Plain and Simple Ghostwriting

Hazzardous Medicine

ghostscribe — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:10:21 +0000

Linda Burfield Hazzard had the potential to accomplish a great deal of good in her lifetime. Born in 1867 in Minnesota, she became a doctor at a time when women were not encouraged to pursue such a career. She was an intelligent and very determined woman as wel, and a charismatic speaker and writer.
But something went wrong. Something went very wrong indeed.
Dr. Hazzard chose a peculiar area of medicine in which to specialize. Her specialty was fasting. At that time, fasting was considered quack medicine, largely discredited. This did not prevent the determined doctor from publishing a highly successful book in 1908, “Fasting as a Cure for Disease.” In it, she claimed that her fasting method could cure just about any disease known to man, up to and including cancer.
With her alcoholic husband Sam, Hazzard opened Wilderness Heights, a “sanitarium” in Olalla, Washington, a remote and picturesque coastal town. Here, wealthy patients came to take the cure. Many never made it out of Olalla alive.
Earl Erdman, a Seattle city engineer, kept a detailed diary of his stay at Wilderness Heights. In it, he described the spartan meals he consumed as part of the fasting treatment. The diet consisted mostly of strained tomato or asparagus broth, only a cup or less once or twice a day, supplemented with tiny amounts of orange juice. Erdman wrote that he slept well on this diet but that he was light-headed, suffered severe backache, and that his eyes were “yellow-streaked and red.” He died after nearly two months at Wilderness Heights. Predictably, the cause of death was starvation.
It was the Williamson sisters who finally exposed the full extent of the “treatment” prescribed by Linda Hazzard. Dorothea and Claire were wealthy British women in their early thirties, both perfectly healthy but with an interest in medical fads. This, coupled with a fair amount of hypochondria, led them to sign on for the fasting cure in 1912.
Initially the sisters lived in an apartment in Seattle, where they were cared for by a nurse and visited by Dr. Hazzard. When they were sufficiently weakened, they were moved to Olalla and the sanitarium itself.
It was at this point that Linda Hazzard gained control of the sisters’ finances and took possession of their jewelry and other valuables. She took advantage of the ladies’ rapidly-deteriorating health to get them to sign documents giving her such control.
And the treatment continued. Dory, as Dorothea was called, finally began to suspect that something sinister was going on. She and Claire were literally wasting away, in constant pain and barely able to talk. Dr. Hazzard separated them, and by the time Dory was finally permitted to see her sister, Claire was near death. Claire died shortly after a “massage” which was a part of the “treatment” which consisted, essentially, of Hazzard vigorously pounding on the sunken abdomen.
Claire Williamson died weighing less than fifty pounds. Dory was less than sixty pounds when a family friend finally arrived and rescued her, taking her to Seattle against the strong objections of Dr. Hazzard.
From there the terrible truth of what happened at Wilderness Heights began to come out. Hazzard went on trial for the murder of Claire Williamson, with Dory as the star witness against her. She was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to two to twenty years in prison. She was released after two years, and a year later was pardoned by the governor of Washington.
The Hazzards promptly moved to New Zealand, where Linda worked as an osteopath and dietician for four years. After that they returned to Olalla and reopened their “sanitarium” though this time Dr. Hazzard billed herself as an educator, since her license to practice medicine had been revoked.
But the loss of her license made little difference. Linda Hazzard was still starving her gullible patients. Several more would die by her “treatment” methods, but she continued to operate without interference. The local residents were used to seeing pathetic, skeletal men and women around the sanitarium, and they referred to the place as Starvation Heights.
The sanitarium finally burned to the ground, and a few years later, in 1938, Linda Hazzard died by self-starvation in an attempt to cure herself.
Gregg Olsen, noted crime writer, deatailed the Hazzard case in a book called “Starvation Heights.” I hesitate to recommend it to anyone, because I didn’t actually finish reding it. I was forced to give it up because it was so slow-moving, so wordy, so BORING, that I just couldn’t keep on. The book was as heavy and indigestible as Dr. Hazzard’s cure was spartan and unnourishing.

