Rhyming, reporting and phasers on stun

At the Poetry Jam last Thursday, another local poet said she was looking for volunteers to help paint children’s faces at an arts festival being put on to raise money for art programs for kids. To my surprise, it sounded wonderful.

Though I design on a computer all day and I have some (mostly basic) background in arts and crafts, painting is definitely not a skill I have. But volunteering is something that was always an important part of my life that has fallen to the wayside since I’ve moved to Florida.

Part of it is the schedule because working noon to 9 p.m. isn’t conducive to a normal life. Part of it is that now that I’m out of school, nobody is showing up in my classes to ask for volunteer time, anymore. And part of it has been fear, I think, because finding new places to volunteer is a lot like making new friends.

But once the opportunity presented itself, I pounced and became a face painter. I spent my Saturday afternoon making children look like cheetahs and tigers and pandas and butterflies and one ferocious dinosaur. There was real joy in putting the mirror in front of a child’s face and seeing the smile slowly build up as they realized that they did (sort of) look like one of their favorite animals.

Saturday reminded me just how much I do miss volunteering, and made me wonder if I can’t find a way to work it back into my life.

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for Ryan Martin

A voice is a difficult thing to find. Even more difficult to maintain.

The demands of daily life destroy enthusiasm and productivity. I’ve never been a fan of conformity, but it seems the farther I get from school, the more it is required as a matter of simple survival. Great minds are made to think like every other, and that is a tragedy.

My own tribulations are primarily brought on by myself, as I’ve documented at #Life. Choosing to live halfway across the country from Jean has been the best and worst decision I’ve ever made. But at the same time, I feel the pressure to sit down and shut-up coming from people who aren’t interested in improvement because improvement requires change.

And that’s a theme I’ve seen among everyone I left school with. We left with aspirations and ideas, but nobody cares to listen. Not just in work, but in the structure of our lives. Expectations require us to ignore everything we trained for and accept the fact that our lives are going to suck. We are suffering from a cabin fever of the mind — an inability to operate at our full potential.

As I look forward in my life, as I try to write more and to be more fulfilled, I need to remind myself that I will never be happy so long as I conform.

This photo says it all. Rampant fanaticism and oppression is easy. Hitler did it. The United States is doing it now. Need proof? Read this blog post:

Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

The accusation of “suspicious activity” in the vaguest sense of the word is not grounds for that treatment. You want to remove the suspicious non-white people from the plane while you check out the situation? That’s still wrong, but not as bad as conducting intrusive searches and long detainments with no evidence.

I am not scared of terrorists or attacks or people who are different from me. I am scared of ignorant fanatics who report “suspicious activity.” I am scared of people who use fear as their weapon.

I spent some time this last weekend familiarizing myself with Reddit. I still think it’s ugly as hell, but I believe I’ve managed to figure out how it works. It calls itself “the front page of the internet.” And it’s the closest thing to that goal, which I think is a rather noble one.

Trying to stay up on all the popular web services, social and otherwise, can be a bit of a task. I don’t try to use them all for long, but I like to try them out. That’s how I felt about Google+. It’s pretty, it’s not Facebook, it has a couple of interesting features and then…that’s it. I haven’t logged on in weeks. It didn’t hold my attention, at least in part because I think maintaining circles is just a very complicated and tedious task.

When I’m online, I usually keep 3 windows open: Gmail (including Gchat), Google Reader, and Facebook. Between those three services, I manage to do just about everything I want and can contact any person I want in at least two different ways. Also, I get my news, poems, stories, and cat pictures from around the web. But that’s three different windows and I have to constantly switch between them.

I abandoned Google+ because it doesn’t add enough value to keep a window open. Same for Twitter, where I really only read a handful of friend’s posts and rarely bother to update. I understand the differences in all of these services, but with a smart phone and most of my working day spent on a computer, I find myself limiting my free time spent maintaining them and I try to streamline the process. I used to love Twitter and its SMS capabilities when I had a dumb phone, but now that I have a smart phone, it’s a redundant service to my Facebook updates.

