Fortnightly Writing Competition: Winners Announced!

[DanielH]

We had a good turnout last time, let's hope this trend continues with the Ninth fortnightly writing competition.

This bimonthly's theme is:

      The worst job in the world

Winners Announced!

1^st Is rock_chick

Joint 2^nd Are Obi and Krayy

rock_chick, go ahead and start the new competition.

[Jack Sheehan]

It's up in the air whether I enter this one or not. I'm having serious computer troubles and am very busy. Don't count me out though.

[Obi]

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgkbm6ch_27hkz6pnc9

[Lionmonkey]

The yesterday's burger came out first. Small brown pieces of roasted animal flesh, covered with ketchup and other stuff, they usually put in there, flopped one by one onto the otherwise strikingly clean floor, creating the ultimate contrast, any artist could ever imagine. It catched my attention, that 16 hours in the stomach acid didn't seem to affect them. I should really stop going to fast food restaurants.

These thoughts caused another strike of agonising pain in the chest, slowly going up to the throat and finally erupting in the form of half digested chunks of bread and liquified strawberry jam. Something, that once was a doghnut has been added to the abstract creation of my digestive system. As the last bit of it went out, I was going to catch up my breath to the heart beats and stand up, but the food-consuming and, as, I've recently discovered, -extracting part of my body had other plans.

For a whole eternity, I've been filled with a deepest compassion and understanding of gardener's hose's suffering. I could have sworn, that, there were some drops of blood in the indefinitely coloured mixture of stomach acid and every drink you could have in 48 hours. Unfortunately, this wasn't the end either.

Question: If a person ejects completely all the food and liquids, inside his/her stomach through the act of vomiting, what is he/she going to eject through the act of vomiting if the person is still willing to vomit?
Answer: Oxygen.
If you think that being unable to breathe in is deadly enough, try having to constantly breathe out all the time.

Although, I thought it was the time for me to pass away, I must thank the christian God and/or any other mythical beings for not letting me to die. Somehow, I managed to regain my breath and even get up from the mound of... something. Then I heard the always hated by me monotonous voice:
- Jubba buble gum flavour variant number 6. Rate the taste from 1 to 10.
I hate my job.

[rock_chick]

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder but so is many things, including for me the worst job in the world. Not in general or for everyone, just for me this job is the worst. When I was in my 20s I was naive, my father had been sent to jail for life when I was a young child. I can barely recall him but one thing I trust even to this very day is that he was innocent of the crime. Ever since I was determined to stop people like him having not only their lives ruined but also their families’ by incompetent lawyers, inadequate evidence and general frame jobs. Clearly my emotions towards my father’s case had clouded my vision about innocence and guilt. My mother was mortified when she discovered I was to become a defensive attorney. Through her tears she even asked me to seek therapy about my father before doing so. However I was cocky and rebellious and foolishly discarded her request.

When I began defending clients I was optimistic of their innocence, my court appearances were filled with zeal and blatant attacks at the prosecution, and it was like the cases were all for defending my father and freeing my clients was an attempt to free him.

Yet as the years wore on, my blind optimism was stripped away. I was listening to bank robbery suspects, murder suspects, etc. and trying my hardest to best represent them but my belief of their innocence in many cases became eroded and instead I told myself it was a now just a job, no longer a cause for my father. I was becoming hollow and egotistical; I’d use my now fake zeal to free people who I believed were as guilty as the prosecution and every time I won one of those cases a part of me faded away.

The final straw was when I took on a client accused of murdering his father; there was no evidence of abuse or a reason for the murder except greed, inheritance money. By this point I was in my early 40s, my marriage had crumbled and I barely saw my children because I had become someone they didn’t know any more. Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep when I thought about what this job had done and taken away from me. Every bone in my body told me this guy was guilty, that he’d brutally beaten his father to death and all for money. I began remembering my own father; only a year ago he’d passed away in jail. I kept feeling how pained he would be to see what I’d become and the irony is that I began this for him, or was that merely a pretence to convince myself it wasn’t for me. On the final day of the trial I was suffering from depression and laid in bed all day, ignoring the persistent calls to me about my absence. I just couldn’t do it any more; this had become the worst job in the world for me. I was allowed to retire gracefully rather than be disbarred. Defence lawyers are important, they’re needed, not all of them only care about freeing their clients regardless of whether they are innocent or guilty and not every defendant is guilty but it’s not for everyone, I now know it was never for me.

[Oddysseus]

"Monday, 12:03pm.  Plane is flying steady.  We have reached the optimal drop height of 35,000 feet.  Cabin light is on.  Opening door, preparing to jump.  Okay... 1... 2... 3!"

"Descent .......steady!  Approachi... parachute deploym.... height."

"Pulling ripchord!"
...
...

"Chord failed!  ...ulling reserve chor..."
"Son of a..."

The preceding recording was found embedded in a field with the body of Jack Johnson, professional parachute tester.

[TwinMoon]

Damn.

I had this great idea of having this main character who complains about his job to three old men sitting on a bench outside of a mall, to which they reply with three overblown stories in which they brag about having had the worst job in the world.

But since it's past the deadline and I'm nowhere near completing it, I won't ask for an extension.

I will vote though

[DanielH]

Closing up and beginning voting soon... Does anyone need extensions? I've no problem with them.

