This was a school project where we had to write a how - to paper. Mine started out as kind of a joke, but it kinda got too real so be warned.

A question I’m often asked is, “is there a way I can be you, or even just a little more like you?” It seems to be a recurring query in most conversations I have, so I decided I’d finally sit down and see what I could do. I am intimately acquainted with the state of being that happens to go by the name of Lou, and following these steps, will allow someone to in some part address the issue that is the undersaturation of Lou.

The first thing to do is cop the look. For this, pay a visit to the nearest thrift store and find the men’s clothing section. I’m talking jeans and t-shirts. Do a cursory sweep, and if there is any clothing in a particular dark shade of purple, pick that up immediately. It might not necessarily fit, but that’s not important yet. Next, go to the jeans section and find some plain jeans that look like they’ll be a fairly tight fit, but not quite skinny jeans tight. The final step is to go and get the smallest v neck t shirts available in the store, and any sweaters that are laying around. You can go try them on, and if they’re tight and blue/purple enough, you’ve got a wardrobe! Don’t worry about shoes, any shoe will do. You’ll only wear the vans knockoffs to the skate park though.

Now that you have the look down, you’re gonna want to take a look at your hair now, because that’s the next thing you’ll have to work on. As a rule of thumb, if it doesn’t at least barely hit your shoulders, it’s gonna need some work. That’s okay though, because you do still have time. While you wait, go ahead and visit the black hair aisle at walmart. It won’t be labelled as such, but you’ll know you’re there when you start to smell the coconut oil. Get any product with coconut or shea in the name. Argan and castor oil are also options. At the end of the day, as long as your hair is shiny and as black as possible, you’re good.

Finally, you absolutely can’t be Lou if you don’t act a little bit like him. This is the tricky part, but once you get into it, you’ll do just fine. First, you have to understand that before middle school, he’d been led to believe that he was a really special person. The realization that he actually wasn’t will inform a lot of his, and now your choices in the future, as he struggles to be what he’d always thought he was born as--exceptional. You’ll need to develop a fascination with people’s reactions, and those reactions should come to be a major reason behind most things you do. The idea is to do things that will have people saying stuff like, “Holy shit, I thought he was joking,” or, “I didn’t think he’d actually do it, Jesus Christ!” You wanna value your life, but at the same time, do remember to look at everything as really just a big piece of performance art. One way to begin to do this is to joke about stuff a lot. Every now and then, actually do what you’re joking about, and you’ll be able to throw people off balance a bit, which is what you want. If it gets to be too much for you, that’s fine--I’ve had that happen myself, actually. Don’t mention it to anyone, but it shouldn’t be too hard for you to modify the way you operate just enough that you’ll be good.

Now I can’t promise that following these steps will make you quite reach maximum Lou, but you can use all this information as a sort of starter kit. Life is more improvisation than not anyway, so as long as you understand the basic idea, you should be good. If you’d like to be able to know exactly when you’ve reached maximum Lou, I’d advise that you watch other people. When the theatre kids and the mormons begin to sort of hold you at arm’s length, but old people love you, you should be just about there. Ultimately, I don’t think worldwide maximum Lou would really be a good thing because we would all collectively just get too hyped and die, but we could so far use quite a bit more Lou, so go out there and be Lou!

"YouTube Doc"

This is a short story I wrote for english 9 about a camping trip I went on with my scout troop. It is very unpolished, because I ended up having to rush it so don't expect too much ^_^I think I might work on it a little more later and if so I will be sure to post updates.  That said, the story...

The jeep was warmed inside and out by the harsh afternoon sun. My eyes tracked the landforms that slid out of sight. They were fluid, knobby columns of crumbly rock colored by the iron in the soil. The terrain was irregular with an uneven distribution of muted green and yellow foliage. The occasional scrubby tree would make an appearance if I really looked. I leaned into the hard plastic trimming of the window and rested my head awkwardly in the corner between the door and my seat. It was hard to find a comfortable position in the muggy atmosphere. I sat up and looked outside at a distant hoodoo.My backpack sagged over the edge of the seat.

