Serial Sunday Part 3...

So sick today, but posting anyhow. Yeah, me. Sorry for the late posting...

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You Lost Me...

A serial story

By MiddleMan

Part Three

His reality coming back slowly in-between sharp stings of pain: Craig found himself echoing the same questions he heard before the attack.

"Do I know me?"

"Am I OK?

"How many fingers am I holding up?

Wait, those questions weren't what he heard before. He was also pretty sure the voice asking them had a different accent than his normal internal voice. He slowly focused his eyes, and asked, "Fingers?"

"Oh good, you're coming around," he heard the now human shape in front of him say, "We were worried you took a harder hit to the head." It was Jim's older brother, Kyle. He was part of the town's small paramedic force.

"I... what... head?" Craig tried to look around for a large pool of blood and brains that had to have leaked out of the hole in his head that was causing him such pain, but another set of hands held his head steady. "My bike! Linda! She's going to kill me!" He started to sit up way too quickly for his bruised cranium to tolerate.

"You're not going anywhere, Craig. We need to take you in to make sure that you're really OK," Kyle grabbed Craig's arm, "Someone will contact Linda and your family to let them know where you'll be."

Craig tried to argue, but a head full of sharp edged thoughts made this an exercise in futility. They carried him on a backboard to a waiting stretcher which was wheeled into an ambulance. As they took him to the local hospital, Craig struggled to think of what had happened and what he did to deserve this.

***************************

His mother's hand stroked his as they waited for the results of the examinations and tests that had filled Craig's last few hours. "You'll be fine," she repeated every few minutes. This seemed to be more of a mantra for her own self-reassurance than Craig's, but he knew she was only concerned and feeling helpless. It did make him feel better that he wasn't the only one.

His sister walked into the exam room with a bottle of soda for his mother, "Is he going to be OK? Or, am I getting his room?"

"Kelly, don't say things like that!" their mother admonished her. She stopped petting Craig's hand to grab the soda bottle with one hand while smacking his sister with the other.

The doctor walked in a that moment, saving Kelly from further scolding. A man in a dark suit jacket followed him in. "Craig, it looks like you suffered a nasty concussion and need stitches for that gash on your head. Thankfully, no fractures or any other injury, but we are going to need you to stay overnight of observation." His bald head looked as shiny as the glasses he wore in the lighting of the emergency room. He took off the glasses and pointed at the man behind him, "Detective Dakins would like to talk with you about the attack, if you feel up to it."

"Can it wait, Detective?" Craig's mother asked, "He's still feeling achy, and he needs to rest."

"Wait, Mom," Craig put his hand on her arm, "I want to ask him some stuff too."

"OK," she looked at the rest of the room, "Your sister and I will wait outside. Let us know when you're done," As they walked out the door, Detective Dakins told the doctor to stay, he wasn't going to ask many questions. He agreed and grabbed Craig's chart to make some notes.

"What do you remember about what happened?" He asked Craig in a surprisingly deep voice.

"Not much," Craig shrugged while responding. He related the glimpse of gray he saw and the qusetions he heard before he hit the ground and the world went black. "All the rest is coming to and ending up here."

"The person who attacked you was a Mr. Hugh Pearson. You have any issue with him?"

Craig was shocked. Mr. Pearson was an older man from the neighborhood; he had known him from his bike route when he was a paperboy. The worst problem he had with him was being late with the paper a couple of mornings. "No, I barely had any contact with him. He seemed OK. What else did he...?"

He was cut off in mid-sentence by some commotion out in the hallway. Not a few seconds later the noise made its way into his room: it was Linda, with his own father walking behind her saying, "See? He'll be OK. Just needed to be seen by the doctor." His mastery of understatement did little to make Linda stop crying.

"I'll talk with you later, when things calm down," Det. Dakins said as he walked back out the door, nodding at Craig's parent and the doctor.

It took another half hour before Linda was calm enough to talk about how he felt and how bad she was for being mad at him earlier. They talked a for a while before she left with his family when the nurse told them they were going to take him to an observation room and get him ready for bed. Craig was somewhat thankful for the silence.

****************************

Afterwards, that night, he could have sworn he saw a red-headed nurse move about in his room.

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That's it for now...

Later,

MiddleMan

Almost Forgot...

Something I saw on one of the blogs I read. Gruesome...

From DenofGeek. Check out the whole list, if you DARE!

Sorry, had to share the pain...

MiddleMan

Felonious Friday...

Not Really. Just being lazy and copying a post I did on Skepchick... Hey, it took me most of my lunch hour to type, give me a break...

My story starts with my shitty luck with cars. I’m from a large family with not much money, so us kids either bought or inherited our cars from friends and family as we got our licenses. The first car I inherited was from my brother-in-law; was a Chevy Nova with bad mileage and constantly broken turn signals. I received more than a few tickets for a broken tail light, but I always had the situation taken care of by the next day. Or, so I thought.

