The-Day

postmodern,writing,task

The time I gave up writing, coz my audience were a bunch of tossers.
– By Todd Backhouse

He drove into the “drive through”, which really should of been called a ‘drive around’ as it went around the building and not through (which I am sure was deemed good by the majority of parents whose children were up and wandering around within the restaurant – with the exception of perhaps the one woman in the corner who was actually praying a car would come through the building and kill her [which is rather morbid] and she wouldn’t have to put up with her defeatist existence). As his blue car, which he, much the same as many others had previously, often mistook for green – as a result of his genetic construction that resulted in blue-green colour blindness – made it around to the first cashier (who I don’t suppose can be legitimately labelled as a cashier, as she did not take his money, and the sign above the window, instructed him to “order here” and not pay) he noted that he’d have to get some petrol; or as the news week had called it the week before ‘liquid gas’.

Ordering himself the only thing that he even slightly desired in terms of cardboard food (which actually was not made of cardboard, at least according the most recent press release of the fast food industry – undermining accusations similar to those made about “power bars containing shredded newspaper) – the nugget meal, he did not notice his mobile phone vibrate in the glove-box, where rules and regulations said it was to be while he was in operation of a motor vehicle.

I wonder if the Australian Department of ROAD and TRAFFIC authorities, had a special sect who handled “Mobile phone restrictions’ and if the new legislation had been thoroughly thought about. Had they stopped to think, what if the owner of a phone in the glove box of a motor vehicle were unable to take an emergency phone call from their dying loved one, or perhaps their black-mailer who being unpleased and unappeased in his demands, had tried to contact the person, to allow them one chance before killing their children or worse….

Finally exiting the drive through, after being told what to do several times (which had resulted in slight build up of hostile aggression to the universe at the lack of choice [order here, pay here, collect here, sorry your order will be a wait of five minutes as we have to cook some fresh nuggets…] and may have, had he been a more homicidally predisposition state of mind, resulted in one mass murder within the confines of a franchise) he was all to happy to turn his vehicle east, then south, (then a number of other subsequent directions) to get on the road home.

On every open empty space, (bill board, bus seat, strangers t-shirt) was a big, often bright, display telling him to “get himself a new look with. ..” or to “give us a call now on…” – but these went unnoticed (which was a shame really considering how much time and effort went into crafting these wonderfully voyeuristic advertisements [all for the greater consumer good!]) As countless other not so subtle, not so subliminal, sales campaigns of the past and present had begun to.

I ask myself, where do we go from here, words have too many meanings; people are actually beginning to overlook the images we place in front of them. Where is our modern day Baudrillard? Who will tell us what to use now the font colour and size, and picture in front of us become…

Pulling into his driveway (again a rather poor effort for effective labelling, as the deconstruction of such words, which was encouraged by the potentially pessimistic movement of the time, stressed that we must do- would result in something much different to what the object, or its purpose was - It makes me wonder, if a word could actually feel, would being misunderstood or insulted cause it to do rash things? Henceforth I shouldn’t abuse words, they are my only tool as an author, I guess I cant say crap is a vulgar word anymore either, because it may not like it, its bad enough it has to go around all day everyday being called crap…) he turned off the engine of his car. The lack of “vroom” (yes, well give me a better word …wait….give me a more appropriate word and I will consider using it) made it easier to hear the last bars of his favourite advertising jingle. He knew that jingle, he infact knew most jingles, who didn’t those days? they were easier to remember than contemporary music, and often used frequent expressions in funny ways.

With a slight inkling of disappointment, that the jingles had been replaced with the on the hour every hour report, which had started a good twenty minutes after the last hour had ended, he went inside. Entering the building he felt relief to be home.

As an author, you want your character to start feeding you what they are going to do next, however if the are the type of character who comes home and….feels relief, at being home, I personally may find them a bit boring, and is probably the type to be completely banal for the rest of the day and not worth writing about. And seeing that im writing for an audience of my peers, who I would assume have similar tastes, I will have to take a bit of artistic license.

Ahem….

Entering the building, he kicked off his shoes, and scoffed down his now cold nuggets and fries. He thought about just how he could make sure he would have a good time, that night at his friend’s house. Reaching into his pocket to retrieve a key device in arranging numerous alcoholic beverages for himself for his planned night –he realised he did not have it.

It? Might need to explain what is now, hey...