I pulled it up and unzipped it to get out my videocamera. I opened the window so that I could record better. After taking a few short videos, I put my camera back and shut the window. That would end up on my YouTube channel. We turned off onto a dusty unpaved road. Cows slowly looked up at the jeep. I saw in the distance  a huge landform that wrapped around the horizon. It broke up into tall hoodoos at the edges and balancing stones on the top. It became gradually more prominent as we wound along the road closer to our camping site.

The sun reached it’s peak of brightness and was now quickly retreating to the west.  There were lights in the distance from the cars preceding us that had reached the camping ground. Coming down from a small hill, we reached our destination. The jeep rolled to a stop on oddly smooth packed ground. I took out my videocamera again and tried to get some footage of a large hill that wrapped around one side  of our camping grounds. By that time though, it was too dark for my camera to pick it up. I noticed with some disappointment that the battery was going down pretty quickly. I turned it off and put it in my pocket so I could go help set up the tents.

I woke up to the distant sound of cows. Moisture from the air had made my clothes and backpack slightly damp. Somehow, my camera had ended up in a little bag hanging from the side of the “wall.”  When I had gotten dressed in some new clothes and put on my shoes, I took the camera out and took a quick video explaining where I was and what I was doing there. After that, I turned it off again and left the tent. I was surprised to discover that I was the only person awake.

The hill was a good deal more impressive in the early blue daylight. It had an incline of less than45 degrees that made it very easy to walk up, untill I got a little closer to the top. It was at that point where my footing became a lot less stable in loose, rocky dirt. When I got up, I looked around. I had gotten quite a bit higher than it felt from the climb. The whole camp looked very small down there at the base.  Across from me was another, taller hill. It’s makeup was much less dirt than a lot of broken up, loose rock chips. There was another camp on the other side of the first hill in it’s shadow. I got some video of the sun rising.

I was climbing up the second hill when I noticed my brother and our friend Vuna walking around the camp. I yelled at them until they noticed me and started climbing up. I continued to climb closer to the top. They started to scramble up the hill, which was really the only way to get up because of the difficulty of getting a firm foothold. I called down again , asking if anyone else was awake. Nobody was. They got up to a large , stable boulder that I had chosen to stop on.

“Do you know what we’re having for breakfast?” Vuna said. I looked down at the camp, “Nope, not really. Probably just like pancakes or something.” I looked at the battery widget on my videocamera. It was at a dismal percentage of a full charge. I turned it off. “Hey watch this.” Damian said. He turned his body at an angle like a surfer and started shuffling down the hill side. We watched him start to pick up speed near the place where the two hills met. Vuna followed him , “surfing” in the same way. I turned on my videocamera and went down after them. After one near wipe out, I stopped recording, put the camera in my pocket and held out my arms to maintain better balance. We started jumping along the slope of the hill near the bottom until we reached the camp again.

At that point, almost everyone was awake and the sun was hot enough for us to take off our sweaters. The members of our scout troup were scattered around in small groups exploring the surroundings. A few of us, myself included, were gathered around the gril watching the food being cooked. It was what I had expected; Pancakes with bacon and eggs. I considered adding that to my growing collection of video clips of the camp, but decided not. That was something I could easily find at home every morning. The leaders told us to “go do something.”

“HEy, let’s go check out the top of that thing.” I said, turning towards the hill.”Okay,” Vuna said, “Come on Damian!” We took a different route that looked better for actually scaling the hill. It was on the west side, made up entirely differently of silky dirk covered in a hard crust interrupted occasionally with a rock or a footprint. When we were almost to the top, we stopped and looked down. It looked a considerably less forgiving fall.

As we came back down, I started looking through my videos. I deleted a few to save some space. There was some video from yesterday when we were driving to the camp, and then a lot from today. These would probably end up being uploaded in episodes. There was nobody waiting in anticipation to see them, but I thought that would make it a lot easier to understand what was happening. If my camera lasted until the next day, I would be able to have a little series of three videos like I had planned.

Camp was almost shut down for the day. The leaders told us we were going to the actual valley now. The place we were staying in was a few miles away from that. I put some of my more important stuff into my pockets and got into the jeep with Damian and Vuna. We talked a little bit and watched the everybody pack up. Lance got out of the driver’s seat and checked everything just to make sure, and then we left. We were the last of the troop to leave.

