More Lazy Excerpts #7

“What’s up there, dad?” Killian asked, concerned. The writer shook his head and shrugged, sitting down. He picked up the newspaper on the table and looked through its somewhat soggy pages, due to his having overturned his teacup when he stood up so hurriedly.

“I still think it was the scones,” Ayla remarked.

“Oh, shut up.”

The articles were rather mundane, reports about the variety of accidents people get into every day, more accounts of mishaps people get into on purpose, some stories about cops and robbers, one or two about events that people never go to yet are always reported as having been utterly packed with other people. Like that one about the opening of the latest enormous departmental store, what was it’s name again, Horace’s? Something like that. It mentioned some bigwig launching the opening ceremony

and departing soon after, though the reason was not stated. How strange. The writer picked up the teacup and found it empty, thus he attempted to pick up the teapot, which was oddly light, and in fact, he discovered, empty as well. He sighed, and took a buttered scone instead. With some degree of trepidation, he bit in.

///Yes, this is it. It’s the end of the chapter, that’s why. Anyway expect no updates in the near future, I am off to nano///

Unposted Post

**Written 20 Dec**Yep, what that says. I looked back at my drafts, then checked in the blog and woe is no one, for I completely missed this one. Actually intended to say something here about my self reconciliation with the frequency of my postage, but never mind. I just re-broke my broken and re-modified promise. Again, never mind. For some reason I can hardly fathom, people’s minds do not run parallel with mine. That sucks a lot. It probably makes reading whatever trash is posted here somewhat difficult. But I don’t care, because I’m not a nice person. On to the missed post.

I have absolutely no idea when this was dated. Forgive me. All below is the post. **End 20 Dec crap**

Title: I Have and Excuse

For not posting in bloody ages. Really, I do. It was because I could not get into www.wordpress.com. Really. I thought the site was down. So then today I googled around a bit, visited my own site, and clicked on wordpress.com (minus the triple w) and lo behold, here I am apologizing for not posting. Not like, I reiterate, anyone reads this stuff anyway.

Nanowrimo is going along awfully. I have not even reached the half point. I know I will, but finishing the entire thing gets more and more daunting day by day. Maybe I will cheat. Maybe I won’t. I suppose I will if I’m desperate enough in a couple of days or so. Did you notice that I have become oddly longiloquent? Yes. I have. Blame Nano.

Good day.

More Lazy Excerpts #6

The puppy – whom the man had already decided to call Sig after the word victory in some obscure ancient Germanic language just because the name Fluffy plain sucked – came to a rest in front of a hot dog stand, which was understandable because it was still raining quite heavily, and it was the best shelter available. The man panted to a stop behind Sig and stopped to catch his breath. Finally he stood up and took a look around. The kid manning the hot dog stand gave him a look which clearly said “ If you ain’t getting a dog, get the hell out of my honorable establishment, you disreputable son of a madhouse peon!” Well everything except the latter half of it. The man got what he meant, however, and pulled out his wallet, which contained an impressive amount of matter within. He bought a hot dog and sat back to enjoy it, though the man caught the waves of discontent coming from the direction of the ground at his feet. Sig was positively glowering at him. The man gave up and gave Sig the sausage, leaving him with a relish filled bun, which in fact did not taste particularly bad at all.

There was a newspaper that had been left at the hot dog stand which the man picked up and flipped through with little interest, save for a small clip about one Fabian Thierry being present at the opening event of some large departmental store or other that he recalled had been so long ago he had actually rather forgotten about it. He wondered for a moment how the store was doing. The moment passed.

The man came onto one of those book lists that newspapers are so fond of making and read on, despite himself not having finished the last book he picked up… seven years ago. Granted, the book was very clearly named War and Peace, by a certain Russian writer by the name of T——. Forgive him. The list was not particularly long, and centered on the “Best Writers of the Modern Literary World” or some shit like that. One name specifically caught his interest – Alfred Kelsey, writer of such literary bestsellers as Divine Providence of the Cow State and Attack of the Killer Water Turbines Equipped on the Extensively Modified Tortured Fins of Nearly Extinct Sharks. The man mused on this for some time, watching the rain fall and munching on his empty hot dog bun.

The writer had peered at the shiny metal object (that was flitting across the sky a tad too quickly for it to be a plane) while his family chatted amiably. He pondered on whether to mention this, and decided not to, watching the object placidly instead.

