Alan Shore

Kara Marie Keating.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:46:06 GMT

We had a deal. You were to run my foot over with a lawnmower.

Because the alternative is offering to post pictures of my bathtub.

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:59:04 GMT

Go here, reload until you have five quotes that sum up your philosophy or outlook, then post them.

I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
-Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forgo ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
-Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
-Tom Stoppard (1937 - ), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with. His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine.
-Henry S. Haskins

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.
-John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)

The Multimedia Meme

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:11:31 GMT

There are 10 questions. They are to be answered with the following:
+a picture found in a flikr search
+a personal picture
+a word picture
+a lolcat
+one of your icons
+a song
+song lyrics
+a youtube video
+one word
+the answer

Any of the above options may be used for any of the questions, however, each may only be used ONCE.

Except if you're Bruce Wayne then you may do this however the hell you like because you're Bruce Wayne.

1. What's the best advice you've ever received?
Music to peruse my answers by. Aren't I thoughtful?

2. What's the hardest life lesson you've had to learn?
Lyrics.

3. What is your greatest regret?

4. What is your greatest achievement?
I played a part in saving a man's life.

5. What is your idea of love?

6. What is your idea of family?
I warn you, this is very subtle. You may have to watch more than once.

7. What do you value most in life?

8. What do you value most in other people?

9. Where do you see yourself in 20 years and what are you doing to achieve this?
~~Dead.~~ Tropics.

10. If you could choose one of your personality traits to pass on to your children, what would it be?

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:09:04 GMT

So, tell us about your name. Do you have a middle name? Do you have several? Do you go by a pseudonym? A nickname? Why? What about your username? Give us a story. There’s got to be some reason you’re called what you are called.

His first day of practice as a Boston Bruin, Eddie Shore—twenty-four, desperate (one imagines) to slough whatever trace remained of the Saskatchewan farm boy who’d taken up hockey because his brother said he’d never be any good at it—skated out onto the ice and into the path of teammate Billy Coutu. For whatever reason (and in those days, “this is hockey” was often reason enough) Coutu had it in for the team’s newest addition. He was relentless—barreling down the rink, throwing himself into Shore with enough force to set the other man’s bones ringing. It wasn’t long before Shore began to give as good as he got, matching Coutu blow for blow, bruise for bruise. The game fell away; again and again they found each other, instinctively, like lovers locking eyes from across a crowded room, bodies meeting with a sickening crunch.

And then Coutu charged one final time. Stop for a moment and think of it: the tshhh of his blades on that scarred practice ice, the cold air whipping through his hair (nobody wore helmets then; nobody would wear a helmet for thirty-five years), the implacable grace with which he ran down his teammate.

Shore saw him coming. He let him come.

The two men collided and Coutu hit the ice, transported almost instantly to the woozy limbo between consciousness and unconsciousness. As for Shore, his left ear had been ripped down the middle, top to bottom. Blood spilled from the gash, streaming down the side of his face, dribbling off the tip of his chin, but he remained on his feet.

When the team’s doctors informed him that the ear would need to be amputated, Shore decided he wanted a more optimistic physician tending his wounds. He went from doctor to doctor—presumably he’d changed clothes and slapped a bandage on the ear before taking to the streets, but in my mind’s eye he wears his sweat-soaked practice jersey and the ear is slick with blood—until he found one who agreed to stitch the ear back together. The operation was a success; it should surprise nobody who’s paid the least bit of attention to the preceding remarks to learn that Shore endured it without the benefit of anesthetic.

In grade school we used to play this game called typewriter. What you’d do was you’d pick out a likely-looking victim, somebody small and not overburdened with friends, and shove him—like most schoolyard games, this one had vaguely homoerotic undercurrents, and besides, the girls cried too easily—to the ground. You’d plant your knees in the hollows of his arms and commence jabbing at his chest with your index fingers, as if he were the Smith Corona on which you clacked out thank yous to your Auntie Edna.

I don’t know what it was that made me the favorite. No, that isn’t true—it was the way I squirmed and thrashed and squealed and erupted sometimes in laughter and sometimes in tears. Even the real dunces of the school, kids possessed of an almost supernatural stupidity—Nick Lustig, for instance, who postulated that the photographs in our history textbook were black and white because color hadn’t seeped into the world until the ‘40s—had the sense to bear their pummelings stoically, to feign boredom, nonchalance, or at the very least death. I, on the other hand, lacked the survival instincts of a possum. Beating me up must have been an immensely satisfying experience.

I tripped over Eddie Shore’s name—my name—in the index of The Encyclopedia of Hockey or some similarly titled tome. He was the subject of a lengthy article written, like most sports reportage of the day, with a curious blend of bloodlust, reverence and folksiness—the kind of writing that prompts the reader to, when he’s finished, prod his teeth with his tongue to ensure they’re all present. I sank to the floor and, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the aisle, drank it all in.

In the course of his career as a professional hockey player, Shore received 978 stitches. His nose was broken 14 times; his jaw was broken 5 times. His hip was fractured, his back was fractured, his collarbone was broken. Both his eyeballs were split open.

I had bruises on my chest. Tiny ones—no bigger than a dime. I’d count them in the shower, monitor their shifts in color: indigo to olive to mustard.

And we had the same name.

I wanted to be him, of course—to be the one still standing, the rookie triumphant, awash in my own blood and somehow okay with that. I wanted (having performed the necessary bit of mental arithmetic) to be his long-lost great grandson. I wanted, for just five minutes, to know what it was to be invulnerable.

I kept him to myself, Eddie Shore, although the coincidence of our shared surname begged for embellishment, ought to have formed the centerpiece at a lavish dinner party, to be cooed over as guests passed platter after platter of lovingly prepared lies around the table, spooning the choicest ones onto their plates.

Instead it was more of a talisman, a lucky coin. Something I could slip into my pocket and finger for reassurance.

The strangest things sustain you in your youth. Much as I loved my father (and I did—ineptly, perhaps, but deeply and without reservation), the thought of him beating the stuffing out of my tormentors or, more improbable still, careering down the ice to crash through a line of defensemen…if Eddie Shore prevailed by dint of his own strength and a bone-deep toughness, Nathaniel Shore did so thanks to an unerring instinct for the weaknesses of others.

