Friday July 13th, 2012

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose about: condition.

There's some impressive lightning going on outside right now, looks like on the other side of the lake. Hoping it stays over there, as I can see it better that way.

Plus, you know, keep that downpour crap out of here.

Back at the market tomorrow morning!

Mine:

"I thought the ad in the paper said the car was in mint condition," I said, more to myself than the nervous bearded man jingling the keys in his left hand.

"Yeah, exactly," he replied, rather unhelpfully.

"Exactly what?" I asked, though I really should have known better.

"Was in mint condition," he said slowly, "as in, past tense, dude."

2 comments:

Greg said...

The lightning sounds nice. I was lucky, it was raining as I went to sleep last night, and that's a very soothing sound.
I love the idea that the car owner was only being pedantically honest in his advert. I wasn't quite sure what the punchline was going to be, but I enjoyed it when it arrived!

Condition
Carlos Dészegerégy, Linguist First Class (non-Whorfian) tapped his pen thoughtfully against his tombstone-like teeth. The condition of the translation-device suggested that his colleague, Irena Novosibirsk, had had one of her temper tantrums again.
"When I said, 'Condition the system', I meant that you should run the training programs again," he said.
Irena picked the broom-handle back up and started towards him, snarling, "I will condition you next, Dészegerégy!"

Marc said...

Greg - Hah, 'tombstone-like teeth' is a great description. So vivid!

Morrigan - ah dear, acute stupidity is not a condition with any known cure. Well, you know, other than death.