"We could be heroes... just for one day."
Dec. 29th, 2004 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI am having yet another university-related crisis. I don't want to talk about it. I mention it only because it accounts for my relative silence over the last few days, and may well account for more silence, LJ and RL, in the future.
Anyway. Two nights ago, I was moodily writing an essay and watching VH1's 100 Greatest Songs Ever (no. 11, With or Without You) when the resident Lesbian Odd Couple and Ron arrived threatening turkey. They were being spontaneous, they said. I'm ill, I said. They got lost, they said. In Formby? I said. It's the Armpit of the Universe, they said. It's not, I said.
(Really, it isn't. It's a quiet English village that is no harder to get to than most. Besides, this from someone who lives in Ormskirk!).
Come, they said (they wouldn't be spontaneous again till half ten next Tuesday). I told Pedar I was being forcibly taken for turkey (as Colleen's family Christmas turkey was obscenely large) and he merely looked at me. Go, he said.
I have no choice in these things. I clambered into Ron and off we went, attempting not to get lost on the way. We went via Southport, past Homebase, and I said in passing, "When Colleen invades Poland..."
Thing is, she so will. One may remember our brief and frightening segue into Cheethamist political theory some months ago; in short, it involves the brutal segregation of half the population and death by manual labour for the other half. I will vote for her when she stands as a Green MEP, so help me god.
The turkey was in sandwiches and part of a buffet. The three of us sat on Colleen's bed, in her sci-fi den of a room, and watched the DVD version of Once More With Feeling and plotted a roadtrip to Wincanton in Somerset. I want to go just to take a picture of the sign; it is, if we remember, the town twinned with Ankh-Morpork. Ankh-Morpork. This can only be good.
Clare delivered me home in the end, after driving me for miles down winding scary roads, and I fell straight into bed. At ten pm. Yay for still being ill.
Talking of which, Jane dropped in on me yesterday, for Christmas present exchange and sitting there and giggling. This is the way my encounters with Jane always go. We meet. We giggle. We glance at the clock and discover three hours have passed. As usual, I have no idea what we talked about, but the time swept past as quickly as ever.
I am ill. It is beginning to be annoying. And in the name of all that is good and holy, I ought to throw out these socks.
Anyway. Two nights ago, I was moodily writing an essay and watching VH1's 100 Greatest Songs Ever (no. 11, With or Without You) when the resident Lesbian Odd Couple and Ron arrived threatening turkey. They were being spontaneous, they said. I'm ill, I said. They got lost, they said. In Formby? I said. It's the Armpit of the Universe, they said. It's not, I said.
(Really, it isn't. It's a quiet English village that is no harder to get to than most. Besides, this from someone who lives in Ormskirk!).
Come, they said (they wouldn't be spontaneous again till half ten next Tuesday). I told Pedar I was being forcibly taken for turkey (as Colleen's family Christmas turkey was obscenely large) and he merely looked at me. Go, he said.
I have no choice in these things. I clambered into Ron and off we went, attempting not to get lost on the way. We went via Southport, past Homebase, and I said in passing, "When Colleen invades Poland..."
Thing is, she so will. One may remember our brief and frightening segue into Cheethamist political theory some months ago; in short, it involves the brutal segregation of half the population and death by manual labour for the other half. I will vote for her when she stands as a Green MEP, so help me god.
The turkey was in sandwiches and part of a buffet. The three of us sat on Colleen's bed, in her sci-fi den of a room, and watched the DVD version of Once More With Feeling and plotted a roadtrip to Wincanton in Somerset. I want to go just to take a picture of the sign; it is, if we remember, the town twinned with Ankh-Morpork. Ankh-Morpork. This can only be good.
Clare delivered me home in the end, after driving me for miles down winding scary roads, and I fell straight into bed. At ten pm. Yay for still being ill.
Talking of which, Jane dropped in on me yesterday, for Christmas present exchange and sitting there and giggling. This is the way my encounters with Jane always go. We meet. We giggle. We glance at the clock and discover three hours have passed. As usual, I have no idea what we talked about, but the time swept past as quickly as ever.
I am ill. It is beginning to be annoying. And in the name of all that is good and holy, I ought to throw out these socks.
