Day 15: Idioms delight

Start with the idiom I usually don't hit the ground running. In your conclusion use the expression that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Hit the ground running and that's the way the cookie crumbles.

These two idioms were always used (overused, I think) by bosses and co-workers at an office I used to work at. I am guilty of using the first one in job interviews. Maybe because my work then was with fixed-term projects which, well, needed to hit the ground running. And we had to deal with so many uncontrollable situations, the Chief of Party was wont to say: Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

But I am not about to pepper this exercise with idioms, no sir.

Some people may think that using idioms every chance they get makes them better English speakers or writers. Take this guy who comes home to the Philippines after living for some years in the US. In one brief telephone conversation alone, he slipped in "frog in my throat" and "say uncle." I get it, idioms give language a bit more color, but please, too colorful is not necessarily beautiful.

For non-native speakers like us Filipinos, using what I have come to term as Americanisms, doesn't become us. The place for this is probably in the customer service outsourcing companies. And these CSRs (customer service agents) should keep them within the confines of their cubicles. I shudder to overhear a CSR apparently showing off his mastery of spoken English, trying hard with an affected diction, pretending to be so at ease with American idioms.

While I'm at it, can people interviewed on TV stop using the phrases "end of the day" and "basically" to that point that it becomes like an annoying mannerism of speech, whether these are used correctly or not. All the more irritating if "basically" is used to explain something that is far from basic.

As I see it, though, there's not much I can do about these fake Americans. I can't control them. So I just have to live with it. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

Day 14: Testing 1-2-3

Instructions: 

Choose one word that most appeals to you: trophy, bible, inhale, giraffe, lava, weed, crush, banana, mask, gas, fender 

Choose one setting that most appeals to you: At a circus, during a war, in a space station, at a park, under a full moon, on a beach 

Choose one starting phrase that most appeals to you: If I could stop, I once asked, The first day, If you must know, The hurricane neared.

Start your story with this phrase and incorporate the setting and word.

The first day that she planted it was just a twig. Honey, the sad song. Reminds me of friend from school. Stephanie, but Honey to family, and Panyang to us, her friends. The latter name she allowed only her high school buddies to use. One of us actually gave her that name. It was the fashion then to make beautiful names "ugly"-sounding. She had her Panyang, Cecilia got her "Zadang" from her last name "Lozada". Zadang's cousin, though, Isabel, with the same last name, got Sabel Sabaw (soup), I vaguely recall from a soft-porn movie of a similar title. A few were spared that awful naming convention, perhaps, I'm only speculating now, their names were already difficult to enunciate, not necessarily ugly-sounding (Wilweville was a mouthful, also a victim of a parallel vogue of combining both parents' names to form unusual names.)

But I digress. I was at this park/cemetery for American soldiers. More park than cemetery. After I figured out how to get there, it quickly became a place I go to when I needed to think. No, not really serious thinking, just letting the mind drift. Like about the twig. And Honey. Or a weed, and how you can't find any among the hectares of grass. That's how immaculately maintained this cemetery is. Not your typical park or cemetery. Visit a local park, and it's littered with trash from fast-food picnics, lovers who need to, but can't afford, to get a room.

While some people might find solace in the Bible in trying times, I go to this place, with two Sunday papers tucked under my arm. Why the papers? My small crises are usually preceded by a change in jobs, so I scour the Sunday classifieds for job openings. Then, done with that, I tackle the giant crossword puzzles. I look up every now and then to follow the planes taking off or about to land at the nearby airport. The ones that are approaching are usually eye-level from where I'm sitting. The ones taking off are farther up, and I follow it until it tucks its wheels in.

Two or three hours there, and I'm ready to head home.

You are a 13-year-old-girl named Lisa Palluzi. You have made up your own language where you put the letter S in front of all words beginning with your initials L and P. You (SLisa) speak this language to torture your two younger sisters, SPatty and Slorna. Write in this language. Start with:



When I babysit for you spipsqueaks on Saturday night, I am going to . . .


. . . turn off the main switch so that you won't be able to turn on any slights or use your sPCs. Slet's see what you will do in total darkness. I will lock you into your bedrooms. No amount of noise will bother me because I will wear my headphones and turn the music up.

This will teach our sparents not to sleave me to babysit you monsters.

Day 12: Spoiled Rotten

Day 12: Spoiled Rotten

List six disgusting you’ve found in your refrigerator (or have heard others describe they found in theirs).


Cheddar cheese, dried out to a plastic transparency
Onions growing roots
Tomatoes with skin still intact but all mushy inside
Water bottle smelling of stale, uncooked fish
Cola spilled all over the bottom
Leftover beef soup frozen over with its oil
Use all six in a story, start with Whenever he mentions Paris . . .

. . . I shudder at the recollection of crashing at his pad there. Paris was my last stop on my 10-city tour of Europe, and I was running out of money, so I had no choice but accept Stefan's hospitality. I hate to sound ungrateful (he was very gracious after all to readily offer me a couch at his place when I told him I was visiting Paris) but he was the ultimate slob, and the place isn't fit for humans, it's literally a pig sty. I guess he adapted too easily to the Vietnamese pot-bellied pig he kept there.



