Page-View Poison: Why I Love My DVR and Collaborative Fiction on AC

Like many people with DVRs, my husband and I have been recording The Winter Olympics on NBC. We don't record every single Olympics broadcast during the day-the four hours in the evening, from 7 to 11 p.m., is plenty. That's when they show all the "good" events, right? Well, the only Winter Olympic event I care about is figure skating. (I'm a full day behind in my Olympics-viewing, by the way, so don't spoil anything for me!)

Thank goodness for my DVR. I fast-forward through all the commercials and all the fluff-so much fluff!-and all the events I don't care about, and I watch the figure skating, and then I'm done. What I've noticed is that the most popular Olympic events-figure skating, for example-are drawn out forever and interspersed with clips of other events that no one would normally watch. Sometimes they throw in medal ceremonies, but only if an American has won a gold medal.

How do you folks without DVRs do it? How? I suppose you could set your VCR to record The Olympics, but who still has their VCR hooked up? Or do you watch your favorite Olympic events online? (That's a good idea. You can watch some of the video footage from this year's Winter Olympics here.)

I imagine there are still a few people out there who must groan and roll their eyes and throw things at their TVs as soon as their favorite event is interrupted and replaced by the dramatic behind-the-scenes story of the one-legged Olympic bobsledder who was reunited with his sick, blind father after winning the bronze medal. Followed by all the curling highlights. Followed by whatever that event is where they ski and shoot stuff. Thirty minutes later, if you're lucky, you can get back to watching figure skating, but only after you've listened to Dick Button complaining about how often the pairs skaters grab their skates for extra points. I don't know how anyone puts up with it!

Creative Writing Exercise: Collaborative Fiction on AC
I started a silly short story based on suggestions from other AC Contributors, and now I've asked other AC Contributors to add on to my story. "Be as crazy as you want," I told them. Please let me know if you'd like to participate in this collaborative fiction project. Someone needs to write an ending and put this thing out of its misery.

Here's your quick refresher: Stub is a one-armed garbage man. Ali is a stripper/law student. Ali invited Stub into her house because she wanted to share her suspicions regarding Earl and Eunice, the serial killers next door--serial killers who keep killing people who wear those tacky Crocs shoes. The garbage truck is still parked outside Ali and Chantelle's house. Sitting inside the garbage truck, doing God knows what, are Stub's co-workers, Jesse and Urble. Urble is Stub's brother. It's unclear who the heck Harold is, but he's been gathering up all the trash in Ali and Chantelle's house. And farting.

The Trash of Whispering Hills (continued. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

...Then Harold ran into the room, yelling and farting. "Got your trash, babe! Is the garbage truck still outside?"

Ali, so caught up in the moment, did not realize she was coming on to Stub. She suddenly froze. Had she left the freezer door open again or was it the vague recollection of a distant memory? She looked at Stub's missing arm but all she could see was the curtains. In her mind's eye she could see Helen Kimble's bloodied body. Battered to death with her own Crocs.

It was all coming back to her now. Driving home one night, she caught sight of a one-armed man in her headlights as he fled the scene. Was he the Fugitive? Should she confront him or go shut the freezer door?

Her satiny pink robe slipped lower and lower, and Stub felt a stirring in his nether regions that made him want to get rid of Harold with a quickness. But how to do that? Hmmm...

Ali fell in a false faint into Stub's surprisingly strong arms. She whispered, "Please? We have to figure out this Croc thing or I, well I just don't know what I will do."

His palms were as sweaty as an Olympic runner, but he straightened up, grabbing Ali a little tighter. Stub remembered Harold's dramatic entrance and cleared his throat.

"Say, Harold," he told the apparent man of the house, "the boys and I uncovered a cache of unopened cans of sauerkraut a few houses back. It seems a shame to throw all that cabbage out, especially if somebody wanted to claim it." Harold was out the door like a shot.

"How did you know he'd go for the kraut?" Ali asked him.

"Oh," he replied, "just a hunch."

"Hunch?" Alli pulled the robe up defensively around her shoulders. They had promised her no one would ever know. "What do you mean, hunch?"

Stub looked taken aback at her sudden change in demeanor. "Nothing, really. You'd be surprised at what people throw out. Why, just the other day--" Stub broke off, his attention captured by a flash of brightly colored plastic peeking out from beneath the couch. "Say, aren't those...Crocs?"
****

Ooooooh, the plot thickens! Special thanks to all the cool writers who contributed: Cathy A Montville, Morag Mortimer-Smythe, Ali Canary, Jenna Kulasiewicz, and K K Thornton. I have a few people lined up to add more lines to this masterpiece, but I'd love to have a few more. Join the fun! You know you want to!

What's Worse?
Waking up trapped in the body of an Olympic snowboarder
OR
Waking up trapped in the body of a beloved pet cat

(Note: It's only temporary; you'll be returned to your own body in 24 hours. The snowboarder and cat are alive and healthy. You can't control the snowboarder or cat; you're stuck inside one of them, seeing and feeling things the way they do. You will retain your memory of the experience. It's hard to decide which option is worse, I know, because they're both kinda cool!)

Featured Poisonous Articles of the Week
Here's the part where I beg you to check out some other AC articles written by nice, talented Contributors you may not already know. These articles are "poisonous" only because they haven't earned many page views. Thank you for spreading a little page-view love to these gals:

"Tips for Spending an Entire Day in Stanley Park, Vancouver" by Tricia Sabol (Hey, is Stanley Park anywhere close to where the Winter Olympics are going on right now?)

"Trouble" by Nancy V Canfield (a must-read for dog lovers)

"A Cautionary Tale for Halloween" by Ali Canary (Halloween poems in February? Sure!)

"Review of The Summer of Us by Holly Chamberlin" by Ellen Burford (Anything "summer" sounds good to me right now! I'm so tired of the cold.)

Thanks for reading! More Men's Figure Skating is on tonight. Set your DVRs!