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Home | Non Fiction | Fiction | The Disassociated Pressed | Editing | Bio |
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WINNER OF THE MONA SCHREIBER PRIZE FOR HUMOROUS FICTION AND NON-FICTION: Under the Influence Don't you hate it when it happens? You're minding your own business, going about your normal routine--maybe reading, ironing or paying some bills, when suddenly. ... You get an overwhelming craving for Spam. You drop everything to dig through the pantry, looking for that elusive blue can. Your mouth waters; you fling aside packages of crackers, Twinkies, popcorn ... but alas, no Spam! Your heart beats faster. You ransack the refrigerator, and find only sliced honey ham from the deli--pricey stuff. Blah! You race to the basement and paw quickly through old Y2K rations, though you know it is futile. You have raided this stash before. There is no Spam left. You panic. You must get to the store! Of all the days for the car to break down. You call the bus line, but the Number Nine is not due for another two, agonizing hours. You consider calling a cab, but you're low on cash. You try to go back to work, but can't concentrate. Images of previous Spam sandwiches present themselves for your inspection and dance within your head, taunting you: Spam on white with mayo, lettuce and a dash of lemon pepper; Spam and mustard, tomatoes and black olives; Spam, plain, on whole wheat toast, with a glass of champagne on the side. The images are maddening; the craving is so real it is painful. You could call your sister ... but do you dare? Shaking, drenched in sweat, you misdial the number not once, but twice, as you think back to that night--the last desperate Spam call. She had been furious! Disgusted to hear your pleading voice at 3:00 a.m., promising her anything if only she would bring over a can. I can't believe this is happening again. As you begin the ten block walk to the store, memories of your senior year in college emerge. I had to have it--had to! I'd have never made it through those late night cram sessions without it! The worried look on your roommate's face, the night you clung to your can of Spam, passing up a piping hot pizza, flits before your eyes. ... Mother, I swear the turkey was wonderful! Your mother's hurt expression when she found you hiding in the guest room, with a plate of stuffing and three generous slices of Spam, pops into your thoughts. ... I'm sorry! Pl-e-e-ase! The aching memory of your husband packing, screaming he could not live with a woman who would falsely claim pregnancy just to cover up a ten can Spam binge, explodes within your soul. Too excruciating to bear, you stop dead in your tracks, smack in the middle of a busy intersection. A BMW slams on its brakes. You drop heavily to your knees, sobbing, mindless of the screeching tires and cars slamming into each other in order to avoid you. The police will be arriving any moment--they will notify your husband, your mother, your sister ... soon they will all know. Despite your best intentions, once again, Spam has become your master. Suddenly, something inside you snaps. No, no, NO! Your willpower, that paltry, nonexistent force, at last rises up in a magnificent rebellion. You raise your bleary eyes toward the glory of the noonday sun and feel the power of the artificial meat weaken. It crumbles, crushed by your emerging strength. You rise to your feet, shaking but confident, dazed but ... free! Free from the grip of the spicy meat, a hold even electric shock treatments hadn't broken! That door has been shut. You are free! A new life begins for you. Without the influence of Spam restraining you, your creative genius emerges. You develop cures for the common cold, cellulite and athlete's foot. Five years pass--you are the CEO of the fastest rising company in American history. A pharmaceutical giant offers you millions for the formulas. As you lower your pen to sign the contract, the deal of a lifetime, a long quenched memory of anchovies on a bagel, topped with Spam and melted mozzarella, suddenly slams into your brain. Your speech begins to slur from the drool and, unable to understand you, they believe you have backed out of the sale. You are ruined. You don't care. The pen lies abandoned on the contract, as you rev your engine and speed recklessly toward the nearest supermarket. You've become a statistic: another wasted life, consumed by Spam. Don't you just hate it when that happens? © Amber Ferguson This essay is online at: Mona Schreiber Prize. Copyright retained by the author. Writers United Attention, all publishers! Beware! We writers have joined forces--yes, your pool of sun-starved, nearsighted, carpal-tunneled slaves has accomplished a feat you believed impossible. But we are united, at long last, and as one voice we hereby proclaim: We are sick of your obsessive-compulsive fascination with spelling and grammar! Are we supposed to be scientists or artists? You demand the genius, the beauty, the magic of prose--yet expect the science of syntax! For what do you pay your editors? Have you popped in lately to check on them? Are they spending their workdays tracking eBay items? We demand that you make your editors work for those big paychecks! Make them undangle our participles, connect our infinitives, and straighten out our there's, they'res, and theirs. Now on to a few other issues. First: the (expletive deleted) query letter. Who started that? Seriously--we want a name and a physical address. You won't be held liable for the consequences. Furthermore, this is our formal announcement we shall no longer cow to this maddening requirement. Henceforth, we shall submit our manuscripts in their entirety, disregarding word count guidelines, with an accompanying sticky note. We reserve the right to use crayon. Second, the writers' guidelines for every known publication--from Cosmopolitan to Tropical Ice Skating Monthly--read precisely the same, to whit, you require: "fresh, well crafted, polished writing." Well, we're sick of the word fresh. There is no word more stale than fresh. We also hate the term well crafted, and are collectively nauseated by the repetitious polished. We know the drill by now. What we want--dare we say it--are fresh, well-crafted, polished guidelines. We want you publishers to crank up your old thesauruses and sweeten things up a bit. Note the following example: Fresh. Possible alternatives: alert, newfangled, cheeky, peaches-and-cream, impertinent, and saucy. See? No more redundant guidelines. We demand you require impertinent writing and alert wording. We want to pen cheeky stories and dream up saucy poetry. We demand that you demand peaches-and-cream! We also demand the freedom to format our manuscripts any way we want, while under the influence of any given whim. We formally declare our united refusal to produce any more cookie-cutter manuscripts on boring white paper. We demand the right to print poetry on pastel paper, mysteries on tan, and humor on whatever color the voices prefer at that particular moment. Speaking of which, we creative types are a sensitive lot. We demand you soften the blow of the rejection letter with a gift, such as an accompanying box of chocolates. Tickets to a major sporting event would be an appropriate apologetic gesture for the male rejects. Would a balloon bouquet really blow your budgets? In summary, we writers demand complete autonomy, sovereignty, and freedom. We will henceforth write what we want, when we want, on whatever paper we want--and you will cheerfully publish it, or provide a nice consolation gift. Thank you. Sincerely, Writers United (Postscript from the typist: They made me do this. All I really want is to be published. Please note the enclosed group photo; I'm the one on the left, groveling. Also, a few of the authors believe the phrase "humor is subjective" should be banned from the English language for all eternity. And they're getting ugly about it--curses, voodoo dolls--watch your backs). © Amber Ferguson |
... what a romp! After this read I've got a case of humor whiplash. Great writing! --Reader, 2004 What a great story. I laughed until the tears rolled. --Editor, 2004 You are a nut! Thank you for the big laugh you gave me ... you made my day! --National radio personality, 2000 ...Your entry blew me away. --Contest judge, 2004 Spam, wonderful Spam! --Reader, 2004 |