wr_post14:subj_fict

URBAN ANTHRO: KNOW YOUR 'FUCKER'

when you're in love, it shows. you glow, i guess, but glow isn't really the word. you exude the inner peace that having someone to confide in grants you. there's a spring in your step (an expression that must (and here i have chosen my words insensitively) sit funny with the paraplegic. can one have a spring in ones' roll? a question for another time). there are those who will resent your newfound or longstanding happiness and in turn find you absolutely repulsive. you must, above all things, ignore this jealousy. it can ruin a relationship; make you question your motives; give you a repulsion towards yourself, and by extension, the one(s) you love. instead, as with any pack animal (and humans are most certainly pack animals), you must establish dominance. there is nothing wrong with your behaviour. you are entitled a healthy amount of pride in finding that someone who does it for/to/with you.

begin your training regimen by establishing boundaries. to truly instill a sense of inferiority in the unlucky few, for simplicity's sake we'll call them 'losers,' who cannot adapt to the necessities of reproduction and subsequently, the passing on of ones' genes (and in many cases, jeans), you must catch them out of their element and repeatedly emphasize their aloofness. invite your single friends out to bars and doubles tennis tournaments. next, startle them with gestures that emphasize your superiority. grab a sensitive area on your significant other's person while grunting loudly. proffer it to your single friend. when they make to accept the gesture, strike swiftly. it is crucial that they perceive no hesitation on your part.

repeat as necessary.

when they are sufficiently demoralized, you may reward them in some small way. offer to hook them up with another single friend. so that they don't react too strongly to this gesture, it is important to temper it with characterizations of their attire, build or personality as undesirable.

remember, above all else, that you are better than they are: more virile and lithe; sexier. it is entirely acceptable to goad them into self-mutilation. it will indicate that they have accepted their role in the pack.

kill yourself.

wr_post13:subj_fict

OH, HENRY!

Henry Benson.
Hank to his friends...if he'd had any.


So already, we've established Hank as an outsider. He probably could've had friends if he weren't so particular about the friends he (would've) kept. He worked in finances and made enough money to retain a substantially well-endowed girl. He'd never tried the gay thing, he was just waiting for the one, as they say. Generally reserved was he in two words. Sure, he went out on weekends and got drunk and social, but he'd never felt the need to take anyone back to his rat's nest. He wasn't a pack rat, per se, just disorganized. He kept ill-kept records on potential terrorists, do-badders in his neighborhood and people who had pissed him off in one way or another. They occupied the rooms Hank didn't and waited for their date in court.

Late in the afternoon, one August day, he slit both wrists and died on the phone with his grandmother who suffered from Alzheimer's. She told the rest of the family that he had decided to move to Swaziland. No one looked into it and his firm replaced him.

wr_post12:subj_fict

CLYDE THE DONKEY: LUXE AND REDUXE

once there was a donkey who lived on a farm. it wasn't a commercial farm or even a subsistence farm. more of a hobby farm. they had two cats to keep mice out of the barn. and a cow because the grandchildren liked cows and clyde. he could pull a plow if you wanted him to, but the garden wasnt big enough to merit all the machinery. instead he just sat in the barn and thought his donkey thoughts. one of the cats, morris, had lived in the house for a while and was knowledgable about words. he used to read the old woman's fashion magazines. clyde loved words. they were so pretty, he thought. except he couldnt read them. he wanted to learn so that he could write down his story. everyone could benefit from his story because donkeys live a long time and think slowly. he used to pull the pages out of the books that he could find. he would pile them in his nest. (donkeys keep nests you know). morris used to come by and write things on the walls as clyde spoke them, but they didn't make any sense to a cat. the farmer saw the markings one day and decided there must be kids sneaking into the barn. for the protection of his animals and because kids could get hurt unattended in a barn, the farmer closed up the doors at night and bought a lock. morris couldnt come to visit at night anymore. instead he had to interrupt his sleep pattern and come in the days. he was typically very clumsy and donkeys do not have very good eyesight so one night clyde accidentally stepped on morris and killed him. they buried him by the barn and whenever clyde looked at the little cross and read the letters, he said to himself, "M-O-R-R-I-S, smart. morris was a smart cat!"