The Forgotten Tragedy of Babbs Switch

ghostscribe — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:35:01 +0000

Note: The name of the town has been seen spelled in various ways: Babb Switch, Babb’s Switch, etc. but I’ve decided to go with Wikipedia’s spelling of Babbs Switch.

Everyone knows about the Great Chicago Fire. A fair number now know about the Peshtigo, (Wisconsin) wildfire that broke out the very same night as the Chicago blaze and killed many more people. Quite a few people know about the fire at Boston’s famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub in 1942.
But few know the story of the Christmas Eve fire that broke out in a one-room schoolhouse in Babbs Switch, Oklahoma in 1924. By any standard, it was a terrible tragedy.

On that Christmas Eve, the little school building was packed with students and their families enjoying a Christmas program. A teenage boy was up on the stage, dressed as Santa Claus and distributing presents. Also on stage was a Christmas tree ablaze with lit candles.
Suddenly the boy playing Santa accidentally bumped against the tree, and one of the candles was knocked loose. It immediately set the cotton trim on his Santa suit alight. After that, things spiralled out of control with frightening speed.
Flames spread quickly within the small school building. People naturally ran to the door to escape, but found it opened inward, as most doors in public buildings did. Panic set in as people began piling up at the door, preventing anyone from opening it.
Others looked to the windows for escape. But unfortunately, those windows had recently been fitted with bars, after the glass had been shattered during several severe windstorms. Some managed to break the glass and pass smaller children out to safety between the bars. Mrs. Florence Bil (some sources say Bell) saved several of her students’ lives this way, but she herself perished in the flames.
In all, the fire claimed 36 lives, among them several entire families.
The Babbs Switch disaster led to stricter building codes and, along with the Cocoanut Grove fire, is widely believed to be the catalyst for modern fire precautions such as outward-opening doors.

A strange twist to the Babbs Switch story unfolded in 1957. A woman named Grace Reynolds, living in California, came forward and claimed that she was actually Mary Elizabeth Edens, who’d been presumed killed in the fire back in 1924. Mary Elizabeth had been only a toddler at the time, and her body was never identified. Reynolds’s story was that she was handed out the window by her “real” mother into the arms of a childless couple who assumed that none of her relatives survived the fire and informally adopted her and raised her as their own.
(It was never explained how this couple came to be outside a tiny school in a tiny town just as it happened to catch fire.)
Grace Reynolds became a minor celebrity, appearing on Art Linkletter’s TV show and in various newspapers and magazines. Mary Edens’s family accepted her story and were thrilled to be reunited with their long-lost daughter.

Sadly, it was all a hoax. Nobody knows why Grace Reynolds believed, or claimed to believe, that she was really Mary Edens. It’s possible she suspected that the people who raised her were not her biological family; perhaps she was adopted, and her adoptive parents told her of the fire, for reasons of their own. Then again, perhaps Reynolds was delusional, or greedy, or just bored. Or perhaps she was even inspired by the story of Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, who at the time was widely believed to have escaped assassination in 1918 and to be alive and well; this fanciful version of history had been dramatized in the movie “Anastasia” starring Ingrid Bergman, right around the time Reynolds made her claim.

In any case, a newspaper editor uncovered the hoax for what it was, and informed Mary Edens’s biological father. The father asked that the editor not publish his findings, as he (the father) felt that his wife would not be able to cope with losing her daughter for what would have seemed like the second time. The editor, in a rare example of journalistic restraint, agreed, and his findings were not revealed until 1999.

A sad conclusion to a very sad episode of history.

