the local Native American connections to these particular animals. We agreed that Matt's piece was nearly polished, and left us wanting more.

At this point, Marcy made a big pot of coffee. Matt drinks his coffee black. Dave drinks his coffee black but with two spoonfuls of sugar. Bryan drinks his coffee with Irish Cream creamer. Marcy drinks her coffee with fat free creamer and a spoonful of sugar mixed with cinnamon.

While sipping coffee, Bryan made the observation that every time Dave submits a piece of his novel to the group, it is never enough. This led to a quote by Dave: "My story is giving you blue balls?"

We discussed Dave's latest piece of his novel, and how the brilliant chunks he's written - while captivating - need to start being tied together. We also discussed other authors that write in a similar way; George R.R. Martin and ___ in particular. We also made the observation that there is not a real strong female character - the few that are there seem to be background characters - in the story and wondered if that would come into play. We then begged Dave for the next part of the story. He laughed maniacally and called us minions.

At this point, we snarfed down a Devil's Food cake that Marcy made. It tasted yummy but wasn't very pretty. The top layer had broken in half and was sliding off the frosting. It looked so bad that "This was supposed to be pretty" was scrawled on the top in the frosting. In retrospect, we should have taken a picture to post with this blog entry, but we were distracted by bad teenage poetry.

A local poetry contest inspired us to our next writers' group assignment:

This Friday, we will post a blog entry in which we have all written our absolute worst attempt at mocking bad teenage angst-ridden poetry. To get us all in the mood, Marcy broke out her high school diaries and read horrible passages to all as we laughed with glee.

So, Hack Fans...stay tuned, and read all our pretend teenage angst this Friday...

-The No Talent Hacks

Honoring the voice, celebrating the sacred space

2006-05-06T10:05:00.000-04:00

By Allison

Saturday morning and the sky is crying, sheets of icy rain are bursting out of the gray. I sit snug in front of the fire, contemplating Marcy’s post, missing Don and thinking about voice and expression, art and literature. Don, by the way, (the hack without a picture – my bad) is working in the rain to create the sacred space for us to honor the voice.

When he leaves, he says, “write.”

There is so much I must not do: Worry about what must be done, stress over piles of work sitting on my desk in the newsroom or censor the wild voice that informs the writing. Censor her and she’ll rear her ugly head and roar, leaving fragments of drivel on the page.

Where does she come from, that voice? She is the one who says things I would never say out loud. She frightens others – she frightens me sometimes with the things she says. That’s what I like about her.
She’s the mystical, magical unconscious and she’s like driving from one place to another and wondering how you got there. She’s like mining for gold.

I will spend much of the day immersed in the letters of Virginia Woolf. The Bloomsbury group – Leonard and Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Lytton Strachey, Virginia and Clive Bell – they honored the art and the voice. They communed in their sacred space and made their passion, their art, the focal point of their lives. Minds, bodies, souls. They said, “This expression matters.” They said, “This is what we are called to do.”

The studied and critiqued literature, wrote and reviewed and celebrated. Through the madness and the pennilessness, they persevered for the art – for the voice. Don and I envision our sacred space much the same – our hack group, though lighthearted, honors our expression by honoring the voice.

Dishonor her and she falls silent.

Previous Weeks Writing Assignments

2006-04-28T10:51:00.007-04:00

These assignments are in order from most recent to oldest.

Write a story that begins with: Deftly, his practiced fingers unhinged the lock on the large, wooden chest that held the secrets of ...
You are watching a home makeover show on television, and the homeowners are going in to horrid detail describing the loathsome appearance of one of the rooms of their house. You realize that this house used to be yours, and the design they are tearing apart was your crowning achievement in home improvement! How do you react?
Use this sentence and a half to start your story: Belinda Budge was as stubborn as her last name implied, and on this particular day she was resolute in refusing to ...
Use this sentence and a half to start your story:
When Max spoke, people listened. The problem was that Max ...

Write a page from a travelogue of a space adventurer.

Write a synopsis of the perfect summer blockbuster. (not an EXISTING movie, mind you, but a short story of mashing all the elements of what makes a blockbuster great, like Titanic meets LOTR or something.)

Write a story set during your most recent vacation.
What is life like in a fish tank?
You have been given the power to change one thing in the world. What is it, and what are the ramifications?
It's Friday, two hours before you get to leave work. You look out the office windows and (insert phenomenon here.) How does this affect your plans for the evening?
You are the leader of your own nation, and your top aide as just told you of a huge crisis. What is the crisis, and what do you do?
Write a story backwards. Start with the ending paragraph and go back to the beginning. And NO CHEATING: you can't write a story and cut and paste the paragraphs.
Write something based on the title of a book, movie, song, whatever - that has nothing to do with the oritinal premise. (paraphrased from original assignment wording.)
Write the opening scene of a movie with the development premise of "JAWS meets BAMBI."
You awake one morning to find yourself a prisoner in the Bastille during the French Revolution. Things don't look good for you. Find some way to escape or talk your way out of prison.
Write an epic (multi-stanza) Haiku about the day Pirates stole your lunch.
You are leaving for work in the morning and you run into your neighbor, who has ... (insert phenomenon here)
Plausibly explain how a mythical creature, such as a unicorn, could be responsible for your car accident.
You are a/an: Demon/Angel. Describe your earliest memory.
You just woke up on a hillside above your town. You look over the edge and your town is ... (insert phenomenon here)
Write a letter of complaint to a (futuristic) company who sold you a fautly teleporter and you are furious.
You are 16, the prom is this weekend, and (insert crisis here.)
Write a story from the POV of a literal fly on the wall.
Write a story using these 5 words: Illuminated, Gristle, Matrix, Sandpiper, Ankle.
Write a story from the POV of your most recent Halloween Costume

