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Saturday, September 27th, 2003
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1:58p - A plot!
A hot, juicy, and detailed NaNo or other plot. If you're going to write it, please let me know. Myself, I can't use it, because I cannot write convincing YA, but I think it's a great plot. It's recasting The Scottish Play in a high school.
Setting: a middle to upper class high school. BETH is the leader of a popular clique, a "Heathers"-type group where her friends constantly try to undermine Beth and her confidence, since they see her as implacable ice queen. MACK is her boyfriend, the leading scorer on the high school basketball team, which has won three championships in the last three years. DUNCAN is the team captain and assist leader, and is heavily scouted by the NBA. It is expected he will enter the draft upon graduating. Beth used to date him. DUFFY is a point guard on the team, an excellent player but with nowhere near the money of the other students. His parents are divorced. MALCOLM is the leading scorer of the rival high school's team, but is really tangential to the story.
Beth is jealous of the way NBA scouts only seem to see Duncan's play - she can't understand why the leading scorer isn't a huge draw, and why Mack isn't more popular than he is. Her pairing with Mack was more of a calculated move, since the most popular girl in shool should be with some big sports jock, but she can't humiliate herself and go back to Duncan, either. Duffy doesn't like Beth and thinks she's no good for either player, and Beth hates Duffy because he's poor and doesn't become enthralled with her like she believes everyone else is.
Her friends in her clique are somewhat responsible for this; they constantly fawn over Duncan and compare the two players in Beth's earshot. She has to do something to make Mack more popular and, if all goes well, make the scouts pay attention to him instead. Late after school, she appears in the boys' locker room - it's Duncan's habit to work out after school, after everyone leaves. They used to make out in this locker room, like their own private sanctuary, before she dumped him. So she knows he'll be there, showering after his workout. She pepper-sprays him first, so he can't see who's attacking him; blinded, he stumbles and hits his head on a faucet, splitting open his skull.
It was not her intention to kill Duncan. All she wanted to do was hit him in the leg, make him injured for the next game - but now, he's dead, lying on the floor, blood and matter washed away by the shower. She wraps his head in some towels and drags his body to her car, which she's fortunately parked by the locker room's outside door. She drives over to a development being built by her father - where they've just laid the foundations for the homes, and will no doubt figure some kids were fooling around in the fresh concrete while it laid overnight to dry, and will just smooth over those rough spots when they get back to work in the morning.
When Duncan goes missing, Beth isn't even a suspect. She breathes a sigh of relief on the revelation that Duncan's father owed several million dollars to various business partners, some of whom were less than straightforward people. The police think it's a warning to Duncan's father. They use Luminol around the locker room, knowing Duncan's routine, and find both the bloodstains on the tile and faucet and the traces of pepper spray; a kidnapping gone very wrong is how the police believe it happened. Beth's feelings of guilt are overshadowed only partially by her satisfaction that she appears to be getting away with it.
Mack still shines on the basketbal court. NBA scouts aren't exactly showing up like they should, and some of them stay away because of the scandal, but a few teams are still interested - now that Duncan's gone, they're paying attention to him. Duffy's stepped up to help Mack get those shots, but he doesn't score as much without Duncan's eye for opportunity and timing. Then, Duffy's mother is injured in a car accident, and he goes to live with his father, who's in the district served by the rival high school. He comes onto their team as a midseason replacement. Mack's struggling to make those points, especially with people from the junior varsity team brought into varsity, and after an early defeat, they're getting back into a rhythm. They meet up with the rival team, Duffy playing against Mack for the first time.
Midway through the game, Duffy finds himself playing defense against Mack. Duffy sets his feet, Mack goes in to score, and commits a foul by charging into Duffy with his elbow. Before the ref can call it, Mack gets thrown off balance by his elbow, trips, falls on the floor, lands square on his pointed elbow, and shatters the joint. He's ended his career quite effectively. He's fine with that, since he can get an academic scholarship and didn't want a pro career anyway, as it turns out. Beth, on the other hand, is livid and dumps Mack, but she's tied her popularity to her boyfriend for so long that her friends see a way to make their move.
She gets away with the murder. Nobody ever finds Duncan. However, she has to show up at the prom with the captain of the chess club.
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10:28p - Banned Books Week, which has eight days for some reason.
As Banned Books Week draws to a close, I hope everyone's done some thinking about banned books. They fit all genres of literature and all degrees of quality. Banned books respect no politics or origin - if a right-wing Christian bans a book by a Womanist African-American, the next week a radical feminist collective can ban the Bible. It doesn't matter who bans the books, the message is the same: ideas are dangerous, and ideas lead to action. People cannot be trusted to dismiss or approve what they read. People are stupid. People are sheep.
The idea that people are sheep is one I believe in - however, unlike the people who yank Bill O'Reilly and Salman Rushdie off the shelves, I believe they are sheep because they are not encouraged to think and are not given the opportunity to do so. People who think and challenge authority where they see fit are either nerds or criminals. More people are afraid to be labelled as intellectual than people are to be labelled feminist - when did the mere publication of ideas become something to be outlawed? When did thinking make you a snob? When did blind acceptance of what you are told make you normal? Oh yeah, since always.
I see little difference between literary monks burned on a pyre, and the fatwah against Rushdie. On some level, what these people fear is not that we're all going to become sexual degenerates after reading Toni Morrison - they're afraid that they will lose the ability to tell us what to do and how to react and who to hate. If you're always told that black people are evil, what happens when the subversive school librarian hands you Native Son? If Christians should be thrown to the lions like in the good old days, how would you feel about inoffensive, lovely, tolerant Jesus in the New Testament?
Be careful. If you read banned books, you might start thinking for yourself. And we all know where that leads.
The final book is Ray Bradbury's only science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451, so named because that is the temperature at which books catch on fire. What I've just written is the message of the book - so I don't really need to say any more than that.
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