Week 10, Junkyard Quote 1

"SNIPPY ALWAYS TELLS ME LIES. HE SUCKS.
I TRY TO CONVINCE HIM THAT CAPTAIN IS A REAL WIZARD AND RULER OF THE UNIVERSE, BUT SNIPPY IS A STUBBORN GOAT. HE SAYS "IT'S ALL MAGIC TRICKS" AND "YOU ARE GULLIBLE".
I CALLED HIM A "JIGGLY SLUG" AND PRESENTED HIM MY PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE.
SNIPPY CALLED MY PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE "PHOTOSHOP". I DON'T KNOW WHAT PHOTOSHOP IS, BUT IT SOUNDS SCARY. IT REMINDS ME OF THOSE OLD MAGAZINES I FOUND OF GIRLS WITH GLOSSY FACES. I THINK I WILL NAME MY CATERPILLAR FRIEND "PHOTOSHOP". THE CATERPILLAR GETS ALL GLOSSY AND ANGRY IF I TRY TO HELP HER FLY. IT TOOK A LOT OF WORK TO CATCH PHOTOSHOP AND TIE BALLOONS TO HER. NOW SHE CAN FINALLY BE FREE, LIKE A SKY-SHARK. SNIPPY CLAIMS HE IS A SMART, BUT I KNOW BETTER. REAL SCIENTISTS CREATE SKY-SHARKS. SNIPPY HASN'T CREATED ANYTHING LATELY.
PHOTOSHOP ROAMS THE SKY, I HOPE SHE LANDS ON SNIPPY."

- Pilot, from Romantically Apocalyptic, Issue 63.


I love this kind of writing, when done well, and I think this is a good piece that accompanies the silent images above it.

Week 9, Junkyard Quote 2

"As you approach the building you see the racetrack to its right, littered with debris and surrounded by desecrated bleachers."
- N. Parry, describing an abandoned racing circuit in a near-future wasteland scenario.

I heard "desecrated bleachers" and it struck me as very interesting language. The first half is paraphrased, didn't have time to write down the exact wording in the narration, but those two words stuck with me. What kind of character would describe a racing circuit as hallowed ground?

Week 9, Junkyard Quote 1

"I heard a baby crying. The child was lying on the ramp, wrapped in rags. A mother had left it behind, perhaps because she knew that women with infants were sent to the gas chambers immediately. I saw another SS soldier grab the baby by the legs. The crying had bothered him. He smashed the baby's head against the iron side of a truck until it was silent."

I've been reading about holocaust denial this afternoon, and came upon this translated interview from 2005 of Oskar Gröning, a Waffen-SS vet that worked at Auschwitz, who's accounts of what transpired at the camp is great evidence against deniers. The quote above, from the article, kind of struck me as very strong language... Uncomfortably gruesome, but strong nonetheless. Not something I would use on my own writing directly, but it might serve as inspiration.

Week 8, Junkyard Quote 2

"But I move my body a lot, like I'm a snake with a face deformity (...)"
- Overheard on campus from some girl, in a cheerful voice.

Week 8, Junkyard Quote 1

"So if anyone asks, the sword is there because of an ancient prophecy, not five dipshits in an airship."
- darthmarth28 on Reddit, quoting one of his players in an ongoing rp campaign.

For anyone who might want the full story as to why this was said, here it is. Things like these are what makes me come back again and again to the rpg genre.

Week 7, Junkyard Quote 4

And sometimes I get this pain in my stomach's pit
It's what I get
I'm convinced it's my punishment
For those nights I got drunk and let go at some bar
In some city with some people I don't know
For all the times that the lines on your face
Reminded me of the days before the dagonflies escaped
It trips me out how you pick up all my traits
From the way that you spit to the fists that you make
I watch the way you try to keep your mom happy
Daddy learned that from you
You're supposed to learn that from daddy

 Little Man, from You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having (2005), Atmosphere

 Someone posted a link to an Atmosphere song in an alkie forum I frequent, and through a few related-video jumps I arrived at this song. The lines above really stood out to me, mostly the last two thirds (first third is there for completion's sake).

If anyone's interested in other good songs by the same people, so far I've found The Waitress (first and foremost) and The Ropes to be quite good, it's a very relaxed style of H.H.

Week 7, Junkyard Quote 3

Daddy, who was tall and strong and liked going to the hospital to play with their fun machines, was put in the bye-bye box at a big, white house where everyone had a party for him even though it wasn't his birthday.
From "Daddy Put In Bye-bye Box", from The Onion.

Reminded me of some infantilist poetry I read a while back. Not very clashing or provoking or anything, just a funny article about the death of loved ones.

Week 7, Junkyard Quote 2

Sarah trusted her gut, and her gut said Agent Nightingale was an asshole. He felt wrong, and it wasn't just the smell of stale booze. It was in the way he flashed his badge, pulled rank, the look in his eyes when he wanted answers.