Granny Granny, Quite Uncanny, How Does Your Garden Grow?

ghostscribe — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:10:30 +0000

If you’re Alberta Kelley, the answer is: “It’s growing like a weed!” The 67-year-old Pennsylvania resident was recently acquitted by a jury of possession and manufacture of marijuana.
Mrs. Kelley was charged last year after the police, acting on a tip, discovered seven “well-cultivated” four-foot-tall marijuana plants in her backyard. Mrs. Kelley predictably claimed she didn’t know what the plants were, but from here on her story becomes ridiculously, hilariously far-fetched.
She claims a “bearded stranger in a pointy hat” gave her a handful of seeds, saying they were flower seeds. She simply tossed them into her garden, thinking they might look nice next to her tomato plants. And they grew like crazy. And she still never suspected what they might be, even as they probably dwarfed her other garden plants.
Methinks the lady has read too much Jack and the Beanstalk, and possibly has been smoking a bit too much fresh garden produce as well. Seriously, a stranger in a pointy hat? Please. Also, since when do people just give marijuana seeds to strangers, not worried that the strangers might turn them in, and not insisting on a share of the crop?
And how many even semi-serious gardners just randomly plant unknown seeds, not worrying that the newcomers might not be something they want to grow?
Mrs. Kelley told a local TV station “To me, weeds are just weeds.” How many gardeners allow “weeds” to grow four feet high without question?
My theory is the jury knew she knew better, but let her off because her story was just so silly there was a slim chance she might be telling the truth.

Still and all, I advise all of you: don’t take things from strangers. And that goes double if your stranger is wearing a beard and a pointy hat. And if your name happens to be Jack, whatever you do, do not sell your family’s only cow in exchange for his “flower” seeds.

Knocked Stiff

ghostscribe — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:30:31 +0000

Don’t worry, I’m going to post about books I do like too.
“Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock, is a collection of short stories that take place in and around Knockemstiff, Ohio. There actually is such a place, though it is essentially a ghost town now. In all honesty, if even a fraction of Pollock’s stories about the place are accurate, I’d pakc up and leave it too. Head off to Cleveland, or New York, or Timbuktu, or just about anywhere else.
These stories are not “Prairie Home Companion” material. They’re closer to “Tobacco Road” only worse.

Everybody in Knockemstiff is a drunk, an addict, a head case, a criminal, a loser, or some combination thereof. There are no heroes. A few townsfolk you’ll meet in your wanderings around Knockemstiff:

Jake: Jake ran into the woods to escape the draft at the beginning of World War II, and during his time hiding in the woods around town his mind began to disintegrate. Now he’s old, still living in the woods, surviving on what he can catch or scrounge, supplemented with a few grocery items he trades arrowheads for at the general store. A harmless, sad old soul, but what happens when he stumbles upon a brother and sister doing the nasty in the creek is rather worrisome.

Lard McComis: We never learn Lard’s real name, if he even has one. All we know about him is he’s a fat, slow-witted teenager who carries around a Nancy Sinatra album and calls Nancy his girlfriend. His main hobby is getting his friends to throw darts at his monstrous stomach.

Daniel: Daniel runs away from home and hitches a ride with a trucker who calls himself Cowboy Roy. This story is especially fun because we, the readers, can spot the warning signs right from the beginning, but Daniel, drunk on whiskey and hopping on speed provided by Cowboy Roy, is blissfully oblivious to the danger he is in.

Sharon and Joan: Niece and aunt, respectively. Sharon occasionally goes into town with Joan, acting as bait so that the older, fatter Joan can pick up men, which she apparently drugs and takes home with her. It is ominously hinted that some of these men are not seen again, but Sharon is not particularly concerned.

Del: Del is the champion loser in this town of losers. To enumerate the various ways he demonstrates his loserdom would fill a book by itself. Suffice it to say he will take any drug he can find, his wife is a mentally retarded woman who carries around a lot of fish sticks in her pocketbook, and his only good shirt, the one he deems appropriate to wear to a funeral, has “Troy’s Bait Shop” stenciled on the back of it.

“Knockemstiff” is definitely not for everybody, and if you do a little Googling, you can find some pretty “angry literary snob” reviews of it. But I love the stories for their sly, dark humor, their frightening realism, and the fact that Pollock, an ordinary guy who worked in a paper mill for 35 years and had only just started to write, scored such a commercial success with a book of short stories in a market where short-story collections aren’t supposed to sell. You go, guy!