Make no mistake, Eddie Shore was a brute. He approached the game of hockey—a game I enjoy today for its breathtaking swiftness, for the grace and skill of its players—the way a battering ram does a bolted gate. He brought us both the first NHL All-Star game and the first players’ union—the former by checking Ace Bailey of the Toronto Maple Leafs with such viciousness that the man fell to the ice and fractured his skull, spent two weeks so close to death that he was administered last rites by a priest, and underwent two emergency brain surgeries before recovering (the game was held as a benefit for Bailey—whose hockey career had of course come to an end the moment his head hit the ice—and his family) and the latter by managing the Springfield Indians in such a miserly fashion (withholding pay without cause, forcing his players to perform menial tasks ranging from changing light bulbs to popping popcorn to sweeping the arena after games to inflating balloons) that eventually the team flat-out refused to play.

But. But there I was, a boy whose only history was the dirt under his nails, the scratches on his legs, and whose future…

All of a sudden, my name was a promise.

OOC

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:09:13 GMT

Comment at your peril for a big block of text about how Mr. Alan Shore feels regarding your character(s).

Little!Alan's thoughts also available upon request.

[for dr_julianna_cox and backdated to last week]

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:24:03 GMT

He’d bought the Mercedes seven years ago with the better part of an extravagant and wholly deserved bonus, had borne the inevitable cracks about his midlife crisis bemusedly. It was by no means a flashy car—four doors, a top that wouldn’t budge, a coat of black paint designed not to turn any heads—but it handled well and, on those occasions when Alan pressed it for speed, complied readily enough. A study in the elegance of understatement, he might have (and probably did, at one point or another, to impress one girl or another) pronounced it.

All of which served to make the journey from Boston to New York City just short of intolerable.

He left the office early, thanking the deities or demons governing baseball scheduling that the Sox had been banished to Philadelphia for the weekend, and nevertheless managed to snarl himself in traffic almost immediately. Several hours of the very worst kind of driving ensued, Alan nudging the car forward with alternating taps to the gas and brake pedals, blasting the air conditioning and fussing with the radio. Traffic thinned once he’d left Boston behind, congealed again when he reached New York. There were, of course, no parking spots available in the vicinity of Julianna’s apartment.

(Well, no legal parking spots.)

Road-weary, tie slightly askew but expectant look in place, he rapped on the door.

Two devilishly handsome men walk into a Stargate... [for stargatejackson]

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:52:56 GMT

“You can sit down,” the judge says, shooing the latest witness—an economist with an oily smile and (Alan is forced to concede) a rather slick-looking suit—from the stand with a dismissive sweep of her hand.

“Forgive me for asking the obvious question, but was it absolutely necessary to antagonize him?”

“It was that or succumb to sleep in the middle of my own cross, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion”—the gavel comes down; they’re vouchsafed two hours free from the mind-numbing intricacies of antitrust law, two hours in which the words “market power” will not be uttered—“that would have sent the right message to the jury.

“Besides,” Alan adds, gathering his notes and depositing them in his briefcase, “the man had it coming, and somebody involved in this case might as well get what he deserves. Shall we?”

“Oh. Jerry’s here—today—on another matter and I—“ At this conversational juncture, a polite person would have the grace to look contrite; Katie looks positively mortified.

“And you’d rather have lunch with him.”

“Well.” She smiles, likely in spite of herself.

“I’ll see you in two hours,” he says, feeling—for a fleeting instant—like a father setting curfew. It passes, as things do, and he makes his way to the door.

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:32:08 GMT

Comment to this post and I'll entrust you with five subjects I believe you uniquely qualified to discuss. Then post this in your LJ and tell me something I don't know about the subjects given.

From Peter:

Lawyer: When I submitted to this little exercise, I didn’t know you were going to be so literal about it. Yes, I am a lawyer. To its profound and lasting regret, the Massachusetts bar admitted me to its ranks in 1986.

Is that really all I’m supposed to say? “Yes, I’m a lawyer”?

How about this: in ancient times, lawyers were permitted to employ a rhetorical technique called prosopopeia, wherein they would speak as somebody other than themselves. The dead, usually, or a living person not present. Cicero does it in Pro Caelio, his defense of Marcus Caelius.

It’s fallen out of fashion today, obviously, the advent of the Ouija board having rendered impractical the use of attorneys as conduits to the netherworld—but in those rare moments when I’m feeling charitable towards my profession, I like to think that’s what lawyers are meant to do: give someone without a voice the ability to speak and to be heard.

Generosity: The act or virtue of giving freely, with no regard to the worthiness of the recipient and no thought of recompense. Denny is generous. I’m just rich and easily outraged.

Boston: As splendid a city as you’ll ever encounter. An interesting tidbit for all you trivia buffs out there: our sports teams are far superior to yours.

Zippy: I dimly recall knowing—and perhaps even harboring a certain affection for—a person by this name, but it’s been so long that the details elude me.

Justice: I presume this marks the point where you ran out of ideas.

Joseph Heller on the subject: “Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That's what justice is.”

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 03:53:57 GMT

Happy Valentine's Day.

How old were you when you discovered the joys of masturbation?
Ten? Eleven? It bears noting that masturbation didn’t yield its joys all at once.

How old were you when you first did anything sexual with another person?
Fourteen.

How many sexual partners have you had?
Enough to populate a mid-sized town.

Have you ever had unprotected sex? Why?
Yes. Because I thought it would be more intimate. Because I thought it would be better. Because I wasn’t thinking.

What term do you prefer to use when saying you had sex? (Got laid, fucked, made love, etc.) Is there a difference in your mind between such terms?
What do you mean, is there a difference in my mind? They’re different terms.

I use whichever suits my needs at the time. “Made love” is rarely employed without a dollop of irony.

Have you ever used common household objects for sexual purposes?
Common household objects like money?

Do you own sex toys?
No, I lease.

She-male porn! Yes or no?
None for me, thanks.

Your current partner has had way more sexual partners than you. How do you react?
I wonder why we’re comparing stats.

You have had way more sexual partners than your current partner. How do you react?
It—get used to this answer—depends on the circumstances. If she felt intimidated or vulnerable, I suppose I’d offer as much reassurance as I possibly could without lying about my sexual habits. If she felt embarrassed…

Would you have sex with a person who you hated if you were extremely physically attracted to them?
Yes.

Would you have sex with someone you cared deeply for, but had no physical attraction to?
I don’t know. This question presumes an ability to cleanly sever the physical element of attraction from other contributing factors—an ability I’m not sure I possess.

Would you dump someone for refusing to give you head?
Denny’d better hope not.

Do YOU ever refuse to give head?
I have.

