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Wk 19
Sept 10, 2020 17:55:23 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Sept 10, 2020 17:55:23 GMT
So here's a tale of a has-been SF writer who scores an old typewriter from a ghost at a lawn sale, which, no matter what keys he presses, types out a young girl's account of her abduction by whom at first I believed to be Joe Biden.
"He keeps talking to me like he knows who I am, and stroking my hair.... He says things I don’t really understand."
The paranormal mechanisms in play are never really explained, but that's okay; that's what makes them paranormal. There's a definite UK lilt to the narrative, even though it's set deep in Amurika, but which only detracted a little. The MC's under pressure from his agent to finish editing some 700 page manuscript, his wife is tentatively divorcing him, and there's a lot of chit-chat with the old lawnsaler's elderly, black, next door, gardening neighbor whose revelations and dad-gum huck-shaw vernacular start to wear a little after a while, and whose husband (spoiler alert) abducted the little girl who, unbeknownst to her, has been moldering in a trunk in their basement for the past 40 years. So probably she has Covid, loss of sense of smell being one of the primary symptoms. I might be a little shaky on some of the plot details. I was reading pretty fast by the end. It's not bad, though. Actually held my attention longer than most. But in the end it just seemed like there was too much filler, too much gab and unrelated goings on, despite which, I never did learn if he ever finished his SF novel, what it was about, or if he and his wife ever managed to reconcile. So somehow, it was both too much and too little.
[Rocks taps Carol on the shoulder then steps back out of swinging range. She's cleaning the Porthole after DD, who should've never tried to go shot-for-shot with Doomey, threw up out but forgot to open.]
No hurry, but when you're done there, I have this manuscript...
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Wk 19
Sept 15, 2020 1:10:41 GMT
Post by carol on Sept 15, 2020 1:10:41 GMT
[Carol steps back, her face mask (a stolen Trader Joe's model) leaking smoke from her last bong hit. She slops the cleaning rags she'd been using into a gross, syrupy, stinking bucket at her feet]
Sorry, man.
[She thrusts her hands Portholeward, ushering all activities thus, like an usher revealing the upper tier seat of a Rush fan to a dude that got in using his wits and charisma]
Be my motherfucking guest.
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Wk 19
Sept 18, 2020 0:49:07 GMT
Post by doomey on Sept 18, 2020 0:49:07 GMT
[doomey runs his gaze over the current capital, left to right, down a line, left to right, down a line, left to right, et fucking cetera. it's spread out on the cherrywood's desktop, it's edges burned, escapee from some forest fire? he licks his dry lips, and he taps out a pall mall, swan vestas it, and he sucks in some sweet smoke. he leans in close to the capital, examines, places his knuckles on the desktop, purses his lips. he nods his head]
yeah, hey. wow. i know capital. been examining it for a long time, a decade? longer? capital must connect, cousin. if you want to make it difficult, go join the fucking marines.
[he gathers up the current capital and walks it over to the Porthole. he jacks open the window and tosses the capital out into the deluge]
Vince Barry's Underlying Condition has been Portholed.
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Wk 19
Sept 21, 2020 18:56:10 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Sept 21, 2020 18:56:10 GMT
There was something familiar about this Hideous Brain one... gave me the same vague deja vu I'm getting re-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. But I don't think I've read it before. It's just your evil genius, who, for all his smarts and supernatural abilities and paid muscle who reminded me a little of Otto's old sidekick Travis here, somehow can't procure for himself a much desired magic talisman from its current owner (who, as it turns out, was happy to just give it away) and so hires at considerable expense the story's 1st person narrator (who tends to narrate to some 2nd person "you" who I assume is me), a playfully misogynistic noir-genre PI-dick who, as Dan Brownian coincidence would have it, just happens to drop in on another less evil but still sort of evil genius professor who knows all about the magic whatever it is, including who has it, allowing said noir PI narrator dick, pursuant to a little emotional extortion and physical and supernatural arm twisting, to easily retrieve said talisman that it might impart to its new owner its trademark brand of poetic justice, the specifics of which I've mostly forgotten. So, okay, not bad, close even, but still a no.
[Rocks pries open the Porthole, which seems to be stuck. There are a couple pieces of corn, some stringy looking green stuff and what appears to be blood spatter left from Carol's cleaning that Rocks smears around with the cap's cover page. Good enough. That oughta do till the next time DD tries to party with Boli.]
"Place has kinda gone to hell since Dep left, n'est pas?"
