I think Bert's point was about the drain cleaner with it being highly toxic and all. I wasn't sure about including that myself. It's basically a placeholder til I can think of something funnier.

I'm glad you're enjoying this Bert, and thanks for reading. I can feel it spiralling out of control as I'm writing it. I keep having to reel it in and get back on track. It's very helpful to get some feedback along the way.

Part 3 may take a while and I doubt it will be the final part as I previously thought

Quoted from TC Taylor I think that Ed would pull it off high the entire thing, High people think clear something believe it or not

Umm...case in point?

Just teasing, man.

The too high thing was a pun (over the top / too high), get it?  You'll get no hypocritical judgements from this corner

My main point was that, yeah, drain cleaner will kill you.

My tiny southern brain miss it completly  My bad

I just finished part one and look forward to two.  I'd like to make a couple of suggestions.

Stretch out his life going down the tubes a little bit.  Having Matt lose both his girlfriend and his job in the same episode is a bit much.  Perhaps you can show him at the verge of losing his job (receiving his final warning as it was).  He can get fired in the second episode as he tries to reconcile with Amy.

The whole thing with the pellet gun seemed too non-challant for me.  The girl shoots a pellet gun at Matt regularly and Mom is just interested in grabbing his ass.    Maybe it's just not Matt's style, but a rock through the window would cure the girl of her behavioral problems.

The Prophet could be an interesting character, though I'm not sure how just yet.

The conversation at the end between Matt and Ed does a lot to define Ed.  It shows that he's more than just a stoner.  He should stay like this, where he'll have an occasional bit of wisdom to share.

I'm not sure where you're going with this series, but I could easily see this as something both comical and dark (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer).  Looking forward to part two.


Phil

Thanks for your comments, Phil, much appreciated.

You're right about the pellet gun incident, I believe Bert picked me up on that too. I did submit a revised draft with a rewrite of that scene but I don't think it was ever updated on here. Also, the reason he doesn't retaliate is somewhat explained in part two.

I did worry about cramming too much into part one but I wanted to get to the pigeons by the end of act one. I'll work on that when I get around to tying it all together as a feature.

As for the Prophet, we'll have to wait and see. I have a few ideas.

Glad you enjoyed it, Phil

I wouldn't say that you were cramming everything in there.  I'm just saying that you shouldn't fire Matt right off the bat.  Have him work at a frustrating job a bit before he's sacked.


Phil

Just bumping this up in case anyone else wants to read it. I've almost finished writing this up as a feature entitled 'The Coop'. Quite a few things have changed since I submitted it here but any more feedback on this early draft would be much appreciated.

Hey, that's cool.

I seem to recall it took 30+ pages before we had a sense of where this story was going, so be sure that got tightened up a bit.

And a new title...thank god!  M.A.T.P. always sounded like a children's book to me.

Thanks Bert, I'll keep that in mind.

It seems there is still a problem with the format of episode two due to it being an rtf file. I've resubmitted both episodes as one html file so it should be up soon.

Martin,

Just finished reading 'Matt among the Pigeons', and I really enjoyed it.  I was going to suggest combining the two and turning it into a feature, but once I went back and looked at the board I saw that you had already intended to do it, so no good advice there.

When he came out of his house and noticed all of the bird droppings I started to think about the scene in Mel Brooks' 'High Anxiety', and I was just waiting for something like that to happen.  No dice, but you did introduce the Tammy character, who is well written.

I definitely see comparisons to 'Shaun of the Dead', and obviously 'The Birds', but the combination of the two works well together.  Overall, the story kept me interested, and I look forward to reading the last chapter.

Matt Among The Pigeons is now The Coop