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WK 25
May 2, 2021 16:55:06 GMT
Post by rorschalk on May 2, 2021 16:55:06 GMT
[Rorschalk descends onto the floor, strapped to a camera crane, sporting huge metallic lobster claws (Rorchalk, not the crane) like Michael Ironside's Overdog in the long forgotten film SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE or Palpatine in the even more forgettable LAST JEDI]
I seem to have lost control of this undertaking.
[He cackles at the pun he's inadvertently made about the dead's profession as he flails his over large metal pincers before him, wondering at the transhumanist monster he's become]
Noooooooooo! I am still alive but saddled with these cold, dead claws!
[He glances at the denizens of the Floor and their individual reactions to his presence: Carol's crossed arms and hippie angle speak to the fact that she is unimpressed, Boligard's two inch ash on his cigarette sez "I wonder where the fuck my pez dispenser got to?", Rockefeller toils in the gloaming somewhere between total obscurity and bas relief and Dep's force field of muttering Zen is as impenetrable as ever]
Well, a good damn day to you all as well. As you can see, I seem to have grown these useless appendages for some ungodly reason. Can you understand how hard it is to wield my red pen with these mothers? Please drop me a line about the when where, what and how of your recent vetting, m'kay?
[So saying, the crane ascends into the dark night, taking the bound Rorschalk with it, into the upper reaches above the unfathomed floor]
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WK 25
May 5, 2021 1:50:55 GMT
Post by deplancher on May 5, 2021 1:50:55 GMT
Did you get the receipt for this dome I built over here, Mr. Captain Impossible with GlossIfied Appendages? There must be compensation. I get it that my spider web infested desk was cleared in my prolonged absence for reason undisclosed but not including death is now Carol's home...I mean, I don't even want it back and besides arm wrestling has never been my thing, too docile but not to be construed as weak. She works more and harder and longer and more precisely than I.
But anyway, this dome. Some call it a summertime igloo. Of course it's not made of snow! There are some things growing in it I'm not sure about. I like the blue light though. It never burns out.
I have a bandaid on my left forearm. Where did that come from? The lower half of my face, has anyone seen it? This moon stealing raven look is attracting weird vibes. I only wanted to buy squash and the cashier at the market asked if there would be pumpkin seeds with that.
Well, when you look over the budget. I mean after your ceiling dance and the other. I could use reimbursement. Yes, I speak in full sentences.
The cap I'm reading is long but I did not nod off! This is a good sign. Even the rhythmic rocking of my hammock did not take me to slumber.
What is this? A concept where everyone is so fat they need a custom cradle to transport them from here to there?
Doom. Carol. I do not smoke those Pall Malls but may I interest you in some Dream Tea to pass. The time. To walk the. Fine line.
Rocks. Stay away from those injection sites. Unless you're prepared to participate, you may be swallowed whole.
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WK 25
May 6, 2021 15:41:30 GMT
Post by rockefeller on May 6, 2021 15:41:30 GMT
Despite its complete lack of similes, want of metaphor, occasionally clumsy grammar, mispunctuations (especially closing speech tags), ping-pong dialog, unsavorable and generally voiceless prose and overly familiar tropes, wondering what made a certain prisoner so special held my attention until the hook was resolved halfway through, after which it all dragged out fairly predictably and I began skimming. So I probably only read about 5478 words of Leahy's 7392 word cap. I don't believe TQR has ever published a fantasy and, sadly (or perhaps happily), this Lordling cap will not be the first. I feel its author is actually a competent wordsmith, but who needs to pore over his writing as thoroughly and carefully as he does his CV.
Just for fun, find the mistake in each of the following.
1. No sooner had Manrel uttered the word than there came the sound of numerous footsteps from up ahead.
2. stair-case
3. Potrian Magatoyce, who you’ve already met.
4. “Alright, prisoner” he said softly.
Dep, you are right handed, n'est-ce pas? And you have recently given blood. Too much, perhaps? Or too often. Your poetry sings true. Remove the Bandaid and promise never to temper your kindness with pragmatism.
