No, I Mean That Literally

You think your life is a dumpster fire?

Well, you and the public library have something in common.

The fire department visited my workplace today as a tossed cigarette started a surprisingly-large fire in the recycling dumpster on the north side of the library.  

While waiting for the firemen to arrive, my coworker Abe ran out and pulled the flaming representation of the Michael Bay Transformers movies away from the building, where it quickly melted the entire container into a bubbling, stinking puddle of charred filth (see also, THE REVENGE OF THE FALLEN).

It did create quite a smell, and the entry doors are propped open as we speak to air out the building (though I can't say if *opening* the doors when the fire was outside makes scientific sense to me).  I can't say that I participated in putting out the fire in any way, but I did take a picture, and made three or four lame jokes about dumpster fires.

Oh, add this one to the list.

Rish Outcast 312: Heads Up

Rish presents a very short story he wrote a number of years ago for a match-the-image contest, about a boy who gets a strange visit from his brother in the night.

Then Rish talks about floating Danny Glick and the last time he saw A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984).

Download the file directly by Right-Clicking HERE.

Support me on Patreon HERE!

Logo by Gino "Foreheads Up" Moretto.

My Voice On "The Wax Shadow" on HorrorAddicts

A lot of the stories Emerian Rich writes for her podcast* have a female main character and female supporting characters. Sometimes, there's a dude who grabs one of the women's butts on the subway or tells her he's gonna kill her daughter if she doesn't give up the briefcase . . . and in those cases, she lately calls me to voice those guys. Everybody else, she voices herself.

But with this new story, "Wax Shadow," it's almost completely the opposite. This tells the tale of Josh Anton, up and coming star of action movies, who is gifted with a wax replica of himself, one that looks remarkably like him. But when Josh spreads himself too thin, the wax version decides to take his place for a little while, to help him get back on his feet.

I voice a whole mess of characters in this one, from Josh and his doppelganger, to his brother, to a talk show host, to a deliveryman, to an Action star from the past that lives down the block (Emerian did change the gender of Josh's assistant to a woman, or it would've been even more).

I tried to make Josh and his brother and his artificial twin sound similar, but slightly different to one another, and that turned out to be a real challenge (sometimes Josh sounds a bit KeanuReevesish, and that wasn't entirely my intention). I'm not sure if it's even apparent in the finished product, but I did try.**

If you've got the time, check it out HERE.

*It's more likely she writes them elsewhere and puts them up on her podcast, since she also publishes collections of them . . . like I oughtta do more of.

**Usually, I can alter the pitch or the accent or the age of the character so they sound distinct, but this one gave me way less wiggle room. By the way, when you were a child, did you have a Wiggle Room? I was always jealous of my friend Steven's Wiggle Room. It seemed so wondrous and freeing and fun. Until they found the bones, that was.

I Don't Know Where He Gets It

My nephew Kayden asked me what time I went to work on Monday, and if I could help him with his English project before I left.  I asked him what the assignment was, and he told me he had to write a narrative story in the first-person that was at least 750 words and had to have a resolution.

He thought maybe he'd write about a court case with lawyers and a judge, and I asked him, "Do you know anything about courtrooms?  Like, do you watch any shows about that sort of th--"

"No," he said, "you're right, that's a stupid idea."

I told him it wasn't stupid, but that he should probably write about something familiar, like school, or golf, or family, or fishing, or buxom young women that like to wear white t-shirts and suspenders in the rain.

He said, "Okay, sure."  

I said, "Alright, what do you want it to be about?"

He didn't know.  I strongly suspect that's why he wanted my help with it.*

So, I kicked several potential ideas at him, of things I knew he was familiar with, that wouldn't be too difficult to riff on (I may have tossed out that old chestnut "Write what you know"), and he picked a fishing trip with him and his friend and his little brother.  It starts to rain on them, and his little brother goes back to get ponchos and/or umbrellas, so he has the keys, and they're lately locked out of the car because of that.

I gave him a couple of notes, feeding him a set-up that could pay off at the very end of the tale, but mostly letting him write the story. And I was surprised by just how hard that was for him, just how bad he was at it, and how not enjoyable this task was to him. It was supposed to be at least 750 words, and at the two or three hundred word point, he asked if it was okay to stop. We could resume work tomorrow, the day before it was due. But I told him we should push on through to the end, and tomorrow, we could do revisions.

The story, as I said, was about him and his friend and his younger brother going fishing, and they get lost in the woods, and then a bunch of wolves chase them ("bunch" is the technical term for a pack of wolves). And to my surprise, he chose to end the story with the wolves eating his little brother.**

It was a surprise because it's not something a lot of kids--a lot of normal kids, anyway--would have gone for. It instead seemed like something I would have gone for at his age. And a lot younger, if we're being honest. So, was that my influence on him? Was that him writing something he thought would please me? Or is it possible that this sort of twisted morbidity runs in the family?

