Wednesday November 4th, 2009

The exercise:

Your prompt today: the money grab.

The inspiration: my "consultation" with the oral surgeon this morning was about thirty minutes and cost $85. I'm not sure exactly what I paid for, but it looks like I'm officially celebrating the end of NaNoWriMo by having my wisdom teeth yanked on December 3rd.

NaNo Word Count: 9,486 (calling it a night)
NaNo Target: 6,668

Mine:

I sat in that office,
Not sure why I was there;
But oh don't you worry,
It was soon made quite clear.

They had nothing to say
I had not heard before;
The truth of the matter:
I was extremely bored.

At last my time ran out;
A bill and smile were flashed.
And I finally saw:
They just wanted my cash.

5 comments:

Greg said...

Good to see that your NaNo momentum (NaNoMo?) is keeping on and you're rolling along nicely :)
I know you disagree (having just paid for it) but $85 for 30 minutes doesn't sound too bad actually -- although it would be fairer if you could present them with a bill for the amount of time of yours you felt was wasted.
And the poem it inspired is a good one, so you did get a little more for your money!

The money grab

"What the hell is this, Vince? It looks like a fish and chip wrapper. A used fish and chip wrapper."
"Well, I didn't have any other paper to hand when I had my idea."
"...right. Right. I know that makes sense to you, Vince."
"It's our plan for--"
"Our plan?"
"Yes, now shut up and let me explain. It's our plan for the money grab. See, for the first step, up here by the cluster of small grease stains that look like the constellation Cassiopeia, we need a children's choir and a crate of cucumbers,..."
I let him carry on for a few minutes, mostly because I was stunned at how elaborate this plan seemed to be. We needed money, but I'd always expected that I, being the brains of this gang, would think of a plan, not Vince. I had Vince in mind as a decoy. Or maybe a sacrificial lamb.
"...and then, with the cucumbers all in place, we trigger the power surge and that'll give us, I reckon, forty-five minutes to get to the church where we untie the priest and the rottweiler..."
"Vince! Shut up Vince, and put your mask on. We're going to hold the bank up."
He looked a little hurt as he slid his mask into place and I threw his plan into the bin, where it clearly belonged.
"Vince? Vince, why the hell are you wearing a copy of the death mask of Tutenkhamun?"

Marc said...

It just seems silly to me, and mostly unnecessary. I'd rather just show up for the procedure and hand over the small ransom they demand for that.

I do like your NaNoMo term though and am quite keen on this idea of presenting them with a bill for my time :)

And I think Vince's plan sounds very interesting. The bit with the cucumbers particularly so :D

Monica Manning said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog, Marc. To be honest, my muse was really your post, but I was partway through when I realized the prompt was "money grab" and not "consultation". By then, I was on a role! And I was too embarrassed to admit my mistake! :O)

I know you understand!

morganna said...

Hey, your dentist experience could be worse. You can wait until December for the actual work. Last year when I did Nanowrimo, I had to get a filling halfway through November. Totally messed up my rhythm and word count.

Anyway, here's my poem.

He takes your money and pulls your teeth,
He causes pain for your thanks,
You walk out with less teeth, less money,
And you feel like you won.
(Or at least your teeth feel better.)
Who is he? He's the dentist.

Marc said...

Monica - absolutely :D

As I always so, go with the prompt where you will. And that applies even when you misread it :)

Morganna - yeah, I'm glad it worked out that way. I wasn't even thinking about NaNo when I booked the appointment, I just wanted the first available Thursday or Friday so I could have the weekend to recover. Thankfully that wasn't until December :)

"And you feel like you won"

That's definitely my favorite line.