Month: September 2011
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Writing Challenge: Day 20
(First posted here.) It was a little less clear from here. Maureen’s purple hair did nothing to dull her personality. She was getting people to dance together, picking couples at random, then judging the victims’ mutual reactions with either a new match or by leaving them alone. “She’s hilarious,” a guy named Lima said near…
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Writing Challenge: Day 19
(First posted here.) It was like popping the cork off a volcano. Nirvana’s outburst reminded me of Elfen Lied’s diclonii, pretty little mutants that can slice through human bodies like knives into butter. These creatures look all cute and waifish in their pink, laced camisoles wading through bloody remains of spontaneous dismemberments. I did not…
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Writing Challenge: Day 18
(First posted here.) From Ding and Ferdinand Lancaster’s Search for the Great Uncanny, the hugely popular life blog maintained by Keebs, sidekick and partner-in-crime to trail-blazer and all-around it-man Danilo Bustamante, posted March 20, 2008: This is why strange girls rock. (cue in: kickass guitar riffs) Dude #1 (big man on campus) spends the…
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Writing Challenge: Day 17
(First posted here.) “Take for instance the seemingly inconsequential decision Keta makes outside the mock interview doors,” sabi ko kay Keebs. “I hate adverbs. They load words unnecessarily.” “And you would’ve made a stronger point by not using one,” sabi ko, quick to catch the slip. “Still. Continue.” I was demonstrating my powers to Keebs since this morning and so far have not been able to get my point across. This power to see the ramifications of people’s choices…
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Writing Challenge: Day 16
(First posted here.) Dante was staring at the lighted cigarette stick in his hand. And then, in a moment of lucidity he realized what he was doing. “Shit.” The vendor at the lagoon was taken aback at the expletive, having sold him the aformentioned cigarette just seconds before. “I don’t smoke,” Dante said. The vendor…
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Writing Challenge: Day 15
(First posted here.) Nirvana and I had just finished telling a freshman that we once smuggled some geese from the lagoon and into the BA library and was going to ask the neophytes to retrieve one come second sem. The truth is even stranger. We routinely smuggled geese from the lagoon as some sick competition about…
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Writing Challenge: Day 14
(First posted here.) In Which Dante Wonders Whether He Will Die Part of me knew none of me was dry, or was ever going to be dry by the time this night ended. But I’ve been holding Nirvana’s hand for the last thirty minutes and could not let go. “You know how this ends,…
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Writing Challenge: Day 13
(First posted here.) On the matter of {ria}. It’s the name she responds to, the name Nirvana calls her. But I’m pretty sure I never really heard the girl’s name or never really understood the sounds and letters Nirvana uses when actually speaking it. {ria} The sound, either an exaggerated sigh or a full-bodied incantation,…
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Writing Challenge: Day 12
(First posted here.) I get schizophrenia, somehow. It’s when the sounds of memories and dreams and fabricated scenarios dance around direct experience and merge, cross over, overlap. It’s hearing, tasting, smelling, seeing things that are not supposed to be in this plane of reality. When I get these mental blips, I get not only other people’s…