Day 79: Reflection

              So now that I'm openly posting about this thing I think it's about time for some cool hard reflection! 
              Skipped the job fair again this morning, but there's really no point to that anyway.  I don't want to sell myself to some random hacks, it'd feel like army recruitment.  But really, I overslept and that was the whole deal.  So, oops.
              Muppet movie last night was awesome except for underusing Jack Black.  Also, fact that Selena Gomez was in it at all sucks, even though she was awful and I think that was the point.  I should watch it again for some positivity today.  Going into the home stretch on this one!  Bout to get a story rolling.
              Muppets taught me a couple of things about character that I should have realized a long time ago, yesterday.  First of all, Fozzy working with the knock off imposter band in Reno, that tells you everything about character.  A celebrity who isn't with the original group and does some stage show for ends meat (ends meat is a thing you can get), screaming Ringo Starr.  I don't know how much it will help me with my own writing but it's good as far as character goes to notice instances like that, I'd think.
             Problems with my writing!  Introducing characters that have a strong sense of purpose will be difficult until I have a strong sense of purpose that doesn't involve writing every day.  This is still a little bit of a goof-off thing, although I do feel more confident in it since I started effing proofreading every day.  Proofreading bolsters the wordcount and makes everything more readable at the same time, so that's good.  I remember seeing a snippet from Christopher Paolini (shitty author, I know), where he said there's no way to learn more about your writing than to read your own.  Alright, I get it Mr. Eragon.  Something tells me I never should have graduated college without proofreading, but that's tantamount to my "natural talent", or else the laziness of college professors and everyone's fear of conflict.  I'm a fearsome guy, that's what it really is.
             Oh!  Other great inspiration from the movie was when Kermit tries to call Jimmy Carter, the what-if scenario that plays out there.  First, what would happen if Kermit called the whitehouse?  Well, obviously, he'd get through right away and be directed to a secretary or something.  Then, that secretary tells him Mr. Carter has changed residences, not very surprised someone is calling for him.  That's just a joke being a joke, and being subtle and all that hooey. 
              Writing has become easier since I started thinking of people as random animals that inhabit certain places.  See, I could never explain that where it'd make any sense.  Youtube clips.

             Life's a happy song

            “Some of the problems with fatherhood are that there’s no allomothering involved.”  Jim said without flinching.  Roger wasn’t a fearsome dude, even when his paternal instincts were kicking in.  He stared across the table like an angry rottweiler.  "Where the hell's your wife, anyway?"

            A man wearing a bib spoonfed an angry baby in a highchair in the nonsmoking section. The baby casted formula bottles, sticky dinosaur toys and sippy cups on the floor,  the dad fighting through the projectiles like a snow storm.  He squeezed the bottle of baby food tight in his hand but was unable to break it.

            Roger couldn’t open his mouth without Jim saying something stupid.  Jim waved the waitress down for his fifth cappucino, taking full advantage of the free refill policy.  The Christopher Cross title track from the movie Arthur, “Arthur’s Theme (The Best You Can Do)”, chortled sweetly over the sound system.  Roger stared down at the cross around his neck; he and Miranda had seen that movie together in theaters.

           A business meeting adjourned and men with suits exited into the parking lot.  A robust circle of a man led the pack, using the cliched business phrase “In the interim” twice as he smiled lecherously at the waitstaff. Roger’s lowered eyes following them through the glass windows.  They piled into a black sedan, their meeting continuing on wheels.

            “Hey, you’re the guy who built those robots!”  A man with a braided beard called from the bar.  He was sitting by a glass case full of pies that were spinning on their own axises, a dull yellow light illuminating the counter space around him.  He set down his tabloid and got up to pester Jim. 

            Jim hid sheepishly behind a menu, although he knew he shouldn’t bother hiding.  He’d been spotted, he was going to have to face the music. 

            “It’s you, I know it’s you!”  He sprang up from his seat, his T-shirt barely covering his fat belly.  “I can tell it’s you because of your pony tail, man.”

            He offered a flabby paw to be shaken.  “You’re not looking so good, man.  I hope you haven’t quit.  Some of your bots were genius.”

            “My apathy toward my appearance reflects my dedication to my work.”  Jim said, proud the words came out in a straight line.  “Yeah, I’ve built a few robots in my day, what of it?”  Jim blushed.

            “Some of those ideas were brilliant man, they really were.”  He showed Jim his T-shirt, which was from a robotics convention in the summer of ’98.  “Years really fly, Jimbo, years really fly.”

            Roger was asleep on the table, or sobbing silently into it.  The old people stared over like they knew Jim was famous.  They talked amongst themselves; Jim assumed it was about him.

            “Pardon me, young sir, what have you invented?  You’re an inventor, he says?”

            The fan sat down in the booth next to Jim, forcibly moving him toward the window.  Jim scooted, without much of a choice.  He felt like a artist who was still working diligently on creating new songs, but still all anyone wanted to do was talk about the old ones.

            “I’m a scientist, not a celebrity.”  He assured them, sipping his cappucino.

