Thursday writing: The Bearded Man Behind Her

Every Thursday, I go to a writing group at Lestat's coffee shop on Adams Avenue. As some incentive to update my blog regularly, I'll be uploading what I write each week. The prompt is the title of the post. Hope you enjoy!

Josie knew that, in theory, Christmas was supposed to be the season of giving. When she was feeling particularly idealistic, or particularly poor, she liked to think that this meant something heartfelt and simple, like a handmade card or a hug. Now, though- now that it was below negative 30º and had forgotten to snow. Now that she had waited forty-five minutes to get her son's picture taken with Santa Claus, who apparently had a thick Brooklyn accent. Now that there were three other Moms fighting over the last remote-controlled dinosaur in aisle three, the exact same dinosaur she had been planning to buy for Tristan. Now, she was ready and willing to view the holiday season with a healthy- possibly unhealthy- dose of cynicism. She wondered what color of flapper dress she would get from Aunt Tilly this year, and whether she herself would end up in a similar rut. Someday, she might end up sending Tristan a different remote-controlled dinosaur from a mental institution each year.

On the way out of the mall, Josie saw her fifth Santa of the day, a man who looked as cold as she felt, but smiled merrily anyway. She dropped a five dollar bill into his Salvation Army bucket, and felt both a little more idealistic, and a little poorer.

Game Review: Veggie Samurai

So as you may or may not know, most of the apps on my iPhone are games. I usually clear them out once a month or so, but the really good tend to stick around. After my old phone got stolen, though, I had a few paid apps that I didn't want to pay for again, and one of them was Veggie Samurai. It turns out that I actually didn't have to pay again, the purchase was recorded and they let me download it for free.

The basic concept of the game is pretty simple- vegetables fly across the screen, and you swipe your finger across them to cut them in halves, and to cut those halves into quarters. Occasionally you'll get a bottle of poison flying across the screen, too. You have three lives, and you lose one if you hit the poison or drop a veggie without, uh, samuraiing it. Or whatever.

Really, what I like most about this game isn't the actual gameplay (though that's pretty fun too), it's what it gets me thinking about. Why are these vegetables flying through the air in the first place? Are we making soup? If so, why is it very obviously in front of an outside garden wall, and what's with the poison? Shouldn't someone be alerted of this? Are your three lives actual people you're poisoning with your negligence? At the end of the level, you hear sort of a disappointed crowd noise- does that mean there are people watching you? Are they trying to poison the people eating the soup, or are you making the soup for them? The swipes across the screen make obvious sword noises, and the menu is a picture of a katana, so how do samurai fit into all this? Is this the sad fate of retired samurai, chopping vegetables in half for something that may or may not be a soup, or perhaps just for the sick amusement of a faceless crowd that for some reason enjoys seeing vegetables chopped into pieces for no apparent reason?

See, this is why I stick to simple games. Don't even get me started on Doodle Jump...

The Comic is not Relieved

There are lots of ways to provide comic relief in a story. My personal favorite, of course, is the sarcastic cynic who can never bring him/herself to take anything seriously. Unfortunately, since they're my favorite in general, I dote on their backstory until they have enough depth to make them more than the comic relief. They now have complicated emotional problems that, because they show so little genuine emotion, come out erratically in big fiery balls of angst. Mind you, these characters are usually pretty hard on the angst-ridden protagonists that they inevitably come along with, so this is kind of a conflict of interest.

The easy solution to this is to have the cynic treat the angst burst with the same disdain, sarcasm, and unconcern that they do the angst bursts of the protagonist. This works to bring the cynic closer to the protagonist, without losing the appeal of comic relief. You also don't have to lose the character development, just stick it in at relevant points in time.

See? Writing is fun!

Unorthodox Fulfillment

It's kind of funny how you find what you want.

You can spend hours, days, years, maybe your whole life looking for it and never catch so much as a glimpse. Inversely, you might not give it a second thought, and yet have it fall in your lap. Worse than either of those, perhaps, is when you don't think about it but need it anyway. It's like a food craving you can't quite put your finger on. Do I want egg salad, or a chocolate milkshake? Or potato chips? Heaven forbid I go through dozens of different foods and drinks and not find what I'm looking for, I'll just come away feeling like a perpetually unsatisfied glutton. So what to do?

There is, of course, the miracle of dumb luck. Where you spend just enough time to make it feel like you deserve the reward, even if the reward is in no way what you expected. Maybe it's an apple when you could have sworn you were craving pasta, or maybe you just needed a glass of water; whatever the solution, the novelty of wanting it despite the fact that you hadn't even considered it as an option is enough.

Anyway. So I really wanted to listen to Rhapsody in Blue a few minutes ago, and I was reloading the George Gershwin station on Pandora frantically, growing more and more frustrated with each song that came on. Finally, the theme from Edward Scissorhands came up, which I hadn't expected at all on that station. I listened to a few bars, and remembered why it's one of my favorite movie scores.

Then my train of thought stepped daintily off the track and plunged off into a field, and I wrote a blog entry about it. Partly 'cause I'm feeling guilty about not updating yesterday.

Blue and pink and brown and green and kind of orange polka-dots

I always liked those "Miss Mary Mack" songs that go on forever and have sort of a repetitive tune. So because I'm not quite ready to go to bed yet, I wrote one.

It was a
Lovely pretty sultry sunny salty peachy day
When right before my eyes I saw a store along my way
The doors were made of windows and the windows were all bare
And right in the display case I saw something lovely there
It was covered in
Blue and pink and brown and green and kind of orange polka-dots
Though it was in a fabric store it didn't really have a lot
My eyes filled up with dollar signs, I knew I had to buy it- but when I
Went to the counter, they said "Maybe you should try it."
But I just
Laughed at him and bought the thing and went straight to the dock
My friends were out there swimming and I knew that this would rock
They all would be happy for me, and envious to boot
Because of my new (kind of orange) polka-dotted suit!
And so I
Took it to the changing room and took off all my clothes
My shoes from off my feet and then my glasses from my nose
I struggled with the polka-dots and found to my dismay
That this would never fit on me, no chance, no how, no way!
And then I
Cried my eyes a river, and I cried my eyes a sea
Because I had just managed to make a big fool of me
I had no other swimsuit and there was no other way
I guess there was no swimming on the beach for me today.
And so the
Moral of the story is to look before you leap
And also 'fore you purchase 'cause mistakes do not come cheap
The suit was triple digits and the cost hit me real hard
Because I'd used my parents shiny green new credit card!