Wednesday, October 07, 2009

What If, Would You?



"What if I showed you a picture of an Amishman?"

"What if you did?"

"Would you comment on the Friar Tuck beard and how much they must save on shaving cream?"

"I might."

"Would you kiss a pig?"

"Is it washed?"

"How do you wash a pig?"

"Then no."

"What would you do if I killed you."

"Die."

"Interesting."

"Really?"

"No. Back to the Amishman."

"He's gone."

"Where did he go?"

"There's a hill, and his homemade scooter is flying through the gravel. He's scaring the pigs."

"Have you ever seen a scared pig?"

"On the Wizard of Oz."

"Yeah, that's right. Dorothy fell in."

"She shouldn't walk on the fence."

"You shouldn't walk on the fence."

"How else can you get to a place without stepping on one side or the other?"

"Good point."

"I would be an Amishman."

"No you wouldn't."

"I could pretend."

"If you pretended to be an Amishman, how would you be any different from a real Amishman?"

"I wouldn't."

"Would you go to Hawaii?"

"Yes."

"Would you go to Hawaii naked?"

"Yes."

"Would you go to Hawaii naked without having any spending money?"

"Yes."

"Would you kiss a pig in Hawaii?"

"Before or after the luau?"

"After."

"Yes."

"Before?"

"No."

"Would you kiss an Amishman?"

"I'd kiss the one in the picture."

"No you wouldn't."

"I'd kiss his scooter."

"You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Don't insult the man's scooter."

28 comments:

Aniket Thakkar said...

This is not one of Aine's logs of her therepy sessions with you, is it? :D

"Would you go to Hawaii naked without having any spending money?"

'Hell yeah!' :D

Meghana Naidu said...

whatever that was it was super fun reading!
i love dysfunctional conversations
they give me a fresh lease of life
;)

Shadow said...

doesn't make much sense, but why should it. the joy of reading this is worth it...

Terri said...

Thanks for the comic relief :-) OK so where did this come from? There's gotta be a story behind this. There's always a story behind these...!

Mona said...

indeed, why should one insult the scooter by being ashamed of kissing it!...whatever the hell that means...

Anonymous said...

I like this. Very cool.

Nice dialog Jason.

dark wings said...

Now this is very cool! :)

Sarah Laurenson said...

And all I could think of was the great food at the Pennsylvania Dutch Pantry restaurant in Amish country. Hungry now...

jaz said...

Jason, I am so out of the loop re: your blog, but this I just had to say I loved. LOVED. There is a fine line between genius and totally crazy, a different level of perception perhaps, and I really find you there from time to time. Which is meant as a good thing. :)

Hope all is well!

PhilipH said...

Actually, I quite like pigs. I guess I wouldn't want to kiss one on the snout, but would probably just give it a peck on the ear.

Unusual and interesting dialogue.

SzélsőFa said...

I, too enyoed it. Whatever it was an experiment for.

Stacey J. Warner said...

that was fun! Thanks for sharing!

Amias (ljm and liquidplastic) said...

A friend of mind explain this type of dialogue to me ... as one of the reasons she read certain books.

She called this pure dialogue without the clutter. It is natural, and it flowed well. In a human sort of way it made lots of sense, especially in relations to what I hear on tv shows these days. But yours is funnier.

PixieDust said...

This reminds me of a scene in an old movie, The Bachelor & The Bobby-Soxer which has Cary Grant driving an older gentleman crazy with the following:

"You remind me of a man." -CG

"What man?"

"The man with the power."

"What power?"

"The power of hoo-doo."

"Hoo-doo?"

"You do."

"Do what?"

"Remind me of a man.", etc

great fun!

love,
me

Karen said...

I'm with Jennifer. I enjoyed it, but I'm not quite sure what it is!

K.Lawson Gilbert said...

Great exchange! I enjoyed reading this innovative piece. It actually sounds like what emanates from the back seat of my car, when my two older sisters are sitting back there!!

