Another boring fragment
October 28th, 2007 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
I need to release some friends from jail. There is a long line for doing so. In order to prove that they are innocent, I must provide my IP address. I accomplish this by entering a dreamworld where it is easily accessible.
David Bowie Came to my Birthday Party
October 28th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am at my cabin with my cousins playing dungeons and dragons and eating ice cream. It’s time for dinner, so we go across the room to where a large banquet is set up and sit down. My cousin starts passing out more ice cream to everyone. I get two cups, each with one kind of ice cream inside. Everyone around me has at least two kinds in each cup in a precarious stack. I go to the kitchen to remedy my ice cream deficiency and find dozens and dozens of one-pint cartons open with one or two scoops out of each. They are all starting to melt, but I choose one that looks good and pile it on top of my plate.
My mom mentions as I am returning to the table that David Bowie and Bob Pfizherschwizer-or-something are coming to my birthday party.
“David Bowie is coming to my birthday party?!”
“Yeah, considering he and Bob are the only two neurologists in Santa Barbra.”
This seems to make sense.
“He doesn’t want you to act like he’s David Bowie, though,” she adds. “Don’t treat him special.”
I start to plan out my conversation with him. “Oh, hi David,” I’ll start, “I’m glad you could make it. Tell me about neurology.” Once we’re really chummy I might ask him if he’s still working on music.
Swimming, then Sex with a Stranger (well, almost)
October 18th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am with my cousins near a large, remote lake. It is warm out and there is a long dock which extends out to the middle of the lake, so we all take our shirts off and jump into the water. We start to play a game in which we throw shoes at each other and try to catch them. All of our shoes are large blue flip-flops, and there are soon enough shoes flying through the air to clothe the feet of ten times as many people in the lake.
A woman comes around the end of the dock in a kayak. She is older than us – in her 20’s, or something, and beautiful. She lights up when she sees me and starts talking to me like she’s really excited about something. She explains that she’s been kayaking all day and hasn’t talked to anyone in hours and it’s been driving her crazy. I say that I know how she feels and that I get really eager to talk to people after riding my bike all day without really knowing if it’s true. She’s been kayaking for four hours, she says, but as I look around the lake I can’t imagine where she could have gone for four hours but around in circles. I figure this lake must link up to a larger body of water. She gets out of the kayak and starts playing the shoe game, also.
We’ve become really good at throwing the shoes long distances. The lake has expanded accordingly. We seem to be about one quarter mile apart and throwing the shoes with superhuman accuracy and power. The woman, though, has given up with the throwing of the shoes and has taken to blatantly flirting with me. I haven’t been throwing shoes for a while because I’m so distracted by her, so the shoes begin to accumulate around us. She pushes me over into the water and sits on top of me. I realize that she wants to have sex with me, but that would be super awkward in front of my cousins. I get up and start gathering up all of the shoes around us. Everyone else has stopped playing because that have nothing else to throw. They start going home, so I throw a gigantic stack of shoes back towards the dock which is almost beyond the horizon by now. I’m not sure whether to go back with my cousins or to stay with the beautiful woman pressing herself against me.
Deaths by Bicycle, or Impact
October 16th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am riding down Nickerson ave going towards downtown Seattle on my track bike. Someone in a business suit opens the door of a black sedan in front of me as I am looking over my shoulder for passing cars. I collide with the door and hit my face against the edge as the man in the suit is reaching for something in the back seat. He feels the brush of a wheel against his heel as my front wheel crumples like it is made of aluminum foil. He looks at the bike, then at the streak of blood and bits of flesh still hanging from his door. He then looks out onto the road at a lifeless body whose face has become a nearly homogeneous red, chunky gel similar in appearance to a thick tomato soup.
I am test-riding a bicycle I am putting together. I am at the top of Queen Anne Hill looking south. I’m not sure whether I have put on brakes at this point in the build process or if I have any way of stopping, but I start to roll down the hill regardless. A bus pulls in front of me and I reach for the brakes, only to find them absent. I try to stop by backpedaling but there is a freewheel on the rear hub. I swerve out of the way of the bus just in time almost into another car. I continue to accelerate for quite a while, the hill seems to go on for miles. Finally I can see the bottom – by this time I’ve reached my terminal velocity – and there is a red light with a row of stopped cars behind it. I impact the back of one of the cars just as the light turns green and it starts to move forward, sending me flying over the car into the path of the wheels. After the car runs me over with both the front and rear wheels it stops. A driver gets out and inspects the rear fender and determines it is not terribly damaged, then gets back in and drives away.
I am riding through UW campus fast on my track bike. I come around a blind corner at a blistering speed only to find a line of toddlers strung together with ropes crossing the street. I do a giant bunny-hop just in time and barely clear the rope, but instead of coming down on both wheels I start to do a somersault in mid-air. I land on my head, which is not quite perpendicular to the ground, so it folds over and breaks my neck as the rest of my weight bears down on it. I die while I am still clipped into my pedals and my wheel and cranks are still rotating.
