SwimModSponges

Where are my manners anyways, whining about my place instead of congratulating the winner and all who participated and ran the contest. We're all winners.

The neding wasn't supposed to be a punchline though: "This scene was a perversion of Jesus washing the beggars feet. Whereas the original story demonstrated empathy with the downtrodden and the absolute humility of a proposed human deity, Prosperity Jesus (Saturday mornings at 9:30 AM on TBN) shows that he is absolutely subservient to the power of rich men. And the slaves that built this golden monument? Lost and forgotten in a sea of nuclear dust as mankind triggers the next great extinction in earth’s history. "

Did you get what I was trying to do here? Like nobody I've shared this with understands. Did I go too deep in my metaphors?

Goddamn, nobody got my symbolism. It's a good thing I prepared a longwinded explanation of it- Literary analysis- The first paragraph serves to create the setting for the rest of the work, of course. The language I chose in describing the monument was meant to invoke images of the great pyramids of Egypt; and though it takes on several more meanings during the course of the work, should at the first instance represent a form of civilizational memento mori- that is to say, a ruined monument; lost to time. Shelly’s Ozymandias, as it were. The “shining city on a hill” is a direct reference to Ronald Reagan’s metaphor for America; as is mine. I presented his beacon of capitalism as a world struck by vast differences in equality among human beings. Specifically, I wanted to highlight the fact that the hill upon which the shining parts of the city (America), as well as the monument itself were built directly upon the efforts of the lower classes (slavery, abuse of factory workers until the unionization movement, inhumane conditions experienced by both migrant workers and also those to whom many lesser-desired jobs are outsourced). The shape of the city on the hill is also symbolic in and of itself, I mean it’s no coincidence those on the lowest rungs of society are far below the horizon that is the poverty line. The main character is presented as an individual powerless in the face of an exploitative system. She is without a name, without pride in herself, without any of the things that make one human; she has been broken like an animal by the system. As have those around her- the reference to hiding her genitals while fiercely protecting the water; the only resource she could even for a moment lay claim to, was a commentary on the statistics of rape among underprivileged women (96% of native American women reported being raped in a 2006 study, I can cite it APA style but if you want to check my references feel free. That goes for everything. Please be equally critical of this work, I thrive on it.). The workers at the tables represent the middle class; specifically a middle class given the barest of necessities (animal fat and rice) and a token privilege above the lowest class (the cigarettes). These differences, minute as they are in reality, allows those at the tables to feel that they are I fact better than those at the troughs, and maybe even almost as good as the nobles on their camels (a pack of camels was at this point supposed to serve as a red-herring: “is this story about a pack of cigarettes somehow?”). The shepherds of course represent the police, gerrymandering, poll taxes, gentrification, or any other entity or concept which exists enforce social stratification. The older gentleman was Obi-wan Kenobi. Not literally of course, but metaphorically. Full disclosure, almost all of my works are in some way based on a loose concept of the Hero’s Journey framework. It’s a perfectly valid writing technique for leading the audience through a story at a physical and emotional pace that many argue is the best for storytelling. Most movies follow this formula though they don’t come out and say it. Dan Harmon, creator of Rick and Morty, does however. He loves him some Hero’s Journey. Anyways, Old Ben talks about that time he had a lightsaber and fought in the clone wars (metaphorically) and the Call to Action box on our Hero’s Journey checklist gets marked. So now we Introduce the Villain. Exciting times. Now at this point we don’t know much, other than the fact that he belongs to the noble caste, is a fan of gold, and likes throwing out token privileges (that honestly just end up killing you anyways) to the middle class, while showing nothing but disdain for the lowest class. Yes, he urinates into the only water they get that day. I mean it’s an exaggeration, sure, but it’s symbolic for the growth of nationalistic hatred that has swept the nation. Plus, having read the story and knowing that SPOILER ALERT the noble is in fact Donald Trump, it’s a literal reference to the “alleged” Russian videotape in which he enjoys the presence of two ladies of the evening who proceed to urinate onto the bed that former president Barrack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, had stayed in while visiting the country. Allegedly. END SPOILER ALERT Also the proclamation of “Let’s get these people back to work” is the promises of taking jobs back from the ‘illegals,’ met with cheers. As the whips of the shepherds descend. I’m just saying, deaths in coal mines are waaay up this year. Thanks, OSHA! Cut to that evening; the lowest class getting the scraps left on the tables of the higher classes. Government cheese. Welfare. She finds a place that will accept food stamps for a lottery ticket. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Creepy Ol’ Obi’s saying some weird shit in here. Better cut to a dream. Here we refer to the monument as a needle for the first time. Needle, camel, are you seeing what I’m getting at here? Anyways the monument begins to take shape: it’s a clear allusion to the tower of Babel. And, by extension, the “American Dream.” She’s dreaming of a dream she couldn’t have in her wildest dreams. Sorry, couldn’t help it: she’s lost faith in the system, she realizes she can never appreciate the freedom the monument stands for. Obi-wan appears in the dream and passes her the torch. She sees the needle fall in her mind. Wham, rude awakening. Shit, it’s the cops. Nope wait, just SPOILER ALERT Donald Trump END SPOILER although honestly if you couldn’t tell it was him by those quotes, well then, I suppose that means I hid my foreshadowing fairly well? Anyways, nope, he just wants to rape her. Again, clear reference to the gentleman, who has currently been accused of sexual misconduct by 21 separate women, including his former wife who accused him of tearing out large chunks of her hair and raping her after he found the hair replacement operation she had suggested to be painful. Again, “allegedly.” Also there’s symbolism in the repetition in the way I describe both her and the stone being torn form the earth. Anyways, this moment of darkness represents the turning point for our hero. She looks at the broken American dream and is not blinded. She’s going to burn this motherfucker down. She’s a servant; a member of the service industry. She is the thirty year old man working at the drive through window at McDonalds. She is those jobs that pay minimum wage because they’re not supposed to be actual jobs, just jobs for kids. And holy shit y’all, she is going to burn this motherfucker down. And she’s really going to do it too! Here she goes! Shit, she’s caught! Obi-wan comes to save her but he’s caught to! Black Moment checked off on our Hero’s Journey. I bet the man who stopped her thought he was doing the right thing. I mean the Nazis thought/think they’re the good guys. But the nobles still see them as nothing more than slaves. Yeah, I dropped the N-word. Again, shocking, but again a direct reference to “alleged” footage of Donald Trump using the terminology while working on his reality show. Oh shit, I said it without the spoiler alert. Well whatever, if you haven’t figured it out yet… Anyways, time for the Sacrafice box to get checked. Well, there goes Obi. And it’s not pretty. But then, state-sanctioned executions never really are, are they? There’s symbolism in them stealing the hammer and Obi-wan’s brains embedding in the archway too, but now we’re just splitting hairs. Well anyways, she gets blackbagged by the feds. Cut to darkness. It’s done y’all; the Wall -er- Tower is built. Rich men congratulating each other on the work of poor men. Same as the city, same as the nation. Now we officially know it’s Trump. For a brief moment, the slaves of all three castes stand hand in hand and praise their masters as well. But there’s always an enemy; always an Emmanuel Goldstein (Orwell, 1984), always something to focus the frustrated anxieties of the masses upon. The master points at his dogs, tells them to hate, and throws them the cat. Now this is a plot twist to the conventional Hero’s Journey. Now if this was just a bizarre rip off of the Hunger Games, this would be the part where that one lady rallies the crowds and convinces them to turn on the government and everybody goes home happy or decapitated. I assume that’s what happens, never finished it. There is no grand showdown, no equality- she dies as she lived; a nameless, faceless, sacrifice to a corrupt system. Again, it’s gory. You ever see a child caught in a combine? Did you know that child labor is legal on farms, at a reduced minimum wage? This was originally designed so mom-and-pop farms could have their kid’s first job being a farmer. Currently, it’s so factory farms can have small agile migrant laborers they can pay less. And those migrant workers are the ones stealing our jobs. They’re the ones we need to hate. And while we’re distracted, rich men lead their camels through the eye of the needle. You know how, in Jay and Silent Bob’s Dogma, those two angels find a loophole to get back into heaven? Yeah this is kind of like that. Of course the symbolism here is a critique of the hypocrisy within a Republican leadership which claims to espouse the story of a beggar king, while at the same time making themselves king at the expense of beggars. Have you heard of the Prosperity Gospel; as preached by Paula White, chief spiritual advisor to the current president of the United States? It’s a trip. She recently requested her followers to donate 1 month of salary to her. Additionally, Vice President Mike Pence is a member of a congregation which espouses (and I am not joking here. Fact check me please) sending all of the Jewish people on earth to Israel so they can take over the Temple Mount and usher in a biblical apocalypse. Donald Trump’s recent decision to move the Israeli embassy has been attributed to influence by Mr. Pence; Vice President of the United States of America, and very excited for an apocalypse. And Holy Apocalypse commeth; the whitewashed and kingly Prosperity Jesus (great action figures, terrible cartoon) steps down from Heaven, tells the rich folk that they passed their cool to head on up, then steps towards Donald Trump. Jesus welcomes the President of the United States as his “favorite angel,” essentially stating that Donald Trump is Lucifer, tricking Yaweh (or Jehova if you like) to re-enter heaven with his army of demons. Now we get to the climax, if you’ll excuse my pun. What you felt was entirely natural. This scene was a perversion of Jesus washing the beggars feet. Whereas the original story demonstrated empathy with the downtrodden and the absolute humility of a proposed human deity, Prosperity Jesus (Saturday mornings at 9:30 AM on TBN) shows that he is absolutely subservient to the power of rich men. And the slaves that built this golden monument? Lost and forgotten in a sea of nuclear dust as mankind triggers the next great extinction in earth’s history. This work is shocking. This work is violent. This work is disgusting. It should be all of those things. You should hate it. You should hate me for sharing it with you. You should hate yourself; I mean we all should. Not the collective “we” of humanity of course, but the collective “we” of middle class Americans. We live in this shit. We eat and breath in an exploitative system. Do you know the original meaning of Banana Republic? If you don’t I might suggest reading up on the history of “Chiquita.” Bet you didn’t know that all those supermarket flowers that nobody ever buys come from an extremely exploitative industry. Have you ever seen a Coltan mine? It makes your cellphone possible. If you, or I, or any of us had any shred of moral dignity, we would destroy the devices, followed by the system which procures them. But we won’t, because that’s ridiculous. We’ll just stare at our betters on the national stage, shout at what they shout at, and tear a woman to pieces when they command us to. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Submissions ended on the 10th.