Little Black Girl Lost, and So Is This Reader

ghostscribe — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:44:07 +0000

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, but this year I made one, and that is to update this blog regularly. And what could be an easier way to do that, a better motivation, than to start off by talking about books I’ve read? It’s almost too easy, really.
Today’s Reading Rainbow book is “Little Black Girl Lost” by Keith Lee Johnson. And the Siskel and Ebert rating is: two thumbs down.

Confession: I did not finish this book. I didn’t even get halfway through it. That’s how bad it was. I hardly ever just quit reading a book, it has to be really terrible for me to do that. Well, LBGL is really terrible.
The story, (and according to Wikipedia it’s the first in a series; be afraid!) is about a poor black girl named Johnnie Mae, who lives in New Orleans in the 1950′s. Her mother is a prostitute, and she pimps Johnnie Mae’s virginity out to a rich white client on JM’s 16th birthday. Up till then, JM has been a Good Girl, going to church, getting good grades, and being very conservative and well-mannered. We never see a grandmother, a father, an aunt or any kind of mentor, so we have to wonder who is being such a good influence on Johnnie Mae, because it certainly isn’t her mother.
After Mama does her dirty deed, Earl, the rich white client, “falls in love” with Johnnie Mae, who, extremely conservative values forgotten, begins working her wiles on him. She’s so good at it, despite never having had even a casual boyfriend till now, that inside a couple months, Earl has bought her a house of her own. He doesn’t put her up in an apartment or fine hotel, mind you. He buys her a house.
The plot thickens! Johnnie Mae begins investing the money she wangles out of Earl. She retains a broker to help her manage her money. This is Louisiana in the fifties, she is a teenage black girl raised by a prostitute, yet she manages to get this stockbroker to work for her, convincing him she is a rich society woman. How exactly does this work? (No, she doesn’t do for the stockbroker the things she does for Earl to get money out of him.)
I quit reading about at that point. It was just so unbelievable. I had the feeling the author really only wanted to write a story full of hot sex, but thought he would sell more books if he had an actual plot too. From what I can tell, the plot goes on to involve Johnnie Mae either teaming up with or trying to outwit the organized-crime boss of her section of the Big Easy.

Ah, the Big Easy. New Orleans, a city as rich in character and atmosphere as a good gumbo is rich in flavor. You’d never know it by reading this book. You’d honestly never know where the story was taking place if the city’s name had not been mentioned. There was nothing at all to identify the city as New Orleans, except some vague references to “parishes.” I suspect that the author hasn’t spent much time in the city, if he’s ever been there at all. He doesn’t even use the word “parishes” correctly, he has them confused with wards. Which is a shame. He’s trying to write what he doesn’t know because he thinks that will save his book from his bad writing and ridiculous plot. Sorry Keith, it only made it worse.
*Ghostess exits to a jazzy saxophone riff*

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus…

ghostscribe — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:31:48 +0000

But was there really a Virginia?
Today, our local newspaper, as it does every year, printed the famous letter of one “Virginia O’Hanlon” to the New York Sun asking if there was really a Santa Claus. The letter, and the editor’s response to it, have become legendary. Her letter is sweet, and his response is eloquent and beautiful.
But I wonder… did an eight-year-old girl really write that letter? Take a look at what Virginia supposedly wrote:

Dear Editor!

I am 8 years old.

Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun it’s so. Please tell me the truth: Is there a Santa Claus?

– Virginia O’Hanlon.

115 West Ninety-Fifth Street.

The question Virginia poses is definitely childlike, but would an eight-year-old refer to her friends as “my little friends?” That sounds more like what an adult would say if he or she was talking to an eight-year-old. “Find some of your little playmates and do something nice outdoors,” for example, as Fern’s mother in “Charlotte’s Web said.
Then there is the rather obvious plug for the newspaper itself: “Papa says if you see it in the Sun, it is so.” Uh huh.
Now here’s the editor’s reply:

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.

There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal life with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?

Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

It’s a well-thought-out, beautifully expressed response.
But it seems awfully advanced to be directed toward a girl of eight, even a bright one. he does try to present his response in a way she can relate to, by mentioning fairies dancing on the lawn, but all his talk about poetry and romance seems directed more at his adult readers than at Virginia. Of course, since he was writing in the newspaper and not just a private letter to Virginia, he had to produce “editorial page quality” work.

