flash fiction friday #17

carnival intervention done, but before i talk the return of pointe, soucouyant-suck, 3canal show, jouvay, bes' care-package comes with new dildo, the season and how i in season, figured is high time (all the time for me, heehee) for a new fff.
please reread the rules of engagement below, i made adjustments in hopes of better accomodating writing+reading+busyness.
this week's trigger's a starter, and no, there is no mistake in the italicised words following this colon: the rules of engagement...

rules of engagement:
you will send in your suggestions for flash fiction friday triggers (starter sentences/phrases, closers, titles, inclusion clauses, etc.) anytime during the week up to 11.55a.m. friday, trinbago timezone; i will post the new fff trigger by noon friday trinbago timezone.
if your trigger is not chosen and you think it is too brilliant not to be chosen, you will send it in again the next week.
you will write an anecdote, short story, or novel length prose poem using the trigger provided.
you will add comments and appropriate linkage to my trigger-post indicating your desire to participate and the completion of your piece (don't need a blogger/gmail account to comment on my blog).
you may join in at any time prior to the deadline.*
you will display your piece as a post on your own blog (or as a comment on my trigger-post or fasbook note or whatever, once we can all read it- please make sure we can all access the link to read it, not just those who are your friends on fasbook; there's a way to create public links for that, right?).
you will be done by monday noon trinbago timezone.
write fresh!
walk good.

*in light of collective busyness and my general mentality, i not pressed about the monday deadline 'cause i'd rather have fun reading late than never, so if you want to fff past deadline, go through hard, just make sure you comment on the appropriate trigger-post so we know which it belongs to, and if is a real old trigger, comment on the most recent post as well so we know something new to back-back+read...

It's like... a whole new way of speaking

by david nanton, reposted with permission (hence unusual usage of uppercase characters in these parts).

Have you noticed that the word “like” is changing the very nature of the English language? This little word is being used so often to add an irrelevant pause in the middle of even the shortest sentence – as in, “She was, like, really nice" or “We had, like, snow all the time!” – that it has become part of some larger conversational drama.
The speaker may say, “She goes, ‘You can’t do that here,’ and I’m like (long, significant pause) ‘I don’t believe this!’”
Here, “like” signals high emotions, in this case astonishment, anger or outrage. The speaker is saying “I was shocked, I was in a total state,” and the listener is supposed to gasp.
However, the speaker isn’t really saying it, but acting it out.
Often, this kind of dramatic utterance is part of some larger story in which an important dialogue is reproduced. We have all heard it: “So she said, ‘You’re going?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I think so,’ and then she goes, ‘How come you didn’t say so?’ and I’m like (long pause, mock astonishment, mouth and eyes open in disbelief).”
We get the direct quote rather than the indirect comment on it. Dialogue is replayed rather than summarised. The story is not reported so much as it is rendered, with the storyteller sometimes mimicking the characters’ voices. Even speechlessness is mimed.
This kind of talk attempts to show rather than tell. Especially among the young, speech is turning toward performance. We’re asked not just to hear, but also to experience, the speaker’s astonishment. And if other people’s reactions are quoted, then we hear what they said and how they said it, in their own tone of voice.
In fact, the use of the word “goes” or “went” instead of “says” or “said” is also evidence of speech turning into drama. “Going” suggests activity, acting, both in the sense of doing something and of performing.
One theory I have about the origin of this sort of talk is that it started with a generation brought up on Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny – on cartoons, where everything was always spoken with great emphasis, and any conversation had to be acted out. The children liked the energy, picked it up, copied it – and a new style was born.
Cartoon talk needs the inflections, the gestures, the mimicking and clowning, to accompany it. You say, “You know, I mean, wow, I was like…”
You can only give those words meaning by creating a highly charged context. Eyes grow wide, mouths fall open, tongues hang out.
In such exchanges, body language replaces oral language. American movies and cartoons are spreading this new way of speaking all over the world. It’s the great American over-animation that never fails to impress (or distress) the rest of us.
What’s lost is a certain precision of language, a suppleness of vocabulary that comments on the action. What’s gained is that emotion that gets into the conversation as part of a performance.

i appreciate the expression of the precision vs. performance idea, something i been thinking about awhile now...walk good.

3canal show sooncome; jam-it!

haven't slept since friday night; saturday night post-rehearsal lime was so ridiculous that not only did i not get in the bed until 8a.m. sunday to then not sleep before rehearsal due to some minor fuss with the rasta, earlier i managed to break a glass pinny was using in my livingroom, only for him to then break his replacement glass not once but twice (yes, puncheon make man break same glass twice) and after not sleeping it took me over an hour to wake stanton (sleeping on my chaise, apparently with his phone ringing like crazy with people calling him and each other looking for his ass) for our 2p.m. rehearsal @ the mas camp in chaguaramas sunday; just reach home from panorama straight from sunday rehearsal, have an 8page spread to write about the show to submit tuesday, rehearsals every night for over a week now @ callaloo company including one by candlelight+flambeaux when current went, and we doh stop until we close carnival saturday night; we move into queens hall monday with our 1st audience friday and my having no idea what i doing except wining for the entirety of an ataklan tune...carnival sweet too bad...
walk good.