Facebook status updates part XXVIII (Oct 2014)

Once upon a time, there was a prince who saved a princess from a dragon by bringing with him a dietitian who explained to the dragon what their diet was lacking and why they felt compelled to capture and eventually eat such a high-carb meal and got the dragon on a sound diet that did much for their digestion. The dragon and dietitian eventually had a cooking show together.

"You see," the Detective said, "all it took to catch the killer was to examine personal ads in the paper."

"But I’m not a killer. I just wrote that I liked long walks late at night," the suspect wailed.

"Exactly! Who wants to be out late at night in the dark except a murderer?"

this was going to be a poem to you about us but I forgot to put in line breaks so I guess it is prose instead, a story about where our story went wrong and how there are no endings – happy or otherwise – and the holes we leave behind us never as big as the ones we fill.

"Everything is political," he said gravely. "Consider children's cartoons: which of the two major parties in the USA do you think is the Road Runner and which is Wile E. Coyote?"

“We’re all addicts. Everyone is addicted to something or else they would be dead.”

Make the choices that are right for you; sometimes it is all we can do.

We build our wholeness out of so many broken things.

“I am allergic to good deeds,” the villain explained. “I trust you will not breach the rules of hospitality and attempt one in my castle. The results would be more unfortunate.”

“It’s not as long as we wish it was: forever never is.”

“The only thing I have learned about love is that you can’t put someone in checkmate.”

“I have a door I dare not open,” he said.
“And you expect me to do something about this?” I enquired.

“I merely expect you to know.”

“I am rather more than I appear,” I snapped.

She smiled. “That’s hardly a trick, darling.”

I said that if your writing was beautiful enough I could forgive you anything. And oh, it is. And oh, I was wrong.

“I don’t believe in muses,” the writer said roughly.

“I know.” He almost smiled. “Is that why you can’t love me?”

“I think — I think I love you, and that’s why it’s never going to work out between us.”

“The budget came through, sir. I believe we’re going to need to consider a bake sale for funding.”

“But we are the military!”

“The teachers might lend us money. It was that kind of budget, sir.”

“If it ever comes up, I am highly inexperienced in dying. I haven't done it yet.”

"I - I can fix this. I just need a spade. Two garbage bags, the industrial kind. And no questions asked."

"How can we help you?" the bankers asked, in a way that was not a question at all. And their eyes. Oh, their eyes. I never wanted to know what made eyes like that. What was left behind when cruelty had hollowed out even greed.

"I lose myself in you, my hand finding your flesh, pressing on bone through skin. I only know I should have been more careful, not stabbed the knife so deep. The stains might never come outing my carpet: I guess this means you were right. I will never forget you."

What if they turned your life into a movie and you couldn’t even get a part as a background extra?

Plot is how you get there. Story is why you get there.

"It’s too early to be morning," he muttered and fell back asleep despite the noises outside his window.

The aliens who had been considering abducting him took pity and abducted his cat instead. It worked out better for everyone in the end.

"Sir, you can't risk impeachment just to destroy the career of that teacher who gave you an F in chemistry in grade 9!"

"We have so much knowledge: think of all we could do with this!"

"Yes. So much knowledge, but how much wisdom?"

Research for NaNoWrimo factoid of the day: You can find pictures of crack dens on pinterest. I am pretty sure this is not normally what people look for on it.

I am trying to keep up with your silences.

Some people have talents that aren’t talents. Me? I can lose anything. Wife. Kids. Jobs. Money. As talents go, it’s right up there with being able to pleasure a rhino. In a manner of speaking. Not that I’ve tried.

Which is why I was shocked when the oldest man in the world found me in a bar. I tend to be hard to find; he didn’t care about that and wanted just one thing.

"You’re serious?" I asked. "You want me to help you forget?"

"Like Alzheimer’s, yes. I am old," he whispered. "So old and I have forgot nothing in over a billion years."

I could have said humans weren’t that old. I could have said a lot of things, but there’s some things you don’t say. Not to the oldest man in the world and certainly not to the pain in his eyes.

"I’ll see what I can do," I said, and the bastard treated it like a promise.

It probably says a lot about me that I am utterly horrible at promoting my own work, but fictional characters I make are quite happy to shamelessly promote themselves.

Halloween costume idea: Go as the new Disney character who has to get back home by midnight to write words....