Random stories and stuff

[Shaun das Schaf]

Balon! Find your medicine here...

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=866895#866895

[balon!]

thanks man. I dunno WHAT that was about...

[MsMary]

Sounds kind of scary.

[balon!]

Sounds kind of scary.

Seriously!

Claire must've been freaking seeing me covered in blood on my hands and knees...haha

[deer of the dawn]

so Null, the Mirror story wasn't yours? I was floored by that, now I feel so used. j/k

In middle school there was a girl in my little crowd called Helen. Very short and thin, mousy looks, hardly said three words together. It was a banner day if she uttered a sentence; most days it was a shrug or a Mona Lisa smile.

We had a sleepover. Late in the night when we were all getting sleepy, Helen began to talk. She talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talkedand talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. At some point she said, "Okay, who haven't we talked about yet?" and we all yelled "Helen, shut UP!!!" We were all exhausted and I think she had been the only one talking for at least an hour....

Back in school on Monday, she was Mona Lisa again. No one would believe us when we tried to tell them that Helen actually talked to the point where we all wanted to kill her. When we asked her about it, we got the familiar shrug and smile, and that was it.

[lorin]

When I was about 35 I was walking home from work and got bit by a sick rat. I went to the emergency room but they did not do a proper job cleaning the wound. I got an infection in my bone marrow. I spent two months in the hospital. The hospital overlooked the football field of Columbia University. I spent the whole two months watching the CU football team (yes they have a team) practice football. I don't know which was more painful, the infection or watching the practice.

[Linna Heartbooger]

Whoa lorin... a sick rat and a bone marrow infection, (horrifying) and stuck in a hospital bed for 2 months... horrible.

Claire must've been freaking seeing me covered in blood on my hands and knees...haha

Wow, has anyone else here read (or seen, I guess) "Time Traveler's Wife"? This sounds like it's straight out of it..

(I'll come up with a story of my own sooner or later..)

[MsMary]

We're waiting for it, Linna...

[sgt.null]

It all started when our (former porn) star, Sgt. Null, woke up in a foxy forest. It was the third time it had happened. Feeling abnormally stunned, Sgt. Null attacked a dull pencil, thinking it would make him feel better (but as usual, it did not). Ever so extemperaneously, he realized that his beloved White Gold Ring was missing! Immediately he called his former squire, Lord Zombiac. Sgt. Null had known Lord Zombiac for (plus or minus) 200,000 years, the majority of which were striking ones. Lord Zombiac was unique. He was smart though sometimes a little... pestering. Sgt. Null called him anyway, for the situation was urgent.

Lord Zombiac picked up to a very glad Sgt. Null. Lord Zombiac calmly assured him that most legless puppies turn red before mating, yet South American hissing sloths usually flamboyantly shudder *after* mating. He had no idea what that meant; he was only concerned with distracting Sgt. Null. Why was Lord Zombiac trying to distract Sgt. Null? Because he had snuck out from Sgt. Null's with the White Gold Ring only two days prior. It was a flamboyant little White Gold Ring... how could he resist?

It didn't take long before Sgt. Null got back to the subject at hand: his White Gold Ring. Lord Zombiac yawned. Relunctantly, Lord Zombiac invited him over, assuring him they'd find the White Gold Ring. Sgt. Null grabbed his hippopotamus and disembarked immediately. After hanging up the phone, Lord Zombiac realized that he was in trouble. He had to find a place to hide the White Gold Ring and he had to do it carefully. He figured that if Sgt. Null took the amphibious vehicle, he had take at least three minutes before Sgt. Null would get there. But if he took the donkey? Then Lord Zombiac would be really screwed.

Before he could come up with any reasonable ideas, Lord Zombiac was interrupted by ten stupid Vultures that were lured by his White Gold Ring. Lord Zombiac sneezed; 'Not again', he thought. Feeling frustrated, he skillfully reached for his gerbil and aggressively slapped every last one of them. Apparently this was an adequate deterrent--the discouraged critters began to scurry back toward the bush, squealing with discontent. He exhaled with relief. That's when he heard the donkey rolling up. It was Sgt. Null.

----o0o----

As he pulled up, he felt a sense of urgency. He had had to make an unscheduled stop at Sears to pick up a 12-pack of dangerous oil-soaked rags, so he knew he was running late. With a careful leap, Sgt. Null was out of the donkey and went explosively jaunting toward Lord Zombiac's front door. Meanwhile inside, Lord Zombiac was panicking. Not thinking, he tossed the White Gold Ring into a box of carrots and then slid the box behind his time machine. Lord Zombiac was relieved but at least the White Gold Ring was concealed. The doorbell rang.

