Welcome to Word Enchilada S01E02

We write prototypes, eat enchiladas and get in fights

What?

A microquest for Everything2 in the spirit of Game Jams

How?

The updated rules are in Word Enchilada Rules, but here’s the TL;DR

1. Just before the Quest starts, a theme will be revealed. Please don’t spoil it for yourself, only read it after the official start of the Enchilada¹;
2. You have 48 hours to write a prototype² that follows³ the theme;
3. You post the prototype in this node;
4. ???
5. Profit! You will receive fabulous prizes⁴

After the Quest is over, you’re encouraged to give the noder below you some feedback on their prototype. Bear in mind: the goal of Word Enchiladas is to write for fun and outside of one’s comfort zone, so be constructive and be kind.

Theme!

The theme for this Enchilada is:

JVGUBHG PBAGEBY > E2 Rot13 Encoder

The suggested nodetype is:

essay

Start and end times

The Word Enchilada starts at March 12, 2021 12:00 PM and ends at March 14, 2021 12:00 PM in whatever time zone you observe.

Notes for today: Enchiladas will now happen every fortnight until further notice. This means that the Xmas Special will fall on September. Yes, I like that.

Participants

Closing comments

2021-03-30 19:22 GMT-0600: These days things got very dark inside my head, which led me to take forever reading your entries. Thank you for taking part :)

1. The idea being that you shouldn’t prepare anything beforehand, and that you should only have 48 hours to work on your writeup. But I’m just a footnote, not a policeman.

2. The word “Prototype” is important here: you’re expected to write a quick draft, not a perfect, well edited writeup.

3. The phrase “Following the theme” is purposefully ambiguous. Be creative :)

4. Actually, some GP, depending on how much the E2 gods can spare… Updated details on the Word Enchilada Rules

There's only one way to be in control when it comes to the time and place of one's own death. Let's not go there.

There have been a few times in my life when I feel certain that I should have died, and didn't. This story is about one of those which stands out quite starkly in my mental movie of it. The movie is based on a true story but I know perception is a slippery slope. In my perception there was a moment when the universe stood still

If working on top of the second tallest mountain in Arkansas has its perks, it also has some hazards. One of the hazards is wind and weather extremes. I came to work knowing that an intense weather event had taken place. I knew this because it had been a bad storm at my home, at the foot of the mountain. Much worse a thousand feet higher; that is pretty much a given.

As soon as I clocked in, I hurried down to the water plant. No outage had been reported, but electric relays "don't like" power spikes and I wanted to make sure everything there was good. Pulling up to the plant, I noticed that the bathhouse, right next door, had no lights. Might just be a tripped breaker. I walked around to the back of the building, where the breaker box was located. The door of the panel was wide open and, as I walked up to it, I heard the voice of Joe, the Park Electrician. What Joe said didn't really register at first, as I reached up and grabbed the metal door. The door wouldn't budge and Joe's words registered suddenly. "That's HOT". It was while my bare hand was on the metal door that I recall having a strange déjà vu moment where time seemed to stand still. I then immediately let go of the door to the breaker panel and went and found a short length of PVC pipe. Bringing it back to the panel I wedged the pipe between the door and the wall and popped it loose with some effort as Joe stood by, telling me to be careful. We were showered with sparks as the panel door broke loose. It had blown open and had hit the meter, which was mounted alongside, with enough force to smash the glass cover and had been securely welded to the contacts inside.

I didn't get shocked that day. I didn't even feel a tingle of electricity. Still, something weird happened that morning that I can't quite put my finger on. We all like to feel like we are in control. Deep down, many of us know that it's all a matter of perception.

WITHOUT CONTROL

This is a true story. 

During the summer before my sophomore year in college, I worked at a small Mexican food joint. It wasn't a chain -- just a local place called Hacienda Enchilada. It was more popular than it should've been. The food was not good (except for our curly fries, which actually were amazing) (yes, we sold curly fries at a fast food Tex-Mex restaurant) and the prices were higher than they should've been. 

Nevertheless, it was popular. Really popular. Especially during lunchtime. It was pretty busy after five, but lunch was when things were always busy. Lots and lots of customers, lots and lots of work. I never figured out why -- unless it was the curly fries. 

