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The Bomb Squad, a section of the more responsive Special Weapons and Tactics division of the Metropolitan Police, filed a report that was read out loud 23 August 2007, during a Senate hearing attended by hundreds, on how come only two senators were left alive after all twenty four of them attended the engagement party of the President's daughter.

"The two Senators [a former starlet and a former basketball player] went to one of the farthest and thickest-walled areas of the President's mansion," the Bomb Squad leader began. He said it haltingly into the microphone of the hot but fully air-conditioned hall. His dark blue uniform clung to him in the heat, and he wiped his forehead with a hanky.

The Vice President, from behind and at the center of the half-moon table across the same kind of table where the bomb squad leader sat, asked the policeman to explain in detail this area, this area found to be far from the center of the explosion, an explosion that killed the invited captains of industry, Tim Yap, and some other irritating news anchors and columnists (who can't write anyway) whom no one will miss.

"It was the private bathroom of the President, Mr. Vice President." Murmurs of disbelief from the audience and members of the press filled the hall. The VP leaned back for effect, looked away, took in the moment. The murmurs died down and he leaned close to the mic.

"Perhaps they relieved themselves at the same time." Hoots and laughter from all around. The VP is smiling with the audience. This is his moment. He who casts the first gloat wins.

"Yes, Sir," the policeman said, "one can imagine the lovely Senator sitting on the toilet while the former coach relieves himself standing up, in full view of the other."

"You trying to be funny, Captain?"

"No, Sir. The expensive facilities in the comfort room allow only that explanation, assuming you use the term 'relieve themselves' to mean simultaneous urination."

"Are you offering another explanation?"

"No, Sir. Forensics found traces of semen. Semen is not usually funny, Sir." Tears of joy filled the media members' eyes; they could not stop themselves--they stomped the floor they stood on, threw knowing looks at each other, and yelled and clapped at the wit of this policeman. Screw the alleged sanctity of a Senate hearing. Most of the Senate is dead. The remaining two are elsewhere. And no one in the room hardly remembered that so many people are dead. [The President and her daughter, sadly, were late to their own party, and therefore survived.]

"Where were such traces found?"

"The bathroom, Sir."

Woohoo! -- a photographer yelled and the audience followed with more hoots.

"Quiet, quiet!" the VP yelled. When the murmurs and jeers died down, he asked, "Are you saying that you can place the two senators at the bathroom at the time of the bomb explosion?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Definitively?"

"Yes, Sir."

"But the semen traces could have been left there by someone else."

"That is correct, Sir."

"So how can you be sure the semen came from, err, one of the senators?"

At this, the policeman leaned back, looked away slowly, sighed, and went back to the mic. "You have to understand, Sir, that my team was barred from examining the crime scene. We were only allowed unrestricted access to the surrounding area, which we examined. Evidence we thought was related to finding the culprits we were ordered to turn over to the Office of the President."

"Yes, of course. We all want to get to the truth."

"And what materials we found to be unrelated to the manhunt for the culprit we brought back to headquarters and merely filed."

"Yes, it's your procedure, I've been briefed. Go on."

"And that our computers sometimes crash, and so we uploaded some materials to the Internet."

"That's unorthodox, but I guess given our cost-cutting measures, that can't be helped."

"Sir, perhaps this is not the venue to discuss these things..."

"Nonsense! Tell us, tell us all here, tell us the truth. Hold nothing back."

Slowly, the captain spoke. "Sir, we have, ahm, security camera foot--" But he was never able to finish his sentence. The audience ooooooh'd in unison, drowned the voices of the police and the VP, and started chanting, "Scandal, Scandal!"

The media suddenly jumped over the cordon separating them from the rest of the inquiry; they jammed their recorders and mics into the captain's face. Camera lights and lens focused on the one who would let out a bomb. Where is the footage? Where is the footage?

The captain's lips could be seen making out two distinct words.

hard-boiled friendster fiction

I still haven't thanked Siege enough for that hard-boiled fiction style Friendster testimonial that he wrote me:

"I need you," the blonde stranger said, casually cascading herself over the mahogany chair in front of Ayen Rivera, P.I.,'s oakwood desk. "To find my husband."

Detective Rivera traced the stranger's length, from the toes of her red stilettos, up her alabaster pair of legs (of the long variety), across her generous bosom, finally settling on her sharp, heavily made-up face. If not for his parole conditions, he would have humped her right there.

"Husbands," Ayen said. Coolly, like he didn't need the business. "Are hard to find when they don't wanna get found."

The blonde stood up to her full height, her wavy tresses rippling around her head in elegant bounce. It reminded Ayen of someone's head, one he held underwater for a couple of seconds longer than normally considered safe.