To my surprise, he wanted it to end with his little brother getting eaten, instead of sacrificing his friend's life, or having all three boys escape.  "Are you going to get in trouble?" I asked, "having it end that way?"

"I can write what I want," he said.  "The teacher said it could be about anything, as long as it was long enough."

Well, it was long enough.  I have to admit that I made matters worse, though, by saying, "How about nobody believes you about the wolves, but later, a farmer shoots one, and when he cuts it open, they find your car keys inside it?"  He liked that idea.

I did a word count when we reached the end, and we were at 864 words, which exceeded the assignment. I saved the file (for once) and told him, tomorrow, we can read it aloud and make whatever fixes it needs, then he could turn it in.

But that didn't happen. The next day, he told me he didn't want to work on it anymore, and that it was only supposed to be a first draft anyway. So, I emailed it to him and he handed it in. And he got 100%, which felt pretty good.***

The next assignment was to do a polish on the story, to fix whatever notes the teacher had given, by Kayden said he wasn't going to bother, as he'd already gotten 100%. Now, I don't know if that means that there were no mistakes (there surely were), or that it couldn't be improved (it surely could be), but if the teacher didn't find anything wrong with it, the boy wasn't willing to put in any more work. So I guess that's where he's not a chip off the old block (do uncles have blocks?). At least not totally.

RBO

*I get that this sort of activity is painful drudgery to some people, but man, it's the sort of assignment I ate up in elementary school, junior high, high school, and college.  In fact, I even thought it was fun walking him through it, though it was a challenge not to try to take over the narrative, or correct him when he said, "Me and Chris kept running as fast as we could" and such.

**Not just biting him, or killing him, or infecting him with werewolfism (the technical term for lycanthropy), but eating him.

***I had worried that the teacher would say, "Uh, no. You need to rewrite it so it has a more appropriate, positive ending." But who knows, maybe he thought it was refreshing.

A Free Lunch?

I came into work today, and saw an unmarked brown paper sack on one of the benches just outside the library (where people go to smoke).  I see abandoned items literally every single day* and often, they're clearly garbage that someone chose not to throw away, but other times, it's less clear.  If it's something valuable, we put them in a little safe in the back and put a note on them designating the date and who found the item.  If it's something less so, there's a big container/tub where items go for a week, then get transferred to a Week 2 tub, and after that . . . well, there's a farm upstate where the items are free to roam and play.  And if it's food-related or simply trash, that's where I toss them.

An hour or so after seeing the sack, I went out there to look in at it, and I saw a sandwich, a green apple, a mustard packet . . . and a couple of dollars under a napkin (actually, I put them under the napkin when I saw them so they weren't so obvious anymore).

I would normally have tossed the whole thing, but now I didn't dare.  But I also didn't dare leave the bag out there in the sun--I know how little money these homeless folks h--okay, I imagine how little money homeless folks have--and assume they would miss even two or three bucks, which makes the difference between a cheap meal . . . and nothing.  So, I grabbed the bag and took it to my desk, then stuck a Post-It note on the cement bench where it had been telling the owner that I had it and he could pick it up from me.

It seems unlikely (at this time, anyway) that anyone will come claim it, but I wanted to give him/her a chance.  And this is all totally unnoteworthy, I realize.

But just a moment ago, a young man--a student-type--was walking down the inside hall, looked over to where my note was, then promptly did a U-turn and headed outside.  Ah ha, I thought, here's our culprit!  (and by that, I don't mean anything negative about the guy, just a fun word to use in a blog post . . . stop getting so upset about words, okay?)  So I watched the kid leave the building and go out to the atrium, where he read my note . . . then promptly took out his phone to take a picture of it.

What the hey?  I'm currently racking my brain to figure out why someone would take a picture of my note--is it funny?**  Does it have some kind of double-meaning behind it?  Is it an in-joke or is he taking it that way?  Does he think it's a clue to something?

I can't say, but then, I can never really say, unless I ask.

Well, a few hours have passed, and nobody came to claim it.  I figured I'd toss the food, but then I thought I'd go ahead and eat the apple.  But it turned out to stink of cigarettes, so I did toss it.  Wow, another truly awful blog post.  Sorry.

*This is actually not technically true, as I started keeping track in August, and there was a single Wednesday where I didn't find a wallet, keys, library card, water bottle, sketchbook, headphones, iPad, or one of those vaping mechanisms.  A single day.

