My plans to make a mockery of last week’s writing seminar were partially foiled by the dreaded “lunch crash.” We were bribed into the seminar with the promise of a pizza lunch. After said lunch was consumed nobody much felt like doing any writing.

In the past I’ve been the victim of a recurring nightmare in which I’m led into a room and presented with vast amounts of pizza. The grease shimmers on the surface of the pepperoni like a Tuscan lake at sunset. I eat my fill but there are no napkins. All of a sudden the room is shaken by a great tumult. An angry mob has gathered; swept up in a wave of anti-dairy sentiment. I try to call for help but I’m too full to shout. I reach for a pen to write an impassioned plea to the mob but my hands are too greasy to grasp the pencil. I’m swept up in a wave of fisticuffs, sauce, discarded pizza boxes, and inhuman anger. Then I wake up.

So that’s why I negatively associate pizza with writing.

Anyway, we get to the actual “writing” portion of the seminar and are given 20 minutes to bang out a draft. I sit and stare for most of that time. When my pen finally begins moving I write:

The Black Mesa incident, tragic as it was, teaches us many lessons about the intelligent and safe management of interdimentional experimentation

That’s really as far as I got before I set the pen down. I don’t think I can write with my hands anymore. My handwriting has degraded to something that looks like Chinese but isn’t.