Now I have to go flog myself for being deadline-avoidant.

This reminded me of one of my favorite Douglas Adams quotes: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

This one's a bit brutal. Closer to Erin's in spirit...

The Meat Market

Six teen-queens, short skirts, glittery lashes, teetering on high heels they can't manage. They look like dress-up dolls, alluring bits of jailbait. When I find out who let them in, the fucker dies.

One of them zeroes in on him. One always does. She needs to believe the big guitar or the big piano equals the size of his cock

He comes offstage, sweating, tired, and there she is. Before he has to be polite, I've got her by the arm, high up, where she can't twist loose.

"Come along, lamb chop. Out you go, before I roast your ass."

Gore warning. More just bleakness than anything, but there you go.

starkness

There's a lot of death on the rez. You get sort of used to it. No one mourns the dogs with their heads split open on the road. No one grieves the children with their bleeding wrists.

At some level, we're all just meat. The flesh we contain so tenuously within our skin -- just gristle and muscle and bone like a butcher's day's work.

I don't know if I know, any longer, how to be human. How to let humanity leak out of the chemicals soaking my brain, how to value the blood that pumps so relentlessly through these veins.

Liese, that's gorgeous. Dayum.

One question, and I'm not sure if this is another regional thing: can "grieve" be used that way? The same way "mourn" is, that is - active? Or does one have to grieve for something?

If it's regional, all the way cool - I've never heard it used that way and it's another new for me.

It looks like it's an acceptable usage: [link]

I'm not sure 'an acceptable usage" is an acceptable usage, though. Ugh. Brain fogged.

Heh. Cindy, I think all usages are acceptable, basically. I'm very Humpty Dumpty when it comes to that.

I just hadn't heard it before, and one of the cool things about everyone's work in here has been the new ways a word or a turn of phrase gets used in different parts of this country.

I've seen it used a lot in this sort of situation, "It grieves me to tell you X" or "You know how it grieves me when you act this way." I always thought it was a Britishism. I do know it's used in formal-type situations.

Heck, it's in a song I love, "And it'll grieve me so to" something or "And it grieves me so to" something.

Say you're sitting high atop Writers' Mountain, being the guru. Students of writing toil up the hillside, to ask you for the One True Pearl of Wisdom that will shine the glow of enlightment on their labours.

One line, and one line only. Distill, please. What would you tell them?

Sorry I am late to this.

Don't edit until the story is done.

connie, that's what I meant - not sure of how to phrase what looked different. Let me try for examples, instead.

"I mourn my dead love. I mourn for my dead love. I grieve for my dead love."

IOW, I've seen "mourn" used both ways, but never seen "grieve" used without something to qualify it.

Crap. No access to memory bank sections dealing with linguistic architecture terminoloy this morning. Send donuts.