**Probably, as I'm a pretty funny guy.  You should see me in swimtrunks.

Under The Big Top World

Last year, Marshal Latham did a very bad thing.  But what I did might have been even worse.

Over at the Journey Into... Podcast, he created a story contest once again inspired by the music of Journey.  This time, though, there was a visual aspect to it all, as he fed the lyrics of each song into an image generating program.  The song I was assigned was Faithfully, the one about a musician on the road, missing his lady love, and most certainly not mutant related.

But this was the image it generated for me:

Circus life, anyone?

So, I wrote a story ("Faithfully") about a man who used to travel around, judging records for the Guinness Book, who has lost his sense of wonder.  And then he goes to a mystifying backwoods circus, and sees Marcelo, the dog-boy.

It's another of those tales that I wrote in a fever, with very little memory of, which is always nice for me to revisit.  It ended up a quite long story, but is it a good one?  Well, you can find out for yourself by listening to this week's Journey Into... podcast episode, where my tale is narrated by the talented (and muscular) Wilson Fowlie.  Click HERE and send all your love along the wire.

Podcast That Dares 61: Goodnight, Mr. James

Rish presents Clifford D. Simak's 1951 Sci-Fi tale "Goodnight, Mr. James," where an unstoppable alien creature escapes captivity and only one man (or technically, two) can stop it.

It was also the basis for a 1964 episode of "The Outer Limits" called "The Duplicate Man," which only the Patreon version explores.

Warning: Distractingly noisy audio.

If you'd like to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

Come support me on Patreon HERE.

Logo by Gino "G'Day, Mr. James" Moretto.

Marshal & I Find Monsters Among The White Rocks

Over at the Outfield Excursions podcast, Marshal Latham and I review the 1959 low-budget horror film, THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS, no doubt one of your favorites.  We have so little to say about it, though, that I change lanes to talk about a little-seen John Cusack adventure, HOT PURSUIT.

Check it out HERE.

Rish Outcast 311: In Security 5

This is the big one folks--the most significant thing I've experienced since coming to work as a security guard*--and hopefully, I tell it well.

So, in this episode, you'll hear:
1. The Patron That Was M-wording
2. The Sleeper Has Not Awakened
3. Rish Says Inappropriate Things About Minecraft Club

As always, you can download the file by Right-Clicking HERE.

And of course, you can support my Patreon by clicking HERE.

Logo by Gino "In Maturity" Moretto.

*If you don't count the time the poor man befouled his britches because the bathroom door was locked.

If I Was A Ghost, Would I Tell You?

I meant to blog about this months ago, but it seemed so unimportant.  But here we are, at the end of summer . . . and it's even more unimportant.  But I'm going to tell you about it because the library just put up its first Halloween event notice, and wouldn't you know, it has three ghosts on it.

So, because of weirdness, I always go running at night, and I seldom encounter other runners or dogwalkers or crossing guards, etcetera.  But one evening, pretty close to midnight, I was doing my usual spin around the block, when I saw a dark figure at the end of the street.  They weren't jogging or walking, they were standing still as a tree, only the illumination of a nearby streetlight pointing them out to me.  I kept jogging in that direction, but they didn't acknowledge that I was there . . . or even that they were alive.

My pace slowed, which you'd probably think was impossible.  I was only a few yards away now, and the person--it was definitely a person--had not acknowledged me.

"Hey," I said, but the figure didn't move.  I was still moving, though, and as I got closer, I could see that, while it was a person, they appeared to have no face.

I got nearer and nearer, and I have to admit that my pace slowed considerably* and I began to wonder just what I was encountering.

Finally, just as I was passing by, I said, "Are you a ghost?"

At that, the figure moved.  He pulled back his hoodie so that he could lift off one of his headphones, and said, "What did you say?"

Nope, it was just a dude, who had been standing in silence, presumably listening to Chantal Kreviazuk or Cannibal Corpse.**  "Nevermind, sorry," I said and began to jog again, distancing myself from the stranger in the way we always do.

About a half a block away, I turned my head to look back, just in case.  The figure was gone.

No, that's not true.  He had gone back to listening to his Lil Nas X or Rebecca Black.  And I envy him that.

*As I was typing this, the lights in the Attic here at the library began to flicker, and I saw a woman standing alone in the room, looking around as it alternated between dark and light.  Turns out, they're having yoga classes in there tonight and another woman was testing out the lights, but for just a moment...

**Both are equally likely.

Rish Outcast 310: Judge Not

It's time for another sketch, guest-starring Bigglesby Anklevich! This one's called "Judge Not" and deals with a boss very pleased his employee is not the judgmental type.

If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Fudge Not" Moretto.