Mr. Ofdensen Makes An Appearance
Jan. 5th, 2007 06:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dethoratsTitle: Apples and Coffee
Rating: G
Word Count: 619
It was the sound of paper ripping from somewhere both behind and above him that finally made Charles take a break. He’d been working on organizing his thoughts for his thesis proposal for the last three hours and his neck was stiff and his fingers cramped and his back hurt and someday he’d be rich enough to afford a really nice ergonomic chair that came with those massage functions. Hopefully before they became commonplace and cheap and everyone had one. Status symbols were important after all. But status symbols could wait until he needed them to impress and impart the proper look. Right now he had half a closet full of varying label-quality suits, 3 VERY expensive ties, and a roommate in the process of ripping down the poster that had dominated the dorm room they’d shared for the past 4 years.
Steve Wisnowski had not initially been Charles’ ideal choice for a roommate. As a matter of fact, he still wasn’t. But Steve was smart and Steve was in his own doctoral program, just as early as he was, and from the way people talked, computers and this whole Internet idea was going to be very big in a few years. Networking was very important, as his marketing professor was so fond of emphasizing, especially for a young man like him, fresh out of Iowa and working hard to adopt the well-bred tones of his old-money east coast peers and all of their familial connections. So Charles put up with the occasional late-night soldering and the talk about intangibles and cables and programming languages and he even put up with the music and that poster. It hadn’t hurt that the lead singer, the one staring so defiantly out of the poster beneath that outrageous mane of red hair, had a kind of air about him that appealed to Charles’ own inner anger at all he could never be because he was from the wrong sort of family. (The fact that he had rather vibrant green eyes and a cute slip of stomach showing registered too, but only vaguely, because Charles had no time to think about sex, gay or otherwise, if he wanted to make it on Wall Street before he turned twenty-five.)
Steve had been obsessed with Snakes n Barrels, and Charles had actually been a little worried about the man last year when the break-up rumors had stopped being just that and became the truth. But it appeared he was free of them at last, if the ripped poster was any sign, and Charles absently recalled hearing something about two or three of the members entering rehab and another one getting married to some Playboy model or other. They were over and it was good that Steve was moving on. What they had really needed, Charles mused as he watched a new poster going up, this one with a lanky, greasy, young man wearing a flannel shirt around too thin hips covered in ripped jeans, was a better manager. One who wouldn’t have let them get so far out of control.
Music, plodding and heavy and more than a tad depressing in contrast to the fast, bright, alive notes of the late 80s scene, came out of the pawn-shop speakers and Charles shook his head and resolved that he could learn to tune this out as well. He only spared a single, last, clear-eyed glance at the ripped poster before Steve stuffed it in the trashcan. And then he turned his attention back to his books and his word processor and his attempt to mesh the ideas of New Institutionalism with the Complexity theory. Economics was hard work and he didn’t have time for cheap sentimentalism.
Rating: G
Word Count: 619
It was the sound of paper ripping from somewhere both behind and above him that finally made Charles take a break. He’d been working on organizing his thoughts for his thesis proposal for the last three hours and his neck was stiff and his fingers cramped and his back hurt and someday he’d be rich enough to afford a really nice ergonomic chair that came with those massage functions. Hopefully before they became commonplace and cheap and everyone had one. Status symbols were important after all. But status symbols could wait until he needed them to impress and impart the proper look. Right now he had half a closet full of varying label-quality suits, 3 VERY expensive ties, and a roommate in the process of ripping down the poster that had dominated the dorm room they’d shared for the past 4 years.
Steve Wisnowski had not initially been Charles’ ideal choice for a roommate. As a matter of fact, he still wasn’t. But Steve was smart and Steve was in his own doctoral program, just as early as he was, and from the way people talked, computers and this whole Internet idea was going to be very big in a few years. Networking was very important, as his marketing professor was so fond of emphasizing, especially for a young man like him, fresh out of Iowa and working hard to adopt the well-bred tones of his old-money east coast peers and all of their familial connections. So Charles put up with the occasional late-night soldering and the talk about intangibles and cables and programming languages and he even put up with the music and that poster. It hadn’t hurt that the lead singer, the one staring so defiantly out of the poster beneath that outrageous mane of red hair, had a kind of air about him that appealed to Charles’ own inner anger at all he could never be because he was from the wrong sort of family. (The fact that he had rather vibrant green eyes and a cute slip of stomach showing registered too, but only vaguely, because Charles had no time to think about sex, gay or otherwise, if he wanted to make it on Wall Street before he turned twenty-five.)
Steve had been obsessed with Snakes n Barrels, and Charles had actually been a little worried about the man last year when the break-up rumors had stopped being just that and became the truth. But it appeared he was free of them at last, if the ripped poster was any sign, and Charles absently recalled hearing something about two or three of the members entering rehab and another one getting married to some Playboy model or other. They were over and it was good that Steve was moving on. What they had really needed, Charles mused as he watched a new poster going up, this one with a lanky, greasy, young man wearing a flannel shirt around too thin hips covered in ripped jeans, was a better manager. One who wouldn’t have let them get so far out of control.
Music, plodding and heavy and more than a tad depressing in contrast to the fast, bright, alive notes of the late 80s scene, came out of the pawn-shop speakers and Charles shook his head and resolved that he could learn to tune this out as well. He only spared a single, last, clear-eyed glance at the ripped poster before Steve stuffed it in the trashcan. And then he turned his attention back to his books and his word processor and his attempt to mesh the ideas of New Institutionalism with the Complexity theory. Economics was hard work and he didn’t have time for cheap sentimentalism.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 09:42 pm (UTC)...Or at least stumble across Pickles, 'cause WOAH. I'm so glad this comes out in semi-regular chunks 'cause I want Dethklok backstory like nothing else right now and TOKIRELLA ISN'T BEING PRODUCED QUICKLY ENOUGH. Not that I'd ever even consider complaining.
You've got a good voice for the manager, rather prim and business-like, but not stuffy about it. Just driven.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 10:32 pm (UTC)He's so driven it's adorable and a little sad at the same time, with just that faint hint of the nascent Manager who stabs trained killers with their own knives and has beatings sorted by severity and type. And Ofdensen/Pickles in the makings. Oh my. XD