The Little Truths Writing Contest deadline will be extended until midnight, Monday, March 10. You may leave entries of 75 words or less at the contest link above or over at LitPark, where some 150 other entries wait to be vanquished. Give it a try, Dallas!
May 10? It keeps getting longer! :)
Thank, you Jay. Monday, MARCH 10. I'm tired. So, so tired. So...very...tired. Well, now I'm better.
Oronte, I want to enter the contest, but I've read the other entries and they are so good that I know I can only be creamed by their superior awesomeness. Plus, I'm a nobody. What's a fat boy gotta do?
Courage!, as our slightly odd friend Dan Rather used to say.
If I'd let limited intelligence and spurious credentials hinder me, would I ever have become an adjunct lecturer and a blogger? Well, probably so, but you should enter the contest anyway. Write an entry about hamburgers. Big juicy hamburgers with all the trimmings, in which you find sudden bone chips that make you nearly remember something important....
The Great Lakes crisis created a need for French-speaking volunteers. Raised in Ohio, I thought they meant Lake Erie, so raised my hand. Next thing I knew I was southbound on a long-haul flight to the heart of darkness. Based in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, I made my way across the Congo border to Goma where an annual Miss Tutsi competition sought to break the monotony. The Great Lakes crisis resulted in the horrifying deaths of more than 800,000 persons, most killed with knives, machetes, clubs and bats. The absence of technology apparently was no hindrance to the impulse for carnage.
Gah... I've been called out. I do want to give it a try; I'll see what I can do.
I was thinking about the contest when I read an article in the New Yorker about six-word biographies: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/02/25/080225ta_talk_widdicombe
His finger brushed her palm. Through their fleet greeting, no eye contact, but a jolt through her body, cascading into her groin. Twelve months later they sit wordlessly in the darkness, will their elbows touch? The high school musical drones on, but they are together. He’s divorced, she’s married; yet happily? Lately, most thoughts crowded out by his clear blue eyes, the salt and pepper in his hair, as she glanced sidelong at him, warm, in the dark.
Ho, hum, it's March 11.
And?
First, a posting today on evaluating writing, then the contest results later in the week. Relax, have a latte. Davenport's cogitating, and we don't want to go anywhere near that.
CHURM! I'm illiterate and I have one excuse. I misread "March" as "May." Is it too late? Is it really too late?
1. Whiskey
The young man swallowed with difficulty, watching his father’s face flush.
“Shaving,” he nasalized, removing his hands from his closed eyes. “Your mother says you’re shaving.”
“Oh. Uh-huh,” the young man answered.
“Listen…” he paused, drank it off, and filled the Dixie Cup to its brim.
The clouds moved, shading the apartment. “Got a girlfriend?” he asked.
“Uh-uh,” the young man answered.
“Try it. It’s bitter, though.”
2. Show and Tell
Eric Hawk opened his uncle’s Hustler and pointed, rubbing the page with his thumb. “See!” he started. “Told you it was gross.” It was nausea and thrill at first sight. Before I could peer into the eye of a manicured vagina—truly a clinical sight, almost alien, like a close-up of a deep-sea beast without a name—Eric had his pants around his ankles and, while masturbating, goaded me to follow suit.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.
3. Undersea exploration
Daniel and Danny laughed suddenly and had to surface for air. The high school pool was full of Saturday morning families and their kids. Juvina was wearing a polka dot bikini, smiling at her aficionados, Mexican almonds behind oversized sunglasses. At 14, she was more of a woman than her teachers, and knowing this, insisted that her “boys” take a deep breath and “this time, do something you pendejos!”
4. Denouement
“Weh!” The Penguin began. “You’re wondering how I outsmarted Mr. Batman and purloined your capital, aren’t you?” The Penguin paused to adjust his monocle. “Let me give you a word of—” “Well, if I can make a comment about the stated question, the very fact that we're discussing them tells us a lot about the sort of intellectual culture and moral culture in the United States,” replied Noam Chomsky.
I forgot to add this to the last story entitled "Denouement"
(Noam Chomsky, The Real News Network, November 19, 2007)
