2010 Word of The Year

Every year in December my local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, solicits reader suggestions for the word of the preceding year.

From those suggestions, the staff picks the annual word with an eye toward choosing the word that best sums up the year in news.

In 2009 the word was Tweet. In 2008 the word was Bailout. In 2007 the word was Subprime.

Getting the trend here? Something popular, perhaps overworked by the media. The word on everyone's minds.

This year, the staff of the Chron went a little less global and a little more local.

Here's the back story:

The San Francisco Giants baseball team has an award winning local broadcast team made up of former SF Giants pitcher Mike Krukow and former SF Giants shortstop Duane Kuiper, known together as "Kruk and Kuip."

Neither of these men had stellar baseball careers, but in their retirement gig as broadcasters, they have really made their mark.

These two are colorful, fun and knowledgeable. They are revered here in the Bay Area.

At the end of every game, the television broadcasters (usually Kruk and Kuip) and the radio broadcasters (usually Jon Miller and Dave Flemming) will get together on the radio for a post-game wrapup.

It's their chance to talk about the game, pick their favorite players of that game, and generally cuss and discuss. These post game shows have become very popular, mainly because the style is very casual and conversational. The listener feels like they are sitting in at the table with these four guys (and sometimes former first baseman JT Snow) having a beer and discussing the day's work.

Over the course of the 2010 baseball season, it wasn't always a smooth ride for my lowly Giants. They played in a lot of tough games that were often decided by just one run.

Out of eighteen games over the season with the Padres in 2010, eight were determined by one run. In the month of May, the Giants had ten games decided by one run out of 28 total versus all opponents.

At the end of April, just the first month of the season, the Giants had lost two games back-to-back. The Monday game was a ten inning loss, and the Tuesday game was a one hit game lost on a walk off run by David Ekstein (who had so plagued the Giants in the 2002 World Series).

It was emotionally taxing.

So, when Kruk and Kuip hit the air that next day for the third game of the series (in which the Giants were ultimately swept), Kuip used the San Francisco Giants own PR slogan in an exasperated way.

The long running ads had proclaimed, "San Francisco Giants baseball...(pause)...there's Magic Inside!"

On that day in April, Kuip said, "San Francisco Giants baseball...(pause)...Torture!"

The phrase resonated with weary fans and the word Torture! was applied to every game, every moment, every second of agony we endured...including every single game played in the post season.

Torture became the theme of our World Series winning season. An anguished cry. A rallying cry.

And so the 2010 word of the year from the San Francisco Chronicle is...you guessed it:

Torture

What a lovely way to suffer.

(for the record, from the SFGate: ""Vuvuzela' and 'hacktivist' finished second and third. 'Refudiate' and 'patdown' were the other finalists...")

Trophy image taken by a corporate photographer from my place of work and used with permission.

Brevity Is Not My Middle Name

(Sometimes the pump just needs priming. After writing about having nothing to say, it turns out I actually did have something to say today. It was just hiding. Here's a second post for the day.)

A few weeks ago, we had a manager's meeting here at work. This is a once a quarter affair where we meet, eat pastry, and talk about our plans for the department over the next three months.

Part of these meetings is also a discussion about how we, the management team, can improve ourselves and be better leaders for our team.

This quarter's growth topic in support of that goal was about our use of words.

A senior member of our staff held aloft the cap from a water bottle, and told us the goal was to "use a capful, don't pour out the whole bottle."

He told us to shorten the bullets on our PowerPoint presentations.

He told us to "speak in conclusions" in our emails.

He told us to always be aware of how many words we're using and then trim it back.

Ironically, it took him over half an hour to pass along this message.

I deeply considered throwing the cap from my own water bottle at him.

But I didn't.

Ahem.

Look, dear readers, you’ve been with me for over three years, and 1,000 posts which amounts to approximately half a million words.

Do you *really* think I can "use a capful" when I write?

People, please.

To paraphrase The Dude, I'm not really into that whole brevity thing.

I'm a writer! I'm a creative! I pass words like currency through my life. My husband and my best friend, the closest people to me, both have kick ass vocabularies! If you're gonna run with me, you gotta love the use of words and language and be willing to endure my penchant for storytelling the whole damn six pack, not just the capful.

No, I say! No! I reject the capful and dive headfirst into the ocean of words, swim around nekkid, get the words all soaked into my skin and then I'll use a few more adverbs just to make it more, erm, wordly!

Damnit! Asking me to ratchet back the words is like tying Rodin's hands behind his back and asking him to craft a masterpiece with his toes.*

Ain't gonna happen.**

* Look who is comparing herself to Rodin. That's a bit audacious, innit?

** That said...I'm trying. Well, trying at work anyway. Be warned, all the words I have to cut out of my days at work are so totally going to show up here.

Cartoon from Toothpaste for Dinner

A less than beautiful mind

When I look inside my head, as I usually do about this time of day, and ask myself "what would I like to blog about today?" I often see many colorful suggestions, images and ideas pop to the forefront.

Sure, many of the suggestions that my monkey mind puts forth are so capricious they become either not appropriate or too complicated to write about in about 500 words, on average. But I can usually find one gem among the rubble and bring that to you, every weekday, on my blog.

Today, on my walk over to the cafeteria to grab a salad and rush back to my office in time for another conference call, when I turned inward for a good blog idea, what I got, instead of colorful confetti and suggestions of "poop!," was resoundingly gray. Quiet. Lonesome.

As gray as the cubicle walls that line my office building.

As quiet as the dark winter clouds that have gathered over the Bay Area to lie down and weep cold rain on our heads.

As lonesome as New Mexico state highway 285 between Vaughan and Roswell.

When I looked inward, I discovered that my brain hurts.

For every company that's ever employed me, December has always been a busy month. My current employer is no exception.

At five months into my new gig, I really like it a lot, and as I've begun to hit my stride, I have discovered that cute little word "global" in my title means my days begin in the UK, lunch with Sao Paulo, a quick break for the US, afternoon tea with Australia, early evening snack with Hong Kong and I am put down to bed for the night with India.

All on the phone. All day long. The UK to India run encompasses about twelve hours of my day.

Then I wake up and do it all again.

While this probably sounds like complaining, it's really not. My job is fascinating and fun and really good stuff.

But I am *tired*.

In the interest of my own health, I've begun working out again. Nothing major, Jazzercise a couple times a week and a sashay on the treadmill a couple other days a week.

I found I need that exercise to build up my stamina so I can sustain these long days at work.

But all that exercise wears me out too.

And my blog, my beautiful, wonderful blog. It's suffering too. My goal of a post every weekday stands firm. Then I go and miss a day (like yesterday) and I've got to climb back out of the hole.

So all of these words (about 430 so far) are just my way of saying I don't have much to say.

For today, anyway. That quiet, gray, lonesome mind only lasts for a little while. Then my severe latent childhood will kick in, and I'll figure out how to write another post about poop.

You can count on that.

Artist Heather Gorham's interpretation of the monkey mind

Bend The Rules Until they Squeak

You know, over the years I've come to accept the fact that the internet is a place that full to brimming with misspellings, bad grammar, and callous disregard for the English language.

My only refuge has been in "respectable" news organizations that still take the art and rules of writing seriously. So there I am today, reading an article on cnn.com a (relatively speaking) respectable news source.

Trouble is, I can't focus on the article because this is glaring at me from the right hand side of my screen.

It actually hurt my head.

Yes, I know, that's an advertiser and not CNN. Yes I know CNN just pumps out the ads, they don't proof them, yada yada yada.

That said...Funk and Wagnall wept.

Word Association

Ok, back in the day shrinks used to use word association to tell something about their patients.

Yeah, no idea if that really works.

Anyhow, just for fun, let's see where this takes me.

We'll start with a random word generator.

And the word is: Lost

Not going to think too much, just going to let this flow.

Let's see...

Lost

Map

Driving

Back roads

San Francisco

Roads not straight

Crooked

Broken

Snapped

Why in the *&#% hell did you *&@#! make a right turn back there when you @#$% know that we wanted to go THAT way!!

Ahem. Yes.

No, that doesn't imply anything about me or my relationship with The Good Man. Why do you ask?

Oh, this is all hogwash this word association thing.

Ok, fine. Let's try again.

The word is: Liquid

Liquid

Moist

Wet

Damp

Why the !@#$ing hell is the cat wet? Did you leave the shower door open again? Or was she drinking out of the toilet? I HATE it when she drinks out of the toilet!

Hmm.

Ok, one more.

The word is: Corn

Which just makes me think: I am Cornholio! I need TP for my bunghole!

Yeah. There you go. Sophisticated psychoanalysis technique to Beavis and Butthead in three easy steps.

Welcome to the inner workings of my mind.

Round and Round

The past couple weeks I've participated in the Theme Thursday challenge. A fresh topic is presented each Thursday and over the next week, bloggers interpret the theme.

Cool, right? I sure think so.

The first couple weeks were pretty easy. The words were game and knot and I happily interpreted them in my own way.

This week, the theme word is wheel.

It's one of those deceptive words. It seems so easy. Simple. Complete. Because it's so simple and ubiquitous, it actually becomes hard to narrow down a single interpretation of the word wheel and go with that.

So I won't.

Here's a real time brainstorming session. All the ways wheel speaks to me:

Ferris wheel. Uncle Cliff's in Albuquerque. I'm kid, waiting in line. That incredible view of the lights of the city when I'm up there at the top and it pauses a moment just to let you sit. Yeah. The smell of cotton candy and corn dogs wafting up. That's summer.

The Wheel of Fortune Tarot card. Round and round.

The Wheel of Fortune television show. Vanna, pick me a letter.

The wheels on a car. Man are tires expensive. Yesterday it rained like it meant it here in the Bay Area. The first big rain of the season. We drove up to San Francisco, and it became very clear that The Good Man's car needs tires soon.

The steering wheel. Remembering gripping that big wheel when I learned to drive in my dad's 1972 Chevy Blazer. Blue. Four wheel drive. I loved that truck.

"Wheel in the sky keeps on turning..." Who did that song? Gonna have to Google it. Oh yeah. Journey. Weirdly, Steve Perry has been in the ballpark during the San Francisco Giants baseball playoffs. The park has been playing "Don't Stop Believing" and Perry has been leading the singalong. Hell, if Steve Perry is the Lucky Stuff that got us to the World Series, I'll take it.

Wheels, as used in baseball. Referring to the feet, especially of a fast runner. "Man, that Andres Torres has some wheels! Did you see how fast he got to first base?"

If you say the word wheel to yourself long enough, it starts to sound weird. Wheeeel. Wheeeeeeeeel. Have you seen that Geico commercial with the little piggy going wheee wheee wheee all the way home?

Asleep At The Wheel, what a great band. Saw 'em play live at the Pan Am Center in Las Cruces. Danced my booty off. Fun!

Business lingo: "Let's not reinvent the wheel." Though lately that's been replaced by the equally lame phrase, "Let's not try to boil the ocean." Argh! Take your low hanging, wheel inventing, consensus building, suit wearing phrases and stick them in your.... *curse words redacted* for the sake of my mom, who reads my blog.

Ok, I think that's enough. There's more where that came from, but ten interpretations of the word wheel is plenty.

And there you have it.

Photo by Tamás Schauermann and provided royalty free via stock.xchng

He Spoke to Me

Do you have any idea how powerful it was when I read the following poem, written by Shel Silverstein as part of his book "Where the Sidewalk Ends?"

Listen to the mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.

I don't know how old I was, ten or twelve maybe? But to have an adult, especially such a surly looking adult, say something like that to me!

Whoa!

This past weekend, I pulled "Where the Sidewalk Ends" off my shelf and gave it a new read. It had been years. Maybe even decades.

And that poem, it still stopped me in my tracks.

I just finished a biography of Shel Silverstein called "A Boy Named Shel" that I found, of all places, at the Dollar Store.

I'm not going to lie to ya, the biography is not the greatest writing I've ever encountered. In fact, it's pretty bad, worthy of the venue in which it was purchased. That said it did give me some (hopefully true) insight into the life of the very prolific writer, cartoonist, songwriter and playwright.

I learned from this biography that Silverstein's mind was constantly in motion, constantly creating without restrictions.

I only know of a few creative people in my life that are *constantly* channeling The Muse. One of them might even be related to me.

I'm pretty creative and am usually chock full of ideas, but I also go through extended periods of time of writer's or crafter's block. Perhaps for me, these are quiet periods that are essential to my own creative process, because as frustrating is to be creatively constipated, I usually come through it stronger.

I have learned that The Muse will return if I just relax and let her go. She always comes back.

It's funny, sometimes seeing art or meeting a creative person will touch off a creative spark inside of me, thus breaking through the blockades. Through the words of his poems, Shel Silverstein did that for me this weekend. I started a new art project and I did photography and I felt the creatives begin to whisper in my ear, which always gives me such satisfaction.

I understand that Silverstein was a mentor to many of his friends. He would push them to create more, to push the bounds of their art and to be better artists.

Silverstein died in 1999, but his words remain powerful. They speak to me as loudly today as they did when I was young.

Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.

Photo From BigHeartDesign.com

Listless In San Francisco

In searching for something to entice The Muse to put down her bons bons and get off her settee, I like to search around for pages offering help to flagging bloggers.

Just about every page I visit suggests creating posts with lists.

I see it all over: "list posts are very popular!"

1. Really? With who?


2. Perhaps the who doesn't matter as much as the what


3. I'm not sure lists are my thing


4. Maybe on this one I should go against my own grain


5. And make a list


6. A list for the listless


7. (Yes, I went there)


8. How about a blog post where the contents ARE the list


9. No well thought out collection of ideas


10. No useful reference guide


11. Just random thoughts


12. listlitized


13. Which is so not a word but I don't care


14. I mean, does it count as a list if it's not


15. a clean, well organized list?


16. I think it does


17. In fact, I think it makes it better


18. Maybe people will even want to


19. read to the end


20. instead of scanning down the list


21. Which I am totally guilty of doing


22. Maybe


23. I should leave


24. Some blank list items








28. Just to make it confusing


29. Or maybe


30. Lists


31. Are just too darn orderly for my disordered mind

Goodbye to a Mentor

I was shocked earlier today to hear the news that Stephen J. Cannell, prolific television series creator and author, has passed away from cancer.

Last year I had the chance to meet Mr. Cannell at book signing for his Shane Scully novel, "On The Grind".

That day at my local library, I was feeling especially low about my prospects as a writer.

After a fantastic talk with details about his journey from being a dyslexic child to creator of such shows as The Rockford Files, 21 Jump Street, and The A-Team, I wanted to ask Mr. Cannell if he had any suggestions for a better way to query agents with my own writing.

I waited until the entire line had gotten their autographs and no one waited to distract, then I walked up to Mr. Cannell, a Hollywood legend by anyone's standards, and I boldly asked him my question.

What followed was not just an answer, but an almost thirty minute long conversation in which Mr. Cannell was supportive, asked questions, gave advice, mentored, guided and encouraged me.

At the end of the conversation, when his handlers were pushing him out the door, he took out a piece of paper and wrote down a phone number. He told me to call his office to schedule a continuation to the conversation.

I was beyond geeked out that he would be so generous. I tried calling and spoke with his admin several times, but given Mr. Cannell's crazy hectic schedule, I was never able to speak with him again. No matter, the thirty minutes he spent with me will resonate forever.

Today I'm a bit saddened as I say goodbye to an intensely creative and prolific man who is, in many ways, both hero and mentor to me.

The best way I can honor him is to just keep writing.

Carbo Loading The Muse

This past weekend, I competed in round two of the NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge.

It goes like this: They give you a genre, a location and an object. You get 48 hours to write a one thousand word story incorporating all of that.

I *love* participating in this contest. It is my third year and it challenges me and stretches me and causes me to come at my writing from different angles.

Until this contest I'd never written anything that could be remotely labeled science fiction, fantasy or historical fiction. But guess what, I've done them all, and in the case of historical fiction, twice.

My first jab at historical fiction was a well researched story about Babe Ruth. It remains one of my most favored stories of all that I've written.

It scored very low with the judges, however.

This weekend I pondered all the angles of a comedy set in a tunnel with a gold watch. (A little bit like Clue...Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.)

As I threw around story ideas, I got the brilliant Good Man involved in brainstorming. He looks at the world in a way very different from me and is a good source of inspiration. While brainstomring, he uttered one of those pearls of wisdom that will stay with me all my days as a writer.

The conversation went like this:

Me: "What's funny about a tunnel? Is there a tunnel that could be funny? What about a sewer? Is that funny?"

TGM: "Well, anything with poop in it has potential."

There it is, folks. Write that down. Embroider that on a dish towel. Just remember you heard it here first!

But he's right. Bodily functions are usually funny. Except when they are not.

I chose to avoid a sewer tunnel for my story, choosing something a bit more metaphysical instead.

All of this yammering on is to say, my brain is exhausted. My Muse is weary. She gave it her all for forty-eight hours and informed me this morning that she didn’t *feel* like coming up with a brilliant blog post idea today.

So instead, I chose to follow well-heeded wisdom when it comes to writer's block...

Write through it.

So here I am, writing through the block. Suddenly words are forming into paragraphs and the page is filling up. It's not brilliant words of prose, but it's working.

And here I am at about 400 words. Plenty enough for a blog post! So ok! I did it!

The Muse didn't even have to work that hard.

Though I think if I hope to get another blog post tomorrow, I'd better treat her to some baked goods. She does tend to run better on sweets.

Ain't No Poetry Like Bad Poetry

So I hit up the idea generator today.

And it suggested I write a limerick.

A limerick?

Really?

*sigh*

Couldn't I just take a stab at Haiku?

In fact, here's a Haiku I wrote during a painful interleague game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's earlier this season:

Jack Cust at the plate
Hits ball three for three today
SF fans Cust too

See? I can do Haiku! Can't I just try another like that?

No, the prompt said limerick.

I remember in grade school we had to write limericks for an English assignment. I didn't like it then either.

Not even writing the naughty limericks.

Whatever.

Ok.

Fine.

Here's my attempt:

There once was a girl from the 'Burque
People found her to be quite quirky
     To California she fled
     No green chile she did dread
Homemade chile rellenos keep her quite perky


Or how about:

There once was a singer named Buck
His songs make a nice rattle in my truck
     From Bakersfield he hailed
     "Tiger By The Tail" he wailed
That acoustic guitar he sure could pluck

(Betcha thought I was gonna get naughty on that one, huh? It was very difficult to restrain myself.)

All right, I'm on a roll now

From a bag of pinto beans I did remove
A handful of rocks and a piece of dry bean root
     Soak 'em I did
     Rinsed, boiled and added a lid
Because if not cooked right, dem beans will make you toot


Ok, ok....I'm done.

Somebody stop me before I try to rhyme Nantucket.

Word-Reduced Wednesday

A lot of blogs I read have a "Wordless Wednesday" meme where they post an image with no or very few words.

Well, since asking me to use no words is like asking the ocean not to be so darn wet, I think I can only eke my way into a reduced-word situation.

And so...

New Mexico, being of the high desert variety of places, is normally very dry. Humidity levels in the single digits are the norm, and that warm dry air makes me happy.

After all these years living in the Bay Area, you'd think I'd be more accustomed to humidity. I am not.

So I always rather enjoy a trip back to good ol' NM to dry out (and not in that rehab kind of way).

Not this month. Nope. It rained like a sonofagun the whole time I was there. Which, honestly, is good. They need the rain.

However, swamp coolers don't work in the humidity. The evaporative cooling aspect relies on the water evaporating. Which it doesn't when it's humid.

Gah!

But cloudy skies sure make pretty pictures.

Word-Reduced Wednesday and associated images by Karen Fayeth are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Flash Fiction - Day Four & Final

Whoooo, yes! Fist pumps and happy jigs. I managed to pull off this massive stretch goal of writing a new Flash Fiction story four days in a row.

I'm not going to lie to ya, this has been challenging. Getting today's story done was tough, and I think it reads like it. This challenge really took some work.

Today, the overworked Muse got a little silly. I hope you're willing to come along for this final ride.

Tomorrow, as promised, I'll be posting an oral reading of a New Mexico folktale as my wrap up of this crazy off beat week of Flash Fiction and Fables.

It's a good one, I think you're going to like it, especially the readers/listeners from my home state.

But for today, my randomly generated word is: portability

Without further ado:

The Device

by Karen Fayeth

Darryl and Sean worked quietly, side-by-side in the corrugated metal work shed they referred to as "The Lair."

Work was wrapping up on their invention, a device without a name so far. If you asked them, it was totally a fusion reacting, power providing, super über top of the line invention.

The whole deal was this, it was a small reactor that creates enough power to run a small city. Clean burning, no electricity or fuel required, and it only fills up a small footprint.

The genesis of the invention came when Darryl had entered a project in his college science fair to show how he could make small fusion reactions.

Sean had also worked on an entry for the fair, but wasn't able to complete it in time. His was a device for efficient distribution of power in a small space and without heat or exhaust.

The two ideas put together was an invention in which Pajaro Ventures had invested $3 million in R&D money. It would totally pay off, assuming they could get the device to be stable.

Initial trials were not as successful as they'd hoped.

The Lair had been replaced three times due to what the boys referred to as "misfires."

But if they got it to work right, they could rule the world. Literally, they hoped, because that would be cool.

When they weren't working on, or fighting over what to call the device, they were arguing over what to call themselves. Darryl favored Captain Hazard as his superhero slash evildoer name. His costume included a bright yellow vest, the kind road crews wear to be seen by passing cars.

Sean was leaning toward Dr. Reaction. His costume was a bit more ill defined, consisting mostly of a white lab coat with nuclear symbols attached to both shoulders like epaulettes.

The U.S. Army was interested in the unnamed device, as they needed strong, reliable power at many of their installations in the Middle East. A clean burning self-contained unit that kept them off either generators requiring gasoline or power lines requiring infrastructure was looking real enticing.

However, the U.S. Army was a bit skeptical that two recent college grads had the gonads to actually pull this thing off. No matter, the risk was on Pajaro Ventures. If it worked, Parajo got a huge contract. If it didn't, Pajaro ate the R&D fees and the U.S. Army would keep on looking.

Early on, Darryl and Sean had flown out to Washington to meet with senior ranking officials, including one five star general. The field commanders gave the boys their list of must haves and nice to haves around this thing.

The team agreed on device specs. Darryl and Sean would come back in six months to demo their progress.

That demo was due to take place the next morning. After a good night's sleep, the boys rose early and got ready. A black Suburban rolled up and men in dark sunglasses loaded up The Device and the boys and delivered them to the airport, where they boarded the Parjaro private plane headed for the Pentagon.

The flight went without a hitch and soon Darryl and Sean found themselves in a large auditorium surrounded by a lot of people, most wearing dark green uniforms.

"Yeah, so, ok, let's get right into this," Darryl said, doing the talking. He was the more eloquent of the two.

The Device sat on the floor in front. When signaled, Sean hit the go button.

Fans whirred, parts rumbled and the machine's lights flashed.

"As you can see," Darryl said, "It takes only a few moments to come online. Once you see an orange light here, at the side, it's fully charged and ready to go."

The light came on, and Darryl took the plugs from a refrigerator, a clothes dryer and a microwave and plugged them into the outlets built into The Device.

"These high power drawing items are but a fraction of what The Device can power. When up to full capacity, this device could power a small city, say the size of Austin."

The assembled crowed murmured their approval.

It worked. The Device was generating smooth power. It shook a little, but no fires so far.

"Gentlemen, I believe this meets your requirements for high voltage yet safe and steady power. We have achieved your list of must haves. Oh, wait, there's one more item we haven't demoed," Darryl said, flipping a red switch on the back panel.

Immediately a bright blue undulating hole, about a foot wide, ripped into the fabric of time and space above the machine.

"And there you have it, General, sir. Your requirement is complete."

General Johanssen looked at the eerie opening in the air that was starting to exert a gravitational pull.

"What the sam hell have you boys done?" he shouted.

"You said that your key requirement was portal ability. We've succeeded. The Device not only facilitates powering your base camps, but also provides the beginning stages of time travel. This really is a cutting edge machine."

General Johanssen's face turned tomato red with anger. "I said it was mandatory that this device have PORTability, meaning moving the stupid thing as our troops relocate around the world. I did NOT ask for goddamn portal ability! What the hell is that, anyway?"

Darryl and Sean looked at each other, eyes wide. Darryl began frantically fiddling with the red switch.

"Boys, close that goddamn worm hole before someone gets hurt!" a major called out from their left side.

"Um, I'm trying, sir," Darryl said, sounding panicked.

Suddenly, a nearby office chair was sucked into the depths of the wormhole and sent two thousand light years ahead into space. It landed with a "whump" on the fifth moon of the planet Kranon, killing the opposition leader of the attempted violent overthrow of the King of the Kranonians.

Two thousand light years back on Earth, Darryl could only reply, "Whoops."

"The Device" by Karen Fayeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Flash Fiction - Day Three

I wanted to take a minute to thank my usual readers for sticking with me through this week of a bit different sort of blog post.

I'm not going to lie to ya, this challenge has been a lot harder than I expected. I compete in contests where we have 48 hours to write a thousand word story, and even then, the time feels tight. I've been producing the stories this week in around five to six hours.

I'm pretty pleased so far. They all could do with more time and distance to allow for extra editing, but I'm not ashamed of anything I've written so far.

I hope at least a few of you are enjoying reading them as much as I am writing them.

My goal for this week has worked. I needed to shake things up to get back into my blogging head and it's working. I'm looking forward to getting back into my groove next week.

For now, here's Day Three's story.

Today's randomly generated is: representation

Top O' The World, Ma!

by Karen Fayeth

Alex was on top of the world. Six months ago, he'd been promoted to Senior Director of Sales and he was rolling. He was the fair-haired boy employed at one of the fastest growing companies just shy of Fortune's top 100.

Yesterday the Executive VP of Sales had called Alex personally to congratulate him on landing the biggest client in the history of Jackflash Software. The ink was barely dry on the deal.

Alex and his boys had properly celebrated the victory.

After just two hours of sleep, Alex now looked at himself up and down in the mirror because he knew he looked good. Not just "hey, that's a nice suit" but "damn! You look GOOD in that Prada suit" sort of good.

Even his hair looked good and his eyes weren't the slightest bit puffy. A little chin stubble told the tale, but hell, that would just make him look a little rugged today.

If asked, he could say he was up all night on an overseas call. They'd buy that.

This morning he had a date with the CEO of Jackflash, Bob Jackson. The invitation had come quite a few days before the new contract had settled and had been somewhat vague as to the agenda.

Jackflash was still a pretty small company, so meeting with the CEO wasn't entirely unusual. Maybe there was another big deal in the works? Or maybe there was even a big bonus coming his way. He smiled at the thought. Oh so many toys like boats and cars he would buy...

Alex looked at himself in the mirror. "God, it's a great day to be me," he said to his reflection.

Turning from the mirror and picking up his car keys, he felt the burn from lack of sleep around his eyes. Unacceptable, he told his wavering body.

Revving the engine of his brighter-than-the-sun yellow Porsche, his first stop on the way into work was a 7-Eleven. Two Rockstar energy drinks should do the trick.

Alex was guzzling the second Rockstar when he parked and walked into the office. Burping loudly from the fizzy drink and tossing the can in the trash, he put on his winningest smile when he saw people in the lobby turn to look at him with nods and waves.

News must be out, he thought. But not everyone was smiling. Jealous, probably, he thought to himself.

He smiled and made like a politician. If there was a baby in the room, he would have kissed it.

After all the schmoozing and stopping by to talk to friends along the way, it took him a half hour to get from the front door to his office. His heart was trip hammering in his chest from all the caffeine and he couldn't sit still. He glanced briefly at email and ignored the flashing message light on his phone.

A note was taped to his monitor. Terry, his boss, wanted to see him as soon as he came in. He checked his watch, 9:45. Terry was probably already in the day's meetings, but he figured he'd give it a try.

Alex walked so fast to the elevators, the back of his jacket trailed out behind him like a little woolen cape.

"Hey Susan! Is she in?" Alex said, putting on his charming voice for Terry's admin. Susan wielded all the power in the organization, including whether or not Alex flew first class, so he treaded lightly.

Susan looked at Alex with a face drained of blood. "No, Alex. She's gone."

"Gone? You mean meetings?

"No. I mean gone. Fired." Susan whispered the last word.

"Fired? What the hell?"

Susan shrugged.

Alex checked the Rolex on his right wrist and noted he had five minutes to get upstairs to meet Bob.

"Ok, I'm going up," Alex said, pointing toward the ceiling, the company recognized gesture to indicate Bob's office on the top floor.

Susan was VP of Sales. If she was gone, and with Alex coming off such a huge victory...well, the writing was on the wall. He was going to get promoted again.

Alone in the elevator, he did a little "yes!" fist pump dance/jig sort of a move.

When the elevator doors opened, he was met by Bob's Admin, Charlene. "He's here," she said into her boss' open office door, then with an out of character syrupy voice, "I believe Bob is ready for you. Go on in."

Alex walked into the office with his head high, but faltered when he saw Ellen Banks, VP of Human Resources and Stan Ingersol, Jackflash General Counsel already seated at the conference table.

"Hello Stan," he said, shaking the man's hand, "Ellen," he said, nodding. "Bob, how great to see you! You heard about the Techtron Telco deal, I assume?" Alex said, all smiles and sales training in his demeanor.

"Yes, I've heard. But that's not what we're here for. Alex, why don't you have a seat?"

Alex was still grinning ear to ear when he sat down at the head of the table.

Alex drummed his fingers on the table impatiently and looked at Bob who turned instead to Stan. "How about you take the lead on this meeting?"

Stan cleared his throat and shuffled through the stack of paperwork in front of him. He found the page he needed and held it up.

"Alex, this is a copy of the resume you submitted when you applied to Jackflash."

Alex leaned forward to squint at the document, then nodded.

"It was your representation at the time you were hired that you both attended and graduated from Yale School of Management. Your hiring manager failed to do a background check before extending the very generous offer. During a routine audit, Ellen's team found the lapse in procedure and conducted the appropriate check."

Alex swallowed. He knew what was coming next.

"Son, you never even graduated high school."

Alex closed his eyes.

Visions of Masaratis stopped dancing in his head.

"Top O' The World, Ma!" by Karen Fayeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Flash Fiction - Day One

Today's word from the random word generator is: gibberish

And so, without further ado....

What Leibniz Never Learned

by Karen Fayeth


Anton dropped his head into his hands with a deep sigh, allowing frustration to wash over him.

He had so many things to say, deep, powerful, urgent emotions, and all he could squeeze out onto the pages of his spiral notebook were gibberish lines and jumbled words.

If only it were as easy as the calculus he loved so much. Figuring derivatives of complex equations happened with ease and grace.

Math made sense. Feelings did not.

He turned to a clean page and wrote down a problem, crafting the most difficult math he could think of and then solved the equation without breaking a sweat.

Math = Easy. Clean. Pure.

Words. They sucked. They could be misinterpreted and used against you. Fumble over the wrong words and people laugh, they make fun, they misunderstand who you are at your core.

Words were squishy like jell-o. Numbers were clean and simple and rarely misinterpreted.

Anton sighed again. Be that as it may, words were what he needed to use right now. No calculations could explain how he felt about Lisa.

She was his graduate teaching assistant for his hatefully required English Lit class. She was a lady who liked words.

It was Lisa's hand that wrote the red ink C minus grades on every one of his papers.

She also left comments like, "Where is the heart of Anton in this story?" and "It's ok to use adjectives."

Anton would never have believed that he could love a girl who was anything other than a math or engineering major. Maybe even a physics major, but that was pushing it.

And yet here was this raven-haired beauty, with eyes the color of periwinkles and a smile as bright as the North Star.

"Hey, that's not bad," he thought, then scribbled down "North Star and periwinkles" next to the first derivative and just before the next.

For inspiration, Anton dug into his desk drawer and withdrew the file labeled "Creative Writing." He fished out the paper that had netted him the worst grade and stared at her writing.

He sniffed the page, hoping to capture a momentary whiff of her smell, a mixture of rose oil and chamomile.

Hmm, he thought, and then scribbled down, "roses and chamomile"...that might be something.

She was right, his heart wasn't in his words. He wrote assignment papers in the last minute before class, fulfilling only the word count requirements (a number!) and caring less about things like sentence structure and meaning.

Anton ran his finger over the lines of the words she wrote, examining each letter with a scientific eye, measuring their weight and calculating the angles of the swoops in her pen stroke.

Lost in moony love thoughts, he was snapped back to reality by the thunderous return of Lars.

"Oy! Anton!" shouted his Australian rugby playing couldn't-be-any-more-different-from-me roommate who filled the corners of their dorm room with beer, cigarettes and cheap cologne.

"Hey Lars," Anton replied in a quiet voice, hoping his roommate would follow suit.

He didn't.

"Lend me a twenty, mate, I need beer!" Lars shouted.

Lars always borrowed money and never paid Anton back. He should tell him no. But if he did, Lars would only hang around the dorm room blowing unkind sounds from his tourist version of a didgeridoo.

If peace could be bought for the price of twenty dollars, maybe the math worked out in Anton's favor.

He sighed again and pulled his RFID blocking wallet from his back pocket.

"Here," Anton said, thrusting the note at Lars, "Go drink somewhere else, I have work to do."

"Oooh, someone's knickers are in a knot!" Lars taunted, then swiped the twenty from Anton's hand, scampering out the door. In as much as a 280 pound rugby player could scamper.

Anton turned back to his desk and looked down at his notebook.

The blank page stared back.

Anton closed his eyes. "Feelings," he thought to himself. "What am I feeling?"

"Mad. Goddamn Lars!"

"Ok, no. Not that feeling," his mind replied, sternly.

So he thought about Lisa. He thought about that day she wore a sundress with small yellow flowers with bare legs. He could see her feet in the tiny sandals she wore.

Anton had a thing for girl's feet. It was not something he mentioned to his friends, obviously.

Ok, the mental image was working. He was feeling something akin to a feeling.

"Yeah, that's the stuff," his brain encouraged.

He let his mind wander to fantasies of Lisa holding his hand as they walked together to the math building.

He thought about how all those other math nerds would lose their shit when they saw him with a girl.

Oh yeah, this felt good.

"Now!" said his mind, "Write! Write your heart!"

Anton scribbled furiously on the paper, opening the floodgates and letting the words fly with the fleet winged feet of Mercury the Messenger.

Oh sweet release of all that was pent up inside!

He quickly tore the page from his notebook, folded it roughly and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. He ran from his room to the admin office in the English building.

He found her name on the wall of mailboxes and carefully placed the note inside, heart racing out of his chest and into his throat.

Spent, he returned to his dorm room to wait.

The next day, Lisa noticed something in her mailbox. Usually it was empty, but a few Luddite professors still refused to use email.

She smoothed open the folded piece of notebook paper and read:

"Lisa -

Uh, hey. I noticed that you smell really nice and I think you have, like, really pretty feet, too.

So I was thinking, maybe you and I could go get a coffee or something?

Yeah, so, talk to you later."

The note was left unsigned.

Shaking her head, Lisa deposited the piece of paper in the trash.

It wasn’t the first stalker-y note she'd ever received, only the latest.

"What Leibniz Never Learned" by Karen Fayeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

And now for something completely different...

So lately I've been impossibly busy with work, life and all the joy that long summer days bring to my easily distracted brain.

As such, I've had the attention span of a gnat and have been really running to catch up on my blog.

In reading over posts from the past couple weeks, I feel like I'm starting to be derivative of my self.

And, well, that's ass.

I had a long talk with The Good Man about maybe taking a break from blogging, or quitting entirely.

In fact, I considered it seriously.

But then again...I'm up to 939 posts over three years, and there is a part inside of me that *really* wants to top 1,000 posts on this blog.

So I dug deep inside and asked myself if I wanted to stop blogging.

The answer was clear. No. I don't want to stop.

I love blogging and it's done amazing things for my writing and editing skills on the fly.

And so....

I'm going to keep on keeping on here on the blog. But to keep things interesting, I’m going to try something different this week.

I shall dub the week of June 21 through June 25 as Flash Fiction and Fables Week.

On Monday through Thursday, my blog posts will consist of a no more than 1,000 word fiction story or essay, thus the very definition of Flash Fiction.

As the impetus for each day's story, I will visit a random word generator and use the first word that is presented as the foundation for the story.

I will have to keep an eye on myself for no cheating! No hitting refresh until I get a word I like.

I have no idea what the stories will be about as this is all a fluid process.

I hope you are willing to come along on this ride, as it will be harder than it looks, I can assure you. This is really a task in pushing The Muse to produce. And sometimes she doesn't like that.

Here's a representative sample of her cranky face.

Four days writing a totally new Flash Fiction story each day may be tough to accomplish. We'll see.

And then Friday will be a special day. On Friday I'm going to present a "Fable Friday" selection. This is a story I've taken from one of a couple books I have of fables and folklore. I will read the story aloud complete with funny voices, if necessary, and will also post a link to a scan of the story if you'd rather read it yourself.

This was inspired by a great night at a friend's house reading fables and folklore aloud. It was a fun and touching night and I'm experimenting with making this a regular item on the Oh Fair New Mexico blog.

After my week of Flash Fiction and Folklore ends, I will likely go back to my regularly scheduled stream-of-mind posts that I've done for the past three years, hopefully with a renewed sense of creativity and verve.

Verve...what a great word.

Anyhow, do join me and give feedback on the stories if the spirit moves you.

Personally I'm both excited and scared about the week, but I'm also raring to go!

Wheeeee!!

Show and Tell Time

Since yesterday was a whirlwind of deadlines and today is a whirlwind of meetings, I thought for the blog today I'd share a bit of what I was working on yesterday.

The deadline was for the Arthouse Co-Op, located in Brooklyn.

I participated in a project they have going called The Fiction Project.

They sent me an 80 page Molskine notebook and challenged me to fill up the pages with stories. My topic for the stories was, "And suddenly..."

Whoo. And I thought this was going to be *so* easy to do. I love to write short stories and flash fiction. What a snap!

Silly me.

It was a fun challenge. Writing the stories wasn't even the hard part, though it was hard enough. The rough part was in actually putting all the stories into the book in some coherent form. It's harder than you'd think.

I thought I was done and had a full book of stories, but when I glued it all into a first draft piece, I still had four pages left to fill.

I suppose I could have left those four pages blank, but that seemed like cheating.

So I sat down to dash off something quick.

Dash off something quick. Har, har. Of course, that's when writer's block set in.

Anyhow, it took a while, but when I did finally write, what is below what came through.

It's in need of more editing, but as I ran out of time, I had to just run with it. This is what covered the last four pages of my Moleskine book. For your perusal.

It's called "And Suddenly...It's Over"

*****************************

I look at my oldest, most reliable friend and plead silently, "speak to me!"

The blinking eye of the cursor just beats a perfect metronome rhythm back at me, waiting. The whole empty white page, devoid of the text I yearn for so much, mocks me openly.

I love the words, the black squiggles and marks on the page. Words that express how I feel, how I want to feel, how I ought to feel. But the words don't flow so easily from my veins.

I plead with the empty page to fill up quick, but it never helps. So I take another course and appeal directly to The Muse. She is recalcitrant and obstinate, but I goad her along.

She wakes from her satin sheets, stretches her pale, lovely long arms, and rises.

"Oh, all right," she concedes after I've wooed her with mimosas and caviar.

And so we sit down to write.

I step back, ceding control of my body, my thoughts, and my mind to The Muse. I let her dance. I let her sing. I let her weep if that's where she wants to go.

I am at her service, totally, completely.

We write tales of the life cycles of the human, of cranky old men with faithful dogs riding in rusted old pickup trucks. We write of lost girls with music in their head and small town girls finding their way in the big city. (editors note, these were the topics of the other stories that filled the book)

Sometimes we write of horses and cows, other times about diamonds and millionaires. We write of everything and nothing. All of it and more.

Today, however, this day when there is nothing I want to do more than write, I can't manage to coax her to give more than a single paragraph.

This is the worst. We begin the takeoff sequence, the words start to form, but I can't get wind under my wings. Soon we stutter and the engine fails. We write, but then we don't get very far before we don't write anymore.

The cursor blinks. Waiting.

I sit, begging, pleading with her. I try to do it on my own, force the words to come through, but each letter oozes painfully out of me like blood from a fresh, deep wound. It's not natural like when she does it.

I used to think this was a terminal condition, this writer's block, and would last forever. Over the years I've come to know that the diva inside of me, she of all the ideas and brilliant turns of phrase, will always come back. No matter how firmly she leaves or how far she goes, one day, I know she will return.

And she does.

She'll always find a way to embody my fingers and my soul because she just can't resist. The pull toward the joy we feel in those moments when the words flow free is too great. It's like an addiction, stronger than any drug or drink.

We write because we must write.

And so today, I wait her out. The first paragraph is written and I wait, blinking in time with the cursor.

If I don't squeeze too hard, if I don't press her, it will happen.

Magically, it will happen.

So I avert my eyes and pretend it doesn't matter. I fix a cup of coffee and I read the news and I say in a sighing way, "oh, I guess we're not going to write today."

And finally, when I've got her fully convinced that it just doesn't matter, The Muse shows up with a "who me?" look on her face and suddenly has the will to write.

So we take another go at that runway. Faster this time, we let the words start to flow free. Soon, with enough speed and plenty of ideas to fuel our ascent, we break away from the land below and we begin to rise.

The adjectives and adverbs and participles flow smoothly over the wingtips and we soar, together, my fingers are her engine while The Muse is pulling all the levers.

It's magnificent. Suddenly, we kill off the main character and bank hard to the left. Oh this is a great run. Then a plot twist, some suspense, upward we climb, faster, faster.

And finally, when it feels like my fingers might snap off from the speed and the altitude, the climax of the story arrives and we climb to impossible heights and finally crest that hill.

Once over the apex we begin coasting down the story arc of the glorious dénouement.

Then, the story draws to a close. The engines slow, the fingers wind down, and we touch gently back to down earth, weary but fulfilled.

Flaps come up, we coast to a stop and ease our rig back into the slip.

And suddenly...it's over.

It is then, with much melancholy, together we type the words...

The End

The poor, downtrodden, much ignored lunchmeat

Liverwurst.

Poor lonely liverwurst sitting there in the corner of the deli case, wishing for somebody to love it with a slice of swiss and generous helping of mustard on a nice marble rye.

I think it's that word "liver" in the name that puts people off, despite there being only being maybe 10%-20% of actual liver in the product.

I suppose if McDonalds served a McLiver and fries, it might be hip and people would eat it without thinking.

But sadly, no.

Liverwurst and its lonely brother braunschweiger get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

I, myself, am a HUGE fan of braunschweiger (owing to the partial German heritage of both my parents), but when I eat it, my loving, studiously liver-avoiding husband refuses to give me a smooch for quite some time after consumption.

This is obviously a big point of consideration.

So if it comes down to smooches or sandwiches, I'll take the smooches and leave the braunschweiger to the "only very rarely" category.

However...that being said, we have a well understood agreement that whenever we manage to find ourselves in a real deli (like Molinari or Carnegie) I will order a chicken liver salad, no questions asked.

These sorts of negotiations keep our marriage humming along, I think.

Anyhow.....

By the by, in case you are wondering why I am opining about liverwurst? It's because it was the word of the day on my WordBook Dictionary iPhone app.

I had open that app today so I could look up a ten cent college-level word that my friend NewMexiKen threw out there on Twitter. It was a doozy!

And then I got lost in thoughts of lunch.

To you, that may look like a brown lump, but to me, that's a lump of tasty goodness!!

Tapping Into My Personal Genius

Boy, that's a title, eh?

I'll provide a guarantee right now, this post won't live up to that title.

Maybe it's aspirational. We'll see.

There is a blog I read regularly that takes the form of an online journal. The author is really open and straight forward. It really is like reading her personal diary.

She suffers from quite a bit of writer's block, and so when that happens, she'll do a free association blog post where she asks herself questions and has her mind answer any which way it wants.

I find those posts fascinating as they always contain some nugget of something good that makes the whole exercise worthwhile.

I'm not saying my version of this is going to provide anything other than a nugget of "what the sam hell?" but I'm willing to try.

So. Here we go.

Chatting with myself...

Heeere we go!

Yup, let's go!

We're doin' it!

Crimeny, I'm so blocked I can't even write interviewer questions.

Ugh.

Ok, for real this time.

Hello, welcome to our self-chat. How are you feeling today?

Wait, that's how a therapist likes to start a conversation. "How are you feeeeling?" How am I feeling? Bite me, that's how I'm feeling!

I sense a little hostility.

Congratulations, your sensors are working fine. Can I go?

Yes, you can. But would you stay a minute more?

Why?

Because I asked you nicely.

Fair enough.

Why are you so cranky?

I get cranked up when I have writer's block. It usually comes so easy to me, the words. In fact, I can write too many words. I was constantly admonished by a former boss, a numbers guy, that I wrote too many words.

He was a toad, though, so no need to let his opinions matter.

Isn't writing a process? A flow? Sometimes a raging river, sometimes a trickle?

Thanks. Now I have to go pee.

Some of the greatest writers in the world had and have writer's block.

Sure, sure. I know it's all a part of the creative process but damn, I hate it!

Don't you think railing against it only makes it worse?

Don't you think being a smarty-pants is going to net you the backspace key, repeatedly?

Hey, this is your mental exercise, hot-shot, I'm just asking the questions here.

Oooh, touchy touchy! Fine, yes, I know that railing against writer's block only makes it worse. But railing against [insert item here] is sort of how I make my way through life.

You know, "Hulk mad! Hulk smash!" or something like that.

Yeah. How's that working out for you?

Today, not so well.

What do you think would help clear the block?

I don’t know. It usually passes in its own time.

So, if you can just wait it out, it will resolve itself.

Usually.

So, being patient with yourself and letting it pass by might actually be the quickest route?

Yeah, probably.

So why don't you do that...be patient with yourself?

Damned if I know.

Well, maybe that's something to work on today.

Yeah, you're right. I'll grudgingly admit you are right. Maybe even helpful, too.

Any closing thoughts?

I like pie.

Thank you, and good night....

It's daytime, stupid brain. You good fer nothing piece of......


Thus concludes today's conversation. I hope we've all learned something here. Though I've no idea what that would be.

Oh fer the $#%@ing love of $%#!

You know, where I come from, folks don’t necessarily have the best opinion of California.

"Land of fruits and nuts," the old saying goes.

California does tend to come off weird, aberrant, plastic surgeried and just plain wacky to the middle of the country.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I can manage to fight off those accusations.

"I live in Northern California, it's different," I say.

Or, "you only know what you see on TV. That's not real."

Or, "I wouldn't have lived here so long if it was really like that."

And then every once in a while, this crazy state does something even I, a long time apologist, can't manage to explain.

No, I'm not talking about the Guvernator, but yes, that's one example I can't rightly explain.

Today, the one that's got me scratching my head is this recent bit of legislation:

A little thing called "Cuss-Free Week".

What the &*$#!?!?!

No cussing?

This is California for &*$#'s sakes!

No cussing?

Ok, so the idea was brought on by a fourteen year old kid who I'm sure has the best of intentions.

And yes, it's probably a good idea to clean up the ol' language.

But for the love of %$#@, this is California. You know, the state where people like to bring wacky lawsuits?

Ten will get you twenty, SOMEONE is going to allege a first amendment rights violation. This thing will get hung up in court for YEARS costing the taxpayers of an already on the verge-of-bankrupt state millions of dollars to adjudicate the situation.

I might remind you that the whole "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance kerfuffle began in, you guessed it, California.

Our residents seem to know how to tie things up in the courts.

Well %&@$.

P.S. As an aside, a friend of mine brought up the question of: does the curse ban only apply to English colloquialisms? Because she is fluent in another language. I find this to be a very good pinche point. Yeah, cabrons?

P.P.S. To my Spanish speaking readers...I Googled "pinche" to see if any of the letters needed accenting. I was amused to find that one user on Urban Dictionary seems to think pinche means : all the guys who work in the kitchen at a restaurant. If I had been drinking coffee, I would have spewed it all over my screen.