When we pulled up into the park, I didn’t really see much of note. It was a wide expanse of orange dirt. There was what looked like a massive dip in the ground. I got out and walked over to a pavilion at the edge of the dip.It turns out that was the actual goblin valley park. What I couldn’t see from the car was a huge valley type thing studded with bulbous and twisting sandstone formations. These were small enough that people could climb up on them and explore very easily. The massive scale of the valley was amazing. This is what we came for

I got out my videocamera and turned it on. The battery bar was red and it looked like I wouldn’t have much recording time at all. I pressed record. The screen faded away. Disappointed, I put it back into my pocket and ran down into the valley.

I'm bound by my mind
It is all self imposed
Why is it so hard?

I can't breath
I've buried myself
Help.

Head Down

Hey still living from my head down and still got nobody watching. So I got a new tablet for christmas. With a keyboard. Hopefully, words will now rain down from my fingers.

Stuff is happening. Not on this blog. It includes the slow death of my computer.

Response to a prompt

Warning:I decided to go into somewhat gruesome detail.

The quiet rumbling of thousands of people just waking up quickly became unbearably loud as they began cheering and screaming. The first float was drifting by, and it was much more than what they had expected. It was by itself fairly generic. Lots of colored paper flapping from the edges. Paper mache furniture. But it's occupants. They were something else entirely. A man dressed as a bulky, paper mache astronaut sat in one of the chairs, legs stretched out across the floor. Another man, the tattooed 2050 presidential candidate from Texas was screaming and flailing around. They were both very much on fire. Something in his ink made it quite flammable, and it was a spectacular sight. The strange shapes of fire that rose from the dark purple markings of his skin. Burning pieces of paper fell from the astronaut and into the crowd as he continued to give no regard to the fire. Very quickly, the crowds began to wonder at the realism of the special effects on the float. The astronaut was of course just a paper mache sculpture, but the movement of the screaming robot seemed a bit too fluid and varied. They spoke to each other, trying to figure out if there really was something wrong. A few people spread the news through the crowd that everything was fine. There was some explaining of the technology. They were apparently satisfied. The tattooed candidate had stopped moving. He was curled up in a fetal position on the float. Not moving. Still burning. Quite charred. The astronaut had burned away, and there was a strange and blackened flowing figure sitting in the chair now. Jerkily, it raised up an arm and waved. It was garish. A man started yelling. Protesting the over the top  gruesomeness of the float. He ran up to it and hoisted himself up over the edge. Two policemen stopped their cars and got onto the float. Yelling, they forced him to the ground and handcuffed him. They assured the crowds that everything was alright. At this point, they were louder. Angry voices. Parents. Screaming children. Vomit. Things were thrown. The police chose not to engage, and instead escorted the man into the car. A window shattered inward. They sped off. The float continued. Until the first few people found weapons and began to attack the wheels. They were beat at with sticks and crowbars from people's cars. It dropped onto the ground and the astronaut slipped off it's chair. It was stiff. More police arrived. They chased away the people and told them all to go home. The parade was over. Most people left. Both bodies were eventually autopsied. There was metal inside. silicon muscle, mostly burned away. The silicon skins were both gone. The company responsible was sued.

Do What You Do (work in progress)

Unique is good. It's great, but I feel like people try too hard to be unique. They give it too much importance. You are already something different. Just do what you do.

Everybody want to be something new
Unique is what we all want to do
You write books and sing songs, buy a new face
There's a price for everything and you're willing to pay it
Terrified to be part of the crowd
If you're not unique, you pay a fine.
And what you have cannot be mine.
It's like a religion and we adhere to it
Scheming, we spend years for it.
Sure we'll all die, but will they remember?
Don't let me fall into the abyss.
We're all uniquely the same and there's nothing different
And that's okay; I'm not any worse for it.

