GrumpysMonkey

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This time I’ll talk about food. I’m not always entirely happy with the style of my food writing. I want it to be somehow more. I’m not sure if I want more variation or more punch or more emotion, but something more than what I’ve got now. But since I’m also hypercritical of myself and unwilling to make too many changes on Cook Local without having tried them first, I’ll do some writing samples here. Feedback always appreciated.

Though it is nearly an abomination given the quality of food we normally eat, right now, at work, all I have to eat that I can describe right now is a snack sized Milky Way.

Is there anything more ubiquitous than thesnack sized candy bar? The perfect brown rectangle, with just that hint of molding on the top that you want to believe is the chocolate dripping off of a spatula, but is really just a mold to give the impression of uniqueness…

The smell is familiar. It’s the chocolate of my childhood. Though now that my pallete has been exposed to so many high quality chocolates, I can detect the slight chemical scent in the aroma.

Biting into the bar my jaw vibrates. My teeth and my tongue can sense the overload of sugar that’s about to flood my mouth and I think they are protesting. The caramel sticks to my teeth while the nougat coats my tongue. After the first two tentative bites, when I don’t even want to finish it, I dive right in, downing the rest of the bar in less than ten seconds. The sugar has just taken over and demanded more.

Like any cheap thrill, there is an aftertaste and I can feel the cheap chocolate, with its high fructose corn syrup sitting in the back of my throat. Water is a necessary accompaniment to a cheap candy like this, though right now, all I want is another.

Ick. I can’t say I like much of any of that. But then again, this is just an exercise.

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Today’s post will be more of a creative writing exercise. I’m not sure where it will take me, but I’m going to sit down while enjoying a cup of coffee and just put some words on a page (or rather in an electronic box).  Ideally I’d like to try to do these writing exercises two or three times per week. I still have dreams of getting back to writing a novel (or maybe even finishing the one I got so close on years ago) and regular writing is the way to do that.

A hand touched her face. Fingers explored her wrist, finding a pulse and she stirred, the first vestiges of consciousnessstill clouded. Suddenly, almost violently, she was awake, taking deep drags off the oxygen mask like she hadn’t had a hit in months.

She remembered everything. The dark figure dropping from the ceiling. Fumbling for the gas mask stored in the emergency locker and nearly having it secured when the figure, a man with broad shoulders and black leather gloves ripped it from her head. The tattoo on his left wrist was burned into her brain. A black dagger stabbing a cobra that looked to circle his entire wrist. Then the pain as he slugged her and the clatter of her shoulder hitting the emergency locker as she went down. The last thing she saw as he stood over her were his black Nikes.

Her only questions were these. “What (or who) had he come for?” and “Did they have any idea she had a photographic memory?”.

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