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no subject
on 2004-12-30 08:54 am (UTC)Chandler stopped, and stood across the street, watching the door. Somewhere deep underneath its enourmous iron hinges, it snickered, certain that the pathetic human would be put off by the mere out-of-place-ness of an ancient wooden door in the centre of New York. The rest of the building, Chandler observed, looked like any other: it was tall, constucted of brick and glass, and in what was probably an office six floors up two women where having an argument which involved massive waving of arms.
He took a deep breath. Everything was normal. Cars, buildings, arguments.
Chandler was just about to stroll on down the street to Central Perk, probably to enjoy his first coffee in his now offically unemployed state, when the wooden door opened with a creaking and groaning to rival that of Joey's bedframe practising for the Random Midnight Noise Olympics*. From it emerged an orangutan.
For a moment, Chandler's body considered fainting. It was distracted at the last moment from this course of action by two exceptionally beautiful women, who walked down the street between him and the orang, loudly discussing their single and sexless miseries, and ignoring the male population of the area entirely.
He liked to think the orang was male, anyway. Chandler stared longingly after the two women, wondering if he should run after them and introduce himself, but looked back one last time at the orang before he left. The huge orange primate met his gaze, with an expression he knew all too well. He was probably wearing it himself.
The orangutan nodded, apparently in sympathy, and then jerked his head towards the open door behind him.
"Ook oook," he remarked.
Chandler paused, checking in case the orang meant somebody else, but it was clearly looking at him.
"What the hell," he said, crossed the street, and followed the orangtan into the dark passageway beyond.
- - -
*Older than the regular kind; Achilles is said to have initatied them, with the aid of Patroclus, in one of the more boring stretches of their Trojan campaign.
no subject
on 2004-12-30 02:01 pm (UTC)I have had my hair cut, I have a fringe.
I look like a disturbed wombat.
Help me god I am meeting MOMD(Man of my dreams) in 2 weeks.....
HELP!!!!!
no subject
on 2004-12-30 03:38 pm (UTC)(Sorry, eternalwings. I'd just finally got around to starting a story Raven and I discussed some time ago, and thought I'd post the first part here for want of something better to say. Good luck with the MOYD.)
no subject
on 2004-12-30 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-12-30 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-12-30 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-12-30 05:29 pm (UTC)Will there be more? *hopeful*
no subject
on 2004-12-30 07:35 pm (UTC)- - -
'Clonck,' sang the Expresso machine cheerfully. Gunther glowered at it, and his hair* frowned too.
"Problem, Gunther?" Rachel enquired behind him, which made Gunther spin around and smile.
"No, no," he said. There had been, as a matter of fact, the small issues of Gunther's hangover and recurring nightmares**, but Rachel's presence had brightened his day immeasurably***.
"Good," she said. "Latte, please. And have you seen any of the others around?"
Gunther shook his head. He'd seen Monica only ten minutes ago, before she rushed back up to her apartment to check the angles of the magazines on the coffee table, which could have drifted slightly; he'd seen Joey an hour earlier, and knew he was waiting upstairs for someone with money to come by, so he could have a muffin; he'd seen Ross half an hour before, looking for Rachel; and he'd seen Pheobe just five minutes past, looking for Ross-- but they didn't count. And besides, a headshake meant 'yes' in some countries. It wasn't his problem if Rachel didn't choose to understand it that way.
Rachel looked slightly saddened by this news, and Gunther was instantly contrite. "Actually..." he began, but the universe conspired to prevent him having to confess to misleading her*****.
Central Perk's door opened, and Chandler strolled in.
Chandler strolled in. Wearing a purple dress and a pointy hat.
Chandler strolled in, wearing a purple dress, a pointy hat, and an orange ape.
Chandler strolled in, wearing...
It was no good. However Rachel punctuated it, she couldn't make in into an actual sentance, if one understood that as requiring a certain amount of, well, sense.
A fundamental desire not to turn into her mother prevented her screaming, "What on earth are you wearing!?!"; a basic understanding of Chandler prevented her screaming, "OH. MY. GOD.", with suitable hand gestures; but nothing, nothing at all, could prevent her screaming******.
She settled for, "CHANDLER?"
"That's me," Chandler replied.
After a moment, Rachel stopped screaming, reverting to fact-checking mode. "Chandler?" she asked.
"Still here."
"You're wearing a dress."
"Actually no," he told her, crossing the (mercifully empty) coffee house. "This is the latest in Unseen University's range of stylish gowns for honourary members. It would be in a more fetching colour, expect for my extremely junior status."