Spit or swallow?
If this refers to my toothbrushing habits, I spit.

What have you had up your butt for sexual reasons?
Moving on.

Would you ever consider fisting?
Thanks to you, Jean-Paul, I'm considering it now.

Have you ever sneezed during a sex act?
Not that I can recall.

Farted?
Yes.

Do you prefer to face your partner during intercourse, or away?
I prefer to face my partner.

Do you have a favorite position? If so, what?
I enjoy variety.

Where indoors do you prefer to have sex? (Bed, floor, shower, etc.)
I like beds, certainly, but there’s something appealing about making use of whatever surface happens to be handy.

Do you enjoy having sex outdoors?
It can be fun. It can also be exceedingly uncomfortable.

Have you used sex toys (vibrators, dildos, etc) with a partner? If not, how do you feel about doing so?
Yes.

Would you ever take erotic photos of yourself or make sex tapes?
No.

Do you enjoy being watched while having intercourse/masturbating?
No.

Would you enjoy watching your partner masturbate? Have sex with someone else?
Yes to the former; no to the latter.

How important is your sexual identity (gay, bi, straight) to your sense of self?
Not very.

If you woke up in bed, naked, with a member of the sex you don't normally fuck, how would you react?
It would depend upon the person and possibly the bed.

If your partner admitted, while extremely drunk, to a fetish you find distasteful, what would you do?
Denny has admitted while extremely sober to fetishes I find distasteful.

If it were a drunken confession from a woman I was sleeping with, I imagine I’d inquire further.

Have you ever dressed in costume as part of sex?
Yes.

Have you ever tried any form of bondage?
Yes.

Do you enjoy pain during sex? Yours or your partner's?
Yes. Both.

If you partner told you he/she desired a threesome, how would you react?
Once again, it would depend upon the partner and the circumstances. I might be intrigued. I might take it as an indication of waning interest.

Would you ever try swinging?
I have. It, ah, didn't quite pan out.

What is the maximum number of people you would sleep with at one time?
If two extremely attractive women accosted me on the street and demanded I go to bed with them both, I wouldn’t say no, but realistically speaking, one.

Have you ever toyed with the idea of double penetration?
I’ve given it due consideration.

If one partner cuts off all sexual contact, is it acceptable for the deprived partner to cheat?
Understandable, perhaps, but not acceptable.

What's a sexual deal-breaker for you? The one thing you will NOT do for anybody?
I don’t like blood. I don’t like being infantilized. Aside from that, feces, children, animals, corpses, and public transportation are all out of the question.

Say you have a kid. What sort of attitude towards sex would you want them to grow up to have?
~~I am not ever going to have a kid.~~ I’d want them to be knowledgeable about and comfortable with it. I wouldn’t want them to feel anxious or pressured—sex should be fun and it should be pleasurable. I’d want them to feel as though they could discuss it with me without being judged or misled.

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:08:05 GMT

1 question...
~~1 chance...~~ That's a touch hyperbolic. I've posted this once before, and one could always loosen my tongue with liquor.
1 honest answer...

That's all you get. Ask me one question. Any one question, anything, no matter how crazy. An honest answer. No catch.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 04:35:58 GMT

Five minutes in the life of your muse.

One

The printer spits out sixty-five pages of court opinion—only the legal system could produce a sixty-five page "no"—and Alan gathers the still-warm stack of paper in his hands and carries it to his office. Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach was decided over a year ago; it has mattered to him for all of ten hours.

He takes a seat behind his desk, trains the lamp on the bundle of words. Silence drapes over him like a coat, thick and heavy.

“Abigail Alliance” is (as often happens) a truncated version of the petitioning organization’s full name: Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs. The founder’s daughter died of cancer at twenty-one and he affixed her name to a non-profit, put her picture on the front page of a homely little website.

Alan never bought into the Kübler-Ross model. They’re a convenient fiction, those five neat stages, designed to bestow a soothing sense of continuity on the aggrieved. To him, grief has always been a series of poses struck, a collection of awful grimaces made in the mirror.

He flips past the cover page and begins to read.

Two

“All I’m saying is it’s not a legal argument you’re propounding.” Alan tips his head back, widens his mouth to admit a slice of pizza that droops like the face of somebody who’s received some very bad news.

They’re crammed into a booth, eating off paper plates translucent with grease. From the corner of his eye, Alan can see a squat man in a flour-dusted t-shirt shoveling pie after pie out of the oven.

“Are we in a courtroom?” She knocks her knee against his, her smile mocking but not entirely devoid of affection. She’s called him a dopey drunk—in accordance with her theory that every man, when intoxicated, assumes the personality of one of the seven dwarves—and she’s not wrong. “Besides, you don’t win a jury’s heart with legal reasoning.”

“I don’t want to win hearts; I want to win cases.”

“Boils down to the same thing.” She peels a splotch of pepperoni from her pizza and regards it with almost scientific interest before popping it in her mouth. “I thought you were an idealist.”

“Where is it written that an idealist has to believe in people? Much less”—he gives a tidy little smirk; bit by bit, it unravels into a smile—“the intelligence of the average juror. I believe in—I cling to the ideal that, as a lawyer, I won’t ever be called upon to sway a jury with a sob story about my client’s dead dog.”

“You have sauce on your chin,” she says. “C’mere.”

Three

He sits on the living room’s gargantuan cream-colored sofa, studying the way his fingernails fit together. He slides one thumbnail—the dead, white part of the nail, the part that looks like a smile—underneath the other and pushes, thumbs straining against each other, unmoving, like a pair of evenly matched wrestlers. When they begin to sting he moves on to his index fingers.

“Alan. Look at me, Alan.”

He folds his hands in his lap and looks up.

His mother is talking, talking, talking, her voice smooth as a skipping stone. He watches her mouth, her lips, the hint of pale pink tongue crouched behind pristine teeth. He finds the lines on her face—the shallow, wobbly crescents on either side of her mouth, the deeper grooves below her eyelids, the crooked crease in the bridge of her nose. He watches the hollows in her cheeks and the light tangled in her hair.

He watches her eyes. He doesn’t have words to hang on the emotions—not yet—but the thrill of recognition comes just the same, like an impatient tap to the shoulder.

“Alan, are you listening?”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, automatically.

