Michael Ampersant writes:: Freedom Fries --- introduction

Sep 23, 2012

Freedom Fries --- introduction

Freedom Fries, yes, how about the Freedom Fries. The term came into being in the spring of 2003, when President Jaques Chirac of France refused to join George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq (the second Gulf War), and Representative Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), the chairman of the Committee on House Administration, directed the three canteens of the US House of Representatives to rename French fries to "freedom fries."

US House of Representatives member Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio),
announcing the renaming of French fries to Freedom Fries in 2003.

When we decided to write a script about the aftermath of the Bush years, we used the Freedom Fries reminiscence as a trigger for a change of heart of (or in) the former president, with predictably unpredictable ramifications for him and others that make up the story.

We finished the script quickly, but couldn't get it produced, of course. So we decided to turn it into a novel. The novel is still unfinished because (1) we developed unsurmountable seconds thought about the legal feasibility of the whole thing since we have the main actors involved in doing fairly funny things and they could try to drag us into American courts with libel suits or worse, and (2) we started to work on a new novel, Green Eyes, which is almost finished in its first draft and is taking up all of our time.

We published most of the available Freedom Fries draft on this blog as a feuilleton, a 19th century term initially coined to characterize a work of fiction published in installments (in Germany, the term is now used for the cultural pages of a newspaper). We removed all FF posts a month ago when we decided to revamp this blog as a publication platform for the Green Eyes.

But we are having second thoughts now, whence the decision to re-introduce the Freedom Fries in a slightly changed format, with longer fragments of the manuscript posted at more distant intervals.

So, stay tuned for the first part of the Freedom Fries on this pages coming week, at the top of the hour, of course.

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Infinite Jest

David Foster-Wallace

Kate Gompert enters the story:

"The doctor who poked his fine head just inside her hot room's open door and knocked maybe a little too gently on the metal jamb found Kate Gompert lying on on the slim hard bed in blue jeans and a sleeveless blouse with her knees drawn up to her abdomen and her fingers laced around her knees. Something almost too overt about the pathos of the posture: this exact position was illustrated in some melancholic Watteau-era print on the frontispiece of Yevtuchenko's Field Guide to Clinical States. Kate Gompert wore dark-blue boating sneakers without socks or laces. Half her hair so long-unwashed it had separated into discrete shiny strands, and black bangs lay like a cell's glossy bars across the visible half of the forehead. The psych ward smelled faintly of disinfectant and the Community Lounge's cigarette smoke, the sour odor of medical waste waiting collection with also that perpetual slight ammoniac tang of urine, and there was the double bing of the elevator and the always faraway sound of the intercom paging some M.D., and some high-volume cursing from a manic in the pink Quiet Room at the other end of the psych-ward hall from the Community Lounge. Kate Gompert's room also smelled of singed dust from the heat-vent, also of the over-sweet perfume worn by the young mental health staffer who sat in a chair at the foot of the girl's bed, chewing blue gum and viewing a soundless ROM cartridge on the ward-issue laptop. Kate Gompert was on Specials, which meant Suicide-Watch, which meant that the girl had at some point betrayed both Ideation and Intent, which meant she had to be watched right up close by a staffer twenty-four hours a day until the supervising M.D. called off the Specials."

Infinite Jest --- p. 68-69.

Connubial bliss

Disclaimer: you get only one side of the story

(Anytime) Michael is sitting on the bed next to Chang who's studying the latest Samsung TV-screen commercial on his laptop, about the SAMSUNG 40ES6100 TV LED 3D. And it's great, this screen, its display, the brilliance, sharpness, vibrancy, so many parameters to marvel at, the best image ever. You can see it, can't you? We must buy the new Samsung screen now, it's better than anything before. "Better than your laptop?" jaded Michael is about to ask, and because this is him, he actually does (ask): "Better than your laptop?"
"Of course."

And because Michael carries traces of irrepressible school-mastery pedantry in his DNA, he continues the conversation carelessly with: "How is it possible that your laptop screen is able to show an image quality exceeding its own image quality," to which Chang (still sitting on the bed next to Michael) will reply "Shut up!" or "You always do this to me," or "This is also a Samsung."

For more Connubial Bliss go here

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Sep 23, 2012

Freedom Fries --- introduction

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