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WK 25
May 11, 2021 1:32:22 GMT
Post by doomey on May 11, 2021 1:32:22 GMT
[doomey taps ash into the triangular marble ashtray, the ash settles on mounds of ash, and it tumbles down the edges of the mounds of ass, like -]
okay, motherfuckers, we've, and by we've i mean me and carol, are rocketing Tom Howard's capital up to the Terminal. It's sci-fi but it's Tarantino. and it deals with a down and out car salesman who gets into satan worship but takes a turn and becomes a camp councilor and develops a brand new way to camp cook. right? no. that's not what the capital is about. i'm not an asshole.
[doomey tosses the capital to the rafters]
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WK 25
May 13, 2021 1:25:48 GMT
Post by doomey on May 13, 2021 1:25:48 GMT
[doomey swan vestas a new pall mall, inhales, enjoys]
the costales capital really stirs my soup pot, cousins. soup pot. i just now came up with that.
[doomey grabs up the capital, twists it and shoves at its edges with his palms. he's made the capital a baseball, a fucking mazing! he reals back, focuses, closes the mechanism, and he throws the capital through the rafters, upward]
Ark has been Terminaled, folks.
[dust and spider eggs rain down on doomey. he shuffles and dusts the shit off his sleeves and head hair]
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WK 25
May 14, 2021 0:33:39 GMT
Post by carol on May 14, 2021 0:33:39 GMT
[Carol sanitizes DePlancher's desktop with a bunch of sani-wipes, and then she tosses the sani-wipes into the wastebasket stationed deskside. She steps back, wanders toward the Cherrywood]
Girl, that desk is yours. I am so seriously a fan. I love the stuff you've done. You're. like, my hero.
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WK 25
May 14, 2021 3:59:00 GMT
Post by rorschalk on May 14, 2021 3:59:00 GMT
[Rorschalk shimmies down the wall like a possessed Raygun making clay peni on the Mary statues at the corner church. Oh Father Karras how we could use you now! Vomitting a glut of green bile, the old blue hair cranes his neck at an impossible angle and sez]
She's got her own font, ya'll!
[He scurries crab crawls from the lighted places over by the pointilist mirror ball and retreats like a cockroach into the shadows that dominate the dank basement also known as the floor. 'nuff sed]
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WK 25
May 18, 2021 23:30:50 GMT
Post by carol on May 18, 2021 23:30:50 GMT
[Carol stares at the crack in the wall where mutant Rorschalk crawled. She pulls off the fat joint vised between her lips-
AND YES FOR YOU YOUNGER FOLK OBSERVING OUR WEBSITE WE ARE ADVOCATING THE USE DRUGS SUCH AS WEED BEER VODKA AND COFFEE BUT PLEASE TRY YOUR BEST TO STAY FAR FROM HEROIN AND ALT MEDIA
-and after a few beats she exhales]
Wow. She does have her own font. Damn.
[Carol grabs up the current cap and twists it into an altered blue room, like a surfer sliding through a cave of cacophony out on the grand landscape known as ocean, off the coast of Australia. She releases the curled artform and it untwists with sparks and ignitions and movement and farting bleats, and then it jets upward and gone. Carol looks after the capital, and takes a pull from the joint. She waits, looks around, exhales.]
Okay, fuckers. Stillman's Someone Important has been Terminaled. Might be a really great...thing.. I seriously don't fucking know, cousin.
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WK 25
May 21, 2021 0:59:08 GMT
Post by doomey on May 21, 2021 0:59:08 GMT
[doomey grabs the edge of his desk. and he breathes, and he throws the current capital across the desktop. he lowers his knees, breathes, stands erect. he taps out a smoke, vestas it, sucks]
okay so Dan's Border Children has been Terminaled. it is a strong capital, cousins.
