Day 13- 23,509 Words

I have been having so much trouble staying on top of this.  Writing is such a chore, and my story has mostly stopped making sense.  I have also been copying and pasting the majority of my story rather than writing anything new.  But, I'm almost half way there, so I can't stop now.  I'm sorry that I haven't caught up on the blogs, I hope to soon.

I wrote a lengthy chapter today where it was revealed that former Leafs enforcer Waldo Balek killed himself, which will cause a scandal in the sports reporting world and cause certain characters to question the negative impact of professional sports on the lives of athletes.

But, in the meantime, here's what I wrote during our fantastic writing session on Saturday.  I had so much fun, and I hope that all of you did as well!

“I just have very attractive friends who like to bake and dance but don’t like to wear too much clothing.  We had initially opened up a shop where we sold odds and ends like highball glasses with ‘Smirnoff’ written on the bottom with a green Sharpie, but to our surprise, it wasn’t very popular.  I started baking to try to attract more customers to our shop who would follow their noses and then realize that their life was worse because they didn’t have highball glasses with ‘Smirnoff’ written on the bottom, and eventually we realized that people were coming to the shop just for that.  The dancing, well, it just kind of happened organically.  On slow days we would try to amuse ourselves, and again, we realized that this was one of our customers’ favourite features of the store.  So we changed the name to ‘Buns of Steel’ and here we are today.  I mean, it’s business.  You have to do what you have to do to compete.  It’s not like it’s easy being down the street from an adorable bakery where an even more adorable woman owns it and stars in a reality show.  What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.”

Carson might have thought that he sounded profound, but Ellie knew otherwise. 

“Did you just reference Hagrid’s (not Rubeus Hagrid, the character from the acclaimed Harry Potter seven part novel series, but rather, the mononymous actor named Hagrid, who exploded onto the small screen with the television movie adaptation of ‘Death Comes to Pemberley,’ an Austenian murder mystery where the much-maligned George Wickham became the subject of a murder investigation) the forgettable line in the much maligned film adaptation of the ‘Two and a Half Men’ episode called ‘The Devil’s Lube’?”

The film had been based on an identically titled episode of 2 and a Half Men, in which Emilio Estevez had played foil to brother Charlie Sheen when he dropped dead on the balcony of his beach house.  Hagrid delivered a heartrending performance of identical strangers who ill advisedly switch places, only to have one of them die, thus ensuring that the other was trapped forever in a role he was never intended to play.  Now that Ellie thought about it, what if Penny Lane died and she had to stay on as Penny Lane and run the bakery forever?  Or worse yet, what if she died suddenly and Penny Lane had to take on her life forever?  Perhaps the Hagrid line that had just been delivered by Carson was particularly well-timed—what’s comin’ will come, and she will meet it when and if it does.

“If the line was so forgettable, how come you remembered it?  And furthermore, why did you see that movie?”

“It was on a plane to Columbus. What you watch on a plane stays on a plane,” Ellie shot back defensively.

“Well, I hadn’t really intended for the bakery to be long term anyway.  I’m just trying to save up money so that I can go to grad school for astrology.  You know, from the fake stars to the real ones.”

“Do you consider yourself to be a star?” Ellie asked, confused.

Carson mumbled for a while but didn’t really say anything.

“And do you even have an undergraduate degree?”

“No, but I don’t think that you need one to get into the program that I want to get into.  It is, as of this moment, unaccredited.”

“What program is it?”

“It’s at the Scorpio College of Astronomical Phenomena and Events in the Human World.  They’ve recently filed an online petition to be considered for accreditation.”

Ellie was trying to be polite, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.  She had heard about the petition, which had caused quite the stir in the blogosphere.  Evidently the Scorpio College of Astronomical Phenomena and Events in the Human World had experienced more difficulty than they had predicted (using the stars, of course) to get the requisite 2,000 signatures required to file a petition for accreditation.  They decided to take a shortcut and steal the signatures from the Change.org petition that had been created by an angry Detroit Lions fan who did not want the homegrown Canadian super group Nickelback to play at the American Thanksgiving Day halftime show in their game against the Green Bay Packers.  The petition had read as follows:

Greetings,

I just signed the following petition addressed to: The Detroit Lions.




Replace Nickelback as the halftime show for the Thanksgiving game.  

This game is nationally televised, do we really want the rest of the US to associate Detroit with Nickelback? Detroit is home to so many great musicians and they chose Nickelback?!?!?! Does anyone even like Nickelback? Is this some sort of ploy to get people to leave their seats during halftime to spend money on alcoholic beverages and concessions? This is completely unfair to those of us who purchased tickets to the game. At least the people watching at home can mute their TVs. The Lions ought to think about their fans before choosing such an awful band to play at halftime.

 Sincerely,

[Your name]

Ellie felt that the three question marks interspersed by three exclamation points had made the point particularly salient for any human with eyes and a heart, but evidently, the Detroit Lions organization had disagreed.  The petition was ultimately unsuccessful, and Nickelback played at the half time show.

When the Scorpio College of Astronomical Phenomena and Events in the Human World had simply replaced “The Detroit Lions” with “The people who decide if we can give degrees or not” and “Nickelback” with “real science,” they had only succeeded in attracting the mockery of the internet at large.  She had not followed up, but it was assumed that they had not and would not succeed in becoming an academically accredited institution.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of that school, where is it?”

“It’s in the much maligned farming community of Black Wood in South Western Ontario.  But I hear that there’s a Royal Canadian Legion there that’s just hopping.  Thursday night Karaoke and dart night is insane.”

“Well best of luck to them on the accreditation process.”

Ellie closed her eyes and thought of better times, like an excursion with her fellow sports writers to the local watering hole, a sports pub aptly named ‘Balls to the Wall.’ The walls were adorned with balls of the sporting variety only.  When she had last been there, Damien Cox had tearfully raised his cold certified bottle of Coors Light to toast to space exploration and fancy gadgets, but more importantly, to the beauty of soft candlelight.  Since she didn’t really know what to say, so she figured that for once in her life, she might as well take the lead of Damien Cox.

“Well, before I go, I want to propose a toast,” she said, raising the second pie that she was several bites shy of finishing, “to space exploration and fancy gadgets.  Oh, and I can’t forget, I would also like to raise a glass—or cherry pie—to the beauty of soft candlelight.”

Carson Carrington seemed somewhat confused, but she was pretty unconcerned.  Besides, she had more important things to do, like cruise the pages of Pinterest in order to select the perfect guac recipe for the Guac Off.

Carson turned to go, but turned around again.  “By the way, the theme of the competition is ‘Rock Out With Your Guac Out.  Do you think that you can handle it?”

“I think you know that I can,” she said as she nodded and squinted her eyes and pointed towards him.  And thus ended what would go down in history for her as one of the most confusing conversations of her life.  She would later find out that the entire conversation had not, in fact, taken place with Carson Carrington.  Instead, she had been talking with Carson Carrington’s evil twin, Larson Carrington.  In fact, Carson had desire to attend the Scorpio College of Astronomical Phenomena and Events in the Human World.