Search Results for 'ask'

Monica was asking Pedro about Pr. Moss last assignment. Everybody had been very impressed by his story teller talent and she wanted to know more about it. He was quite secretive though, and maybe it was because he was not a native English speaker, but nonetheless she wanted to know about some details.

Before he could say anything, she felt an excruciating pain in her belly and the announcing signs of intestine problems…

— Are you ok, asked Pedro? What was that strange noise?
— Nothing! she eluded quickly. I need to go to the bathroom, excuse me.

Another spasm almost made her fall on the ground.

Damn Pr. Flipswitch! she thought, I shouldn’t have accepted to try the herbs he gave me after his herbal course.

Professor Gub smiled kindly at the young student. It was a common trait of the individuals in this dimension that they needed endless repetitions of information before they could assimilate it, and Prof Gub assumed that this was simply another example of the density of the inhabitants. It hadn’t occured to him that his words weren’t clear enough, as in his own dimension, the words were always accompanied by the clarity of the energy of the meaning behind the words.

“The assignment is to explain the symbolic significance of a statue of Walter Melon with pigeons sitting upon it. “ he explained. “Simple and profound, lengthy and convoluted, the choice is yours.”

Turning to Lavender, he asked “Are you understanding?”

“Oh yes, thank you, now I am” replied Lavender politely. The student sitting next to her, the enigmatic and dashingly handsome Dieter had helpfully passed her a note with Prof Gub’s words translated into plain English.

“Yes, sorry Sir, can you repeat the assignment please Sir?” asked Lavender, politely. Having just recently enrolled in the writing class, at Harvey’s suggestion after the appalling Limerick fiasco, she was finding Professor Gub’s strong Slooperniff accent rather hard to decipher.

Godfrey stood looking up the pigeons sitting on the statue of the Academy’s founding father, Walter Melon, pondering the symbology.

“What do you reckon the symbology of that is, Aaeiulie?” he asked his colleague, this years alien-Xchange visiting professor, Aaeilulie Gub, from the Worserversity in the Slooperniff Dimension.

“No idea, God, I’ll use this as my next class assignment, see what the students come up with. Anything else, or just the statue and the pigeons? Keep it simple, profound? Or convoluted but with lots of options?”

“Oh keep it simple, if I know those students, they will manage to convolute even the simplest ideas.”

“If they didn’t, we’d be out of a job” said the alien.

“We don’t call them ‘jobs’ anymore, we call them S.M.I.L.E.S, or Something Marginally Interesting, Lucrative & Enlightening.”

With a perfectly straight face the alien replied “What rubbish.”.

It was a pleasant walk to the Academy from Ann’s student digs, the leafy suburbs of Poubelleville were dappled with sunlight and sweetly scented with lilac blossom. Bird twittered in the trees and miniature zebras nibbled at the grass verges as Ann made her way to class. As she walked past a sidewalk cafe she spotted Monica, or rather Monica spotted Ann, and called her over to join her for a cup of rhubarb tea. Ann had forgotten she was late for class, and gave Monica the customary seven kisses ~ three on each cheek, and a final one on the nose ~ and pulled out a chair.

True to form ~ for Monica was the Academy’s best known gossip ~ after the inital pleasantries, the conversation soon turned to the latest scandal. Max the janitor, one of the students, and Professor Moose had been caught engaging in a menage a trois in the broom cupboard.

“All in aid of an assignment, so they said” explained Monica. “Who did you choose for your menage a trois, Ann? You’re in old Moose’s class, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t translate the assigment that way.” Ann frowned. “Gosh, I wrote a haiku about slobber instead, everyone will think I’m all prim and prunes.”

“Well, we only need one more” replied Monica with a sly grin.

“What?” Ann blushed as she cottoned on. “Oh!”

Monica wriggled about in her chair, revealing an expanse of lean tanned thigh, not altogether accidentally.

“Mind if I join you?” asked Good God Gordy, calling to the waiter for a cup of Hornygoatweed tea.

Ann glanced vaguely over the bookcase, wondering where her dictionary was. Did people still use dictionaries in book form? I suppose any book will do for the purpose, she decided, and reached for the nearest book, a book about Rembrandt. She opened it randomly five times, using a ball point pen as a pointer, and selected five words for Prof Underbaker’s assignment.

