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Achmed had just arrived with another bowl of dates --
I landed swift teasing slap across his brown buttocks and sent the boy scuttling back to fetch my luncheon -- when I realized, with a crystalline lucidity that I have known on only a few occasions, that I would never again see London, that here, in this walled garden, in the cooling shadows of this arcade, I would remain; and my soul was flooded with a boundless joy, for I knew then that all of my strivings and hardships were behind me: my existence had been distilled to simplest and most inviolate of pleasures -- evening backgammon matches, watching rivulets of fig juice trickle southward down the heaving slope of my magnificient belly, buggery -- and I knew that history would remember me as a great bicyclist, perhaps the finest of his generation, and that soon Achmed would return (and Makmoud would be with him), bringing mint tea, and spit-roasted lamb, and honeycombed Bagh'ir, and goat's yogurt.
Date Written: June 18, 2004
Author: Craig Lewis
Average Vote: 3.7143
Comments:
06/23/2004 Benny Maniacs (3): I don't know. Debauchery without satisfaction; I didn't get anything out of it. Good job at keeping the sentence going though.
06/23/2004 qualcomm (4):
06/23/2004 qualcomm: all right people, let's see some hustle.
06/23/2004 Ewan Snow: I didn't find this all that interesting or funny; and given that this short is clearly a long sentence exercise, it doesn't really succeed because it could very easily and more naturally be broken up into multiple smaller sentences: a long sentence -- or is this just me? -- that chains together little sentences with dashes, semicolons and colons seems like an eminence front.
06/23/2004 Ewan Snow (3): and so...
06/23/2004 Will Disney (4):
06/23/2004 qualcomm: i didn't really pay attention to the one-sentence thing, but i liked the idea of an ex-professional cyclist going to seed in the mideast. has a paul bowles sort of degeneracy (because it involves whitey buggering arabs). snow, you asked slocum to stop writing wine shorts, and this is his reward?
06/23/2004 anonymous: Snow, this is not an eminence front. It's a put on.
06/23/2004 Ewan Snow: My mistake. I thought they were the same thing. And I apologize for not rewarding you handsomely for refraining from writing about wine.
06/23/2004 qualcomm: yeah, maybe it's lewis. i'unno.
06/23/2004 John Slocum: Look, if you want, I'll keep writing wine shorts. Obviously you do, given this icy reception. Fine, all wine shorts from here on out.
06/23/2004 Craig Lewis (4): Slocum: I didn't think this was so bad. Buck up, son.
06/23/2004 Mr. Pony: What's an eminence front?
06/23/2004 Ewan Snow: It's a put on.
06/23/2004 John Slocum: well...okay, maybe I'll write one more non-wine short. I'll talk it over with my psychotherapist.
06/23/2004 Ewan Snow: Okay, but I'm only going to write wine shorts from now on, if that's okay with you.
06/23/2004 Craig Lewis: I did notice that you couldn't help throw in the dates and lamb and mint tea. So this isn't the purest example of a non-wine short. Can't you just stop mit the food and drink, for once?
06/23/2004 Ewan Snow: Yeah, I was going to mention that. And the fig juice is really a grape juice placebo. (Grape juice, I’ve heard, is one of the main ingredients in wine.)
06/23/2004 Dylan Danko (4): Well, I liked.
06/23/2004 Mr. Pony (4): Yes, well. While it might be easy to get distracted by the one sentence thing, I thought this was pretty solid. Also mouth-watering.
06/23/2004 scoop (3): eminence fronty.
06/23/2004 Mr. Pony: Scoop, what's an eminence front?
06/23/2004 Litcube (3): I like sentences.
06/23/2004 John Slocum: The dates, lamb, etc. was merely for character development and point of view.
06/23/2004 Ewan Snow: Pony: it's a put on.
06/23/2004 qualcomm: yeah, pony, it's a put-on. what the f?
06/23/2004 qualcomm: know what's funny? those eminence front lyrics look like the lyrics to a james bond opening song. lewis look into this? was eminence front contracted by the cubby broccoli crew, then rejected and put on an actual album?
