WR #8 and #9 Late, lulz. [TJC, LS, JL, EW]

Poasting my last 2 weekend writings so you can comment if you don't want the wrath of Harris.

The Festival (WR#8)

The odd thing is the lack of customers. I’ve never seen the festival from this point of view. It’s very uncanny valley. I feel out of place, so I follow the yellow signs leading me to the volunteer “lounge,” which I soon discover is nothing more than two coat racks and a table behind a makeshift curtain at the back of the right-side hallway. Mildly disappointed, I set down my messenger bag (decked out with pins from the previous year’s festival) and look for the proper nametag, which I affix to my volunteer pass. I rummage through the giant GILDAN cardboard boxes under the table until I find a medium volunteer shirt. Then, mildly flustered, I sit down at the top of the stairs and survey the vile, stained paisley-patterned carpeting. The “lounge” is dimly lit and the walls and floor are all dark red. There’s a creepy glass door in the back left corner that opens into an anonymous concrete corridor lit with a single fluorescent tube in the ceiling.

LAN Party (WR#9)

The LAN Party has been around since the late 1990s with the advent of networked video games. Though the history of LANs is largely unknown due to antisocial gaming nerds and the impermanence of the events, it is generally understood that all serious gamers have been to at least 4 or 5 (I will not deny the implication behind this statement that console addicts are not, in fact, legitimate gamers [while console owners can sometimes connect their consoles over a local network, these gatherings are considered amateurish by people of real value]) and they are usually casual affairs, barring the occasional nerd rage as the result of a well-placed nuclear missile on the part of the other team. A LAN party can, obviously, run the range of size from only two people to five or twenty or ten thousand. Larger LAN Parties are organized events that look suspiciously like cult gatherings to outsiders. Gaming culture generally warrants making it bigger, faster, and more awesome, and thus the humble suburban dining-room-table LAN party has been evolved into multi-day events filling up entire convention centers with live music, hired security, and as many as just over twelve thousand unique attendants.

WW9, Fools, Group UNO

A shock goes through my arm as the mesh of my racket swiftly collides with the bright green hollow sphere flying its way. His serve was solid, sure, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I narrow my gaze in on the ball as it soars over the net, back onto my opponent’s side. I take a quick glance downward, catching view of my stance. My brand new, all white Nikes instantly take dominance in the court. Glowing brighter than the court lines, they extend from my leg, creating quick flashes of light as I dart from one end of the court to the other. Cut to the left- flash. Cut to the right- flash. Flash, like lightning- fast, dominant, bright, and beautiful. They should nickname me Zeus. How fitting.

WW9 Pho (linus, joe, margo, sammy)

Before leaving, our group stood in the hallway waiting for a couple people to use the bathroom. As one student came back to my buddy and me smiling, he proclaimed with joy that, “the bathrooms just have a little dish of detergent to wash your hands!” So we had to check that out before we left. Sure enough, right below the mirror, on the small aluminum shelf there sat a small, clear, plastic dish with only a miniscule amount of blue, viscous, liquid soap. “This also looks like a bathroom that someone would be murdered in” one friend said. It was a statement that may or may not have been appropriate for the overall sketchiness of the bathroom itself. It was probably a good time to leave.

WW8 (Sammy, Joe, Linus, Margo)

The motto life’s not fair is very appropriate for a man whose story you will have to try to imagine for yourself: You are detained as one of three suspects for the murder of a man whose body was found by a logger in a river. You have been leading a normal life until just two weeks ago. Today you stand in a court proclaiming your innocence. Although you may not know it, your prosecutors, including one of the other suspects who plead guilty and now stands as a witness, hold ten bits of information that would lead to your successful plea and the chance to go back to your family. You feel that your antiperspirant hasn’t worked and your light yellow dress shirt begins to soak up the sweat underneath your arms and on your back and neck. You wipe the top of your forehead and look at your glistening fingertips as you await a final decision. You have had the opportunity to control your own destiny and you have acted accordingly however, due to an unfortunate coincidence, your fate is in the hands of people who do not know you or what really happened. But someone was murdered and someone must pay.

Faces - WW9, Marmot Gladiators

What? I blink. No, I’m not staring at you. The smoky haze reverses in time, returning from sprawled, diffuse chaos back into tangible, solid objects. Huh? I don’t know why I’m sitting in the middle of the Pronto Room. I just am. I grab my face and rub the corners of my eyes with my middle and ring fingers, flattening and deforming my cheeks as my cold hands run harshly down my face. With contorted yawns I thrust my arms behind me, stretching my back, and stand up to greet the amused girl in front of me, my classmate once 4B starts in five minutes. What’s up? Nothing? That was enlightening and worthwhile, but I had expected no more. Well, then.