“I wonder if any of your extreme friends would have tattoos of hot chicks on them… ”Killian mused.

“Hah, of course they do, Baldev, that’s why you ordinary people like labeling them ‘extreme’. They’re just the same as everyone else,” Ayla replied absently, munching on a scone.

“Don’t call me by my middle name, Muirgen. I know they’re human, and that’s plenty enough for me. I’ve never met an ordinary person in my life, really… So where are you getting your chick put?” Killian inquired, smirking.

“Nowhere you’d ever look,” Ayla said, and savored the look he made in response.

The object was indeed coming closer, the writer noted. As soon as the thought came to him, the object winked out of existence, as if in response. The writer jumped to his feet and stared at the sky.

“What happened, Alfred?” Lani asked in surprise.

“I bet your scones were just too good for him to handle, huh dad?” Ayla answered, with absolutely no hint of sarcasm in her voice. Killian hit her in the back of her head. “Ow – you arse – “

Still Lazy: Excerpt #5

/////Page 2 of Chapter 1/////

“Put the gloves on. Put them on!” he shouted, as the bushes rustled. The man did so. They fit surprisingly well. “Now pick the creature up,” the voice continued, gesturing with the gun. The man stared at him for a moment more, then shrugged and reached under the bushes. The creature was surprisingly light. He drew the puppy out, which regarded him balefully and promptly sank its teeth into the man’s wrist. Fortunately it was covered by the thick gloves. But that was going to leave a pretty bad bruise. The man shook the pup, not violently, till it relaxed somewhat. The puppy had a rather odd tuft of dark fur at the top of its head, contrasting sharply with its otherwise golden pelt. And boy, those teeth sure were sharp looking.

“Right. Get up and follow me. Don’t let go of the animal,” the younger man growled, and stormed off. The man considered this for a moment. Why not drop the dog and run? But the kid has a gun. Why not sic the pup on it and run? But the kid has a gun. Why not… The man ran out of ideas and gave up. He trailed after the youth, feeling somehow disconsolate. The puppy whined, as if in response. The rain lightened slightly and the brightening sunlight glinted off its oddly metallic teeth… The man’s eyes widened a fraction.

“By the way, I’m Nicolas Normand,” the young man in front of him said suddenly. “That’s, um, Fluffy. From the labs. I mean, it’s a lab. A Labrador. Well, not quite. It’s more of a mongrel…” Here he trailed off, mumbling almost incoherently to himself. The man gave him a quizzical look and seriously considered running away again. A loud screech ended that thought as a car came barreling down the road and onto the pavement, stopping exactly in front of young Normand. The door opened and a panicky looking woman jumped out and screamed. “Fabian! What the hell are you doing here? Get in the car, now!”

“Uh – ” began Normand, but the woman was already pulling the man into the car, together with the metal toothed Labrador. Before he could even brandish his gun, the car pulled out and sped off. Normand slumped visibly. “Not again…” he muttered.

The man, still holding on firmly to the pup, looked out the car window at the buildings whizzing past very fast, and sighed. Was this how the writer felt every day? No, it must be the complete opposite. The was free as a bird, yet refused to exercise that very freedom. How very depressing. The man and the dog exchanged stares.

“… You really must stop all this nonsense, Fabian, everyone has been so worried about you. We’ve been searching for the past week, looking all over the city for you. Why don’t you care? What happened to you? Get out of my way, you idiot! Can’t you see I’m in the fast lane?” said the woman. The man, having come to a general consensus with the puppy, very gently lowered it onto his lap and waited.

“And what is that – that creature you were holding? Is that a dog? You know you can’t bring animals to the building, we’ll just have to leave it somewhere… Don’t you dare cut my line, you retard, stay in your own bloody lane – God damn it, who put those red lights over there?“

The car slowed and stopped. The man glanced at the seething woman and most calmly opened the door. The puppy hopped out and dashed away, the man right behind it, ignoring blissfully the loud angry shriek that sounded like a fire alarm that had inhaled helium coming from the car behind them.

Lazy Excerpt #4

//////So very sorry for not posting. I keep forgetting. Here’s chapter 1, absolutely unedited rubbish, of my Nano novel//////

Chapter 1: It Totally Isn’t a UFO.

“Hey mister, you alright?” The man gave a start. “Oh. You ain’t dead.” The voice sounded disappointed. The man merely looked at him. “Yer cigar’s getting pretty short, mister. If you don’t want it, I do,” the boy grinned up at him saucily. The man affixed upon the lad a stern glare.

