Someone has some real perception problems. Via BoingBoing.

On the day Tokyo was being destroyed by giant robots, Ichiro Ramone was 5,470 miles away enjoying a nice sandwich.

Ichiro’s mother was Anzu Watanabe, a Japanese supermodel and lead singer of the all-girl 80s punk rock cover band Bang Bang Go Go. His father was Ricardo Ramone, a multi-billionaire who oversaw an empire of Mexican factories churning out NAFTA-friendly merchandise, ranging from cars to casino chips. Ichiro never felt at home in either Tokyo or Mexico City, so when it came time for college, Ichiro chose Berkley and majored in math with a minor in art.  It turns out that Ichiro was a certified Einstien-level genius, which was quickly noticed by the spooks at the NSA. They recruited Ichiro upon his graduation and put him to work on a top-secret project that involved breaking complex coded communications.  These signals appeared to be between the Russians and a destination just outside the orbit of the planet formerly known as Pluto in a region of space known as the Kuiper belt.

Being born to money gave Ichiro certain advantages.  He worked for the NSA on his terms; when he wanted to. The rest of the time, he made a living working in a ticket booth at a Sunset Boulevard pornographic movie theater in Hollywood.  The owner, Mr. Perkins, was an ex-Scientologist who had hit it big working at a start-up during the dot-com boom and left it all behind to buy the theater from its previous owners, a transvestite named Denise (formerly Dennis) and her wife Charlene, a retired porn star.  Mr. Perkins knew nothing of Ichiro’s secret life decoding alien broadcasts, but had he known, he might have re-considered his stance on the Scientologists.

Ichiro was about to take a bite of his sandwich when his iPhone started playing Bang Bang Go Go’s rendition of The Ramone’s “I want to be sedated”.  Even though he was estranged from his parents, Ichiro was very proud of his mother’s rise from poverty to the heights of the super rich and elite, and had her band’s songs programmed for all of the different ringers in his phone.  This particular ring meant he had received a text message from Robert Marley, his superior at the NSA. Although Bob bore no resemblance to his namesake, his name was the source of constant amusement within the coordinators of the NSA’s headquarters at Ft. Meade and he was forever finding hand-knit Reggae beanie hats on his desk.

Ichiro read the message. It was typically terse and to the point, like all of Bob’s communication. “Tokyo destroyed; parents likely dead”. Ichiro paused, trying to decide what that really meant to him. It made him sad, but he knew his parents had lived life to the fullest and would die with no regrets.

“I guess it’s true, you can never go home” he remarked out loud, then proceeded to finish the rest of his sandwich.

Why are people surprised when a guy name Madoff (pronouced MADE OFF) steals $50 billion dollars.  THE GUY IS NAMED MADE OFF.  What were people expecting.  If you give a guy named MADE OFF $50 billion dollars, odds are he’s going to MAKE OFF with it.  Sheesh.

On BoingBoing, a collection of hilarious animated gifs of the shoe thrower guy.  Love the Warcraft one.

My friend meshealle (that just sounds weird) finally posted her Tiny Fiction.  It’s starting to catch on!  Soon, I will RULE THE ENTIRE INTERNETS with my Tiny Fiction empire.

Anyway, you should go check it out.

Good Job Meshealle (really, just sounds weird).

On the day Tokyo was being destroyed by giant robots, Ichiro Ramone was 5,470 miles away enjoying a nice sandwich.  Ichiro was born to Anzu Watanabe, a supermodel Japanese mother and Ricardo Ramone, a rich, industrialist Mexican father 22 years ago in Tokyo.  He was an outcast to both countries.  So naturally, as soon as possible, he left his family in Tokyo and moved to Los Angeles, where he now makes a living working in a ticket booth at a Hollywood Boulevard pornographic movie theater.  A job that had its share of obvious drawbacks, certainly, but it was not without certain perks.  The owner, Mr. Perkins, was an ex-scientologist who had hit it big working at a startup during the dot-com boom and left it all behind to buy the theater from its previous owners, a transvestite named Denise (formerly Dennis) and her wife Charlene, a retired porn star.  In addition to paying Ichiro a salary, Mr. Perkins allowed Ichiro to stay in a room just off of the projection booth, so Ichiro was spared the expense of an aparment in LA, which saved him a considerable amount of money.  Ichiro was saving all of his spare money so he could go to culinary school and one day open his own restaurant.  He needed to do this on his own, without his parent’s money, to prove to his father that he was a worthy son.  When he had last seen his parents, it had been a heated, angry exchange, and he had stormed out of their penthouse apartment and not seen or spoken to them since.  He eventually bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles.