And the owner was a jackass. If you've worked in fast food or retail, I bet you know the type. Cheap, mean, arrogant, dumb, racist, sexist, etc. Arthur was white, and he desperately hated Hispanics, so I have no idea why he wanted to run a Mexican food restaurant. 

There was no single job in the place. Sometimes you worked the grill, sometimes you ran the counter, sometimes you ran the drive-thru, sometimes you mopped. Our manager was Louis. He was the owner's brother. He was an asshole, too, but he wasn't nearly as bad as Arthur was. Louis worked his ass off during the lunch rush and helped clean the place before we closed down at night. He was still an asshole, and he lost his temper with us almost as often as Arthur did. But he kept working there, 'cause he hoped to take over the business eventually. 

It was a bad job in a bad restaurant, but I liked all my other coworkers. Everyone seemed cool, everyone pulled together to get the jobs done, and I still think they were all genuinely great people. I can't remember their names anymore, but I loved working with them. 

And one day, Arthur came in -- just before the lunch rush, no less -- and announced that none of us were getting paid that week. Not delayed paychecks, but no paychecks at all. 

"You're all stupid," he yelled. "You're all dumb, you all suck, and none of you deserve to get paid. I'm a producer! You're all parasites! You should be paying me! You should worship the ground I goddamn fucking walk on!"

"Arthur, you gotta pay people," Louis said. "I don't care if they're all shitty employees. You gotta pay 'em." 

"Fuck you, Louis!" Arthur yelled. "You're not getting paid either!"

So everyone quit. Basically all at the same time. Including Louis. 

"You can't quit, you bastards!" Arthur was screaming at us by now. "You've got to get ready for the lunch rush! Get back to work! We can't give up that much business! I own you, goddamn it!"

And then the clock ticked over to 12 noon, and the lunch crowd started pouring in. 

"Fine!" he yelled. "You're all useless! I don't need you! I can do this better than all of you put together!"

He did alright for a couple minutes, because we'd already made a lot of our more popular menu items and put 'em under the heat lamps before the rush started. But it wasn't long before he ran out of the pre-prepared food. And then there was no one else to run the grill, no one else to run the register, no one else to run the drive-thru. 

I'd love to tell you exactly what happened after that, but all of us split as fast as we could. Yes, it would've been funny to watch, but we were all mad, we all hated working there, and we all wanted to get the hell out as soon as we could. 

We only found out what happened on the news that night, when the local TV station aired footage of the Hacienda Enchilada burning to the ground. Apparently, Arthur lost control of everything sometime around 12:20, had a screaming fit at the customers, tried to sling a tray full of hot grease at them, and ended up setting the kitchen on fire. There were only minor injuries from people trying to get out of the restaurant, thank god.

But Arthur spent over a decade in prison. And he deserved it. 

Louis started his own restaurant, the Taco Temple. It was also bad, and it closed down after two years. Don't know where Louis is, but I hope he's not in management. 

I still know how to make the best curly fries in town. 

I am not confident writing fiction or poetry. So, my entry here will be a story.

By the year 2034, a combination of events and trends had merged to make nuclear power the default energy source for much of the world. Firstly, an increasing number of less developed countries had rallied behind Iran to demand that the nuclear powers must fulfil their own obligations under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and share nuclear technology for peaceful uses. This was strengthened by the rising sea levels which it was increasingly clear would affect all parts of the world negatively. The tensions caused by climate refugees led to small scale conflicts that made it difficult for countries to agree to share facilities and thus many countries insisted on building solo generating plants that they could control. Finally, resentment against historical colonial countries and the multinational companies headquartered there had enabled countries to take control of their mines, thus loosening restrictions over uranium trade and production.

In all this turmoil, Nigeria and its northern neighbor, Niger Republic had been forced by their circumstances to cooperate. The Atlantic Ocean had eaten away large swathes of Nigeria's coast. Given its reliance on declining crude oil sales, it had moved quickly (which was unusual), to strike a deal with the uranium exporting Niger Republic to build a plant at Lokoja and share the power. Niger had accepted because while it had uranium, it had insufficient water and (more importantly) money, to build a plant on its own. While there were a few Nigeriennes in the staff, most of the employees were Nigerians and that was the cause of the problem.