“If you want it, just say so, jerk,” the boy stuck his tongue out at the man and ran off. The man reflexively raised the cigar to his lips and took in a deep draught, noting that the boy had indeed been correct. How long had he been reminiscing about his dream? He stared up at the sky, noting the various cloud formations that told of rain in precisely… now.

A large drop of water plopped onto his nose as if in acknowledgment of the fact. He stood and quickly walked to the nearest shelter, which happened to be a closed phone booth, and wondered how long he would have to stay there with only a phone directory and thirty two cents spare change as company. To amuse himself he started balancing the coins on their edges upon the phone directory but one of the one cent coins kept refusing to stand on its edge. The man shrugged and tossed it out into the rain instead, where it hit a park bench, rolled into a storm drain, and whined.

Odd, one cent coins had never whined at him before. He put his hat on and pulled his coat closer around himself. The man walked into the rain towards the storm drain, in search of the whining coin. The water rushing past was a somewhat murky brown, he observed as he went close to the railings that protected unsuspecting people with infantile minds from wandering into the drain and breaking their legs or something. No coin was to be seen, as could be expected from looking down a meter deep storm drain full of muddy rushing waters to seek a tiny metal cylinder one centimeter in diameter and one millimeter in height. A softer whine, a little distance away, sounded to his left. The man frowned, as it wasn’t coming from the direction of the storm drain. He looked at his left, at the mass of bushes by the pathway. The whine was coming from under the bushes.

The man squatted and peered under the plants. A dog. It must have been a dog. Please let it be a dog.

Thank god, it was a dog. A little Retriever puppy, to be exact. The man reached out for it and froze when he felt something cold and hard pressing against the side of his head.

“Do not touch that animal.” An equally cold and hard male voice said to him without emotion. The man carefully withdrew his arm and raised his hands, signaling no harm. The gun at his head was withdrawn. If it was a gun. The man sneaked a peek and resisted a shudder. Yes, definitely a gun. And looking down the barrel of it was no fun at all.

“Good. You just saved yourself from a rather nasty demise. Not from me though,” the voice said evenly. “Put these on.” A pair of heavy duty looking gloves were dropped in front of the man, who took a level look at the owner of the voice. It was a very young looking man, he couldn’t have been over twenty, in fact. He had a rather thin, small frame, and not particularly large hands. The semi-automatic handgun in his hand looked like an oversized toy in comparison. He had on a dark yellow raincoat and the same thick gloves that were in front of the man. He wore a pair of rectangular frameless glasses and his tousled brown hair was completely soaked. There appeared to be a long white coat under his raincoat. A name tag pinned to the white coat said, as far as the man could make out through the translucent raincoat, “Normand”. The words ‘escaped boy wonder mad scientist’ came to mind.

Lazy Excerpt, Page #3

“Oh, Alfred! What a lovely surprise,” said the woman – who was rather lovely herself – from the umbrella shaded table at the patio just a few halls away from the study. The young man beside her nodded. “Hey dad, Ayla. Lani made some scones. Tea?” The writer smiled and nodded, taking a seat by Lani. Ayla took the one beside him and the young man.

“Thanks Killy, “ she grinned. “That’s Killian to you. Unless you want me to call you Aylie, mademoiselle Ayla Muirgen.” Ayla made a face and stuck out her tongue, thereupon inciting a murmur from Killian. “Whoa, another piercing? The silver balls sure do look hardcore,” he remarked. Ayla shrugged. “Not really. Just wait till you see my other friend, now that’s extreme.”

:”Bah, you always have another friend who’s more extreme than you are,” Killian replied. “In the last month you’ve gotten, what, three piercings and another tattoo?” Ayla blinked. “Weeell… Actually, um, I’m having another tattoo done, by a friend of mine.”

“What? Gawd… At least I hope it’s something cool looking that won’t look like a molten crayon drawing when you’re eighty two. Not a, say, smoking hot babe or anything, that’d look awful in like thirty years – Ayla?”

Ayla rubbed at her cheek with a finger. “Er. Hmm. Eh…. Right. If you say so.” Killian blanched and opened his mouth. “This tea is fantastic, mom, what is it? Earl Gray?” Ayla said very loudly and suddenly.

