Criticism. Essay. Fiction. Science. Weather.
week:
1The disadvantages of having a hole in your
foot, a cat named Buckley, and falling in love. 2Come eat it.
Or don't. 3Wine, Shoulder, Bolt, Socket. 4Mothbombs 5On the road with your only soul. 6One woman's trash is another woman's treasure 7Aliens! Right here in America! 8It's not as crazy as it sounds
or, music is as music does 91) Sign.
2) Hope for the best. 10A friendship in a bottle. 11A five-year-old tries his hand at action adventure. 12Will the circle be unbroken. 1390ways' first Quaterly Review rages on:
2 samples of Fiction. 14Muscles and fat.
A thin layer of sweat. 15Fiction goes serial.
Part 1 has sex and drugs.
You know you want to stay tuned. 16Our fiction serial concludes to cure your
vertigo from last week's cliff-hanger. 17An iced-out 21-speed sensation: The Moves are
all up on your handlebars. 18We're all in this together.
Except those bastards in administration. 19Jilted, laughed at,
and in the air. 20Swirling and swirling... 21You can't make yourself like them, but you have to pretend because they are your family. 22How well do jewel cases retain odor?
About as well as you stink. 23It's black and white. It's old world.
It's photo time. 24Piggy calls, wanting to sell you insurance.
This is what's on the other end of the line. 25A long pause, then, 26Fiction's Second Qaurterly Review
can speak Italian. 27It's only bread, after all. 28It's job search time at 90ways. 29George W. Bush's resting heart rate and a bum in a green sweater. 30Antique weaponry and teenage angst.
Together at last. 31One-hundred-fifty-three syllables
of October fun. 32there is only
self 33She's cold to the touch.
Cold and pebbly. 34Gut-wrenching love.
And wallabies. 35Building a habit out of ivies and orange flowers. 36A 90ways exclusive sneak peak at the
new and groundbreaking Alphabet Book. 37Type it with one hand and
see what happens 38A face any susbsitence farmer could love. 39The Quarterly Review: read it again for the third time. 40For every task, someone is the best.
Sometimes that's impressive. 41I didn't get a computer;
I moved to Indiana. 42The deepest of mistreatments, in three. 4390ways has new concerns about identity theft. Lock up the children and your sense of self. 44time. eyes. deep sighs. 45I know there's a place 4690 stars are born. 47I had to ask. 48It's about sex.
But isn't that always the way with classical music? 49The epistolary form in the 21st century.
Complete with neuroses and unpunctuation. 50There is no end to the party. 51Rockin to the sweet sounds of prepared food. 52Of or pertaining to. 53Including spaces, this blurb is 90 characters. Ways, words, characters. It is a leitmotif. 54Minnesota. Miami. Poetry in 90ways' Fiction.
It's the best of all worlds. 55It lives and breathes and is hungry for carnival food. 56Manhandled, womanclutched, or otherwise attended. 57The curtain is being pulled back... 58Up in the Fiction house! It's a bird. It's a plane.
It's an illustralogue! 59The hat, in all honesty, is a private matter. 60Putting up with all the doth. 6190words strike terror into the hearts of the longwinded. 62Return of the illustralogue! 63Take one down, pass it around,
blow your nose. 64All any of us want is a little approval and some light stalking. 65The First Quarterly Review wants
you to meet its little friend. 66From our servers to your ear buds!
It's misguided enthusiasm, in podcast form! 67Questions for the man himself.
Plus, the podcast adventure continues. 68No one would ever use Starbucks
to define their identity. Right... 69Don't you remember the rose clipped under my windshield wiper like a butterfly under a pin? 70Oh, it's nothing.
Oh, it's life-threatening disease. 71It's not you. It's me.
And my Eurasian captors.
72Root, root, root for the brisk
sale of anything possible. 73Look within the very bowels of the soul.
Or at least your mother. 74We're not strangers any more. 75He knows of what he speaks. 76I find that often times I'm quite
mature enough to enjoy a few beverages. 77He is licking me.
I don't like it one bit. 78Our favorite stuff is coming 'round the mountain, again. 79A wooden-back brush and a homemade bowl of oatmeal. 80A man's home is his... 81Fack to the Buture. 82This dude pulled back on his nose
and mucus and unleashed a city. 83The polls are in. 93% of respondents do not approve of the monkeybone lodged in their lower lip 84Like a thirsty man in the desert 85Taxpayer dollars wasted on broken egg. News at eleven. 86She loves her red octopus.
She will chew it to death. 87Bubbling, gurgling, fighting a moment to stay afloat. 88Molting our pasts into the air... 89The Return of 90 Words 90It comes but once a... ever. 91Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, the end of the Fiscal Quarter. 92The 540 word circle is now unbroken. 93An emptying out of the animus, perceived as tranquility
94All roads lead to South Dakota. Or at least the I-90 does, anyway. 95He laid down his whittling knife and he and his brother took up arms in rage. 96Drinking manhattans made with a good bourbon, and strong. 97Living white and pudgy, I never expected much for myself. Now, I could tell that was true. 98A few gestural lines towards the thought of death. 99Rest in peace.
I know I will. 100And then we played baseball and then we played army and then we were best friends. 101We torn holes in sheets and became ghosts for each other's pleasures. 102I looked at the pictures of you, twenty years old,
sometimes skinny and sometimes your face a soft moon.
103Fingers clutching little trinkets of the day... 104All roads lead to South Dakota. Or at least the I-90 does, anyway. 105Everywhere signs of an interstice arriving. 106What you see and what you believe are two different things. 107It was as if a million literary ghosts poured from its pages, moaning to be set free. 108So what if too many times we have been here, both
lost in our machinations...