Four

Alan should be asleep, cocooned in cool, clean sheets and dreaming of Marshall’s opinion in McCulloch, the words soaring above the Capitol dome like untethered party balloons: “We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.” He should be seated at the desk in the corner, poring over the mounds of research Jerry and Katie have amassed, a cup of coffee growing cold beside him. He should be standing before a mirror in tomorrow’s suit, reciting the fine phrases he’s readied for the occasion.

He’s playing with his tie on the bed.

He sets the ingenious little mechanism—it was described to him as simple, a stopwatch fused with, say, the siren mounted atop a toy fire engine—for ten seconds and waits, counting along in his head. Right on schedule, the tie blushes bright red, continues blinking until Alan thumbs the switch into the “off” position.

There’s a rattling at the door, an approving click from the electronic lock. It’ll be Denny, smelling of alcohol with perhaps a hint of opposing counsel’s perfume lurking beneath.

“I thought you were…” One of Denny’s hands loops through the air even as the other slaps his keycard down on the dresser. His face offers no insight into the outcome of the conversation downstairs—it might’ve gone well, it might’ve gone poorly. It might already be forgotten.

“That was the idea,” Alan agrees. “I got…a little overwhelmed.”

With a grunt Denny plants himself on the bed. The mattress contracts under their shared weight.

“You want a drink?”

“No,” Alan says, threading the tie through his fingers.

They don’t touch and the promises they make aren’t spoken.

Five

He never fails to fall silent at the sight of the Supreme Court building.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:34:08 GMT

All right, since I have a lazy Sunday ahead of me, we'll give this a try. Basically, it works just like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel: I write a little snippet that culminates in a cliffhanger and a series of options, and the first person to reply gets to select the option that most appeals to them. (I should probably warn you now that, in keeping with the spirit of the CYOA books--and, for that matter, Boston Legal--these options will tend toward the cracktastic.)

This continues until Alan discovers the treasure trove hidden in the boiler room of CP&S, meets his doom in a pit of writhing snakes, or I lose interest.

Anyone is welcome to comment. You don't need to have Alan friended!

The new regime took a dim view of tardiness—they’d conveyed as much in a meeting consisting largely of stern looks supplemented by the occasional PowerPoint slide—and accordingly Alan made a point, whenever possible, of arriving to work a few minutes late. It meant losing out on the choicest pastries and the freshest coffee, but adherence to principle demanded certain sacrifices.

Today he set down his briefcase at 9:23, took a seat behind his desk, and began what promised to be a long and arduous slog through a contract in need of invalidation. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before something stirred near the doorway.

Alan looked up to see…

A) Denny Crane!
B) Carol Danvers’ feral feline
C) His younger self
D) A partner intent on reprimanding him
E) Rahm Emanuel

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:09:06 GMT

From Kara.

1. What are/were your parents' names?
Colleen and Nathaniel—never Nathan—Shore.

2. Where are/were they from?
Providence, Rhode Island and the outskirts of Boston, respectively.

3. How did they meet?
He overheard her making fun of him at a restaurant. I'm not making this up.

4. How long were they together before you came along?
Three or four years.

5. Were you an accident?
More of a failed experiment.

6. What did you love most about them growing up?
I loved my father's laugh. I loved his presence, the ability he had to draw people out of themselves (of course I didn’t think of it in those terms at the time). I loved my mother’s scent and her handwriting and her French toast ~~and her touch~~.

7. Did/do your parents fight a lot?
~~This is exhausting.~~ No. Not a lot.

8. Or did/do they have sex a lot?
Well, they did spawn me.

9. What is the worst argument you ever overheard them having?
I’d rather not say.

10. Were/are they affectionate?
With each other.

11. What is your favorite memory of them?
I assume this means together. When I was young—six or seven—on nights when I had trouble sleeping, I’d sneak into their room and watch them. It was…I felt safe.

12. Scenario: You walk into the house and find your parents getting busy on the dining room table. What do you do? What do you think they would do?
Walk right back out the door and buy a new house.

13. Were/are your parents hip or lame?
Neither. They weren’t hopelessly backward, but they didn’t make any special effort to ingratiate themselves with the teenage crowd, either.

14. Did/do they ever embarrass you in front of others?
No, I did that well enough on my own.

15. Which parent wears/wore the pants in the relationship?
My father, although I doubt he would have been able to do so without my mother’s consent.

16. Have you ever seen one of them crying?
I have.

17. Did/do you ever wish they would get divorced?
No.

18. Were/are they the type to spontaneously dance around the kitchen together or sit quietly in the living room ignoring each other?
The latter. They weren’t much for spontaneity.

19. Do you think your parents made you or ruined you?
They made me. Only one person is allowed the distinction of being my ruin, and he knows who he is.

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:20:10 GMT

Denny and I are now legally wed.

No gifts, please. ~~Definitely no china.~~

OOC

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:31:10 GMT

So, as you may or may not know (and judging by the show's ratings, I'm gonna go with "may not"), tomorrow the very last episode of Boston Legal airs. Thus far, I've tried to play Alan as close to canon as humanly possible (with a few minor exceptions *cough*utterlypreposterousfearofwater*cough*), but it's possible that after the finale I'll need to tweak a few things.

Therefore, Alan will likely spend the next few days in a state of suspended animation as I try to work out how best to incorporate his final bit of canon into RP ~~and cope with my grief~~. I definitely plan to continue writing him--Alan will be around to torment your muses for years to come--but he may vanish for a short while.

Of course, it's also possible that nothing of import will happen in the finale and things will proceed as usual.

Anyway, while we're at it, if you have any questions about Alan or how I write him, or would like to treat me to a nice old-fashioned spamming, go right ahead.

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:14:22 GMT

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to all those who saw fit to participate in Thursday’s festival of gluttony. Shirley Schmidt was kind enough to throw wide the doors to her home and welcome a—I’m not sure what the term of venery is for a group of lawyers, so I’ll appropriate that of our closest relative—shiver of attorneys to her table. I spent the better part of the day nibbling on succulent turkey and gorging myself on candied yams, and the worse part suffering the egregious violation of my bodily integrity by one Melvin Palmer.

I’m very glad to have done so.

My legal career has always been a follow-the-bouncing-ball sort of affair—or perhaps, more accurately, a follow-the-wrecking-ball sort of affair—and when I was hired at Crane, Poole & Schmidt, I didn’t expect to last a year, much less six. I certainly didn’t expect to find myself...I sometimes (all right, often) lose sight of how fortunate I am.

