Welcome to the Butt Rock Lounge (Weekend Coffee Share #3)
Good evening, and happy Friday! I’m writing this week’s Weekend Coffee Share post on a Friday night, which doesn’t seem like the right time for coffee, so we’re going to do something a little different.
Welcome to the Butt Rock Lounge, where the hair is big and the spandex is sweaty. Pull up a leopard-print beanbag chair, and let’s get this party started!
[Narrator: She’s in a faux-leather office chair in front of a garage sale desk, her hair is in a messy bun, and she’s in stanky gym shorts and a 20-year-old Def Leppard t-shirt.]
Ignore the narrator. He’s an asshat. Let’s crank the tunes. How ’bout a little Joan Jett:
Now that the walls are shaking [Narrator: they actually are.], how ’bout a drink? We have a well-stocked bar with 5 kinds of tequila and–
[Narrator: She has Diet Coke. And it’s caffeine-free.]
Stuff a caffeine-free sock in it, asshat.
Let’s raise our glasses, because it’s been an amazing week. Six publishers are in a bidding war for my time travel romance, I just got a big promotion, and Tom Ellis keeps bugging me to run away to Fiji with hi–
[Narrator: The time travel romance has racked up a folder’s worth of rejections, she managed to not get fired, and the closest she’ll get to Tom Ellis is the episode of Lucifer she’s going to watch when this post is finished.]
Hey, asshat, why don’t you do something useful, like fact-checking political ads?
Anyhoo…
I’m working on a short story for this year’s IWSG anthology contest. Cool, right? Well, there’s just one small problem: this year’s genre is sweet romance, also known as clean romance. Which means I’m trying to do something I haven’t done since high school: write a story with no sex and no cussing (hell, I have a hard time writing an email without cussing, but that whole not-getting-fired thing is a powerful motivation). I started this project for 2 reasons: 1) To play around with one of the supporting characters in Vanishing, Inc., the aforementioned time travel romance, and 2) To expand my writing horizons (or as our parents used to say, It’ll build character). All in all, the story is… not terrible. There has, however, been a lot of foul language involved. Just none of it is on the page. Picture an R-rated version of the furnace fighter scene from A Christmas Story, but with less coal and more typing, and you’ll have a pretty good picture of me writing this week.
[Narrator: She’s telling the truth this time. Mirabile dictu.]
Now Narrator Asshat’s getting all sophisticated with the foreign phrases. Showoff.
I’d better wrap this post up. I’ve been invited to a VIP party with Def Leppard and–
[Narrator: <rolls eyes>]
Oh, yeah?
[Narrator: That picture is from 12 years ago. And you were in the audience with 10,000 other people.]
Yeah, well, I had great seats.
How about y’all? Who’s partying with rock stars this weekend? I’ll be writing and making pesto and partying with–
[Narrator: Ahem.]
Fine. Writing and making pesto. That’s it. That’s the entire plan.
Please tell me y’all are doing something more exciting than that. Lie if you have to.
[Narrator: <shakes head>]
8 Comments
Maria
Janet you had me laughing when I was reading your post 🙂 Awesome! Some weeks are like this. Thanks for the beverage, whatever we ended up having.
Janet Alcorn
Glad I could make you laugh! I really did end up with Caffeine Free Diet Coke. *sigh*
Natalie
Janet, Who needs to go out when there is YouTube, LOL. Just dress up and play music like Joan Jett in your living room. Good luck with your short story contest. Thank you for your #weekendcoffeeshare.
Scribble and Scran
Loved the youtube clip…and can relate
Gary A Wilson
Hi Janey – I love this! The narrator was just plain fun.
You made me laugh out loud at the last comment, “Lie to me”,
No – I’m going to synopsis it here, but I am so tempted. Somehow this material, in my mind, just lent itself to getting rowdy in places because it was so technical.
When I was teaching it for UC Berkeley Extension in Silicone Valley I became notorious for how I gave my tests. Since it was a UC class, there had to be grads and on a whim one night I changed the model with amazing results. Instructors of both sides or our room hated me and my exam nights.
I think it’s good for a laugh and you might enjoy the chaos it stirred up.
https://garyawilsonstories.wordpress.com/my-rowdy-approach-to-giving-exams/
Thanks for a fun coffee share. You made my morning.
Janet Alcorn
Good for you! I hate it when professors write exam questions that seem designed to trip up students with tricky wording rather than test their actual knowledge (I’m looking at you, physical anthropology professor from undergrad).
I would have appreciated your approach when I was taking comp sci classes. I had a great instructor for computer architecture, but he let his TAs grade exams, and they were… not great. We were supposed to talk to the instructor if we thought a question had been graded wrong, which meant waiting after class with about 20 other people after every exam was handed back. In just about every case, the TA was wrong, and people’s grades were raised by a full letter by the time the corrections were made. Lots of wasted time, all so the instructor didn’t have to grade his exams or provide a clear answer key for his TAs.
Gary A Wilson
Ugh – I don’t know if I provided the link or not.
Here it is just in case.
https://garyawilsonstories.wordpress.com/my-rowdy-approach-to-giving-exams/
joylenebutler
LOL. You have to dream, eh! And how cool was Joan Jett?! I wanted to be her when I grew up, except I was already too old by the time she came along. She did however provide sweet dreams for my 5 sons, I’m sure. haha. Great post, Janet. Thanks for the laughs with my hot chocolate.