            “I remember…”  The fan started.  “Back in 75 when you had that Alan Moore hair and beard.  You had an air about you man, a real je ne sais quoi.  On that panel, you were like a man amongst boys, man.  Charlie Hytzer, Paul Vinderbiln, those guys looked at you with disgust, a real renegade, yeah.”

            “Those guys are still working for Mr. Grey,”  Jim nudged Roger, who raised his head off the table for a second and then pried himself upright with his palms, like he was pulling himself off of fly paper.  His eyes were red and he rubbed them with the napkin on the table. 

            Roger recommitted himself to the table, falling into an instant sleep.  He dreamed of Jim’s creations locking him in a small room with a dangling light and a brassy mildew stink, and interrogating him with robot voices.

            “You should never have moved here.”  One that looked like an ostrich with reversable joint legs said.  A robot wearing a Zoro mask repeatedly thrashed him with a coat hanger, and down the hall he could hear the heavy crackling of a fireplace.  The door opened a crack and a robotic version of Jim squeezed through, putting a spiked choke collar around Roger’s neck.  Roger shook like a wet dog, and Jimbot slapped him across the face and tugged at the metal chain connected to the collar.

            “Friend of yours?”  The fan asked Jim as Roger lay there asleep.

            “He’s… uh… renting my house.  His wife is the one with the dough.”

            Robot Jim walked fast, and Roger slipped his hands in between the collar and his neck to keep from being choked.  He stumbled onto the cobwebby dungeon floor and scampered on his hands, passing cages of colorful birds with skull masks and shrunken headed fellows with taxidermied bodies.  An assembly line carried them along faster finally, and he relaxed, laying on his back with the leash taught.  Robot Jim pulled him back up to his feet, waving a pneumatic finger wildly in the air.

            “That time you created that water out of thin air, how’d you do that again?”  Asked the fan.  Their cute blonde waitress came over, chewing gum and eavesdropping from the comfortable distance of the next booth.  “Naw, you don’t have to tell me, magician can’t give up his secrets.  Hey, I’ll be right back.”

            “Pretty big deal, huh?”  The waitress asked, inching in.  Jim couldn’t tell if she just wanted a bigger tip.  He had no idea what to say around women, his experience was that he’d start talking about tinkering and they’d find out he had no free time or independence. 

            Out in the parking lot, the fan dug through a shitty Red Volkswagon Beetle filled with fastfood wrappers, used-up air fresheners and multidinous cupholders.  He came running back in with a tightly wound piece of parchments, unrolling it in front of Jim to reveal a large treaded robot with arms that were cannons in an action shot on an aircraft carrier deck.  There were lightning bolts and flame decals bordering the centered picture, with the caption written in rock n roll typefont:  “The birth of AI.”

            “First succesful artificial intelligence, in a robot that shoots fireworks out of its hands!”  The nerd said, pointing at the poster and turning toward the audience, a group of apathetic diner patrons.  When he took his hand off the poster to point at it, it rolled up on one side.  “You gotta feel a little guilty about the deaths, though.”  He whispered behind his hand to Jim.

            “I swear the arms were callibrated correctly, that’s the problem with artificial intelligence.  Wasn’t my fault it just started shooting bottle rockets at anything within a half a mile.”

            The robot was conjured into Roger’s dream through inception.  He actively tried to make himself wakeup, the thing turning its evil hands toward him as he shoveled coal into a furnace with his bonded hands.

               

Day 78: Pandora plays a commercial every other song

              Noticed I write a lot better in the morning!  At night there's too much stuff on my mind.  A  whole day of negativity has kicked my ass by then.  I'm trying though, guys!
             Ok, it turned out a lot better than it started.  Nothing funny to relate today, just another day at the office, sirs.

 

“Your brain is programmed to have dejavus to keep you on the right track.  When you have these ephemeral flashbacks, its like a clue, consider it breadcrumbs.”  Jim spattered off details on their trek up to the car.  Roger walked ahead, speeding up his pace each time Jim would catch up beside him.  He looked back at him as he yammered on, Jim debating with himself as much as he was talking to Roger anyway.

            The robot followed slowly on the trail, in full on strut mode.  It had battle scars, and didn’t bother removing the glass lodged in between its joints.

 “Don’t worry that’s as fast as he’s programmed to walk.  Running isn’t cool, and he’s programmed to be cool.  Completely unlike me.”

            It ran into two trees that were standing close together and ripped one of them down and in half with a loud tear.

            “How did you plan on standing up to that thing, anyway?”  Roger asked as they reached his Subaru.  He got into the drivers side and opened up the passenger side for Jim.  He had urgency in his eyes, but still moved smoothly and slyly.

            “Well, I was going to punch it in the nose, if you hit it hard enough in the nose it’ll back off.”  It kept coming toward them, making up a dangerous amount of space.  With a quick lunge, Roger was positive they’d be goners.

“…But, metal is pretty hard, and it doesn’t want you to hit it in the nose.  Therein lies the problem.”  The robot was distracted with pretending to be too cool to approach more quickly.

  “Seems like there’s been a few mutations, it might be just a little more unpredictable than planned.”