I’m thankful that I’m able to work with a number of passionate, intelligent, talented people, many of whom inexplicably permit me to call them “friend.” I’m thankful to work at—to be a part of—a place that, for all its shortcomings, does occasionally aspire to loftier goals than turning a buck. I’m thankful that place has a balcony.

I’m thankful to belong somewhere.

~~Even if that somewhere may not be around much longer.~~

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:37:46 GMT

After Disch and Levine, with apologies only to the former.

A is for Antics, of which I am fond;
B'd better be Bail or—barring that—Bond.
C is for Closings of prodigious length,
Because I refuse to abide by the notion that anything and everything can be distilled to a sound bite or encapsulated in a convenient metaphor. Complex issues ought to be treated as such, ought to be examined in depth and from more than one perspective, and if that takes seven minutes of your time, so be—
D for Debauchery, Debasement, Denny.
E is for Eloquence, which eludes many.
F is for Fishing at Nimmo Bay;
G is the Games that I am wont to play.
H is Hotel, rather than House,
I the Intent lacked when offing one's spouse.
J is for Jail. K is the Key
That locks you away or sets you free.
L is for Laughter held tightly in check;
M is the Moment it bursts forth to wreck
The pretense of Nonchalance (that would be N).
O is for Objections sustained often.
P is for Pink, preferrèd hue;
What could I choose but a Question for Q?
R is for Rules—bent, fractured, broken;
S has been censored with a stroke of my pen.
T is for Truth guaranteed by an oath;
U is for Utah and Undress, states both.
V is for Venturing hither and thither;
W's Wit, without which words wither.
X was a girlfriend whose name I expunged;
Y is for You, who I have adjudged
Worthy of reading this litany.

There are your constants—now solve for Z.

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:16:21 GMT

Write page 57 of your 300-page autobiography.

Excerpt from As Yet Untitled by Alan Shore.

I went. Simple as that. I was twenty-three—newly twenty-three—and not in the habit of soul-searching. I knew what my soul contained. Industrious little stock clerk that I was, I took inventory regularly; if pressed, I could have drawn up an itemized list of its contents.

Morris Mason was thirty-two. Seven years earlier, he had raped an elderly neighbor, clobbered her with an axe and nailed her hands to a chair before setting fire to her house. The next day, he had raped and sodomized a girl of twelve and then shot her thirteen-year-old sister, leaving the girl a paraplegic. For these crimes, the Commonwealth of Virginia had decreed his death.

I made the ten-hour drive from Boston to Richmond in a green Chevy Vega that had either air-conditioning or the ability to climb steep hills—never both at once. It was a hot, sticky day and I spent most of it listening to whichever baseball game I could pick up on the radio, stopping to stretch my legs or buy a soda.

No one’s ever asked me what it’s like to witness an execution—perhaps because it’s not something I readily discuss, or perhaps because the answer is obvious: it’s awful. And I had no delusions on that score. I knew I was speeding down the eastern seaboard to watch approximately 2000 volts of electricity fry a man’s internal organs. I knew I had as little chance as Mr. Mason of emerging unchanged from the seat set aside for me by the Virginia Department of Corrections.

I sure as hell knew better than to eat on the way there.

But at the same time, I had this sense of—I’m sitting here mentally snapping my fingers in an attempt to conjure a word that probably doesn’t exist in the lexicon of a forty-six-year-old cynic—resolve, I suppose. Hope, even, absurd as that sounds. My crazed jaunt felt, on some level, like a rescue attempt; on some level, maybe I believed that by witnessing the death of a stranger I could salvage some part of him.

(He had, at most, an IQ of 66. At the age of twenty-one, he’d begun to hear voices urging him to commit violent, destructive acts. He spent much of his life in and out of mental institutions. The day before the murder, something had impelled him to seek refuge in a halfway house; there hadn’t been any room. I enclose this information in parentheses because it had little to no legal relevance.)

It was dark by the time I arrived in Richmond. I stopped at a gas station and scrambled into my suit in the bathroom, raked a hand through my hair.

Witnesses were to assemble in a dingy little room at the police station, where we would be briefed and then crowded into a van bound for the state penitentiary. Walking into that room was like showing up at a cocktail party just as everyone’s finished polishing off that one drink too many. All of them—the loose knot of

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:35:26 GMT

9-1.

Break my heart why don't you.

At long last: sleazy!Alan for tm_northstar

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:09:44 GMT

Remember that drabble meme? ~~No, you say? It was posted four months ago, you say?~~ Well, this began in response to that and then proceeded to devour my brain. I apologize for the utterly ridiculous length and my equally ridiculous attempt at a plot.

It was a beautiful suit—sand colored, understated, matter of fact in its elegance—and it moved with the grace and fluidity of its wearer, rippling ever so slightly as he raised his arm to snap his fingers in Alan’s ear.

“Alan.” In either exasperation or mock horror, Jean-Paul bugged out his eyes. “Alan. Look. At. The. Road.”

Swatting away Jean-Paul’s hand, Alan did as directed. There wasn’t much to see—the street was riddled with cracks and lined with washed-out billboards depicting washed-up celebrities. Hard to believe fifteen minutes’ judicious application of his foot to the gas pedal could return them to Crane, Poole & Schmidt’s gleaming windows and sleek furnishings.

“You were checking me out.”

“The suit.” Alan’s eyes strayed from the asphalt; his right hand abandoned the wheel to swerve through the air, tracing the contours of the garment. “I was admiring—“

The car thumped into a pothole.

“I don’t mind,” Jean-Paul said sweetly, leaning forward to fiddle with the radio dial. Country, hip hop, and rapid-fire Spanish burst from the speakers in quick succession. “I’m used to it.”

The languid, breathy notes of a tenor sax—Alan belatedly recognized Pink Floyd—threaded their way through the stereo system. Jean-Paul slumped back in his seat, eyes bright, mouth twitched into a smile too unselfconscious to be termed a smirk.

“I was wondering, if you must know,” Alan said, “how many weeks at Kelly’s office it cost you. My guess was three.”

“Are we there yet?” Jean-Paul propped hundred-dollar loafers on the dash. Haughtily he tossed his head—every inch, in that moment, the son of a wealthy ambassador. “You drive like an old man.”

They left the Mercedes, its pristine windows begging for the touch of a crowbar, snuggled up to the curb outside a boarded-up supermarket. This was the sort of neighborhood that would go unchanged, impervious to revitalization efforts, indifferent to beautification initiatives, until the day bulldozers flattened the sagging porches and steam shovels bit into the pavement.