A few years later, that car finally died and I got another Chevy POS from another family member. This one’s lights worked, but it would die at the drop of a hat.

One night I went out to the movies with my friends. As usual, we left the theater and decided to go to the diner. Me, my girlfriend at the time, and my friend Dave, got into my car and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main street. At that point the car decided to die on me. I let it roll it over to the side of the road to get it started again.

A few seconds later a cop car pulled up behind me. One cop gets out and walks right up to my car.

“What’s the problem, son? You know you can’t park here.”

“Sorry officer,” I pleaded, “My car’s just died again and I can’t get it started. I was just going to call my dad to come and tow me away.”

“Are you sure it won’t work? Try it again,” he said as he looked at the three of us sitting there.

“Ok, but it won’t -” As I said this, I turned the key and the car came back to life. Damn, now I look like a liar!

“Now that it’s running, how about you move on?” he sneered. He walked back to his car and waited for me to pull back onto the road.

I got back on and drove a few blocks with the cops following me all the way. I got to an intersection, put on my right turn signal, and made my turn as textbook perfect as I could.

That was when I heard the “whoop-whoop!”, and saw the flashing lights behind me.

I pulled over a quickly as I could without breaking any rule I could think of. I waited with my ID and information in hand as the cop took his time walking up to my window. “License and regisitration please!”

I handed it to him and he walked back to his car as his partner watched our car from the side walk.

At this point my friend Dave is joking and telling me, “That’s it! There taking you to jail now!” My girlfriend sat there worrying about me getting another ticket while I mentally went over what I did wrong. (The light worked BTW.)

A few minutes later he came back and asked me to “Please exit the vehicle.”

The charge? Driving with a suspended license.

The funny part? It was a clerical error from the DMV. Seems they didn’t get one of my broken tail light tickets cleared out of the system, and it flagged me.

To make a long story short (too late), I spent a night in jail, sitting there stewing and trying to figure out the best way to get out of this.

My father came to the precinct in the morning to pick me up and take me home to a mother who wanted to both hug and strangle me. He called around to get me a good lawyer and found a family friend who was one of the best around. He managed not only to get the charges dropped, but he worked it out so that my record was cleared. (Still have him as my personal lawyer.)

The really funny part of all this was the lawyer calling me a week before my trial to ask me for information and give me some good news.

“I got them to drop the ticket, too!”

“Ticket?” I asked, “What ticket?”

“Don’t worry about it. I covered it by pointing out that they never gave you a ticket, and we had witnesses that could attest to that.”

“Ok, but what was the ticket about?”

A broken right turn signal.

Needless to say, for now on, I always replace my lights when they die.

Later...

MiddleMan

Missing time...

Damn! Didn't post yesterday...

To make up for it: MST3K!

Yeah, I know. Laaaaaazzzy!

Later...

MiddleMan

Monday, Much todo...

Had a lot to do today, but I had some time to do some thinking about things...

The serial story is coming along OK. It's not my best stuff, but it could be a lot worse. And I'm having fun.

I was listening to a past Skeptiod episode that struck a cord with me about am essay regarding religion and modern science that has been rolling around in my head, but I want to put some more effort into it before I write on it.

I want to keep Mondays mostly retro tech (or as close as I can). Today's tech is something that made me go "Hunh?" on my daily commute here. This is something I hadn't seen in over twenty years!

Also, I need to take more time in planning these out, or do them in advance when the muse hits me. Work has been crazy, and as much as it's given me some good stories, it really saps my creativity.

That's about it, getting tired and I'm going to cut this short. More to come tomorrow.

Later...

MiddleMan

Serial Sunday Part 2...

I hate to say this, but I'm glad that the first part is over.

My biggest problem with writing has always been the beginning and the end. I have (what I believe) is a good story, but I'm always unsure of how to start, and how to finish. The Mid-wife even had to yell at me last week to, "Leave it alone!", and "Go to bed!" as I was sitting there, fretting over the keyboard. But, I did finally let it go and publish it as is.

I say this but I'll still check it over again after this post...

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You Lost Me...

A serial story

By MiddleMan

Part Two

Climbing out of the shower, Craig nearly found the floor the first time he stepped onto the tile. He grabbed a towel, and, as he dried himself off, he glanced around at the steamy bathroom, trying to remember something...

It was when he saw the now soggy and slightly-but-still-vomit-covered shoes that he remembered that he still had work to do. He grabbed the sneakers and a scrub brush and attempted to not let the smell make him spew again as he got them as clean as he could.

He was almost done when he was interrupted by his sister, banging on the door and asking him to, "Get his ass in gear!", again. Making sure that his towel was cinched up around his waist, he grabbed the sneakers then opened the door to see his sister about to scream again. At that point he caught her by surprise by shoving the now soaking sneakers right into her arms. She was so shocked, all she could squeak was, "Did you shower with these?"