            Roger stared in the rearview mirror, it was coming up the walkway.  He took the car key out and twisted it, revving the engine in reverse. 

            “You could just hit it with the car, theoretically that should put it out of work.”  Jim said, fiddling with something in his pocket.  He put on a pair of sunglasses, and reconfigured the passenger side chair, rolling it back to the seat behind him.  Roger pulled the car up the path with Emerson Lake and Palmer still blasting from the deck.  He reached and turned it down.

            “First thing we need to do is figure out where we’re going,”  Roger said.  “Where am I going?”

            “We might want to go visit Otto first.”

            “Otto?  I don’t like the sounds of that”

            “He’s an old pal.  He didn’t quite get out as cleanly as I did, though.  He had to listen to that wailing going on all night, every night.  It makes me shiver to think about.”

            The robot disappeared completely from view in the rearview mirror until it was a tiny grey speck behind them.  It was an unapologetically handsome day outside, allergy causing green shrouding everything.  The windshield wipers were covered in leaves, and Roger flicked them on to get rid of them.  A lot stuck, intertwined around the swishing blades like tendrils on a hungry tree holding down a crocodile.

            They stopped to get gas, Jim insisting on paying with cash, removing a sweaty smelly bundle of bills from the inside of his dirt black socks.  He bought a Red Bull on the inside, and joked around by calling it “motor oil.” Jim insisted he could drive if Roger got tired of it, but Roger didn’t respond, merely looking over with a furrowed brow and a grave look on his face.  They drove two hours back to the city, not saying a word to eachother.

 The shrubbery and foliage outside lessened progressively as they departed the woods, past the old water tower and city graveyard full of homemade wooden graves. 

“I want to be buried there.”  Jim said, unaware of the crypticness of this comment.  “I just think the stones are cool, looks like people really cared about their loved ones.”

“You know, you don’t sound like much of a scientist,”  Roger said.  “If your science hadn’t got us here, I’d think you were more of the antisocial hermit type.”

“I’m an intellectual, I keep on going because I have to.”  Jim assured him.  He had little sense of humor when it came to things that dealt with his personal nature, even though the world was one big joke.

Roger switched off from checking the clock on the dashboard, the mirror, and the road.  His eyes glazed over from time to time, and to a bystandard it appeared he might fall to sleep at any second.

            A tiny black shadow ran in front of the car, and Roger unwillingly crunched over it.  It made a loud popping noise, like a balloon right in someones ear, and Roger pumped the brakes as the tires left a long black smear on the road behind them.  The car finally righted itself as they came to almost a complete stop.  A mouth wateringly bad smell took over the car, and Roger knew he had hit a skunk.

Everything started to get uncomfortable in the car after that smell.  Roger cracked the windows and turned the air up, but this seemed to amplify the smell.  Jim complained about the tightness of his seatbelt and removed it as he continued emptying his pockets and reorganizing them.  He found a little red rectangle that looked like a block of wrapped cheese, which he sounded particularly excited about.

“Roger, this is exactly what we needed,”  He said, pressing the button in the center of it and releasing a gas into the car.  “Omega oils in gas form.  Smells like fish sticks.”

Roger hated this smell more than the skunk one, and they melded together to become almost intolerable.  He saw a sign for a diner flashing, a plate with a fork and a knife on each side in bright neon, and pulled in.

“You’re right, Roger, we had better eat and think this thing over.”  Jim said, putting his useless inventions in the door pocket.  He checked his hair in the mirror, assessing for damages, and they stepped out together.

“I should try calling the police again.”  Roger said.  “They should know what happened to their policeman.”

“Well I wouldn’t dream of having you do that on an empty stomach.”  Jim said, an air of nonchalance in his voice.

They sat down and Jim ordered Salisbury Steak.  Roger got the Family Chicken Combo.  The young blonde waitress looked like she had no business working at a Denny’s-lite type of place.  When she left to get their coffee, Jim had a few comments to make.

“I need to know why she’s here.  Why would someone like that be here?  She looks like a real woman.”

“What do you know about real women, Jim?  And while we’re at it, what do you know that I don’t know?”  He leaned across the table, and the waitress placed their lunches in front of them.

“Roger, I know you’re upset because your girls are gone, but yelling at me won’t help you about it.”

They ate in silence, the TV showing a turtle escaping from activity.  A table next to theirs consisted of three older man concerning themselves with lifes bigger probems, mainly lottery tickets.  The car in the parking lot practically had stink lines coming from it.

“I do know one thing you don’t know.”  Jim said.  “They aren’t going to hurt your girls.”

Roger sighed audibly.  “How do you know this?”

“He kept a stable of younger girls, he treated them all like princesses.  He pampers them, gives them a taste of the good life.  It’s going to be like those girls were at the spa.”

“But they need to be raised by their parents!”  Roger slammed a fist down near his mashed potatos.  Some of his water splashed on the table.  The old men facing away rearranged themselves, the svelt leather booths crinkling underneath them.