[doomey pulls in smoke, and he tosses the capital to the rafters]
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WK 25
May 21, 2021 14:19:58 GMT
Post by rockefeller on May 21, 2021 14:19:58 GMT
Problem with Jones`s Tall Tales cap isn`t voice. Lots of witty banter and male bonding. (Back when gender was something you were stuck with, long before it became a personal preference, I was told men bond by insulting, women by touching, each other.) Some tense confusion in the third sentence had me scratching my slightly askew rug and squinting my one good eye while trying to figure out how two of the characters were "on the street" after having just been told "the weather kept them inside." But otherwise it seemed to read clear and even sharp, if kind of directionless. See, the problem here for me is that I really, really hate the objective tense when carried by a ton of dialog. The POV can't even be said to be omniscient. I'm like a fly on the wall itching to buzz off in search of other shit. I'm a pretty clueless reader, even when I care about what's going on or what might happen, which I really didn't here. I know both our Terminali are busy with their own publications. So even though they love this little zine for all its captiousness, incorrectness, weird personalities, insensitivity, odd kinships and annoying vernacular, I don't like to make them critique cap that has no chance of beguiling the Monkey. So out the Porthole it goes, yammering (albeit often cleverly) all the way.
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WK 25
May 21, 2021 15:39:48 GMT
Post by bulldust on May 21, 2021 15:39:48 GMT
Moo, Rocks! Much appreciated.
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WK 25
Jun 1, 2021 18:36:22 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jun 1, 2021 18:36:22 GMT
This Lumen cap's about a woman who's lost a baby late enough in pregnancy to constitute a stillbirth (note that stillbirth is one, not two words as written). Because a lot of it's extraneous, or just wasn't that interesting to me, I got to thinking about recent peer-reviewed studies' conclusions that the spike proteins that give coronaviruses their name and what the various mRNA vaxes program your cells to produce are what cause the vascular problems associated with Covid-19 (primarily a vascular disease), and that these proteins, unlike conventional vaccines' dead microbes, migrate from injection sites, across blood-brain barriers, into livers and hearts and spleens, and also women's ovaries and their breastmilk, which has been associated with gastrointestinal bleeding in infants.
The first sentence, "Self-check out was always, always the worst," actually tripped me up enough to google "self check out" and see that checkout is (also) one, not two words. (Worse than a stillbirth?)
A few other things bothered me before I really stepped on the gas to get to the ending's saccharine reconciliation:
She was side by side with grief at all times anymore. Mostly because of the "anymore."
The word still made her nauseous. Italicizing "still" is no substitute for a comma pair. I.e., The word, still, made her nauseous.
Most egregiously, though, her eye color (hazel) is mentioned three times. Nothing advances character development like hair and eye color; I wonder how Chinese fiction writers manage. Not.
It saddens me a little to know that these sorts of "reviews" can hurt a writer's feelings. But I am such a writer and, from much experience, know these feelings pass. Hopefully, however, the inclination to reread and revise and consult the oracle of the internet, and (as I have belatedly learned of late) to let Google docs take an editorial crack at your manuscripts, will endure and grow.
[Uh, Doomey, not sure if you've had the vax, but if you have, could you move away from the Porthole for a second while I feed these pages into it. I don't want you shedding spike protein all over me. You too, Carol. Please.]
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WK 25
Jun 3, 2021 17:40:25 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jun 3, 2021 17:40:25 GMT
I really liked the authenticity of Bailey's Blemmyes cap (which got buried under some TQR Training & Policy manuals Boli left on my desk, and which is why I'm late vetting it). It made me think the VC's either been to or researched India, or both, though probably just the latter. Still, it's always nice to learn a thing or two. Even though the prose is a little verbose and the narrative tends to dwell too much on between-scene minutiae, and even though I had a pretty good idea early on where it was headed, I never really felt the need to skim. The journey was that okay.
I don't agree with S. King's advice to never use them, but here there were too many "ly" adverbs for my ear, many of which might be omitted through more exact verb choices.
The narrative's (not dialog's) avoidance of simple contractions (e.g., "we had" vs. we'd) gave it a stilted, kind of robotic voice. Just addressing this could reduce the word count and improve the pace.
Plot-wise, there was too much build up for how easily it got resolved (via explanation/backstory/coincidence). Also, someone at least needed an arm or something bitten off.
