Haven’t done one in a while. You know the drill.
I write part of a story and the next poster adds to it, and then the poster after that.
If Sealemon tries to kill the thread don’t get mad at him. Here goes:
It was a dark and stormy night.
Idly, I looked out the window and saw a clear blue sky with a couple of cottonfluff clouds drifting by.
It wasn’t dark and stormy after all. It wasn’t even night. It was a bright and sunny afternoon. But that’s how they work it. They won’t let you choose the weather. You have to take what they give you. Bastards.
Again my thoughts returned to the same old question: what am I doing here? Not here, in this institution. I know the answer to that. I mean here, in this universe.
Hume’s assault on the self is a barren philosophy with little explanatory power. To compound the felony, he offers no alternative. It’s only redeeming quality is that it strengthens the Cartesian dictum, “I think, therefore I am.” And I think. I think a lot. That’s why I know the truth, even though they’ve done secret things to my mind. Goddam aliens. And I don’t mean the immigrants.
It was getting dark. The white clouds were being replaced by dark, ominous ones. Thunder. Lightning. And then the rain started.
It was a dark and stormy night.
Suddenly, the telephone rang. I picked it up and said, “Yes?”
“Floyd is acting up again.”
I groaned and said, "Give him 2 cc’s of Procaine and have him ready for electro in the morning.
I hung up the phone gently. Then, upon reflexion, I picked up the receiver and slammed it down violently. The satisfying crashing sound filled my soul with joy.
Unfortunately, the joy was immediately dispelled by the contemplation of a new window that had popped up on my computer screen. I saw the dreaded words “10 new mail messages.” I bit my fingernails as I considered the next optimal course of action.
If today was a day like any other, I would have deleted them all without a thought. However, as I was soon to find out, today was a day like no other I had experienced before. On a whim, I opened the first message, a mistake I would regret for the rest of my soon to be miserable life. It read:
Thousands of people have made millions of dollars following our simple plan. You’ll be amazed that no one has thought of it before. Don’t you want to get in on the action?
SEND THIS TO TWENTY OF YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS OR BAD LUCK WILL BEFALL YOU AND EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!
Example Number One: Gladys Hornback ignored this message. She was walking home from the library with a stolen copy of Penthouse Forum when she was hit by a runaway train. The nearest train tracks were two miles away.
Example Number Two: Gandhi ignored this message. Look what happened to him.
Example Number Three: David E. Kelley immediately sent this to forty of his closest friends. And now he’s married to Michelle Pfeiffer.
Could this be true? Would forwarding this e-mail really make a Hollywood star fall in love with me and bear my children?
I hurriedly chose the “Friends” group in my e-mail address book (a group sadly small in number), and with trembling fingers clicked the “Forward” button. The computer barely had time to beep when the phone rang again.
Cursing, I hit the “speaker” button. The dulcet tones of my secretary Jim sounded portentously. “It’s Brad Pitt on line 1.”
My jaw dropped as I said “patch him through”. Heart pounding violently, I waited for the connection to be made…
A voice on the other end growled, “I just got 47,000 copies of a forwarded email chain letter from groupie AOLers and the computer hacker in my entourage traced the letter back through several layers to your computer. If I ever find out that you’ve forwarded another one of those things, I’m sending Guido after you.”
I hear him slam down the phone, my hopes and dreams crushed. Except, perhaps this “Guido”? I start to search through the pages of Brad Pitt information that my trusty aides have scavenged from tabloids and garbage cans, looking for information on “Guido”…and perhaps a photo.
Finally, in an old issue of the Weekly World News, I see him, Guido, suspiciously eyeing the crowd at Brad’s side at the opening of the latest Porky’s sequel. And he’s damn fine looking - well, OK-looking, anyway. Sort of like a young version of the guy that used to tell the cops to “be careful out there” on the old “Hill Street Blues” show.
Amazingly, his number is in the phone book. After dialing tentatively, I hear the phone ring. But when it answers, Guido is not there, only a weird series of beeps and noises, like a fax machine in heat.
Suddenly, I hear odd scurrying noises outside my door, made by something larger than a rodent … Sounds like a lot of whatever they might be. I apprehensively walk to the door, look out the peephole, only to see
…nothing at all. I turn away and make a mental note to get ahold of a good pest control place. Then I hear the noises again. Then silence. Then the door crashes in.
