For today’s blog entry, I thought I would do something completely different. Please find here a humble offering of short fiction. I write fiction from time to time. And to share it, a work either it has to be so good that I think everyone in their right mind will love it (this has yet to happen), or I wrote it because I was bored and I don’t care if anyone likes it or not. The story here falls in to the latter category. It was written after I read a book called “The Passion Test,” one of the many character-building, pseudo-spiritual corporate books I have been made to read for the sake of my education.
I admit the story is a little dark. But I wasn’t being dark when I wrote it. I was just following The Passion Test’s premise--that we all might live our dreams--to one possible end.
Enjoy.
To prove that I (occasionally) think about something other than Josh Groban:
Recently, a professor of creative writing wrote an article about the state of young adult literature today. In it, she condemned the solemnity and morbidity of some of the plots of these books (She didn’t even mention the scourge of Gossip Girl or the fact that mothers die with alarming frequency in other YA novels. What does this tell us? Have all the promiscuous relations you want, young girls, but motherhood will one day kill you).
However, she really lost me when she described, among this “new crop of young adult fiction,”
“A town holds a lottery. At first it seems like an innocent exercise, but the author slowly reveals that the winner of the lottery will be sacrificed.”
Wasn’t this first written in 1948? By Shirley Jackson? Wasn’t it a short story called “The Lottery?” Wasn’t it in The New Yorker, the same publication referenced in this YA article? I didn’t know The New Yorker printed YA.
Um, ma’am, nice article and all, but perhaps you need not comment on the state of young adult fiction today. Though you could instead criticize Gossip Girl. To that, I could relate.
So, Barnes and Noble has snippets of Josh Groban’s new CD out. I really didn’t care that he is coming out with a new CD.
At least, that is what I tell myself so that I can look in the mirror in the morning. It’s not like I’d knock people over trying to be the first in line to get the special edition CD with the holiday ornament. No. I am far too composed for that sort of thing. Besides, Christmas trees are against the rules here because they are flammable. So I’d have to hang the ornament somewhere else. Like on a life-sized Josh Groban cardboard cut out. Which I totally don’t own. Because they are probably pretty flammable too. At least, in a house where Peter has ready access to a lighter.
In any case, early reviews (from me) mark this as perhaps the most powerful mix of marketing musical beauty ever to hit the shelves. Josh Groban and the birth of Jesus? That, right there, is pretty much what I’m all about. If he were to throw in a Wesleyan resurrection hymn and a dramatic reading of a children’s book, I’d say he’d have me completely. Crafty Warner Brothers. You know me all too well.
I listened to 20 second of “The Little Drummer Boy” over and over again. Upon hearing his Voice sing That Song, I vowed before God and the ancestors that I would finish my dissertation, write the great American novel and stop hunger, sickness and global warming in my lifetime. However, Josh has also once again insisted on singing in French, something I wish he’d just stop. I keep trying to get my friend Katherine (who lives in France) to like Josh. This sort of nonsense is not helping. Seriously, Groban. Cut it out already.
There are three versions of the CD too, of course. One with a “making of” DVD sold at Target (*cough Christmas present from brother-in-law cough*), one with an ornament, and a regular one. These CDs don’t feature extra music, which is generally the only reason I preorder months in advance buy the special edition CDs. So maybe I’ll skip the special ones this year.
Again, that is what I tell myself. You know, for the mirror and all.
"So who can tell me about Calvinism?
*silence*
“Robert, how about you?’
“Isn’t that the religion about the flower?”
*silence on my part*
“Like, a rose or a carnation or something?”
“You mean, T.U.L.I.P.?"
“Yeah. That’s it. Some people got flowers, some people went to hell.” There is no irony in his voice.
The professor, who is observing at the back of the class, stands. “Okay, class. Adrienne the teaching assistant will be doing the bulk of the teaching for the remainder of the semester.” He shakes his head and walks out.
Robert pipes up again, “The Calvinists came over with Christopher Columbus, right?”
I am thinking of adopting limited atonement as a grading policy.
