Observations of The Urban Spaceman 
I love words. As a reader I love to read them, and as a writer I love to write them. I enjoy finding new ways of saying things. New turns of phrase, new methods of describing things… and new (or uncommon) words which might not make it into every-day vocabulary.
I want to know what words you like to use, and why. Throw them into the comments section. Your favourite words, a brief overview of what they mean (if you deem it necessary) and why you like using them so much.
I need my daily word fix!
All hands—Battlestations!
(or, The Urban Spaceman rambles about Star Wars, Star Trek, and how Domhnall Gleeson may be the next Gary Oldman)
Today is an exciting day. Amazon just gave me the release date for my pre-order of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and it’s such a thrilling moment that even my computer decided to get excited too!
I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve never been the biggest Star Wars fan. If you say “Star…” I’ll automatically finish your sentence with an eager “…Trek!” But The Force Awakens has got me interested in Star Wars in a way that I haven’t been since Return of the Jedi. I’ve been asking myself why. What is it about TFA that has made me pre-order this on DVD despite the fact I’ve seen it three times in the cinema? (for comparison, the only other films I’ve deemed worthy of seeing more than once on the big screen were X-Men (the first film) and The Dark Knight Rises). In order to answer my own question, I’m going to ramble a little about what holds my interest as a reader or viewer.
It’s been a few weeks since I participated in one of Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction challenges. This week he set the challenge of picking a sin and writing a 1000 word story. I picked all seven sins and wrote 912 words. BECAUSE WHY THE HELL NOT?!
I hope you enjoy this story, and I can’t wait to see what other sinful things my fellow flash-fiction writers have written.
The Board
“First item on the agenda,” said the woman with luxuriously dark hair and plump, pouty red lips, “the Fast Food Fiasco.” She turned to her colleague, a rotund man practically bursting out of his faded tuxedo. “Perhaps you would like to…” those lips curled up at both corners, but there was little mirth in the smile, “…weigh in?”
He shoved several cocktail sausages into his mouth and nodded. “It isn’t my fault!”
“We are not here to assign blame, Gluttony. Besides, we can’t minute that. Just tell us how this happened.”
“It’s all Pride’s fault!” He grabbed several cheese-on-sticks and swallowed the yellow cubes whole. His tiny, piggy eyes travelled to the Board member sitting opposite him, a woman whose flawless skin and perfect cheekbones spoke of countless encounters with plastic surgery.
Pride allowed one perfectly threaded eyebrow to rise. “My fault? You’ve sunk to a whole new low, Gluttony, if you think you can palm your inadequacies off onto me.”
“But it’s true!” Gluttony’s jowls wobbled and his face reddened as he shook his head fervently. “Those stupid glossy pictures you put in magazines. The self-worth articles. The men with six-packs. You make them feel good about being perfect. And because they want to be perfect, they don’t want to eat what I sell! If people won’t eat it, the chains won’t sell it.”
Another man, this one handsome and wearing a pinstripe suite, gave a brief nod of agreement. “Gluttony is right. This is getting out of hand. I walked past a McDonalds the other day, and do you know what I saw them selling? Salad!”
There was a collective gasp of horror from the group.
“You always side with Gluttony, Greed,” Pride scowled. “Sooner or later, he’s going to have to start accepting responsibility for his own mistakes. Coddling him won’t help him in the long run.”
Lust cleared her throat. As all eyes turned back to her, she tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “Perhaps we should look at what we can do to mitigate the effects of Pride’s hard work. Sloth? What have you brought to this meeting?”
A slim man with hooded eyes yawned, then sat up straighter as the attention switched to him. “Well, I’m planning a new Call of Duty title,” he said. “Cross-platform, of course. It should get the teenage and early-twenties male demographic to sit around a bit more. Every time I release a new title, I see a spike in pizza deliveries. But I have to agree with Gluttony, here. Pride’s been pushing hard in the glossy magazine market, and I don’t think Envy has been helping, either.”
“What does this have to do with Envy?!” demanded a third woman. Her face contorted into a maelstrom of rage as she slammed her fist down on the table. Sloth flinched.
“Now now, Wrath,” said Lust, “please let Sloth elaborate. If there is a problem, we need to address it.”
Sloth licked his lips, his eyes darting around in the search for allies. But Gluttony and Greed were fighting over a plate of pastries, whilst Wrath and Envy were shooting daggers at Sloth, and Pride was engrossed in a chip in her nail varnish.
“Well.” He licked his lips again. “Men see the six-packs and the chiselled features, and they want to look like that. Women see the flat stomachs and the tanned skin, and they want to be ‘perfect’ too. This goes beyond simple Pride. This is people craving the love and acceptance of others. Wanting what other people have. This is Envy’s fault.”