To be fair, he was the typical foreign student, trying to juggle school work, parties (!), a part-time job, a budding romance with a pretty local, and taking care of his beloved piggy.

He told me to help myself to anything in his refrigerator (anything, edibles or otherwise!). A milk drinker, he never ran out of fresh milk, and he almost always had no leftover milk, thank god. The only stinking dairy product that obviously has outlived its shelf life is a chunk of cheddar cheese, metamorphosed into something like those fake sushi or steaks displayed in tacky restaurants. Only those fake ones look tasty enough to eat, while the cheese in his fridge has dried to a hardness that you could use in construction (it would put a brick to shame).

I still couldn't understand why keeps buying vegetables if he couldn't make a meal to save his life. He leaves them all to rot: onions already growing roots, fit for planting, tomatoes with the skin still intact but already mushy inside.

Obviously something left over from eating out sometime ago, a styro bowl of beef soup, frozen over with its oil, shares the cold space with the already-smelly vegetables. Throw in a puddle of cola at the bottom, and I say, I think he's trying to build himself a high-tech compost pit.

Ah, but he doesn't mind it at all. He chugs down water that smells of rotten fish. How do I know? Because I once made the mistake of drinking from the same bottle.

Before my 10 days was over, though, I developed immunity. I found myself deftly shoving aside the dried cheese to make room for newly-bought wedges, positioning the onions so that the roots are immersed in the nutritious spilled cola, and the tomatoes actually make excellent toys for the pot-bellied pig to chase after. I just make sure it (the pig) doesn't catch it, because I return it to its rightful place in the fridge, as if it hadn't been touched.

What? I'd never dare clean out my friend's refrigerator and risk insulting him, after the hospitality he's shown me.

Think
of a slinky. Write four textures that come to mind.

1. sharp
   
2. sleek
3. slippery
4. smooth
   

Now think of a scarf. Write four
textures that come to mind.

1. linty
2. scratchy
3. fluffy
4. loosely-woven
   

Use all these in a story that begins:
Late night city streets were the perfect backdrop for...

Late night city streets were the perfect backdrop for a painting of a different kind. A realistic mural dreamed of by this guy, who got world-famous for using the craziest medium to deliver his art. He once draped a whole mountainside with a plastic sheet, creating a smooth, surreal landscape. It was like looking at a snow-covered hillside, only the snow looks too slippery for even a daring skier. The sharp crags, still appearing sharp, you could tell it was the kind of sharp that will not cut your flesh because of the plastic coating.

Back to his new undertaking, he has thought of setting up glass sheets over a huge portion of downtown, and painting over and tracing whatever is under that glass--the city streets at night, but as he sees it, not as everyone else sees it. The street, sleek tar glistening from a downpour, becomes, in his version, a dark river, lined by shops, linty like it's shop windows when it hasn't been cleaned well enough, fluffy blobs of plants, unnamed and unidentified because of the lack of details of his artwork. The patterns on office buildings, solide granite and steel structures, changes into a facade of threadbare, loosely woven and drab, almost like burlap. Just thinking of it's scratchy fiber makes me itch.

So Mr. Innovative Artist finishes his artwork, his take on the city streets that to the average person walking down it from work, perhaps, is just a succession of structures and lights that help him feel a bit safer. The painting now looks like a Disney movie, where inanimate objects take on a life of their own.

Day 10: Use the directional words as you get to them. Start with: Just like the little red caboose. . .

Up the steep incline of life I chugged along, not knowing how long it's going to be like this. But there's no turning back, or else I'll hurtle downhill faster than ever, with no engine to break my slide down. Then I reached a fork in the railway.... which way to go? Right my instinct told me, and my instincts were wrong. Left, I should have turned left, but I don't have time to dwell on my wrong move. Take the road that you chose and see what's up ahead. And as if to validate my wrong decision, I suddenly found myself rushing down headlong into the depths of depression. Down deeper and deeper I went. No where to go but up now.

DAY 9: FICTIONARY

Write a dictionary-style definition for the word EC.DYS.IAST (pronounced eckDIZeeAST). Use ECDYSIAST with your fictitious definition in a story. Start with : It all started when . . .

Ecdysiast: 1. noun - someone practicing ecdysia or body tattooing using only naturally occuring dyes or inks.

It all started when Juno met Bruce five years ago. Since then they have been hanging out. Bruce was a tattoo artist and his passion rubbed off on Juno. But Juno, who had his own quirks, wanted to take tattooing a step further. He wanted to stand out among the practitioners -- consistent with his being an "organic" aficionado, he wanted to use purely natural dyes and inks. Even his needles were the organic kind. He started toying with bright colored insects that were known to yield bright colors and crushed them to get just the hue he imagined. He also built up a collection of common plant dyes. But he was not satisfied. He was obsessed with getting his dyes solely from the human body. Anybody would be grossed out by the green puke from someone who hasn't eaten anything in days, when the stomach contains only acids and bile. Green. Naturally occurring green. Blood, that's always available, but even blood has different shades and he wanted to get as many shades and consistency as he can get his hands on. A thousand substances from the human body. He gets a high from discovering new ways to use human fluids and tissues for his works of body art.

So the killings were baffling the police when it first began. . .