OMG!Lit.com

OMG!Lit.com Contest Announcement

rrherring — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:15:54 +0000

Go ahead and send us a tirade about your recent relocation to Saint Francis of Assisi, CA. If you already lived here, just send us a tirade. Keep it under 500 words or be disqualified. Send your entry to omglit@gmail.com by September 22nd. Winner gets Jello Shots! (Nobody ever enters these things, so you should. Free Jello Shots!)

Kisses,
OMGLit.com

Jennifer Lynne Roberts (2nd Year)

rrherring — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:00:18 +0000

Two men sitting at a bar.

HAROLD

When I spoke to my guy in Arizona, he said you were the man, the man. Never saw a man so determined and fearless. That’s what he said. Like you had some sort of vendetta against bees. And I asked myself, “What would make a man have a vendetta against bees?”

BEE BOUNTY HUNTER slams shot glass down on bar. HAROLD jumps.

BEE BOUNTY HUNTER

Bees took everything I owned.

Beth Mattson (2nd Year)

rrherring — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:19:52 +0000

Following the pictures, the hook was easy to make, but the string was hard to find and I had to make my pole out of a skinny pipe instead of flexible wood. I dug my fingers in the dirt of the park for worms. Other squatters steered clear of me, disgusted looks on their faces. I stabbed the worms through their bellies, twisted them back on themselves and the stabbed them again, to be sure they would stay on the hook.

Josh Breitbart (1st Year)

rrherring — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:00:40 +0000

“That was cute, Typo.” Eek whispered in my ear. “You got all jealous.”

Immediately I stiffened, hunched up my shoulders, and lifted my head up with all the strength of pride I could muster. “I did not get jealous!” That wasn’t a lie, you know. I wasn’t jealous of Eek’s popularity, or how children remarked how ‘cool’ that ethereal axe in her translucent head was, or how ‘wicked’ the smoky drops of blood wafting from where the weapon splintered the skull, or how I had to wait in the Train Station–absorbing smells from sweaty travelers even as they avoided me as if I had been carrying a plague–while she played and joked around with kids who adored her. Why would I be envious of someone who did not constantly have to feel pain despite being more dead than I am? They adored her because despite being most definitely not alive, she was also most definitely full of life.

For my part, no wounds technically marred me. Yet my ‘birthmarks’, the tears through my flesh, also oozed constantly. Unlike Eek, I felt the pain. Unlike Eek, the blood did not drift into nothing. It stuck to me as a constant reminder of my fate.

Why would I be jealous of someone who was better than me in every way? Ridiculous.

Eek swooped around in front of me and smiled hugely at me, “But I’m jealous of you. You’ve been dealt a bad hand but you always work so hard and you helped a lot of other people in bad circumstances.”

Well, zombies anyway. I fixed my eyes on Eek’s and told her that that was a load of monkey dung.

But Eek had one last gambit: The pout. Her eyes, despite their immaterial nature, seemed to water. Her body, despite not truly having one, quivered. She clasped her hands together and stared sadly into my eyes until I cracked a smile.

“But thank you anyway,” I relented and with a whoop Eek swooped around me one more time and flew ahead into the city.

Christine Choi (2nd Year)

rrherring — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:45:44 +0000

THAT PONY FOR SALE: IS IT WORTH AS MUCH AS MY DEAD GRANDMOTHER?

Dear bird will you hold me in your square bracket arms before running across I-198 blaming your ancestors, before dinner is ready. This skin you gift me—it’s beautiful. This song that left you is full of light. The war is over. We can eat off deluxe paper plates again. Next week Korean tongue twisters. This week calming music and perpetual miscommunication—soft goals for old dreams. Our ancestors too were snoring, making room for children here, stringing up their prescription-strength prayers with pale afternoons spent walking up the mountain, gathering fragile grasses in their hearts. Listen bird, I can be patient. Pray you weave me a hearth from the center of your sleep. The island of trash in the ocean can wait. This molten hold on stale things, their comforts, their first cousins, murmuring promises to the night grasses about being tall thistles and net-productive. Dear bird I watched you run across the road. Your fitted fear, your spotted tail.

