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Doing everything exactly opposite from "The Mainstream" is the same thing as doing everything exactly like "The Mainstream."  You're still using What Everyone Else is Doing as your primary point of reference.

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Started by ~, February 22, 2010, 02:37:23 PM

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Triple Zero

Wow, that thing you did with the names and numbers ... AWESOME!

At first I was just skipping them, and then I caught "Horrour" in the corner of my eye and thought "did he do that on purpose? is he copying the names from somewhere or just making them up?" and then when I got to the end I noticed and had to backtrack a little to catch all the things.

I think I like this one best so far, maybe. Though some of the earlier ones I cannot quite remember anymore.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Pope Pixie Pickle

Cram, great idea about intermittens.

Also splitting/copying them into a new thread as one pile of writings should be done here.

Nice one LMNO!

ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞

I'd really like to make some illustrations for these.

Something about the key scene without giving anything away.

Black and white photorealism with hidden messages in them.
P E R   A S P E R A   A D   A S T R A

Triple Zero

knowing the sort of stuff you can create, I think that would be awesome
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

LMNO

Day 17:

I was asked to meet some friends after practice last night.  A few drinks, a few laughs, some cattiness, and a thudding metronome of a kick drum.  Old friends, from the old days.  Days when a young man could dress foolishly, drink all night, and manage to live on 26 hours of sleep a week.  Days before the rise of the New Puritanism – when there were places in this city that were magnets for people looking for something different.  When goths, punks, rivetheads, queens and twinks all flocked to the same place, and were happy rubbing shoulders and calling that place home.

That place is long gone now, and when the wrecking ball came through those walls, most of the crowd scattered throughout the city, ending up as little clumps of subgenre clinging to niches in the sidewalk and errant club nights usually listed as "throwback" shows.  Decentralized, it became easier for some nebulous Them to slowly squeeze out the kinds of Fun typically considered "wrong".  Clubs fell like dominoes, to be replaced by condos and second-rate wine bars that spun the kind of techno you hear when shopping in department stores trying to sound hip.  Economically, small groups of 15-20 scattered through the city didn't have as much clout as several hundred all heading to the same event.  As a result, the oppressive Average stepped in to fill the spaces that the Interesting minority used to inhabit. 

Some of us stuck together, though.  An odd bunch when taken individually, but our friendships were forged in an odd time and in an odd place.  But it worked, for a very obvious reason: it was built on honesty.  That place we met was where we didn't have to be shy about our quirks or eccentricities; it was a place that played Big Black and Dee-Lite back to back; it was a place where being yourself was the order of the day; and a place where you just couldn't take yourself too seriously.  In a way, it was that last point that made the whole thing work.  If you start treating things in a serious way, all the little primate territorial games come creeping though the door.  And then people start splitting up into little tribes based on similarities.  I suppose we were all fortunate enough to have found the right place at the right time to avoid some of that.

In any case, we drank vodka and talked about our lives, updating the narrative and reminiscing about the past.  Last call came too quickly, but we all settled up and made our way out into the chilly night.  I was a little buzzed walking to the subway, but by no means unsteady, when I stumbled, and felt a sharp pain in my ankle.  Damn.  It had been a while since that had happened.  I cursed my aging, beat-up body, remembering a time when I could dance for hours without stopping, and looked down at my feet.  Jammed into my ankle, just behind my Achilles tendon, was a large fishhook, about four inches long and attached to a line that was trailing behind me.  I turned, and down on the far corner of the street was a man with a long, black coat.  His face was hidden by a fedora, but the round lenses of a pair of glasses flashed under the streetlight.  In his hands, he held a surf casting rod.  His hands twitched, and a flash of pain blossomed in my foot.  Slowly, he began to walk towards me, patiently reeling in the line.  As he stepped out of the reach of the streetlight, he slipped from sight like a fish diving below the surface of a quiet pond, only to re-emerge a moment later in the glow of a neon bar sign, or the glare of a passing car's headlights.

