Category: Words Words Words

lost time incident 72 – why do I number these things?

lost time incident 72

lost time incident 72
Howdy howdy howdy. Just as soon as I get these boots & spurs off, we can get this newsletter started. Just as soon as I’ve removed my 10 gallon hat and this silver star that says that I’m the closest thing this town has to “the law”, we can get this newsletter started. Okay, hold on, as soon as I take off this vest that has the little trailing leather things hanging off it, as well as these turquoise charms, we can get started. I just need to put down my six-shooter, and my rifle, and my knife, and my land grant papers, and my horse. Just… just putting them right down here. Where I can find them later. When we’re all done with this newsletter.

Okay. I think I’m all—

No, damn it, wait, I have to put down this blue sky that arcs from horizon to horizon, and all these miles of dirt, and these herds of cows, and that lazy river and then that’s it. Then I’m ready.

I’m just… I’m just going to hold on to this bighorn sheep. Just this one sheep. Okay, let’s do this. Here come more words.

THREE ESSENTIAL OILS YOUR BODY NEEDS THIS SEASON
The Oil of Nabgaranth – Drawn from the depths beneath the Lost City of Xxn, this oil coats your skin in a silky layer of luxuriance. As a kicky extra, it’ll also give you the perfect beach body once the tentacles finish growing in and stop aching! Surf’s up!

Product 18 – Sorry, we signed a non-disclosure agreement, but our lawyers have informed us that we must say, in this public forum, that this oil is essential.

S-oil – We mean “soil.” For agriculture. Just wanted to end the list with a fun little joke. But seriously, if we lose our topsoil, we’ve lost everything. You can’t eat sand.

 

Petition to Start Every Day by Sticking Arms Straight Up From Bed and Intoning “I…. RETURN!”

__________________________
[SIGN HERE]

[Share with Friends – Click Here(link removed by AccuLinx Security)]

 

a poster

YOU ARE INVITED
to a musical
JAMBOREE!
NO COVER CHARGE
— bring your beautiful bones —
**free calcium chews with every admission but you have to eat them immediately**
MAIN STAGE
Ogres But Not the Kind That Eat Bones
SECOND STAGE
Slurptime and The Marrow Spiders

 

secrets revealed
So much of magic is just done with staples. Not a lot of people know that.

Rabbit in a hat? It’s pinned in there with animal-friendly staples.

Crystal ball? Full of staples. You can hear ’em if you slosh the ball around.

Is this your card? Nope. It’s just a pile of loose staples.

Every star and moon on my robes is stapled on.

The magic was inside you all along and that’s too bad, because now the magic is stuck there. You shouldn’t be eating staples.

 

ending theme song
Not that you asked, but progress is still being made on the e-book project that’s going to consist of the best  micro-fiction I’ve produced over the last year or so. I’ve got pieces picked out, sorted, labeled by theme. Now all that’s left is everything else, and then I’ll be done.

My social media fasting continues. In order to fuel progress on this e-book’s creation, I’ve sworn off the two big time-suck sites I was addicted to and now my social media belt can be tightened a few loops. And all this is costing me is the ability to stay in touch with the few friends I’ve managed to keep as an introverted adult, further isolating myself in service of a writing project whose target audience is unknown, but likely would have included some of these friends if they knew it existed, which they won’t if I don’t go back.

Someday I’ll go back.

Not today, though. Too much writing still to do.

Type-ity type-ity.

—Michael Van Vleet

Hey! Did you enjoy reading this? But did you find yourself thinking “Dang, if only this sort of thing were delivered directly into my inbox so I didn’t have to spend time on a website as if it were still the 90s or something!”?

You’re in luck! You can subscribe to the LOST TIME INCIDENT newsletter and finally class up your inbox. 

i don’t know what this is, i am a vessel for dumb ideas

IMPACT TEXT: get you a cauldron that can do both

[image 1 – a cauldron bubbling with unknown contents]

[image 2 – the same cauldron as image 1, shot from a different angle, bubbling with unknown contents]

—
Click here to confirm your subscription to WITCH MEMES FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED or click here to be removed from our distribution list.