Journey of Many Beautiful Happies
Joshua W. Jackson
Afternoon in a bar. SARAH, in her early twenties, stands behind it, wiping glasses. JIM
and FRED (both in their early fifties) stand in front of it. They are atrociously drunk.
FRED stands behind JIM.
JIM: Sarah, ask Fred what color his socks are!
SARAH smiles.
SARAH: What color are your socks, Fred?
FRED: I know what he's doing.
SARAH: Yeah? What color are they?
FRED: We were talking about symbolism.
SARAH: Yeah?
FRED lifts his pant legs to reveal his white socks.
JIM: Symbolism, ya know? Like in America the Indian outside the cigar shoppe, in Japan
the elephant outside the pharmacy. Symbolism, ya know?
SARAH: Sure.
JIM: Well, in Denmark if you wear white socks it means you're a fag.
JIM stumbles downstage to his table. FRED shrugs.
FRED: I knew what he was doing.
SARAH: Did he already say that to you?
FRED: No, but he said it before. You know... when he talks about symbolism you know
it's gotta end with him calling you a fag one way or another. And he asked me about my
socks before the whole thing started.
SARAH: I don't really like that word, Fred.
FRED: I know.
SARAH: (Calling downstage) Jim! I don't really like that word. Please don't use it
around me anymore.
Jim waves a hand in the air and takes a drink.
FRED: He knows you don't like it. He doesn't care, Sarah.
SARAH: Well, I wish he would respect my request.
FRED: Do you see the way he talks about me? He calls me a fag when I wear white
socks, and I'm his best friend. The thing is... do you know what the thing is?
SARAH: Which thing?
FRED: The thing is, I don't think that's really true about Norway. I bet you if I had worn
red socks today, we'd have heard all about how if you wear red socks in Australia it
means you're a fag. Or a cocksucker. Or some other kind of pederast.
SARAH: So, why do you let him bother you?
FRED: I've been to Norway! When I was in the army! I think it was Norway.
SARAH: So just don't put up with him. Don't let him bother you.
FRED: Jim? Jim doesn't bother me. He wishes he could bother me, but he can't. He tries
all day every day, but he's never bothered me yet.
SARAH: I don't know, Fred. I've seen you bothered by him sometimes.
FRED: You have not! Don't tell me when I'm bothered!
SARAH: Fred, you seem a little bothered right now.
FRED won't say anything. He slams his hand on the counter and looks back at Jim, who
sits in a drunken stupor.
SARAH: I mean, if you guys are friends, right, shouldn't you get along a little bit better?
FRED: In theory... yes, Sarah. In theory... yes... But. What it is... Do you know what it
is? It's like we're on the schoolyard. It's like we're dumb little children. And for no good
reason, just because Jim says, Jim gets to be the bully -- or not the bully, but it's as though
he's like the ringleader. And everybody else just has to follow along. Good ole Fred has
to be the sidekick. And why? Just because Jim says.
Jim rises, carefully, and approaches the bar.
SARAH: But it doesn't have to be like that, Fred. You guys are friends. You don't have to
let him treat you like that, though. You shouldn't give him the power to make you feel like
that.
FRED: You're right, I probably shouldn't.
JIM: (Now next to Fred) I was in the navy, Sarah. Did you know that? That I was in the
navy?
SARAH: Fred was in the army.
JIM: That's not the point. That's not the point that Fred was in the army. Fred was in the
army. Pff. What's the army need Fred for? What do they need with Fred?
SARAH: Fred is an army of one.
JIM: Will you listen to me? When I was in the navy -- Are you listening? -- When I was in
the navy all the guys would go on shore leave. Have you ever heard of that? Shore leave.
It's when all the guys, all the sailors, would get some time off. It's like a day off. And
they'd all go into whatever town they're near and they'd sleep with all the prostitutes
there. Now, I don't mean to be a, rude -- but that's just what they would do. They would
sleep with the prostitutes. Right? Right?
SARAH: Right.
FRED: She doesn't want to hear this, Jim.
JIM: So this one time we were in Bangladesh or India or somewhere and all the guys
went in like normal, but I didn't go, because I was sick or something, and the guys they
came back and they were all doing this funny voice, Indian voice or something, about,
"May your life be a journey of many beautiful happies"
FRED: Call us a cab, Sarah. You already know this story.
JIM: So, the thing is, it turns out these guys went to this place and slept with this guy's
daughters or something, and the whole time they were there, nobody really said much of
anything. Then they're leaving, right? They've had their fun and they paid their dues and
they're walking out and the dad calls out to them, "May your life be a journey of many
beautiful happies." Now, they all thought that was hysterical, and I did too. It's all we
would say to each other for weeks in that little Indian voice, then I was talking to this kid,
the one who heard the guy say this that night, and the kid tells me he made it up.
FRED: Jim, she doesn't care. You're drunk.
JIM: I don't know if the guy, I forget his name. Something dumb. But I don't know if this
kid was lying to me and trying to get some credit because we were all laughing about it so
much, or what. I don't know. Maybe he did make it up. Why would the Bengali man say
that to us after we fucked his daughters? But the thing is, Sarah, even though we were
making fun of it, we all believed it. We all thought our lives would be a journey of many
beautiful happies. Fred, did you call us a cab? Now, it's like, what do I do? I sit around
here and I get drunk with fucking Fred all day. What the fuck is that, you know?
SARAH: But Fred is your friend, Jim.
FRED: I'm not his friend.
JIM: Course you are, Fred. We're best friends.
FRED: I know we are. Let's get a cab.
JIM: I was thinking about walking today. Let's see what else is open on the way.
FRED considers. They turn and walk toward the exit.
SARAH: Tomorrow, boys.
FRED: Take care.
Just give me one thing I can play for.
Disco boys on bicycles.
So what if too many times we have been here, both
Poetic Retrospective
The Weather votes for Kelly Clarkson.