True Words 2: Fanfic Division

"But in those whom no necessity forces to turn Author, who merely write for fame, and have full leisure to polish their compositions, faults are impardonable, and merit the sharpest arrows of criticism."

Mathew Lewis, The Monk (1796)

Thanks Mandy!

I got the title wrong and couldn't remember the author but Mandy still managed to find this for me:

The Most Illuminatingly Doleful and Instructively Affecting Demise of Flo, Late of Upper Blooton
by Russell M. Griffin (1943-1986)

Sweet little ones, attention lend,
to Flo's grim, grisly, shocking end.
Flo lived in Upper Blooton then,
an Eden just off Exit 10
Where almost nothing went amiss
to mar her Prelapsarian Bliss.

But smallest things, we often find,
can rattle the serenest mind:
The least cloud dims the brightest days,
the fly afloat in Sauce Bernaise,
The fizzless Coke, the tepid shower
will sweetest dispositions sour.

So Flo, though blessed, would run amuck
on mornings when her toaster stuck.

Sometimes the Arnold Veri-thin
would buckle and get wedged within
Or English muffins prove too wide
or scraps of heel slip down inside.

She'd never first remove the plug
as mother warned, but always dug
Her fork deep in the toaster's slot
and rout and thrust until she got
Her slice, by passion blinded to
the arcing sparks that upward flew.

One day, alas, it happened that
her Eggo waffle was too fat.
It stuck. In plunged her fork and went
right through a heating element
To form a fatal AC link
from Flo to Blooton Power Inc.

Her eyes grew wide, her hair grew straight
she cursed her hasty fork - too late!
For as a pennant when gales blow
stands straight out from the mast, just so,
Flow sideways rose with high-volt torque
a banner from her red-hot fork.

"Dear me" she mused, "I never thought
my inner light was quite so hot,
But none can say my light was hid
beneath a bushel." and none did.
No bridegroom, peeping Tom or tramp
could miss this foolish virgin's lamp.

But as the brightest shooting star
is soonest spent, our tale's bizzare
Conclusion was on final flash
converting Flo to soda ash
And, freeing all her primal parts
air, water, carbon and pop tarts.

One instant still her image hung
in floation soot and then among
The molecules of air dispersed.
Her mother later found the worst:
What had been Flo was now no more
then siftings on her no-skuff floor.

Her mother later, over juice
received reporters "What's the use?
Despite our warning her" she sighed
"she stuck her fork inside and died
And charred her brand-new dress-up shoes
and blew a twenty-ampere fuse.

She's free of pain and cold and toil
she's shuffling off this heating coil.
But we, the living, spent an hour
deprived of all electric power
And worse, endured - Oh Wretched Ghost
this morning's breakfast without toast."

Bulwer-Lytton Wept

http://mctabby.livejournal.com/327291.html

A best (worst) of list of actual Harry Potter story summaries gathered from fanfic sites by Minerva McTabby

Put the coke down before clicking, management is not responsible for damage to your keyboard if you ignore this warning.

Darwin Award?

The Dawin Awards are given to people who remove themselves from the gene pool by doing something spectacularly stupid that gets them killed or sterilized.

In December Denis Donaldson, a prominent member of Sinn Fein, admitted to spying on them for the British, did interviews about it on TV, and then did not leave Ireland. His mutilated body was found earlier this month.

Would this count as assisted suicide or is is Darwin worthy? Either way I'm surprised he lived this long.

Oh Look!

Life

I didn't realize how long it's been since my last post. I've mostly been absorbed with just about anything that didn't require me to think too deeply about anything without realizing that I was trying really hard not to realize what this week was and what today was in particular.

Didn't work.

Wednesday would have been my mother's birthday. Today is the anniversary of the day she died. Her deathday?

Would you believe that on Tuesday I thought about going to a country cooking restaurant I haven't been to in a few months and started crying thinking about Mama's pork chops and didn't stop for an hour? That was the worst point so maybe things are getting better with time.

Things conspired against me for most of the week. Mandy was missing her mother's cooking too and blogged about it. Wednesday I wandered into the recreation room for the patients for the first time in months and the song book on the piano was open to Whispering Hope, Mama's favorite hymn. This morning her one of her amaryllis bloomed.

But then also this morning I attended a wedding at the hospital.

Our facility is a little different. There are two hospitals joined by a central lobby and the building wraps around a beautiful courtyard where there is almost always something in bloom. There is a small rose garden at one end and that's where one of the staff from the psych hospital exchanged her vows this morning with the man she has been with for 20 years. Retirement is coming up so they decided to make it legal. Standing there watching two grey haired people making a commitment to each other and looking at each other with so much love gave me hope that maybe this isn't hell after all.

That's what I really felt Tuesday, that this is hell and heaven may only be wishful thinking and my only hope lies in not killing myself and enduring my sentence here because I want things to be better the next time 'round.

But then I attended a wedding and went back inside and passed by the therapy gym on my way to work where a man with no feet was working out to strengthen his legs so he can walk with prosthetics. So there is hope. At least for some people. And maybe one day I'll finish paying off whatever karmic debt keeps biting me in the ass and I'll find a little hope for me too. Even if it's only being good enough to get to heaven someday so I can have some of Mama's pork chops again.