Saw a few edits, though no more than I miss in my own work even after zillions of reads.
Apparently the over in the cricket match had finished, I thought. Cut "the over in" which makes no sense, and cut "I thought" which is redundant.
they had eye near each shoulder, an eye
an Indiana jones film. Jones
and I only heard it when were up in that valley. when we were (or just cut "when were")
This is a tougher than usual call. Pretty sure Boli would've sent it up to be bludgeoned to death in the Terminal. Maybe sub it again after an editorial scrape, and request it land on his desk... just kidding, but for sure send it to other venues. Anyway, not so much a no as a not quite.
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WK 25
Jun 10, 2021 16:57:43 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jun 10, 2021 16:57:43 GMT
[ Hey all, is it just me, or does an exact word count like 6,266 portend a painful read? Not sure why it does for me, but it does. I know it's not like the VC painstakingly counted each and every precious one, that you just click on something in Word, but still... And it's not like TQR pays by the word, which always tempts me as a writer to make my characters stutter.]
Okay. I just tried to read Darnell's sub. At first I thought the repetitive Dick & Jane-ish phrasing was some sort of voice thing: simple sentences, most beginning with a noun or noun clause.
Rocks opened his eyes. He was sitting on his chair. It was an office chair. It belonged to a guy who got fired. Rocks felt what he thought was a fart. The clock on his computer said it was 1:16 PM. By then it was too late.
And it goes on like that. All the way to the end, at least from what I sampled. The grammar and punctuation appeared perfect. I have to give it that. Weird that a VC would be tone deaf but have such good technical abilities. Even Grammarly or Google docs wouldn't do that clean a job, would they? If I had to guess, I'd guess Darnell has friends or family who help edit his prose, but who also have tin ears. It's a head scratcher. Maybe he's writing in a second language. But even then I'd expect the odd complex sentence and sentence fragment, the occasional conjunction, some crafty rule breaking. As is, it's like a long series of non sequiturs. Grammatical repetition keeps each perfect sentence from flowing into the next, imparts a wooden, overly assertive quality to the text that makes me think of lies.
I think it's about a guy who gets into some sort of altercation with his girlfriend's ex. It reminded me of this English woman with an unusual vaginal technique (she called "screwing you back") I met through the Companions section of the local paper (before the internet) whose estranged husband dropped by my house late one night to talk to her. I had this little billy-club-like baseball bat in my back pocket that he fortunately never had to use on me. It was all pretty civil as I recall. After a few weeks, she went back to him. I'm almost confused enough by this Player's cap I was unable to read to send it up, let someone else give it a shot. But only almost.
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WK 25
Jun 12, 2021 1:22:02 GMT
Post by carol on Jun 12, 2021 1:22:02 GMT
[Carol places the roach on the edge of the triangular marble ashtray, and she exhales. She shuffles the current capital into a tightness it's not seen since birth]
We're not on this.
[She puts the capital aside]
Damn, I hate this.
[Put aside, the capital starts to melt, right? It goes from physical to liquid. And it slides sideways and it absorbs into the floor weirdly]
I am so fucking sorry, but Robert's The Elf, the Orb and the Shadow Dancer has been Portholed.
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WK 25
Jun 14, 2021 0:16:57 GMT
Post by doomey on Jun 14, 2021 0:16:57 GMT
girl, don't feel bad about rejecting that capital.
[he places the Batman pez in the center of the cherrywood's desktop, and he puts the scooby-doo pez beside it]
dynamic duo.
[he sips at the tumblerful of amber and sets the tumbler down next to Batman. he situates the poop pez facing the dynamic duo. it wobbles a bit till he settles it with his tender touch]
rejecting capital is our job. s'what we do, savvy? we are the heroes of the literary revolution, Carol. we survey the pile, and let the goodstuff rise. there's no time to consider the casual scribe, okay?
