Emery and John M. decided to experiment with some collaborative writing. The game went something like this: the first guy writes a paragraph and IM's it to the other, who has four minutes to remix (if he so chooses) and expand upon it. And so it builds. You can view our IM script here: MessengerGenesis . Our narrative is below. Enjoy, realizing this is merely a draft.

Passersby were appalled by the prodigious amount of human excrement. This was no ordinary mound of dung. It was biblical in both scale and stench. The great diversity of people from which the samples had been forthshat would require half a book itself. And then, oh, the flinging! The flinging of it was glorious. With utter disregard for the Armani-wearing, BlackBerry-barking young professionals who clicked and clacked past, teenaged boys in Catholic school uniforms and young ladies dressed for ballet dove hands-first into the steaming pile, as though searching some sort of golden token. A septic tank pumping truck had come undone at the seams, like a burgeoning teenager after one too many pieces of carrot cake, and buried three socialites, a club kid and an executive in feces. The team of city workers gnawed at pastrami-on-rye sandwiches at the deli down the block. With each bite, the mess they would eventually have to clean became more monumental. The onlookers passed by and the passerbys looked on as the Herculean effort of some teenagers to save five lives was well under way. No one else cared to join in. Even if they were compassionate enough to help people normally, the necessary work was being done, and onlooking seemed like it might be a lot more fun.

And it was fun, an unabashed, summer-afternoon hoot. Well, that is until Anastasia Timoli, heiress to the vast Timoli Pasta Co. empire, took a snowball-sized wad of dung right to the temple, knocking the diamond-studded Gucci sunglasses from her face. She had no idea it was coming. Generally, she chose to live life in some shade of oblivion. A pile of exrement, anus of origin, unknown and likely composite, tends to snap such an individual out of such a haze. In a moment of selfless compassion, awareness and humility, she began to help the teenagers, calling onlookers to pitch in. Those men and women admonished by her ... Her fecal epiphany, was however, cut unfortunately short by the blast of a nearby fire hose.

And that's when she met Terry Tarmac, a Ladder 18 rookie firefighter with the biggest hose she had ever seen or imagined. He and his squad saved the day by hosing down the mixed pile of living folk in poo. Tarmac and his boys even sprayed off the miniature ballerinas, a gesture befitting the compassion of the St. Jerome Fire Dept.

Terry Tarmac was stubble-faced and breathtakingly handsome even through his shield. Anastasia made these observations as specks of cocoa, dijion and burnt orange painted her white suede catsuit like a Jackson Pollock masterpiece. Her faint smile faded quickly, however, as Terry turned the hose on her, as though she herself were ablaze. Unable to withstand the blast of reclaimed city water, she fell on top of a few of the choir boys, who were all being hosed into each other, seemingly from all different directions. It was an orgy of discord as the huddle grasped at each other in an effort to resist being jolted around.

The mass of people, which now included a handful of television media and freelance photojournalists tipped off about Anastasia Timoli's involvement, struggled to precisely comprehend or characterize what they were witnessing. Not since the Great Backup of 1983 had they seen this much chaos caused by human waste product. How did it happen? Why were the children in the middle of downtown on a Wednesday afternoon? Who dove in first and what possessed them to do it? These were not rhetorical questions.

Upon hearing nothing but befuddled nonetheless, one TV reporter set up for a face-to-face exclusive with the Angel Haired heiress, Anastasia.

"Holy Timoli," the reporter said, snickering at himself. "That is a lot of feces. I mean, truly, I've never seen that much of, at least not in person."

He pointed the microphone at Anastasia, waiting for a response, a quote Eagle Eye News Action 7 could use to tease to its 6 o'clock broadcast. The foolish reporter poked and prodded the dripping millionaire, but she remained speechless, for the first time in her memory. In a moment of shear rage and antipathy over the reporter's lack of concern for her well-being, Anastasia rose, headbutted the shameless "journalist," roundhoused his cameraman in the testes and announced that, "I'm sick and tired of all this shit!"

EmerySkolfield

That's some funny shit! JS

What happened to your first narrative, is this one your #2?

I found the remix interesting. I like this concept of the collision of the primitive world with the modern "society of control" world. You are not sure which is weirder--the excrement or the people's trendy clothing and behavior. This piece of writing reveals how modern conventions mask reality. If it were not for modern conventions like septic tanks and sewer systems, the ground would be covered in human shit. Once confronted with the reality of the shit, humans are ironically disgusted by their own natural processes, which they see every day but in a different context. The feces is not on the ground, but in modern objects known as "toilets." This writing reminds me of a book--can't think of the title (Please help me!). This book discusses how anthropologists would describe our current society if they were to discover it on a dig thousands of years later. The anthropologists perceive nearly everything through their modern lense of religion. They assume that a toilet, for example, has religious significance. The anthropologist's perspective is analogous to the people's reactions to shit because both perspectives are based on modern-day lenses. Like the anthropogists, the people perceive their environment through current filters. The line: "Holy Timoli," the reporter said, snickering at himself. "That is a lot of feces. I mean, truly, I've never seen that much of, at least not in person" reveals this concept of a filter. The reporter is not used to what he has not seen, even though this reality existed many years ago when the sewer system did not exist.

I also want to add that the sexually perverted and "shit"-based metaphors were clever. Are the writers saying that the society of control is just a bunch of shit? That is just one possible interpretation I thought I'd throw out there.

source: Young Jessie