Day 19, 32,280 Words

I thought that if I didn't post another blog for a while, I might entice some of you to comment, but I can see that is not going to happen, so I am going to post a short excerpt from yesterday, and a short one from today.

First- a showdown between Gordon and Tim. I had just written some very serious stuff, and felt like lightening my own mood:

Tim chooses this moment to intervene. “Is this really necessary?”
Gordon turns on him, his lips drawn back in a snarl.
“Am I bugging you? I didn’t mean to bug you,” he practically spits these words out, his voice soaked with venom.
“Hey man, I listened to a lot of U2 in the 90s, too, so don’t be thinking you can quote Bono in here without getting called out,” Tim replies, refusing to back down. “Just… give her a minute, okay?”
Gordon writes something on his notepad angrily. It looks spiteful.
“What did you just write down?”
“I just wrote that you listened to ‘a lot of U2 in the 90s’” Gordon says, making quote marks with his fingers.
“Really? Why?” Tim asks. It is a valid question, to be sure.
“Because I think it’s ‘interesting’,” Gordon replies acidly, making quote marks with his fingers again. He seems to be using these haphazardly at this point, it makes little sense to use them here.
“Really. Well perhaps you should add that I have watched the concert video Rattle and Hum more times than I can count, and I can quote any Bono rant back to you, word for word, any time I like, though my particular favourite is the Sunday Bloody Sunday rant, that concludes with the famous “Fuck the Revolution” culmination.” When Tim uses his fingers to make quote marks around ‘fuck the revolution’, Gordon is effectively defeated. Tim has used his own weapon against him, and he is unable to top Tim’s brilliant rebuttal. He surrenders in defeat.
“That is a good rant,” Gordon concedes the point gracefully, making a note in his notebook. The others can’t see it, but if they were to catch a glimpse at his notebook, they would have seen two things written there. First “remember to watch Rattle and Hum at earliest convenience. Repeatedly, if at all possible.” And the second thing “Remember that the jock knows his shit.”

Today was a very productive day, I actually overshot the daily quota, which is a first for me. Helped that Matt was at work and the kids were at daycare. Another brief excerpt that I wrote for the purposes of amusing myself.

So it was that the night before the planned exorcism, Gordon was separated from the rest. He slept peacefully, though his dreams were affected by something like static from a television, as though picking up on a transmission that interfered with his dream, like a crossed signal. Maggie settled in her old room, still decorated with posters of the New Kids on the Block she couldn’t bring herself to tear down. Joey was still her favourite. He hovered over her bed like a pimply, fluffy haired, big-toothed ghost, though Maggie suspected that no self-respecting ghost would grin like such an asshole. Edie nestled under her Cure comforter, pretending it was a dark cavern where she would forever live loveless and alone while creating surprisingly complex yet simple-sounding music that would make teen girls cry and despair. Tim slept uncomfortably on the couch in the living room, which was too short for his long limbs, but he fell asleep quickly, as he usually did, thinking about girls in the summer, his final thought before drifting off was that Maggie, in her weakened state, looked like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch.