Wednesday, November 03, 2004

 

A Gloomy Day


Well, I'm about to head off to bed, seeing I can't stay up long enough for America to make up its fucking mind, but it's looking more certain by the minute that the semi-trained chimp will be back in office again.

All I can say is well, if you made the bed you might as well lie in it.

And if you didn't vote for Bush, my condolences. There's nothing much to be done about it.

Man, I hope I wake up tomorrow and they've gotten a million absentee and provisional votes or something.

That being said, here is the first excerpt from my novel, as requested by Juno:

*******

What’s That You Said?

The day started pretty much as any other day: I woke with a hangover and with only seventeen minutes to get ready before I’d be late for work. Despite this I kept pounding the ‘snooze’ button until even I could justify no further sloth.

There was no hot water. The inconsiderate bitch upstairs always has the nerve to get up half an hour before I do and then takes an endless shower. Yeah, I know this problem would be alleviated by getting up on time, but really d00d, let’s deal with reality here.

The cold shower woke me up enough for me to get dressed. I hastily crawled into the least-crumpled clothing I could find in the shambles of my bedroom, gulped down two glasses of water, grabbed my briefcase and ran out the door to the subway, hoping to god I had a token in one of my pockets.

Fate was smiling on me. I found a token, barreled through the turnstile and forced myself into the overcrowded, smelly subway car just as the doors hissed closed. Grabbing a handhold I went immediately into semi-snooze mode, hoping that by some miracle the 20-minute ride would afford me enough rest to be able to function at work. I had a client meeting at ten and had to pull some sort of amazing presentation out of my ass in the hour and a half I had until the client, affectionately referred to in my mind as Fatty McYap, and his sidekick arrived in the boardroom. I was always intimidated by the sidekick; a wiry, tense little woman who often seemed about to start frothing rabidly at the mouth while yapping shrilly and poking holes in my presentations.

I had a feeling she could see right through my pretense of competence.

It wouldn’t be hard. I didn’t have the first clue what I was doing, and the weekend spent sampling the charms of the new guy from behind the counter at the funky deli down the street rather than working on my presentation hadn’t improved on my sketchy and unrealistic ideas for marketing their latest useless product. It had seemed the only wise course of action at the time, however upon more sober reflection I had to admit that the only move higher on the “Career Limiting Actions” list would be something along the lines of being caught in an amorous embrace with the client’s Shih Tzu. In a stolen Mercedes. His Mercedes. While being serenaded by a mariachi band hired with his own Platinum American Express card.



Comments:
Keep the excerpts coming ... I'm in the process of clawing my way out of my own seasonal depression, and could use the grins :c)
 
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