Why You're Reading This

In my Writing Fiction class we have to write a little at least every day. Today I found my entry extra amusing, so I thought I would share it with everyone, as I may or may not do with some of my other more interesting ones.



If you're reading this it's because you smell really, really bad.

So bad, in fact, that I shirk at the idea of being anywhere near you. The way your blood flows under your skin makes my stomach churn in disgust. My disdain for your body and general appearance makes my head spin so much that thinking a thought about you makes me dizzy.

I know you showered this morning, or maybe it was yesterday, but I don't care. You're rank. The odor of your shampoo makes me nauseous, the soap you use too powerful for any one nose, assuming you used enough for me to smell it at all.

The point is, reader, you smell so terrible that the thought of eating you, your heart, your face, sounds like the least appetizing buffet one could ever come by. It would be like going to a steakhouse and ordering a salad without dressing.

So, I didn't eat you, and that's why you're reading this. I didn't eat you because I'm not a cannibal, and I'm not a cannibal because you smell bad.

On Auto Mechanics

There's a french writer named Guy de Montaigne who titles all of his essays "On ______", and since this isn't really a writing post I'm telling you this writing fact. You're all so very welcome.

But really, I kind of just wanted to rant today, because I don't think I've ever had a good experience with an auto mechanic. As much as I'd like to believe that gender roles are dispersing and that it has nothing to do with me being a girl, all the evidence indicates otherwise. Every. Single. Time.

When the alternator (translation for the car illiterate, like me: this is what makes your battery run, so when the alternator gives out the battery can't... charge? translation of translation: Your car won't start.) in my car gave out about a year ago, we towed it to a mechanic I used a couple times before. He charged me up the wazoo for the fix, and I found it for much cheaper elsewhere just by calling and telling him, "Look, I need the alternator replaced and I'm not stupid. I have the new alternator, how much to fix it?" Let's just say, having an old car sucks sometimes.

My power steering gave out last Thursday, and at first I had a bit of a hard attack because it sounded like I was running over a mechanical cat at first. So, of course at first I was like, "Oh no, poor mechanical kitty!" but then I reasoned this was silly, and instead I wondered what was wrong with my car until turning the wheel was about as fun as shining an old pair of tennis shoes, bad analogy and all. So, at least I figured that out all by myself. It was the next part that became tricky.

Let it be known to any female who doesn't know a thing about cars that there is an easy way to figure things out without having to do much. It can be done in an easy five steps, as follows:

1. Be female. If you are, like half the population of earth, male, this might require more effort, or you might just have to use other means. For that, I'm sorry.

2. Have problem. This can be anything from a flat tire to having your power steering not work, but there should indeed be a problem. Or, there doesn't have to be a problem if you want to get a laugh, or if you're hoping to meet your One and Only via Car Problem Diagnoserosa. Though uncommon, the movie Are We There Yet? proves this feat to be possible. Hopefully minus the electrocution.

3. Pop open the hood of your car. This tells other drivers passing by that there is a problem, too.

4. Stand in front of hood and look like you have no idea what you're doing. If you're me this is easy because you don't. By no means should you touch anything inside, because it might confuse people into thinking you do know what you're doing. Instead, you can look inside all confused-like and bob your head in and out of looking. Scratching your head might not hurt either. Or, you can put your phone up to your ear and bite your nails while looking off into the distance.

5. Wait no more than five minutes. Zing! (And when they ask if you need help, you should probably say yes. probably. Unless you like to be confused.)

Speaking of doing it as a joke, I think it might be kind of fun to just pull off on the highway and try this, just to see how many problems you can fake diagnose your car with by telling the people who stop, "Uh, there was a weird noise" or "There was some steam coming out from the hood." I may or may not try this. One day.

Anyway, after the boy who stopped told me that the pump was probably out, I decided to find the cheapest rate. This, I thought might be okay, because often when one asks about pricing the salesperson realizes they're competing. Today, I felt like such a nuisance to the salesman.

"Heeey, this Jose! How can I help you, man?"

Okay, one, Man? I haven't even spoken yet!

"I need a new power steering pump for my Infiniti G20, '92. How much?"

"Uh, lez see here... we have on in Salt Lake, can be here by 10:30 AM tomorrow. Is good with you?"

"Awesome. How much, though?"