Niger Republic did not see itself as the junior partner as it provided the uranium, without which, the entire plant was just another building. Nigeria viewed this intransigence with irritated amusement, considering Niger's demands that the plant have dual heads as ludicrous and unnecessary. Further, considering that 95% of the staff were Nigerians, working in Nigeria, it was only logical that the person in charge be one who understands and is understood by the majority of the staff. Further, the plant and power evacuation lines were built with Nigerian money and title to that was not something it was willing to share. Niger did not agree and kept pressing its claims because power is nothing without control.

The piece before mine was by Jet Poop. I score it a 5. It quickly caught my attention and held it to the end. An engaging story.

Which one is 12 PM? Is that noon, or midnight? If it is the first, I only have ten minutes to finish this! So this essay will be abbreviated, but that is in part due to time zones, something that I don't have control over.

I also spent much of Friday and Saturday sleeping off the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, that caused me great fatigue. My first shot. Which makes me think that my Covid-19 last summer that I got a test for was a false negative, because the reaction is supposed to be worth when you have had it previously. I didn't select the Moderna vaccine, or the date, or the time, and I certainly didn't select the type of test I had last summer, or getting Covid-19 in the first place. Those things were out of my control.

Oh, and guess what happened an hour before I was going to get my shot? I got a letter in the mail, I opened and read it. The letter was from a collections agency, saying I needed to pay 700-odd dollars, including fees and interest, for a 600 dollar bill I owed to a landscaping company. Now, I live in a one bedroom apartment and landscaping is not something I do, so. This seemed improbable. But what do you do when you get a letter from a collections agency an hour before a vaccine appointment? I called the state consumer complaint agency. I called the landscaping company, who confirmed they didn't know me. I went and got vaccinated. I came back, called my bank. My credit cards weren't compromised. I wrote a letter of dispute, on notebook paper, and ran to the post office, right after getting vaccinated, to mail it away certified. But what will this do? I spent 5 dollars and an hour of post-vaccine, exhausted time, mailing this letter away, to dispute a claim that is prima facie, ridiculous. But what recourses do I have? Someone can make a clerical error, and it is my job, apparently, to fix it. And, if I don't, and even if I do, dispute it, it can ruin my ability to seek housing for what, a decade? This erroneous claim has created a labyrinth that I must run, while doing so many other things. But like the clock that is now two minutes to noon, this is something that [without control|I have no control over.

What is a "Basic Bitch?" The broadest definition would be a woman or man who for the most part enjoy only the most popular and mainstream aspects of society and culture. They rarely stray from the norm, thus earning the unfortunate-sounding tag of being The Basic Bitch.
Occasionally the term will be thrown out by individuals who just don't like someone as a means to discount them with two simple words, although it may not follow the true definition.

My belief is if you are the definitive Basic Bitch, you shouldn't be bothered by this compartmentalization. In fact one should embrace it, because you like whatever the fuck you like and that's OKAY.

Earning Basic Bitch status would mean that the majority- not all- of one's preferences must be considered mainstream. Let's say 75% or so. Having less than 50% would put this badge in great doubt, considering most people, if clinically alive, will like at least some of the most basic of pop-culture that exists.

Here's a list of some cultural biggies that fall into this category: Starbucks; the Harry Potter series; Yoga; 50 Shades of Gray; Twilight; Taylor Swift; Justin Timberlake; Ed Sheeran; Sleepless in Seattle or The Notebook- any enormously beloved romantic comedy, as well as any summer blockbuster movie; simple but classy (preppy) clothing; always staying on trend... you get the idea.

I must state that I have no problem myself with anything on this type of list- it is offered as objectively possible from myself and other generally accepted items for the category. In fact I like a couple of them myself.

Would I classify myself as a Basic Bitch? No. I'm a sprinkle of basics with a large smattering of quirky and off-beat preferences that adds to my already complicated existence.

Would you consider yourself a Basic Bitch? Be honest. If so would you consider it a negative? You shouldn't. Consider it empowering to embrace whatever category society places you into. You are who you are, right? Only think about this as well- try not to judge others harshly for not being like you. The outsiders, hipsters, punks, oddities and eccentrics deserve the same respect you do.

#themoreyouknow

Hope you found this wu helpful regarding such a serious and possibly outdated cultural term.