Creativity

2006-04-27T23:19:00.000-04:00

By MATT

It's not easy to find time to write. Whether its because of work, school, volunteering, or hanging out with friends, sometimes the hardest thing to do is to sit down and start typing, writing, dictating, making cuneiform tablets, etching in stone - or whatever method you use to express yourself.

Yet it's important to find the time. I don't do it enough and sometimes I think I'm poorer for it. Whenever I do sit down and start typing, I'm amazed at what happens. I never know what direction my fingers are going to take me. It's always a journey. Sometimes it's deeply personal, expressing some long repressed emotion or reaction to an event. Writing can be quite cathartic. It's helped me over more than one hump in life.

The are times what you write is pretty cut and dried. News stories, for example, can often only go in one direction. Sometimes though you find them going in unexpected tangents. You get the best stories that way.

Often what I write stinks. I go back erase the whole darn thing and start over. Most of the time it's the third or fourth attempt at a story that sets me down the path. But whether your story is good or not is not the point of the exercise. Discovery is.

Sometimes writing's funny. You sit back at the end of a story, laugh, and wonder just exactly what deep recess of your brain it came from.

No matter what type of writing I ultimately end up doing, all stories have one thing in common. I've learned something about myself. And that makes me richer.

Meet Your No-Talent Hacks!

2006-04-26T18:55:00.002-04:00

BRYAN MAHONEY
Boston, MA
Good looks: Check.
Writing Skills: Check.
Creativity: Check.
Big Annoying Ego: Check.
Even Bigger Noggin: Check.
Check out Bryan's own blog here.

DAVE WHEELER
Canandaigua, NY
Dave is simply The Man. That's all that must be said. Well, no. In addition to being The Man, he's also a journalist, a conoisseur of fine earworms, a sci-fi/fantasy/filk geek in exelcis. And he's broke. Send him money. Lots and lots of money. Fund his existence so he can write. Or just buy him a Guinness and everything'll be cool. Oh, yeah.
Check out Dave's LiveJournal Here

MARCY MAHONEY
Boston, MA.
I'm random, rambling, and radioactive. I love Halloween, hate cube steak, and my favorite cartoon of all time is He-Man. I love stories that take you somewhere else and leave you there, then steal your lunch but leave you chocolate. Favorite authors include Neil Gaiman, Patricia A. McKillip, George R. R. Martin, Paulo Coelho & Phillipa Gregory.
Check out Marcy's own blog here

BRIAN ARNOLD
Los Angeles, CA
Got a job, a wife, a kid, a text book, a dry sense of humor and lots of student loans.
Check out Brian's blog HERE.

JILLIANNE REINSETH
Vancouver, Canada
Born of the Norsemen, Jillianne is a Viking Pirate Queen with boundless creativity and a California/London/Canadian accent. She is an animation and comic book guru who loves cute mighty cartoon characters and all things Bruce Campbell. Jillianne joins the Hacks from Vancouver, Canada, and as such has made the Hacks an international organization!

MATT RIED
Fairport, NY (for now)
Geek: Always
Cook: Sometimes
Writer: Sometimes
I love anything (mechanical) that flies, hockey, Discovery HD Theater, Battlestar Galactica, and history. Books rock and so do computers (refer back to geek)

LAURA MAHONEY
Boston, MA
Laura has zip-lined through the jungles of Costa Rica, sailed with the Merchant Marines across the Arctic Circle, and lived in Seville, Spain. She played Jesus' mother in her school play and yelled at Joseph when he forgot his lines. By day, she's a travel agent and by night she's a super-hero travel writer.
Check out Laura's Facebook page here

KRIS DREESSEN
Rochester, NY
Kris is an adventurer and a rebel. She loves loud music, she hates grasshopper lollipops, and her guilty pleasures are the Jackass Movies.

Check out Kris's own blog here.

ALLISON COOPER
Canandaigua, NY
Allison is a newpaper editor, reporter, supermom, and philosopher. She has the soul of a poet and the prose of a goddess.

STEVE MAST
Los Angeles, CA
Steve Hacks from sunny So Cal and graduated (not recently) from UCR. Enjoys long walks on the beach, plasma TVs and HD movies.

NO-TALENT HACKS UNITE!!

2006-04-25T23:15:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the official blog of the
No-Talent Hacks writers group!

(Yes, we are exclusive, you can read us but not play with us. We're not snobs, just insecure hacks.)

We, the No-Talent Hacks, will be comin' atcha with all of our creative fury.
We write it all ... travelogues, fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, fantasy, children's lit, spiritual journeys ... and once there was this story about a pink balloon registering under a false name while waiting for the four horsemen...

Sit back and enjoy the magic, as the No-Talent Hacks try to live up to their glorious name.

Yours Hackfully,
The No-Talent Hacks