Time

[Fiction] Friday comes to you this week from a new home. This week's prompt:

"Drunk on _________.
Fill in the blank, then write a quick description of your character in that state."


I sit down before my legs give way, the magazine clutched in my hand as I half fall, half attempt to sit into the big leather chair. Ahhh … I can’t help but spin around in the chair that hugs me like a large and expensive glove. My head is dizzy, light – wafer thin echoes through my head, in correct Monty Python fashion. Yes, my head is wafer thin. I force myself to focus on the magazine cover. It brings me back to my faculties again. I stare down and two faces grin back at me.

I want to giggle because it seems so absurd, even as I sit here, in this huge office with a river view. We’re on the front cover of the Time Magazine … and we’re laughing, Tony and I, because we couldn’t take the photo shoot seriously. We would have been better off taking ourselves down the road to find a photo-booth. Yeah, a strip of three goofing off photos on the front cover of Time – that’s us, keeping it grassroots - simple.

Neither of us really took the ‘business’ too seriously – we just wanted a place to get ourselves published. Then this happened ….

“Time Magazine!” I exclaim out loud to myself, “I’m on the front cover of Time magazine’ and don’t think it sounds boastful or full of ego. I’m probably deluded though. Honestly, I needed the front cover of Time - to make this success real to me.

And I love the headline “Are these the most dangerous people in publishing?” You bet, I agree, if only to myself. We came, we saw, we conquered. Yeah baby!

I’m tempted to be vain, to look closely to see where Photoshop has touched me up. It reminds me of the days, eons ago, when I would get up close in a nightclub toilet mirror and attempt to touch up smeared or missing lipstick. At least Photoshop got my lipstick right. As for Tony he didn’t need to worry about a good hair day or a good lippy day. I should ask him what he was looking for in the front cover – wrinkles, a grey hair?

I grab my mobile and I send a rapid, slightly illogical SMS to ask Tony. There’s plenty of words that make no sense, but I don’t waste time fixing them. I want to get up and dance on the leather couch over the other side of my office, with a bottle of expensive French champagne in hand, swigging from it.

“MUM! Share the glue.”
“Huh?”
“Share the glue. Co-oper-ation,” he exaggerates, looking at me seriously from underneath his long golden brown fringe.
“Sure love,” I mumble and pass the glue stick over.

I look down at the magazine cover on the table.
“What’s this called again?”
“Collage?” I reply and stick the head down.
“Why is there a clock?”
“The magazine is called Time Magazine.”
“That’s a silly name for a magazine.”
“You think so?”

I run my finger over the cover, neatly torn off an old magazine. The date has been changed, now neatly handwritten as July 2008. My head is glued to one body and Tony’s to the other. I have Mike from Monsters Inc on repeat loop in my head .. “I’m on the cover of a magazine!” Next I pick up the first of two words, publishing, cut ransom note style from the newspaper, and stick it down. As I stick down the second word, I begin to hum.

“What’s that song?”
“From little things big things grow,” I reply absently.
“That’s a silly name for a song.”
“No sweetheart it’s not a silly name for a song,”

And I stare at the second word …. revolution!

Mercurial Observations 2

It's been a few days since I've blogged anything about this current cycle of Mercury Rx. In the past few days the following things have happened:

• Dylan's kindy got a new assistant which meant Wednesday I needed to stay back at kindy for an hour to help Dylan with the transition (it was also kindy open day and it was organised, blissful chaos - and didn't want to make life any more difficult than it was for the kindy Director). This meant I was an hour late getting to the cafe for my cup of tea, my morning pages and meeting Annie, before taking in our weekly movie.


• The Babes in Arms screening was switched times - from 10:30 to 10:10 - so I'd missed Annie at the cafe and she'd given up on the movie because I hadn't shown. Thankfully I'd double checked at the desk the day before as to which movie was the Babes in Arms session. The girl at the ticket booth didn't seem to know what was going on - gave me the movie for the $8.50 the babes in arms session is (bonus!) and off I went. Saw '21' - awesome movie!!


• In all of the above, my mobile was flat so wasn't able to ring Annie - she deduced that I'd been abucted by Ninjas.