Jim leaned in so their heads were almost touching eachother and said.  “This is the first and only time I’m telling you this.  I don’t want to be traveling with you any more than you want to be traveling with me.  You seem like an alright guy, you have it together, you’re serious, you are a creature of habit.  They want me to come back, they don’t want you.  They think it’s my daughters, he doesn’t even know who you are.”

“You’re the creep living in a shack.  What happened anyway, where’d all of your money go?  Why did you have to insist on staying near the house, if you knew you were endangering my family?”

Day 77: Lucky 77!

I'll put all my money on black today.  And I'll spin that wheel until I lose it all.

Good indie rock band name:  Jimbo's Belt.  In case anyone was wondering, it's an extension cord.

            “Where we’re going,”  Jim said, wrapping an american flag bandana across his head and now really looking like Willie Nelson ready to go out on stage.  “There’s going to be a lot of violence, a lot of unpredictability.  The impropability variant is going to be high, we don’t know what we’re going to see.  You should probably just keep your eyes on what’s straight ahead of you.

            “But we do know where we’re going, then?”  Roger sounded relieved.  He fingered his earlobe with a grimace.

            “Yes, it’s where I was working before I came here.  My old employer.  He had a freak accident and it landed him in that metal facade.  Let’s just say I jumped the coop.”

            Jim explained how the particle stabilizer had misfired, and the room’s door was closed, with him inside it.  Mr. Grey, who at that point was just a confident if not arrogant young scientist only had his goggles and led vest on, when the rooms sirens started to blare and the red light began to flash, lighting up the granite bomb shelter walls.  Jim sat outside with a few other scientists, an inexperienced young bunch that were collectively dreading the ramifications of this experiment.  He remembered saying, “If he doesn’t end up killing himself, he’s going to get cancer.”

            “It was supposed to speed up time,”  Jim said, shaking his head.  “Instead, it created more time, it revolutionized time in that one spot.  The quarks ate Mr. Grey’s skin and instantly recreated what was there.  He was… no longer… human.  But the bright side is, I’m pretty good with machines!”

            Jim pulled out a fancy phone, fiddling with the touch screen for a minute.  He clicked and dragged, clicked and dragged, clicked and dragged.  The screen produced a picture of an outdoor facility, it looked like there was a front desk and the offices were carved into the trees somewhere, but the virtual tour didn’t have clearance to get through it.  They both stared on at the tiny screen, Roger looking perplexed and confused.

            Jim looked at the lapel he handed to Roger, who twisted it in between his fingers and placed it in his pocket.  He smelled the air, no traces of the metallic residue that the robots left on their path.  He recognized that smell so clearly when he held the pin for the split second, they might now recognize Roger as one of them, and see Jim as the only intruder.  That was, once they reached the outdoor bunker.  It seemed like a far off dream, so the anxiety wasn’t creeping in yet.

            The front door opened itself before Jim could walk through it and the Bully Bot stood there, his foot stuck out in a tripping position.  Jim recognized it immediately and knew it would try to trip him, since that was what he had programmed it to do, and slammed the door quickly.

            “Going somewhere?”  The robot said in a perfunctory monotone.  “You will stay in the house until you meet your maker.  Me.”

            Jim moved a coffeetable sideways into the door, ripping a long hole in Roger’s nice blue carpet in the process.  He apologized with his shoulders.  The robot clawed at the other side of the wooden door like a cat, a sudden red dot appearing that seemed to soak through from the other side.  A hand poked through the hole, rotating around and making it wider, and long snakelike fingers stretched out for the doorknob.

            “I didn’t teach it to do that, or say that.”  Jim said, panicking.  He hunted through his toolbox, turning it over on its side on accident.  He reached down with one hand to grab the lid and lift it back up, the the lid popped off and he fell onto his back.  Screws, washers and nails rolled out like doors to a clown car had just opened, and they rolled freely across the alcove. 

Roger ran to the sink and turned the knob to full blast, fumbling around in the compartment underneath it for a bucket.  He filled it and the hot water sloshed freely, soaking his T-shirt as he scrambled over to the door.  He threw the bucket in an overhand heave at the robot, sliding forward on the floor.

Jim gave off an agitated yelp, as the robot grew faster and shined a metallic red.  The robots function on heat, he would later explain.

“Come on!”  Jim called, already out of the back door, the swinging gate creaking in the wind.  The robot barged through and stepped directly through the glass coffee table, wearing it over its body like a person who had a painting smashed over his head.  Roger threw the knock-off Van Gogh at it from off of the wall, it smashing ineffectually against the robots body.

“Nice shot, Tex.”  It said, whistling between its teeth.  It shook its entire body with a violent vibration and turned its lower half into a round spiked ball, shooting glass around the living room like a chandelier falling on concrete.  Roger caught some shrapnel to his sweatpantsed ankles, gimping his way up the stairs to Jim who was waving enthusiastically like a runway guide.

Jim pulled a shiny metal discuss out of his sweatshirt pocket and hurled it down the stairs at the robot, and the metal disc gave off a blue light.  It pulsated once, distorting the air around it, and the robot was temporarily phased, holding its head like it was drunk and walking around woozily.