“Why you lazy, good for nothing—”
“Hold on, Wrath,” Lust interrupted. “Sloth may have a point. For now, why don’t we try this; Envy, Pride, you tone down the glossy pictures and the feature articles, whilst Gluttony and Greed, see what you can do about this whole ‘health food’ nonsense.”
“What’s in it for me?” demanded Greed. Lust merely winked at him before glancing down at last meeting’s minutes.
“Item number two. This whole ‘Kardashians’ thing.” She ran her pink tongue over her red lips, moistening them so that they glistened. From behind one of the curtains which covered the alcoves of the room, she heard a muffled groan, and her lips curled up into a smile. “Can we axe it?”
Greed shrugged. “It wasn’t me.”
“Hmm. Sloth?” asked Lust.
“Nope.”
“Oh, I only wish I’d thought of doing the Kardashians myself!” Envy whined. “They’re soooo popular. What a great idea.”
“They aren’t mine,” said Wrath.
Pride shook her head, and Gluttony was too busy shovelling Oreos into his mouth to respond.
“To be honest, I always thought they were your doing, Lust,” said Greed.
“Well, if they’re not our product, where did they come from?”
“Perhaps,” said Wrath, “the order came from below. You know how… He... has a twisted sense of humour.”
All seven members of the Board looked down at the floor tiles. Then Lust cleared her throat.
“Yes. Well. We’ll just leave the Kardashians on the air for now, then.” She shuffled the papers and glanced once more to the curtain over the alcove. “We did have several more items to discuss, but I’m calling an end to this meeting now.” She reached down into her bag and brought out a gag and a leather whip. Her red lips curled up into a hungry smile as another muffled moan reached her ears. “It sounds like Manuel is ready for round two.”
Snow Day
(or, Somebody Stole My Hills)
That sinking feeling when you realise you’re probably not going to get your car off the drive today.
I went there to disappear, but she found me nonetheless. She sat down at my table, directly opposite me, and just watched me with those big, brown eyes as I swilled the drink around my glass. Courteous, she waited until I’d downed my whisky before hitting me with her words.
“We need your help.”
(or, Baby Things Are SO CUTE!)
My attempts to cultivate Earth life upon my spaceship are met with mixed success. I seem to be quite terrible at keeping plants alive (unless they’re cacti, or housed within the confines of a terrarium…)
These plants are in a terrarium, and therefore safe from me.
…yet at other times, life proliferates when I least expect it. These cute little guys are newly hatched baby angelfish. Mother and Father are doing well, and are very protective of their offspring despite being first-time parents. Thus, today I learnt that out of my four angelfish, I have at least one of each gender. And the other fish in the tank learnt that although generally quite congenial, a breeding pair of angels is very territorial.
I don’t have high hopes of these fry surviving, as it’s a community tank with a fast-flowing filter and I don’t have another tank I could transfer them to (or rather, I do, but it’s in one of the storage bays, unprepared, with no equipment, and trying to remove them from the aquarium glass would kill them anyway) but maybe I’ll be surprised again.
So small, but so cute!
Please ignore the algae. That’s, umm, part of another experiment. Also my snails like to snack on it.
So glad I asked the pet shop guy for angelfish, and not rabbits.
To round off this cute-fest, have a snail. No babies yet, but tentacles crossed!
Cute to the power of ∞ (and beyond)
He watches me from over the barred iron gate as I make my way to work each morning. I can tell by the shape and thickness of his arms, as he flexes them for me to see, that he works out.
An exhibitionist, he waits to greet me on my walk back home, too. He flexes, and I smile. Each time I see him I can’t help but wonder: will I ever posses such strength as he?
Since I get a lot of emails from human beings curious about my mission here, and about the rest of the universe in general, I thought I would take a moment to answer some of these emails publically, in the hopes of quenching the thirst of curiosity. Much as I would love to answer all of my emails personally, my schedule affords me very little spare time to interact with humans in a less ‘official’ capacity.
So, straight to business!
Scott, from Massachusetts, writes:
Dear Mr Urban Spaceman,
What exactly *is* your mission here? Who are your people, and why are you so interested in our planet? Were you ever in Roswell? Was that even real? I’d love to learn more about you, as long as it isn’t against your rules or whatever.
Sincerely,
Scott, Mass.
Those are some good questions, Scott. As you’ve been following my blog for some time, you’ve probably gleaned by now that I’m here to study the Earth and its inhabitants, to perform various non-invasive experiments, and to relay the results of those experiments (along with my general observations) back to my High Commander, who invariably decides which bits are important enough to pass along to SCOLIS (the Science Committee for the Observation of Less Intelligent Species).