Yesterday was the last day(refer to post called "commitment")

 My first post today will be a recap. I think that's what it's called. Needless to say, it's not finished; this is just what I have so far. Later, I might add actual illustrations to make it less of a wall of text. Bear in mind that this is a very rough first draft and I haven't yet examined it deeply or done any major editing. Here it is. The product of my two week commitment. forgive me for the two hastily and poorly computer sketched illustrations.
                                                                 Untitled

  The camera sweeps across the scene to a man. He is sitting in the corner of the room, staring off into space. He notices the photographer and tilts his hand in a kind of wave. His eyes never seem to focus.Everything blurs for a second, and then all that can be seen is the floor. It bobs up and down in the frame as the photographer walks around the room, seemingly unaware that his camera is still recording.
     Fred scratched his beard, his eyes sweeping across the room in search of anything more to look at than a dirty-looking man and the shapes in the wood floor. He remembered once losing his keys in his garden. They had disappeared with a rattle of metal and he spent a good forty five minutes looking for them. When it seemed he had looked everywhere, he began looking under rocks and pots. This was like that. No matter how hard he looked, interest was not to be found in  this room. If he wanted that, he would have to go somewhere else.
     I lean back against the wall. The rough hewn stone at least offers some variety of sensation. Makes it a bit less like one of those white sensory deprivation rooms. A shiver runs down the length of my arms. It might have been wiser to bring a sweater or something. But that isn't what I am here for. It would be more productive for my mind to dwell on more relevant things.
     The environment in the room is so painfully boring. I sweep my hand across the cold floor and gather some dust in a pile. In my mind, I build up a mountain range over the unsanitary collection of various particles. That makes me realize how dirty this place must be. I wipe my hands a few times on my pants and pull out some hand sanitizer to disinfect my person.
     With a fingernail, I flip up the cap, and then squeezed a light green gel onto the palm of my hand. I close the bottle, drop it into my pocket, clasp my hands together, and began viciously rubbing them together.
     I bring my hands up to my face to smell the sharp, beautiful smell of the hand sanitizer. It fades quickly and they are left a bit more moist, coated in a bitter taste known well to people who like to wash their hands with it before eating. I resume my gaze into the wall at the other end of the room.
    A moving figure enters my vision and I recognize the camera man's posture. He has the camera pointed at me. Slightly annoyed that he hasn't bothered too ask to film me, I give him a jerky, cut-off half wave with my fingers. The camera holds still for a moment, then he brings his arms down, holding it with his right hand and starts walking around the room.
    He too is looking and failing to find anything interesting in this almost featureless room. My arms are damp with sweat.