They scurried out onto the overlooking porch, Jim looking around decisively and grabbing a hold of a branch.  The robot hulked its way up the stairs, losing some of its humanlike enamel as it continued.  Roger was standing by the foot of the bed, looking forlorn.  He spotted a picture of his daughters with the Easter Bunny on the dresser and pocketed it, throwing a cross necklace of his wife’s around his neck as well.  Jim waved and they jumped off the porch together, landing softly in the bushes.

Jim looked at the necklace and then up at Roger.  “There’s no God where we’re going.  There’s nothing at all there.”

Day 76: I didn't forget about you, writing blog

OK I'm going to get more into this thing "in earnest."  I know I've been doing it every day for SEVENTY SIX DAYS, and that in itself is a commitment, but I'm going to marry it now.  Also, want to read a book about making successful blogs.  I think that might make me more blog-savvy.



            The face saw Jim and panicked.  It cradled its black leather fingers in front of its face, steepling them under its jaw.  A smile rose over its nonexistent lips, hinted at by its eyebrows which lurched downward.   The frenzied neighing of a stallion in the background caused temporary feedback, the screen fuzzing blue black.  The man looked like he could see into the other side of the camera, and the screen turned apprehensively in each direction as he tried to figure out what was going on behind Jim and the policeman.

            “That sure is a lot of scrap metal around.”  The metallic voice said.  “You… must,  have had some problems.”

            The policeman looked around unscrupulously, the wheels turning slowly inside his head.  He took the hand off the holster and walked over to the pile of rubble, kicking a metal corner with his steel toed boots.  The pile collapsed in on itself and the cop turned slowly, staring blankly over at Jim.  He rolled up his sleeves for no apparent reason, falling to one knee with his elbow perched on the other looking at the pile.

            Roger slouched and rubbed his forehead with an open palm, the vein under his eye throbbing with red intensity.  The bags under his eyes grew with each second, crows feet popping up by the twenties like his face was building a fence to protect the nose from the eyes.

            “When can I see my girls, are they fine?  They have to be fine.  Where did you take them?”  Roger said, his voice wavering.

            The robotic eyes twitched and focused on Jim, ignoring Roger’s question completely.  An aperture adjustment scrolled like a hand on a mouse button, the screen zooming forward about a quarter of an inch.

            “Jim, how are you? It’s been so long, hasn’t it?!”  The voice moved up to a high register and stayed there,  the robot voices enthusiasm sounding entirely genuine. 

            “Yeah, I suppose it has.”  The cloudy veil behind Jim’s eyes lifted and he was lucid again.  His voice took the shape of a Batman behind the mask.  “Glad I got here in time for the screening.” 

            It’s voice grew shriller.  “Making dumb jokes at a time like this!  Jim, you really are a piece of work!  You think you can escape from here without doing the work we scheduled for you?  Do you think that, Jim?”

            A bouncing autonomous sound shook the camera, the screen displaying it rising up and facing out into a vast desert.  Roger watched with anticipation for a glimpse of one of his daughters but the bright midday sun gave him an eyeful of blurs instead. 

            “It’s not my fault you guys can’t invent yourself a design out of a cardboard box.”  Jim said, digging through his pockets for something.  He retrieved a piece of gun and popped it into his mouth, smoothing his wild long hair back into a pony tail again after popping it into his mouth. 

            “I’ll give you one chance,”  The robot voice said after a long pause.  The cop pressed a button on his neck, and the man on the screen froze.  A bright purple laser shot in a concentrated line at the cop, leaving a skeleton laying in a pile of charred ash.  Roger recoiled,  gulping back copious bodily fluids rising through his throat. 

Jim looked at him, he was close to tears, and what he really wanted to do was walk over and give him a hug.  Instead, he ducked around the house, out of view of the screen, and returned seconds later with a triangular shaped rock.  He held a “shh” finger in front of his face, Roger looking at him with woeful acceptance.

Roger was too afraid to talk to the screen, although now they were left alone.  He smiled at it sheepishly.

“Where did Jim go?”  The screen asked, perplexed.  Jim jumped out at it like a wild tiger, struck it in the side with the rock, and the picture fizzled into white noise momentarily.  Roger languidly walked toward Jim who was frantically gesturing, the screen trying to turn to face them, drubbing its sides against the wooden scaffolding of the building. 

“I will be here, waiting, when you get back, and you want to see me.”  It assumed they were going somewhere.

            Jim ran through the house organizing all of his warring equipment.  He got his metal boots, bulletproof vest, rickshaw cutoff shotgun.  Roger grabbed the shotgun out of his hand and looked at him with disdain.  He fumbled it, unprepared for the heaviness of it, and screamed weakly as it hit the front walkway and didn’t go off.

            “Who is that guy?  What kind of people are you involved with?”  Roger shouted as Jim dug through cabinets, pulled drawers open, stomping more loudly than might have been necessary.  Chunks of dirt from his clothes left a trail on the kitchen floor.  “You know, this isn’t your house anymore!”  Roger said rhetorically

            Jim speedwalked down the hall and hit an invisible button underneath the stairs and a hidden armory opened, from which he removed a helmet and special gloves.

            “What do you know about this guy?” Roger pestered in a feeble voice.

