Maybe a bit of a cheat on this one, but I think it works.
Peroxide Head
There were ridges in her forehead, grim and foreboding, and tears (perhaps) in her eyes. She sped past me as I walked, manicured hands clenching, unclenching, clenching again. Her capris were immaculately frayed khaki; her shirt showed the faded name of an Abercrombie island. And I wondered if she maybe wanted to be there, be somewhere entirely not here.
* * * * *
Peroxide Head II
I think I figured out frats today, in a way I hadn’t before despite Jon’s whole fiasco-causing war/bondage game of last week. Frats try to live vicariously through a strung-together mash of child- and adulthood. There’s the kiddie pools on the front lawn, Bozo beanbags between classes, large inflatable balloons. And there’s sexual awareness, promiscuity, alcoholism. People cling tenaciously to this because they know it’s their last chance. Frats are the childhood you never had meeting the adulthood you’ll never have again.
I think I pity them.

O, fuck it
Speed(-)reading
I’ve never had much time for speed-reading. It always seemed like a waste to me, like only getting through half a book. You miss the point.
But I’ve realized lately that I still read pretty damn fast. So I think I’m going to try and do something about it. I’m going to read turtlely.
I wonder if I should let that affect my writing – if writing speed matches reading speed. I’m writing this sentence like a sleepwalker, willing my hands to pause and hover and then press. It’s not working well.

Day Twenty-five
Fuck.
..she thought as she clambered up the splintering fence, almost too high for her and definitely not sturdy enough by half. How did she get into this, anyway? Why did she ever trust someone else on a job? That was just asking for trouble, asking for someone to notice when she came by without a penny and went with a wallet or necklace or bracelet. But Jake had ruined it, of course. And now of course the security was after her, but they were only mall security and so she’d gone slower, playful and inviting chase, grateful for a chance to break the day’s monotony. But then they’d called for help, and the help had turned out to not be overweight and undershape. The help was sleek and quick and almost got her by the penny fountain but miss and slipped and she threw change in his face, laughing, only to shriek when his hand closed on her ankle. She slipped, a fall that would have been graceful in slow motion but in normal was jarring with tile and water. But she was up, bounding over the guard and out of the fountain and down the main section of the hall, weaving between old women and teenagers with equal contempt. But by then the guard was back after her. But if she could just make it over the parking lot fence…but then she felt fingers on her ankle, grasping, clawing, holding.

Day Twenty-four
The Examiner
He looked out, and everywhere he looked he saw, and everywhere he saw he was unseen. He saw microbes and dust mites and other such things, and was unmoved. He looked at birth and noticed death and felt nothing. Always from above, always from a distance, always without.

Day Twenty-three
Extrapolate a conflict involving a box of matches.
So I was walking along Broadstreet late one snowy night this January past, and I saw the most pitiful sight of a girl I’ve ever laid eyes on. She was selling – can you believe this? – matches, or trying to. I don’t think she was having any luck. But I thought to myself, What a shame. And so I went over to do something about it. I mean, I had a few dollars in my pocket, and I figured – well, that is, I don’t want to sound horrible or anything, but I thought maybe if I helped her out she might be up for doing something that night. I’d just be left to wander the streets lonely otherwise.
But you’ll never believe it – she wouldn’t go along with anything. Wouldn’t sell me the matches, wouldn’t come around for a cup of tea (or coffee, I checked that too), wouldn’t move from her street corner. Said she couldn’t. Said it’d interfere with the story.
So as you can imagine, I was really confused. And then I was kinda angry, the kinda angry you look at afterwards and wonder, Why? but at the time you’re too caught up in it to notice. So then, right there in the street, I started yelling at her that I didn’t give a fuck for her fucking story, and why wouldn’t she sell me her goddamn matches?
But she wouldn’t give ‘em to me, so I grabbed them and tried to pull them from her, but I couldn’t get her to let go, and she kept screaming at me that if she didn’t stay people just wouldn’t get it and then everyone walking by started to look at us and sneer. So I let go of the matches, I guess kinda fell backwards because my grip slipped off, and left her there on the corner, with her story.