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Wk 19
Sept 26, 2020 0:39:09 GMT
Post by doomey on Sept 26, 2020 0:39:09 GMT
[doomey raises his head]
DeP left? I didn't fucking know that.
[doomey lowers his head. is this some sort of automaton? no, it doomey. he gathers the capital layered on the desktop of the cherrywood, and he grasps it to chest. a gate keeper pez dispenser tumbles from his suit jacket pocket and rolls across the cherrywood's desktop. with his free hand doomey slams his palm atop rick, grasps that as well to his chest. he twists his lips (how he contemplates particular situations) and says]
i -
[he shuffles his feet, and then he shoves the capital into his pants]
i proclaim this capital Terminaled.
[he shifts his hips, swivels them a bit]
oh wait.
[he digs into his pants and pulls out the capital, a bit mangled for wear]
that's not how it works.
[doomey pulls a tube from inside his jacket. he rolls up the capital and shoves it into the tube]
we, TQR, will thrust this capital Terminalward, mothers.
[he stumbles over to ruined tube beside the wardrobe and whispers good tidings to it, making corrections and repairs. he shoves his tube into the tube and, with a fizzle and a whomp, the capital geysers up to the Terminal. doomey steps back. he taps out a pall mall, swan vestas it, sucks in some sweet smoke]
we're sending Laura Campbell's Subterfuges up to those fucktards in the Terminal, those with strings of roast beef in their teeth and shoes on wrong feet.
[doomey staggers over to the cherrywood, palms the desktop leaning. leaning into it. he smokes]
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Wk 19
Sept 26, 2020 1:07:45 GMT
Post by carol on Sept 26, 2020 1:07:45 GMT
[Carol leans into the cherrywood. She tugs the chip from her lip and she exhales, and she places her forehead up against Doomey's]
Sweet, cousin. You are true.
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Wk 19
Sept 26, 2020 1:10:15 GMT
Post by doomey on Sept 26, 2020 1:10:15 GMT
Not so much. Did you hear Dax relapsed?
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Wk 19
Sept 26, 2020 1:11:42 GMT
Post by carol on Sept 26, 2020 1:11:42 GMT
[Carol goes to her knees]
Fuck.
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Wk 19
Sept 30, 2020 1:29:15 GMT
Post by doomey on Sept 30, 2020 1:29:15 GMT
he'll be fine. robust, he is. unlike some of our contributors.
[doomey sucks on his cigarette. he taps his finger on the cherrywood desktop]
wish we could have an honest capitalist. that'd be nice. just finished examining Elmore's Honey's Room. my fucking god, what a great capital. slides up against mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. Sam Shepard should seriously mail his goodstuff to TQR, if only he wasn't fucking dead.
[doomey sucks on his pall mall]
bucket list. meet sam motherfucking shepard.
[doomey smashes what's left of his cigarette into the gigantoid marble ashtray sitting downstsage right. he rubs the embers dead. he breathes]
shit, okay. oh god, sorry sam. new bucket list. meet mamet. is he dead?
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Wk 19
Sept 30, 2020 1:37:36 GMT
Post by carol on Sept 30, 2020 1:37:36 GMT
[Carol gets to her feet, shakes her locks, raspberries herself]
Pfffffft.
[She wags her hips. She googles Mamet. She waits for a response. She pulls out her kit, and then her eyes pop as her phone responds]
Fucking A, comrade. Mamet lives!
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Wk 19
Oct 7, 2020 1:13:32 GMT
Post by doomey on Oct 7, 2020 1:13:32 GMT
[doomey sits at his cherrywood, tapping his fingertips on the desktop. he taps out a pall mall, swan vestas it, sucks in some sweet smoke. he leans forward, runs his fingertips along the grain lines on the desktop. he looks over at the Carol. he looks up at the mirrorball. he taps his toe. he sucks some more on the pall mall, inhaling some sweet smoke. he looks around. he breathes deep. he sucks some more smoke into his once-pink lungs, exhales. he rummages in his desk top drawer and pulls out some pez dispensers. he's found batman and donald duck and christopher walken. these pez dispensers do battle on the desktop. one gets gutted. doomey sucks in some sweet smoke. he tires of the pez dispensers battle. he taps his fingertips on the desktop]
where the fuck is the capital, Jones?
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Wk 19
Oct 8, 2020 0:34:42 GMT
Post by carol on Oct 8, 2020 0:34:42 GMT
[Carol hovers around DePlancher's desk, twirling, her arms out]
I do believe we are in limbo, cousin.
[She plants her ass in DePlancher's desk chair. She pops a blueberry into her mawl]
Rocky? Rock!
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