…now…excite…

What a coincidence, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone here, Ann thought, with a slight shudder at the bird killing metaphor (if it was indeed a metaphor, Ann tended to skip the Labelling Words classes)…

…someone…

Ah, but who? Who shall I excite?

…pointed…

Pointed in the right direction? Addressed someone pointedly? Not to put too fine a point on it…

….time

Ann was interested to note that her selection of words started with the word NOW and ended with TIME, and popped it into her clue box in an effort to stay on course and finish the assigment.

There was no time like the present. Indeed T’Eggy was well aware that All is Now, she’d heard about that theory in Wicks, the online magazine that she’d found so enlightening. She’d been reading a copy of Wicks (a reproduction, the originals were now collectors items and very valuable ~ in an artifact rather than a monetary value kind of way, monetary value having been devalued in the early part of the century) in the teleport waiting room when she met the handsome foreignor in the dusty blue robes. Of course, it was not unusual to meet foreignors in the teleport waiting room, not unusual at all, but the tall, dark, and handsome stranger had excited her. Perhaps it was the flash of long lean tanned thigh that she glimpsed as his robes caught on the door knob. Of course, even the ‘waiting room’ was a retro touch, because there was no need to ‘wait’ for teleport travel. It seemed ironic in a way that folks in the old days had perceived ‘waiting’ as an onerous thing, an somewhat unpleasant period of clock watching and crossword puzzle books. These days ‘waiting rooms’ were popular places to meet people and choose probability pools. The latest trend was Turtle Nights, and Frog Nights, where men and women gathered in waiting rooms to choose partners, to find that special someone, loosely based on the old Hen and Stag nights.

“Do teleport stations have door knobs, Ann?” Pedro interjected.

“Oh!” Ann was momentarily non plussed.

“Non plussed? Is that a word?” asked Pedro.

“Pedro, stop interrupting! The assigment isn’t to design a teleport station!”

The teleport station had been designed in retro style, a facsimile of the Atocha train station in Madrid. Lack of need for physical details had not resulted in a lack of appreciation for physical detail simply for it’s artistic merit, not to mention historical educational value, and the TRANS (Teleport Relative to Any Now Space) Station was an award winning example of old fashioned detail. Why, it even had doorknobs, even though doors had been dispensed with several decades ago.

“I thought the assigment wasn’t to design a teleport station?” asked Pedro.

“Does it bloody matter?” retorted Ann, with a hint of exasperation. “The overall point is to write rubbish, and that’s what I’m doing!”

“I’m glad you pointed that out, Ann” remarked Pedro helpfully.

“Oh my god, look at the time!” Ann exclaimed. “It’s time for class!”

“Bugger that!” snorted Pedro. “I’d rather hear about what happened with T’Eggy and that tall dark stranger!”

Arona had no idea what dimension she was in. Or indeed, whether she was where she was at all. Oddly enough, and it was not often now that Arona found anything odd, she was finding the experience rather freeing.

“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Hoooooooooooooooooo” she shouted, and holding her arms wide open, began to whirl joyously around, till dizziness overcame her and she landed in a heap on the ground. She expected to land in a heap on the ground in a soft meadow with pretty spring flowers, but to her consternation realised that she had landed on what felt like polished concrete. She was even more concerned when she realised that she had a large audience watching her with interest, although at that stage all she really took in was a sea of feet around her. On further inspection she appeared to be in what looked like an enormous building full of shops, and, shoppers.

“Are you okay?” A kindly gentleman asked her in a concerned voice. At least that is what Arona thought he said. Although the words were familiar, the accent was strange, and not one she had heard before.

“I am fine, thank you,” replied Arona, trying her best to appear composed and rise gracefully from her sprawled position all at the same time. She must have looked convincing because, after a few more curious looks in her direction, the crowd began to disperse.

Good Grief, where am I now? she wondered. Determined not to be alarmed and to go with the flow, however rapid that flow may be, the intrepid Arona set off to explore her new surroundings.

“Wait!”