Day twenty-two
Baby coupons“Which one do you want?”
“Well, we can get this one at K-Mart, and O, wait, half price!”
“Those are only for the browneyed ones, though, remember? Here, take this stack – look for a good blueeyed one instead.”
(Shuffling noises, punctuated with grunts)
“Ah, here we go! Buy one, get one free, just down the street at Target!”
“Looks good to me, but I thought we were only getting one.”
“You’re right. Hm. Why don’t we ask the Jacobsons next door if they wanted a new kid? Maybe we can split the thing.”

Day Twenty-one
Using the last nightmare you remember as the basis, write
an absurdist comedy sketch.
It’s late at night. Two men stand on a roadside underneath a tree.
E: What are we doing back here again?
V: O, it’s someone’s dream.
E: Again? Don’t we have better things to do? Do we?
V: Do we?
E: I don’t know, do we?
V: I don’t know, do you?
E: No one tells me anything.
V: No one tells me anything, either.
E: Right.
V: Yes.
E: Exactly.
V: Is anything exact?
E: What do you mean?
V: I mean, is anything exact?
(E looks around suddenly)
V: That’s an interesting tree, isn’t it?
E: It’s fine, as trees go.
V: I suppose you’re right.
E: So why are we here again?
(Enter L on all fours)
L: Hee-haw.
E: That’s the worst fake donkey noise I’ve ever heard.
L: I can’t help it, I’m only following orders.
V: Orders from who?
E: You mean “whom”?
V: No, I mean “who.”
L: I always thought it was “whom.”
V: Quiet, ass.
L: I don’t know whose orders. I’m supposed to wait here.
E: We’re waiting, too.
V: What are we waiting for?
L: For someone to think of the last nightmare he had.
E: I could use a hamburger right about now.

Day Twenty
You’re sitting on the el, and someone’s behind you and you
don’t know who and you don’t turn around but you get this
feeling in your gut and this picture in your mind…It’s someone, you know, someone from the past that you’ve been trying to scour out of your mind but can’t because they don’t really make brain-sized Brillo pads now do they? But you wish they did, and you hope that whoever it is (first girlfriend, best friend in fifth grade, worst enemy in third, kid with a bike from down the street) doesn’t remember you. But if you remember them why wouldn’t they? And so you don’t turn around. Don’t turn around, ever.

This is one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite plays.
Day Nineteen
“If we shadows have offended,/Think but this, and all is mended,/That you have but slumber’d here,/While these visions did appear./And this weak and idle theme,/No more yielding but a dream.”Nietzsche has an interesting idea about dreams. I think I far prefer it to Freud, especially since I’ve never understood Freud anyway. Nietzsche thinks that dreams influence – directly affect – our waking lives. That what we dream about changes how we are when we’re not dreaming. Not literally; just because you dream you’re an elephant doesn’t mean you’ll become one in reality. But it does mean that you’ll be plodding, dull, and perhaps aged-looking.
I really like this Nietzsche guy.
And I’m going to be dreaming of flying tonight.

Day Eighteen
What do you really care about, honestly?
People. Not most of them, but a very few.
Music and hookah, the two greatest relaxants ever.
Books.
I’d say “myself,” but, well, duh. I think it’s pretty much understood that’s first on anyone’s list.

Halfassed today because of long paper to totally rewrite after getting edits back. Yikes.
Day Seventeen
Anatomy
Anatomy is no joke, though the person you just passed on the street might think so and snicker, thinking you don’t notice but O you do, you do and you grimace. Anatomy is not something you can help. Should you blame it on your parents? Maybe. But will it help any? Probably not at all one bit. God would have given it to you if there was a god to do such things. So you and your anatomy just need to learn to get along, even if you’d both much rather be picnicking down at the seashore.

Note the skillful use of profanity. Nothing gets the attention of a highschooler faster. And yes, this is exactly ten sentences.
Day Sixteen
A High-School valedictorian speech in ten sentences or less.
I’m not going to tell you some bullshit like You made it, because you haven’t yet. And don’t get your hopes up, either, because the odds are against you. But here’s a few things to keep in mind as you struggle.
Perspectives are important and experiences are even more, so try as many of both as you can.
You are not your family, not your school, not your past; you are your own beginning and your own end.
There is education without school and school without education. Avoid the latter and embrace the former.
Try to see what’s around you, before you get too fucking old and need glasses or someone young or a psychologist to point it out.
Most importantly.
Confront the truth, defect from the old, create the new.

Day Fifteen
Stick to those practices you know to be safe or proper.
This honestly makes no sense to me at all. “Safe or proper”? Humanity would no longer exist if it was always safe or proper! The species as a whole would have been trod to dust under the feet of who-knows-how-many other animals by now if it had stuck to the safe and proper. Maybe some people find this desirable. But putting it in a fortune cookie for Ed to find after a meal seems to me an odd way to spread a message of self-annihilation. Because that is most definitely what this message represents. The safe, the proper, the unchanging: they are our most profound enemies, our greatest evils. We must never be safe, never be proper; for within these things are the fossil and the wasteland.

Day Fourteen
Why do office buildings have a few random lights on even at night?
It was past three when Richard stepped out of the tower, walking briskly towards his Honda. He thought it had been a good night – he’d mostly avoided the others while cleaning, though there had been one close call. They moved in with the janitors and moved out with the morning sun. In between, in the dark and murkiness of the night, they ran things – really ran them. Richard had seen the visitors to the building, the people he recognized from the morning news. They came in their helicopters and limousines, and left just as quietly. And the next day they were always on the television in the morning again, saying things and making important things happen. And so Richard lived a life of floors and shoes and not making eye contact with anyone at all.

Day Thirteen
A flock of geese fly by as you look up. Find a meaning in them.
They never learn. They follow the weather and wind currents in their demented arrowhead year after year after long slow year. For what? To follow the weather and wind currents back again year after year after long slow year. The cycle never changes, the birds never learn.
So don’t be a birdbrain.

Both of these suck, so I’m hoping together they’ll add up to something half good.
Day Twelve
Fictionalize a conversation you had in the past three days.
-So have you read Woolf before?
-No, and I’m not sure I want to.
-You, you didn’t like it then?
-Not really, I mean, it’s just a day and it was just, it seemed kinda hard to follow.
-Yeah, I can see that. But her imagery was so, so vivid. I really liked this, liked it a lot.
-Yeah?
-Yeah, I’m thinking of reading some more of her stuff over the summer, even, honestly.
-I just didn’t like it that much, I guess.
-See, I was totally impressed with it. Totally.
* * * * *
-So you’re going to, you’re going to eat a piece of paper to prove you’re more of a man than Al?
-Shut up, Dave.
-No, hang on. I’m just trying to get this straight, make sure I understand what’s going on here. You’re trying to prove you have a lot of, lot of testosterone. And you’re going to do this by eating a piece of paper?
-Dave, it’s times like this I hate you. I really do hate you.
-But, but I’m just trying to clarify this, for the sake of everyone, everyone here.
-Have I told you lately, have I told you how much I hate you?
-No, but you’ve started to eat a piece of paper.
-Dave, you’re an asshole.

I like this, so I’m considering it atonement for yesterday.
Day Eleven
T&A: A Television Epidemic
“Okey, cut.
Thet’s a gud wun, but ya know what I want? I want us to if we cud get sum mor of Sharon’s tits in the nex shot right now.”
“Yea all rite, thet wirks okey. Couldja jest twist a littl mor twirds th kemra heer over by me, babe? Thet’s rite. Jus a littl more, okey? Perfik.”
“Okey, now, rite now, win you scream fur the hero heer to cum n get you you jest stick yer ass awt twirds me, jest like thet n skweez yer arms t yer sides, jest like thet, you no this’s fer th gud uv yer kuhreer.”
“Yea, Sharon, yer doin gud babe jest keep t up whal I zoom in heer jest a littl. Yea, this’ll be reel drematic fer th people this heer.”
“Okey, now, here’s yer big momint – th one I promisd you, remimbir? Our he-ro here is a smite distractd n you punch th ninja fella heer on yer rite. Nono, yoos yer lef erm sos I kin hev a shot uv yer tits ther. Thet’s rite thet’s rite.”

I have company. And so I apologize for the complete lack of thought here.
Day Ten
Personify a Hangnail
Hey, what happened? O, wait. It must have been that zipper – the thing always catches and she rips something. I might as well enjoy myself for a bit – she doesn’t have a file with her, does she? She kept planning to bring one the last time this happened, but I guess she didn’t after all. Lucky me. Ooh, if I reach a little I can grab that lady’s jacket. Yeah, that’s right – weren’t expecting a hangnail with attitude, were you now? Ah, wait, I’m sure we can work something out – think of the damage you’ll do if you rip a nail off – think of something, at least – no!

Day Nine
Warning: Thoughtcrime Deleted
Didn’t you hear? Stay away from that corner. See the sign? My aunt’s brother told me the Kindly Ones took a man away from that corner Thursday last. Yep – thoughtcrime, had to be. Even without the sign you can tell by how the people don’t walk on that corner. You never know for sure what might have triggered the crime. Maybe it’s the angle of the buildings from that perspective, or the arrangement of the streetlights. So it’s better to avoid the risk entirely. Thoughtcrime might be catching, after all.

Day Eight
So how do I get there?
Getting there is the significant part. So be sure to look at the trees, spindle fingers reaching out and up, take note of the anthills (here, here, over behind the thistle) scattered in the woodchips. Watch the people more than your feet – you’ll have the latter forever, and the former will be gone when you turn your head. See only in colors for a while, or feel the wind caressing the pores of your arm. Exhilarate in the mutability of the surroundings.
But as to how you get there, well, where are you going?

Day Eight
Define a season.
((This is the coincidental song I was listening to when I started this, which turned out to be at least as distracting as it was inspirational)
“Not for the Season” by Jeff Tweedy
Springtime comes and the leaves are back on the trees again
Snipers are harder to see my friends
Weeding out the weekends

Summer comes and gravity undoes you
You're happy because of the lovely way the sunshine bends
Hiding from your close friends
Weeding out the weekends

Candy left over from Halloween
A unified theory of everything
Love left over from lovers leaving
Books, they all know they're not worth reading
It's not for the season

When autumn comes you sit in your chair and you stare
At the TV square
Hiding in the deep end
Weeding out the weekends

Winter comes and the days all start late
There's motion on the boughs where the dark shapes prowl
Feeling out the feelings
Feeling out the feeling

Candy left over from Halloween
A unified theory of everything
Love left over from lovers leaving
Books, they all know they're not worth reading
They're not worth reading)

Spring (sprĭng) n., transitory 1. Release from prison by means of a breakout
v., insistent 2. To come forth, grow out of [as Athena from Zeus’ head]
n., creationary 3. Rebirth

Day Seven
Enter: Bramble, Alabama
Population 3, 597
We roll through town in late September of 1954 and the streets are filled with ghosts. Buildings fade in and then out behind us and people drift from storefront to storefront or not at all, tethered to their homes and porches. They give us looks (of course they would, father says) but they’re more scared of us than we are of them I think I hope. They peep out from their eyeholes and we keep rolling through, the car going bumpitybump on the gravel beneath and the foggy rain around us leaving a coating of wet on the car and us. We roll up our windows and we keep rolling. As we leave town, I look back at it drifting out of sight and decide, Bramble is like a ship on its side in the Sargasso.

I swear this was done on time. But our server has been down the past four hours or so, and therefore I haven't been able to post it. Until now.
* * * * *
Day Six
Malanomy: A Tribute to…
The work of Professor Wilhelm Herrick is not often appreciated. This is no doubt because it is not often understood. The beauty of Herrick’s creations is unparalleled – while artists have, for millennia, used the human form as inspiration, Herrick uses it as a medium. His works, from Eyelid Snowflake (1912) to Maze of Fingers and Toes (1953) demonstrates an understanding of the contradictions inherent in the human condition and create wonder out of the mundane.
Some have criticized Herrick for his occasional messiness – the bruises and cuts which may be found on Emptiness of Thighs (1946) is an example – but it is in fact a strength. Herrick’s refusal to romanticize the instruments from which he constructs his works grounds them as firmly in reality as Herrick himself was grounded – he, more than perhaps any artist since Leonardo, was as involved in the creation of the media in which he worked as he was in its use. Herrick’s work is extraordinary for its affirmation, for its methodic approach to creation, and for its ability to take the most brutal parts of humanity and make them into the most beautiful.

