This round of the smokies will cover the last two weeks of posts.  Sorry for skipping last week, but hey, it was memorial day weekend.  Which I spent at home.  Alone.  Playing video games and watching movies.  And not in Alaska showing off my beard.  Or in Florida with my girlfriend.

You understand.

Anyway, since two weeks are being covered, prepare for a long post.  Lots of wit to be awarded.

IT BEGINS!:

Recipe for ruining an otherwise perfectly fine and relaxing day:

1) Tune into the coverage of the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee;

2) Watch as 12 and 13 year olds not only spell words you’ve never heard, but also know their definitions and root languages;

3) See these kids turn and head back to their seat after speaking the final letter and without waiting for the nod of, “that’s correct,” because they know it’s correct;

4) Watch as a 13 year old with that just-entering-puberty moustache starts to cry when he misspells, “Apodyterium,” as a-p-o-d-i-e-t-e-r-i-u-m.

I’m reconsidering the title.  Perhaps a little too much saccharine, even for my tastes.  But, if I stay true to form, I’ll finish this post and publish it anyway, because somehow, in my own arrogant panda way, I’ll make it work.

Which brings us to the contest!  Somehow, in all of our own arrogant wordsmoker ways, we can take 101 words, arrange them in some sort of order that makes some sort of sense, and we make it work.  And how!

This week’s theme, in honor of the dead messenger parrot, and partly due to the impending doom of a global warmed summer, the theme is, “Don’t Forget The Sunscreen.”

(As you recall, the theme this week for the micro-fiction roundup was “Desperate times…” and VaQuero was the chosen one, the winner-and-so-winner-chooser.  Here is the results, as dictated to me from a messenger parrot VaQ had fly into my windshield earlier this afternoon.  It squawked a bit, but in between spurts of blood from it’s beak I was able to get down the following):

First off, all entries were a pleasure to read. This time around we had nine writers and eleven very short and thrilling stories. 101 words is fucking painful in my opinion, but everyone is making fine work with such small amounts of language.

Up With People!

1. The arc of my life thus far can be summed up in one anecdote: I had just started at a snooty J-school after barely graduating from an open-enrollment commuter college. Feeling insecure among all the Yale, etc. grads on my first day, I sneaked a peek at the monitor of the woman working next to me. Her writing was rough, the syntax not quite right, and I immediately felt much more comfortable, knowing there was somebody even more out of their depth than I was. A few minutes later she reached into her bag and pulled out a massive book. It was a Russian-into-English dictionary.

The line seems interminable. For a long time its been just this one fleeting image of you which I have become so obsessed with, that as Jackson says “… it was never clear, how far or near, the gates to my citadel lay; though I keep a watch on the distance, heaven is no closer than it was yesterday”.

We will be discussing Candy in the CHAT ROOM this Tuesday on June 2 at 9pm EST.

Wealthy asshole inflicts himself on his betters, can’t be bothered with the child he fathered late in life, dies senile. Good riddance.

(On the gem published May 18, 2009 – Mommy is in her bathrobe watering what appears to be the concrete driveway of a quiet suburban ranch house. One of her tow-headed offspring (I’m guessing it’s Jeffy) is dangerously close to playing in the street without adequate adult supervision, as mother is quite intently focused on the taks at hand.)

(Note: This is part of an ongoing journal of Sproing’s experience as a mite on the sickly hide of that dying beast, Old Media.)

Welcome to journalism! Unless you have that rare gift for letting your love and your hate ooze around the corners of the stuff you write, you will never be allowed to express an opinion again. Anywhere. Not even on your own lawn.

Neck and neck, I tells ya.

Normally, I guess I’d just decide the winner, but I’m having a difficult time.  On one hand, I want to watch On The Waterfront.  On the other hand, I think I should watch Casablanca, and should feel shame for not having done so already.

Hrmph.

Help a panda out.  Keep those votes rolling in.  I’ll declare a winner tomorrow morning.

Woody Allen is indeed short, and I suspect he is also fictional.

You’ve got until midnight tonight to submit your micro-fiction entries, at which point the great and wise VaQuero will be deciding the fate of your submissions.  Will they pass through to the winner’s circle?  Only time and VaQuero will tell!

Rules, theme and associated comment fields for submissions located here.

Midnight!  Gah! 

I even googled it.  All the related articles spoke of the ‘upcoming’ event, and how it ‘will be held,’ this last weekend.  The Wikipedia entry hasn’t even been updated yet. It’s been three days!

Perhaps all involved are still up in Anchorage, partying, lackadaisicaling, and not updating websites.

Alas.  Alack.  Anon.

I will continue with what information I was able to attain, and I shit you not when I say I did do a large amount of research on this.  Being a fellow ‘Beard-o,’ as they’re called, to me this championship is like a, uh, big chess tournament for say a, uh, geeky chess enthusiast.  That analogy work for ya?  Or perhaps it’s like the world cup, were all the footballers to grow beards and stylish moustaches and parade around Alaska and not kick a ball around.  Getting the image now?  Good.