“Have you been saved?” the tall gangly man asks in a quick accusative tone. He invites himself in, and is soon handing me a series of pamphlets and fliers.
I recoil, frightened by the persistance of his proselytizing, and having dealt with his type in a familiar internet message board.
He reaches into his overcoat with an unnerving vacancy in his gaze. I freeze. His hand jerks out to reveal…
I pause, then reach eagerly for the card. As I fondle the card in my hand, I notice that it just happens to be personalized with my name. I’m confused…I’m wondering how this could have happened…how could have they have known in advance? I look back to the tall gangly man but he is gone!
Come to think of it…he did have sort of a gray complexion!..
Krispy Original – voted SDMB’s 19th most popular poster (1999)
I decided to call the number on the card. I dialed it, but there was only a series of clicks. I listened to the clicks for awhile, as they almost sounded like they were telling me something. I felt myself slipping into some sort of a trance…
When I awoke, it was dark again, and I was outside in my driveway. I was covered in some sort of dark liquid, and I had a chicken in my hand…
The package was still there. And I wasn’t talking about the package the Drain Bead is so fond of either.
The plain brown wrapped package held together with a bit of twine was given to me by Sister Mary Rosita after a year of training in the convent when mother superior discovered I was a male with a libido that would have made Mary Magdeline blush.
I withdrew it, pulled the twine (and in the process dropping my chicken), pushed back the paper to reveal…
You are now leaving a “Smiley-free zone”!
A public service message brought to you by G.R.O.S.S.
The last sponge! The sponge used by a bystander to offer wine to Jesus when he was on the cross. Why would I be charged with this sacred relic? Why did Sister Marie Rosita entrust me with this awesome responsibility?
While pondering these issues, three tall men in Benedictine monk garb strode towards me out of the dark. “We’ll take that”, their leader sneered.
“Not so fast”, I replied. I reached into my other pocket and pulled out…
“Not so fast”, I replied. I reached into my other pocket and pulled out…
A naked Barbie doll, which I shoved into the center “monk’s” eyesocket. As he evaporated into a cloud of neon-green gas, the other two were distracted long enough for me to make my getaway.
I managed to eat the sponge as I ran, but the other monks were gaining on me. Just as I felt a boney claw tighten around my collar, I was enveloped by a blue pulsing light from above. My collar ripped free as I was carried up on the beam of light, toward…
… a nearby 7-11. The cold claw fell from my shoulder, and I was dragged inexorably toward the convenience store. As I clawed wildly at the ground in a vain attempt to stop my progress, I saw that the alien monks had stopped chasing me; in fact, they seemed frozen in place. Was this mysterious force trying to help me? I had obviously attracted attention, but whose … or what’s?
Was it God that had saved me fromthe monks? Had the sponge transformed me from an insignificant wretch, into a worthy being?
I noticed that the closer I moved to the 7-11, the farther away that it appeared to move. It was only an illusion created to distract me from the horror of what waited on the other side of reality.
I felt myself falling through a crack in space and time, just before everything disappeared… including myself.
Slowly, it occurred to me that I must, in fact, exist.
My proof was, that I was able to harbor that realization.
So I looked for myself, but found nothing.
The only clue to my existance was an insignificant displacement of the lack of anything that was everything.
Sensing that I was alone, I became a cold blue shadow of loneliness, all ablaze with the glow of despair.
Butt then, my analytical meanderings convinced me that I was more than dead stark logic.
There was no binary code to describe the impossible colors of my emotions.
That same logic confirmed that I was more than simply organized patterns of reason.
The colors of my thoughts took on the rainbow hues of
hope, as I realized that I was alive, and that anything was possible … by will alone.
I basked in the warm glow of my new contentment.
But still, sumthing was all askew with the shimmering brilliance of my life spectrum.
That cold blue loneliness pulsated relentlessly against the
warmth of my contentment.
I craved sumthing to fill the blue void and give my emerging
life-force a reason to exist.
Drawing on the infinite resources of imagination, I envisioned the possibilities of other entities than myself.
They would reflect the impossible colors of my existance,
so that my life might have purpose.
I forced my will to concieve of a small lamp, in the shape of a hula dancer.
Her seductive charm radiated in waves, through the intricate thatched shade, and cast an interesting texture upon the colors of the new universe.
Then I created beer…and life was good.