Dear JoMaWriMo Readers,

As you may have come to gather recently, things are getting tight here on my end. Unfortunately, due to pressing issues over which I have no bodily control, I have to delay the pleasure of writing my blog for a few days. I'm being a very naughty boy, and really ought to be punished for being so naughty.

I know this means I'm failing the challenge I set myself, but disappointment is a part of life, and I swear, the last five entries (days 27-31) are gonna be amazing.
-Jonathan

PS: you can take this hiatus time to read all those posts you've been meaning to, but haven't yet!

For the Greater Good

            Specimen H4-09 woke up to his first day of life in a warm, sterile room, on a bed of woodchips alongside his many siblings, and exhausted mother. His nose prodded at a warm spot on his mother’s belly, and he promptly went to sleep. He awoke a few hours later to the feel of rubber. It was an unusual sensation, and stood in stark contrast to every sensation of warmth and softness to which H4-09 was accustomed, so he reacted in the only way his body could: he bit at the strange, foul-tasting tubes wrapped around him. He kicked as hard as he could, but the tubes had a firm grasp on him, so H4-09 was helpless to do anything as he moved into a new room. He was placed in a cage similar to the one containing his mother and siblings, alongside, on top of, and underneath dozens of similar cages. When his feet felt woodchips again, H9-04 scurried into the far back corner of the cage, and nestled himself as well as he could underneath the wooden camouflage. Still an infant, his scampering was entirely ineffective at keeping the rubber tubes away from him, but fortunately the giant creatures that manipulated the rubber tubes were already more interested in the inhabitants of the other cages. H9-04 fell asleep soon afterward.

A Personal Appeal from Jonathan

            Okay, folks, it’s time we got personal. I only have about an hour to write this blog post, and I have too many have-developed ideas to commit to one that I can successfully develop and crank out in the next hour and eighteen minutes. I may also throw in filler words as often as I can find places to put them (see what I’m doing?). At first I felt like this was a cop-out, and defied the challenge I set for myself three weeks ago. However, I thought about it for a second, and after some serious ego rationalization, I’ve decided this is a challenge in its own right: I usually spend at least two hours on a blog post, and I’m seriously lacking in the time department right now. How about I talk about my creative process for a while?

Ethics and Purity Reclaimed

            I can’t even begin to tell all of you how grateful I am for the opportunity to speak in front of this beautiful audience today. While I don’t usually attend speak publicly at political activist campaigns, I feel like this issue has persisted for too long, and deserves my utmost attention. Never again should a child be subjected to parents of two different races, or have to endure the pain and humiliation of being born a half-blood. My name is Cassandra Gedrarian – though most of you know me by name online name, Cassy Gregarious – and I am pro-pure marriage!

Well Wishes

            “If ever you need a friend, I’ll be there ‘til the end.” The card featured a childish animation of two stick people holding hands underneath a sunny blue sky, unidentifiable animals frolicking in the background. Norman smiled as he read the handwritten note underneath the message. Jen cared about him, and whether she would ever reciprocate his feelings for him or not, Norman was happy to have at least this sentiment. When he saw Anthony walk into the hallway, his smile shifted into a scowl. Norman threw the rest of his things into his personal space, slammed his locker shut, and shouldered Anthony aside as he marched to his next class.

Pastoral Poetry

            I led a fascinating life for the first eighteen years of my life. I grew up in a small rural town, miles from any major city, and helped out on my parents’ farm after school. Living so far out in the country, I was sent to private schools from kindergarten through high school, and was exposed to few other cultures. I tried to befriend the few students at my schools that would be considered ethnic minorities, but doing so led to disapproval from my peers. I sympathized for those students, but in the world of children and adolescents, fitting in is more important than living by principles. As a farm boy, I was subjected to a fair amount of teasing as well, but as people gradually came to see I had money, they backed off. I call those people Money, because it’s their defining feature. They like Money, Money makes them happy, and when they encounter things that are not, or defy, Money, they tend to either throw Money at it, or take their Money and run far away. In the fifth grade, I once declined an offer to go to recess with a girl because she looked unkempt and somewhat malsuited to her uniform. That was the closest I came to being Money, and when I saw a group of Money pull her hair at recess that day, I immediately apologized to the girl, and befriended her. We dated for a few years, but that wouldn’t come for a while longer in my education.

Crunch Time

            Julian started freaking out. It was 8:19 pm, and he had a group paper to finish by midnight. 2,000 words on a current political issue was his contribution to the group, and it was the last day of classes, so people were vomiting left, right, and directly behind him. Julian knew it was partially his fault. He had all day to finish the assignment, and there he sat, pulling his hair and clawing at his eyes and cheeks. He put into a fair amount of thought into it during the day, though! He read a newspaper that morning to get ideas, attempted to engage in some political discourse with a guy on the bus – he ended up being asleep, and homeless. He spent the rest of the day trying to keep other things off his mind – his girlfriend was getting clingy, his parents weren’t talking to him, and he got two failing papers back.