• Yesterday Dylan sprayed stay in conditioner onto the TV screen and into the control buttons below the screen and seized the TV. Thankfully after a day of sitting there doing not a lot, the moisture seems to be dissapated and we're back to TV as usual. I should also add - that Dylan has NEVER done anything crazy like this before - and looked at me blankly when I asked him what possessed him to think spraying the conditioner into the control buttones was a good idea.

I've also given up trying to get through The Magician and picked up The Time Travellers Wife from the library today. 17 pages into it ... and I'm hooked. Mercury Rx seems to be a good time to me, to be reading about time travel.

And finally, in regards to the 'writers block' that I had been warned of - well it's transpiring more to be an apathy towards writing, rather than a actual block. I need to sit down and just write. Those famous words again.

And everyone else - how are you faring?

Advertising and Ethics

Tonight was the first episode of the ABC new programme The Gruen Transfer- pitched on it's website as looking at 'advertising, how it works, and how it works on us.' Hosted by comedian Wil Anderson, it's a hit in my world just for that (which would come as no surprise to anyone who lives in our household)

The following two ads from Dove were dicussed in the the ethics section of their show.

I had never seen either of these ads - we don't watch commerical TV. I'm posting these this evening to open a a discourse about them. At the moment I'm too tired to string together enough words to make either a logical or coherent sentence.

Is there such a thing as ethics in beauty advertising?

Firstly evolution ...



And the follow up onslaught



Are we being sold a new beauty myth ... is this just a wolf in sheep's clothing?

Mercurial Observations

Mercury went retrograde yesterday. 'What's that?' you ask. Mystic Medusa sums it up brilliantly in her most recent Mercurial Musings "Mercurial Bats: Blithe Spirit":

Mercury is the mythological Messenger of the Gods and the planet that rules such phenomena as e-mails, couriers, gadgets, computers, phones, letters. In short, communications and intellect. Three times a year it goes ‘retro’ and can produce complete utter chaos. Mercury Retrograde rules missed calls, delayed flights, lost data and stupid vile misunderstandings.

Activities to be avoided include:

• signing contracts (or singing them as I've just typed three times!)


• Buying big items - especially electrical equipment, phones and computers


• making significant moves or life altering decisions


• beginning a book, a marriage or a business


• gossiping

For us writers it's a great time to enjoy our favourite old novels (especially if writer's block is biting!)

With all the communication and travel bungles, combined with what Mystic has intuited for this period, to be 'trouble with locks' ... there's always some great stories going around about what's happening with this energy. For example:

1. Dylan somehow converted the language setting on my mobile phone to German (while he was playing Sonic in Spanish!) and I have no idea where the language setting is ... oh and I can't read German to be able to find it.


2. In addition to changing the language (if that was not bad enough!) he has also replaced the text writing setting so now I've got predictive text back (and whoever thought that was a time saving device was sorely deluded!) so my phone for texting is useless. And again - can't fix it because everything is in GERMAN!


3. Leaving Annie's house this morning ... I decided to take Annie's advice and do the Indianna Jones under the electric garage door trick ... got under only to discover the door had bounced back up. Then worried that I'd trip the alarm ... only to reset the alarm and then trip it ... all at the same time I was trying to get the electric door to go all the way down and yell to Dylan that I'd be in the car in a moment. In the end I gave the alarm the middle finger, as well as the electric door (when it did finally go all the way down!) and left via the front door.


4. My spam has amped up - and now I'm not just getting the Nigerian bank transfer scam (in all its shapes and sources), but emails about pills, computer programs that I've never had.


5. My MSN messenger continues to turn itself off for no reasons


6. If my cat could talk - he'd mention the fact that when we stayed over at Annie's house last night ... he got locked out of the house and had to sleep outside for the first time in his 16 years!! Poor puddy tat.

But on the other hand ... Annie's internet woes were fixed (it alway seems a fortuitious time to fix existing issues ... my burner suddenly started working for the first time in 18months Mercury Rx in January!) and I finally got on their wireless network. So it's not all bad.

As I mentioned a few days ago ... I'm back reading Magician again - but in true Mercury Rx mode ... I decided today that I wished I'd chosen to re-read Dean Koontz's Lightning, which I've never had a chance to read again. Ahh ... the wisdom of hindsight ... and that's what Mercury Rx is all about!

What interesting computer, telecommunication, electrical, locking or travel issues have you had in the past few days? (Honestly - in hindsight they're always hillarious!)

Conspinkey revisited

The Friday Fiction prompt last week was to use the word conspinkey in our writing.