“You haven’t told me what we’re doing here,” Jean-Paul said as they halted before a wrought-iron gate.

“You’re right.” Alan brushed his fingers over rusting hinges, peering intently as though in search of some fatal design flaw. Then he placed a hand on one of the thin iron poles and wrenched the gate open, smiling at the resultant shriek of long-disused metal, the satisfaction of a feat of physical strength successfully performed, or in anticipation of Jean-Paul’s reaction to his next remark. “I haven’t.”

Behind the gate, adorned with skid marks and smeared with foul-smelling testaments to the permeability of the below-average trash bag, was a narrow stretch of concrete. Jean-Paul stepped briskly through, glanced left, glanced right, and, curiosity extinguished, began rummaging for a cigarette. “An alley? Kinky, Alan.” His smirk and the match flared as one. “Okay. Shove me up against the wall and have your way with me, but if you think I’m getting on my knees in this suit, cher—“

“A man after my own heart,” Alan said blandly, clanging the gate shut and smoothing his tie.

“M. Shore, I’m serious.”

“And well you should be. A fine suit is a serious matter.”

“Serious about knowing what’s going on.” Jean-Paul smoked impatiently, as though eager to reduce each cigarette to a butt, a husk to be discarded or ground out. “I hired you. I therefore tell you—“

“Two things to bear in mind about the great hulking beast we Americans affectionately refer to as our legal system: one”—nearing the end of the alley, now, Alan veered left into a weathered doorway—“it does things in its own time. Every trial, every suit, every imaginable legal proceeding involves a tremendous amount of heel-dragging.”

As he spoke, Alan jiggled the doorknob. Held in place by a single loose screw, it seemed as likely to clatter to the ground at his feet as to open the door. “Sometimes—frequently, in fact—the very object of these proceedings is to cause delays. Tie your competitor up in litigation and you buy yourself (at no small expense, I’ll grant you) a few years to duplicate or surpass that groundbreaking new product. Patience is—“

Something gave; all at once, like a tooth wrenched free of a confining gum, the knob tumbled from the door. Alan stood blinking at the lump of metal clutched in his hand.

The screw tinkled to the ground.

“Patience is essential,” he concluded, with no appreciable shift in tone.

Jean-Paul snorted and reached for another cigarette.

Knobless doors could be opened, of course—Alan poked a finger into the riddle of metal to which the knob had so stubbornly clung and, with a bit of experimentation and a squashed pinkie, succeeded in teasing back the bolt.

“I hope you don’t expect me to be impressed.”

Alan arched an eyebrow. “Sorry, should I perhaps have kicked it in?”

“I probably could have,” Jean-Paul said airily. “I also could have flown to an open window, or up on the roof, or—“

“Or, with that unspeakably sexy accent of yours, enticed somebody to open their door.”

“Alan.” With a lazy jerk of his shoulders, Jean-Paul shoved off from the wall. He flicked his cigarette away, smirked, anger forgotten in a flush of self-satisfaction. “My accent’s so sexy I could’ve enticed the door.”

Alan shook his head and locked the smile that threatened behind pursed lips. “Sometimes,” he murmured.

“Sometimes what?” Jean-Paul said, voice suddenly sharp, words bristling like the hackles of a cat.

“Nothing.” Alan motioned him through the doorway. When Jean-Paul gave no sign of moving, he shrugged. “Sometimes you and Denny could be the same person.”

She answered the door in jeans and a tank top, then turned and walked away, bare feet slapping against the linoleum. Alan stood in the hallway admiring her ankles.

“Were you going to invite me in?” he ventured.

She tossed a smile over her shoulder. “I never had to before.”

By the time Alan stepped inside, Jean-Paul had already toppled a vase, righted it without spilling so much as a drop of water, and moved on to scrutinizing the décor.

“So. Ex-girlfriend of yours?” His eyes flickered from walls painted a hue best described as “seasick” to the end of the hall.

“Always a safe bet,” said Alan, “but no.”

“Alaaaaaaan. Okay. Current girlfriend?”

“Hardly.”

“Lover.”

“Your accent does magnificent things to that word.”

“If you don’t tell me, when she comes back I’m gonna ask her point blank how many times Alan Shore’s fucked her.”

Alan smiled. “Be sure to specify physically. Assuming that is what you—“

She strode into the room, pressed a large, flimsy envelope to his chest. “Thank you, Cindy,” he said softly, tugging at the envelope until her hand rested against the dark wool of his suit. “I can’t tell you how invaluable—“

“No.” She gave a pinched smile—he’d always been under the impression she rationed them, allowed herself only so many per day. “You can’t.” Hand still in place, she looked him up and down, fondness, or a distant cousin thereof, easing the lines of her face. “Alan. It’s been a long time. You look—“

“I’ve put on weight.”

Her hand slid to his tie; she twisted it in her fingers and pulled, leaving him no choice but to take a faltering step forward. “It’s kinda cute,” she said, a rustle of suppressed laughter in her voice. “What happened? You find a nice girl to settle down with?”

“Now”—Alan inched closer, set a hand at her waist, ran his thumb over the ridge of her hip—“whatever would I want with a nice girl when there are girls like you to be had?”

With a laugh she relinquished the tie. The intervening years had treated her neither well nor poorly. She had the beauty of a tree denuded of its bark—some essential encumbrance had been stripped away. When she did grow old, Alan was convinced it would happen overnight.

“Charming as ever.” She arched a brow. “Sure you don’t want to show me what else hasn’t changed?”

“You shouldn’t take your work home with you. I hear,” Alan leaned in to confide, “it’s unhealthy.”

“You came here.”

“Not yet I—“

“Alan broke your doorknob,” Jean-Paul said, sounding as if he’d finished politely masking a yawn with his hand.

Alan’s arm dropped to his side. He took a step back. “Downstairs. I put it out of its misery.”

“He’s being modest.” Jean-Paul sidled up to Alan, gracing Cindy with a grin that suggested they were in on the same joke. “Alan overwhelmed it with his manly strength.”

“We should be going,” Alan said.

“But I want to meet your friend,” Cindy protested. It would have been difficult to say which word was more laden with sly insinuation—‘meet’ or ‘friend.’

“Jean-Paul Beaubier.” Jean-Paul somehow refrained from bowing at the waist or kissing any hands. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. How is Alan in bed?”

“We really should be going.” Alan slung an arm around Jean-Paul’s shoulders and guided him to the door. “Before I break anything else.”