     The scene, cropped into a rectangle is almost motionless. It sways just about imperceptibly. Two men are sitting at the far end of the room. They are only a few feet apart from each other. One is dressed rather casually in sweats and a black shirt. The other is in a business suit. His hair is the tangled ghost of a sharp haircut.
     The one in sweats sways restlessly, legs drawn up to his chest. There is no expression on his face, but he somehow still seems to be conscious and sane. Business suit man is also rather restless, but that can only be seen just barely in the beat he is tapping out with his shoe.
     The whole room turns on it's side with a rustle and a dull, plastic sound. Everything is a blur again and then the camera is focusing on the two men. The rather disheveled looking man in street clothes has curled up on  the floor. He is breathing, but only very slightly.
     Fred glanced at his informal companion. He was on his side, still with his knees drawn close to his chest. It would be so much easier to just sleep until they all had to leave. Better not to risk missing it though. The humidity loosened the threads in his suit and he was able to relax a bit. Leaning against the wall, eyes half closed, he felt ready to complete the objective. With any luck, they wouldn't starve during the wait.
     It happened almost in stages. I rest my face in my hand and lean my whole body on my elbow to get more comfortable. That is nice for a while, but then my arm goes numb. Small, precise, needling pinpricks of sensation envelope my hand. It feels cold and wet. I shift a little and it only gets worse.
     I lean forward on both elbows with my head between my legs, resting on my hands. My back doesn't quite bend right to accommodate the pose. I ease myself onto my side and close my eyes. I won't go to sleep. Can't afford to miss it. I'll just lay here and think about movies and stormy nights sitting at my computer.
     The man in the suit has almost closed his eyes. He is nestled into his suit and barely moves. Consciousness appears to bubble back up and his eyes snap open. Slowly and with some degree of difficulty, he stands up and stretches. His head and upper torso disappear.
     Stiffly, the man in the suit begins walking. He goes out of frame and comes back a few seconds later, filling the whole screen. He disappears and returns at the opposite side of the room again.
     Fred felt his conscious mind beginning to melt away. Physical will was replaced by a longing for rest. His sense of time was inconsistent. It seemed to spurt out and then start dripping like a hose that had been bent. That wasn't completely the effect of the sluggish state of mind that was easing him into a deep sleep.
     He suddenly realized what was happening and stood up on wobbly legs. In an effort to regain his consciousness, he made himself start walking around the rectangular establishment. The informal one arched his back and blearily opened his eyes.
     A quiet clipping noise, like the sound of high heels on concrete. It's quiet, but I still notice it. The noise gets louder as the high heels lady comes closer. It somehow has a different quality from everything else. Maybe its' constant regularity. It gets louder than ever, then almost disappears. A few seconds later, I start to hear it again.
     I am laying down on my face and I open my eyes. There is a lady who goes by. She fades away, and then returns as a horse with two legs. The optical manifestations are all different, but the noise is the same.
     There is an echo now. And everything is gone. It's all a strange landscape of shades of red. They are moving synchronous to the sound. A sensation is suddenly present. It feels too far away, but it's connected somehow. I realize it's my hand. The other hand fades into my version of reality. Then my legs. Then my face. I open my eyes. A shiny black shoe flies right by my face.
     The informal one sits up and looks around. His eyes are wide. A gasp of air exits his mouth, shrill and abruptly cut off. The  man in the suit looks at him and the frame shifts as the cameraman focuses on him, guiding the camera with his feet. Suddenly,the floor is all that can be seen. There is a sound like a button being pressed and then...Nothing.
     Fred looked behind him at his companion in sweats. It looked like his mind was already beginning to fester in this environment. That couldn't be allowed to happen. If one of them went, the other two would soon follow. He clawed around in his pocket for something. Anything, really.
     There was only a pen. Thin, shiny black. It was a simple design. His own design, actually.
     Joints burning slightly, but in what felt like a good way, he knelt down and offered the pen to his companion. Unfocused, confused eyes looked up at him. "It'll make this place a little more interesting." Fred said, "Draw with it and stuff. We could play games too, if you want." He took it and pushed the tab that connected the cap to the body. It slid off with a click. "Thanks." Leaning into the wood, he began to draw.
      I sketch some lines onto the floor. The pen slides across the floor a bit too well. If I had some sandpaper, I could have made a much better drawing surface. But this is fine. My mind feels more active than it has since I came in. My friend is facing me, kneeling on the ground.
     It is a new video now. The perspective is higher than it had been for the majority of the last one. "Stupid shit." A voice comes from somewhere behind. The other person looks up from what he is drawing. "It's not the equipment that's at fault. It was you who forgot to turn it off." He disappears from the frame.
     Everything spins around as the cameraman shifts it to the angle of the artist. A little bit of hair is visible at the bottom of the frame. His arm reaches out to create lateral detail on the inside of the door he has been drawing. A few more smaller lines and the material of the door has some definition. It looks like a heavy bamboo screen.
     Fred looked at the drawing. He looked to his left. And back again. "Maybe you should draw something else." He said. His companion looked up. "Oh. Sure." He moved to a clean section of wood and started drawing.
     With skill that must have been learned from a lot of practice, he sketched the shape of a slim face with four very light markings in the lower half of it.

two days again. first one was too short

 I sketch some lines onto the floor. The pen slides across the floor a bit too well. If I had some sandpaper, I could have made a much better drawing surface. But this is fine. My mind feels more active than it has since I came in. My friend is facing me, kneeling on the ground.
     It is a new video now. The perspective is higher than it had been for the majority of the last one. "Stupid shit." A voice comes from somewhere behind. The other person looks up from what he is drawing. "It's not the equipment that's at fault. It was you who forgot to turn it off." He disappears from the frame.
     Everything spins around as the cameraman shifts it to the angle of the artist. A little bit of hair is visible at the bottom of the frame. His arm reaches out to create lateral detail on the inside of the door he has been drawing. A few more smaller lines and the material of the door has some definition. It looks like a heavy bamboo screen.
     Fred looked at the drawing. He looked to his left. And back again. "Maybe you should draw something else." He said. His companion looked up. "Oh. Sure." He moved to a clean section of wood and started drawing. 
     With skill that must have been learned from a lot of practice, he sketched the shape of a slim face with four very light markings in the lower half of it. 