"Well, then, Mr. Rivera, I suppose this would make it easier," she said, tossing over a bundle wrapped in a paper bag held together by a couple of rubber bands.

Detective Rivera considered the bundle sitting on top of his desk. He leaned back farther, weighing the object, weighing the woman, weighing the job. A hundred grand, easy, he thought.

"I want you to find him alive," the woman said. Her voice was steady, but the trembling of her blonde tresses betrayed her. "But I want to find him dead."

Detective Rivera sighed. All in a day's work, he thought, reaching for the bundle. Some days, he wished he was a writer in some alternative world. He read of quantum theory once, as a child, and had heard of the possibility of alternate realities existing side by side the one that he knew. There are stories, Detective Rivera thought, that needs telling. He watched the woman light a fag.

I had "testified" earlier for Siege. Read it here.

Siege, thanks for this. :D

of the pickiest kind

Nice to know that people out there, friends, they know who they are--all right, their names are Camille and Jea--are still writing. (So much for blind items.) Point is I'm relieved to hear from them, and to get to read their stuff; just so I could tell myself that my writing job is no excuse to freeze up my own tilted-world essaying and sudden fiction writing.

Camille sent me her re-envisioned short story, an earlier study of which she submitted to her fiction class, under Butch Dalisay. Her class must have scooped up her story like a handful of sand, and squeezed hard; later, they unclenched their hands to see what's left. I did my own squeezing: I emailed Camille my comments. She wanted it brutal and honest. Brutally honest. Good girl. That's the writing workshop spirit.

First person point of view narrative. Manipulative mother-protagonist. Work in progress, but the neurotic character of the mom and her world view is the twin allure ("is" because the two are properly one). That's my "unputdownable" back-of-the-book synopsis of Camille's story, which doesn't tell much, really. We like to keep things mysterious around here. Tends to keep the publishers guessing. (Har har.)

Jea is going through her pickiest-kind blogging phase again. Her current blog is the umpteenth reincarnation of her ADHD'd brain. That's Aversion to Dim-Hwitted Doodling. (I just made that up. But that explains things.) She has had so many blogs, which she edits and edits--resizing header text and margins now, changing titles and labels later, and finally settling on a backdrop color that doesn't redirect your eyes from the life-stuff on the webpage. In at least one previous blog, she told of her terrible tales of teaching tupid tudents. She has picked up on that theme in her current blog. Lucky me. I love those posts. A handful of sneers.

One should take lessons from these two. Camille and Jea, who both happen to be teachers.

Writing is a neurosis.

Of the pickiest kind.

the idle villager

I always have this impression that Ricci is constantly harassed by her teaching schedule. She told me once that you need some free time to imagine consequences, so you can write. Her use of the second person (you) is really some underlying "her" trying to tell herself, and me, about the need to rise to the surface and breathe. Her use of 'consequences' intrigues me. If you live on a weekly basis, there's that dual anxiety: you might not be hitting deadlines; your life is nothing but deadlines.

If you are always in the thick of things, life things, work that foots the bills, there's not much mental space and time to space out so you can write. A writer needs some amount of idleness to remain sane.

I'm starting to ditch some side jobs so I can sleep more, so I can be idler, so I can write. If you're routinely pressed by the four cubicle-walls of work, you're hemmed-in soul tends to whine, pant, and give up.

jump

And so, Hinus Long, strained out of his wits, took up Jenny the bitch's dare, and walked towards the open third floor window. The rain-grey half-empty parking lot would be waiting below. Hinus shoved Marky to one side: get out of the way ass-boss, Hinus hissed as he took long, quick strides towards the light. The studio room where he churned out web articles dimmed in the coming evening's yellow light. Cost-cutting memos ordered them to cut the air conditioner, the fluorescent lights, the free coffee--so only the humpback thin lamppost outside illuminated the studio. Yellow was in Hinus' eyes as he broke into a run. Fuck you bitch if I live you die with the ass-boss, he yelled as he gained momentum. Other web writers and graphics people stood up from their hobbitty cubicles to gape at the spectacle. Rebellion is the man, Sharky whispered, adjusting his necktie (and screw this dress code, he added). Sharky knew Hinus asked for a raise and got visually middle-fingered in return. The ass-boss' secretary bitch drilled the final hole: you're not getting a raise, Hinus; take a running jump. Maybe I will, Jenny, he said and walked away, and now Hinus was in the zone, the open canvass of the window coming closer, closer--somebody stop him, screamed the bitch, because someone had to say that, but the room moved not one finger as Hinus jumped and stretched in midair and slammed into the wall below the window. Stunned, no one moved. Finally, Jenny's high heels clak clak clakked to the lying unconscious Hinus. What were you thinking? the bitch said. Ommigod. Jumping without your glasses, you near-sighted idiot.