Information about my people is strictly classified, so I’m afraid that question will have to go unanswered for now, but our interest in your planet is both scientific and anthropological. I suppose you could say we share the human trait of innate curiosity. Predominantly, we’re interested in the extreme diversity of your planet, including the diversity amongst humans themselves. As a species, you are remarkably divisive. Since my own people achieved a state of Perfect Unity millennia ago, we like to investivate species like yours as a means of studying how we used to be.
Roswell? No. But I think I know the guys who were. This is the first time my people have visited your planet, and I’ve only been here since early 2013. Hope this puts your mind at ease!
– TUS.
P.S., thank your deity for spell-checkers, or I never would have been able to spell Massachusetts. Read More
It was our weekly routine. A ceremony practised every Friday at 4.30pm. We’d stand at the bus stop, me in my Armani suit, shoulders hunched against the rain, him in his tweed trousers and flat cap, ambivalent about the weather. He’d nod his head at me, and give me a gap-toothed smile from that ancient, craggy face.
“Friday again,” he’d say.
“Thank God,” I would grin.
“Out for a night on the town?”
I’d nod my head every time. “Takes more than a bit of rain in London to stop me.” Then I would gesture to his bottle of red wine and budget-brand microwavable shepherd’s pie. “You’re up late again tonight?”
“Yep. Can’t let them go the whole weekend without hearing my voice. Otherwise they might forget me.”
And I would nod again. His son had emigrated to Australia years ago, and eleven in the evening for us was nine o’clock in the morning for them. The kids had half an hour of Grandpa before their morning dose of Steve Irwin or Skippy, or whatever kids watched over there.
The bus would come thirty seconds later and I’d make sure he got a seat at the front, even if it meant evicting somebody else. His stop was two before mine and he’d turn to give me a little wave before disembarking.
Last week, he wasn’t there to greet me with a smile. I checked my watch. Asked the bus driver to hold on just a minute longer. Stood waiting in the rain, one foot on the bus, one foot on the pavement, trying to delay it just another few seconds. When he didn’t come, the people I normally evicted looked relieved. I told myself that he’d got an earlier bus, or perhaps a taxi. Maybe he had a cold and was staying home instead. Perhaps he’d gone shopping on Thursday, instead of Friday.
This week, he wasn’t there either. I waited until the bus pulled up, then shook my head at the driver. The bus pulled away, and I watched it go. My routine had been broken. It didn’t feel like a Friday anymore.
Tonight, I’m not going out on the town. I’ve just been to the Co-Op, to buy myself a microwavable shepherd’s pie and a bottle of red wine. Tonight I’m going to stay in, to see if I can find my Friday again.
You killed me.
Why?
Was it because of that time I passed you in the hallway without returning your smile? Was it because I argued with you in the last big meeting? Because I couldn’t see it your way? Because I questioned you, challenged you, made you feel threatened or unappreciated?
Was it because I snubbed you at the party that one time? Because I forgot your name after I’d had a few drinks? Because I didn’t acknowledge your input in my speeches? Because I never said ‘thank you’?
Killing me was bad enough, but the way you did it… you destroyed me. Everything I had. Everything I had worked for. The success I had sacrificed for. I died a thousand times, in the run up to my death.
You made me a sadist. A womaniser. A thug and a racist. You dropped my name in the dirt and dragged it through trash.
The people who had adored me now despised me. I saw disgust etched onto their faces, and when I looked into their eyes I saw your lies reflected. Believed. Repeated. Shared as nothing more than Monday morning office gossip. From hero to villain to dead. Just like that.
You killed me on Friday night. 9.30pm. Prime Time. You killed me in front of a million witnesses. They saw my body. They saw the knife sticking out of my back. They watched the autopsy. It was then that I knew; there would be no coming back from this. There would be no reprieve. This world isn’t governed by magic, and there was never any long-lost twin brother conveniently secreted away at birth. I’ll never come back like RoboCop, my mangled remains forced into a machine body. I can’t even return as a ghost.
I am dead. There is nothing for me but the next life. Perhaps next time I’ll be a better person. Perhaps I’ll be a father, or the President of the United States of America. Perhaps I’ll be a pirate, or a stormtrooper, or a zombie. Vampire. Yes, vampires are big right now. Perhaps I’ll find work as a vampire.
I’d planned to beg you to take me back. To bring me back to life in the way that only you know how. But even if you’d planned a loophole, I no longer want you to use it. You killed me, and now I’ll stay dead. There are better lives out there for me to live. But before I move on, I wanted to tell you one thing.
Message received. Lesson well learned. I’ll carry my death with me, into my next life. And I will always remember the last words you ever spoke to me. The words you whispered into my ear before you ended my life.
“Never fuck with the writer.”
Glorken
The Urban Spaceman
Observations of The Urban Spaceman 
Things humans said