            Jim didn’t answer, he raced upstairs into the master bedroom, slipping at first on the bottom of the stairwell and having to hold himself up with the banister to the top.

            “There’s nothing in our bedroom!  What are you doing in our bedroom.”  He rolled his eyes and followed upstairs, repeating in a quiet staccato.

            Jim was on his knees digging through Roger’s wifes underwear drawer, with a focused look in his eyes.

            “What the hell are you doing?”  Roger blustered out in his most authoritative tone.  He stood over Jim with his hands on his hips and fingers facing outwards, and started gnawing at his lower lip.

            Jim removed a pin from the drawer minutes later, a tiny lappel with a swordfish insignia.  He handed it to Roger, giving him a stern “you know what to do with it” face.  Then he raced back outside, dragging his armament along with him.

          Ok, not quite a thousand words, and not a particularly good one.  It ebbs and flows.  But, it's not always easy, so it feels like work.  And so the point is definitely to improve as time goes on, eh?  We'll see tomorrow.

Day 75: Day off

Not really a day off.  Just a rabble rousing topic line, sue me.  I think I'm going to move into a warehouse with this guy from high school and do this exclusively until I find a book in me.  It's like digging up a fossil, it's like digging up a fossil.  It's weird to think that everything comes from somewhere and you can't be completely random, because more often than not I feel like I'm completely random.

I gotta get fired up, what's a good warm up?  I've got all day to do this thing so I don't necessarily need one.  Yeah, I should get out and do something else at some point today.  PS:  I'm going to find that new job, tomorrow?  Yeah.

The Earth is 4,550 million years old.

Biggest in the universe


            Jim was loose in the woods with a long wooden stick attached to a round piece of metal.  He would have told you it wasn’t a metal detector.  He stared up at the sun to keep himself awake, the searing pain cutting into his retinas.  He looked down at his tattered rags, his mechanical arms, and stared back at the house. 

            Jim sneaked back up to the house when Roger was showing the policeman the giant metal plug the robots had installed on the den.

            “We’ll send an electrician, yeah, I haven’t seen anything like it.”

            The cop was caught unawares by the Bully Bot, who stared from a frozen position.

            “Pig.”  The robot said without moving its fake lips, and tacitly sneered.

            “Well what the hell is this thing?”  The burly cop asked, suddenly a little more than confused.

            The wall-mounted device spawned a camera screen with a metallic uncoiling noise.  The shutters opened like an old fashioned camera, and the screen propped itself up like an outdoor movie screen.

            “Jim,”  An out of focus gargly voice broke into focus.  “Jim we have your girls.” 

            The cop reached and put his hand on the holster and stood tense.  The face on the other end came into focus on the video, a metal mask covering its whole face other than the eyes.

            Jim was back in the house, tirelessly trying to scrub the red out of his eyes in front of the bathroom mirror.  The sink ran at full blast, overflowing with water, and Jim had to turn the water down once he heard the shrill cries of Roger outside through the window.  Jim walked toward the den, seeing his screw driver lying on the floor of the room, yet he forced himself to go out of the front door.

            The voice sat there static, Roger and the policeman yelling at it.  The policeman had to continuously remind Roger to stay calm, and the face in the screen ignored both of them completely.

            Jim walked briskly around the side of the house, and when he set eyes on the screen he became pale and looked faint.

            “He’s back.”  Jim said.  “I thought it was all over.”

            “What was all over?  Hey, bub, what did you think was all over?”  The policeman enquired, reaching into his front pocket for a tiny yellow notebook.

            “He’s got the girls, Jim.  He’s got my girls.”  Roger sounded utterly defeated.

Day 74: My First hundred

Got my first penny yesterday on the day called "No first penny", so let's call today "My First Hundred", eh?  Ok ok, proofreading gets you the good stuff.  You find the best details when you're proofreading.  So this process is going to be doubly long every day, but I'm read for a commitment!  You hear that, ladies? 

I think "finding your voice"  means writing so fast that you can't censor yourself.  And then you go back and proofread, right?  Or maybe it's all about watching a lot of Rich Fulcher videos.

Rich Fulcher book interview

Note to self:  Stop prefacing everything I say with, "I know you don't care, but..."  That's a defeatist attitude!

Working on finishing all of this stuff.  I'm steadily getting more hits on this thing.  Facebook friend me, whatever random person reads this.  Justin Engelbart.  That's me.  Says it right on the blog title.

             He hit the automatic lock button and beat his hand against the dashboard when he saw the path of destruction cleared through the woods.  Jim was in the middle of the driveway, facing away from the house on the gravel path bathed in the light that cascaded down through the trees. 

            Carefully opening the drivers side door as to not alarm the girls, he worked to get his most composed “I’m a good dad” face on and turned back toward them. 

            “Girls, this will be a minute, we have to see what your Uncle Jim has gotten himself into.”  He shot them a smile and swore so low under his breath it was inaudible.

