Hello, my name is Dan and this is my DT Log.

Maybe I shouldn’t look at the stats to Dan Touchette’s Timebox:

I don’t think you can accuse me of keyboard spamming, because this was the passage that probably brought this search term to my dashboard:

Honestly, Troy and Andrew were most excited about this. They were the ones who networked their computers together and played Doom all weekend. Troy was practically fondling the Timebox to suppress his excitement. Andrew told him to knock it off and give to me.

So I had the Timebox in my hands, which were attached to arms around a cute red-headed girl who was, for all intents and purposes, jailbait. The only thing I needed was a day off tomorrow to enjoy this a little bit longer…

Maybe this contraption would make her boyfriend disappear.

I think you can see here that I’m only commenting on the romantic age difference of 20 to 17, which does carry some sort of guilt and delicacy.  There really isn’t anything sexual about this scene other than the fun and innocent flirting I remember from 14 years ago.

So if people are scouring WordPress pages, in search of underage girls,

well, I hereby apologize you had to read my little sci-fi story and left unsatisfied.

The following has been edited for clarity, legibility, humor, intelligence, grammar, and redaction of embarrassing facts or opinions.

THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE A TRUE STORY.

DT Log 1
Wednesday 29 March 1989.
Day’s Grade: B+

“AR”

Uh-oh.

It’s a fast-forward, rewind, fast-forward, get frustrated and say what the hell we’ll start in the middle job for Coach O’Malley.  Though we can’t see the absolute confusion behind his sunglasses.  Maybe if he took the sunglasses off, he’d see the VCR better.  Oh well, I guess he’s just not used to being indoors and seeing all the lazy students sitting around instead of running laps or doing pushups.

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Yesterday, the Brainerd Public Library concluded its seasonal book sale by offering a paper bag full of books for $2.00. (Sadly, the bag, overloaded with my choices, didn’t make it into the house and now rests in the recycle bin.  So it goes.)

I grabbed two by Stephen King, a couple of tomes by Erma Bombeck, the last poems of Allen Ginsburg, The Millionaire Next Door, a couple of retro educational books, The People’s Almanac #1 and some children’s books.

I also picked up this vintage computing book:

For the retail price of 5.95 plus tax 1983 dollars – you have 31 games to play on your Texas Instruments computer!

Wait, there’s a catch.

YOU have to type the code into computer, and you also need the Extended Basic cartridge to program and play half of the games.

After all that work typing in the codes, you can begin playing Zombies in the Swamp, Shark Hunt or Las Vegas a Go Go. But how do you save your work?

Presumably, according to Wikipedia’s article, a tape deck and floppy drive were available as peripherals to save TI basic. Though nobody I knew in the early 80s had anything more than the basic console, which cost $600. Add $50-200 for the read-write peripherals, and that’s a lot of money to invest in programming BASIC games with limited appeal and simple vector graphics and/or sprites.

Maybe I’ll get a TI emulator and code these games just to pique my curiosity.

***

Parsec was the star of the TI-99/4A, and more than once a couple of us stayed after school in Mrs. Graham’s classroom playing it.

1989:

Near here in the northern Midwest, people are having troubles with flooding, especially around Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead, Minnesota.

It makes a lot of sense, considering the Red River flows north, and you have melting waters rushing downhill, hitting ice, and sprawling over the prairie.  Thousands of selfless volunteers have made their way there to pile sandbags and improve levees as the river rises to record levels.

The following story is not meant to take recent flooding lightly, but rather what I can say about someone who is completely the opposite of those selfless people.  It’s enough to make me form a drunken posse and kick this guy’s ass.

THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE A TRUE STORY.

It was a rather stormy day in the People’s Republic of Smurfland, and Smurf Village was threatened by floods of the overflowing dam!

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I was checking out at the store the other day, and this caught my eye:

Yowsa!

And Elaine couldn’t find anybody that was sponge-worthy?

If you put me in a room with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Megan Fox, seriously, I couldn’t be sure who I’d gawk at more.

For those hopeful of maintaining health and vitality at age 48, it might be a good read.

link

This is big news, because I have been working on this for two years, and the end is in sight!

I have just posted Episode 7 of Dan Touchette’s Timebox.

My original plan was to force myself to write and edit and publish every two weeks back in May 2007 – but then I learned I just don’t work that way.

So I’ve taken my time, and I think I’m more satisfied with the result.

The end of the story is coming soon!

***

In order:

1. A package arrives.

2. A simple plan.

3. Terms of service.

4. ßiography.

5. A punk’dystopia.

6. Turn me on, dead man.

And the new episode.

7. Something no one else can give her.

As always feedback is appreciated and acknowledged. I still consider the story rough,

but above all, I am writing this to be a light, fun read.  Please enjoy!

Dan

Well, I might as well open up the archive.

One night after heavy drinking and laser tag (well, heavy caffeine drinking), Brad, Jon and I began discussing plans for a third Kung Fools movie at the Sports Arena Denny’s.  Also in attendence was my brother Kody and my wife Bronwynn.

For those unfamiliar with Kung Fools, it was the high school video short that Jon and Brad made for creative writing junior year, and then I took over the sequel for English class (and never finished) senior year.

This would have been a professional style reboot, remaking the first one, with me presumably getting in UFC shape and playing Flow-Jo, and I would have asked my friend Andrew Wood to play Emperor Chong.

The project never got off the ground and a few months later I entered the Project Greenlight Contest, and abandoned this script.

So, what I have here is the “first ten pages” of that script, and I think I have some funny stuff in there.  By this time, I had already finished five screenplays, and I apply those Syd Fieldian techniques here:

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