[he grabs up the current capital and struggles out of the pilot's chair. he scurries over to the wardrobe and Tom Cruise's up onto it's fragile roof. he pulls out his phone and taps a button. Phillip, the drone, hovers in from stage left, and doomey stuffs the current capital into Phillip's under-mesh, and he taps another button, and Phillip rises, stealthily]
are you in? or are you out?
[doomey climbs down from the wardrobe, wanders back to his desk, taps out a pall mall, swan vestas it. he sucks in some sweet smoke]
Robert Stahl's Evil, Inc. has been terminaled.
[he settles into the pilot's chair, sips and sucks. he makes his pez warriors battle, king of the desktop]
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WK 25
Jun 16, 2021 1:13:30 GMT
Post by carol on Jun 16, 2021 1:13:30 GMT
[Carol watches Doomey climb the wardrobe and send the drone upward. She shakes her head, wipes her nose, chomps on the fresh tomato she just now got delivered, wow. She seperates the kale from the lettuce]
Dude, why the fuck are you climbing up on shit?
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WK 25
Jun 16, 2021 17:58:15 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jun 16, 2021 17:58:15 GMT
I gave blood again yesterday. Ms. Rocks used gallons of it during her months in the hospital and, being she's on warfarin now for the rest of her life, can't give it back. So I've stepped up. Plus I like the mellow feeling draining a pint leaves me with (maybe my BP or iron or something is too high). At Canadian Blood Services, everyone must still respond to the now familiar Covid-detecting queries and wear a provided mask at all times, even alone in the little kiosk tap-answering a zillion Yes/No/Unsure questions like, "Have you had sex with a man... used needle drugs... visited the UK... snorted cocaine... had a vaccine in the past three months... touched a monkey [seriously, they're concerned about monkey contact]." There's a guy continuously wiping down doors and counters and anything else anyone might have touched or breathed near. So it weirded me out a little that we all have to stick the same oral thermometer under our tongues, even if they do then rinse it off in some sort of disinfectant that hopefully also kills strep and mono and Enterobacter cloacae complex, and so on, but that is still okay to lick. I was also a little surprised to learn that people who've recently taken a highly experimental vaccine authorized by the FDA for emergency use only can still donate.
Even though it's tough to pull off, 1st-person present-tense is great. It's the narrative we live. Done well, I don't imagine the narrator carrying around pen and paper, or some other recording device. And, in this story about PTSD (or whatever it's called now), Tierney does it well. Drew me right in. And for the first half or so, I thought I'd send it up. But then when drunk Chad pulls a knife and nearly guts the narrator despite his "combat training" having kicked in, I began to have second thoughts.
See, 10 or 15 years ago I placed a short in the Eric Hoffer anthology, which only pays the editorially determined "best" story's author. (It sounds like a lot when, in fact, spread over the dozen or so incorporated, would only come to maybe a penny a word). Because the editor assigned to my story was a numbskull whose every modification to my text was wrong, forcing me to refuse the galley, despite being clearly the best, mine did not win (not even one of the various editors' non-paying honorable mentions). Worse, the one that did win was about some Vietnam vet who remains staunchly heroic and patriotic despite the traumatizing horrors of his tour. And Tierney's cap, while more subtle and much better penned, reminded me a little of that emotionally pandering, groan eliciting piece of shit, and I thought I'd pass.
But then I decided I shouldn't let my traumatic experiences as a wannabe writer hold back work that might well be deemed to have merit by less jaded readers. So, yes. I'm Terminalizing it. I know you two are busy, but, have at it fish thing, have at it bovine entity. Let opener minds prevail.
Being on warfarin sucks. Too little and your new mechanical heart valve throws clots, and you die, sometimes horribly. Too much and you bleed to death internally (which is why it's the poison of choice in mouse bait). Twice a week I prick Ms. Rocks' finger with a sticker pen to get an INR reading. Too high, and you need to take vitamin K. Too low, and you need a shot of heparin. The lady at Blood Services said all their stickers are set to max depth because too much squeezing can put bodily fluids into the capillary blood and screw up the hemoglobin reading. So I'm setting Ms. Rocks' pen back to 5. I try to learn something every day (to compensate for things I forget).
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