Jean-Paul thundered down the stairs like a stampeding herd of buffalo, spinning at the bottom to regard Alan’s less hasty descent with undisguised contempt. “So. What’s in the envelope?”

“Legal documents,” Alan said, voice measured as the thump of his shoes on the steps. “Exceedingly dull, every last one of them. I didn’t think that would be your first question, by the way.”

Jean-Paul shrugged. “She’s a prostitute.” Coming from a mouth that freely issued—and had likely enacted—all manner of vulgarities, the word sounded antique, almost quaint.

“Yes, she very much is.” Reaching the end of the stairs, Alan crossed to the door. He placed his palm flat against it and waited for Jean-Paul to say something.

Jean-Paul said nothing. Alan pushed open the door and stepped outside.

A gust of air whipped past him, stinging his face, sending him lurching sideways like a drunk or a man who hadn’t yet found his sea legs. It happened in the merest fraction of an instant; by the time Alan’s mind had processed Jean-Paul’s burst of speed, in the time it had taken the appropriate synapses to fire, it had become memory.

Jean-Paul hovered two feet above the ground, bangs drooping into his eyes, tie askew. His lips were parted, as though he’d frozen in the act of catching his breath. In one hand, forgotten, he held the envelope. In the other he held a series—lurid, glossy, magnified to dimensions calculated to administer a jolt of dismay to even the most calloused of hearts—of photographs.

“Jean-Paul, come down—“ The bleating, motherly quality of the words struck Alan a moment too late; he was obliged to roll his eyes and finish. “Come down from there.”

“Blackmail.” Jean-Paul tossed his head and beamed. “Alan.”

“It’s nice to know that even at this stage in our relationship I’m still able to surprise you. Now I’ll need those back, and I’ll need you to forget you ever saw them.”

“I’m not that surprised,” Jean-Paul said, frowning appraisingly at the topmost photo. “You’re always going on and on about what a detestable bastard you are. Who’s he?” He flipped the picture over, treating Alan to a black-and-white tangle of limbs and bed sheets.

“None of your business.” Briefly Alan entertained the notion—all the more satisfying for its impossibility—of snatching the sheaf of photographs from Jean-Paul’s faster-than-light fingers. “And you’re holding it upside-down.”

“It is my business.” Jean-Paul’s frown hardened into a scowl. “Maybe you’re gonna have to explain this to me like I’m a fucking idiot, Alan, because I—you asked me to come with. I know you like to pretend I’m some innocent kid, but…chrisse. They tried to machine-gun me in my boss’ kitchen. I was old enough for that.”

Alan shrugged. His suit felt heavy on his shoulders, his tie snug around his neck. He’d spent his life tethered to the ground and in front of him was a boy bobbing with agitation in midair. “I made a mistake.”’

“You didn’t.” Jean-Paul alighted on the concrete with the ease of a cat. “Yeah, okay, I’m not a lawyer. But think of”—he flashed a smile at once giddy and fierce—“think of everything I can do.”

“I have,” Alan said curtly, starting toward the car. In moments of weakness (they were frequent), he’d indulged in thoughts of security cameras—no, check that, weapons—dodged or dismantled; of men with faces the color of day-old porridge jumping out of their drab suits when Jean-Paul descended from the sky like the condemning finger of God; of stacks of evidence reviewed in mere minutes; of the ease with which an alibi might be constructed when one could outrun the sound of one’s own voice. “There are better uses for your talents.”

“Better uses than protecting the people I care about?”

“You don’t number yourself among those you care about?” He pulled open the gate and followed Jean-Paul through. It closed with a satisfying clatter. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question.”

“Uhm. I—well, duh, Alan.” Jean-Paul drew his mouth into a strained approximation of a smirk. “I’m awesome. I need to be preserved as an example of sex appeal incar—wait.” His eyes narrowed. “What about you?”

Alan raised his eyebrows. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone capable of describing me as ‘sex appeal incarnate’ while maintaining a straight face.”

“Ha ha,” Jean-Paul said, maintaining a straight face. “You know you’ll be in more danger than me. So. Why are you allowed to put yourself at risk when I’m not?”

“Because that’s what a lawyer does—shields his client from liability.”

The car—now draped in the afternoon’s lengthening shadows—sat imperturbably where they’d left it, like a faithful if not particularly bright pet. Alan paced a wide arc around the vehicle, scrutinizing it for gashes in the paint, the telltale slump of a slashed tire.

It had gone wholly unmolested. Even the pigeons had refrained from bombarding the windshield with derisive graffiti. Feeling vaguely cheated, Alan slipped his key into the lock and climbed inside.

Jean-Paul settled into the passenger seat, photographs strewn across his lap like a poker hand not worth playing, arms folded over his chest. “I wanna fuck them up,” he said quietly.

Alan turned to look at him. “I’m sorry?”

“If you don’t let me do this”—Jean-Paul closed his eyes, sighed as though sinking into a hot bath—“your way, I’m going to beat the living shit out of anyone I can get my hands on. I’m not trying to guilt you into anything, I swear, I just…” He pulled his arms tight around himself, buried his fingers in the cloth of his suit.

“Yeah,” Alan said. “I understand.” He twisted the key in the ignition. Music growled from the stereo.

Jean-Paul turned it up.

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:32:52 GMT

For the purposes of this inquiry, "therapy" shall be defined as "the treatment, conducted by a licensed professional, of mental and emotional disorders through the use of psychological techniques"; "therapist" shall be defined as "the licensed professional conducting said therapy."

These questions arise from my own curiosity, nothing more. They're for my own edification and enjoyment; you're under no obligation to respond to them. If you do opt to answer, however, I would ask that you do so as honestly as possible. Or at the very least, as entertainingly as possible.

View Poll: #1229865

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:47:57 GMT

Here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "I am not smarter than Alan Shore."
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very frivolous nature.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them 5 questions.

1.Who're you?

I'm Alan Shore. You may recognize me from such projects as Commonwealth v. Shore (2005), Commonwealth v. Shore (2006), and Kramer v. Kramer v. Shore (1979).

That last one's a joke.

2. Let's see here. Personal questions for a stranger... What do books mean or represent to you?

What do...~~what am I, applying for college?~~ It depends on the book.

3. What's your favorite sort of weather?

Heat lightning. In early autumn.

4. Are you happy with your life?

Yes.

5. And, last but not least... cut or uncut?

Cut, last I checked.