"Oh, is _____ with ______ we'll refund if you bring the old one back. You sure it's a pump you need and that it's not low on fluid?"

Okay, I might not know TONS about cars, but I know enough to realize how stupid this question was. "Gosh sir! I didn't even think to check! Good thing you asked, because I was too stupid to think about the easy solution before ordering a new part," is what I think he must have expected me to say. Instead, I go, "Um, yeah. I checked the fluid."

"Well, was wrong with your car? Is hard to turn?"

And I'm sure he expected me to say, "No, it's really easy to turn. Like, as easy as doing donuts in ice. I'm just asking for a new pump in case one day I need it. You know, to be safe, because you just never know."

But, because I'm not passive aggressive enough to pull that off, I said, "Obviously."

And then, what bewilders me most is that he told me to come into the shop to order it. I asked if I could over the phone, and he goes:

"Yeah, you can, I jus' wanna make sure it's really what you need."

Okay. Really?

I'm thinking: "Hey, I just told you my car is broken. Which is why I'm asking you for a part... because my car. is. broken."

If I was meaner, I would have said so, but I'm not mean to people I don't know (to their face), so I just said, "Okay, I guess I'll come in later."

But I totally wasn't going to, so my brother in law called in later and asked for it, and they didn't tell *him* to bring the car in *just in case*.

I really don't know what all this ranting is for, except to tell you that I'm so frustrated with jacked up prices that magically go down for males, for all the unnecessary inconveniences that males don't have to endure, and mostly to whine that my car needs fixing tomorrow which means I have to either play candy crush in the shop all day or walk home. And maybe someone might feel a little sympathy and offer me a ride back.

Smiley face.

Anyway. I guess the good thing about having an old car is that I'm learning a lot about them. I now know about mufflers, alternators, tires, power steering, and oil changes. Hooray!

Next post will be more awesome, I promise.

Water After a Day in the Sahara

Saturdays, I said? Saturdays it is.

Actually, it just happened to work out that way. I wrote tonight, and it's for practice since I don't know where I'm going with this. I do know, however, it won't be a long piece. I'm thinking it will be a 3-5 part piece as an exercise. The good news is:

Hooray! I'm finally writing again! (Just in time for finals to start but... let's not talk about that.)



Untitled

            I did it because Emma said she’d never kiss a boy with virgin lips.

            My best friend Danny will tell you that it was because he convinced me to do it, but that wasn’t why. Yes, he did tell me to, but he was kidding. He didn’t actually mean for me to do what he told me to, it was all fun and games.

            Standing of the porch of Emma’s house, the porch light glowed purple from previous Halloween decorations, even though that was over half a year ago. Danny and my friend, Greg, were with me, huddled in a bunch around Amber. Her long, blond hair drew most guys in, such as Danny and Greg, but somehow her flirtatious voice and sexy eyes repelled me. Emma, on the other hand, sat on the white porch swing, her legs bringing her slowly back and forth as she poked into the conversation here and again.

            Emma was beautiful. Her short, auburn hair was cropped up in a braid, and her eyes glowed purple under the porch light. I couldn’t help but continue glancing over in her direction now and again, but I had to refrain most of the time so that she didn’t know that I kept staring. At appropriate intervals I would crack my knuckles, clear my throat, laugh a bit louder, and everything else I could do to both keep myself occupied and wonder if she paid attention to what I did.

            Mind you, the kissing discussion was days before this night. It was a night I had her alone on her couch going over math homework. I helped her since she couldn’t comprehend numbers the way my mind did, and I was happy to since we were in the same college course anyway. We only got on the subject because one of her roommates came in the door and ranted a long story about her bad boy-kissing experience she’d just had. Then Emma said it.

            “I don’t know you do it. I would never kiss a boy with virgin lips.”

            This shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did because Emma and I weren’t a thing, so there was no rational reason for me to be upset. Somehow, I was anyway.

            Back to the conversation on the porch. I keep losing myself in the point, here. The point was on the porch, and the story started on the porch. Where Amber twiddled her hair, and Danny fiddled his thumbs, and I did all I could not to piddle and make a fool of myself in front of Emma.

            “Josh would be good at poker,” Amber said, blinking her long, sexy eyelashes in my direction. Sometimes I think I annoyed her when I didn’t give her the proper attention she required, which is why she ever bothered acknowledging me at all. “Have you played, Josh?”