I don’t know where my backpack is. The same thing happens every day. I spin around looking for blue lining on black, and notice it sitting within five feet of me. Brilliant. Don’t judge me. I walk methodically. I climb the stairs two steps at a time, accelerating to a jog over the short stretch of stairs to ascend a half story, and stroll into the Writing Center, sweeping my attention over each sunlit face and each empty chair along the long table at the center of the room. I sit at its foot since Mr. Harris always claims the head, even though he hasn’t arrived yet. If it weren’t for arbitrary social customs, my side would be the head of the table, and I’d be in charge. Damn.

WW9- Uno

As I thrust my chopstick into the bowl, I capture a bunch of slimy noodles that are way too tempted to slide off of the stick. The juicy meat is a little more difficult to pick up—I either have to use two chopsticks to scoop up the piece, or stab the beef with the narrow end of my one stick. My whole table laughs and we are highly entertained by eating this meal in which we have a struggle to the finish to simply capture the smallest pieces of food. I move the chopstick covered with noodles to my mouth and slurp them all up. Eventually, my stick latches onto something that looks like a sea urchin or a tentacle of an octopus. I have no idea what this is. Scared because I’ve never seen something like it before, I place the tentacle noodle back on my napkin. I eat my noodles and converse with others at my table. But as much fun as it is eating it and as delicious the foreign Pho is, as soon as I’d ordered my meal I knew in my gut that I really shouldn’t be eating this.

Group UNO- weekend writing 8 (sorry so late)

“It’s a summer day in the year 1962. Myself and my sister, Wanda, are outside playing. We’re in a number 3 washtub. For those who know what is a number 3 washtub, that’s the closest thing we’d had to a swimming pool.”
She just laughs and grins her wide grin with a little gap between the two front teeth and closes her eyes again.

“Wanda is 2 years old. I’m 4. We live on a plantation called Clifford’s place.” Debbie looks up towards the ceiling. I imagine the inside of her head resembles something as if she’s searching through her file cabinet of memories.

“We lived in the center of a cotton field.” She looks down and smacks her plump, chapped lips. “The house, mind you, was airy. And when I say airy, I mean airy.” Her voice’s volume increases as she says “airy.” “We had wallpaper to cover the holes in the walls, but even in the summer it was cold in the house. So it was a hot summer day outside, and we were playing in this number 3 washtub.”

The Steps to a Furthered Lack of Motivation (WW9) Group UNO

The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.

Start game with ace of spades. Double click on ace of spades and move to upper right corner. Move king of spades to empty space and queen of diamonds on top of him to reveal the eight of spades beneath her. There is no problem here.

Sorry, typo, below should be titled "Research Your Show"

Colors and Music, WW8 (Group Uno)

The illuminated sign sent a stinging sensation through my eyes as I looked up to read it. The words “House of Blues” radiated in a white, red, and yellow blur through the piercing cold, Cleveland winter air. I chill made its way down my spine as I stood waiting for my group of friends to finish their cigarettes so that we could all enter the warm refuge of the venue. Kevin, the only other friend in our group who is not victim to cigarettes, turned to me, the tip of his nose and cheeks glowing almost as red and bright as the front-entrance sign. “Dude, never again will I be spending a winter here. No more of these cold shindigs.” I let out a little laugh, watching a stream of white flow out of my mouth. My conscious then returned to the misery of the situation. “Oh, I know. Trust me, I’m with you on that. It’s California for me.” He nodded in approval.

WR #6 and #7 [TJC, LS, JL, EW]

aw jeez, i forgot to post last week's. I'm posting both here so as not to spam the blag. feel free to do them separately.

last week: (#6)

The low, droning buzz of the ClearComm system in my right ear is omnipresent and extremely annoying. I remove the headset because I don’t get cues anyway, opting to control the goings-on backstage under my own power. The actors have already begun to annoy me. They have left plastic water bottles and costumes all over my scenery, like they always do. In vain have I demanded that they find other venues on which to store their sundries, so I toss their belongings into the back hallway with impunity. I need to clear the scenery off for the next shift, anyways. It’s the church. The benches are ready. I give my run crew the signal, and they begin rolling the choir loft into the wings. We direct it carefully so we don’t run into any other scenery. All of the scenery is under my control. Back here, my word is law. The humble scenery is my domain. The curtain falls.

