Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

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Badfellow
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Informal Doomsday Fiction Contest

Post by Badfellow »

Okay, here's the dealio.

A fellow Drunkard and I were kicking around an idea of sorts: why not take advantage and turn some good of the current situation? And perhaps have a little fun while many of us have some spare time on our hands?

So we both agreed to spin our most wily and creative tales of doomsday gloom. A short story of fiction with a minimum of 1,500 words. Any teqnique or style so long as the general theme of the piece prescribes in some way to a doomsday scenario. Comedy, tragedy, horror; nothing is out of bounds.

If you're interested in participating, start writing post haste. While we have yet to set a deadline, this covid crap isn't bound to last forever, and EVERYONE MAY DIE!!!
ພາສາລາວNONE GENUINE WITHOUT MY SIGNATUREພາສາລາວ

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Re: Informal Doomsday Fiction Contest

Post by Badfellow »

Here's a quickie...


The Last Apple

"I remember what it tasted like," said Johnny. "That juicy crunch. That sweet tang. Oh, it was heaven."

Sanubar sneered through the grease of his thin snarls with what remained of his teeth. He would have smashed Johnny's head already with a stone or gutted him with the blade, but the old man was too damn fast with the gun and the draw and the aim. Besides, the old man was leading him to the great and holy stockpile of the end all to be all.

"It was a green apple," said Johnny. "Never liked green apples as much as I would like one now. Apples and caramel."

Sanubar picked his blackened bicuspids with the blunted tip of the knife. All the talk of fruits and foods that no longer existed made him hungry. Feasting on the bitter meat of cockroaches had made them both hungry. Everyone hungry.

"And I remember what Doritos tasted like. Nacho cheese. Do you remember cheese? No, I suppose you don't."
Last edited by Badfellow on Wed Mar 18, 2020 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: edited for punctuation
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Re: Informal Doomsday Fiction Contest

Post by Nausea »

It had been nearly seven thousand days since their departure from home planet Earth 2.

Signals from Earth 1 were still being received. The probes extended far enough to maintain communication between what would -- so far, at least -- turn out to be the rarest ecosystems in the universe. It was mostly noise.

Signal processor Anja was the first to notice an abnormality in the "noise." Could this be a legitimate signal?

The prospect of life surviving on Earth was slim-to-none, but not nil. The soil had, for the most part, been ravaged. A select few synthetic food forms and oxygen-enriching technologies were the only option for those who remained, or those who had simply had the misfortune of being born in the circumstances.

Earth 1 had a unique quality. Its dead computer systems maintained archives of knowledge pertaining to the location of the Booze Nebula.

Travel from Earth 2 to Earth 1 was restricted, by the limitations of physics no less. Locating the Booze Nebula from the distant Earth 2 was a technological feat -- simply too many resources were required to perform the necessary computations for something so far away.

The search would continue. But prospects gleamed when a little beacon from Earth 1 started signalling maps of relative constellations, a map to something... something important.
Don't worry. We're in no hurry.

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Re: Informal Doomsday Fiction Contest

Post by mistah willies »

Folks were shaken, I tell ya. What stirred the Drunkards into action was the sudden use of Lovely Miss Ethyl that some began using to wash their hands. Frig soap.

Those Bas-Tards. Disinfection from the inside was the only proper course. War-mongers turned to the panic-mongers on the telly for help in controlling the expenditures of finances to purchase paper products, the new oil. As the stocks plummeted, all those rich assholes new that cotton currency was the new toilet paper. Gold ingots were the best. Au never rusts. Just wash it off with soap made from animal tallow. Gold is a soft metal.

I shut off the news and looked down at the empty streets. It was Bif Land, like form an old movie. Them skies frowned with disappointment at the folks scurrying beneath, all keeping six feet apart. Six feet distance. Not like they had six feet.

How would I feed meself? Why, by hunting. No, not long pig. No other creature was infected by human-based Covid-19.

Yet, to baste the game, I would first have to learn how to milk a bear and make butter form it.

It turned out to be a very interesting six months until all the world settled back into sanity again.

Then I opened up a bear-cattle feed lot. The cheese was an acquired taste, but the meat is tasty.

.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by Rye and Coke »

Hugh wrote:
Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:47 pm
Not really a fleck of gold, but a poem that I had forgotten about ended up getting accepted. It was called The Courage of the Ne'er Do Well and Terror House Magazine took it along with a couple of others. It was one of those whiny poems I write when I wallow in self pity.

https://terrorhousemag.com/neighborhood ... FwdNTTmLvs
I didn't even make it to the third poem.

HUGH!

"There’s no appreciation for the courage to keep failing."

Are you serious, that's goddamn brilliant...
"They told me to see the glass half full cause some see it as half empty
I chose to see the glass twice the size it needed to be" - Pharoahe Monch, 'Broken Again'

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by Hugh »

Holy fuck, man. One of my Facebook friends pointed out that same line just like you did. And she's one of those Facebook friends who largely ignores me.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by Rye and Coke »

Like I told Willies, it's the subtlety that gets me... It's just a great fuckin' line.


Mid-day Chocolate Doll (or Black Girl tears)

Glassy eyed chocolate
doll, melting under
the heat of
indifference and the
shallow, hollow temperament
of America's
white ambient
afternoon

Crying tears from her own
flesh into a horizon-kissing
late day shadow
she melts
over the
course of a long
lonely life
"They told me to see the glass half full cause some see it as half empty
I chose to see the glass twice the size it needed to be" - Pharoahe Monch, 'Broken Again'

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Re: Informal Doomsday Fiction Contest

Post by oettinger »

Peak alcohol I found it r n` c
Drink!
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Re: Informal Doomsday Fiction Contest

Post by oettinger »

Is it the radiation syndrome or just the hangover,

radtion doesn`t make you crave another drink you think and shurgg it off.