Robert Herring (2nd Year)

rrherring — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:07:03 +0000

I know him. He tells anyone who listens about helping people. About saving women from abusive husbands and taking drunks off the road. But he’s lying. In kindergarten, he pissed his pants and all the boys and girls laughed at him and he had to move all the way to Kentucky to escape the nickname squishy boots. Now he pins a badge to his chest, straps a pistol and taser to his waist, pulls black gloves over his white knuckles. Red and blue lights in your mirror. The bright flashlight in your eyes. Keep your head down and your voice low. Do exactly what he says. Don’t get too comfortable.

Midnight Sun – Jennifer Roberts

dapperjent — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:04:54 +0000

Midnight Sun

There’s one road from Anchorage south to Seward. The train parallels part of the way, sea-level, eye-level. Salt-petrified trees haunt the marshes; a wave long ago had sucked their bones dry. Sap-blood steeped with saline, they stand embalmed at the entrance to the incline, a reminder of what lay ahead: wild, untamed fury.

We’d purchased our tickets and packed our backpacks. We’d slid local books on folklore under our arms and all day we rode. The train chugged up the hills dotted with Dal sheep who stood precariously on hooved feet on thin edges—a magic trick. North we passed Eagle River and Chugiak, south we headed to Kenai and Seward—until milky blue ice parted the rock hills, broke through the thin treed woods, emerging out in front of us like rivers of cold stone.

The conductor called out the names of each glacier. Spencer! Bartlett! Burns! Byron! Glaciers named for the dead. Each day he cuts through this rock cliff, with the smoke of the train trailing behind like a black veil, and each day he ticks off their names in memoriam.
“Spencer,” he said, “slipped down into an infinite split among sharp pillars of creamy blue never to be found.”

But now, in the Midnight Sun, we alternate between watching the scenery and reading Into the Wild, haunted by the isolation of both. We look for bears and moose. We look for an end to ice, we look for an old bus to ride out from the edges of the horizon carrying Spencer, Bartlett, Burns and Byron… McCandless at the wheel. Their blood turned salt silt long ago.

Contest Winner – Cornucopia, by David Aloi

dapperjent — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 08:16:15 +0000

MY ATTEMPT AT SHIFTING THE CONVERSATION IN THE NASCAR YAHOO CHAT ROOM TO A MORE HOLIDAY-ORIENTED TOPIC
by David Aloi (& Co.)

Andy G: and my foot got stuck on a cable and had a 200 pound cabinet in my hands
then fell and it landed on me
You can call me BIGDADDYPAPA
AmandaBear: hey mr kev
********** at 1:46 AM rocksteadily left the room
Walt: DONT SAY COLORED PPPPPL THEY DONT LIKE IT
David: cornucopia
SheShe: you’re going to denver?
Mr. Kevin: bored?
Andy G: yep
Andy G: maby keystone
AmandaBear: intolerably
Walt: HE PICKED IT UP WITH ONE HAND
SheShe: keystone licks it
Mr. Kevin: wanna IM?
Andy G: well I will be there but not sure if I can ride
********** at 1:47 AM SoCkS© left the room
Walt: WITH A GROUPIE IN THE OTHER HAND
Andy G: do you think someone could drive me
AmandaBear: sure can you pm me???
Walt: AND A THIRD HAND ON HIS JUNK
Mr. Kevin: yea let’s do it now

ToDo 12-1: Relatively Speaking

dapperjent — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:25:37 +0000

Come to Philz Coffee Shop tonight to hear stories from a few of your favorite CCA students and alumni…

…you won’t want to miss it if pirates invade yet another San Francisco reading!

Bounty For All

dapperjent — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:29:50 +0000

Have a swell ThanksG, everyone.

(pigeon courtesy of Beth Mattson’s roommate Imin)