Wincing at the pain, I crouched down on one knee, and began trying to work the fishhook out of my ankle.  The barb had done its work well, and I could feel it tearing at the tendons in my foot as I frantically worked it out of my flesh.  I glanced back, and he had already halfway down the sidewalk.  I could make out a glittering smile beneath his glasses, and I really didn't want to find out what his teeth were made of.  With an effort, I tore the last inch of the hook from my foot and leapt up, only to stagger into a parking meter when I tried to put any weight on my injured leg.  I heard a grunt behind me, and the zipping, metallic sound of a reel being wound up quickly.  Gritting my teeth, I lurched towards the subway entrance, and hobbled down the steps toward the turnstile.  I've never been happier when I heard the garbled speaker announce, "The last train to Forest Hills is now arriving."  The right place at the right time, once again. 

Doktor Howl

Nice.

I can't wait to read these as a single work.
Molon Lube

LMNO


Roaring Biscuit!


LMNO

Day 30:

The morning sun was bright, but the air was bitter, and carried a chill like the winter hadn't decided to let go yet.  As I locked the front door behind me and walked down the front steps, a gust of wind snatched a page of coupons from an abandoned newspaper, and kicked it down the street.  Tiring of that game, the gust slapped at my face for a while, whispering hints of months-old snows.  I pulled my leather blazer tighter around me, turned up the collar, and tried my best to ignore it.

As I cut through the small playground/park on the way to catch my train, I heard a dog barking once, twice.  Looking to my left, a young Boxer trotted from behind a laurel bush, saw me, and stopped.  He tensed up for a moment growled softly, then leapt in the opposite direction and sprinted away as a bright orange tennis ball sailed over his head and bounced off the fence that marked the boundary between the park and the street.  I turned my head to the right, and saw a woman holding a steaming travel mug, with a leash draped across her forearm.  I gave her a small wave, and kept walking.

Stepping through the turnstile at the subway, a speaker overhead blared out an announcement that my train was arriving.  Kind of redundant, because the way the platform is set up, you can see about a half mile down the tracks, and the fact a train is approaching becomes obvious.  Looked like it was going to be a full one today.  No holidays, no vacations, so station was filled with kids going to school, and office workers going to their nine-to-fivers. 

The train pulled up, the doors opened, and we all filed in.  The usual games began, as people tried to balance their desire to be isolated with the possibility of squeezing into an empty seat between two other people who didn't really want anyone sitting in the open space.  Mumbled apologies and grumbled acceptances followed, along with some shuffling and adjustments of briefcases and backpacks.  The rest of us preferred to stand, holding tight to the rails, straps, and other solid pieces as the train swayed and jolted us towards the day's tasks.

The elevator's doors slid shut, and their highly polish surfaces reflected back a homogeneous group staring back: Starched shirts, light blue or ivory; demure necktie; shoulder bags instead of briefcases; pinstriped trousers; shiny black shoes; cup of coffee in hand; tired, apathetic gazes.  They slid open again, revealing the beige welcome of our floor.  A short walk to my desk, and the morning ritual begins.  Murmur tentative "good mornings" to people you don't know, turn on the computer, change the message on your outgoing voicemail, launch and log into the various programs that will tell you what to do today, and how to do it.  A long pull of coffee, and then you're into it.

A few hours later, I looked up from my computer screen, distracted by the changing light.  Clouds had rolled in, obscuring the harsh sunlight and muting the glare that was bouncing off the filing cabinet.  I stood and stretched, my legs and knees protesting the movement.  I grabbed my coffee mug, and headed to the break room to load up on more free caffeine.  The stuff wasn't as good as what you could get... almost anywhere else, but it was close, it was free, and it was something to do other than stare at numbers for awhile.  The brown liquid spat and hissed into my mug, which I tried to doctor with sugar and milk, and then it was back to my desk to work and wait until the golden hour.

New cases happened.  Meetings happened.  Old cases needing troubleshooting happened.  Meetings about troubleshooting old cases happened.  Then more new cases happened.  On the other side of the cubicle field, a tinny radio was tuned to sports talk radio; someone was listing off statistics that apparently meant something.   Took a few phone calls, put out some fires, and finally I was able to set my out of office voicemail, and shut down the computer.  The screen went dark, but there were still afterimages floating in front of my eyes.  I shook my head heavily, grabbed my bag, and headed down to the street.