Love this:
"Would you kiss a pig in Hawaii?"
"Before or after the luau?"
"After."
"Yes."
"Before?"
"No

Avant-garde piece of work. Kudos

Midnight Whisperer said...

Great win here, with a touch of awesome... I would kiss the amishman if he let me drive his scooter; I would kiss the scooter if the amishman kissed the pig ; )

Anonymous said...

To Everyone (wondering where the heck this came from): okay, sometimes I have post ideas, and then I go to my bank of my photos and try to find a suitable image. What I enjoy more, however, is to start with an image and have the post spring from whatever pops into my head. For this one, I really liked this moment I captured (I snapped it as we whizzed past in a car), but a proper idea wasn't coming to me. I didn't want to write a farming haiku or something. Instead, this line popped into my head: "What if I showed you a picture of an Amishman?" The rest was a spur of the moment banter in my head. Kind of like a back and forth challenge. I guess it's just how my brain works. The end result was something bizarre, curious, but I thought fun and funny. :D

Anonymous said...

Aniket, ha!! I loved that! I need some therapy sessions.

Meghana, I could have had conversations like this with my friends from high school. :)

Shadow, yeah, sense wasn't the goal.

Terri, the story is above. Not terribly juicy. But I did really enjoy just letting my thoughts go free. I like making weird connections and unanticipated observations.

Mona, we shouldn't hate on the scooter. ;)

StrugglingWriter, sometimes it's time to do something very different!

Dark Wings, welcome! The clouds tonight were flying on dark wings.

Sarah, where is the restaurant? Maybe we've been there.

Jennifer, I loved your comment! Wandering between crazy and genius is wonderful place to be!! And you're welcome here anytime.

PhilipH, a peck on the ear sounds very affectionate. :)

Szelsofa, an experiment in experimenting. ;)

Stacey, my pleasure!

Amias, I like to embrace pure dialog. A good number of my vignettes are in that style. I love the raw, hyper-reality feel.

PixieDust, what a great circular conversation! Very cool. :)

Karen, just my mind skipping off on a train ride home.

Midnight Whisperer, welcome!! I can see that you could be in this conversation. Excellent!

Anonymous said...

Kaye, your sisters sound cool! Any chance you'll share one of their conversations??

Jean said...

I'm thinking this would pop up #1 in a giggle-search (as opposed to a google-search).

Clever and fun!

Sarah Laurenson said...

Ah Jason. Some 35 years ago (or more) we ate at 2 Pennsylvania Dutch Pantries - one in Amish country and one not. The one in Amish country had much better food. Where in Amish country? I have no idea.

I found this link to a page about the Dutch Pantry restaurants. Seems they're in several states now.

the walking man said...

So yoou have been eavesdropping on me and the old lady eh? All of oour conversations are circular and rolling.

Anonymous said...

The mind works in mysterious ways. I always enjoy the random thought. The dialogue is funny, unusual and unique.

Nevine Sultan said...

I'm going to be quite honest, here, and just tell you that what I got a kick out of the most with this piece was the dialogue in and of itself. It wasn't so much the content of the dialogue that got me. It was the realistic voice of the dialogue. This is how we humans speak. We start a conversation about a certain something, talk about it for a few seconds, someone says something that takes us to another subject, we bring ourselves back to what we were talking about because that was the point of our conversation, and so it continues. This was, for me, an interesting experiment with dialogue!

Anonymous said...

Jean, I'm glad I'm not the only one with a weird sense of humor. :)

Sarah, those places look so charming! It's not very special, but we like going to Miller's on Route 30 east of Lancaster.

Walking Man, you got me! I've been eavesdropping. ;)

She Poet, I love unusual.

Nevine, I hope you feel that realism in my normal works. Dialogue is especially important to me. Nothing fuels the reality of our written dream worlds quite like what people say to one another. Revealing even as they conceal.

Aine said...

I'd give anything to go back in time and watch you and "the Daves" sitting around bantering like this. That would be a turn on!

(Did I just say that? *blush*)

JR's Thumbprints said...

Just please please please cut it out with the pig. Nice crisp dialogue.