What I really want, though, is one place to go. I want something that combines my Gmail, Google Reader, and Facebook all in one place all the time. And I want to have total control over how much it shows me. I can do some of that now, but it would never work seamlessly. I can get my Facebook feed on Reader, but it doesn’t exclude all the people I’ve told it I don’t want to hear about. I can get news sent to my e-mail, but it’s not as well organized and it gets in the way of me seeing direct contact from other human beings (and spambots).

It’s a fanciful, wish, I know, but it’s all I really want. Everything integrated into one stream that I have total control over. There have been attempts — some good and some bad — but none have been precious enough that I’d call them my own.

Another entry for Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction contest. This week, the topic is unicorns.

The Code

At first it was cute.

The 3D printer made the first unicorn figurine in about 5 minutes. It was an inch tall and had a “My Little Pony” feel to it. As soon as I got it off the printer, I tossed it over to my roommate, Ryan.

“Where’d you get the design for this? You aren’t a Bronie, are you?” he asked, flipping it over in his hand.

“Hell no. Those guys are weird,” I said. “I put the Konami code into the printer and that’s what came out.”

“Huh,” he said, throwing it back.

I caught it and then noticed that the printer was working again. Another unicorn from the look of it.

~*~

After the fifth unicorn figurine, each of them getting bigger than the last so that I now had an 18-inch statue, the printer ran out of material. The largest of the statues looked like a robot unicorn and had a rainbow beam trail coming out its hind end, like it was jumping and the rainbow was following. My roommate said it looked like it was shitting rainbows.

I began looking for places to store all of my new unicorns. The second one was my favorite and I put it on my desk. It was a unicorn scratching himself with his horn. As I sought a place for the gigantor rainbow shitting statue, the printer started moving again. I looked over and, to my surprise, the printer also looked like it was shitting a rainbow straight out of the cartridge and onto the floor.

Opening the plastic storage tank, I verified that it was empty and should not be making anything. But still, the printer pressed on. I picked up one end of the rainbow just as the printer stopped. It felt and looked like a fruit rollup, but it shouldn’t have been there.

When the printer started working again, I have to admit that one part of me was not surprised.

“Ryan, I think the printer is broken,” I said loud enough so he could hear me from his bedroom.

“If it’s still printing out those unicorns, just take the plastic out,” he yelled back.

“I don’t think it will be that easy,” I said, checking the reservoir again.

Ryan walked into the living room, carrying half a sandwich that he’s eating. He looked in the reservoir himself and saw that it was empty. “Did you try unplugging it?”

I pulled the plug out of the wall and we both watched as the printer finished up the statue, which we removed from the printer. After a brief pause, it started up again.

“Magic,” Ryan said, shrugging.

~*~

On the third day of our empty, unplugged 3D printer producing unicorn figurines, we started selling them on Ebay.

We figured it wasn’t costing us anything, and as long as we accounted for shipping costs when we sold them, we had a good business model. In fact, since the only resource we were consuming was magic and the bookshelves in our apartment, we had a great business model. When we incorporated our business, we had to go with our second name choice, “Magic 3D Printer, Inc.” because “Magic, Inc.” was already taken by the basketball team.

“Shit,” Ryan said while he was filling out the paperwork on the Web, “I didn’t realize that basketball team still existed.”

~*~

On day five, we had a customer cancel his credit card after we shipped his order. We did manage to contact UPS before they delivered, so our only loss was on shipping.

“Fucking Bronies,” Ryan said.

~*~

Day eight disrupted our business model. In the last week, we’d made almost $10,000 and still had a significant number of statues littering our apartment. We watched all afternoon as the printer put out a unicorn that was more than twice the size of any we’d gotten yet. After several hours, the printer finished the design. It was a unicorn. Not a statue. It was a full-size, living unicorn. And it was standing in our living room.

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“Let’s call him Steve,” Ryan said.

“That’s not possible,” I repeated, not sure Ryan heard me the first time.

