Blog Love Omega Glee: I Find Libraries Depressing (7 September 2012)

Depending on how you set the calendar in your head, it's either late Thursday night or early Friday morning when Francine arrives home. She unlocks the back door and quietly closes it back up and makes her way through the kitchen. She sees the light on in the living room and thinks of how thoughtful her housemates are to have left it on for her. As she makes her way into the small dining room and past the vacant room and Donald's room, she sees that under the light in the living room Masani, engrossed in a book, sits in a chair. "Masani! What are you still doing up? Don't you have to be at work in a couple more hours?" Francine says, setting down her purse on the coffeetable.

Masani looks up and yawns, "Sorry about that" she says of the yawn, "Hi, Baby, I just got into reading this book and couldn't stop."

"Huh? What are you reading?"

Masani shows Francine the cover. It's a book called Fat On The Vine. "This guy's really funny," Masani says, "But it's also sad and disturbing."

"It must be good if you stayed up all night reading it."

"Well, I was also waiting for Donald. I don't know where he goes all night. I think he's cheating on me."

"Donald? No way! He's not home? Where is he?"

"I don't know."

Francine puts her right index finger up across her lips and tiptoes to Donald's door. She quietly opens it and peeps inside. She motions Masani to come near her. They both look and see Donald sleeping in his bed. Going back to the living room, Masani whispers, "I could have sworn he wasn't home."

"Donald's a good guy. He wouldn't do that to you."

"I'm sorry I thought wrong of him. Hey, speaking of being out all night, where have you been, girl?"

Francine smiles.

"You were out with Jake--I knew you'd get back together."

"Whoa! Hold on, Ms. Matchmaker! We're just friends."

"Yeah, right!"

"Well, in any case, you can go to bed now. Everything's right with the world again."

Masani frowns.

"What's wrong?"

Masani holds up the book, "I probably should go to bed, but I want to finish my book."

"Masani! How are you going to work after being up all night? At least get a couple hours of sleep."

Masani gets up, "All right! You know there's so many good books and so little time to read them that bookstores and libraries sometimes make me depressed. I once tried reading several books at the same time in hopes of getting through more faster but it didn't work. Now I have a new method."

"What's that?" Francine says, picking up her purse and beginning to head up the stairs.

"I realize that I can't read all the books in the world, but I'm going to die trying," Masani says, smiling and opening up her book, "I'll be up once I find out what happens next."

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.

Blog Love Omega Glee: A Coffeehouse Conversation About Why Fictional Detectives Don't Ever Need To Take A Shit (6 September 2012)

"Surrounded by twenty midgets engaging in a midget battle royale, the nearly seven feet tall wrestler known as Sweetcakes Sullivan strolls through the melee munching on the latest wrestling promotional product sold at the merchandise tables in the arena, a three-foot stick of meat byproducts called The Knuckle Sandwich Meatstick. Biting into the Meatstick like a police dog sticking its teeth into a arrest practice dummy, Sullivan tears off a hunk of processed food and chews it like a trash compactor in the back of a garbage truck dealing with a particularly troublesome piece of furniture. Occasionally, a midget will jump on Sullivan's back only to be swatted with The Meatstick and tossed into the crowd like a rolled up piece of paper tossed into a trash can at 3 a.m. by a frustrated writer facing a morning deadline. As The Meatstick grows smaller and the midgets get fewer, Sullivan pauses to watch five midgets gang up on another and toss him over the top rope. Sticking The Meatstick in his mouth where it hangs like a plunger stuck to a ceiling, Sullivan brings his baseball glove size hands together to shower them with cavernous applause. Then, like a kicker in a football game launching a longshot fieldgoal, he storms forward and punts Kid Skyscraper out of the ring into the second row of the crowd where he lands on top of a beer vendor in the process of serving watered down beer at an exorbitant price to a drunk businessman from Topeka. The other midgets scramble to throw themselves over the top rope, leaving Sullivan alone in the ring. He savors his victory by swallowing the last of The Meatstick. Then he falls down dead. Watching from the backstage area, private detective Gian Notte couldn't tell if Sullivan's collapse was a shoot or a work, whether the giant was alive or dead. He knew one thing though. He was damn sure going to find out."

"Whatcha reading?" a raspy voice right next to Jake's right ear startles him into dropping his book and spilling his coffee across the small table he sits at in Cafe Eden.

As Jake hurriedly and mostly futilely attempts to mop up the spilt coffee with the one tiny napkin on the table, he is joined at the table by the two old coffeehouse vultures Larry and Tom.

"Hey, Jesse, sorry about that! I didn't mean to make you spill your coffee," Tom says, twirling the corners of his mustache.

"What are you reading?" Larry says, sitting down, "How come you aren't on FaceSpace like all the other young people?"

"Uh," Jake says, giving up on containing the coffee spill and wiping off the splatter from his book with the perimeter of his t-shirt, "I'm reading the new Gian Notte novel."

"Gian Notte? What's that?" Tom says, wiping up the remnant of the coffee spill with the daily newspaper.

"He's an ex-professional wrestler who now works as a private detective and solves mysteries."

"A mystery novel, huh?" Larry says, "I read a lot of those. You know what I've noticed?"

Jake doesn't answer him and Tom ignores him, focusing instead on shaking his newspaper to dry it out. Larry doesn't seem to notice though and answers himself, "All those times those detectives are on stakeouts and drinking all that coffee, they never have to go to the restroom. Has your detective taken a piss break yet in your novel?"

"Uh, no, but I just started it."