'Come in,' Lord Zombiac indiscriminately purred. With a quick push, Sgt. Null opened the door. 'Sorry for being late, but I was being chased by some stupid beer-sloshed tool on a tricycle,' he lied. 'It's fine,' Lord Zombiac assured him. Sgt. Null took a seat exotically proximate to where Lord Zombiac had hidden the White Gold Ring. Lord Zombiac sighed trying unsuccessfully to hide his nervousness. 'Uhh, can I get you anything?' he blurted. But Sgt. Null was distracted. Like a drunken sailor at happy hour, Lord Zombiac noticed a annoying look on Sgt. Null's face. Sgt. Null slowly opened his mouth to speak.

'...What's that smell?'

Lord Zombiac felt a stabbing pain in his scalp when Sgt. Null asked this. In a moment of disbelief, he realized that he had hidden the White Gold Ring right by his oscillating fan. 'Wh-what? I don't smell anything..!' A lie. A insensitive look started to form on Sgt. Null's face. He turned to notice a box that seemed clearly out of place. 'Th-th-those are just my grandma's ninja stars from when she used to have pet Indonesian devil cats. She, uh...dropped 'em by here earlier'. Sgt. Null nodded with fake acknowledgement...then, before Lord Zombiac could react, Sgt. Null recklessly lunged toward the box and opened it. The White Gold Ring was plainly in view.

Sgt. Null stared at Lord Zombiac for what what must've been nine seconds. Like a drunken sailor at happy hour, Lord Zombiac groped charismatically in Sgt. Null's direction, clearly desperate. Sgt. Null grabbed the White Gold Ring and bolted for the door. It was locked. Lord Zombiac let out a sassy chuckle. 'If only you hadn't been so protective of that thing, none of this would have happened, Sgt. Null,' he rebuked. Lord Zombiac always had been a little oafish, so Sgt. Null knew that reconciliation was not an option; he needed to escape before Lord Zombiac did something crazy, like... start chucking gerbils at him or something. Suddenly cheered up by the Hamtaro theme song, he gripped his White Gold Ring tightly and made a dash toward the window, diving headlong through the glass panels.

Lord Zombiac looked on, blankly. 'What the hell? That seemed excessive. The other door was open, you know.' Silence from Sgt. Null. 'And to think, I varnished that window frame seven days ago...it never ends!' Suddenly he felt a tinge of concern for Sgt. Null. 'Oh. You ..okay?' Still silence. Lord Zombiac walked over to the window and looked down. Sgt. Null was gone.

----o0o----

Just yonder, Sgt. Null was struggling to make his way through the fantastic pumpkin patch behind Lord Zombiac's place. Sgt. Null had severely hurt his ankle during the window incident, and was starting to lose strength. Another pack of feral Vultures suddenly appeared, having caught wind of the White Gold Ring. One by one they latched on to Sgt. Null. Already weakened from his injury, Sgt. Null yielded to the furry onslaught and collapsed. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was a buzzing horde of Vultures running off with his White Gold Ring.

About seven hours later, Sgt. Null awoke, his teeth throbbing. It was dark and Sgt. Null did not know where he was. Deep in the uninhabited secret vineyard, Sgt. Null was barely lost. Suddenly cheered up by the Bozo theme song, he remembered that his White Gold Ring was taken by the Vultures. But at that point, he was just thankful for his life. That's when, to his horror, a huge Vulture emerged from the imaginery desert. It was the alpha Vulture. Sgt. Null opened his mouth to scream but was cut short when the Vulture sunk its teeth into Sgt. Null's scalp. With a faint groan, the life escaped from Sgt. Null's lungs, but not before he realized that he was a failure.

Less than two miles away, Lord Zombiac was entombed by anguish over the loss of the White Gold Ring. 'MY PRECIOUS!!' he cried, as he reached for a sharpened carrot. With a skillful thrust, he buried it deeply into his liver. As the room began to fade to black, he thought about Sgt. Null... wishing he had found the courage to tell him that he loved him. But he would die alone that day. All that remained was the White Gold Ring that had turned them against each other, ultimately causing their demise. And as the dew on melancholy sappling branches began to reflect the dawn's reddish glare, all that could be heard was the chilling cry of distant Vultures, desecrating all things sacred to virtuous men, and perpetuating an evil that would reign for centuries to come. Our heroes would've lived unhappily ever after, but they were too busy being dead. So, no one lived forever after, the end.