Sami Järvi, from "Alan Wake"

The writing may be mostly simplistic, but it fits the mood it's trying to complement extremely well. This is from an excellent adventure game, that revolves around a best-selling american writer. As a whole, the game has one of the best balances between Showing and Telling that I have seen (with "Max Payne" being next to it, a noir story by the same developers and writers). It shows you most everything, yet gives you enough nibbles of tells that you can find your bearing in places where the character's intentions may not be obvious.

Week 7, Junkyard Quote 1

The snow crunched under my feet as I walked with the Chechen rebel commander away from the warmth of our safe house. When we entered a bombed-out neighborhood 15 minutes away, I put the battery in my Iridium satellite phone and waited for the glowing screen to signal that I had locked on to the satellites.

Robert Young Pelton, "Kill the Messenger", article on ForeignPolicy.com.

In an otherwise kind-of-flat piece of journalism, I found that the article was a worthwhile read, literalily, for its content, not its form. I just found out that Marie Colvin died a week ago, this article being how I now know. The experiences of Pelton, that partially mirror Colvin's, and his commentary on how some governments make the gears turn, was a nice read.

Week 6, Junkyard Quote 3

"[A]t their word of command many millions of brainless, besotted beasts would stretch forth their noisome talons from the slums of a thousand cities"
- H.P. Lovecraft, from The Street (short story)

For the past year, or so, I've been slowly reading through Lovecraft's complete works (it's quite the daunting task, specially when combined with the other antologies and collections it has to contend for time with). This story, one of his early ones, is a non-horror story (quite uncommon), heavily tinted by nationalism, xenophobia, and nostalgia. I liked many of the scenes conjured in the story, of stout houses and stalwart men, but the line above was specially eye-catching.

Week 6, Junkyard Quote 2

"Yet even in this pastoral land
the green is mixed with battle cries
and phantom groans. A handsome spring
it was. But, my sweet God, to me
the flowers stank of sulphur and
their blooms were flecked with human blood."
A. Hudgins, from After the Lost War.

Been rereading After the Lost War, since it fell from my shelf yesterday, and I hadn't opened it in 3 years or so. Some passages like the one above feel very vivid, and a pleasure to read.

Week 6, Junkyard Quote 1

"Fluid sugar draws bees, fluid filth draws flies, and fluid situations attract the chaotic."
- FANTASYSMITH (pseudonym), from The Dragon #30 (Oct. 1979)

I love how "fluid filth draws flies" sounds and feels.

Week 5, Junkyard Quote 4

"no dude, i swear that is how nails normally grow when you don’t chew them out like a freaky autocannibalistic chipmunk."

E. Davenport, on Tumblr, in response to healthy (white) nail growth.

"Freaky autocannibalistic chipmunk" caught my attention, I like it.

Week 5, Junkyard Quote 3

She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.

T. Pratchett, Good Omens

Week 5, Junkyard Quote 2

N: Why don't we turn prisons into platypus factories?

ME: What.

N: If a man eats a duck and then is dipped into a vat of toxic waste, he is turned into a platypus, you see. This has been established already. Which bring up the question, why don't we turn prisons into platypus factories?

Conversation between my roomate, N., and me. I should just start writing down everything he says. Do note that this is the entire conversation, minus me shaking my head at the end and writing it down.

Week 5, Junkyard Quote 1

MR. SHLUBB: Your unflagging rigidity in regard to this matter we now discuss bespeaks caution beyond all measure of reasonableness, Mr. Klump. I seek only the most light-hearted and momentary of digressions--the briefest indulgment in automative pleasure.

MR. KLUMP: And for cheap thrills of such short-lived durability, Mr. Shlubb, you would risk engenderating ill will on the part of our employers--said ill will to be of such proportion that it would likely manifest itself in punitive actions of such seriousness that we would suffer anatomical transfiguration most permanent and painful incharacter. This is not to be countenanced!

(From Frank Miller's "That Yellow Bastard", assume there is a [sic] after every other word)

 Intentional parody on how someone would talk with what is described as "delusions of eloquence."

Week 4, Junkyard Quote 1

"My  house is creaking and the trees are waving around like drunkards."
 E. Davenport, via Tumblr.

Week 3, Junkyard Quote 2

"I brush my teeth with milk sometimes so that my teeth can get vitamins, but they still hurt a lot."
Christian Jester, via Facebook.

Week 3, Junkyard Quote 1

"Two cookies and a cow... (mumble mumble) I'm not a flying bird."
- My sleeping roommate, just now.

He does this sometimes, it's a source of amusement on late study nights.

Week 2, Junkyard Quote 3

"The curled up legs of a bug on its back."
- Madéleine Flores on streetlights, Tumblr

Ms. Flores is a graphical artist who's work I enjoy quite a bit. She did a quick drawing a few days ago, of an empty street, with the caption above. It struck me as a good example of defamiliarization.