“Oh yes dear, no need to shout. It’s peppermint, actually. Killian got it from, where was that again?” Lani said, “Poland, I believe. Or Slovakia.” Killian nodded. The writer sipped at the tea and sighed appreciatively. “Pretty good, huh, dad. Fresh picked from the farm. I worked there myself. Paid well too, for farmers living below the poverty line. Wonderful people. Just like you told me.”

“Why does Killy get to hitchhike round the world while I stay in this crummy place and rot at university?” Ayla asked.

“Well that’s cause deep down you love the place to bits. And you have your extreme friends too, eh?” Killian retorted.

“Because Killian has the restless legs syndrome and you have an insatiable lust for civilization, my dear,” Lani replied placidly.

“Mom!” both said in unison. The writer turned slightly. What was that glint in the distance?

 

///End of Prologue///

Lazy Excerpt Page #2

//// I might just well post the entire ‘novel’ in here, if this laziness continues////

Back to the dream. He frowned. What had been happening to the writer again? A call from the editor, “You’ve got to get out more, breathe in some of that fresh sea breeze that you’re always telling me about. Go sail your yacht, go ride your ponies, just get out of your house, you know.” Ah yes, the writer had been stuck, or more accurately, was sticking himself, to his home. And for quite some time too. The editor was being rather prissy about the fact that, even at home, the writer wasn’t churning out anything at all. Writer’s block, was it? No, it was more like one of those pits one sees in the cartoons, where the colorful characters fall, and fall, and fall quite endlessly. Those pits where the character is meant to be falling into permanently, but that never happens, because as much as the animators might want to minimize production costs by showing one screen and background indefinitely, the cursed viewers have to be taken into consideration as well.

At any rate, the writer was refusing to leave home. The editor was haranguing into the phone.

“Isn’t that why you bought that home on the waterfront? There’s quite a lovely view of the bay from the south eastern section of your estate… Really now, Al, you just need a wee bit of inspiration, you see, ” The writer smiled oddly and slammed the phone down on the receiver. He stood up and went to the window. It overlooked the bay, and certainly, a wonderful view it was too.

The man smiled as he remembered the panorama he had seen, those crystal clear seas, a yacht or two in the water, a clear blue sky with the sun shining like a glass marble on a super strength Maglite torch. Fantastic. He wondered if he should ask someone to find him a place like that. One of these days, perhaps. He stood up, yawning, and stretched.

The writer had done the same. He was in his pajamas, a pretty nice looking pair of blue checkered, long sleeved shirt and pants. There were a pair of dark rimmed glasses in his chest pocket, which he put on ponderously, and most precariously, on the end of his nose. The effect was that his face aged considerably, previously he could have been no more than thirty, now he looked no less than seventy five, especially when he looked blearily at the enormous wall clock that showed it was 3 hours and 27 minutes past noon. He cocked his head thoughtfully at the clock and crossed over to crumple down on his most comfortable looking sofa.

The man wished he had chosen something like that to sleep on yesterday night. One of those ugly puffy things with worn, brown leather upholstery, covered by a tapestry like blanket. Ugly, yet when one sank one’s bottom on them, one feels a sense of pervasive bliss, and wishes that life was like that, safe and enveloping without all that nonsense about style and insubstance. Anyway that sofa sure looked good. The writer was slowly nodding off while at the process of apparently studying the patterned plaster ceiling. By the by the door to the study – that was what it felt like, with the walls of built in and fully occupied bookshelves containing such weighty topics as Calculus and Financial Planning for the Untrained Financial Planner Novice, 3^rd Edition and a Half.

Now, by the by, the door to the study burst open and in tumbled a girl who could have been no younger than nineteen, and no older than twenty. The writer gave a start and smiled sheepishly. “Hey dad, nice to see you awake before six for once,” the girl said cheerfully. The writer shrugged and sat up straighter. “Mom says tea’s out, wanna go try out her latest scones?” The writer visibly winced, and his daughter laughed out loud and waved her hand, jingling the numerous silver bands around her right wrist. “They’ve gotten a lot better, I swear! Come on, dad, ” she said, taking his hand, and led him out of the room.

This is Not Right.

Political commentary warning. Conspiracy theorists, Rise! Yes, this is probably in violation of some rule or other about “sensitive issues” but I’m saying it anyway.

Saddam Hussein should not have be sentenced to death. Don’t ask me what he should have been sentenced to, I state here that I totally do not know law (apart from that one phone call in case of arrest thing) and thus am not particularly predisposed to making judgements about “crimes to humanity”.

