Sunday, October 26, 2008

Really? Take Two.

1. When a guy has a girlfriend, that means you should view him as off-limits. Just because you work with him does not mean you are entitled to any special privileges.

2. When said guy is out to dinner with his girlfriend, you should not come and throw yourself into his lap and completely ignore the fact that his girlfriend is sitting in plain sight.

3. You should not begin talking about your problems, and complaining about the various elements of your life that suck, and set him to work folding stupid table decorations that you get paid to fold.

4. Nobody cares about you or your stupid table decorations.

5. Not only is this ridiculously rude, but it causes his girlfriend to want to punch you in the face, and makes you look desperate and pathetic. Said girlfriend might even pity you, if she wasn't intent on burning holes into your face with her glare.

6. When you finally get up and leave, you should not come back.

7. When you do come back, you should fully expect said guy and his girlfriend to get up and leave.

8. You do not have the right to be offended.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Why I Am Supposed To Be An Assassin

1. I have two insurance cards. My parents switched insurances or something, and we had to get new cards. The company messed my name up on the first one, so sent another. I now have two.



2. I have two birth certificates. I do not know why.



3. My name is spelled incorrectly on, I believe, both certificates.



4. I was not given a social security card at birth like normal people are. I got mine when I was fifteen. However, my name is spelled correctly.



5. I recently lost my driver's license. After literally emptying my purse out and searching through the contents ten times or so, and turning my bedroom upside-down looking for it, and then finally going to get a new license... I discovered my old license sitting neatly on top of a piece of paper, in my purse, the other night after eating at Red Robin with a friend.



6. Therefore, I have two licenses.



7. I believe this is the most important. I have no fingerprints. Over the summer, I signed up to be a classified substitute for the school district. Part of the application process was that I had to be fingerprinted. The computer system would not take my fingerprints, because they are apparently not clear enough to be identified. For simplicity's sake, the woman fingerprinting me manually accepted the prints on the computer, but I am still unidentifiable.

Lucky for her, I was a kind citizen and corrected her when she misspelled my name in the computer. That would have been reason number eight (my unidentifiable fingerprints linked to a different name), but my kind heart and respect for her job leaves me with only seven reasons.

But really, who else has seven reasons why they should be a hitman?
Forget writing. Killing is obviously my destiny.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

The Story I Almost Wrote For The Class I Almost Took

The last sweet, shy tendrils of sleep began to loosen their grasp on the city as its drowsy inhabitants stirred slightly in their beds. Chests rose and fell as the fresh morning air filled lungs. Arms straightened and bent. Legs curled and uncurled beneath blankets that were tossed aside and pulled back.

The sun, just waking, as well, began her elegant arc over the sky, slowly easing her light over the town, mingling with the still fog to create an orange, velvet glow that caressed the faces of the reluctant wakers, lingering on eyelids with the hope of coaxing them into submission—into relaxation—all the while stirring to life the things of the city.

All of this Joel watched with a quiet intensity, a reverent silence. He had no bed of his own, no blanket to shelter him, no window to mediate the glowing sun’s rays, illuminating dust particles that did not exist, floating in the air of a room he did not own. Sleep had abandoned Joel long before, shrinking back from the touch of the warm sun’s icy predecessor. The sharp bite of the wind had taken it upon itself to wake Joel before ascending to rouse the sun, rushing unceremoniously through Joel’s unkempt hair, finding ways into Joel’s worn coat. For Joel had no door to turn the wind away, no walls to serve as the lamb’s blood, commanding the wind to continue his search for a victim.

Neither smiling nor frowning, Joel watched the sun make her entrance. He alone was her audience. In that immobile moment, when the raucous parties of the night had dispersed and the stiff businessmen of the day had yet to make the journeys to their offices, he alone was awake. Joel sat in deferential acknowledgment of a warmth that had never acknowledged him, much like a child who might love the image of a father who was incapable of showing love in return.

***

News: Deborah Reber, the author I mentioned in the previous post, emailed me back. She found my blog, though I didn't give her the address. So I'm curious as to how she managed it. And she asked for a writing sample. I sent her the tidbit above, along with the first two pages of my book. She hasn't written back yet, and I'm nearly ripping my hair out with impatience while trying to tell myself not to get my hopes up.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

My Mind Is Truly Too Occupied To Come Up With A Witty Title

So, a lot of things have been going on lately. I would tell you that that is the reason for my lack of blogging, but that would be a lie. I just haven't had anything worthwhile to say. But school has started now. And suddenly everything is happening all at once.

I'm facing a myriad of writing opportunities. On top of the book that I have now promised Evan's sister that I will finish, and so cannot back out of, I may be undertaking the writing project that will probably be the death of me.

Door number one. The president of the Shakespeare club at LBCC wants me to help write a condensed version of all of Shakespeare's plays. Although I am not in any way a screenplay writer, I agreed to help. That was stupid of me. But part of me is looking forward to that. It should be entertaining, as the goal is to compile all of the 'dirty' parts of Shakespeare's plays, and I'm not completely sure what the includes. I'm pretty sure it's going to be something like an Elizabethan dirty joke book that nobody in the audience will actually understand. But Shakespeare wrote it, first. Don't shoot the messenger.

Door number two. I asked the only creative writing instructor at school to be my advisor, and made an idiot of myself by forgetting to tell him my name and major until the end of the conversation. It was quite pathetic. And then he told me I have to take his class, which starts tomorrow, if I want to be a Creative Writing major, and gave me the syllabus. In his class, I will be required to write a short story. Now, not only is he a brilliant writer who probably already thinks I'm mentally disabled because I can't carry on a normal conversation with another human being, but I absolutely detest short stories and am fairly certain that I cannot write one. So I started one the other night, and it wasn't awful. But it has absolutely no plot, so it hasn't progressed much. Long story short (oh, the irony...), his class intimidates me and makes me feel like I might be a worthless writer after all, and it hasn't even started yet. His class will bring my credit total this term up to sixteen. I hear that's suicide. But Brianna is killing herself quicker with seventeen, so I suppose I'm alright.

Door number three. I received an email from Evan's mom, that she got through a homeschool program, that was written by the author of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, and she (the author, not Evan's mom) is looking for a girl who loves to write, is 13-19 years old, and has a unique story to tell, to write a memoir. I have never written a memoir, and am not sure how well I'd do. But I have a good subject, and I fit the other criteria. So I shot off an email to her tonight, not pausing to wonder why I'm sabotaging my book by taking on three other potential writing projects.

Meanwhile, I almost feel like I've developed a fan base, because I'm fairly certain that every other conversation I have with people is them asking me when they get to read more of my book. I'm sorry, folks, but I don't have anything new yet. Please do not beat me up. That would make it even more difficult to write. And if you were actually devoted enough to my story to beat me for not writing quickly enough, that would give me a big head and everything would just go down the drain from there. So just pretend that you don't care. If you'd like, I can recommend several authors who are a thousand times more brilliant than I am.

Moral of the story?
Don't ask God to open doors.
He opens them all at once.