1. When did you decide to become a lawyer?

In my twenties. More specifically, midway through my first year of law school, when (depending on who you ask) you've either read and studied enough that things finally begin to coalesce, to make sense, or spent so much time steeped to the eyes in casebooks that you achieve a sort of delirium wherein the practice of law holds appeal.

I'd thought about it long before then, though.

2. What has been the dumbest mistake you've ever made?

I tried to talk a disgruntled gentleman out of robbing a grocery store. I'm not even sure why.

3. How hairy is your back?

Less hairy than my arms but hairier than my face.

4. If you had kids, would you want boys or girls?

No preference.

5. What do you want most before you die?

A new president? I don't know. My death isn't something I tend to contemplate, and now that the Red Sox have gone and won not one but two World Series, there's precious little left to strive for.

1. What would you be doing if you weren't a lawyer?

That's like me asking you, "What would you be doing if you weren't a father?" I honestly have no idea. 20 to life?

2. How would you define your sexual orientation?

~~Is this a trick question?~~ Heterosexual. I'm attracted exclusively to women.

3. What's your favorite fruit?

I'm afraid this question is far too personal in nature, and I'm not comfortable responding to it.

4. Ever considered running for public office?

No. Well, yes, but never seriously. I'm not an electable prospect.

5. Can you do the butterfly stroke?

Is that some kind of sexual--ah. No, I cannot.

1. What song can always put you in a good mood?

"Ice Cream Man" by Van Halen.

2. What case are you most proud of winning?

Denny and I defended two brothers accused of murdering their abusive father. When our defense took a turn for the less than promising, Denny and I, each acting as counsel for one of the boys, had them accuse one another of committing the crime. Since the jury didn't know who to believe, we'd managed to create reasonable doubt. The boys were acquitted.

3. Where is your favorite place to vacation?

Wherever Denny is.

4. Have you ever considered becoming a judge?

No. I'm not even a partner at my firm.

5. If you weren't a lawyer what could you see yourself making a career at?

Teaching history at a small, moderately distinguished college until I slept with one female student too many.

1. What are you looking for in a girlfriend?

Patience.

That's it. No, ah, intelligence. Passion. I like women who are perceptive, who can take me down a peg (and yes, those two are related). Curiosity.

~~This is depressing.~~

2. What is your favourite courthouse movie?

I liked To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men as much as anybody, but what I loved was the attorney in The Man Who Wasn't There. He predicates his entire defense on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. I'd illustrate with a youtube clip or two, but I've been stymied by copyright law.

3. Do you like the Red Sox out of principal or do you actually follow baseball?

Seeing how (Heisenberg aside) I lead a blessedly principle-free existence, I'm forced to actually follow the game.

4. What is the first most important thing my a foundation requires?

A purpose.

5. ~~I want to ask about why you completely invalidated everything I said about why I moved here and how it made me cry when you did but I won't because I should be over it by now.~~ What is your favourite place in Boston?

~~...what?~~ The balcony at my office.

Wed, 28 May 2008 18:12:41 GMT

"Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live." Haruki Murakami.

Denny and I are in Luray, Virginia (at his behest—I don’t voluntarily venture south of the Mason-Dixon line unless it’s to see somebody executed) fishing the Shenandoah. I’m pleased to announce that in our time here we have been neither sued, arrested, imprisoned, nor elected to public office, though this may speak more to the remoteness of our location than the rectitude of our conduct.

It’s quite beautiful. We’re surrounded by mountains—I forget, sometimes, that they actually do exist in this country, that they’re more than a poetic conceit or the name of Colorado’s baseball team. This morning Denny woke before dawn and I sleepwalked alongside him down to the river, which is every bit as breathtaking as its name, and we stood knee-deep in freezing water and watched the sun come up.

I haven’t witnessed a sunrise in I don’t know how long. Not that I’m exactly—at all—eager to repeat the experience (and you can be sure I stalked off to the lodge for coffee the moment the thing had situated itself in the sky), but…he and I are accustomed to looking out over a city that’s more or less packed it in for the night, and…this morning it felt like the day, replete with all its clichéd promise, was ours to share.

Monday we were at Arlington—that, too, was Denny’s idea. ~~Ironic, isn’t it, that he of all people should insist on honoring Memorial Day. Or perhaps not.~~ I’m not sure what to say about it. Public displays of sincerity and reverence never fail to make me feel like a fraud—I don’t know how to properly fold the flag (for that matter, I was one of those kids who cleverly substituted phrases like “and to the republic for witches’ hands” into the Pledge of Allegiance), nobody close to me has ever died in combat or in service of their country, and I’m still half-convinced my acceptance into the Coast Guard was the result of a clerical error or the work of an IBM machine with a sense of humor.

We stayed for some time, though. Eventually I got over myself.

Tomorrow, assuming all goes according to plan, we’re headed to the North Carolina coast. I need to work on my sunburn.

A Plurality of Alans

Sun, 25 May 2008 00:03:32 GMT

In celebration of the arrival of my brand spanking new laptop ~~and because I can't write lyrics-inspired fic to save my life~~, I'm resurrecting my favorite drabble meme. Pick an Alan, any Alan, and I'll write you a drabble featuring him and your muse (or the character of your choice). I'll do my best not to butcher anyone's characters--literally or figuratively--but since I'm not familiar with certain canons, I can't offer any guarantees.

~~1. Playful!Alan~~
~~2. Sleazy!Alan~~
3. Whiny!Alan
~~4. Incarcerated!Alan~~
5. Diabolical!Alan
~~6. Coast Guard!Alan~~
7. Intoxicated!Alan
~~8. Wildly Inappropriate!Alan~~
~~9. Married!Alan~~
~~10. Sincere!Alan~~
~~11. Naked!Alan~~
12. Remorseful!Alan
13. Faux Innocent!Alan
~~14. Young!Alan~~
15. Eloquent!Alan
16. Bedtime!Alan
17. Jealous!Alan
18. Enthralled!Alan
19. Reveling-in-the-Misery-of-Others!Alan
20. Arrogant!Alan
21. Disgusted!Alan
~~22. Loving!Alan~~
23. Balcony!Alan
~~24. Inquisitive!Alan~~
25. Choose-your-own!Alan*

*Except pregnant!Alan.

Mon, 05 May 2008 02:39:13 GMT

1. Ask me three questions.
2. I will pick two of them to answer.
3. One I will tell the truth about.
4. One I will lie about (the last you will have to try and answer for me).
5. Post this in your journal so others can ask you.