My conclusions:
1. Virginia O’Hanlon the eight-year-old probably didn’t write the letter to the editor. Who knows? Maybe in a roundabout way she inspired the published response, but I am fairly sure she didn’t write the original letter.
2. The editor was probably asked by his own children about Santa Claus, and decided that the question deserved to be addressed in his paper. And perhaps he wanted to remind adults that Christmas is supposed to be a time of light-heartedness, joy and generosity.
3. It doesn’t really matter if Virginia did write the letter, or if she even existed. What is important is the response, that whether Santa is real or not isn’t the point. The point is that everybody should believe in teh spirit of giving, the magic of childhood, and in kindness toard others.

Yes, Virginia, there is magic.

News You Can’t Really Use

ghostscribe — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:10:31 +0000

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And they’d be right too, most times, especially when it’s *too* little information, or the wrong info.
Ghostess, Ghostess, what’s gotten into you? Where’d this rant come from?
I saw it on the news, our local news to be exact.
The other night they ran a story about a bank robbery, and asked for the public’s help identifying and catching the robber. They said, in tones filled with delighted urgency, (that station really loves a Big Story) “If you recognized the person in this disguise, please call…”
They then helpfully flashed a picture. It was a good picture, a great one, in fact. Clear, recognizable, accurate and beautifully detailed.
But…
It was a picture of the outside of the bank building.
I know that sometimes bank robbers get creative with their disguises, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of one disguising himself as a bank building.
Seriously, wouldn’t that be cool? Any bank worth its salt would take one look, recognize one of its own, and simply assume this was just a new wrinkle in the “bank-to-bank” transfer field! No need to use a computer, no need for armored cars! The bank just comes to the other bank and gets the money directly.
How cool is that?

What Are the Chances?

ghostscribe — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:32:57 +0000

By now everybody (not just football fans) has heard about the trouble that one Jerry Sandusky is involved in. Thumnail synopsis: Sandusky was, until recently, defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team. He now faces a boatload of charges relating to inappropriate contact with underage boys. Two other Penn State officials face perjury charges in connection with the same case.
And now a one of those barely believable coincidences you’re warned so strongly about trying to use when writing a mystery story: the Baltimore Ravens radio announcer and a sportscaster on Baltimore’s Channel 11 is named Gerry Sandusky. Yes, he really is!
What are the odds of two people with the exact same uncommon surname and almost the same first name both being involved so heavily in football? And I looked up Jerry on Wikipedia, and it appears that it’s only by purest chance he isn’t Gerry also, because his full first name is Gerald!
Gerry Sandusky addressed the problem during last night’s game. “I’m going to address this once and then move on: I’m Gerry with a G! I am not the same one.”
The poor man must have been getting a ton of hate mail and two tons of tasteless jokes all week.
I wouldn’t be in his shoes for anything.
It wouldn’t be so bad if their names were, oh, say… Mike Davis or Tom Wilson. But noooo…
So mind your p’s and q’s, and also mind your g’s and j’s, lest you find yourself on the wrong end of a nasty lawsuit.

Know Your Target Audience

ghostscribe — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:48:53 +0000

Yesterday I was reading the newspaper, and was stopped in my very tracks by an article about the Nestl`e Purina Company’s latest brainchild.
It seems the pet-food manufacturer has put together a TV commercial aimed directly at consumers of one of its products. The product in question is a dog food, and the consumers are of course dogs themselves. No, not dog owners, dogs. Furry critters with names like Rusty and Peaches, you know?
Apparently the company tried in the past to impress dogs with their commercials, but failed. This time, thanks (they say) to animal behavior experts in Missouri, they think they’ve hit upon the right combination of sounds that will get dogs’ attention and make them want to buy the food, without interfering with the human dialogue in the ad. Basically, the sounds are a squeak-toy type sound and a bell.
The new ad will first be aired in Austria. No, I don’t know why, please don’t be e-mailing me to ask why. I just report this stuff. Maybe Austrian dogs are more gimmick-susceptible than American dogs. Maybe Austrian dog owners are more laid-back about how many commercials their dogs watch. Or maybe, just maybe, Austrian dogs have more disposable income. Yeah, that’s probably it. Austrian dogs have more independence too, so when they see a commercial for something they want, they don’t have to wait for their human friends to go to the store and buy it for them. They can just get their wallet, go to the store themselves, and buy whatever catches their fancy.
Seriously though, what is the point of this kind of commercial? I guess the novelty factor might boost sales, at least briefly. Owners might get a kick out of seeing their dogs reacting to the TV ad and thus might be inclined to buy them the product, but how long will that last?
For that matter, how many dogs will react at all to the ads? I have a dog of my own, named Penny. Penny watches TV, or at least she sits in the room where the TV is playing as long as a favorite human is in there with her. But to my knowledge Penny has never shown any particular interest in anything on TV, visual or auditory.
I did once have a cat named Ernie who reacted to the sound of a doorbell in a coffee commercial. He was startled and quickly fled the room.
Somehow, I don’t think that’s quite the reaction Nestl`e Purina is looking for.

Curses, Foiled Again!

ghostscribe — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:01:32 +0000

The other night I went to an informal writers’ group of sorts. No serious critiquing of each other’s work, just good clean fun. Anyway, one of the activities was to come up with something, anything, in ten minutes on a totally random topic.
The random topic turned out to be “tinfoil.” Not much to say about tinfoil, you say? Think again. We got several different kinds of foil-related writing, most dealing with all the different things you can do with it. This is what I came up with.

You can never have too much tinfoil. That’s what Marlene, dear maddening Marlene, always said. She had a real thing about tinfoil. We understood why she always loaded up her cart with boxes of Reynolds Wrap every time she went to Donnie’s Discount Delight. Sort of. After all, was her tinfoil fixation so much different from Kenny’s inability to pass a display of batteries without buying a few packs, or Lisa’s obsessive collection of Precious Moments figurines?
But if the truth be told, Marlene’s foil kick Crossed a Line. What else could you call it when she waited impatiently for you to finish your Super Burger so she could lick the melted orange blobs of cheese off the wrapper before carefully smoothing the greasy silver sheet into a neat square to store in one of her many fancy jewelry boxes? Kenny called those jewelry boxes Silver Mines, because all they contained was foil. Marlene kept what little jewelry she owned in an old tinfoil box, reasoning that any burglar would risk a nasty laceration trying to get to the jewelry, assuming he even thought to go looking in that unremarkable hiding place at all.
The funny thing was, Marlene never seemed to use any tinfoil. When she brought a casserole to a party, she either covered it with saran Wrap or else carried the food in a big oven dish with a lid. She wasn’t artsy in the least, so her saved-up foil never got made into Christmas angels or stars. Even her cat, Snookie, refused to bat a tempting foil ball about, no matter how strongly it smelled of Super Burger. Snookie preferred to spend her few waking hours next door tormenting the McGilivrays’ poodle or trying to catch the expensive miniature goldfish in their pond.
Marlene drove us all nuts with that damn foil fetish of hers. At least Kenny was usually generous about sharing his batteries, and Lisa’s figurines often got knocked on the floor and broken. If you needed a piece of foil to jerry-rig a patch for an old mirror, be prepared to whine and beg and offer payment. And God help you if you used a piece of Marlene’s foil to wrap a slab of cornbread to take to work without Marlene’s ungracious permission!
We asked Marlene often why she needed so much foil, sure we did. She always gave the standard hoarder’s response: “Just in case.” If she was in a particularly good mood, she might add “Better to have it and not need any than to need some and not have it.”
As we knelt on the kitchen floor, meticulously wrapping Marlene’s dismembered body in her burger-scented, shiny treasures, we had to admit, she had a point.

Hey, I know it isn’t great literature, but we only had ten minutes! And anyway, didn’t some famous writer say that to be a good writer (like him, he presumably meant) one must “kill your darlings.”?