[deer of the dawn]

Wow.

A good friend of ours has a son who was a little boy when we first married, and we lived up the street from him. We were close and watched this kid grow up. He would often take off his clothes when playing outside (their house was on a busy road) just to get more comfortable. The school had no idea what to do with him and he was put on Ritalin for a while. When he got tired he ran in circles until forced to go to bed. But he was almost always happy. In second grade, never having written a word, he wrote an entire sentence complete with capitalization and punctuation. The children completed a project on what they wished for, and his said "Happy what I got." Kiddo's teachers pronounced a gloomy, unforeseeable future as they threw up their hands.

My Mom visited and we walked by our friends' house. There was Kiddo, rolling in the dirt under a cedar tree. I called out a hello to him and he sat up and stared at us. Then he picked up a handful of sand and let it pour out slowly from his hand. I knew him well enough that I understood he was sharing his ecstasy with us. My Mom, of course, thought he was just strange.

Kiddo is all grown up now. He is employed by a major university as a computer technician. He goes to church, has hair growing everywhere. He rents his own house and walks everywhere, refusing to own a car. He writes poetry. In other words, he is as he has always been-- his own person.

[lorin]

double wow.

When I was about 30 I was planning my own 'leaving las vegas'. One day I had just had enough. I had just finished Michener's The Drifters. I quit my job, sold my car and bought a one way ticket to Spain. My intent was to follow the path that was taken in the book. I had no intention of ever returning. My plan was to keep going until it was time to depart. After spending about four months exhausting my resources, both mental and physical, I came to the end of the proverbial line. Actually it was the end of the literal line. I was in the Algarve in Portugal. If you go to the tip of the Algarve there is a town called Sagres. If you go through the one main road, keep going out of the town the road ends at the cliffs of Sagres. So there I was, standing at the end of the line, below me hundreds of feet of ragged cliff.


I took this when I revisited two years ago

But at that moment, standing at the rocky edge, the sun was setting, birds dove from the cliffs to feed, it was so damn beautiful that all I could think was that I would be putting a huge ugly blemish on such an incredible creation. And I just could not do it. I could not ruin something so perfect. I fell asleep and spent the whole night sleeping nestled against the rocks. When I woke I was calmer and more forgiving of myself than I had been in years, or ever would be in the years to come. A year later I made this picture;

[deer of the dawn]

That is an amazing and moving story, lorin. Thank you.

[sgt.null]

real story - call in the family!

one day in grade school walking by the Mcgonigal house i spied a pencil cup atop their trash heap. metal bottom, somje sort of treated paper sides. red cup, with gold lines. i took the cup and had it over a decade later when i moved from home and lost it.

[MsMary]

That is an amazing and moving story, lorin. Thank you.

Indeed it is. And love the pics that accompany it!

[aliantha]

So glad you didn't do what you intended, lorin. And I love the picture you made.

[sgt.null]

Books About Lawn Gnomes


Once upon a time, there was this guy. This guy was very sad. He was so sad that he decided to go out into his front yard and seize his lawn gnome. He stared at it for at least 45 minutes. He then smashed it with an umbrella. He suddenly felt happy.
The guy went and published his book, "Happiness Through Lawn Gnomes." Millions of people bought it. It didn't work. They then smashed it with an umbrella. Many people tried to publish, "Happiness Through Books About Happiness Through Lawn Gnomes," but only one four year old girl did. Millions of people bought that book.
It didn't work.
So everybody stuffed their books in shoeboxes and flooded the guy and the girl's houses with billions of books. But they had lawn gnomes and books about them, so they lived on in happiness for eternity.

[Linna Heartbooger]

The other day I had the kids in the car and was feeling very stressed and worrying about various things.

Just as I was getting on to the hwy, I started making up a silly song, (about my stress and how I felt about the whole situation) and singing it out loudly, fresh off my stream-of-consciousness.

Every other line made my 5-year-old laugh! Soon we were all excited, even if my problems hadn't gone away or been fixed.

[aliantha]

Aww.

[sgt.null]

It all started when Sgt.Null, woke up. It was the ninth time it had happened. Feeling abnormally puzzled, Sgt.Null yawned.

[Linna Heartbooger]

One of my favorite me-doing-something-when-I'm-mostly-asleep situations was when I had charged my younger sister to wake me up really early in the morning so I could work on homework.

After a day or two of me complaining, "You didn't wake me up!" to her, she got written evidence.
That's right; she got me to write down and sign a note that I was woken up by her, and I didn't even remember it in the morning.