# the last minute...again



## stonefly (Aug 1, 2011)

"You let it go 'til the last minute again?"

"Hey, there's a lot to be said for procrastination.  Maybe it's not procrastination at all."

"What is it then?"

"At my age, I don't wanna find myself in a position where I have a commitment every minute.  There's a real danger of that.  One sure way to avoid it is to let things slide."

"Until the last minute."

"Yeah, until the last minute.  I like doing nothing.  I've made that monumental discovery about myself.  Doing nothing is wonderful. The only problem is that when you let things go 'til the last minute, and then something goes wrong, you don't have much time to improvise."

"What went wrong?"

"I do my quarterlies with ProMiles.  It maps out the route and lists all the miles for each state.  I didn't realize until today that it automatically routes me through Canada if I don't program it not to, and I don't have any Canadian provinces on my International Fuel Tax Agreement registration.

"I didn't realize what it had done until I got all the way down to "O" for Ontario.  Virginia doesn't accept the ProMiles form, so every state has to be typed in separately to the Virginia form.  It's double work.

"Here's where things get sticky.  ProMiles is online, and my driveway is a weak signal area.  Being it was down to the last day, I drove the 20 miles to the Starbuck's so I could take advantage of their fast internet service.

"Not long after I sat down, another fellow, with a newspaper and some of Starbuck's fancy stuff, picked a chair near me...way too close for my comfort, but he's a customer too, I'll be generous about it.

"Soon I began to hear little slurps and smacks.  They were quiet, but audible.  I kept looking over at the guy, wondering if he was doing it on purpose."

"Why would he be doing it on purpose?"

"To hassle, that's why."

"Why would he want to hassle you?"

"Why does a frog bump his butt every time he hops?  People do things like that.  Don't you realize what's going on?  Listen.  Everything you see is recorded in your mind...everything.  Your consciousness can only be filled with relatively little, but your unconscious is vast.

"Think of it like a computer screen and a hard drive.  The hard drive contains an enormous amount of information, but the screen only depicts a small part of that at any one time.

"Now, consider that you're not the only one who sees the world.  Carl Jung said it best, 'The Collective Unconscious.'  It's there, believe me, it's there.

"Every human and every animal with eyes takes the world into their unconscious.  Somehow it all melds.

"Do you really think you can get away with anything?  You can't.  Every move you make is on track.  People don't have to do things consciously, they can do 'em unconsciously.  It's more comfortable that way.

"All I know is the guy had that fancy stuff which sticks in my craw without me even eating it myself.  Why a roll has to have a French name, I don't know, but he had one of those.  He was also drinking, with a straw, one of those 'frappays' or 'lappaways' or whatever they're called.  He might have been an ex Navy Seal for all I know, but I couldn't help looking over at him every time I heard a little smack or slurp and thinking, 'sissy boy.'

"I deleted the trip that put me through Canada and reprogrammed it with Cleveland as an extra stop.  That forced the program to route me south of Lake Erie instead.  The only problem is, that changed my total miles.  I pondered it for a minute, then realized that I'd have to do the entire Virgina report over from the beginning.

"When I realized it, I said to myself, _I'm gonna have to do the entire Virginia report over from the beginning._

"In that instant, the frappy guy folded up his newspaper with ceremony, stood up, and walked out."

"So?"

"Don't you get it?  He was there to punctuate my problem.  People are whores, always doing somebody's dirty work.  Maybe I didn't look at somebody right, or maybe I inadvertently changed lanes too quickly to suit somebody's delicate sensibility.

"It's all on track.  We pay for everything.  Remember?  Everything is on the hard drive, in the collective unconscious, that is.  It's all there about ProMiles' proclivity to route me through Canada.  It's all there that I had a load from Middlebury, Vermont to Orion, Michigan.  It's all there that I was unaware of the glitch in ProMiles, and that I'm down to the last day, and that I live in a remote area, that I'd go to Starbuck's for their internet service, and that people who quietly slurp and smack get under my skin."

"You have a very serious personal problem."

"So do you buddy, so do you, and one of these days you'll find out.  Mark my words."

"Yeah, well, I gotta go.  See ya."


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 1, 2011)

Check your "Quotes" sometimes it would appear the same person is speaking continuously , but the quotes close and then start again next paragraph. Sometimes they open but don't close. In a piece like this where you don't explicitly tell us who is speaking (He said ... I said ...) they become essential information.


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## stonefly (Aug 1, 2011)

I know what you mean.  I think I got it right, but I'm not 100% sure.

One guy does most of the talking.  When a paragraph ends without quotes, he's still talking in the next paragraph.

The other guy doesn't talk until a paragraph ends with the quotation marks.




...oops, I just saw one paragraph that ended without where it should have ended with.


Thanks Olly...

...I'll fix it.


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 1, 2011)

I'm not 100% on this either, but where a paragraph ends without quotes because the person carries on speaking, do you need to restart them on the next one, or simply leave it until you come to the end of that person's speaking? I would have thought the latter.


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## stonefly (Aug 1, 2011)

Good question.  I'm gonna check into that again.  I did once a long time ago, because of another story I was working on.

I think you're supposed to put the marks on the beginning of sequential paragraphs, but leave them off the ends until the last paragraph, which gets quotation marks at the beginning and end.


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## Cran (Aug 2, 2011)

stonefly said:


> Good question.  I'm gonna check into that again.  I did once a long time ago, because of another story I was working on.
> 
> *I think you're supposed to put the marks on the beginning of sequential paragraphs, but leave them off the ends until the last paragraph, which gets quotation marks at the beginning and end.*



You're right about that. 

In this case, I would put the one speaking less in _italics_ rather than in speech quotes - as though it's a voice in your head, or on the phone, or similar.  The whole piece is dialogue but the speakers are not identified; does it matter if one is thought of as not physically present? In fact, with the lesser voice in _italics_, you can remove all of the quotation marks - it is then the author/narrator and _voice_ in discussion.


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 2, 2011)

There's something learned, I now have some editing to do.


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## The Backward OX (Aug 2, 2011)

If we can get past the discussion about quotation marks, may I bring this up? 

"People are whores, always doing somebody's dirty work."

I don't get the connection, metaphoric or otherwise, between whores and dirty work.


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## stonefly (Aug 2, 2011)

They don't do the dirty work for free.


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