Ghost Story: A Surprise

Laurence killed Derrick while Derrick was on his run. Laurence waited in the bushes in the parkland he knew Derrick ran in. Then when Derrick came by, Laurence hit him with a baseball bat, dragged him into the brush and bludgeoned him to death.

The police questioned everyone, including Laurence. But they had no good leads. Derrick had disappeared. That was all they knew.

But then Derrick started digging himself up. He was found in a pile of dirt by the grave Laurence dug for him in the brush by a jogger and her dog.

The police asked everyone about Derrick including Laurence. But they didn't find out anything.

Derrick was buried in a cemetery. But he dug himself out. The groundskeeper found him out of his plot. He was lying motionless and highly rotted in a pile of dirt on top of his grave.

Chock it up to gauche pranksters. Derrick was buried again. The news of Derrick's second coming had disturbed Laurence. Grave vandals? He didn't know. 

Winter came. A snow fell. The groundskeeper of the cemetery was alerted by visitors to a foot of snow displaced and a dirty little hole emerging in front of a grave.

The groundskeeper shrugged it off. Why bother anyone about a little hole. Nothing important could have anything to do with the hole. Dog went digging there, or some critter. He filled it.

A day later, a skeleton was found on the road outside the cemetery. More news. The body was identified as Derrick. More news still. Pranksters again. The body would be secured in a mausoleum on the grounds.

Thank god, Laurence thought. He was a rationalist but Derrick seemed to be coming for him. Agonizingly slowly. But persistently.

Laurence dismissed the thought and got on with his life. But he couldn't sleep.

Well, you conquer irrational fears by confronting them. Laurence would go to the crypt.

A visit was arranged with a cemetery manager. Laurence was allowed into the mausoleum. The manager gave him some time.

After an hour or so the manager checked on Laurence. The manager found Laurence dead on the floor. The room was as it had been when the manager left, though it looked like Laurence had disturbed the sarcophagus' marble lid when he fell. It was ever so slightly askew.

Fictional writing: Saul writing slice-of-life stuff, part II

Saul continued writing his slice-of-life writings inspired by his limited reading of Bukowski:

"Another Saturday. I seem to be writing these things on the weekend. Okay. Woke up at 830 or so, well, was in and out of it before then I think. More dreams. I had a dream I was at a bar during a pre-wedding event. I needed to get some kind of drink but the bartender was out of brandy or something like that. Later I tried to get a beer from him and he told me he wasn't serving me. I told him something like 'Fuck you!' and then went to the manager and got him in trouble. I went back to the bar and someone new was there, I guess, and I was told that the original bartender was sent 'North', whatever that meant. I don't remember if I got another beer. I looked across the bar and on the other side were people I knew, though I can't remember who--I think they were the women involved in the wedding event. I went over to that side and Fiona, my fiancee, was there (we weren't there for our wedding--someone else's--I magically knew this). We danced on a disco-y dance floor with swirling lights and there was a mirror we could see ourselves in and we were dancing well (in real life I don't feel very comfortable dancing). We were moving all over the dance floor though, so we were causing other people to have to watch out for us.

"I had some other dream too but it's not coming to me too, so I'll leave it for the moment.

"I had been reading books on Lean Manufacturing, or Lean Thinking. This week I read Eric Ries 'The Lean Startup', 'The Machine that Changed the World' by James Womack and 'The Innovators Dilemma' by Clayton Christensen--the last one is not obviously related to Lean, other than being recommended by Ries in his book.

"So I've been trying to get a sense of Lean and how it might improve my way of doing things. This week I watched a video of a guy illustrating the idea that small batch processes can be more efficient than big batch processes (small and big batch processing I don't think is my own term but I can't recall where I heard the phrase)--he has ten envelopes and he does a large batch process, where he first folds all the papers to go into the envelop, and then he stuffs all ten envelopes, and then he seals all ten envelopes, and then he puts stamps on all ten envelopes, or simulates this. Then he does small batch processing, where he folds one paper, stuffs it into one envelope, seals the envelope and puts the stamp on it, or simulates this, and then goes on to the second paper and repeats this process ten times. He times both processes and finds that the small batch process is about a third faster than the large batch processing.

"So I've been trying to do small batch processing in lots of things. I woke up today and did a small batch of laundry and I threw out a small batch of trash and recycling. I tried to keep my 'spaghetti chart' simple and with minimal movements. It's interesting. I don't know if I am more efficient or not. I'm experimenting.

"After I threw some laundry in the wash and made coffee et c. I brought coffee to Fiona in bed and sat down in bed with my lap top. I went to play a video on Facebook of a scene from Portlandia, but when I hit the mute button so I could hear, Guided by Voices' song 'Waving at Airplanes' started playing--I left Spotify on apparently. I played some more GBV and then turned to Pavement, playing most of their album, 'Slanted and Enchanted' while Fiona sat next to me playing 'Tetris Blitz'.

"I took a shower and did a reverse strip tease for Fiona when I got back to the bedroom. I was naked and then I put on my underwear while humming 'The Stripper' by David Rose. Then my socks in an awkward teasing, slow put-on. Then pants. Shirt. Ta-da! Dressed.

"Hm, is that erotic or not?

"Then Fiona took a shower and when she came back into the bedroom I played 'The Stripper' on my laptop and she did a better reverse strip tease.

