June 29, 2009
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Gentle into that Good Night
“And so eventually it wound up all of the people playing croquet had no idea what the rules were!”
Both men bursted out laughing.
“You should have seen them, going every which way—not a clue!”
“A wonderful story, thank you for that,” the larger man said, still chuckling.
“Yeah,” the smaller man said, looking around at the other people at the party. “So what about basketball?”
“What about basketball?” the larger man replied, frowning.
“I asked you first,” the smaller man said, a wide grin across his face.
The larger man snapped into action, shoving the smaller man against the wall, looking around to make sure no one was looking.
“YOU LISTEN TO ME,” he said intensely, his face very close to the smaller man, “I will not have this witless small talk be a part of my life, you hear me?”
“Uh . . .” the smaller man said, his eyes wide and glancing around.
“I said you hear me??”
“I’m sorry?”
“YOU’D BETTER BE!” the larger man snarled, spit flying out of his mouth, “I have plans, you know! Plans to live an amazing life, one filled with incredible people, people who seem too incredible to even exist. My life is going to be one of the most thrilling lives ever, one filled with stories other people could only dream of happening! You got that??”
The larger man’s eyes glowed with a rageful intensity.
“I SAID YOU GOT THAT??”
“Ye-ye, uh, yeah . . . w-why exactly?”
“Because, you fool,” the larger man began slowly, “how ELSE will I make it into history?!? How ESLE will people remember me?!”
“Umm . . . there is no other way?” the smaller man guessed.
“Assassinate someone, that’s how,” the larger man responded condescendingly, “But guess what? I don’t have the hand-eye coordination for that!”
“Oh,” the smaller man said stupidly.
“Yeah, Oh!” mocked the larger man, “So now we’re going to return to our conversation, and you had better have something more intelligent and memorable to say than some vague, open-ended comment about basketball . . . okay?“
“Ye-yeah,” the smaller man stuttered, sliding down back onto the floor.
“So then,” the larger man began, brushing himself off, “where were we?”
The smaller man then gulped noticeably, hoping his brain would take this as a signal to think of something good.
Comments (4)
So, did you write this? I enjoy these kind of posts.
I think I just read the summary of that article. It was written in the summer of 2008; back then it was easy to make ethanol a huge part of high corn prices.In the fall and winter corn prices dropped drastically. They went from $7-$8 a bushel to $3.50-$4 a bushel, while ethanol production was at an all time high. In the summer there were high oil prices, droughts, flooding, and other things that all contributed to the high corn prices, but I think oil was the main contributor. When the price of oil dropped so did the price of corn.Also, America has been planting more and more corn. The government used to pay farmers to lay their fields fallow; now they get more money for planting corn. America has exported more corn every year (except one) for the past 6 or 7 years. Now, this causes problems like the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, but it also raises supply to offset the price of corn.These are the factors that lead me to believe ethanol contributes maybe 20-25% of higher corn prices.But ethanol is still a stupid program that should be eliminated.I’m in a Christian homeschool league, so we’re not allowed to talk fast. Public school policy debaters do though. A couple years ago some people in my club watched public school debate for a day and they talked so fast that they didn’t even know what the resolution was.I’m in team policy debate, so there are 2 people debating another 2. I’ve always thought LD-policy sounded interesting. What was your resolution last year? Or do you get a new resolution each round?Wow, that was a really long comment. I guess that just proves that I really am a debater.
@c_jamaica - Yah – glad you liked it. Hopefully the smaller man reads my blog (and the comments), so that the next thing he says could be, ‘I abhor soap operas. Crime is much better.’
Wow, most people who have cool lives and stories to tell do work so hard at it but at least that moment about making his life interesting was another storyLOL Very cool.