     
     

Sometime in the future...

I can tell that at some point in the future, I'm going to find this first draft of the story rather embarrassing. I hope the polished, completed thing brings me nothing but pride.

Two day's work again/Getting interesting maybe

     The informal one sits up and looks around. His eyes are wide. A gasp of air exits his mouth, shrill and abruptly cut off. The  man in the suit looks at him and the frame shifts as the cameraman focuses on him, guiding the camera with his feet. Suddenly,the floor is all that can be seen. There is a sound like a button being pressed and then...Nothing.
     Fred looked behind him at his companion in sweats. It looked like his mind was already beginning to fester in this environment. That couldn't be allowed to happen. If one of them went, the other two would soon follow. He clawed around in his pocket for something. Anything, really.
     There was only a pen. Thin, shiny black. It was a simple design. His own design, actually.
     Joints burning slightly, but in what felt like a good way, he knelt down and offered the pen to his companion. Unfocused, confused eyes looked up at him. "It'll make this place a little more interesting." Fred said, "Draw with it and stuff. We could play games too, if you want." He took it and pushed the tab that connected the cap to the body. It slid off with a click. "Thanks." Leaning into the wood, he began to draw.
     I sketch some lines onto the floor. The pen slides across the floor a bit too well. If I had some sandpaper, I could have made a much better drawing surface. But this is fine. My mind feels more active than it has since I came in. My friend is facing me, kneeling on the ground.
   

Two days work(complications)

     Stiffly, the man in the suit begins walking. He goes out of frame and comes back a few seconds later, suddenly filling the whole screen. He disappears and returns at the opposite side of the room again.
     Fred felt his conscious mind beginning to melt away. Physical will was replaced by a longing for rest. His sense of time was inconsistent. It seemed to spurt out and then start dripping like a hose that had been bent. That wasn't completely the effect of the sluggish state of mind that was easing him into a deep sleep.
     He suddenly realized what was happening and stood up on wobbly legs. In an effort to regain his consciousness, he made himself start walking around the rectangular establishment. The informal one arched his back and blearily opened his eyes.
     A quiet clipping noise, like the sound of high heels on concrete. It's quiet, but I still notice it. The noise gets louder as the high heels lady comes closer. It somehow has a different quality from everything else. Maybe it's constant regularity. It gets louder than ever, then almost disappears. A few seconds later, I start to hear it again.
     I am laying down on my face and I open my eyes. There is a lady who goes by. She fades away, and then returns as a horse with two legs. The optical manifestations are all different, but the noise is the same.
     There is an echo now. And everything is gone. It's all a strange landscape of shades of red. They are moving synchronous to the sound. A sensation is suddenly present. It feels too far away, but it's connected somehow. I realize it's my hand. The other hand fades into my version of reality. Then my legs. Then my face. I open my eyes. A shiny black shoe flies right by my face.
     

Perception(working title)

   This is what I've got for today. It's starting to look good and I'm trying to figure out the meaning of this story and what it's about. Details and all that.
  The whole room turns on it's side with a rustle and a dull, plastic sound. Everything is a blur again and then the camera is focusing on the two men. The rather disheveled looking man in street clothes has curled up on  the floor. He is breathing, but only very slightly.
     Fred glanced at his informal companion. He was on his side, still with his knees drawn close to his chest. It would be so much easier to just sleep until they all had to leave. Better not to risk missing it though. The humidity loosened the threads in his suit and he was able to relax a bit. Leaning against the wall, eyes half closed, he felt ready to complete the objective. With any luck, they wouldn't starve during the wait.
     It happened almost in stages. I rest my face in my hand and lean my whole body on my elbow to get more comfortable. That is nice for a while, but then my arm went numb. Small, precise, needling pinpricks of sensation envelope my hand. It feels cold and wet. I shift a little and it only gets worse.
     I lean forward on both elbows with my head between my legs, resting on my hands. My back doesn't quite bend right to accommodate the pose. I ease myself onto my side and close my eyes. I won't go to sleep. Can't afford to miss it. I'll just lay here and think about movies and stormy nights sitting at my computer.
     The man in the suit has almost closed his eyes. He is nestled into his suit and barely moves. Consciousness appears to bubble back up and his eyes snap open. Slowly and with some degree of difficulty, he stands up and stretches. His head and upper torso disappear.
     Stiffly, the man in the suit begins walking. He goes out of frame and comes back a few seconds later, suddenly filling the whole screen. He disappears and returns at the opposite side of the room again.
     
