a publisher sets up writers and artists based on what they think will work. So need to worry about that.

That's what I had heard, but it's always good to get that information reinforced.

Calling a Spade a Fucking Shovel (100 words)

This is it, now. No more Marshall Plan; we have Halliburton now. No more sponsorship of the United Nations; they're antique and quaint, don't you know? No more benevolent shepherding of the flock of nations through the arduous process of 'civilisation.' No more White Man's Burden. The mask has slipped, the disguise is askew; our government's naked disdain for others' opinions, others' rights, others' beliefs, is right there for everyone to see.

Let's at least have the decency to tear away the rest of the disguise and call it by its name: This is despotism. Where is our Thomas Jefferson?

Where is our Thomas Jefferson?

Spinning in his grave, love. Spinning in his grave.

Nice, Karl, very nice. That should be published on the front page of every newspaper in America.

Midlife

From the day we're born, we wrap ourselves up.

Clothing, attitude, armour both physical and emotional. We present this persona, this otherness, to the world; things behind which we cower, or rage, or want. Fashion may hide desperation. Humour may hide pain at being unable to fix what's broken.

As we age, those wraps wear thin. More and more, our essential selves become visible.

If you were alive to strip me of my wrap, what would be there? Naked, yearning, needing what I couldn't keep, powerful, still weeping for what broke?

Would you even see me? Am I even visible?

Check it out! A drabble topic that's more or less on time.

Challenge #101 (disguise[s]) is now closed.

Challenge #102 is summer job[s]. Go to it.

For Teppy and my WIP readers. JP's POV, of course.

Summer of Eighty-Three (a Kinkaid drabble)

It was the first real catering gig she ever had, you know?

Should have been easy. First off, rockers? Easy to please. And they were my mates: the Bombardiers, celebrating going into debt to buy their own San Francisco rehearsal studio, south of Market.

Bree's damned good at what she does. But she was barely twenty, just out of the culinary academy. She was scared half off her nut. I couldn't understand why.

Of course, they loved it. It was only later I found out she'd changed every recipe with alcohol in it, because she was afraid of me lapsing.

A year of drama school behind me, I learned the script, and delivered it like a performance. Open, friendly half-smile, inviting the mark in on the joke.

They dropped us off at six, when Dads would be home from work, right around suppertime. For me they looked for upscale suburbs. I killed there, if I could get past the dogs.

(Bing-bong!) "Hi! I'm taking a survey, and I wonder if I could ask you three questions?"

On Friday nights, I'd find some family watching Star Trek, and subside quietly into the couch cushions, hoping they wouldn't ask me to leave during the commercial.

My Last Summer

Days in an amusement park, gosh how they fly.
Cleaning cars in the morning and testing the Gemini.
Bunked in a dorm by the Corkscrew I slept.
Did my days on the Mean Streak and the fairway I swept.
The nights were spent drinking and singing old songs.
Playing Cardinal Puff and quarters and dancing along.
I sped through that summer, like all young people should.
Working coasters of tubes and steel and of wood.
But the one thing I left that will never be found,
Was my last chance at youth, before life came around.

Damn, Aimee. That reads like a classic piece of Americana. Beautiful.