it's touching. the story of a donkey and his cat. it's like "of mice and men". the donkey didnt know how strong he was. he crushed the poor cat. cry, you miserable bastards!!!!

wr_post11:subj_fict

MOVIE OPENING

three men were walking down the road. harry stood to the left of james. james held hands with his son, blake. as they approached the corner where harry lived they said their goodbyes. harry veered off into his yard where he picked up the newspaper and headed to the door. at this point, the camera pans to follow james and blake. a car drives by. we do not know it now, but it will be significant later that the car is red and carries two passengers, one a man wearing a fedora and dark glasses. james is, at the moment, walking blake to tim's house. tim has a son about blake's age and they often play together on weekends while tim and james discuss sports and cars and cooking (tim is one of james' few male friends who also enjoys cooking). they are both stay-at-home dads. tim's wife, helena, works in a law firm while james' wife, sharon, owns and operates an antique store. the antique business is big, because four months out of the year, their town is a very popular vacation destination. being in the middle of montana, this is a bit of an oddity. they draw crowds from the majority of the midwest, but they get the most visitors from canada. so much so that some elderly canadians have established time-share residences on the edge of town. marty, a married woman, retired after thirty years as a seamstress in toronto, often visits montana...alone. the man in the fedora is a private detective hired by marty's husband, donald. donald is bed-ridden from a hunting accident when he was in his mid-forties. his sister, diane, stays with them and watches donald while marty is away. all this is revealed in long pans fading from one scene to the next. there is no dialogue, but the text is instead spoken by an older gentleman.
{title credits}

wr_post10:subj_fict

STORY TIME

steve weinstien and walter johnson lived next door to one another forever. they both lived in their childhood homes. their parents died and they each took over their father's businesses. steve married walter's sister and walter married steve's. and the wheel in the sky kept on turning. then one day as they returned from work steve and walter met at the short hedge that divided their yards, as they often did, and drank a beer as they pondered life's mysteries, as they often did.

"do you believe in an omni-present, creator figure?" steve asked.

now walter and steve had known one another all their lives, yet the issue of religion had never been broached. just one of those things you leave alone. some people are very touchy about it. there was a slight pause as walter thought the question over. then he reached under his jacket, whipped out a gun and shot steve in the head.

it was an open and shut case. there were several witnesses. walter called the cops himself to confess. later in jail he repented for his actions, began tutoring inner city kids through a rehabilitation program, prayed fervently and lived out his life in an upright, admirable sort of way. after three months of appeal failed, he faced the chair. he was electrocuted before nine members of the county governance board and received a small funeral.

"name?" saint peter asked, as walter checked in at the pearly gates.

he got through without much hassle and looked up steve in the heaven directory.

"sorry about that whole business of shooting you," walter said. "i just wanted to do some research before i gave you my answer. after weighing many things, i've decided that i do beleive in a creator and furthermore, a benevolent, forgiving creator. i'm sorry it came at such a heavy price to each of our families. i just wasnt sure how else to be certain."

steve took in the whole explanation in silence, then smiled and offered his hand to walter in a good-natured handshake. walter was moved by steve's unfathomable kindness. he had expected it to take several days, months or years, though he was not sure of a concept of time in heaven, for steve to forgive him. as he pondered all this, steve reached under his robe, pulled out a gun and shot walter in both knees. as steve stood over walter, a look of satisfaction came over his face.

"thanks god," he said. "that guy was a real shithead."

"no prob, steve," replied god. "us jews gotta stick together."