“It” was his mobile phone. Realising he didn’t have his phone, sent him into what may have been an anxiety attack. (Think, perfectly healthy person placed on placebo drip of salane solution/ or other product without any pragmatic or effect on whether the patient survives, because they think it’s necessary) As he realised it was in the car, his stress levels dropped, well in truth, he began to mentally retrace his steps and figured it had to be in the car or never existed – the later of which a horrifying concept being that all modern people that don’t have a phone are worse than low/life bums, I mean even low lives and bums have phones, they just have flat batteries and no credit on them.

Wait, can I even say “bum”? – Heard it recently that political incorrectness is one of the basest forms of discourse – so instead of bum, ill have to refer to them as – “hope-absent individual”. This string of words when deconstructed can point to two things a bum, or no hoper, or a giant whale on the coast of Japan – that would really depend on your context but all in all it shouldn’t affect the piece that much…

Retrieving his phone, from the place he had left it (which in truth was where his grandmother had instructed him, many a time, was the best place to look for anything he had lost) made him feel much better than a hope-absent individual, as he had both a charged phone with plenty of credit on it. He had received a message, how long ago? He thought (or may have thought had he not hastily opened it to read what it said).

Hi, R U Cumin 2 da Ting 2nite?

It’s sad to see language brutally reduced to so few letters without there realistically being a need. A single text message can have a maximum of 156 characters, and with predictive text function it would not take very look to type a proper message. I believe the message would have pleased me more had it been, in full:-

Hello, my dear friend, are you coming to the thing at my place tonight?

Makes me want to sigh. Sigh.

Replying to the message, (with one could construe as being a yes I am, as it was simply ‘Yes’) he set about making sure he had everything he needed for the party. His friend was having a party that night, because his parents had left for the weekend, and although they had told him he was not to have a party – he naturally was throwing one.

I would right what happened in the next four hours, thirty seven minutes, and twenty six seconds – but you being a contemporary audience probably would have the attention span of a gnat, and banality would just bore you. Don’t think im attempting to insult you, I am the same, I was just acknowledging it. So yeah, here is the next segment.

Boy got ready for party, boy obtains lift to party, and boy is at party.

He could feel her eyes on him, they weren’t literally on him, as she was on the other side of the room, but for those who are slightly daft, and have managed to get their hands on this piece of writing, I was clarifying that.

He had been checking her out all night, but he was sure she hadn’t noticed, because he had tried to be subtle about it. (now being im the author and get this somewhat omnipotent status I am aware that she had noticed, as subtlety had been lost, much like the acceptable pastime of going to the theatre which now was reserved for school excursions, old peoples and gays –

Oops! Politically correctness…what I meant to say was the heterosexually-devoid.

- because this made it quite obvious our character had been checking out said chick [not a chicken, I believe that is an outdated colloquialism the media has recently been trying to bring back into the vernacular along with erasure of Snags –sensitive new age guys – and metrosexuals [which sounds to me more like a person who is sexually attracted to metropolitan areas {is that even possible? To be attracted to an area? In a sexual sense I mean} than a man who actually bathes, and shaves and smells nice])

I realize I have left my character nameless…but I tire of pronouns, and now wish to call him Claude, because I like that name, not because it has any textual allusion to any other text, although I did have a neighbor who had a dog, who had a litter of puppies once, and when my teacher’s sister-in-law bought one she named it Claude…

Claude, who had the subtlety of an elephant in a tutu (which is like, null on the subtlety-o-meter) now noticed the girl was returning his attention. This excited Claude. The ideas and possibilities of just what he might get up to later that night began to fill his head.

Is it worth noting, that this is a perfectly normal incident? It is not an isolated incident. It had been happening for years, though slightly different. - Adolescent males who recently being old enough to drive their cars, had often decided they were old enough to drive something less mechanic and more organic, that was between their legs. No I don’t mean a motorbike…okay, so I may have just made a joke, are you laughing? Did you expect me to name it? Im not going to say “Adolescent males, when they get to a certain age are itching to get laid, and use their penis”. That would be distasteful. – In contemporary society with the decline of religious morality and the increase in available contraception, people were more likely to have sexual encounters than awkward boy-girl moments anymore. Some even believed that promiscuity was a perfectly acceptable, often admiral goal.

You seem different.

You aren’t enjoying my piece? Is it because I said penis? Or maybe because I made a lame joke.

Hello?

Fine.

And suddenly, because of an act of terrorism, they were all killed. (that’s your fault.) If only their neighbors had reported the suspicious looking towel head (I mean character of middle eastern descent) buying lots of manure to ASIO, they’d all be alive. (or perhaps if you hadn’t annoyed me, by having such poxy responses to my text…)

I hope your happy…I was proud of my creative writing piece until this point.

Author's Note

yeah...