eggo

removed

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Lucid

Great story! Creative and compact.

I think the to should be removed. How about "Macroscopically it is very hard, almost impossible to remove them."
I would change it to: "The casing is cast from a single pice of aluminum, and it has only about a half an inch clearance between the fiber optic windings. You have to have a pair of tweezers twenty feet long to grab an insect that doesn't want to leave."

Sloping towards itself?

Maybe you should you a different word than hill. Hill evokes an image of natural surroundings. You could change it to slope or rise.
them=then?

semtecks

A very good story, up there with the Zombie dads. Not many people actually do shrinking in fiction any more, but it works pretty well, especially with the twist of average Joe's cleaining insects out of car engines. I really enjoyed that one.

I may be wrong here -- I hope not or I'll look stupid -- but did you namedrop some forum mebers in this one? I.E:

The one problem with the Miller Anti-drive was it was a veritable Pied Piper for certain types of insects.

The Van gun is a mini Van der Graff generator

gohn67

Hey Eggo,
I love the absurdity of this piece, but then again I like absurd and surreal stuff along with humor.

I have a feeling that this is some kind of allusion or satire, since you do that a lot in your pieces. Read it twice and I'm not sure yet.

It was interesting how you described the race of the characters. Like one is italian and one is jamacan. Was there a reason for this? It is an interesting characterization, but didn't really play much of a role throughout the story. I guess it sort of can be saying that this bug exterminating job is for immigrants and not rich people. That the poorer people have to do the all the dirty work.

Also I'm just wondering, but do you hate bugs or something? Hehe. You seem to write about bugs a lot.

Who's Juan Valdez? This sounds like a stand up comic joke. But I don't get it because I don't know who he is.

I like the simile of using ants. Nice.

I hate ripping band-aids off my skin.

I like the use of "Beetles" concert here. Another semi bug analogy.

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eggo

Hey lucid,

Thanks for the crit. I was trying to make this story as tight as possible. Compacting ideas and storyline. 1800 words is as much as I could do.

Thanks for the crit. All of your crits are legitimate and I will attend them.

Hey semtecks,
If it was it was completely pavlovian.

Thanks for reading. I was looking for a weird twist to the shrinking thing.

Hey gohn

This story was just that. I tried to heap on the absurdites while creating a compact a story as possible. The reason I used nationalities for the characters is that is the quickest way for people to create a character in their head.

It kinda like the fast food of characterzations.

Juan Valdez is a small man from South America the coffee bean growers used as a figure head spokesman.

see http://www.juanvaldez.com/menu/advertising/juan.html

I tired to litter the bug anthologies for a bit of fun.

Do I have anything against bugs?

No, they just are handy to write about. I Pick a particular subject hook and write three or four stories with it. Bugs are the most alien of creatures we see everyday.

Been busy Gohn, I have to finish your story.

Thanks for reading,

Pete

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gohn67

Well, yeah, your analogy is very good, that it gives the reader a very quick impression of the characters. But what does it add? It does give a funny image in my head when I'm imagining them kill bugs, but in my opinion doesn't do much else for this story. This piece is more story driven, I guess more relying on action then characterizations. Your characters are cool, but the fact that one is tough small italian guy doesn't come to play, doesn't show up in his character much. Same with the other guy. Because later on the characters can be anyone it doesn't matter if he is short itlian guy with a badass attitude.

I understand this is more plot driven, but if you choose to revise this I think you should take into consideration giving your characters more personality when they are fighting the bugs. It seemed very routine, professional, but those guys didn't seem very professional to me. Besides it will add for some more comedy.

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LoneWolf

Hullo,

I like this one a lot! I've never been one for the fantasy-type stories, but I always enjoy your stories.

I wish...that would be amazing!!

Slipped into the present here.

I love how you always add some crazy humor in there. It really makes the story really a pleasure to read.

Great job with this one! The plot was really unique and I definitely wasn't expecting it to play out as it did. It also reminded me of how much I hate ants! Thanks for the read!

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Chris Miller

Hi eggo,

Thanks for naming the anti-drive after me. Seems fitting that you never specify anti what… just anti. That’s me.

Some of the quips struck me as a little easy, like they were the first thing that popped into your head, almost cliché. I’d have had Juan “try urine therapy” or something.

I’m probably being nit-picky but I can’t see how an expensive anti-drive system (even with my moniker) could be designed so badly as to allow bugs to just crawl in and screw it up. I also had a problem with feeling afraid/sorry for these tough little shrunken fuckers who were like 100,000 times stronger than their insect opponents. Couldn’t see the danger, even with seventy against one. And why not just blow in some insecticide and out some bugs? I guess my problem with this one, even though I know it’s supposed to be farfetched, is that I just couldn’t buy into enough of it. It made no sense. Even the shrinking… I don’t thing drying people out would be very healthy.