     
     
     
     

In a sweaty room

A moving figure entered my vision and I recognized the camera man's posture. He had the camera pointed at me. Slightly annoyed that he hadn't bothered too ask to film me, I gave him a jerky, cut-off half wave with my fingers. The camera held still for a moment, then he brought his arms down, holding it with his right hand and started walking around the room.
    He too was looking and failing to find anything interesting in this almost featureless room. My arms were damp with sweat.
     The scene, cropped into a rectangle is almost motionless. It sways just about imperceptibly. Two men are sitting at the far end of the room. They are only a few feet apart from each other. One is dressed rather casually in sweats and a black shirt. The other is in a business suit. His hair is the tangled ghost of a sharp haircut.
     The one in sweats sways restlessly, legs drawn up to his chest. There is no expression on his face, but he somehow still seems to be conscious and sane. Business suit man is also rather restless, but that can only be seen just barely in the beat he is tapping out with his shoe.
     The whole room turns on it's side with a rustle and a dull plastic sound. Everything is a blur again and then the camera is focusing on the two men. 
     

Brainstorming Again

Okay, it is now time to brainstorm. Again. Maybe there are actual brainstorming strategies to be used during times of...Writer's block. I will go and look that up right now. There are undoubtedly some. And that was undoubtedly the most clumsy sentence I have ever written.
     I am back. Just realized something. I learned all that in school. A technique I will probably employ tonight while I wait for morning is mind mapping. I don't think I could do it effectively on the computer, so I'll just wait and post a pic tomorrow. But for now, I will try some others.
     The camera sweeps across the scene to a man. He is sitting in the corner of the room, staring off into space. He notices the photographer and tilts his hand in a kind of wave. His eyes never seem to focus.Everything blurs for a second, and then all that can be seen is the floor. It bobs up and down in the frame as the photographer walks around the room, seemingly unaware that his camera is still recording.
     Fred scratched his beard, his eyes sweeping across the room in search of anything more to look at than a dirty-looking man and the shapes in the wood floor. He remembered once losing his keys in his garden. They had disappeared with a rattle of metal and he spent a good forty five minutes looking for them. When it seemed he had looked everywhere, he began looking under rocks and pots. This was like that. No matter how hard he looked, interest was not to be found in  this room. If he wanted that, he would have to go somewhere else.
     I leaned back against the wall. The rough hewn stone at least offered some variety of sensation. Made it a bit less like one of those white sensory deprivation rooms. A shiver ran down the length of my arms. It might have been wiser to bring a sweater or something. But that wasn't what I was there for. It would be more productive for my mind to dwell on more relevant things.
     The environment in the room was so painfully boring. I swept my hand across the cold floor and gathered some dust in a pile. In my mind, I built up a mountain range over the unsanitary collection of various particles. That made me realize. I wiped my hands a few times on my pants and pulled out some and sanitizer to disinfect my person.
     With a fingernail, I flipped up the cap, and then squeezed a light green gel onto the palm of my hand. I closed the bottle, dropped it into my pocket, clasped my hands together, and began viciously rubbing them together.
     I brought my hands up to my face to smell the sharp, beautiful smell of the hand sanitizer. It faded quickly and they were left a bit more moist, coated in a bitter taste known well to people who like to wash their hands with it before eating. Now that that was all gone, I resumed my gazing at the wall at the other end of the room.
     A moving figure entered my vision and I recognized the camera man's posture. He had the camera pointed at me. Slightly annoyed that he hadn't bothered too ask to film me, I gave him a jerky, cut-off half wave with my fingers.