It’s all about scope isn’t it? Humanity is made up of 6 billion people and counting. As far as I could ascertain from newspaper reports, Saddam was under trial, no, not for possesion of the hallucinatory “weapons of mass destruction”, but for ordering the death of a village of hundreds of Shi’ite Muslims. Is that correct? Very well then. He was also president of Iraq. Let us then make comparisons (I wonder if an argument using comparisons differering vastly in scope makes it invalid/a fallacy?)

Everyone knows the president of the most powerful nation in the world. This man ordered an invasion on a democratic country on the grounds of seeking aforementioned WMD which were, as all know, never found. Old news, yes. Whatever.

Okay, comparison time. As we all know, over 1000 US soldiers have died in Iraq. Many more Iraqis have died, far more than the US soldiers. By invading, and essentially declaring war on Iraq, the United States have directly caused the death of hundreds of thousands. Do not say the president was not aware of this possibility. And yet it was agreed to. For what purpose? Was anything gained except for even more bloodshed? What was the economic benifit of the invasion?

If the causing of many deaths are valid as a crime against humanity, tell me, which action had the larger scope? Which action was detrimental to more people? Death is death, once someone is gone, he/she isn’t coming back. If all lives are equal, don’t 100000 lives outweigh 10000?

I do not claim to know the details to this matter. I do not attempt to, I don’t know, spread sedition or anything. What I do here is merely stating the facts, and making one comparison, which I am sure has been made by better people than myself. It is not me who will make decisions or have opinions (I’m not American, by the way, do not associate me with them. I mean nothing derogatary by that), it is you, the reader.

If you don’t hear from me any more I suppose I’d have been arrested for being seditious. Au revoir, cruel world! ;P

I Shall Be Lazy and Post Excerpts. Page #1

Prelude: On the Beginning, and Mixed Lives.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Not bad. Well now, what shall I write today? An odd dream I had yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. I believe I’ve had that dream running for a month or so now. Recurrent, and oddly sensible (is that a word?), It makes sense, I mean. No flying around in the clouds without pants on and the crows laughing uncontrollably. What was it about? Nothing out of the ordinary. Hardly normal, yet so completely and astoundingly… normal.

There was a man, you see, living his life.

That is all.

The first night, he was waking up from bed. Well technically it was a bench. In a park. And a very lovely park it was too, judging from the faint smile he wore as he awoke to the sound of chirping birds and the peaceful sussurus of the gently swaying trees. The selfsame smile that quite quickly faded as he sat up and noticed the white spot of birdie poo on his patched trousers. He sighed audibly and sent a wistful glance at the old sheet of newspaper which was supposed to have protected him from such mishaps. It was lying most woefully on the ground, not that far off from the bench. There was bird poo on it too.

This man had a reasonably well made, though slightly shabby coat, along with an obviously good scarf, a pretty nice shirt under the coat which would have most certainly bore a designer label at its chest pocket if it wasn’t being hidden by the coat. His painted trousers were equally high class. He fished about in his pockets for a moment and withdrew a pair of dark rimmed glasses. Beside him on the bench he picked up the hat which he had been using as an uncomfortable pillow, and pulled out the newspaper stuffing he had put inside to make it somewhat more uncomfortable. He put the hat, the kind one would not be surprised to see on the head of a detective in a dark noir investigate movie, and put on his glasses.

In short, this man did not look the kind who was used to sleeping in the cruel outdoors of a modern metropolitan park. As if to prove the matter, he dragged out a silver cigar case from the inside of his well made coat, and opening it, removed a long black cigar and a silver cigar cutter.

He smoothly decapitated the cigar with the ease of a smooth cigar decapitator.

With the cigar between his teeth he replaced the cigar cutter, closed the case, and returned it to his coat pocket. From the same pocket he took out a gold plated and mahogany cigar lighter and lit his cigar with ease, puffing a few clouds of thick smoke into the air as a cyclist whizzed by with a look of disapproving disgust. He merely chuckled, and pondered the dream he had. In that dream he was a writer, a bestselling one at that. One of those narcissists in denial writing their deepest fantasies that for some reason resonate well enough with the ignorant masses to sell, one, two million copies or something – enough, at any rate, to make those weekly newspaper top ten lists, most preferably number one, which aggravates the cycle due to the extra publicity.

Holy Cow I Forgot About Nanowrimo

Time to write, goodbye.