            He knew he heard a couple “but dad’s!” already, but slammed the passenger side door and barrelled headlong up the walkway.  He stubbed his toe on what he imagined was an old steel drum carborator, noticing piles of scrap metal and bolts underneath his feet and looked back at the car in relief that he hadn’t got a flat.  Jim swung the shovel in the air like he had no idea what was going on, his long Willie Nelson braid flailing wistfully in front of his face.

            The magnificent robot head laid spread out on the ground like a pancake with a face drawn onto it with bacon and eggs.  Smoke rose from nowhere in particular like someone was having trouble putting a bonfire out, and the midday sun absorbed it all willingly.

            “What in the world.”  Roger said, shaking his head while failing to suppress the wide grin crossing his lips.  Metal littered the forest like a bomb had exploded.

            “The robots malfunctioned, the giant robot head tried to show me my past and it suddenly excused itself with steam.  Then it got torn up by these two bad guy robots.  They’re still out there somewhere.”

            Unbeknownst to Jim, the bully bot stood behind the house smoking a cigarette and filling its turbine engine with smoke that’s poisonous to humans.  It called its automated good-girl girlfriend, the one that was really just part of its programming.  It used its expensive I-Phone that Jim hadn’t purchased for it, on its calling plan that Jim didn’t realize he was paying for.

            “Well, where are you going to sleep tonight?  You can’t sleep inside, the girls think you are creepy…”  Roger mistook Jim’s forlorness with a shock-related anxiety and couldn’t fight off the humanity irking at him. 

“Okay, we will make you a spot on the couch in the den.”  Roger stared at the girls back in the car, huddled by the windows like they were on safari staring at a rhino at a distance.

            Night fell and Jim got done sweeping up the remnants of his crushed dream.  He had enough scrap metal to build a new hut out of, but most of the connecting pieces and wires were scrambled or fried.  The pile looked like a miniature junkyard when he was done, he didn’t stop to rest or sleep, his mind was racing.

            The tinkering got louder and more obnoxious every minute it continued in the den.  It was as if a tiny bird that only knew how to sing one song and would do so with gusto each hour of the day had found a spot in the house.  He covered his ears with his pillow, put earplugs in his ears, but the faint almost indetectable tinkering noise was just as annoying as the loud, certifiable one. 

Roger pushed through the three part swinging gate to the den and wiped his eyes, sleepwalking the whole way.  Jim was behind a metal workbench that clashed with the modest modern style of the room, but he hadn’t touched any of Miranda’s stuff.  There was no couch there for him to sleep at, and his eyes were peeled wide like he might never blink.

Scaffolding fell off the side of the house and into the middle of the frozen solid walkway on the other side.  It thunked softly, and Jim pried his eyes away from the oval shaped cartridge he was jabbing repeatedly with a screwdriver.  He stiffened again, and focused forward.  The shades showed prisms of shadows magnified by the lantern suspended off the side of the building.

Roger was temporarily mesmerized with Jim’s work, his hand moving in a methodical and swift motion, like they were working on their own without his input.  Jim’s eyes were glazed over and bright red, he had changed into sweatpants and an Incredible Hulk T-shirt which he had apparently stashed somewhere. 

“Jim.”  Roger said quietly, upset at his own unwavering monotony.  “Jim, I have to be asleep.  Jim, that is making a lot of noise, Jim, come on, Jim.”  He pried Jim away from the desk and set him up in an office chair, Jim slowly but surely dropping the screwdriver.

The wall started to shake with a harsh drilling noise, and hollow thunks followed as screws emerged from the opposite side.  The house was old school wood, designed by Jim when he had been more practical in his studies years before.  Roger wasn’t sure how he came into his money in the first place, or how he had lost it, but judging based on his complete disconcern with his physical and mental health it probably was standard delusions.

Roger went out through the front door, putting his slippers on by the doormat.  He pulled the drawstring on his blue robe tight and hugged himself as he walked around the house, apprehensively listening for noises.  The wheelbarrow he liked to keep by the house to move kindling was rolled out all the way to the edge of the woods, a few of his novelty tiki lanters were broken and scattered in bright purple pieces about the ground.  The girls hadn’t liked staying out here in the first place, Miranda was going to kill him.  He sighed as he dragged the wheelbarrow back up the walkway, the wheels scraping more than turning. 

There was what looked like a computer chip planted into the side of the building where Jim’s room was.  Roger kneeled down to touch it and received a mild electric shock that felt like a humming inside of his skin.  It flashed blue when he stared at it for long enough, although the first flash was barely detectable.

Day 73: Still no first penny

            Much better today.  Back on the bandwagon.  Excuse that hiccup.  I wonder what effect it had on my writing.  Probably positive.  I am going to have to get better at completely bullshitting situations that I have no background in describing, that's for sure.  I should probably practice technical writing as well.
            Found the word "plash" yesterday, that's a pretty good one.
            Inane bullshit, yadda yadda yadda.
            Do people like high culture things because they are high culture, or is it to not be associated with low culture?  For instance, should I stop going to BW3?  What separates it from Chuck E Cheese?  Why are adult interests important to have as an adult?