   

Continuing...

 Harsh, warm light radiated from the window to his right. He could feel the heat on his closed eyelids. The combination of the gentle warmth and the silky sheets he was wrapped in made his wait a very relaxing one. 
And then the writer suddenly lost interest.. Human 2.0 was trapped in a couple paragraphs, forever locked in a small room, on his bed, waiting for his arm to connect.
     I think I have writer's block. I haven't written a story in a while, so it's kind of hard to come up with new ideas and stuff. The skill must be exercised.
     

Missed a Day

I missed a day. Maybe I'll make up for it. Alright. Now to begin.
I think I want to organize this thing into a few main events, and then work from there. So first I have to come up wit an idea. That's really the hard part. I always come up with horrific cliches first, when I'm trying to come up with a story idea. I won't even bother to write those down. I think it should be something...relatable. But not so much that it's just a slice of life story. Dunno though. Slice of life might be the way to go. I'm picturing a forest. Lots of trees. Tall ones, too. Something like maybe a cross between a game of tag and paintball with real bullets. Or..maybe bows or someth--Nope, that's the Hunger Games. Maybe it should take place in somebody's mind. maybe two minds. Maybe a battle of minds, or perception, or something. Or maybe it should have something to do with robots. Or transhumanism. Ah. I like where this is going.

Just a quick sketch of what I'm thinking. It's pretty horrible, I know. I didn't put a whole lot of effort into it. That contact looking think up top is like a skin for the electronic eye pictured to it's right. The gray matrix in the arm is supposed to look kind of like silicone or something. Ahright. Now I will try to just write it out.
     Human 2.0 fit the smooth hemisphere to a dip in his exposed scapula. He held the new arm against his shoulder as the gel between natural bone and the stuff grown in a lab became harder, to simulate a joint. Blood vessels reconnected, guided by markings in the individual cells. The feeling was strange. Like an insect was moving around under his skin. Not entirely pleasant.
     It was stable enough to let go of now. He lay down in his bed wait through the remaining forty minutes he had until the connection was complete and seamless. In an earlier upgrade, he had tried to read, but found it...Difficult to concentrate. After he had read the first four pages over again several times, he just set the book down, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

     Harsh, warm light radiated from the window to his right. He could feel the heat on his closed eyelids. The combination of the gentle warmth and the silky sheets he was wrapped in made his wait a very relaxing one.
AAAND....Now I'll stop for the day. I can feel my writing getting clumsier from lack of good descriptive language and stuff, so I'll resume tomorrow and see if I'm better. If I'm not, I'll just have to push through and see what I get.

Commitment

My school is just about over. I have an assignment to do. It is a commitment to write for ten minutes each day for two weeks, starting today. So, I think I will begin work on a new short story. And I promise--I will finish this one. This is just sad. -_- Like talking to a brick wall. But the good thing about that is, I can say whatever I want. That also has it's drawbacks though. So, this is going to start out looking really rough. I'll just type up any ideas I have and then publish them all as soon as ten minutes have passed and I'm done. This should be fun. This blog is like a journal. But without all those sketches in the margins. I must work on that. Maybe I should start drawing all the illustrations.(I think they're pretty important in a blog, if the story goes on and on. Kind of gives a rest, does all the visualizing work for you for a scene or two.)

It's my own fault anyway. Nobody to blame but myself.

I don't know quite what this was supposed to be. I wanted to express my present feelings and this is what came out of that. Stop laughing. As you can probably discern, my fingers are getting worse. It almost looked like they were looking better. Guess not. :/ Alright, this is the last bit of...Writing about me. I'm kind of feeling a new story idea coming on.
Gradually
Into my mind it's creeping
Only fine when I'm sleeping
It all rose from a sting
I've got no time for this
Don't have the mind for this
Why won't it just go
Driving me crazy
Typing's no more for the lazy
I'm kind of sick, my mind's hazy
Maybe
Yep, I've got contact dermatosis.