Fifteen years later the boy that I would have hit is sitting at a holiday dinner table with his family as his mom tells the story to him for the first time. He is depressed do begin with, but, upon hearing the story, it becomes unbearable and he jumps off a bridge the next day to his death. He regrets the decision to jump in the instant before he dies.
Jenny’s Breakfast
October 15th, 2007 by Elizabeth Dameron; no comments
I wake up to find Jenny Crimp in my kitchen making eggs for breakfast. She is wearing a cape and so I can tell that she is Matt’s sister. She only uses the spices “bicycle” and “Alex’s left lung.” These aren’t from Beau’s spice rack, I notice. Upon eating the eggs feathers grow out of the sides of my forehead.
Soon I am totally covered in feathers.
“You are a bird,” she tells me.
We fly to a science/club fair. Ariana convinces Jenny to join SSC. Alex wins first place for making a volcano which, in addition to erupting, takes the place of his missing left lung. Kris is a reptile.
“I am a wolf,” says Kris. He is wrong.
Variations on a theme: I can not drive
October 14th, 2007 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I am in Fremont at the intersection of Stone way and the Burke-Gilman trail in a parking lot (which in real life is where the triathalon store is). My mom left her car in Seattle and expects me to drive it back to Bainbridge for her. I do not have a license to drive. I get in the car and turn it on.
1. I pull forward slowly by putting it into “drive” and reach the mouth of the parking lot, where I take a sharp right into a busy intersection instead of a left, where I needed to go.
2. I am wearing large boots and the pedals are very close together, which makes it difficult for me to tell which pedal is which and to press just one at a time. I start playing around with the gas and the brake to get used to it but soon realize that I shouldn’t use a foot for each pedal; rather, I should leave one on the clutch and use the other for both the brake and gas pedal. I situate my feet so, but as I start pressing the brake pedal it switches functions with the accelerate pedal, lurching the car forward. The clutch, which didn’t actually do anything until this point as the car is an automatic, becomes the brake next. Soon it is impossible to tell which pedal I should push to go forward and which I should push to stop.
3. I get in the car and realize I do not have a license. I think I could drive the car to the ferry, but I just don’t want to get pulled over. My dad and his fiance are in the back seat because they were going to Bainbridge to see Julian’s soccer game that afternoon, and I don’t want to embarrass myself by asking one of them to drive. I take off my shirt so that if a policeman sees me I will appear older than I actually am, making it less suspicious that I am driving. It occurs to me that it might look like I was naked and that a policeman might pull me over on account of that. I’m not really sure how to proceed.
“Somnimath”
October 14th, 2007 by Alex Walton; no comments
I can’t sleep because there’s a Julia fractal underneath my pillow making my head hurt.
Eytmology
October 14th, 2007 by Alex Walton; one comment
Greek words originate from the kitchen table, where (in very large font, 100+) they hang halfway off the edge, covered in powdered sugar frosting. I am certain this is where they come from.
Her mistakes
October 13th, 2007 by Adrian Sampson; one comment
I watch an instructional video depicting an awkwardly dressed woman on a beach. She describes and demonstrates the sequence of moves that make up the Napoleon Dynamite dance. She has them all wrong.
Later, she attempts to describe how difficult it is to sleep near to an ex and not have sex with him or her.
Liquid Dangerous
October 13th, 2007 by Alex Walton; one comment
Kris and I go into our apartment, which is very old, and very dark. Kris sits down on an old cobwebbed chair. There is bank of windows, but they dont let in any light. It must be after midnight; its nearly pitch black. I find a lamp which runs on gas (?) and decided I must light it. I find matches; when I try to strike them they break in half, invariably, and I find myself fumbling to catch them before they light any of the very old furniture on fire. Even when I touch them they crumble, and ash falls. I find a pitcher full of liquid gas (?) and try and stir some semblance of fire in the lamp by pouring it; it doesn’t work. I have drowned (?) the inside of the lamp, and now it will not light. I grow desperate, because gas is leaking in to the room, and I am worried Kris or I will be overwhelmed by it, fall asleep, and die. Kris looks woozy. I try again to light the lamp; it won’t. I get very sleep, and hallucinate some things. I try in vain to light the lamp. I fall asleep, terrified of what’s happening, and dream strange things. I wake up at one point and try to light the lamp again, but can’t, fall back asleep.
I wake up and go to QFC. It is very early, 5 AM, but the whole store is bustling, hundreds of people buying groceries. I get something (a donut? but maybe something to help me light it?) and go to check out– I see my mom, my mom sees me. She is buying coffee. We have an awkward conversation. I worry she will know what I am up to. I am not sure if Kris wakes up.