FOB (?) June 15

Local Writing Group Discusses Changing Its Name

Provo, Utah. In a move that shocked two housewives in Ottoro, Maine, the writing group known as FOB convened today to discuss changing its beloved acronym from FOB to FOD.

"It's a aesthetic decision, really," said Tolkien Boy, speaking in behalf of the group's leader, Master Fob, who was suspiciously absent from the proceedings. "We've discussed it as a group, and the - ahem - private poll we took definitely shows a strong percentage of the group favor the change." When asked what the newly-proposed acronym stood for, Tolkien Boy shrugged and quipped, "I figure it's short for the Foderation. You know, like a collection - in this case, a collection of good writers."

The reason for the change seems to have been inspired by the recent convening of the for-now FOBs to the home of Tolkien Boy, which has never before hosted a FOB-related event. The group, which meets every Thursday night to discuss writing that has been done by the members of the group during the week, gathered this week to review one story, one screenplay, and one poem.

Despite the absence of Master Fob, the collected FOB still began the festivities with their ritualistic hand gestures which are meant to represent the holy triad of rock, paper, and scissors. Edgy Killer Bunny won the contest, which meant that he immediately channeled the spirit of Th., who read to us half of a story in which a mallshop curator gets rather excited about a room strewn with newspaper clippings, if you know what we mean (wink, wink). Th., a one-time physical presence at FOB, was then alternately praised and mocked - his most egregious mistake, of course, being that he used the adjective everday to modify the verb come when EVERYONE who has EVER had an ENGLISH CLASS knows that ADVERBS, in this case the TWO WORD ADVERB "EVERY DAY," are the things used for modifying verbs. Despite this crippling fault, and despite the fact that the universe combined to keep Th.'s story from being read (in the form of ringing phones, distracting conversations, and dying air conditioners), the storyline was praised, the artistry was envied, and the purple glasses worn by the main character were coveted. Melyngoch added a touch of intellectualism when she informed all of us that Mobile, Alabama, was not, in fact, a city in South America, but rather a semantic prototype. True to his everbudding form, Edgy made a your mom joke on this, sadly unpublishable.

After Tolkien Boy's prescriptivist body was revivified, the FOBsters slogged through the synopsis of his screenplay, in which Carpenterites work through their various issues to find love, harmony, and the secret of art (hint: it ain't the sacred feminine), all while trying not to get too emotionally involved with each other. Because he had preambled his rushed reading with an announcement that he was feeling especially vulnerable, the FOBsters were kind to Tolkien Boy and gave him a popsicle. Actually, that was the Marchioness.

Speaking of the Marchioness, and we will, she finished the evening with a poem parallelling Maya Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman,"taking the poet to task for creating an unfair and sexist standard of gender-specific behaviors and attributes that the modern woman simply cannot keep up with. The poem was a howling success, not the least because it actually mentions bra sizes, a feat which not even masters like Whitman or Dickinson ever mastered properly.

When asked about their feelings about the acronym change, the other members of FOB were violently various. "Mems how I was in Yuba recently?" said Melyngoch, speaking in a language we must assume is Slavic in origin. "People shrug too much," said editorgirl, obviously making a statement on the recent rise of apathy in the voting public. "I can't parallel park for the life of me," replied the Marchioness, indicating that she, for one, had no such apathy. Edgy brought the whole thing to a head, however, when he swore to write the next chapter of the awe-inspiring story of the FOBbers (or perhaps the FODders) within the next three days.

Meanwhile, the acronym battle rages. Will it be the conservative FOB that carries the day, or the fresher, younger FOD? In either case, the future of FOB is destined to be one that we, as reporters, and you, as our readers, are going to watch closely in the weeks to come.