Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

As someone who writes both fiction and nonfiction every day, I often discover snippets of writing in notebooks or in long-forgotten files on my hard drive. Generally, I know what they are. At least, I have some idea of why I wrote them. If they are nonfiction, I sometimes revise them for blog posts. The fiction snippets are more difficult to use. I always tell myself that I will finish the story or find a place to use it in the ever-expanding novel that I secretly contend is narratively daring. This snippet is amusing, if nothing else, so I am sharing it. Perhaps, I want to remind myself at some future date that I will eventually finish each of these brief pieces. Another thing, why did I think I could use goosebump as a verb? For this story, I wonder what was coming next: a scary ghost story, a humorous tale, a novel about Bill and his madcap crew of camp rangers, or the secret life of William Jefferson Clinton. One thing I do know is that I am now hungry for s'mores. Take it ...

Right after school Cecil grabbed his shotgun from his father's rifle cabinet and headed out the door. He took his old BMX out of the garage and slung the gun over his back. He pedaled the bike as fast as he could. Small for his class, he was still waiting for a growth spurt. His grandmother had told him that sometimes it happens later in life. But he wasn't waiting until eighteen or twenty-one. He had outgrown his shit hole town already. He spent most of his time out on state land shooting squirrels or just walking. There was nothing at home that equaled the thrill of just being out in the woods, nothing that equaled the thrill of being among the pines and oaks. He was master of all he surveyed out here. No one came to bother him.             He pedaled his bike down Wilson Road past house after house all of them empty because no one was home from work or school yet. Out here the paint was chipped and the yards were filled wi...

He finally found a place downtown near the club he was playing. A underused city parking lot that required no fee. He parked the beast and made note of where. He needed to make his getaway as effectively as possible. He was sick of playing these gigs. He usually opened for some upcoming metal band, whose fans hated his music. They tacked him on the bill because they loved it. He dealt with hours of inane hipster talk with little recourse – he played the blues, at least an archaic crossroads form of it. They loved it, but there crowd always wanted Metallica. He had no problem with the music. He just wanted to some day open for musicians more his stripe. Hell, he figured he deserved it. He had done penance long enough. He pulled his short, but solid frame from the car. His weather worn skin and brutalized stetson spoke of his days as an old dog. Long in tooth, but still strong in talent. His bones ached a little more each day, but he had his pride. He played blues originals and nothi...

I'm listening to Chris Bell and feeling really underwhelmed by graduate school today. So I figured now was as good of a time as any to flex my fiction writing muscles and post another installment of my sojourn into fiction writing -- " "The Jukebox Played An Old Sad Song." I feel that some of this story might seem a tad cliched, or intentionally pulpy, but I am going with it. Writing is an unrewarding task sometimes, but most of the time I can't imagine doing anything else.  One of these times I will put up revisions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He grabbed a pool cue from a corner rack. The bar was somewhat of a dive with dirty concrete floors and cracked brown wall panels covered by decades old beer signs. The only new embellishments included new lights over the pool tables and large screen led televisions with 24 hour sports blaring. The pool cue he grabbed was one of the old ones; it had so...

I'm throwing a fiction snippet up just for fun. I probably won't do many more, but if anyone likes this, I might post again. I enjoy being thrown into the middle of the action, and I want to see what others think. We often live vicariously through the work of others -- nightly television programs, crime novels, postmodern literature, neighborhood gossip, whatever our vice of the moment is. How often though do we really imagine what it would be like to truly participate in these other stories? Instead of relying on the distance that the fictional barrier creates, can we truly confront these other worlds? Or must we be content to live vicariously through stories told by others? Creating or narrating our own stories or adding to the overall discussion is always a possibility. I would like to continue that discussion, whether it be blurring the lines in writing, by putting ourselves in the place of others. Or, perhaps, just keeping an open mind to the other lives and possibilities...