I got home from work tonight at 11:30 PM. To be clear, that’s work-work, not something-fun-after-work. Whip out the tiny violin please / thank you. Moving on to the good part:

What did I do when I got home from work-work? I sat my ass down and work-worked on my story. Yes, indeed I did. I feel good about that. I think I will reward myself by giving a couple of bucks to Clarion West.

Goes off and does the PayPal thing.

Notice that I have just acted in a way contrary to market forces. At the end of a long day of capitalism I turned right around and broke it. Ha! I broke capitalism! Okay, fine — I just gave it a tiny little paper cut. Still I say, Ha! And perhaps someone is interested in splashing a bit of lemon juice on capitalism’s fresh paper cut…

In any case, here is the promised mid-week story excerpt, officially dedicated to
Lib “Everything I Touch Turns to Porn” Erty”:

She saw another diplomat at the bar and reflexively concealed her expression, then reasserted her freedom with a long, slow grinding of teeth. Only a month before he’d been on the opposite side of an exquisitely mannered and deeply vicious legislative exercise.

He obviously didn’t want her to sit next to him, so she did.

He turned to her, his face alive with far more distaste than he’d revealed in seventy-nine hours of negotiation.

“Shouldn’t you be sitting in the No Conscience section?”

“I’ll sit wherever I damn well please,” she said. “It’s a free country.”

“No thanks to you,” he said.

“Bite me,” she said.

So he did.

She pulled her arm back and lunged at him. “You son of a —”

They kept their hands around each other’s necks as they knocked over barstools, spitting, gasping, clawing.

“Hey, you two!” the bartender called out as he sprayed them with soda. “Get a room!”

So they did.