You could go the Douglas Adams route and make your sci-fi metaphors totally farcical, like Bistro drive. But I don’t sense you are poking fun at the genre. You seem to be kind of on the fence here.

It’s funny in the Killer Tomatoes sense I suppose.

This is funny, although I myself have never punched anyone at a lobster buffet. Good simile though.

Found about half-a-dozen places where you need an apostrophe to turn plural into possessive.

Joe and I destroyed them all before that that ten minutes was done.

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Sigg

Oh man, that was such a badass story. Good job man. But for some reason I kept thinking the Super Mario Bros. movie when I imagined the mechanics, with the overalls. Don't know what else to say, I liked it a lot, well done.

Graff

LOL, good stuff Eggo. A very enjoyable story. It actually reminded me a bit of starship troopers.

Only thing I thought wasn't so good, is that you did a lot of telling, where you didn't have to.

Great story overall though! And thank you for naming the Van der Graff after me Just kidding

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eggo

Hey Guys,

Gohn,

About the characterzations, it probably added nothing, depending on who you are. If I said imagine a Jamican male. Your reader would get a image in their head, albeit sterotypical. This image is ready made and when the action starts, I think the reader can relate to characters and form mental pictures in a much quicker fashion.

Just experimenting a bit.

Lone Wolf,

Thank you. I don't think I could write a story without throwing in some sort of humor. I'll make sure you get the first car when they are done.

Hey Sigg,

Thank you very much for reading. I tried to keep it rolling.

Hey Graff,

I will be sure to send you all the royalty checks for the Van Der Graff generator sales and usage fees.Glad to have you.

Hey Chris,

I hated writing this story.

Thats right. It took me almost two weeks to write this thing and it drew blood every word along the way. I started writing a new story last night and wrote 500 words in half an hour.

I am shocked to be honest that it came out as a readable thing. I read it and it seemed OK, but you know how hard it is to judge your own stories. And with the root canal it proved to be, I am not surprised you didn't hand out a glowing crit, nor am I worried about it.

This story was wholly uninspired and like a magician, I just keep pulling rabbits out of my hat. But thank God it's done and I can move on. Half-finished stories bug the crap outta me.

Btw Chris, When have you had a car regardless the price, that hasn't had bugs in it?

No worries guys,Thank you all for reading!

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Chris Miller

Hey eggo,

I went to this play the other night, written and produced by a friend. A musical comedy about WWII. El-stinko! Everything I hate in a play: lots of old tunes and cheesy melodrama and Vaudville schtick. Actually offensive to me in places. But the old guy in front of me was killing himself laughing. I mean I thought he was going to have a heart attack or something. These repetitve formula gags that I could see comming from a mile away and weren't funny to me in any case, seemed to lambast this guy up aside the head each time, almost knocked him out of his seat, the guy was breying like a donkey. Actually, a lot of people were laughing their asses off, and the place was packed, for the fourth night running.

So obviously I don't know shit about humor. If people think it's funny, then it's funny. I don't like this time of year, and maybe I shouldn't crit during it. I'm glad you weren't upset by my "less than glowing" review. What you think of the piece is what matters most. Interesting that you say it was hard to write. It had a kind of effortless feel, like it wrote itself, almost too much so, which is actually what I liked best about it.

Btw: My cheapass 2001 Hyundai Elantra has not given me the slightest problem (except when I hit a stone and all my oil poured out and I tried to drive it home and had to by a new used engine and so I guess they don't call them idiot lights for nothing).

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eggo

Hey Maria,

Thank you very much. Dialogue is my favorite part of any story. If you know Bruce Willis tell him that I will sell the plot very cheap, maybe even less that that.

Hey Chris,

El-stinko! I hope that wasn't the actual name. Then again you may have hit on something.

Thanks for the words of encouragement.

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rmestre

I will keep this short and say, I will be looking forward to your new posts!

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Wyndstar

I hate being the last one to read and comment on things, but it's been that kind of life lately...

Okay, so for as improbably as this piece is, scientifically and logically speaking (there has GOT to be better ways to kill bugs, unless society has gotten so psychotic, murdering bugs becomes therapy), I thought it was hilarious. Death of one of them sort of killed the flow, but hey--I loved the comment about Juan slitting his wrists. That just struck me as funny.

If this were the Gong Show, I'd have given half a gong, but only for messing up the science so badly.

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