"I bet he doesn't. Why don't fictional detectives ever take a shit? They must be awfully constipated by now. I mean some of those detective series run for years and years."

"What's that?" Tom says, giving up on the newspaper by balling it up and tossing it on a nearby empty table.

"I was just telling Jeremy here that detectives in mystery novels never use the bathroom."

"Sure they do."

"When?"

"Between the chapters."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Well, you don't think the writer's going to describe it, do you? I mean who picks up a cozy and wants to read about Miss Marple having diarrhea from eating too many raspberry cream scones? They want to read about tea, not pee."

"So these books will describe human beings being murdered and all sorts of gruesome things, but they're afraid of showing someone take a dump?"

As the argument begins, Jake picks up his book and excuses himself to use the restroom. He quietly slips out the front door as the argument noisily continues. He walks quickly home because he needs to use the bathroom.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.

Blog Love Omega Glee: Lovers Like To Lie (5 September 2012)

In the twilight on the patio of Purgatory, Francine sits chain-smoking, noting a slight chill in the air as the days grow shorter, still suffused with the sweat of summer, but knowing that autumn draws near in the north, so each lightened evening gets shorter and sadder, but Francine doesn't mind, letting the darkness suit her and suiting the darkness to let her, and Lilith comes out to light the patio's lone tiki-torch and defense against mosquitoes and the other small creatures that delight in the border of day and night, and Jake keeps calling on Francine's cell, but she won't answer because she's too busy thinking, though she'd like to answer, but she doesn't want to fall into an old pattern again, and she thinks back to that old pattern, and remembers how she got here, with the world seemingly falling apart, and her own small little piece of it falling even faster, and she remembers being on-track, a college graduate, her parents proud--maybe that was the mistake, as we all know what pride comes before--and making her way in the world, climbing up and up that corporate ladder, a go-getter, a get-goer, until she met John, and yeah, yeah, she was a feminist and knew all that Prince Charming fairy tale stuff was garbage and propaganda for a patriarchal society, but it got in her and she wanted to believe and it was happening to her and it was like a fairy tale but the fairy dust wore off and soon she had a bad feeling in her gut, a stomachache, but it wasn't from anything she ate, it was from John because he wasn't as nice to her as he used to be, and though they were living together and engaged to be married, she felt like some possession he had collected and having gotten it, filed it away and forgot about it, and went out to get something else, the collector, the hunter, always on the lookout, though he told her he was working late, or he had to do this or had to do that, all entirely possible and plausible until one day Francine took his stories or story and interpreted them differently, constructing an alternate story, and in her alternate story everything made sense, every strange phone call, every strange absence, and every strange action of this stranger who shared her bed, and the way it all made sense was that John who had sworn his love was true, true blue, was really not so true, was really, boo-hoo, a liar, who lied with her every night--except for one or two when he claimed to have went out with the guys after work, drank too much, and passed out at the apartment party after they left the bars, calling her, penitent, apologizing, complaining of stress at work, and how he had to do this to get ahead at the firm, had to be buddy-buddy, though he'd much rather have been with her, and he was sorry, so sorry, and she felt like a fool, but not wanting to upset the stack of apples she called her life, she forgave him and understood, though she didn't understand--and who apparently lied to her every day, and when someone lies it's hard to ever believe anything he says again, and she set out to confirm the lies, though she felt dirty about it, so she looked on the computer and saw what he did and she listened through the walls when he had a conversation in another room and closed the door so she couldn't hear, and she could have even imagined following him around like a private detective in some B movie, but one day she decided to check his phone while he was in the shower and the text messages she found--some still burned on her brain such as "I want you", "See you tonight xoxoxoxo", "You so rock", "U r so hot", "Miss u", "Im horny", "I hope u like ur piercing In return I want a kiss", "did you make it home ok", "Leave wifey at home and come out Ill give u a treat", "I wish you were here", "I wish you were here too", "I can't stop thinking about you", "I miss you so much it hurts", and worse ones she's repressed--beyond being offended by the terrible punctuation and spelling, Francine was crushed by knowing that she had given her love to someone who could so casually throw it away and pursue an office tramp, who perhaps had money, who perhaps had bigger tits, or maybe John was so self-absorbed and insecure that he needy needed someone telling him how great he was every second of the day and he didn't much care who that person was, but whatever it was, John should have ended things with Francine and then messed around with the tramp, but John was a liar, a lousy lover, and Francine confronted him in the bathroom, and thus started the chain of events that led her to here chainsmoking a few years later with Lilith approaching her table and saying, "Jake's not John, Francine. You have to learn to trust again. Don't ruin a good thing because of a bad thing in the past."

"What?' Francine says, coming out of her skull back into the patio.

"I said, 'Do you want me to empty your ashtray, or are you making a sculpture that won't last?'" Lilith says.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.

Ode To Twitter

I have a poem called "Ode To Twitter" in this year's Inscape, which is finely produced by the fine folks at Ursuline College. The magazine is available for free on campus, but I'm not sure how off-campus folks could get a hold of a copy so I'll just include my poem (all 140 characters) in this post.

Ode To Twitter

Some people don't have much to say, but they will say it anyway, so thank you for restricting them to 140 characters so they don't go on and

Three Question Challenge!

I worked up some courage, worked out, ate my vitamins, said my prayers, and went to bed early so I could take on King Wenclas's Three Question Challenge! Answers have to be kept to a hundred words or less so I made mine exactly a hundred words with the hundredth word "Hundred!" He's looking for more writers to take the challenge, so if you're a scribbler, slither on over to his blog.