Jeff wrote: "No sooner is a word written about and it has meaning. Like some virus this new word is going to be spread all over the Internet. With everyone writing about "Conspinkey" it won't be long now and this new word will have a lot of other meanings,"

Now conspinkey has many. Here is how the Friday Fictioners breathed life into a jumble of letters!

• a small raw fish eaten at Greek festivals (Annie from Annie's Musings)
• an invisibility spell a la Harry Potter parody (Dr Norf from Scribblings in Cyberspace)
• an evil sea creature (Paul from Clamouring to become Visible)
• the dying note from a snitch (Vienne from Fictionarium)
• a Conspicuous Conspiracy in an Orwellian world where all thoughts are visible (Iris Wild at Wild Iris Dreaming)
• a word used to ward off evil spirits and bad luck (Ther from It's a wonderful life )
• a password for the exchange of vital information (Chefdruck from Chefdruck Writes)
• a nonsense word used in Scrabble (moi!)
• A rat's name - thought up at the last moment (Nona from Noner's Notebook)
• an excuse to have some fun with the English language (Barbara from Orenco Station Opinions)

And thus Dale conceived conspinkey ... and the rest of us spawned it to go forth into cyberspace and multiple. Google it ... it's great to see us all on a page of Google together ... though I'm wondering about the conspinkey cigar?

Musical Musings #2

Musical Musings is a weekly music based writing meme to inspire and support writers of short fiction. Each Tuesday a prompt will be posted and you will have a week to create something (see the guidelines below).

Reading others' work and commenting in a critical but constructive manner is part of the writing process and our growth as writers. All participants are encouraged to actively be a part of this each week.

THIS WEEK’S PROMPT:

Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in The Wall' is this week's song. Use it in any way you see fit to create your piece of fiction.

How to be part of the writing adventure:

1. Check each Tuesday for a new musical prompt – a link to the post will appear at the top right hand of the blog to help you navigate.
2. Write between 1000-2000 words of short fiction in any genre.
3. Editing is welcome and encouraged.
4. On Monday, post your story to your blog.
5. Return here to link your post and leave a comment.
6. Visit other’s posts and leave constructive comments.

Write anywhere

Over the past six months I have had to get over my preciousnss about where I write. As a Mum, the perfect time, space and atmosphere is rare ... and not suprisingly, when it is perfect I cant write.

Learning to be flexible is what has got me writing. And that's a good thing because today I wrote for two hours in the indoor playground that I take Dylan and Lilly to each Monday. This is the first attempt at writing there - in the past I have read, done advertising copy or layout, typed up list of books ... but never gone the whole distance to attempt creative writing there.

I set myself up in what I thought was a 'far away' table ... far away from everyone else but far enough away also from the toilet (I made that mistake last week) By the time I was well into my writing, there was a baby crying at the table right next to me, along with two small girls who seemed to be taking great pleasure in upsetting each other. So be it - after all its a place for parents and kids.

Through the baby crying, the multitude of interuptions, toilet breaks, food stops, encouragement on the Play Station, conversations and gleeful squeals of kids ... I got the first two thirds of my musical musings entry written. Who said you can't wave a magic wand!

Then this evening, with Annie out on a date with her hubby, I cooked pasta for three kids and got them to eat it, bathed, mediated and dressed three kids ... and in between wrote snippets of my story. Refining the story, fleshing out the characters... creating even more twisted endings.

I remember my Dad's second wife Gloria telling me one afternoon, that she had got through university as a mature aged student, with two kids, by utilisin every moment she had .... reading a text book as she cooked most evening. I get what she means now ... and it heartens me to know that I can do it. Just plug that lap top into the power point on the other kitchen bench. Voila!

I wont have my story finished tonight - for once it hasn't quite come out in one big gush, the twists and the turns keep taking me away from where I thought I wanted to go. Plus, I am still unsure of the ending ... even if Paul has given me the out by suggesting I write several endings and see which one people warm to the most (though I doubt anyone is going to warm to any ending that comes with this story!) Something will be up there on the musical musings page tomorrow ... along with the prompt for next week.

Today was the perfect pancea for any of those thoughts that begin with 'but I can't write here ...' Oh yes I can- andso can you. Have lap top ... will travel!

Where is the most unlikely place you have written? Where do you regularly find yourself writing?