THREE ESSENTIAL OILS YOUR BODY NEEDS THIS SEASON

The Oil of Nabgaranth – Drawn from the depths beneath the Lost City of Xxn, this oil coats your skin in a silky layer of luxuriance. As a kicky extra, it’ll also give you the perfect beach body once the tentacles finish growing in and stop aching! Surf’s up!

Product 18 – Sorry, we signed a non-disclosure agreement, but our lawyers have informed us that we must say, in this public forum, that this oil is essential.

S-oil – We mean “soil.” For agriculture. Just wanted to end the list with a fun little joke. But seriously, if we lose our topsoil, we’ve lost everything. You can’t eat sand.

Millennials Are Killing the 2D Picture Plane

The job markets are flooded with artists these days, all with the same lament: “It used to be that if you drew someone /higher/ than someone else, you knew they were further away. But kids these days, they demand that all artwork be representational! That figures should foreshorten relative to their distance from the viewer!”

With that, an art style now joins other destroyed practices such as pyramids, hunting/gathering, and even blood sacrifice.

Nice to see you, nice to see you.

It’s Sunday and we all know what that means! Time to steer your family into a boat and out into the middle of Lake Unnamed, the lake that has yet to be named or put on any map.

“There’s no lake there,” say the map-makers, shivering and afraid of what they’ve seen of our beloved lake, where cold hands stretch above the surface on Sundays. The whole family can paddle about, shaking hands with the water-logged residents of the deep. Nice to see you, nice to see you.

Sure, sometimes the cold wet hands tug an elderly relative whose handshake has grown weak out of the boat and into the dark water, but little is lost. After all, we can see Gran or Gramps next Sunday, their familiar fingers now pushed above the water’s lip with all the others, waiting for our return.

Need ghosts in your life? Support me on Patreon!

PATREON SUPPORT LEVELS

$1/mo. – Only haunted on holidays by spirits that help improve behavior

$5/mo. – Haunted between 3 and 4 a.m. nightly by spirits in ancient garb, silent comforting presence only

$10/mo. – Basic poltergeist activity. Closed doors, broken dishes, bruises on limbs.

$50/mo. – A shrieking spirit will drag you out of this world. (Please ensure autopay is in place if you select this option)

$100/mo. – Custom message in calligraphy sent to your home that will reveal that you’ve been a ghost this whole time, haunting my Patreon… and now you’re free!

SOUP or POTION

It’s time for every witch’s favorite game show, SOUP or POTION, the game show where we give an ingredient and you have to guess if it goes in SOUP or a POTION.

Let’s meet our contestants.

Welcome to [a collection of shadows in the shape of a woman]! It says here your hobbies include manifesting in dark corners and lowering a room’s temperature?

[in response, the studio’s temperature plummets]

Ha ha! That’s just great.

You’ll be competing against The Soft Lady who lives down by the brackish river. I see today, Lady, that you’re wearing a shirt that says I Don’t Kidnap Children. That’s fun!

Just… the worst RPG

SELECT YOUR PARTY MEMBERS:

Your parents – Average stats, but they seem to mean well. For now.

A plastic bag full of rain water and a feather – High stealth

Half a donut – High stamina

A crow that will leave as soon as the adventure starts – High wisdom

It’s dangerous to go alone! Choose two! Or take this blanket and stay home!

lost time incident 71 – abstention

lost time incident 71
Hello how are you I’m fine.

Okay, that’s the formalities out of the way.

I know you haven’t heard from me for a while via this newsletter. I don’t know how you’ve gotten by during the interim. It can’t have been easy for you.

I was thinking I’d start this newsletter back up, on no fixed schedule, because I’m still writing little micro-fiction things and there’s no reason not to share ’em. Especially since I’m on a social media diet at present, so I have the time back I would have spent browsing otherwise.

It’s kind of working already. A few days ago I had a multi-hour productive streak and finished gathering together bits of fiction that I’ll be turning into a self-published e-book this year. Now all that’s left is to rearrange everything, rewrite, edit, come up with a title, etc. etc. etc. But the heavy lifting of cutting-and-pasting-stuff-all-into-one-place is done.

