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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

It was a dark and stormy night...

Kit-Cat Club

09:24 / 24.06.01

A game: compose the first sentence of your ideal novel.

An example, from Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers:

'It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop ahd come to see me.'

(My brain would not permit me to come up with something original for this.)

On your marks...

Cavatina

09:24 / 24.06.01

'WHAT!!??'
I'd been expecting my beloved to bring in the champagne and other necessaries, you understand. Ali and I looked at each other in amazement, shock, horror.

For a number of reasons this visit was a most unlikely occurrence. And the archbishop's recent appointment was widely regarded as reactionary in the extreme. Catamite, who like us never took communion anyway, immediately dived further under the sheets.

GMoney4life

09:24 / 24.06.01

The third President in the last 18 month's was found choked to death in an auto-erotic asphyxiation situation, and all the recently knighted detective Michael Jackson could do was Moonwalk thoughtfully around the chalk outline over and over and over again.

wembley can change in 28 days

02:53 / 25.06.01

When the best people walk into your life, it's always like a beautifully executed play shot past a goaltender - you're impressed, but you don't quite know how to take it.

The Return Of Rothkoid

08:14 / 25.06.01

I first discovered I could levitate at lunchtime on a Tuesday, midway through a home-made pastrami-and-gherkin -no mayo- sandwich, and I remember thinking that if this sort of thing was going to accompany such a meal, that maybe I should cut my own sandwiches more often.

[ 25-06-2001: Message edited by: Rothkoid ]

Our Lady of The Two Towers

08:14 / 25.06.01

The idea that my life was only really beginning as it was ending was an irony that was not lost on me in the 0.000007% of a second before the bullet struck my temple.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

08:14 / 25.06.01

I was snoozing (leaning against my large mastiff, who really doesn't seem to even notice) when this thought struck me: "Elvis is dead, and I don't feel to hot either".

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

11:58 / 25.06.01

"Oh fuck," she moaned, eyes flashing like silver in the swamplight, and I could hear her dropping the spade on the wet earth, "he's not dead yet. He's not goddamn dead."

z3r0

12:46 / 25.06.01

Call me Raphael.

nul

13:21 / 25.06.01

Not again, god-damn it.

No star here laces

14:52 / 25.06.01

You've been waiting and debating for oh so long
Just starving like Marvin for a cool J song
You thought you wanted music but you was wrong
Cos LL's become an author and this book is the bomb.

The Strobe

17:11 / 25.06.01

I could tell it was going to be one hell of a day when my hats fell off my heads.

CorvusB

18:22 / 25.06.01

Despite what you think you may know about me, public persona, police records, essays, performance pieces, and the DNA evidence culled from your "boyfriend"'s brains in my hair not withstanding, I am truly sorry for what circumstance, professional ethics, and an archangel named Vernon forced me to do to that midget in Vegas.

Frances Farmer

09:34 / 26.06.01

It was a well known fact that the odd combination of humidity, ninety-five degree weather, and the close proximity of a paper mill built atop an historical bog could produce a quite unusual smell ... But no one could've been prepared to learn the source of this truly rank stench.

Rialto

09:34 / 26.06.01

Waking up in a rainy alley in Soho with blood in my mouth, coke in my nose and cum in my pants, I realised I'd been dead for several hours.

z3r0

11:37 / 26.06.01

"Hmmm", I thought.

ephemerat

12:33 / 26.06.01

I never really lost that sense of absolute loss and desolation, I just remember looking at the broken, wreck of wood, tears soaking the fur below my eyes, just wondering:

‘Who’s been sitting in my chair?’

Frances Farmer

15:12 / 26.06.01

It was my first day in the big city! Sure, I had heard stories about 'Vegas - But I would not have the guts to come here on my own if it weren't for the impetus of the convention ; The third annual Las Vegas 'Small & Proud' convention... And I thought no one could love a midget.

CorvusB

15:51 / 26.06.01

"The wages of sin are death!" sobbed Vernon drunkenly as I polished off my sixth White Russian, brutishly fondled the beautifully tiny Mira Kopekne (aka "Thumbelina's Daughter" of Barnum fame) and remarked how "Sin City" looked like it had been washed in hot water and shrunk.

pantone 292

16:58 / 26.06.01

Picking myself up from the floor in that oh so familiar fashion, I wondered if I would ever find the seat that could take my big, fat, Victorian ass...

Unencumbered

18:01 / 26.06.01

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

I never did like that book. Being misquoted once can be blamed on simple error, but when it happens almost continually, something sinister's afoot.

Cat Chant

10:09 / 30.06.01

"God, you're a wanker, Avon," said Vila Restal. "Blake could do so much better."

Cat Chant

10:10 / 30.06.01

"So that's why they call you Howl," said Chrestomanci, absent-mindedly tightening a nipple clamp.

Cat Chant

10:13 / 30.06.01

"Fuck off, Janeway, you sanctimonious headmistress manque," said Seven of Nine. "I've discovered a wormhole into another dimension and I'm running off with Servalan."

Fengs for the Memory

15:38 / 04.07.01

For the first time in months my watch was telling the right time, something was definetly amiss.

z3r0

17:00 / 04.07.01

This one I read a long time ago:
"The cosmonauts were transfixed with wonderment as the sun set — over the Earth — there lucklessly, untethered Comrade Todd on fire."
- J. Thomson
------------------
"His eyes bored into hers like the slowly turning bit of a 2.5 horsepower drill press set to slow speed to keep from scoring the surface of a priceless mahogany table being repaired for an estate auction that was not expected to bring in much, anyway."
And much more at
here and here.

Fuck.

I've spent my first few years in alchemy school figuring out how to turn a White Russian into a Black one.

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