My feet hit the sidewalk just as the first drops of rain began to fall.  The air was still warm and thick with humidity, so the fat falling globules were somewhat of a relief as they splashed on my face and head.  It was smack dab in the middle of the evening rush, and the streets were filled with cars and pedestrians pushing to get back to their apartments and their houses, to curl up with a microwave dinner and cheap boxed wine, or maybe ordering Chinese, or perhaps even forgoing food altogether and just drinking themselves to sleep.

The rest of the pedestrians and I filed through the gaping arches of the subway entrance and towards the gates, where we presented our RFID infested cards to the electronic guardian that controlled the panes of bulletproof plastic sliding back which allowed us to keep moving forward, down the stairs and onto the platform.  We milled and jostled for position, betting on where the doors would be when the train finally rolled up.  A distant screech of metal on metal signaled its imminent arrival.  Adjustments were made as the cars ground to a halt, and then we grudgingly stood aside as the passengers pushed their way out through the doors and shouldered through the crowd.  Feet shuffled as we packed ourselves in, and then, with a sing-song chime, the doors closed, and we were on our way.

After twenty minutes of face-to-armpit crowding, the train finally arrived at my stop.  I wormed my way through the door and into the warm rain that was still coming down.  I pulled my jacket tighter around me and walked out the front of the station, for the final walk home.  Through some far-off decision process, the sidewalk in front of the station was laid with red brick, perhaps as a nod to some aesthetic principle.  Unfortunately, that principle didn't extend to quality of work, so the bricks were uneven and had a tendency to reach up and grab your shoe.  What this means is that I was busy scanning the ground for treacherous construction, and didn't see the woman on the other side of the street until I was at the curb.

She was barefoot, and wearing some intricately wrapped white linen robe, or a modified sari.  The wind picked up, and her long red hair whipped off to one side.  She was staring straight at me, and took a step off the curb, crossing straight into traffic.  A car screeched to a halt about a yard away from her, the old man behind the wheel cursing and flipping her off.  She paid no mind, and kept her steady, insistent pace towards me.  I could see her eyes more clearly now.  They were a cold blue, shot through with fine red blood vessels.  They contained worlds.  As she stared at me, coming closer, I could see storms behind her eyes.  Howling animals.  Screaming children.  They had the vision of madness, focused, unwavering.  She radiated a terrifying confidence; I was paralyzed under the intensity of her gaze. 

Rain splashed against my face as I stood transfixed.  She was two feet away.  She stepped closer.  Ten inches.  She leaned in, closer.  Her lips touched my ear, and she spoke.

"Boo."

Without another word, she sprinted off down the brick sidewalk, and around the corner, disappearing from view.




Really?  Really?

MMIX

Quote from: LMNO on May 04, 2010, 02:47:07 PM
Day 30:
[snip - more glorious stuff]
Rain splashed against my face as I stood transfixed.  She was two feet away.  She stepped closer.  Ten inches.  She leaned in, closer.  Her lips touched my ear, and she spoke.

"Boo."

Without another word, she sprinted off down the brick sidewalk, and around the corner, disappearing from view.




Really?  Really?


. . .  sometimes the pay-off's a bitch . . .

       . . .  there are no mittens big enough . . .
"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently" David Graeber

Eater of Clowns

What makes this such an excellent ending is that for all the guesses I made in which direction you might go, I now can't imagine any of them other than this one.

:mittens:
Quote from: Pippa Twiddleton on December 22, 2012, 01:06:36 AM
EoC, you are the bane of my existence.

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on March 07, 2014, 01:18:23 AM
EoC doesn't make creepy.

EoC makes creepy worse.

Quote
the afflicted persons get hold of and consume carrots even in socially quite unacceptable situations.

Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

LMNO

Better Nate than lever....



Now the hard part begins.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: LMNO on May 04, 2010, 03:16:35 PM
Better Nate than lever....



Now the hard part begins.

Lemme know if you need anything.
Molon Lube

bds

Hoooo boy, that was wonderful. I'm not really sure how to respond, other than a "holy shit."

Can't wait to see it in collection form, too.