“Magic,” Ryan said, shrugging.

“But what are we going to do with it?”

“I’ll make some phone calls.”

~*~

Later that day, Ryan brought home some horse feed and a shovel. The printer seemed to be working on our third real unicorn. It’s worth noting that unicorn shit does not smell like rainbows.

Ryan put a large stack of money on the table.

“$25,000 for Steve. A man will be here with a trailer in an hour.”

“Where did you find somewhere to sell a unicorn?” I asked.

“And we’ll get $25,000 for every unicorn after that, but we have to give this guy first option on every one”

“At this rate, we’ll print six of them a day.”

“I’m sure my black market guy will be happy to hear that.”

“We’re going to start selling these animals to fence on the black market? Nothing can go wrong with that.”

“Don’t look a gift unicorn in the mouth.”

I stared back at him for a long time. “How long have you been sitting on that one?”

“Since I got handed that stack of money,” Ryan said, “Thank you for humoring me.”

~*~

We got arrested on day 17. We were charged with animal cruelty, violating zoning regulations, and selling animals without a permit. I’m not sure what they did with our magic printer, but I was glad to be rid of it.

The desk sergeant gave me a quarter and put me in the cell with a pay phone. Our black market connection had promised us a lawyer, so I wasn’t sure who to call. I picked up the receiver, anyway, and dropped the quarter. While listening to the dial tone, I punched in the Konami code. It got me into this mess, and maybe it would get me out of it.

This story is being submitted to the Flash Fiction Challenge on Chuck Wendig’s site: terribleminds.com. The prompt is “An Unchartered Apocolypse,” and this story represents the earliest stages of the end of civilization. If you like writing and funny stories about babies, follow Chuck’s blog. It’s pretty cool. And now, the story.

Tax Not Included

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

“Hello, I think my house is being robbed,” the young man on the other end of the line whispered, so Joan turned up her headset.

“I’m sorry, sir, did you say your house is being robbed?”

“Yes.”

“That pushes you to the front of the line, one moment while I transfer you.”

Joan marked the call as urgent and sent it to the police system. Since there was a crime actively being committed, she stayed on the line to help the customer remain calm in case he was put on hold. Fortunately that wasn’t the case.

“Police Billing, this is Toni, how can I help you?”

“My house is being robbed,” the man whispered into the phone.

“May I have your account number, sir?”

“I don’t have one.”

“May I have your social, please?”

“My what?”

“Your Social Security Number, so we can run a credit check.”

“I don’t think you understand,” the man sounded frantic. “There is someone in my house right now.”

“And that’s why I’m trying to take care of this quickly, sir. But I’m afraid we can’t dispatch a unit until we know you can afford it.”

“He has a gun!”

“I’ll be sure to apply the five percent intelligence sharing discount for you, sir, but may I please have your social?”

“I don’t…I can’t…you won’t approve me.”

“I can check for you, anyway. Free of charge.”

As the man read his Social Security number aloud, Toni didn’t tell him that her computers had already lifted his number off the phone account he was using and run the complimentary police credit check. As soon as he confirmed the number, she knew he was right — she couldn’t dispatch officers to help him.

But she was trained to not let the customer know you had taken the information from the phone line, so she waited about 20 seconds as if the computer was processing the information. She was harvesting Farmville crops while she waited.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t be able to dispatch an officer to your location at this time. If you contact the non-emergen-”

“What?” the man started crying.

“If you contact the non-emergency number first thing in the morning, a loan officer will be glad to discuss investigation options with you.”

“But..but…”

“Thank you and have a nice evening.”

Toni disconnected the line, glad her sign-off spiel hadn’t been interrupted more. Customers never understood that yelling at her wasn’t going to improve their credit score or reduce the cost of having an officer dispatched. And they acted like they didn’t believe a for-profit police department would refuse service, but it had to.

“Are you ready for break?”

Toni looked up to see her friend Debbie standing in the cubicle door.