            “Yeah,” I said. “I played. No good. Danny calls my bluffs.”

            “What? We haven’t played before,” Danny said, but then raised his eyebrows. “I see what you did there.”

            I was the smartest guy I knew, yet I couldn’t seem to figure out how to get the attention of the right girl. Hoping I impressed her with my pre-planned wit, I turned to look at Emma, but she focused on chipping the polish off her fingers.

            That was when, out of nowhere, a white car pulled up and came to a screech in front of the house. Since it was well past midnight, nobody else was out, nor had anyone come by for at least an hour. Needless to say, all our attention turned to the white car as the passenger window rolled down and a girl with long, shiny red hair leaned out the window.

            “Hey. You want to kiss me?”

            I remembered that she said it that way. It wasn’t, “Come kiss me,” or “One of you want a kiss?” so none of us knew who she was talking to.

            “Who’s that?” asked Greg. I didn’t know, and neither did Danny, so together we shrugged.

            Amber giggled and I caught myself staring at the girl in the passenger’s seat. Not because she was outstandingly gorgeous, but something else. In fact, from that distance I would have rated her a 7 out of 10, or a 6.4 at the lowest.

            “Should I do it?” Danny asked, chuckling. “I’m tempted.”

            “You should,” Amber said. “Don’t you think one of them should, Emma?”

            Since the attention was on Emma, I allowed myself to look back and stare this time. It’s okay when she was the one talking, right? Instead of responding, she shrugged. “Danny kisses everyone, so who cares.”

            “Maybe I should, then,” Greg said. “She’s pretty.”

            I don’t know what got into me. Maybe a flash of stupid, maybe some other form of blank brain. All I remember was walking toward the car and watching her face transform from a 6.4 to a 8.3 the closer I got, and by the time I stood right next to her she was a 9.2, but still not the most gorgeous being on the planet. Her eyes were grey and sparkling, her skin looked soft, and her long red hair dazzled me. That was why the only thing I remember thinking when I leaned down was that I would never kiss another girl as pretty as her again. So I did it: I kissed her for a few short seconds, then pulled away from her lips. Mine tingled in a weird way where they both begged for more and questioned why I stopped.

            I also hadn’t noticed that, in that time, Danny came right next to me and patted me on the back. “I believe you just took his first kiss, madam,” he said to the red-headed girl. “With that said, what are you doing tomorrow night?”

            The reality of the situation caught up to me. I flushed, embarrassed of myself. What had I done? It had been my first kiss, and I bet she knew it by the way my lips hadn’t moved much. What shocked me most was realizing that I gave my first kiss to the most beautiful stranger I’d come across, and I didn’t mind, somehow.

            Then, with dread, it occurred to me that Danny had come in to take my place, so my time had come and gone. There would be no competing with his brooding, masculine frame compared to me average one. He was tall, dark, and handsome, I was thin, white, and “cute” as some girls would say. Whatever that means.

            “I’m available for dinner. Meet here at seven?” she asked, her grey eyes sparkling more.

            “He’ll be here.”

            Then the white car and the girl with long red hair drove away. It wasn’t until Danny pounded me on the back again that I realized he didn’t set himself up with her, he set me up.

            “Josh,” he said after the back pound. “You must be out of your head tonight. Either she was one helluva beautiful girl to you, or you’re one helluva’n idiot. I like your style.”

            It wasn’t until I turned around and saw Emma and Amber curled over on the porch, laughing, that it dawned on me: Emma noticed me.

Quote of The Day

I heard successful bloggers do something special that makes them really successful. It was kind of fancy:

Blog.

Oh yeah. I don't do that, do I? Sometimes, when I get bored of stalking all my friends on the Facebooks, so I stalk myself instead. On my blog. And it's cool.

For now, I'm going to try to do it once a week. Saturday sounds like a good day, yeah? I don't have a life anyway, so what else am I going to do besides write to all of you about all of my amazing writing adventures?

Today, I offer a quote from Robert Frost. I used to have a bunch of quotes on my wall (not Facebook... I mean I wrote them on my room wall) and this one is my favorite:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower
But only so an hour
So leaf subsides to leaf
As Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

And a bonus quote from The Outsiders:

Stay gold, Ponyboy.


A bien tot!