 

            The robot pored lights out of its eyes like a rainbow alarm clock.  The woods became a diorama, long armed whistlers and shortbread hocking loafers advertising their wares.  A merchendising man with a horizontal inventory of balloons sold Jim a UCLA sweatshirt, it was the only sweatshirt he had.

            “This isn’t my history.”  Jim stated plainly.  The monkeys jumped from the trees, they were too busy being real to be holograms.  A caveman kicked at a tree tirelessly attempting to loose a bees nest, his flowing green plantwear shuffling like the leaves.  The earth shifted into a facsimile of itself, much more interesting and full of action.  There were even projections of some of Jim’s early inventions, the robotic hedgehog which acted exactly like a regular hedgehog ouside of the fact that it’s moving parts would misfire and prevent its eyes from opening.  Under the elevated palm tree that formed an island in the middle of the forest, his automated carpet cleaner turned remote control seed planter and tiller spun in elongated circles, like two men were fighting over control of it’s steering wheel.

Punching its fist against a tree trunk, spitting for no reason, and popping its metal collar stood the bully bot he had programmed to give him someone to standup to.  It’s eyes were programmed to always be squinting, its teeth moving in a constant mastication.  He wanted to break the perpetual engram in his life of being tormented and abused for tinkering when he created the thing.  It might have been in grade school, secondary school, middle school, or high school when the thought dawned on him.  Psychologically standing up to a bully wasn’t possible when that bully would physically manhandle you.  There hadn’t been a time when he wasn’t a tinkerer, although he hadn’t often followed logical instructions or seen one idea through to an end. 

The bully bot was across by the little duck pond, breaking sticks off of trees and throwing rocks hard in no particular direction.  Jim hid behind the robot head, who was rendered temporarily unable to speak as it continued to falsify the world.  Its eyes spun in a mind control circle, the little black dots that Jim had placed inside spinning uncontrollably.  The dirt under Jim’s feet was particularly sticky, wet dirt blending with his faded jeans.

            The bully bot stood rigid; it always demonstrated an air of nonchalance that feigned it didn’t know what was going on.  The design encompassed a metal chin that protruded further based on how much the arms were moving, and arms that had a muscle system that made them look bigger in moments of durress.  The result was a strutting, taunting machine with inverted leg joints capable of running much faster than Jim.  He’d be in store for some wedgies if it saw him.

A Tarzan type of fellow swung from the trees, performing a flying kick and copyright infringing yell.  The squirrels scampered feverously collecting nuts, it was like it had suddenly began raining holographic money.  For most of the entities in this dream world, the disappointment would be on par with waking up from a dream to realize you can’t actually fly and that girl wasn’t sleeping next to you.

            Jim went back inside the robot shed, and searched frantically for the thing he made that turned all of his robots off.  The hand of the humanoid thing he made to participate in the battle bots tournament dented the side of the robot head, and it starts leaking clear fluid from the ceiling.  He could have sworn it was a giant red button, he remembered using that design specifically for it’s glaring gaudiness and overall noticeability.  The button had been designed so it could be spotted in complete dark, regardless of the fact he had forgotten to make it light up.  There was no button, the robot head had shook everything loose to reengage itself, a clammering cacophony mixed with wood sounds.   He could no longer remember what his current invention was to save it, all of these pieces suddenly becoming his enemies.  Through some sort of osmosis the robot head had absorbed all of the wooden contents inside of it, as well.  All of Jim’s original wooden inventions were gone, a fact that he didn’t have time to bemoan as the metal head ripped open and an emergency steam release valve sounded its warning signal.

            Jim had dedicated himself to putting an off switch on all of his inventions, but they always seemed to be in spots which were difficult to get it.  That was the problem with inventing transformers, they’d change into their second form that you hadn’t actually invented, instead only made theoretically possible.  The robot house, he now remembered, was meant to be nothing more than a bomb shelter with a cloaking device.  He jumped out  of it with undue urgency, the steam rose out of it at a reasonable heat but not bone melting intensity.

            Roger was at the Speedway down the block, picking up icecream bars for the girls who were upset with him.  Since getting in the car, he failed to guess what Sally’s fingerpainting was of, and he glanced up tiredly at the rearview mirror while pretending he needed to watch the road to navigate the course that had become so routine over the last months.

            He retrieved the frozen shapes of cartoon characters that the girls loved from the cooler, and each nurtured hers with passing interest.  Sandy glared up at him and held the picture up again, leaning up in an uncomfortable way against the capital L shaped seatbelt.

            “Uh, a spiderweb.”

            “No!  Try again!”

            “I don’t know… a moose?”

            “Daddy you’re not even trying!”

            He veered a hard right to avoid a stick that easily would have been crushed underneath the tires.

            “The blue upside down thing… that’s a rainbow right?”  Roger asked, earnestly.

            He took the turn the way he always did, slowing and turning sharply right, and then setting the car back into reverse while being careful to avoid the trees behind him.  Light reflected in his eyes off of the cross hanging from the rearview mirror.  The girls were already sitting up and raring to get out of the car.

            

            Ok, proofreading is when you get some of your best stuff.  I have a feeling my first shitty Charles novel is going to be a million times better after I proofread it and add all kinds of crap.