"Yes, I thought it'd thrill you to imagine them near my nude body!" he said right before slamming the door in her face. That didn't help his headache, but he didn't care.

The stunned silence lasted less than he'd hoped. "C'mon and get out! I need to use the bathroom!" It was sure that she wasn't going to back down just because her shirt was now wet.

"Use the one downstairs," he answered.

"I can't, Mom's using it to develop film again!" her whining came through the door.

"All right, hold on," he groaned. He put himself together, quietly seething about his mother's new hobby. It had taken over a good part of the other bathroom, and, since it was only a month old, probably going to grow in coverage.

He opened the door, about to say something witty on the way out, but he suddenly found his head being used as a makeshift shoe rack. "You're not finished! Put them someplace sunny, so they air out!" she snickered as she ran past into the bathroom. The door slammed shut before he could put them where the sun didn't shine.

Walking back to his room, he realized that he was never going to win with his sister, as he dropped her sneakers near the cat's litterbox.

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Later, he walked out of his door and regretted that he never bought a pair of cheap sunglasses. The day was bright and clear; the only storm was slowly abating in his head. He looked at his bike, which looked like he had just left it to its own means after he rode it home from Jim's house last night.

"That's it! This all Jim's fault!" he reasoned to himself, "If I hadn't gone to his party, none of this would have happened." Why Jim also invited that Bitch was another thing he couldn't fathom. He hopped on his bike and pumped as fast as he could deal with over to Linda's

He had spent most of the party trying not get in "glaring contests" with her, but had little luck. He was without Kelly, due to her parents dragging her away on a day trip, and the bitch seeming to be without the morbid little sycophant that usually clung to her leg like a greasy tick.

He remembered that the living room they sat in was suddenly empty of everyone else but himself and her. (Apparently, someone had mentioned something about dares and skinny-dipping, and that; along with the combination of too much alcohol; had caused a mass exodus out to the swimming pool.) Both of them tried to ignore the other's existence until the quiet made her speak.

"Soooo, where's Linda?"

"Out with her parents, looking at schools," he stated as coldly as he could, "Where's your extra appendage?"

"Asshole! His name is Jeffery, and he'd kick your ass if you said that to his face!" She sneered at him, then suddenly got almost sad, "I don't know where he is."

She got up and walked to the window. Craig thought he should leave the room and give her space, but he found himself walking towards her. It was only when he found his hand reaching up to touch her shoulder that he shocked himself with his actions. Why was he feeding her call for attention so blatently?

Before either of them could speak, he held her face and brought his head down into a kiss. He felt her lips part slowly as they merged with his, gradually starting follow each other's curve of the mouth. Her smell of lilacs and musk captivated his nose, as he flet her suddenly grab a hold of his bottom lip with her teeth. At this, she suddenly stopped and said...

"DO I KNOW YOU!?!" screamed the grey blur that tossed him from his bike and onto the grass, "AM I ME?"

Before he could answer he found his head assulted with the rear tire of his bike, then watched as the lights went out around him...

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More to come next week...

Later,

MiddleMan

Solidarity Saturday...

I promise that alliterations will not be a constant thing...

From a number of blogs I frequent; Skepchick, Pharyngula, Panda's Thumb, and a score of others I have forgotten, but are just as important.

It seems that Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute (of Creation Knowledge Specialists); hereafter known as DICKS: has been very, very bad. Not only does he lie to his followers on the Discovery Institutes's website, he lies on national TV, as shown in this video below by one of my favorite YouTubers, DonExodus2:

OK, you say, he lies, big deal. The only people harmed by this are the fools that follow him.

First off, those "fools" vote, and not in their own best interests at times. The school board issue now going on in Texas has been one of many proofs of concept that Creation Science is bad for science education and bad for political discourse.

But, I'm getting off topic: the problem is that Casey and DICKS have decided to do do something both bad and stupid (a dangerous combination) - file a FALSE DMCA.

This something which - at the least - is a distraction for YouTube. Unfortunately, if YouTube's former reactions to the filing of DMCAs (either true, false, or ambiguous), this can become very messy, very quickly.

So DonExodus2 has asked people to embed and mirror his videos all over, to show our solidarity against this kind of censorship. The video below explains further:

So here's my small part. I'm leaving both of these up as long as I can.

DonExodus2 is also considering legal action, which I hope ends up as a huge media event that makes DonExodus2 and the rest of the pro-scientific community very happy; has YouTube make changes in how it deals with DMCAs; and make DICKS look like a bunch of... uh, dicks.

Sadly, this has had precedence before. But, I think what Thunderf00t did to his menace has it's merits.

That last one still makes me giggle...

Later...

MiddleMan