Ichiro was eating his sandwich in a small cafe across the street from the post office where he kept his PO Box (exclusive culinary schools frowned upon applications with a Pornographic Movie Theather as the return address).  He finished the sandwich and proceeded across the street at precisely 12:05 to collect his mail, hoping today would be the day that his acceptance letter to the CIA arrived.  Ichiro had no back-up plan — if he wasn’t accepted, he was prepared to spend the rest of his days working for Mr. Perkins and selling $5.00 tickets to porn shows.  He opened his box, and inside was a letter bearing the distinctive circle-leaf logo of the CIA.  His hands were shaking as he opened the letter, but after reading only a few words, he knew his dream was shattered.  He slumped to the ground next to his box and began sobbing openly.  This being Los Angeles, no one gave him a second look.

After a time, he collected himself, and slowly made his way back to his ticket booth.

This post is a test of the facebook notes feature, to see how long it takes to update the post on my facebook.

Also, it’s pretty amazing the people I’ve found on facebook in just a few days of using it.  Old childhood friends, former Synapse people. Amazing!

This is more of a note to myself, on what I’m trying to accomplish with my experiments with Tiny Fiction, and may likely be very disjointed.  The creative process for these things often starts with the first line of the story, and proceeds from there.  Often, I’ll have no idea where the story is going to end up.  Sometimes, I’ll have an idea of the tone I want to set (in Spies Like Us, for example, I wanted the tone to be bleak, and show how tired and worn Dmitri was by the process of being a spy).  Also, in each of these little nuggets, I want the reader to hunger for more.  I try to do this by including little interesting bits of detail, things I might reference in passing and never explore.  I’m sure I’m breaking all kinds of rules, and if I had bothered to take any writing classes in college, I might learn the “right” way to do this stuff, but I’ve read a lot of books and short stories, and I know what I like and don’t like.

I also want to use these small pieces of fiction to explore character development, and dialog.  I haven’t really had much dialog in either of them, but I’m going to work on that. Dialog is hard to do in only 500 words or so (my self-imposed limit to these stories), but I think that makes it more challenging — each word has to mean *just* the right thing.

This whole process has been interesting so far — now, all the time, I’m thinking up new ideas for Tiny Fiction. As I type this, I’m looking at 6 drafts that I’ve started, all in various states of completion.  One of them only has a title “The Short and Tragic Life of Archibald Turner”.  I have no idea what that story is going to be about, I just liked the title so I started a draft to capture the idea.  I guess that’s one of the exciting parts for me, having a place to capture all of these ideas, and actually bring some of them to fruition.

I’m not doing so great on my goal of writing a “short story” once a month (i.e., something more substantial than Tiny Fiction).  I have two ideas that I’m toying with for my first short story, and maybe I’ll just start throwing stuff out there for both and see what sticks.  Both are perfect for serial fiction — they’re ripe with ideas and characters begging to get into a series of adventures and mishaps. Hopefully after next week things for me in my personal life will begin to “settle down” (ha!) a bit more into a pattern and I can figure out how to fit these activities into my life.

Ah well, enough blathering on. I’ll maybe work on a story now.

Jon Stewart should be the next anchor on one of the major networks.  It’s funny to me that some of the most insightful interviews and commentary taking place today happen on a comedy news show.  This stuff is just brilliant.