We went to this store to get some books and other trash required for my grad
paper on masturbation, and I meet this guy there who's trying to scalp tickets
to a toilet. I figure that I'm going to have to go sometime anyway so I may
as well keep a few cards on hand (like "get out of jail free" in monopoly) and
the guy charged me $2.50 for the first ticket and $6.50 for the second, because
it's real close to the bowl and I probably wouldn't have to stretch and end up
missing it and shitting in my pants instead.
I figure that's a good sales ploy and Martin, who you've never heard of before
agrees. Unfortunately, as you've never heard of martin before, he's like one
of those people who turn up on action TV shows, doomed to get shot in the first
10 minutes, because they hate to add characters to already working shows.
Sure enough, 5 seconds later there's a daylight bookstore robbery, and two guys wearing balaclavas and carrying big sacks and sawed off shotguns have us all face down on the floor while they fill the bags with Novels.
I can see Martin's thinking about this, and being an academic at heart, he hates to see good literature treated like that. I tell him not to be a fool, after all it's only Hemmingway, but he can't help himself, he sees a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, jumps up and tries to wrestle the gun off one of the guys.
It was just like in the movies - you know - two guys chest to chest, and then a gun goes off - and you don't know who got shot for about 2 minutes until someone says "You bastard" and blood comes out their mouth and they carc it. So they're chest to chest and a gun goes off and two minutes later everyone in the shop is STILL waiting, and I'm really getting pissed off with Martin, because everyone knows he's a temp and everything and he has to go, and then the ROBBER says "You bastard" and falls!!!!
So I'm shocked - perhaps I've written someone in as an extra character after all and he'll appear in every story from now on, but then the other robber shoots him in the head and he's back to being a temp.
So I rush forward and pry the gun from Martin's hands, without waiting for him to say "You bastard" which is a pretty heartless thing to do to a temp, he'll probably never be written into a story again, and blow the crim away with one of those roll-over-and-shoot shots that make Bruce Willis look cool.
Shit I'm good.
Then a shelf of books falls on me and I die.
Shit. I was a temp
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* * It's: "SPLAT - MY CAT!"
-//-//-_
+>\ --__ Slower than a speeding DATSUN 180B. Much slower.
+>/ _------__ Mortally slower, one might say. Rest in Peices.
-\\-\\--
* * University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, NZ
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Research is reading two books that have never been read in order to write a
third that will never be read.