Writings
"The Absence or
Addition of Fish"
Word Riot, March 2008
Your task is to read
the opening scene from the following unfinished screenplay and keep writing
until you finish a three-act screenplay, which you will present at semester's
end in my office.
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"Storage"
The Rake, October 2007
Last week we played out the death
bed scene. It wasn’t a life-changing experience, but with Dad dead, my tool
collection tripled. I have enough power drills to arm a framing crew, which I do
in fact arm since I run a framing crew.
We’re the guys who put up the
outlines of houses –braces, trusses, etc. -- and then other crews come in for
the interior and surface work.
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"Peckers"
Night Train,
October 2007
Lately, my
fifth-grade son has been drawing boobs and peckers on his class assignments. My
wife Susie brings home one of Danny’s construction paper artworks with a Post-It
Note from the teacher attached that says, “Please re-enforce the message that
this imagery is inappropriate.” The imagery appears to be a stick-figure with a
giant phallus pointing straight down. I could argue to Mrs. Peterson that an
archetype is working through Danny, but I don’t. One of my work-crews roofed her
house last summer.
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"Motor Repair"
Identity Theory, August 2007
Dave’s in the middle of this
outpatient treatment program with a bunch of other court-ordered drunks because
three weeks ago he got off his shift at the community college where he works as
a lead maintenance technician, had too many beers at Applebee’s bar and
drove his Harley Heritage Softail into a row of mailboxes and ended up concussed
on some guy’s driveway.
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"The Model
Man"
Pindeldyboz, January 2005
Nancy's doctor, who looks like
Pippi Longstockings, sits on a stool and delivers the pre-op consult. “I make a
hole next to the belly button with a laser, drop in a small sack like a marble
pouch, cut out the section of the fallopian tube with the hemorrhage, drop it
into the bag and haul it up. No big deal.” Doug sees black-faced miners with
lunch-pails and hard hats squinting into daylight. Pippi says the surgery will
take an hour. She’ll slap on a couple industrial-duty Band-Aids and Doug and
Nancy will be out in time to extract their son Sean from daycare without a late
fee.
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