Shit im working tonight. Well ill get to see them tomorrow.

YAAAAAYYYYY!

All right, so... 16 years old, riding home from school, sitting in the back of the school bus with my friends. Well we stop to let one of them off, I turn to say "bye" and, well, I'd say it went black after that, but it was black before that too. That's just what I was told happened a week later after waking up from a coma. Apparently while we were stopped, a semi going 70 mph did not see the bus and rammed us at full speed. Driven by the force of the semi, the bus traveled over 100 yards. My friend sitting next to me was killed instantly, but due to the fact that I was turning on impact, I took the majority of my injuries to my right side, as opposed to squarely in the back. Helicopters came and took me away, I was given an emergency tracheotomy, then just kind of sat in a coma for a week. The first thing I remember from waking up is being in a confused animal panic. I had no idea where I was, what was going on, or even who I was. I just knew that I was in pain and I had cords coming from every orifice, including a few more that weren't there before. So I freaked out, starting pulling the tube out of my nose, pulled out my catheter, all the while wide eyed and tense breathing. A nurse had to physically lay down on top of my arms to prevent me from further damaging myself. This whole time was extremely foggy due to brain damage; my mom brought me a shark balloon which I named Patent Manning. I talked about being on a ship headed over to Korea for the war. One time, I asked my mom to turn the cameras on (I was talking about the various monitors I was hooked up to). In my head, I saw myself as the giant monster in an episode of power rangers. Or rather, the man inside the monster suit (probably the brace I had to wear to keep my broken spine still). I sat there in the small replica city between takes in pain, because the power rangers had just badly beaten me, but the scene was not living up to the directors standards so they were going to beat me again (apparently one of the machines I was hooked up to felt like being punched in the stomach about once every 30 seconds or so). The first time I would consider myself fully conscious I asked how everybody else was doing, and was informed that my friend had died. Now that I was awake, they were able to give me a full rundown of my injuries: Fractured skull with traumatic brain injury, broken right clavicle, all ribs on right side broken with punctured right lung, and three vertebrae with all fins broken off, the middle one badly compacted between the other two. Some cogitive difficulties persisted (I could only read things with my left eye for a while) but within a week or so I was feeling well enough to transfer on up to the rehabilitation floor, where I busted my ass to leave with roughly the same level of mental ability I had before the crash. One month after the crash, I left the hospital. More powerful than ever.

Have you not heard that story yet? I can never keep track of who knows my backstory and who hasn't.

One of them got paralyzed after i was hit by a semi but it came back within 3-6 months iirc.

You forgot about my fanfiction obsession.

I was going to give it a full week after the entrance deadline before asking again. Apparently the judges are still judging. Hurry the fuck up y'all. I'm glad this wasn't a long-story contest. Sorry I snapped at you, I'm just impatient af.

But I like being overly descriptive.

I've seen the work of several ladies who've managed it.

I know for a fact the second part isn't true; just have sex while drinking beer. Use a straw.

Thats how i get ya.

That's a lot of crocodiles. I hope you have adequate containment for them.

@PhilosipherStoned i read that rap. It was very good, had a great flow to it and was well written with an impressive range of linguistics. although i personally don't find the imagery of head-nodding particularly strong. But then, i know nothing about rapping.

2 pairs of crocs?

I enjoyed the cameos from the first one. Was pretty good. I enjoyed it, even chuckled a few times.

Yeah it was pretty good. Hey you know what else was pretty good and not as bad as everyone says? My fanfictions, @ghostrek. Red and review them; share your opinions with the world.

So I just ran the math, and it looks like when I'm writing I spend an average of 2 seconds deciding and typing each word. Now I probably did the math wrong- shit, I did; the five hours per 2500 words doesn't include outlining and various other miscellaneous tasks undergone during the five-hour stretch of writing (switching out laundry or dishwasher, taking the dog out and feeding her, etc.). Goddamn math was never my strong suit.