A Possible Forensics Prose Piece

(Alright. Intro time.

Well, there's this thing.

This thing is a gathering of artistic kids who enjoy reciting pre-written poetry and prose, performing memorized drama pieces alone and/or with a partner, debating, making radio shows, and extemp-ing(Hint: extemp is hardcore. Like, solid titanium-core).

They all have mighty fun at this... thing.

As do I.

This thing is called Forensics.

No, not CSI, cut-people-open, odd-white-blot-stained-clothing forensics.

This is the good forensics, which is also known as competitive speech.

So, I have chosen a possible piece for prose recitation this year (which is to be my final), from the Penny Arcade book "Birds Are Weird", by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik (Which, by the way, has influenced my sarcastic writing severely, as you will see when you read the piece and go, oh, that's what he meant. Influenced means ripping off. Wow).

Requirements for forensics prose include a 3-6 minute time limit(which I often break but judges don't care YAY), partial memorization(you get to have the paper in front of you), extreme emotion, great performance, and some eye contact. Can't do that here. But I'd like to try reciting it to you guys, seeing as it is, as so greatly proclaimed by our internet ruler, gg, the Day of The Podcast, and I wondered if you all wouldn't mind listening in and critiquing.

It is humorous.

It is profusely cuss-filled.

And it is graphic beyond comprehension.

Also, ask about competitive speech at your school, as it is fun, easy, looks great to colleges, and (I think) is totally up your guys' alleys.

If you have alleys.

Don't you guys have alleys?

Mine's ballin'.

Oh yes, I went there.

Now I'm afraid the intro may be longer than the piece.

And now I'm going to bed.

Enjoy.

PS And NOW I recommend this book and reading Penny Arcade. They are hilarious, to gamer and non- alike.

-Geist)

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Europe Journal Entry:

It's Fun When Your Balls Swell

Venice, Italy, Fri June 13 2003

I keep hoping I'll see that fuckhole Rick Steves while I'm over here. Yes, that Rick Steves, PBS Rick Steves, Mr. Knows All About Europe, I'm Going To Punch Him In The Face Rick Steves.

We've got one of his travel books with us, a real treasure trove of fucking wisdom. If you turn to the last page of the book, you can see ads for a series he calls Europe Through the Back Door, promising a host of exciting "Back Door Tours". It probably wouldn't hurt Rick to ask his hip young nephew whether or not his new book titles contain references to anal sex.

We did not have a very high opinion of Venice, and we were glad to leave it on a train for Munich a few days ago. The thing is, it wasn't even Venice's fault. I blame Dick Steves.

We were staying in a hotel that was about 100 Euro- which is to say about a million US dollars- a night. Keep in mind that this is a hotel we found in his Book of Lies. When we went in to get our key, we even saw that there is even a Rick Steves tour staying in the hotel; since this was when we still liked him, we thought this was a good sign.

We became very itchy in the night. I thought I was just hot, but it eventually became so intense that I turned the light on and threw back the sheet. What I saw were black columns of insects lining up to take a bite of my business. Me, I mean, that's how I would write about it. Ants were biting my balls. That cockjockey Steves would probably say some shit about "discovering Venice's tiniest citizens". I'm going to choke him with a belt.

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Munich, Germany Mon June 16 2003

I just finished a beer that was so large that I had to lift it with both hands. Really, the only reason I ordered it was to wash down a pretzel that was itself so large that it could have eaten me under the right circumstances. I have a very high opinion of Munich, but it may have been artificially produced.

We got here on Monday, and we didn't know it, but it was some kind of holiday. We just started walking through a park, and we came upon a few hundred people drinking a lot. A bunch of old guys wearing lederhosen were playing brass instruments on the second floor of some rickety structure. I saw no way to access that level, so it's possible they got up there as young men and were never able to escape.

I started to cry as I sat down with a gigantic piece of meat, a schnitzel, which is like a fried continent. I mean it, I pulled my hat off my head and covered my face with it and started to cry in the middle of a crowd of five hundred people. This was the thought that crept across my mind, like skywriting: this is what it is all about. If getting drunk at eleven in the fucking afternoon and eating a huge piece of meat is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Okay, so that was a holiday and people were celebrating. It's not like that all the time. I could live there for the rest of my life, though, if I needed to. We ride rented bikes we have named Bavaratti and Black Power. We ride them through parks as big as my whole district back home. We ride them through wildflowers which are tiny but distinct, like pixels.

In Italy, meals came in discrete phases, like space rockets. In Germany, the best way I can think of to describe the food is "pragmatic". It is there to get the job done, and make sure that the beer has something to keep it company. We have no idea what we're ordering, ever. Brenna did the "Learn Italian" CD-ROM, and I was supposed to do the German one, but once I learned the word for "airplane" I lost interest and got heavily into online video gaming. Airplanes are rarely on the menu.

The best thing about being over here, aside from the bidets, I mean, is listening to all these languages. Someone needs to speak English for about thirty seconds before I even recognize it. Before I came here, I think that I believed Italian and German and French were just other ways to speak our language, like a dialect that they persisted in using because they were stubborn or proud. When you hear a person in Italy or whatever talking in some weird way, they aren't trying to be funny; it's a whole language. They talk like that all the time. They even think like that, if you can imagine it.

Italian is cool because it can warp space-time. Let's say that someone is just saying "hi" to you. The "buon" comes out okay. Even the "g" is good. But when we get to the "iornooooooo," minutes can turn into hours. I was talking to a guy at this place and he was like "buon" and I was like, "Yeah, great. Look, I need to be somewhere this week." German, it's basically like English. English, you know, spoken by a monster, underwater, into a walkie-talkie.

Europe is great and everything, but I miss my fucking cat and I don't want to be here anymore.