Day Five
It is summer 2009 and you aren’t working.

We call 2009 the Year of the Person-Kite.
Around two years ago, people stopped looking outward for trouble in the world and started looking into themselves. And after a few months, they started looking to the sky.
It was on May fifteenth, 2008 that the sighting of a Person-Kite was first documented. There had been rumors of their existence, to be sure, but the Wiltfordshire Chronicle in southern Britain was the first newspaper to record the phenomenon’s existence. It was the first time in the weekly pamphlet’s history that color was used in a photograph, and for months afterward the editor would insist to anyone who listened that he had neither told the printer to use color nor been charged for its use.
But the colors were there, for all to see. And soon Person-Kites themselves were appearing, unannounced and unexpected, for all to see. They weren’t advertised, and they weren’t sold in stores – not the conventional ones, at least – but they multiplied nonetheless. An underground journal, the PKJ, began to circulate in August of that year, containing accounts of people’s first Person-Kite sightings, their first Person-Kite experiences. Everyone had a story; what Kennedy was to the sixties, the Person-Kite was to us. By September they seemed to be everywhere. We found as winter came that they didn’t work as well in colder weather, and so we waited for Spring to take to the skies.
In April, the sky was a rainbow of people.

Day Four
The Turtle, by Ogden Nash:
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
It’s an old story, the kind you learned when you were so young that you don’t remember how. “Turtles are slow,” the story goes, “but they’re steady.” There’s that fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, after all. It’s an interesting moral. But it is, sadly, flawed.
Turtles don’t consider themselves slow (and they aren’t). Think how you’d look if you were in a world of cheetahs and hummingbirds.
Turtle thinking isn’t human thinking. It’s older. Turtle thinking runs deep and covered.
Turtles look at us (fragile, fleshy, impetuous) and blink their liquid eyes sensuously.
Some day we might wake up and find they’ve taken over the world.

Busy, busy day today.
* * * * *

* * * * *
Day Three
Describe a funny experience that made you cry inside at the time.
I was going to write about feet and cars, but decided that’s been a bit overdone by now.
So I was reading joke books and there was this one joke really struck me as humorous and I figured it’d work if anything would.
Q: What do you call a man in his sixties who can’t recognize you, defecates in his pants, and lives in a dark cubicle at the end of an endlessly long hallway where the sun is always setting?
A: Great-grandfather.

Day Two
Godzilla is coming(!) – what do you do?
I look up at a greenly radioactive anachronism and consider for a moment why I’m in Japan, anyway. It’s a bit too crowded for my tastes – put more than ten people in a room and my brain starts to itch. But yes, Godzilla. If I stay around here, I’ll probably get smashed like that dolled-up feminist over there. But if I run, that thing will just step and squish and that’s the end of it, because in thousands of years of evolution no-one’s developed squish-proof-ness. So I twitch a neuron and develop a trait and grow large wings of flesh and air (because if there can be a Godzilla then I really consider biology irrelevant). And, because I’m not missing anything in Tokyo to begin with, I fly away.

Day One
Write a scene from the life of the twenty-third person (who you don’t know) you see today.
Shuffling to the front of the class to ask the teacher, Could I make up the quiz from yesterday? she quickly, unconsciously, tucks her (straight, midback-length, brown) hair out of her face and behind her ear. Her aspect might remind you of a classmate from earlier years if you gave the matter a bit of thought. She shuffles and brushes your arm and to her the desks are regimented cacti in a desert of tile. Her hands clasp and unclasp at her sides, in her pockets (one has a turquoise ring on the third finger). When she arrives at the teacher’s desk after a century, she waits ten seconds before speaking, though her mouth is, as always, slightly and pregnantly open. You can’t hear what she says, but the teacher puckers and says No, I didn’t mean that at all and she looks for a moment as though she would like to evaporate before the teacher says something else, inaudible. She shuffles back to her desk, grasps her pencil defensively and clenches her left hand between her crossed legs.
She walked past you yesterday and you didn’t even notice.