"Not a dress?" Rachel said.
"Could not be any less of a dress," Chandler replied, and added to Gunther, "Coffee and a muffin, please."
Rachel came, quietly, to the conclusion that Chandler had finally run entirely insane. It made perfect sense. After all, with those parents, it had to happen sometime.
- - -
(too long. footnotes in next comment.)
no subject
on 2004-12-30 07:41 pm (UTC)** In which Rachel turns into a horse, and his hair murders him, and... but you don't want to know. You're a nice person. You don't need to have that kind of dream.
*** Except on the Ephebian Philosophical Scale of Day-Brightening, in which the presence of a beloved but unobtainable person is said to measure six Wang-Tang-Pickle-Yonoos****, but Gunther, not being an Ephebian, wouldn't have known that.
**** The Ephebian name for the Morning Star, which (due to certain strange circumstances of geography, the Disc's magical field, and the playful trunk of the youngest elephant) is exceptionally bright in the area. It literally translates as "thing in the sky which makes us need coffee".
***** The universe is dead keen on conspiracy theories. Its antropomorphic personality, Mr. Universe (who rarely appears in stories set within himself), believes that NASA faked the moon landing, that Elvis is alive and well and living peacefully in XXXX, and that soon we'll all be able to build our own modems from toasted cheese. This, it has been suggested, explains nearly as much about the way things are in our world as the full meaning of the first thoughts of the bowl of petunias when they found themselves hurtling towards the surface of Magrathea.
****** Technically speaking, this is not true. If Gunther had managed to have a bullet in the air a second before Chandler opened the door, he might have managed to prevent the scream. But that, for a variety of reasons (which do not include his failure to be clairvoyant), is so unlikely to happen that for the sake of drama we can ignore the possiblity.
- - -
(Author's note: the foregoing does not exist.)
no subject
on 2004-12-31 08:48 am (UTC)"I am," said Chandler, with a weary air, "wearing a gown not a dress and a pointy hat because I am now, by a technicality, a wizard, which enables me to do my new job which I need because I finally snapped and slapped by boss's ass which got me kicked out of my old job and my companion is an orangutan, not, repeat, not, an ape or a monkey or anything."
"Naturally," Monica agreed, and ordered coffee with extra cream.
"So," Ross enquired, realising that Monica wasn't going to manage any more. "What is your new job, exactly?"
"Much the same as my old job, really," Chandler said, still panting slightly from his last speech. He watched, somewhat nervously, as the Librarian and Joey explored the 48 Thing Which Can Amusingly Be Done With Pretzels**. "I take the DICKS*** and put it into the ARSE*****, also known as Hex."
"Still data entry, then?" Ross tried. He was bluffing, but it seemed safer than admitting ignorance. He didn't want his briefcase to go the same was as Pheobe's handbag*******.
"Why, Ross, You remember what I did for a living," Chandler remarked. Ross was glad to note that his friend hadn't changed beyond all recognition. "Well, I suppose my old job is now worthy of your notice, being dead and therefore offically in dinosaur country."
Ross fell silent. He thought he could hear, faint but sure, the distant sound of laughter.
- - -
* For reasons which involve archane mathematical calculations and the angle between the television and the table.
** First counted by the renowned thinker, wizard, buyer-of-beers and All-Round Nice Guy Roland Unkvetch Th Easygoing, in his lifestyle guidance book 'Howe To Stoppe Yes Inate Nasstiness Affecting Ye Liffe: A Piratical Guide Fore Horrid Persons (And Also Ye Terminally Stupide)' (Dibblar Publications, Ankh-Morpork, AM 1773, reprinted 1774, 1775 (twice), 1778, and 1857).
*** Data In Collected Knowledge Store: to the layman****, a library.
**** And laywoman, of course. And laygenderneutrallivingbeing. And, as Reg Shoe reminds us, laygenderneutralnonlivingbeing. And if you're already making a joke which utlises 'lay' as a verb, feel free to insert it here.
***** Arranged Research Storage Experiment: to the layman****, round one of Ponder Stibbons vs. The Monster Which Eats Electronically Stored Information******.
****** John, to his friends.
******* Suffice it to say, the Librarian now owned more lipstick than ever before.
no subject
on 2005-01-20 05:50 pm (UTC)