Arona looked around. It was the strangely spoken gentleman who had first offered assistance. He was brandishing a book towards her.

“Take this book. It is no good for me.”

Arona hesitated. The last time she had heard those words she had ended up with a funny little baby to look after. The man was insistent though, so, thanking him politely Arona accepted the gift.

“Hmmmm, How to Write Fiction, how very peculiar!” Flipping it open randomly she read:

[Random Words Epigraph] Step One: Randomly choose 5 entries from your dictionary. Just flip through the pages, close your eyes, and put your finger down on the page. Copy down the word that is closest to your finger. If your finger lands on a word that you don’t know, you can choose the word just above or just below it. For the purposes of this assignment, count paired words as a single entry (for instance, “melting pot” is listed as a single entry). Step Two: Shape your list of dictionary entries into a poem or story, using all of the entries.

“bugger that,” snorted Arona.

Two students of the Free the Fiction Writer Within evening course were whispering in a corridor of the Academy before it began.

— Did you hear about prof. Moose?
— Yes, you mean what happened with Pedro last night?

They turned their head at the same time to look at Pedro, another student who arrived recently in town. He was sitting on the floor, reading a book and apparently unaware that he was the subject of several discussions.

— Well, yes. Max the janitor was passing by one of the service room when he heard some odd noise. I don’t know if it’s out of curiosity or because it was a service room, but he opened the door and found them half naked between brooms and mops.
— What I heard was that she told him bluntly that she was busy helping one of her students with the assignment she gave her students last time…
— No! she told that?
— Yes, apparently Pedro never had sex before and he went after the class to see her and asked her if she could help him. And after what Max said she was more than happy to help him out.

“Any idea what this is all about?” Beattie asked, to nobody in particular. A crowd was gathering at the crossroad.

The crossroad reminded Bea of a movie she’d watched some years previously, called, coincidentally enough, Crossroads. A symbolic sort of place, although real enough, a junction seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was a large oak tree looming above the intersection, but nothing else could be seen in any direction but endless expanses of fields. There was a wooden signpost, the old fashioned kind, with two slats of wood pinned crosswise in the middle to a leaning post, but the place names had long since weathered away.

It was an odd sort of place and not much traffic passed by. In fact, the only traffic to pass by the crossroad stopped and disengorged itself of passengers..

“Is that a word, Bea?” asked Leonora. “Disengorged?”

“Don’t butt in to the narrative part Leo, or the story won’t make any sense.” hisssed Beattie, “Wait until you’re supposed to speak as one of the characters.”

“Well alright, but I don’t suppose it will have much effect on the making sense aspect, either way. Do continue.”

To say it was a motley crew gathering would be an understatement.

“You got that right,” Leonora said, sotto voce, surupticiously scanning the assortment of individuals alighting from the rather nautical looking yellow cab. Bea glared at Leo. “I suppose I’ll have to include your interrupions as a part of the story now.”

“Good thinking, Batman!”

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Leo, don’t go mad with endless pointless remarks then, ok? Or I will delete you altogether, and that will be the end of it.”

“You can’t delete me. I exist as a character, therefore I am.”

“You might have a nasty accident though and slide off the page,” Bea replied warningly.

“Why don’t you just get on with it, Bea? Might shut me up, you never know…”. Leo smirked and put her ridiculously large sunglasses on, despite the swirling fog..

“Oh I thought it was sunny” said Leonora, taking her sunglasses back off again. “You hadn’t mentioned weather.” She put her sunglasses back on again anyway, the better to secretly examine the others assembled at the crossroads.

“Why don’t you go and introduce yourself to them and see if anyone knows why we’re here, Leo, while I get on with the story.”

“Who will write what they say, though?”

“I’ll add it later, just bugger off and see if anyone knows who sent us that mysterious invitation.”

“Right Ho, sport, I’m on the bobbins and lace case” replied Leo. Bea shuddered a bit at the mixture of identities bleeding through Leonora’s persona. “Och aye the noo!”

Dear god, thought Beattie, I wish I’d never started this.

Franlise was unusually despondent. She flicked half heartedly through the last pages of Ann’s novel, looking for some sort of common thread which she could cleverly take hold of and expand upon, in order to provide the necessary continuity.