06/23/2004 Craig Lewis: You know, you're right! "The snow packs as the skier tracks"!
06/23/2004 Dylan Danko: Party at Scoop's house monday night
06/23/2004 Mr. Pony: Ah, see, I didn't realize there was a reference joke going on. Thought Ewan was making a joke about solidifying his initial assertion. Ewan, thanks for clarifying the fact that you were talking to me. Lerpa, thanks for the helpful link. Scoop, I know if you could have answered my question sooner, you would have.
06/23/2004 TheBuyer: Who wrote that, anyhow?
06/23/2004 John Slocum: The Who
06/23/2004 Craig Lewis: No, Who's on first. Pete Townshend wrote that. Third base!
06/23/2004 Mr. Pony: Gaaaaah!
06/23/2004 Craig Lewis: huh huh huh
06/23/2004 Dylan Danko: This Eminence Front discussion makes me long for Bloomgarden.
06/23/2004 Dylan Danko: Lewis, why are you at home?? You've already missed one Czech match.
06/23/2004 Craig Lewis: Deadline. Writing some ROCK CRITICISM, man. Got the match up on the BBC Five Live streaming audio, though.
06/23/2004 TheBuyer: [baddaboomching]
06/23/2004 Ferucio P. Chhretan (4): (Joining the party late, dressed to kill)
06/23/2004 TheBuyer: HEY, it's Ferucio! Have a drink and a re-re, John Slocum made goat yogurt (i fed mine to the dog, don't say anything)
06/23/2004 Phony Millions (5): This was quite funny for me; I read it as a send up of Bowles/Burroughs/Lawrence Durrell/Henry Miller glorified sex tourism. The avoidance of qualifying articles here and there - 'I landed swift teasing slap' or 'had been distilled to simplest and most inviolate of pleasures' is a clever twist - it gives the impression that the pretentious, faggy old-world protaganist has unwittingly slipped into the Burroughs-esque broken English of his Arab-boy objects of desire.
06/24/2004 qualcomm: evans, i'm guessing those missing articles are typos. still, is good.
06/24/2004 Craig Lewis: They're typos. Oops. Thanks for the benefit of the doubt, though.
06/24/2004 Ewan Snow: Well, I'll be...
06/24/2004 qualcomm: the reason i was leaning toward slocum as author, by the by, was the use of the word "scuttling," which he used in his crab-woman short. i remain a big believer in this sort of comparative diction sleuthery. my mistake was overrating "scuttle's" idiosyncraticness.
06/24/2004 Ewan Snow: I thought it was Slocum's cuz of the food and because I didn't think Lewis would have made (what I considered) the clumsy long sentence attempt.
06/24/2004 Ewan Snow: Plus, they subsequently tricked me by their comments. Crafty bastards.
06/24/2004 Mr. Joshua: The Lerpa: Diving authorship is not unlike handicapping the ponies....you can't just look at one factor, and one factor alone, to determine authorship...in this case, the factor being previously used words. This tricked us in the Lewis/Cooper Green debate, and now again, here. It would be like betting on a horse running a 1 1/8 miles at Belmont based on its last victory coming at 1 1/8 at Aqueduct....the distance is a one turn race at Belmont, but a two-turn race at Aqueduct.
06/24/2004 Great Satan (4): This is real. I love it. 666
06/24/2004 qualcomm: Joshua, my first instinct was that it was Lewis, but then I got greedy and went for Slocum, a longshot exotic
06/27/2004 Jon Matza (3): Come on, this couldn't possibly have been anyone except Lewis. How many more Lewis shorts full of a) elegantly constructed, semicoloned and em-dashed sentences and b) boulevardiers in cosmopolitan locations musing about embuggering exotic servant boys do you people need to see before you can identify the author's style (and stop accusing the likes of the Buyer as being Lewis alter egos)? Re rating: as the author said of an old matza short, he can do this sort of thing in his sleep.
06/27/2004 Jon Matza: ...of being.
06/28/2004 John Slocum (4): Achmed Radi?
07/8/2004 TheBuyer (4):