Modern Day Awesome

I cringe a little bit every time I look back at my old stuff. Not because it's horrible beyond repair, but because I have learned so much from taking a class from author Carol Lynch Williams that my old stuff, in comparison, is... just...

Okay. Terrible. Absolutely wretched.

(And she's probably dead now because I just used an adverb. Shoot, I did it again.)

Anyway, in lieu of writing less crap and more awesome, I've decided to install a short snippet from my most recent scene. Even though it's a chick lit, this scene should appeal to any audience, as I intended for a funnier piece to detract from all the drama that goes on before this scene. I think you'll be able to catch on.

Pending Titles:

How To Screw Your Life Over (And Make it Look Intentional)
    [My personal fave, but the title's a bit lengthy]

Square as a Pear

Confessions of a Dramaholic

For now, we'll call her: Untitled. I feel this is very original.

Chapter Eight

            Dr. Mullins leans backwards in her chair, and I imagine her sticking her feet up onto the cheap wood desk but it doesn’t happen. Her pink lips form a straight line on her mouth, which is good because sometimes when she opens her mouth all I can concentrate on is her teeth. They’re gopher teeth. “So, Jenny tells me that your dad is getting married. What do you think about that?”

            Ugh. Why does Jenny have to make our business everyone’s? I keep telling her that the more she blabs to the Mullinator, the longer I get stuck in her office looking at a picture of Garfield until she pries enough feeling out of me and allows me to go back to class.

            Or, in this case, to lunch. With my friends. So I can tell Gretchen that Trevor is a no-good sleezeball before he breaks her heart, too. But, after last week’s incident, I’ve been sentenced to lunch with my most favorite person in the world. You know, if my most favorite person in the world was the shrink with long red hair caged up in a bun, held in by a scrunchy. Who even uses those anymore?

            In lieu of needing to get to the cafeteria today, I prepare a speech. “Gosh, Analise,” I say aloud and position myself in the chair the way she has in hers. Continuing my best impersonation of her, I continue, “You’ve been such a good sport in class and haven’t punched anyone in a whole week, so I’m going to let you out for real lunch today.”

            “Nice try,” Dr. Mullins says, raising a blond eyebrow that complements her carrot hair. “I’m paid to make sure you don’t bottle everything up, Ms. Jenkins. If we can talk about this, I’ll let you go to the last ten minutes of lunch with your friends today.”

            I don’t give up, despite this. I need out now from the old-lady-smelling room. I continue, saying, “Analise, tell me. Your mother’s death, have you talked about it with anyone? Oh, and look here. Your teachers tell me that last semester you kept up on your schoolwork, but this semester we’ve had a few worried about you because you’re falling behind.” And then, in my best accent, I add, “And how does that make you feel?”

            I clear my voice so that I can continue, this time acting as myself. “Oh, you know. Feels numb. I used to care about grades, and stuff, but now I don’t. I have one friend, I think my dad is a selfish snob for moving on four months after my mom died, and no, I don’t like talking about my dead mom. So, we good, Mullins? A-O.K? Square as a pear?”

            Once again, I clear my voice and I concentrate on the ceramic cat on her desk to help me transition back into my impersonation of her. “I understand, Ms. Jenkins. Analise, do you know what the five stages of grief are? Can you explain them to me, please?”

            I drop the stiff pose and slouch a little bit in my chair this time, mocking the typical teenager. In most cases I would never mock an adult like this, but Dr. Mullins doesn’t seem to mind, and I’ll admit it’s one of the reasons I tell her stuff at all. “Yeah, I know. Acceptance, anger, bargaining, blah, blah, blah. Can I go now?”

            Dr. Mullins smirks, then leans forward on her desk, her fingers interlaced. “Very cute. But sure, let’s talk about the stages of grief. Which one would you say you’re at now?”

            “Um. Anger. Moving onto acceptance, which is why I’ve been good.”

            “Maybe. But if that’s the case, why do you suppose you don’t like talking about your mom? Do you think, maybe, it has some elements of denial in it?”

            “No. I don’t like talking about it because I don’t like people feeling bad for me. I’d rather get a hard slap across the face than have someone pity me.”

            Dr. Mullins picks up a clipboard she has on the desk, writes something down, then puts the clipboard down. My eyes avert to the clipboard, but her scrawl is unreadable so I give up on trying to decipher her psycho-whatever of me.