[rock_chick]

It'd be really good if TwinMoon asks for an extension because their stories are usually cool and currently there's only four entries. If it stays at that I suggest we just vote for one story.

[DanielH]

Agreed, TwinMoon, if you want an extension, that's fine, just ask.

[TwinMoon]

Weeeeelll... ok.

If you can extend it until tuesday evening, I'll make some time.

[DanielH]

Done. You have until tuesday evening, Mr. Moon.

[TwinMoon]

I usually write slow, so this isn't the best story I ever did, but it might still be a little amusing. So, without further ado:


MODERN TIMES

"What's with the long face?" the old man asked.
"Hm?"
I stood in front of the mall and there were these three old men sitting there. They saw them sitting there every day, but I didn't really know them.

"Oh, my boss is being annoying. I work in advertising, and they asked us to make a new style for the company, you know, new logo's and stuff, but he's rejected four drafts so far, but they were excactly what he wanted. Why doesn't he just tell us what he really wants?
I really was glad to vent my anger, since Maureen was away on my free afternoon. I felt better already.

"Pah! You call that bad?" the thin old man snarled. "In my days we had to walk 10 miles to get to work. And we didn't work eight hours either! No sirree! We could only wish for such luxury. Lord, how we dreamed of working eight hours."
"Hm," I said, frowning.

"Pah," said the middle one, "that's still nothing compared to how hard our job was."
"Why, what did you do?"
"We sure as heck couldn't do any shopping. How we'd love to go shopping, buy some coffee. But we didn't have any fancy coffeebreaks, like you do nowadays. How we fought in the union to get coffeebreaks. But you've taken it for granted. The world's gone soft."
"What, from having coffeebreaks?"
"Meh, don't listen to him," said the fat one. "Going on strike for coffeebreaks..."
He shook his head.
"In my days we didn't have time to strike. We worked, that was all we did. Twenty-two hours a day. And we had to walk half an hour to get home and get some sleep.
An hour later we got up again to go to work. Those were the days... Not like today.
I tried to surpress my smile.
"Well, I've enjoyed your stories, even though I don't believe it all, but I must go now, or my icecream'll melt. See you next time."
With that I walked off.

The old men watched the young man walk to his car.
"Hmpf," said one of them. "We'll fool the next one."
"Yup. I think you pushed it with the twenty-two hours, Harold."

[DanielH]

Seems everyone who's entering has entered.

Cast your votes, one vote per person. Winner annonuced on the 26th.

[Krayy]

Late entry from me...

This diary was found on the body of an overweight adult male with a pasty complexion

April 28, 1997
Dear diary. I finally got that dream job that I had applied for!! My start date coincides with the project announcement and I'm really keen to get going. We have target of late next year, so we should be okay. My friends are SO jealous.

August 20, 1997
Dear diary. We released some stuff to the media today, and they love it! Front page in all the mags, so we're really buzzing. My friends keep hassling me for some early stuff, but I'm keeping it close to my chest.

May, 1998
Dear diary. We went to the convention and made a HUGE splash. George is really great at talking it up and had the press on tenter hooks. Can't wait till they see the final product.

November, 1998
Dear diary. George isn't happy with the way the tech is going so is getting us to change it. Luckily we can use most of the existing assets and should be ready early next year. Looks like my friends will have to wait.

May, 1999
Easy to port my ass. I told that idiot that all the scripting would need to be rewritten. I just hope the media doesn't hang us for being too late. I'm losing my friends support every day. I found out that Jim had a party and didn't invite "That lying piece of shit".

November, 1999
Christmas cards!! The frickin idiot sent Christmas cards to the press saying we'll be ready by February!! Sorry ma, but I won't be home for the holidays. Jim and Terry are off to Vegas, and I only found out through Terry's ex-girlfriends mother. Assholes.

October 2001
Jesus, I don't believe this. I was finally getting things patched up with the guys after a year of negotiations and George sent out a note saying "sorry guys, it won't be a 2001 release" on the forums. "Don't worry, the last major hurdle is AI." Fucker. Jim and the guys actually doggy bagged my porch!! Don't they know dog shit won't wash out of suede!!

June 2002
It's been a hard few months. The guys have disowned me and even reckon that I've been lying about where I work. I emailed them some screenshots the other day, but they just claimed they were Photoshopped. I'll kill George for that "It'll be done soon" comment. Now he reckons we'll beat John to the punch with the new tech. We probably would if the asshole would stop changing his mind.

June 2004
I can't take it any more. Every time I close my eyes, I get the words "WHEN IT'S DONE" waltzing across my eyelids. George Broussard and Duke fucking Nukem can kiss my ass. There is no damn way I'm going to be the butt of everyones jokes for the next 10 years, so I'm going to take that damn job with EA to work on Ultima X: Odyssey. At least they know how to finish a project!!

[DanielH]

Sure, I'll allow it.

Entries:
Obi
Lionmonkey
rock_chick
Oddysseus
TwinMoon
Krayy

[rock_chick]

Sorry, I forgot you only get 1 vote this time so that's why I've edited this post.
Obi

[rock_chick]

Love the trophies by the way! 8)

[Krayy]

rock_chick - I'm a sucker for a good morality tale.

[Oddysseus]

Krayy - Just hilarious.  And I can't wait to play Duke Nukem Forever on my Playstation 12.