You move your Shure mic in, you move your Shure mic out, you move your Shure mic in, and you crank the feedback out...

Yes. Definitely disturbing.

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Would now be a good time to point out that in the industry a wireless transmitter plugged onto the bottom of a regular microphone, like a Shure SM57, is called a butt plug?

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Ha! Yes, it's the perfect time to mention that!

Hee.

Deb, I'm 116 pages in and having a helluva a good time. I think you have a winner, here. And you have saved my FUCKING sanity at work today. I have answered maybe 5 phone calls. And delivered the mail. That's maybe 15 minutes of work. It's 2:45.

Ok, back under the story.

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My "meat" drabble, sort of beautifully painful, I think

Mallory knows that bodies are just meat when the souls are gone.(He is not even sure he believes in souls anymore, but that’s what they call the human spark at St. Jerome’s.) He thinks maybe communion should be a bit of steak, slightly underdone, not bread at all, but he keeps quiet because he knows it’s The Job fucking with his brain. He has seen that meat done every possible way after all. Burned, shot, tenderized with ballpeen hammers until he shuddered a little in the hardware store. Normal things are not normal to him sometimes. Even church, which had been bred into him in Chicago, and thus at least a monthly ritual has been hard to face, when, hearing the familiar cadence of the “Our Father” he spoke from another piece of rote.

“You have the right to remain silent.”

Allyson applauded his statement. Allyson thinks everything is a statement, but she has told him she thinks of herself as a piece of spoiled meat sometimes, which though she laughs afterward breaks his heart as if she were his own daughter. Maybe she needs a few less statements.

• **

This is true to life insofar as the Pledge of Allegiance at Dem meetings always makes me want to break out with Miranda instead...I've heard it about a million more times, after all.

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Oh, man, erika. Painful and yes, beautifully so.

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I don't mean to praise myself, exactly, this was one of those that fell in my lap and I wasn't really aware of having to craft it much..so it was like looking at an already-written paragraph on my desk or something. And, yes, I am pinko crime junkie enough to have to bite my tongue so as not to give the flag the Miranda warning...something about how it sounds...the sound of people mumbling something they've said a billion times without thinking, or maybe there's something in the actual...rhythm that is the same. Or the union hall triggers memories of my past life... Wow, I should be a poet, shouldn't I? Talking about rhythm and past-life memories and such. But I'm not. Not lately. (My brother is gonna be so embarrassed if I do that.)

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Honey, when you write something that clearly entitles you to some self-praise?

Make with the praise. There's a difference between being arrogant with no foundation and raising your head in a "whoa! I do believe I just pulled off something really fucking cool!" moment. You know?

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I re-read some stories I hadn't looked at in over a year. I got teary-eyed in all the right places, and I thought, "I think I might have knack for this sort of thing."

I figure if I can make myself cry, I've got the audience by the throat.

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Yes. And no. (Ambivalence I know. Confidence? NSM.)

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I figure if I can make myself cry, I've got the audience by the throat.

It's a damned good start, anyway.

Yes. And no. (Ambivalence I know. Confidence? NSM.)

pftphftphftphftph. Silly spouse.

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