Archive for the ‘Trent Walters’ Category
Meet the Extraordinary Ordinaire
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
In terms of continuity, this is the first of the Pandora series. It is followed by 2) “The Bug-a-Boo Bear,” 3) “Chop Chop,” 4) “Byzantine,” and 5) “Long Live the Dead“.
She was just like us, but she was less than us, and she was more.
Pandora left the pantry door unlatched, the mead-stained beer steins in the sink, her clocks unwound.
She read the stars, some side-stitched journals stained by meadow grass, the minds of mortals (unreliably, it’s true).
Pandora had boxes–lots of them. She opened some and closed the rest. A magpie queen of hollow cubes, she mountained box on box, secreted box in box. She even slept in one. The boys perked up to hear how well she worked with boxes though she labored blithely blind to such potential perks.
She lived for untold years, for who knows what? She died, for who knows why (none cared to ask)? She altered lives, for good and ill.
So why are you, dear reader, unaware of her but for her famed faux pas?
Through Weakness, Strength
Monday, August 25th, 2008
A. Template for the Crrrazy-Bar-and-Grill Story
At the Crrrazy Bar and Grill, where everybody loves you and your worst quirks, Joe Schmuck cradled a foaming mug of Schlitz, sitting in his regular black leather barstool. The stool’s panoramic view allowed him first glance at whatever otherworldly creatures would slime inside Uhura’s [insert more Irish sounding name because they’re so crrrazy and they likes they booze]. The balding bartender wiped down the counter as in sashays his fiery red-headed daughter, whom Joe secretly pines after–the superfluous love interest that is never quite requited so that readers return, story after story, wondering when those two crrrazy kids will hook up. They’ll almost make out, but then she’s beeped out to LaGrange point 2.5 to settle the alien dispute raging there.
In [walked, zapped, sizzled, slithered] a(n) [extra-dimensional being, time traveler, cockatrice, the oafish two-headed were-snake] with a mean thirst for stouts–only Joe didn’t know it was a(n) [extra-dimensional being, time traveler, cockatrice, the oafish two-headed were-snake] until he/she/it did something dastardly, putting the whole universe in peril!
But thank God for Joe and the dipsomaniacs at the Crrrazy Bar and Grill, who come together when they’re needed most. [Insert corny gag at the end to release tension through a forgettable denouement.]
B. Questions for Popular Templates
Is it enough to kick over a man’s many-storied sandcastle, laugh, and walk away? Isn’t the gesture like the hole left from a foot passing through walls of sand?
What is a template, but the framework that satisfies many, not unlike eating a pound of chocolate in one sitting? Is it that the few are displeased that many are happy with little, or that the few are simply displeased with much?
What drunken misfit wouldn’t want to guzzle off a beer-sticky oak floor where misfits fit in? What lover wants the chase to end: Isn’t that what leads to boredom, musty motel rooms, and expensive divorce lawyers? Isn’t it fulfilling when the clumsy two-headed oaf saves the universe due to his deformity precisely because it gives hope to the rest of us misfits?
C. Pop Will Eat Itself
Socrates’ fame inflated like a latex balloon by his popping other balloons with questions lathed to pinpricks. But what foundation did he ever smooth with a trowel? Can an ecology of pincushions and wrecking balls exist alone?
The snake consumes its tale.
Or does it? Is Doctor Frankenstein any less a man for creating a monster that seeks to destroy him as much as the creator seeks to destroy the created?