Saturday, December 26, 2020

Word Slingers, Saturday 12/26/2020


Some Word Slingers product from this morning's session and their associated prompts.

The ground was uneven, a little soft in spots, but we were dancing, dancing on a cold New Years Eve, on the impromptu graves of the lumpen futurists and dystopian world builders who had gone back to starvation wages and dug themselves spider holes to wait out the dreadful, unforeseen year.

If anything, they were good for a quick lash-up and had had a nice living as late arrival disrupters for visionary CEO's with an opening in the calendar. The last pitch I'd heard was for an exchange of a 12-month hi-desert August for the entirety of 2020. It might have gone down too if the negotiations hadn't been undermined by a loud and barely maintained swamp cooler drowning out the nuances of the barter.

Now it was time to dance again, Emma Goldman-type dancing. Imagining the end of the world had gotten easier, and imagining the end of Capitalism was re-illuminated and back on the menu.

 Prompt: You should be dancing

* * * * * 

The marketing was intoxicating and I was drunk on France, or rather some part of Northern California not reduced to ash. Freely flowing and with a hint of a stolen mother from a religious cult's kombucha brewery, the bouquet wasn't quite the punch in the face I'd hoped for. Still it was flowing and my limbs were melting, not from the heat of the loud, darkened cavern, but some cold glacial slide. My legs and arms like stretches of permafrost awakening to a warming season, and my body began to feel porous and open to opportunities that only the next few minutes might provide. Breathe, remember to breathe, I remembered. Agustina nudged me and I refocused momentarily as a glistening waiter approaches us tray aloft and floating above his decorated arm. Keep it flowing, and upright for the moment, Agustina indicated with her glance and whispered "More prehistory later."

Prompt: Keep the champagne flowing

* * * * *

Planning was not my strength after all. It was a fault of our times and I take no personal responsibility for it. We were all being curated, or complicit in deejaying our way into the abyss, while missing the journey and oblivious to the end, even if there wasn't a recognizable end, like the flickering black-and-white title card on a imported Swedish film. I'm saving myself, the best for last, despite all those heads and torsos bobbing up and down around me. The last look at the night sky, the cold plunge, dipping beneath the surface, one warm breath, held tight, exhaling a final performance followed a few sustained moments later by a violent bow. The last, not necessarily my best, but the last.

Prompt: I'm saving the best for last

* * * * *

A celebrity in debt is a fascinating object and ultimately a wonderful investment opportunity. I offer you this premiere financial product before it's official debut on the platform. Risks are substantial but the rewards are astronomical and participating in this fund is a pleasure that you'll be proud to flaunt. The initial offering is a collection of Coreys, Amandas, and syndicated chefs. Rebooted sitcoms, mall openings and car shows, public humiliation and psychic meltdowns, threatening paternity suits and slow, drawn out public suicides, all to a schedule of returns and options. It's fleeting fame and money-in-your-pocket fortunes!

Prompt: Fame or fortune

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Word Slingers, Saturday December 5, 2020


Some Word Slingers product from this morning's session and their associated prompt.

Spare me, it's just a blank canvas.

Yes, but that's the point.

Okay, I'm intrigued. Go on.

Um, that's it. 

What? That's it? If that's just a blank canvas, I'd call that a stretched canvas.

Aha. Cute. You're not really into this, are you?

No, I think I'm getting the hang of it. It's just that as a gaseous being, sentient for sure, but relatively formless and colorless, my perceptions align across several different spectra that are currently well outside your ken.

So you going with that one? I'm colorless and undefined. I do reckon there's a vicinity of some nameless scents, unless I'm having a stroke. You're obviously capable of dialogue.

Maybe I'm just beauty-blind. It's been a lovely visit, I'll grant you that and I do enjoy our exchange.

Prompt: Let me tell you about the time I was invisible

* * * * *

No doubt there'll be a job posting for a new senior program manager on Indeed and LinkedIn within the hour. It wasn't so much that the party was out of control, it was just invisible. If you looked around the office, things seemed like a regular mid-week, mid-afternoon slump, the effect of hastily eaten lunches now midway in process of digestion and the familiar but crushing routines rounding on overdrawn late night streaming. 

It's come to this. Showing up was trigger enough, and the project management role had devolved to a lowly pedestrian form of cruise director.

Some holiday shindig even with the budget recession. Party favors was filling out the checklist. The crescendo was reading out the results of a survey. The walls were covered in tabloid-size Excel printouts , artless pixelated grids of fading four color toner. The supply cabinet had grown skinny with irregular restockings of mostly non-requested stationary seconds and castoffs.

Prompt: Wild party

* * * * *

Delayed and deferred. I could of waited for them. 

Prompt: If I knew then, what I know now