On the second Monday morning after failing the police department entrance exam, Donnie was staring at people at work. He was supposed to be saying “Hello, welcome to Best Buy!” but found himself slack-jawed and unable to form words. He figured this would be all right for one workday, at least; as long as his lips were strung up in a smile he was probably satisfying his job requirements.
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I like to imagine that our apartment was once adjoining broom closets until someone realized you could fit a kitchen counter into one of them and a mattress into the other. Our ceiling lamps, one in each room, jumped right out of a ’40s noir, complete with periodic buzzing, swinging and flickering. Somtimes I like to sit at our computer desk, rest my feet up on the bed, and pretend I’m wearing a fedora. I think this stopped amusing Elizabeth a long time ago, but these days I think I’m much more easily amused.
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To what purpose a canoe? To Harris, twofold (therefore nuanced) in its failure, until the moment it capsizes. The purpose of this writing exercise is to imitate the stylistic technique of an established writer (postmodern author John Barth; story “Lost in the Funhouse”) towards personal stylistic gain. Other generations of writers transcribed short excerpts of (or the entirety of; or large excerpts; or etc) classic novels (desperate mimes setting the table hoping the silverware will spontaneously generate if they do enough wild clutching). It is a learning method not unlike a watchmaker’s apprentice gutting his master’s craftsmanship to explore the innards. (perhaps the shame and apprehension are also not unlike)
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It was a late Sunday afternoon, just on the verge of evening, but the sun was still up outside the McDonald’s restaurant, and many of the ceiling lights along the outer walls were turned off. The main dining area of the McDonald’s was small but cozy; the few walls that weren’t thick glass softly reflected sunbeams across their wooden finish. Angela often likened the effect to sitting on the edge of a gazebo in a quiet park, though here the park had ceramic tile rather than grass and smelled like deep-fried grease instead of pine.
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Oh, my. Look at his eyes. I love looking into the eyes of little puppies. My daughter Alice, when she was seven, she told me she thought their eyes looked look so sad all the time, so big and wet. Me, I think they’re just perfect. Beady, misty little bulbs of innocence, you know? Makes my bones relax to look into them, like I’m sitting at the fireplace on Christmas Day with my grandchildren in my lap.
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I don’t really like to write poetry, but I have written some, mostly for class assignments.

Here’s a poem of mine I found recently; I wrote it a few years ago. It’s a sonnet.

* * *

Her ignorance a rose, her sweetness found -
His scent appealed to her, too strong fragrance,
Dancing around the sky, all tied and bound
With string, tied neat, too tight, not sweet romance.
To him, her eyes had sung, so bright, a trance,
A light, a sign - imaginary pride.
His eyes had called to her, so soft a glance -
Then struck, and bound her to his side.
The touch was light, the signs all - cried -
She made no move, no struggle, no -
Attempt to stop him, try to - cried -
Through stifled - sight bound - tight lips - no -
Her legs cold, her tears coarse -
her face shorn, her throat hoarse.

There has been a Photoshop contest over the past few days at Pointless Waste of Time. The goal is to create alternate covers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for those men who want to buy it but don’t want to be embarrassed if they’re caught reading it. These are covers for fictional books which any man would be proud to be seen reading in public.

It would be worth your time to read the whole thread, as there are many, many amazing and hilarious contributions. I will immortalize my own, however, because I’m very proud of them all and want to remember them even if some or all of them do not make the final cut for David Wong’s article. Also, these covers constitute the most creative output I’ve had in months, so I may as well put them here in lieu of some good writing.

Warning: these are both enormous and not family-friendly.

Book 1: None Hallow’s Eve
Tonight, the lantern laughs… at your corpse!

Book 2: Instrument of Death
They stole his life. He stole their tank.

Book 3: The Porter Incident
“Come on, barkeep, just two more…”

Book 4: Fisting the Dragon
One man. One fist. One million dragon asses.

EDIT: The article is here. Instrument of Death made the cut.

Our eyes tangle from across the table. It’s not a long table — you try fitting long furniture into a one-bedroom apartment where the kitchen doubles as the living room — but it’s long enough for the moment to make me feel like a billionaire whose trophy wife sits on the other side of an improbably long continent of a table, where the girl’s worth a glance more often than not, but her mouth can’t usually live up to the luscious billing of its lips.
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My hands are shaking.
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The guy who runs Pointless Waste of Time, David Wong, is also fairly well known on the Internet for John Dies at the End, a story which began as an annual Halloween treat for PWoT fans and eventually evolved into a full-length novel. It’s simply fantastic horror-comedy literature; the frightening elements are truly disturbing and scary, and the moments of humor manage to be simultaneously outrageous and hilarious and perfectly natural to the rhythms of the story and its characters. Both aspects take their turns drawing you into the story, and the wonderfully expressed characters keep you there.

I had the wonderful opportunity to help proofread a copy of JDatE for its CafePress print debut; that worn editor’s copy holds a precious space in my bookshelf.

I’m taking the time to talk about this now because of some recent developments; specifically, Wong’s got a publisher. Soon, the book will be available on Amazon.com and on bookshelves, and not just through CafePress. By all rights, any random person who takes the time to read it should recognize and appreciate the care and attention which has been put into its creation. Congratulations and best wishes to David Wong on the success of the book. I can only hope that, in this format, JDatE receives all the praise it rightly deserves.