“I sure am,” Toni said, grabbing her purse. “I just had to turn away another person who acted surprised that I wouldn’t dispatch an officer that they couldn’t pay for — as if we were running a public service here.”

“Oh no. It’s been five years since the resolution passed and they still don’t get it,” Debbie said, leading the way toward the break room.

“It’s like they thought doing away with taxes wouldn’t stop the flow of government money,” Toni said.

“If you think we’ve got it bad, though, you should hear some of the stories I hear from my sister-in-law who works in the Welfare Office.”

At 10 p.m., I’ll be sitting in a theater watching the 30 minutes of previews bound to precurse “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″ with two friends. One is glad to be seeing the movie, but I don’t think hangs any life-changing significance on the film’s release. The other friend is a little more excited.

I haven’t found an example of her saying this is the end of her childhood on the Interwebz, but she’s that kind of excited about the movie. She’s carrying a toy wand in her purse, she listened to the book on tape all day, and she brought a stuffed Hedwig to work today.

This movie doesn’t excite me that much. And it isn’t that I’m not in love with Harry Potter and what it stands for — I am. But this movie does not mark the end of my childhood.

But I understand why some people say it is. It’s about the magic of childhood and the stories we associate with it. The end of Harry Potter is like (spoiler alert) finding out that Santa Claus has your parents buy Christmas presents for you on his behalf.

To me, the end of my childhood belongs somewhere earlier than tonight: the first time I read The Catcher in the Rye, when I saw Revenge of the Sith dressed in Jedi garb, or on the release night of the final Harry Potter book.

After all, the Harry Potter series were books, and I’m more a book person. Add on that I think the first Harry Potter movie was awful (a grudge I hold against it to this day), and I’m left putting all of my hopes and dreams into the book basket. Books are better than movies because I get to be involved. J.K. Rowling gives me the most important information, and my mind puts a backdrop of my own imagining. I live in that story with the heroes.

My favorite parts of the movies are quidditch, wizarding duels, and the assortment of mythical creatures: the kind of things that CGI can manage better than I can on my own. But I won’t bother to critique the plot of this movie because I’ve seen it somewhere before. I’m not saying people shouldn’t be so excited about the movie, I’m not that excited.

But I am excited: the Battle of Hogwarts is going to be awesome.

Genre is an issue that I’ve long evaded.

I’ve most oft considered myself a JOURNALIST and a POET. If you made me break it down, I’d say I’m a copy editor or a local government reporter in the journalist tree and I’d probably say something like spoken word poet on the other.

But recently, I’ve been trying to work in fiction. I’ve always wanted to, but I finally feel those juices running through my head. The problem has been that I thought “I don’t want to be a crime writer.” And that made my life difficult. I started to realize that in my 23 years, most of the facts I’ve shoved into my head are based in politics and courts and cops and crime organizations.

Those are the kinds of books I read, the movies I watch, the games I play. And in my real life, I spent so long following local politics that you can’t help but pick up on a lot of the finer points of how crime and law enforcement work in your community.

Great, I think to myself, I’m going to be another one of those journalists.

When my mind settled back to the page, though, I realized I didn’t have to be. It’s what I know about, and it’s what I like to read, so why shouldn’t I be writing it? Besides, outside of the romance novel and great travelling adventures, I don’t think there’s a lot of fiction that doesn’t deal with some kind of authority of the cop or criminal variety.

And now, a few days after I’ve come to peace with whatever the hell genre I’ll end up writing, I finally have an idea for a long-term project. Maybe you’ll never have the chance to read it because it won’t be finished, but my first idea is an exciting one for me.

Whenever I have a new idea, I run with it. And I fail a lot.

Rarely do I think something all the way through before I start planning it. And though some would say that’s bad, I think it’s really just my way of making decisions about what is and isn’t worth pursuing.

And days like today, when I make decisions too hastily, I get better ideas out of them later. And that’s exactly what failure should be — an opportunity to future success. And if that’s the case, I can expect a lot of future successes.