Can vodka get radiation?

Gulp, probably.

It`s three days now since the bombs dropped. It surely burned the tobacco fields you think while you`re lighting your second to last smoke.

If you had any TP or something similar, you`d roll some urbs in it and try to get stoned.

The three vodka bottles you found in that burned bunker will only last for so long.

Food is not a problem, if you`re into human bbq

Gulp, let`s start searching for booze. Where`s the governmet hiding? They`re having some champagne right now, dirty bastards! Every bottle is fair game from now on
Drink!
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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by Hugh »

Long interview with James Michener: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1actU2bk42U

It's a good interview because you never hear the interviewer. You only hear Michener.

I stopped watching right in the middle because he said something unexpected. As you may (or may not) know, Michener was a "research" writer, doing extensive research on people, places, and things for his fiction. But here, right around the 1:02 mark, when I was so shocked I stopped to come over and tell someone what I"d just heard. he says the best books are by writers who just sit down at their desk and write without doing a bunch of research. It's astounding to hear Michener say that. And it's something I really want to hear because I'm always afraid of fucking up my story because I did't research enough before writing it. He's basically telling us here that it may not be necessary to do all that research he did - you just need to get your ass in the chair and write. That means something - coming from him.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by Hugh »

Got a new poem out in the latest edition of Bottom Shelf Whiskey: https://bottom-shelf-whiskey.com/april-2020/

They reject most of what I send them. They published one of my poems about a year or so ago, and when it came out mine was the lead poem. This time they put me at the bottom. No matter, I'll take it. I'm happy to get into places that reject me most of the time. I've stopped submitting to places that accept everything I send. (I say that now, but I'm sure I'll send them something when I hit my next dry spell.)

Two of the lit journals that I follow on Facebook have said they are getting a lot more submissions than usual ever since this goddamb plague started. One of them gently implied that they are a little frustrated with the poor quality of the coronavirus poems that are jamming them up. I have not written a single poem about this shit. One of my Facebook friends, though, is literally bragging about how many coronavirus poems he's written lately. He doesn't submit anything to journals (he claims he's blacklisted, which is only partially true, but he loves being a martyr), but he uploads his stuff to Medium and then links to his latest plague poem in the Facebook comments section of news sites. Now he's complaining when other Facebook users tell him to stop self-promoting his stuff.

So, knowing that editors are getting slammed with these plague poems, I guess I'll stop submitting for now. I don't want to get lost in the crush. And I imagine the editors all shaking their heads at all these bandwagon hoppers. Even though I'm not writing any plague poems, I don't want my stuff appearing in the editor's submissions and getting myself associated with them. It's a good excuse to just sit here and write new stuff without worrying about sending out submissions.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by oettinger »

Copy and paste one from the black-plague outbreak in europe during the 15th century.

They`ll like it
Drink!
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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by mistah willies »

Hugh wrote:
Fri Apr 17, 2020 2:07 pm
Got a new poem out in the latest edition of Bottom Shelf Whiskey: https://bottom-shelf-whiskey.com/april-2020/

They reject most of what I send them. They published one of my poems about a year or so ago, and when it came out mine was the lead poem. This time they put me at the bottom. No matter, I'll take it. I'm happy to get into places that reject me most of the time. I've stopped submitting to places that accept everything I send. (I say that now, but I'm sure I'll send them something when I hit my next dry spell.)

Two of the lit journals that I follow on Facebook have said they are getting a lot more submissions than usual ever since this goddamb plague started. One of them gently implied that they are a little frustrated with the poor quality of the coronavirus poems that are jamming them up. I have not written a single poem about this shit. One of my Facebook friends, though, is literally bragging about how many coronavirus poems he's written lately. He doesn't submit anything to journals (he claims he's blacklisted, which is only partially true, but he loves being a martyr), but he uploads his stuff to Medium and then links to his latest plague poem in the Facebook comments section of news sites. Now he's complaining when other Facebook users tell him to stop self-promoting his stuff.

So, knowing that editors are getting slammed with these plague poems, I guess I'll stop submitting for now. I don't want to get lost in the crush. And I imagine the editors all shaking their heads at all these bandwagon hoppers. Even though I'm not writing any plague poems, I don't want my stuff appearing in the editor's submissions and getting myself associated with them. It's a good excuse to just sit here and write new stuff without worrying about sending out submissions.

That poem has a sense of connection and truth that gets lost these days. Thank you for linking us to it.

Now for another covid-19 poem.

*ahem*



Just kidding dude

.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by Hugh »

The Rye Whiskey Review posted another one of my poems a couple of days ago: https://ryethewhiskeyreview.blogspot.co ... -hugh.html?

I shared it on my Facebook and it got more reactions and comments than any poem I've ever shared.

When the editor notified me that my poem was up, he asked me to send some writing for a new mag he's starting, saying that he digs my writing. He didn't say anything about his new mag other than it's "dark." I sent him four poems. It gave me a lift to hear him say he likes my stuff because when I read his own stuff, he seems kind of prickly.

One of the mags I follow on Facebook posted that they are having a Silver Edition Short Story Contest. I was excited to enter until I read the guidelines - the max word count is 3000 words. I can't even get started with just 3000 words. I recently finished a story that came out to 5100 words, so I went in to edit and cut it down a bit. Now the goddamb thing's up to 5300 words.

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Re: Drunken Literature - Bring it if you got it...

Post by RIPT2.0 »

That sounds more like observation than poetry, not that I'm an expert in poetry.

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