It Does

And so the year continues, one thing after another, a succession of incidents, like all the others that have gone before.  One thing after another, it’s always…  Each year it’s the same, like this, a string of things that just happen to happen.  When the year is sufficiently filled with successfully processed events, it is time to start a new one.  The remaining available capacity is monitored through the year, so as each of the 365 episodes that make up a series takes place, their length is tweaked one way or another to achieve balance.  When a new year kicks in, you might expect things to run faster, because the year is empty, and not weighed down… but what they do is they fill it up with fake future events, as ballast – hopes and fears about things that might happen, or just mindless speculation.  That’s the way it works.  It does…

Smash The Snooze Button

Smash the snooze button
Give up Give up Give up Getting up

Smash it Smash the snooze button
Again and Again and Again All day
Every day Defer and Regret
Take the easy way out Give in

Defer morning
Defer breakfast Defer washing Defer dressing
Defer taking part taking responsibility Defer life
Embrace sleep Embrace lethargy inertia entropy
Embrace it being so comfortable so warm
Embrace it being so peaceful Smash Smash Smash

Smash
Smash the snooze button Stop time
Stop time from happening Smash it
Embrace losing and Snooze away
Dreaming only of snoozing Snooze good and
Snooze long Snooze now Don’t ever stop
so
Smash the snooze button

Snooze
and win

Day #11594: Story Cubes

(Last Christmas, my friend Suzanna gave me some Story Cubes, and then this Christmas she gave me an expansion pack.  Thanks Zan.  These dice make for a good storytelling game with friends, or can be used as a writing prompt.  So, here’s one I rolled this morning, as an example.  I decided to limit myself to 100 words, which I stuck to, more or less.  The ending is a bit weak, but I’m secretly pleased by how many of the exciting plot devices I managed to make less exciting than they should be.  Feel free to have a crack yourself and post the results in the comments below)

One summer when I was a student, I got a job chopping up unwanted dinosaur bones and disposing of them down an old pirate well*.

I hated it.  They didn’t even provide lunch and my supervisor always spoke to me like I was two feet tall.  So I decided to expose the company’s secrets…

I packed my camera, chemicals for processing photographs, and my raygun (which I didn’t end up needing).  Once I’d taken the pictures I retreated to a tent I planned to use as darkroom.

From the shadows emerged a dwarf.  “Well done, you passed the test…”

 

*Y’know… pirate wells… course you do.

It’s Not Uncommon To Hear A Siren

The fire engines are out again, howling up and down the road all night.  Looking for a fire they have lost?  Rushing in loud, fading to far away, sweeping back round.

When it goes quiet, we sit still and listen.  Things are eating their way in to our home.  All our doors are made of wood.  The house is full of paper.

It becomes important that we leave and now, so we climb through the window.  Only late-night readers are still sitting in their lit-up front rooms, caught on the hook of some book they want to finish before sleep.  Just in case they do not wake again.  We do not feel we can disturb.

The sound of a fire engine, then the feel of it going past, and it makes us feel small and light, as if we are morsels that bigger animals don’t even notice at all.