Illinoir

8. A photo of your favorite band/musician. Soul Coughing? Sure, why not?

Not as psyched about this particular part of the photo-a-day meme. Required me to choose a “favorite” band. Then it required me to find a photo of them. I haven’t taken photos of any bands. Anyway. Here is a picture of Soul Coughing.

Very nearly gave up on this thing today. Just felt like, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” Hey, been there before, right? Just not in love with anything that I’m writing. But, this evening, a well-timed pep talk from the NaNoWriMo people convinced me to just keep going. So, thanks NaNoWriMo people…. I guess. Anyhow — word count: 18,167. Excerpt: some silly stuff I wrote yesterday.

Jimmy kept the one room shed dark most of the time, but when I finally made my way inside I found it to be brightly lit by a dozen floating fish-shaped lamps. Paul was standing in the middle of the room gazing up at the lights with a look of child-like wonder on his face. I joined him. Each of the lights was cycling through a set of soft pastels, and though they each put out an incredible amount of light, more than one would expect, it still maintained a gentle quality, not harsh or glaring; just…bright. Jimmy was seated at a long table, tinkering with a lamp that had somehow malfunctioned.
“Jimmy,” Paul breathed, “these are amazing.”
“Yeah, Jimmy,” I agreed,  “these are awesome. When did you come up with these? I thought you were snowed under with your holiday things.”
“What? Oh. These are just something I’ve been messing with in my free time.”
“In your free time?” I asked, disbelieving. “…Ok.”
“Anyway, I wish you’d tell Trammel how much you like them,” Jimmy said, looking up from his work. “He thinks they won’t sell.”
“He thinks they won’t sell?” Paul exclaimed. “They’re floating fucking fish lamps.”
“Yeah. He says that fish shaped stuff is done. Last year.”
“Does he know that they float? Like. In the air?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Um, Jimmy?” Paul asked.
“Yeah?”
“How do they do that? Float, I mean.”
“Oh, it’s really quite simple. The excess thermal energy generated by the light in the lamp is used to heat a small capsule of gaseous iron maganate, which, when it expands creates a negative gravitational index.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yeah. A chemist friend of mine who works for NASA hooked me up with it. Here, check it out.”
As he spoke, he gave the tail of the lamp he was working on a quarter turn. It lit up purple, cycled through green and red. He held the fish in his open palms and shortly, it floated out of his hands. He gave it a gentle push and it joined the rest of the lamps just slightly over our heads. The lamps gave the room a peaceful, ethereal feel. I wanted half a dozen of them for my apartment.
“How much would these retail for?” I asked.
“That’s the thing. Right now we’d have to sell one for $13.99. I’m trying to get the cost down to two for $10. You know how Trammel feels about the Threshold.”
The Threshold was the name Trammel had given for what he felt was the price point that an average consumer would buy something. It varied from product to product, but there were some general rules. For something like this, which fell firmly into the novelty lighting category, Trammel stood firm at two for 10. When something had been dumbed down, cheapened or otherwise fucked with in order to fit in Trammel’s pricing structure, we said that it had been “Thresholed.”
“You mean these things are only $14? And the only reason Trammel doesn’t want to produce them is because they’re fish? And you might not be able to make them two for ten?”
“Better products have been axed for worse reasons, Arthur,” Jimmy said solemnly. “Is it lunch time?”
“Yes, it is,” Paul said. “I’m starving. Let’s go.”