wr_post09:subj_fict

HOW TO TELL A JOKE WHEN YOU FORGET HOW TO TELL JOKES

So here's the point. You are asked to tell the interviewers a joke. You suddenly forget all the jokes you know. So you’re no longer REALLY trying to be funny, but you have to say something. And if its fucked up enough and delivered with a completely straight face people will laugh...albeit nervously. So with those conditions set, I sought to come up with something completely fucked. Hence standard opening:
Two guys walk into a bar...
They work in office buildings next to one another and they realized that they get off at about the same time each day. It’s become standard to see one another there to unwind. So one day they walk in and there's a new bartender. This is a bit of a surprise, especially since they've been coming in for about a year and always had the same guy there to greet them. So one guy walks up to the bar and, by way of seeing whether the "new guy" knows his shit asks, "do you know how to make a sex on the beach?" the new bartender reaches under the counter and grabs a bat, menacing the two guys he leaps the counter and chases them out of the bar. Now they were a bit put off by the unwanted exercise, but they'd been coming to that same bar so long they couldn’t quite get out of the habit. Plus the next nearest bar was several blocks down and parking was always hard to find. So again they go in, this time careful not to say anything provocative. They order two beers. Still the guy flips. Doesn’t say anything, just grabs the bat, leaps the counter and chases them out. Well this is just intolerable. They can’t conceive of going home to their wives without a little time to unwind. They are both happily married, but the buffer is the only time they get to just let it all hang out. So they decide they'll have to wing it on the parking and just go to the bar down the street. So they get their coats on, meet in the garage and climb into the car. They park behind the bar at what looks like a loading dock, head inside and have a beer. This is all they wanted. Just some time to talk about sports, chicks and life. They walk out towards the car only to find it in flames. They are pissed. They run back into the bar to ask what the fuck is up with the "towing" in this neighborhood. the bar is empty. they go back out and see the new bartender standing in their path with a bat. he takes them by surprise. smashes in one guys kneecaps and breaks the bat over his head. he hurls the splintered ends at the man who's running away catching him through each shoulder and knocking him to the ground. he drags them both up against the bar and really works them over. then as he's walking away he looks back over his shoulder. "in my fucking bar, we dont serve no damn pussy drinks." the men chuckle under their breath. "it sure is hard to find a quality bar these days" the newly-paraplegic man says. the other man just slouches down and coughs up blood.

eh? eh? hilarious!
a bit complex, yes, but thats the point. straight face. they wont know what to think. and you probably will be branded as a sadistic fuck unfit to be in any organization. wait what were we trying to accomplish?

wr_post08:subj_fict

…BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

"If I gave you four copies of Hamlet and asked you to make a diorama, what would you do?" he said, entering the room.
"'The fuck is that supposed to mean?" she shouted defensively over her shoulder as she stuffed the potted plants under the couch cushions. He had seen it, but he wouldn’t bring it up. He knew all too well what she was going through.
"You want to go get some Mexican food?" he asked. They only spoke in questions these days.
"Are you hungry already?" she asked. Another goddamn question, he thought. It had to stop. He seized the telephone receiver and put the listening end forcefully in his mouth. He then dialed his mother-in-law. "What are you doing?" she asked, getting up and coming towards him. He slammed the kitchen door shut and barred it with a broom. "Why are you being so crazy, honey?" she wailed. "Is it something I did?"

The phone was ringing. He could feel it in his teeth. Someone on the other end picked up. He took two sticks of celery out of the crisper and played the cadence to "Wipe Out" on the lower end of the phone, while punching more numbers in with his nose.

"Who is this? Sheila?" a voice asked. "Why are you doing this to me? What do you want? Are you hurt? Sheila?" It didn’t matter what he did. Only questions. He couldn’t take it any more. He spat out the receiver into the sink. It clattered into the drain. He hit the garbage disposal and took a bite of the celery. His wife had stopped knocking. Was she gone? No, he thought. It's only a trick. He could see shadows moving outside the door. She must be trying to look at him through the gap. He poured out a pile of salt along the bottom of the doorframe and blew it under the door. There was screeching on the other side.

"Why did you do that, John?" She was crying and coughing, trying to clear her eyes. "Do you have any idea how much that hurts?"

"NO MORE QUESTIONS!!!!" he yelled. The lack of inflection in his voice shocked him. He had made an Imperative statement. It wasn’t a question. He had brought about meaningful change in his life. He pulled the garbled head of the receiver out of the sink and dialed the police. He told them he was trapped in his kitchen and an enraged woman with bloodshot eyes, claiming to be his wife was trying to kill him. He hung up, slipped a kitchen knife under the door and sat down on the counter laughing. She wouldn’t be arrested, but they would look into it. There would be questions and she would have to answer them...