When I’m not working on that e-book project, maybe I’ll be here on this newsletter, making something smaller that can go out the door with much less effort, so I can get that immediate serotonin hit that comes from accomplishment. Thanks for reading this and helping my brain get high on drugs it makes for itself! BAM!

Anyway here’s some stuff to read:

two game figures, a hacker and a cat burglar, standing on a cardboard square labeled COMPUTER ROOM

trying to save some time on this script by setting up all the characters in advance so I can just cut and paste later

GOOD COP:

BAD COP:

OK COP:

FORENSICS COP:

YET ANOTHER COP:

COP ON ANOTHER COP’S BACK, PART OF A SECOND LEVEL OF COPS JUST BELOW THE CEILING:

COPS CRASHING THROUGH 1-WAY GLASS, PUSHED FROM BEHIND BY CROWD OF ADDITIONAL COPS BEHIND THEM, ALL TUMBLING FORWARD AT ONCE:

A ROARING SEA OF COPS OUTSIDE, STRETCHING TO THE HORIZON, ALL OF THEIR SUNGLASSES GLINTING, EACH WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT WHERE YOU WERE ON THE DATE OF:

THE CHIEF:

 

oh heck
A general storms into a computer-filled room at the Pentagon, klaxons blaring, red alert lights spinning everywhere.

GENERAL: What’s going on, soldier?

A soldier taps at his unresponsive keyboard and every key causes his computer to make a “darn!” sound. “darn! darn-darn-darn!”

SOLDIER: I’m afraid… we’ve been hecked, General. Someone hecked our system.

“darn!”

 

wallets out
Okay, wallets out, capitalist scum, ’cause we’re disrupting the dirt market.

How? Easy: There’s an app. Duh.

You want dirt: Use the dirt app. Dirt comes to you. Fills your home. So much dirt. You unlock loyalty rewards like a marble stone with your name on it, says you’re in the dirt right there.

We got the dirt network in place. My pal Dave knows coding. You give us the funding and we’ll have everyone six feet under and the profits won’t stop ever, not ever. Money forever, dirt forever.

 

ending theme song
That’ll do it for this installment! Thanks again for reading. If you’re an artist and you’d like to know how much money I’d spend purchasing art to go into a vanity e-book project because you might want to exchange art for that money, please do get in touch because the number given will almost certainly be “More than would be reasonable.” What can I say? I like my creative projects to lose money.

Just… a lot of money.

I am a fool.

What else. If you like horror movies, THE RITUAL on Netflix is quite good. If you don’t like horror movies, uh, don’t ask any questions about the small piles of dirt that have been appearing outside your front door in the morning or the sounds of soft breathing that can be heard if you press your ear against that door, all the way up until dawn breaks and everything goes quiet.

If you like all sorts of music, well, so do I, so you might want to subscribe to The Tuned In, a different mailing list I run where I send folks 45-minute music mixes of sounds from around the world, which critics have called “exactly 45 minutes long”.

I think that’s everything, now get out.

—Michael Van Vleet

Hey! Did you enjoy reading this? But did you find yourself thinking “Dang, if only this sort of thing were delivered directly into my inbox so I didn’t have to spend time on a website as if it were still the 90s or something!”?

You’re in luck! You can subscribe to the LOST TIME INCIDENT newsletter and finally class up your inbox. 

trying to save some time on this script by setting up all the characters in advance so I can just cut and paste later

GOOD COP:

BAD COP:

OK COP:

FORENSICS COP:

YET ANOTHER COP:

COP ON ANOTHER COP’S BACK, PART OF A SECOND LEVEL OF COPS JUST BELOW THE CEILING:

COPS CRASHING THROUGH 1-WAY GLASS, PUSHED FROM BEHIND BY CROWD OF ADDITIONAL COPS BEHIND THEM, ALL TUMBLING FORWARD AT ONCE:

A ROARING SEA OF COPS OUTSIDE, STRETCHING TO THE HORIZON, ALL OF THEIR SUNGLASSES GLINTING, EACH WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT WHERE YOU WERE ON THE DATE OF:

THE CHIEF: