Tag Archives: Rushed
SnapStory1000 #021: Flyers
#021: Onegaishimasu!
“If you’d please…”
“If you’d please…”
“Sir, would you like to…”
“Akihabara’s newest maid cafe! Would you…”
23 people. She had counted them exactly, partially out of desperation and partially out of a need to keep score. Each one had rebuffed her without a single word. 1000 yen an hour and there she was freezing her thighs off in the middle of the night to an indifferent mob of nobodies she wouldn’t have spent a second glance looking in any other place. Good lord. What’s to do in this country? Graduation was still a year away and that PSP wasn’t going to buy itself!
“Hi there, would you..”
He took the flyer. Success. If only a small one.
“Thank you so much, would you like me esco-..?”
He walked on. The second part of the game was to get them into the store itself. That there was the trickiest part AND the best. To get them in meant that you could go back inside and let some other unlucky sap stand outside in the cold. God, she was ready to get back inside, serve some tea and get back at that Achika. Then she would be in the cold and would warm, sneaking bites of the fried chicken they had in the back room. Not to mention sneaking a sip of the draft beer. That would be all in good time, but for now…
“Would you like to…”
“Please, if you’d be so kind…”
SnapStory1000 Day #018: Trends
Day #018: Signs of the Times
The strongest, most dramatic changes in fashion have usually had a pretty good war to go along with them. The problem comes when people stop caring about the war going on. Fashion becomes static and statements become even more meaningless than they already are. Such was the marketer’s theory when they decided to take 10-cent firecracker fodder than turn them into 10-dollar novelty jewelry. Even better, the profits could come from both sides – those on the right could say that they were being patriotic and honoring the brave warriors on the front lines; those on the left could say it was a silent protest against the treatment of the fighting forces as no better than finger puppets. Either way, there was money to be made.
The trend was soon catching on all over the world after a prominent movie actress showed them off on a Chinese television variety program. Being a devout liberal, her sincere speech through the filter of Chinese subtitles moved the people on the streets of Beijing who were soon to upload it to youtube through their firewall proxies. The footage went viral literally hours after it aired and soon enough, schoolgirls in Thailand were sporting little green men on their little tanned fingers. This did cause some problems to Japanese tourists when they took trips to Dubai or Tehran, which led to embassy advisories against bringing certain types of jewelry.
In all, the trend lasted all of four months in its origin as the war starting fading in the background of the public consciousness again. The jewelry would be mostly forgotten outside of retrospective internet articles and television specials on the year and decade in review. Likewise, Asia, Europe and Africa’s craze for it would soon subside but it would be still be something that tourists would note with curiosity on the streets of Seoul or Shibuya, usually proceeded by a blog post or tweet to the effect of “WTF?”
SnapStory1000 Day #009: Between the Lines
Day #009: Columns
The station was like an imposing castle of concrete, steel, and construction signs. Ever shifting over the past 100 years into spider-web of train tracks and serpentine cars slithering up and down the tracks. It paid little heed to the inhabitants of it.
“All workers report for your daily ration. You have done well, gentlemen.”
Gentlemen, despite the fact that most of the workers nowadays were female. Then again, it was just one of those things were the words employed carried more weight than the implications behind those words. At any rate, she wasn’t a worker so what was the point of worrying about it all? She liked to wander through the columns instead of the main walkway. It was never crowded at this hour, but it was nice think that she was walking down a palace or some forest.
The space between reminded her of a time that she could not possibly remember, but knew to be true.