Daunted by the formidable proportions of her task, her thoughts turned instead to the strange man who had followed her that afternoon. Her attempts to lose him had failed, and, in the end, she had thought it best to delay her appointment with the Fellowship. Perhaps the man was just lured by her beauty, but she knew she could not risk exposure.

“There!” announced Sharon triumphantly. “‘Ow was that, then?”

“‘Ow was what, Sha?” asked Gloria, frowning.

“I inspired ‘er, I got the message through!”

“That aint proper inspired channeling, you daft cow, that’s nonsense! Yeah, you got a message through, but talk about distortion! Blimey, Sha, that aint enlightened channeling, that’s just more rubbish!” Gloria said, disparagingly.

“I ‘ate to tell you this, our Glor, but it’s YOU what aint enlightened. That was me new Distraction Tactics, and if I do say so myself, it worked a treat.”

“Distraction Tactics? Aint she scattered enough already? It’s direction and focus what she wants, not more blimmen distractions!”

“You just aint getting it, are you, our Glor?” Sharon replied. “Answer me this, you enlightened tart, how’s she supposed to find any focus or direction if she’s pushing her energy in a hundred directions at once looking for meaning? Wait a minute, I tripped meself up there,” Sharon corrected herself, “What I meant to say was, why would she need a direction in the first place? She’s going where she’s going, and that’s direction enough.”

“Well you answer me this then, if the direction she’s going in is enough, why did she wake up disgruntled?” Gloria retorted, adding “Rude tart” under her breath.

“I ‘eard that!”

“Well? What’s yer answer to that then, eh?”

“‘Ang on a minute, lemme see if I can channel God’s Flounder fer some answers.” replied Sharon, closing her eyes, and starting to breathe noisily and purposefully.

“Oh fer Gawds sake, Sha, not that bloody breathing again. We all knows ‘ow to breathe already, honestly, it’s as if breathing’s just been invented or something. And not only that” she added “You’re dead, why are you breathing anyway?”

“Eh, good point, our Glor” said Sharon opening her eyes. “I’m wondering now if the dead are supposed to channel for answers, aren’t we supposed to HAVE all the answers?” Sharon was confused.

“Well I dunno about HAVING all the answers, Sha, but we’re supposed to be able to access them, aren’t we? Then pass ‘em on to the living ~ those what’ll listen, that is.”

“I think we’re making a mistake here, Gloria, but I can’t put my finger on it. Who’s our Oversoul anyway? Aint they supposed to be guiding us here?”

“I think we’re both focuses of the Great Flounder, our Sha.”

“Oh blimey” her freind replied. “P’raps we aint been dead long enough yet, to know what we’re doing, like.”

“How can you be ‘long enough’ if there aint no time anyway, that’s what I want to know.”

“Well there’s one thing I do know about being dead” said Sharon, brightening up, “We can ‘think’ ourselves anywhere at all. So whatddya say we go somewhere else and forget all this floundering?”

“Bloody good idea, where shall we go?”

“Oh dear, unlimited choices are so difficult, aren’t they? I don’t know where I want to go!”

“Follow me then, Sha!” Gloria suggested, and in an instant the pair of them were standing in a field in Dyffryn .

Yoland awoke feeling disgruntled. The uncomfortable dreams of feeling left out, left alone and bored beyone endurance lingered throughout the morning. In a peculiar melding of dream and reality, Dan had woken her requesting her assistance in his preparations for a days outing, which didn’t include Yoland. The dream details were already vague, but the feeling was strong, the feeling of being bored and alone ~ wasted somehow, as if all her lust for life was withering away on a back burner, evaporating, as she mooched through her days, accomplishing little (or so it seemed), endlessly frustrated with the clutter and disorganization that was her world, yearning for the life, LIFE that was full of LIFE, that she used to have. What had happened to her sense of adventure? Where had all her fun friends gone?

“Eh Sha, emergency transmission required ‘ere pronto!” Gloria shouted to Sharon. “Yoland needs some inspiration, toot sweet, get yer arse in gear!”

“Oh bloody ‘ell, Glor! Not a-bloody-gain! Not ‘er, she never bloody listens anyway, that one!” replied Sharon, disgruntled. “This isn’t as easy as I ‘spected it to be, getting the messages through, is it?”