This week: (#7)

In my 4th grade math class at Gilmour Academy, we would often boot up the antique Apple III computers in the back of the room to distract us from the evil Mrs. Pelot’s attempts to teach us our four mathematical operations. They were standard early-nineties fare—beige bodies, gray 76-key keyboards and 4-bit graphics with attached 5 ¼ inch floppy drives. We would sit in the back of the room, crowding around the 3 cathode-ray tube monitors, gleefully playing Number Munchers. Even as 9-year olds in 2001, it seemed ridiculous and comical to us to try and use these 16-color behemoths that went obsolete before we were even imagined. Even then, we mostly had access to computers that were 256 times as powerful. Windows XP Had just been released, a key moment in the computer industry, and walking into our math room was like taking a step back in time to the early 1980s.

Shedding Skin (Group UNO)

The average person must have hundreds of scars on their body by the time they are a teenager, some of which, we probably aren’t aware of. They are small and round dots from a lost battle against the itch of Chicken Pox or hives or scars of puberty taking it’s toll, they are straight, perfect lines from encounters with metal, wire, and glass, or jagged from stepping on a pair of open scissors that had been left on the ground after cutting a happy Mother’s Day card out of construction paper.

We, as humans are susceptible to these sorts of injuries, even the most calloused flesh is unable to meet a sharpened object unharmed. Scars are our only way of fighting back, even if it is after the battle. And even when we heal, no matter how many flecks or outer layers of skin fall off, we are never rid of the proof that the wound was once there.

WW6 (Linus, Joe, Sammy, Margo)

I have heard that average humans spend about 1/3 of their lives sleeping. In other words, that means that the average human is only 2/3 as successful as they could be with my superpower of not needing sleep. People like Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso would have had a much bigger impact on humanity. Sleeping is an outlet for me, a way to recharge. But unlike most things that need recharging, sleeping does not require energy.

WW7 group UNO

The piano stared at me when I opened the door. I looked to my right and saw that at the far end of the room sat the judges, members of the orchestra, at a long fold-out table. I walked up to them, introduced myself and handed them my music. I walked the long walk back to the piano at the other side of the room and sat. A middle-aged woman with brown hair put in a bun and a sweet, melodious voice told me to start whenever I was ready. I took a deep breath, thought for a moment about the things my teacher had told me at my last lesson, and set my hands on the keys.

As soon as I started playing I knew what my mom had been talking about. The keys had an awful feel – difficult to press down and slippery, a sign of real ivory. It didn’t matter though, because I played the piece without fault.

Age- WW7 (TJ, Eric, Lauren, Jessie)

Walking on a path beside the road, covered by a canopy of outstretched evergreen branches the yellow scooter zooms by. My mom and I wave at him, but he races past us in a blur without even glancing in our direction. Turns out, the seventy year old was racing away from the police. In an attempt to help a woman with a flat tire on her bike, he tied the bike on a long rope to tow behind his scooter. She fell, hit the pavement with a crash and broke her arm. Debate ensued over which police department should handle this situation as the woman fell right on a county border. Police also soon discovered that the illustrious scooter man didn’t have legal license plates. When he zoomed past us without thought, without any other goal but to get home, he was fleeing from the scene. Goggles strapped tight, white helmet shoved over his round head, leather jacket and all he raced at top speed. The milk crate hanging off the back, bounced against its supportive bungee cords, jostled its belongings before hitting the home stretch.

Colors and Music (WW7, Group UNO)

Ecstatic at the sight of the campground, we quickly jumped out of our car the moment it stopped. A full day of driving, and our destination had finally been met. As we made our way down the entrance pathway, we realized the abrupt transition from driving for miles and miles, surrounded by dull, dirt-roads, with the occasional trailer park along the side, to walking through a sandy paradise, complete with hundreds of brightly colored tents and stands, accompanied with thousands of people adorned in tie-dye. We had finally made it. Squinting in order to make out the words on the vibrant red and yellow entrance sign, I read aloud “Franklin Lakes Music Festival, July 6-9, 1970.” Our excitement renewed from just saying the words, John and I hurried into the main venue, sand kicking up behind our feet as we made our way towards the main three stages. Tapestries displaying the festival’s main attractions- the Grateful Dead, Arlo Guthrie, and Janis Joplin- along with spatters of eclectic artwork encompassed the stage area.