Thread: Doughnuts and Cartesian Dualism [Adult Language]

The bulbous cop shoved the oblong pastry down his mouth, reaching for the napkins and coffee. His partner came out, a rotund beast in blue, with another dozen from the corner store. The cop already in the car honked the horn, urging his partner to get in briskly – he was hungry.

“Shit, what took you so long?” He asked him.
“I saw this fine bitch near the chips, so I went over and asked her if she committed any crimes today.”
“And?”
“Well she asks why, and I tell her I want to handcuff her and feel for any weapons.”
“Bullshit, no you didn’t James.”
“Yeah, no. I didn’t say that. I told her she is committing a crime right now: the crime of being too beautiful.”
“And what’d she say?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, fuck her. Pass the doughnuts.”
“Yeah, ok Peach, have your share. Boston cream is mine, though.”
“Hey, fuck that, I grew up here, I should have a right to eat my city’s donut. You came out of fucking Paraguay or something. You can have the Bavarian cream, it’s the same thing anyway.”
“Fine…”

The two giant officers devoured their cream-filled guilty pleasures, the radio blasting commercial pop hits. James, finishing his six, shut off the radio.

“Hey Peach, it’s almost eight.”
“Oh shit. Ok, what do you want to talk about tonight?”
“Well man, I was actually reading about this guy Riley, I read like the first chapter of his book which totally fucking socks Cartesian Dualism in its face by proving the whole mind-body dualism thing is a fluke.”
“Shit, you mean like that whole ghost in the machine thing gets disproven?”
“Yeah, he uses some tight examples too. Tighter than that fine bitch’s ass.”
“Damn, I’m at a disadvantage here aren’t I?”
“You are damn right you are, Peach, but that’s part of the fun.”
“True, true.”

Peach and James turned to each other in their seats – at least what they could turn of their massive one-ton bodies. Their uniforms were mosaics of a posthumous confection orgy; sanguine jelly oozed from the blue uniforms of both and the white powder from the Bavarian littered James’s collar like careless cocaine. There were shit-colored chocolate stains covering their convex, elliptical, oblong, grotesque faces. Their mouths were red and greasy; confection cannibals.

“Ok, I’ll start off. So I say mind-body dualism is bullshit ‘cuz it’s a category mistake, and it's wrong to say that mind is separate from body, aka a ghost in the machine, aka some separate entity with different rules than the body.”

James said ‘aka’ like ‘aka,’ not ‘ay-kay-ay.’

“What do you mean category mistake? Explain!”
“Shit… well not to sound like a fucking academese-spewing parrot and repeat Rily's examples, I’ll make up my own metaphor. Or simile, or whatever the fuck this – oh wait, I mean allegory! So yeah… say that you’re at the national cop convention in Denver, right?”
“Ok”
“And they have this large commemorative bottle of some fine ass wine. Old and tasty, expensive stuff.”
“Ok”
“And you are like ‘ok, that’s cool, but where the fuck is the drunkenness? I came here to find drunkenness and I only see this wine bottle!’ You get it?”
“Yeah sort of. Give me another one.”
“Hell, I thought that was brilliant improv, but I’ll use one from the book: you’re like watching some game with our glorious Sox and those dirty-bum Yankees, and you are like ‘I see the catcher, the batter, the umpire et cetera, but I can’t see team spirit!’ That more clear?”
“Yeah perfect. Ok, so I argue for Cartesian Dualism, eh?”
“You got it, Lardo.”
“Hmm… Ok, so that whole categorical mistake thing is correct, but it should not be applied to the mind and body. Mind is like a concept, zillions of receptors in that fat head of yours create this theoretical spectral image that you see as mind. This mind can travel to faraway lands, like Vegas or Never Never Land, or like fuck that bitch in the store. This doesn’t mean you yourself can ever do that. To go to Never Never Land you need a book, or Michael Jackson, or your imagination, and too fuck that bitch in the store you’d need to be like a hundred pounds lighter – things you’ll never be able to do.”
“Fuck you. I can go to Vegas.”
“But you’re a compulsive gambler. That’d be suicide.”
“Whatever, go on.”
“Thought so. So yeah, the mind can do what the body can’t, and it can do it in like vivid detail and shit. In that sense – the sense that it is a separate entity able to achieve things the body cannot – there is a split, and your category mistake is in itself a category mistake. In other words, it’s off-key from the actual concept of mind-body dualism.”

“Well-fucking put. I’ll have to put this on hold, I only read like one chapter of Riley’s book – I got distracted with porn. Shit man I found the best big tits and ass website!”

“Oh yeah, what is it? I’m going to write this down…”

The two greasy, lecherous animals winded down from their asinine conversations and turned back to mindlessly listening to pop hits. The night was young, and pointless tickets and/or harassment were yet to be given out.

I thought the title was really good.

Very surreal. As I read this, I kept wondering what the author was trying to convey, by juxtaposing the two images of these two obese cops talking about enlightenment era literature in this manner. It is a very engaging image. On the other hand, I'm not sure where you had intended to take it. It seems as though the conversation is used as a way to offer an extremely well-built foundation for these two characters. By discussing things in this way, they become extremely vivid and three dimensional.

Very interesting and almost attractive characters, aside from their physical negativity. It would be quite easy to expand upon these characters. To put them to other use and re-use them in other scenarios and use them in other stories. I find myself wanting to read more about these two cheech and chong like-characters and their adventures.

On a purely technical standpoint, the writing is very heavy with dialogue. But the dialogue works very hard to pull off an interesting environment and keep things engaging. I wonder if you could keep that up for a much longer piece with more characters, however. And I suggest more description to offset such difficulties.

Good luck,

Die Oldhaetunde

I really enjoyed that. As Die Oldhaetunde pointed out, it is very dialogue heavy, but the dialogue is well written and convincing. I thought it was let down a bit by other parts, though. For example, the opening line:

The bulbous cop shoved the oblong pastry down his mouth, reaching for the napkins and coffee.

didn't work for me. The adjectives seem like they're tacked on and make it sound a little amateurish, in my opinion.
It improved from there for me, though, and while I didn't particularly like the excessive swearing, it was necessary to make the characters more convincing.
One last thing that bothered me was that the two cops seemed like they were pretty much the same person. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but in my mind they looked very similar, spoke in a similar manner and acted very similarly. Maybe that's just what happens when you work side by side for many years, but I still think all characters need an individual identity.
Overall quite amusing and well done.

Like Josh said, some of it is a little overworked, but in general that is part of the style. I think this, in the main, is an excellent piece.