“Well, why don’t you look on it as a challenge?”

“Pfft, more like ‘ard bloody work, if you ask me.”

“Eh, you daft tart, you’re channeling HER! You’re sposed to be sending HER some words of inspiration, not the other bloody way round!” Gloria exclaimed. “Beats me how you ever got your ascension pass, how you got through I’ll never know.”

“Oh they let any Tom Dick or Harry in these days, Glor, they relaxed the rules you know, well did away with the rules, and what happens when you do away with the rules? Floundering, that’s bloody what. Floundering.”

“Is that a fish sync?”

“You mean you’ve finished seeing the funny side?” asked Godfrey and Gordon in unison.

“NEVER!” replied Ann firmly.

“It’s the 57th Creative Challenge theme, so I have to do it,” Ann remarked to her editor. “Obviously”, she added.

“What do you mean, obviously?” asked her editor (Ann had forgotten his new name in the second book, and toyed breifly with the idea of making up a new one ~ perhaps Rumbold the Pale?)

“Well, I would have thought that was obvious, Godfrey!” Ann replied tartly, secretly delighted that she’d remembered the old boy’s name. Notwithstanding, Ann continued to make little ‘cuh’ and ‘tut’ noises, and rolled her eyes a bit, until Godfrey eventually replied.

“Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash”.

“I beg your pardon?” Ann looked at Godfrey in astonishment. “Holy Moly, I said that earlier myself, whatever does it mean?”

“I haven’t got a clue, dear,” he replied. “Just popped into my head, you know, how it does…” His voice trailed off as he stared into space.

“I’ll google it.” As Ann started the search, she realized she’d completely forgotten that she was doing the 57th Creative Challenge entry. “Blimey O Riley, what am I LIKE” she said to herself, with a wry grin ~ she wasn’t altogether sure what wry meant, but somehow she felt it was wry ~ “Now what was the theme again?”

“Misery Loves Company” Godfrey piped up. “And dare I say, it’s rather obvious what has occurred here.”

“What do you mean, obvious?” retorted Ann, somewhat snarkily, although nowhere near as snarkily as Lavender might have said it.

Godfrey resisted the urge to respoond with a few little ‘cuh’s’ and ‘tut’s’, and chose to simply smile enigmatically.

Ann scowled at her old freind and said “If you don’t spell it out, you maddening old coot, I’ll write you out of this story. I’ll delete you.”

“You can write me out of YOUR story if you wish, but I may continue to write YOU into MY story.”

“Oh Gawd, WHAT?” Ann said to herself. “Where did that come from?”

“Ann, let me explain.”

“You sound just like Elias, Godfrey!”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Ahahahahahahah”

“Now shut up and pay attention”

“Elias would never say that”

“That’s YOU saying that, Ann, to yourself,” said Godfrey.

“YOU said that Godfrey, it’s right here in black and white!” retorted Ann.

“It’s never black and white, Ann, and it’s only here in black and white as ME saying it because YOU wrote it.”

“Well there’s no answer to that” replied Ann. She went to put the kettle on.

Ann returned to her computer with a steaming mug of tea.

“Now, shall we get back to the point, Ann?” inquired Godfrey, with a wry grin.

“I must look up that word later”, Ann mused. “I seem to be inordinately fond of the word wry tonight, I wonder why. I Wonder Wry…”

“ANN!” Godfrey shouted. “Back to the point!”

Ann looked pained. “What point?”

“The point of this story, and the obvious occurence therein.”

“Welp, you’ve lost me there, Gordon, there was a point?”

“Oh My God, this could go on all night” Gordon was wringing his hands.

“Good God Gordon, didn’t see you come in!” exclaimed Godfrey.

Ann was giggling helplessly. She was rather pleased with the way she covered her faux pas over the editors name.

“‘Ann was giggling helplessly’; you see Ann, there is your clue!” Godfrey said excitedly, as he read aloud what Ann had just written.

“OH! NOW I get it! D’oh! Nonsense loves company! Giggling loves company! No wonder I couldn’t stay focused on misery!”