"The night before, I had fallen asleep and Fiona was up. I was in the middle of a dream where I was around a round-table of people and someone had said something and I exclaimed, 'It's racist'--but I had woken up at this point. Fiona laughed. 'What did you say?' 'It's racist,' I said. 'You said something racist?' I laughed. 'No, literally, "It's racist!".' We laughed. 'What is?' she said. 'I don't remember.' We laughed again. I think I went back to sleep pretty quickly after that. Sleeping the sleep of the just apparently."

Fictional note: Dr. Bat's business idea

Dr. Bat jotted down an idea in his notebook while on the Red Line to Harvard:

"What if a company shared all information about its operations, costs, average sales, individual sales (all private info would be anonymous) and company cited this when explaining why they wanted a particular price for a product or when negotiating with a partner."

Fictional email: writer pitches horror sci fi idea

A writer emailed his agent:

"Here's a story idea. What do you think?

"A scientist claims to have found the key to immortality but won’t share it. Someone breaks into his lab. Finds out the scientist is really just a vampire."

Fictional Monologue: Crazy man

"I was at work. We have an elevator that goes up to the second floor. I asked a guy to hold it. He let the doors shut. I ran up the stairs and beat the elevator to the top. When the doors opened I blasted the guy with a punch to the face.

"I was idling in my car. The traffic was backed up through the intersection. Nowhere to go. Just bad traffic. The guy behind me honked his horn. I put my car in park and got out of the car. He saw me coming. He tried to lock his door but I got there first. I opened the door and pulled him out. We walked to the car in front of me, where a woman was sitting. She cracked the window as I we came up. 'This guy thinks you should move,' I said. 'He's going to explain to you how to do it.' I nudged him. 'Go on. And if you don't I'm going to throw you into the Charles.' The guy stuttered. 'Well,' he said, 'You have to just get into the wrong lane of traffic and drive past everyone else.' 'Good,' I said. 'Now there's a car coming in the other direction. They'd block her. We have to explain what they have to do.' We walked in front of the car coming in the other direction. We stood in front of the car. 'Yell your explanation,' I said. The guy wriggled a little. 'Come on man,' he said. 'Do it,' I said. He looked at the guy sitting in the drivers seat of the car in front of us. 'Get up onto the side walk and drive!' 'Good,' I said. 'Now we have to explain to the pedestrians what they have to do.' We walked up onto the sidewalk, and I threw the guy down the hill. Traffic was starting to move. I got in my car and drove off."

Fictional Journal Entry: R.E.A. Liste muses about an alternative-history United States 'baiting and bleeding' the Allies and the Axis in World War II

R. E. A. Liste mused in his journal:

"Just as an interesting speculative game--what would have happened had FDR tried to maintain the balance of powers among all the states during World War II? When the Allies were losing, the US would help them, and when the Axis was losing, the US would help them. I could see at the time France had been knocked out of the war that the US might rush in on the side of the UK, in 1940, rather than joining the war in late 1941. Then, as the Axis started to lose the war in 1941 or 1942, the US would step off the gas and stop pushing so hard against the Axis. Maybe the US wouldn't push so hard against the Italians in North Africa. And then as the Soviets and the Brits pushed back against the Axis, the US might even start to support the Axis, stemming the advances of the Allies.

"It seems pretty much impossible though for the US to do such a thing. It just doesn't seem very easy to change sides in a war. I suppose in order for the US to balance powers it might use its economic might to support one side or the other, to varying degrees. That would seem easier. When the Brits were on the ropes after France was knocked out of the war, the US would throw lots of economic and material support to the Brits. When the Italians were on the ropes against Britain in North Africa the US would throw more support to them in money and material and start taking it away from the Brits. Something like that.

"The end result would be what? The war would maybe go on longer and all the great powers involved would be weakened except I suppose the United States. There would be more death and destruction I suppose. Or maybe because the powers involved would feel themselves to be stuck in a deadlock, they would treat with each other and end the war more or less status quo antebellum--I've heard the idea proposed by I think it was Harry Browne and Murray Rothbard, and Patrick Buchanan--noninterventionists basically--that such an outcome would have happened in World War I--I don't recall if they applied the same lesson to World War II.

"So the negative probability from a humane perspective would be more war, more death, but from a political realist perspective, perhaps the US would have 'bled their enemies white' as John Mearsheimer roughly said, and I think others have used that phrase too. The positive possibility from the humane perspective is perhaps the nations would have seen they were stuck in an inescapable equilibrium and would have ended the war quicker and with fewer deaths. I am a bit skeptical since it seems like it would take a while for people to catch on to the US's game of playing both sides. The most likely-seeming result is the US becomes more powerful while the other great powers weaken progressively. The war ends in a stalemate and the US is left the world's sole superpower.

"But who knows! It also occurs to me that the approach I ascribe the US isn't power balancing I don't think, but 'bait and bleed' which John Mearsheimer, Wikipedia tells me, writes about."

Fictional Email: Non-Ghost Ghost Story

A writer emailed his agent:

"Here's an idea for a non-ghost ghost story. A man and his wife--they agree to get their heads frozen when they die. She passes before him and he lives on and marries again. He and his new wife get their heads frozen. They are all thawed out at different times in the future..."