The Vanity Project

So I put on Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield again (because I love the song) but for the love of Mike, can someone, anyone please explain the video to me?  As always it leaves me baffled. Is the boy upstairs her brother or her boyfriend, like David was to Darlene on Roseanne?  (I know the video predates the tv show, it's just an example of a situation.) And the lyrics for the scenes don't exactly help make sense of things here either.  Not too sure about that touching there given the uncertain relationship but the video has "Dad" telling her that if she leaves she can't come back so it's odd to think of it being a boyfriend in that circumstance, because wouldn't the boyfriend leave with her?  What exactly are they fighting for?  What is the battlefield in this case? Is she supposed to be a paid dancer in that bar\club she's in?  Because honestly, she looks so excited to be there.  Just look at her face. When she and the other girls in the bar f...

I discovered an old Reddit account I had for posting stories and writing prompts was somehow still active and decided to raid it for some of the older stuff I wrote while trying to get better at writing.  There isn't much but here is what there is... "Wait! Wait…what’s wrong with it?" The small figure holding several books in his tiny hands asked. "Everything!" The angry voice replied. "For one thing it violates the rule of threes!" "Oh for @#$%!" Cried the oversized bunny rabbit throwing its paws up in the air. "You shutup Bugs !" The earlier angry voice shot back. "You know as well as I do that this whole scenario violates the rule of threes, never mind what it does to the law of equivalent exchange!" The smallest of the party placed the books down, not bothering to save the place in them he had previously held with his finger. He looked over at the complainer and sighed. "Danfole," he rasp...

 I discovered an old Reddit account I had for posting stories and writing prompts was somehow still active and decided to raid it for some of the older stuff I wrote while trying to get better at writing.  There isn't much but here is what there is...   Temporal displacement via avatar overlay is not a recommended version of time travel. Of course, since I was the first to travel in this manner and was completely ignorant of how it functioned that was unhelpful to me at the time. Accidental time travel; it’s a thing. Most people don’t know it’s possible and the powers that be are happier if it remains an unknown to prevent panic. Imagine if you could go to bed and wake up ten years old again? Or if walking out the door of a pub could land you in another continent before you left? Or if you went on vacation in France and discovered you had slipped through time to the days of the French Revolution? I’d fantasized about time slips before. Most everyone I know ...

 I discovered an old Reddit account I had for posting stories and writing prompts was somehow still active and decided to raid it for some of the older stuff I wrote while trying to get better at writing.  I suppose this was a bit funnier eight years ago.  There isn't much but here is what there is... People talk about the power of the presidency but it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. Sure it sounds great—become the most powerful man on the planet, head of state to the most greatest nation on Earth, change the destiny of millions with the stroke of a pen, etc. What no one tells you about are the meetings. That’s what being President actually is—meetings. Every day, at all hours of the day or the night I can get called into a meeting at any time to discuss such items of major import as the migration patterns of northern caribou. Or to talk about how Senator Bob got caught again texting pictures of his junior assistant rising through the drawers at his...

I discovered an old Reddit account I had for posting stories and writing prompts was somehow still active and decided to raid it for some of the older stuff I wrote while trying to get better at writing.  This one went on for a while, to where I had to break it into two sections to make it work!  Hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it... We never meant to take it as far as we did. It was supposed to be a lark, a laugh, just for fun. In the end…? In the end it’s led us both here, to this place. How did it start? Well Johnny and I had just left the theater and—huh? It was the Admiral. Well that’s what it used to be called—I don’t know what they call it today. It’s a what? Well I don’t think Mom would be too happy about that! It certainly wasn’t a peep back when I was a boy! Any way, we’d just got watching one of the Sci-Fi flicks, one of the cheesy ones with the pie tins for flying saucers and Johnny and I were laughing and carrying on, like boys ...

I discovered an old Reddit account I had for posting stories and writing prompts was somehow still active and decided to raid it for some of the older stuff I wrote while trying to get better at writing.  There isn't much but here is what there is...     I used to be a writer. Science fiction was my genre of choice because of the sheer level of possibilities it opened to me as a writer. I could build anything in a science fiction story if I wanted. I could bend, fold mutilate the very fabric of the universe to make it fit my whims if I so choose. What kind of writer doesn’t relish that kind of freedom? Other writers had to worry about historical accuracy, or be careful to get the languages of foreign characters correct. Not I! All I had to do is make up something and nine times out of ten it went right over people’s heads. Say I want to set a story with intelligent cats? I made up the race of cats and described everything from their fur color to the way t...