Thursday, October 31, 2002

 

Happy Halloween.

Boo!

by Fred 1:46 PM

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

 

"Dear Fu'hunarkle... what the hell is a fu'hunarkle?"
He was standing there, holding the letter.
"It says Uncle, Dad. Don't be an ass." I hated this, being critiqued like I was in school. This was my free time, and I didn't need a teacher, I needed Dad to tell me what he thought of the letter I'd written to his brother. I think that's why the epithets came out, to sort of differentiate between school and home. I'd never call my teacher an ass.
"Watch your mouth there, little guy. I can still spank you." It's the kind of threat that we all know means he can't. I can still spank you. The desperate cry of the parent of large offspring.
"Sorry, Dad." A flat reply for an empty threat. Appropriate.
"Dear Fu'hunarkle, I'm forreag chor che lacheaneff of chef refponfe... If your handwriting gets any 'flowerier' I'm gonna have to start burying it in the garden. This is illegible."
"Your eyes are just bad, and I said I'm gonna type it. I just wanted you to preview it to see if it's appropriate. This is delicate." Aaah, lies. They pour from my mouth.
"Oh... hmm... Delicate. He hated the dog, you know." I know. I know because I hated the dog too, and its being dead didn't make it any more likeable.
"No he didn't! He loved bixie, and I did too!" He named the dog Bill Bixbie. Oh, that clever uncle of mine. My clever family. We all hated that dog.
"Hmm."
That was all I could take. I snatched the letter from him and slunk off to my room. He was right, the writing was awfully flowery. All the letter said was Dear Uncle, Your dog died, Sorry, Love, etc. A pointless letter, the punctuation for a stupid dog's life. I still think it was appropriate that the letter be illegible. The dog was only barely a dog, the letter was only technically a letter.
We never missed either. The letter was lost in the post, but my uncle never cared. I called him a week later to say I was sorry and he didn't know what I meant.
He and Dad laughed over the "Dear Fu'hunarkle" thing at Christmas. I heard Dad on the phone, but I don't think he knew I was there. He called me the "Fruity one," when asked which son it was who committed that letter. It hurt, but I knew it was true. And I didn't even have a dog to tell about it.

by MisterNihil 5:44 PM

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

 

Evening was the best time to make progress. The lab was almost always empty, and quiet, finally quiet. Marla liked the hum of the incubators better than the hubbub of technicians and grad students. She placed a specimen sample under the microscope and adjusted the slide into view.

Reaching to her right for her notebook, Marla noticed an editorial someone had clipped. "Rights for the Unborn," it clamored. They didn't understand; Marla shook her head. College student activists looking for a cause to rally behind, only because their parents had rallied behind causes, always tried to put a soul into a collection of cells. Might as well grant rights to a tumor. Marla fished under the editorial for her notebook.

When she returned to the incubators to collect another sample, she tapped on the glass and grinned ghoulishly at the slack face inside. "You don't need civil liberties, now, do you?" Her voice sounded strange to her in the empty lab. "God doesn't give souls to things grown in tanks. --Do you, God?" She squinted up at the buzzing fluourescents.

In answer, the buzzing increased, then dipped, as a power surge shut down the lab hardware. Marla collected her wits as a UPS began to beep pitiously, shrugging into its duty. A stab of alarm struck her, and she rushed to inspect what damage may have been done to the specimens. Fighting the crowding shadows thrown by the emergency lighting, she peered into the incubator window, directly into the manic eyes of the unborn.

by Sharon 11:59 PM

 

Bernie only has one lung. The took the other one when the cancer got him, filled him up with tubes and cogs and wires and patched him up, good as new. You can hardly tell just by looking at him. He still breathes a little funny and holds his side sometimes, but the doctors say it’s a miracle he survived at all. The nurses joke and call him future boy. Bernie doesn’t see it like that, and he doesn't laugh, but he lets the doctors have their say. They hook him to their machines, marvel at their own ingenuity, poke and ask him where it hurts, and Bernie doesn’t say a thing. You learn to accept a lot about a person once they’ve saved your life.

Although sometimes, he worries about the donor.

“It was one of those things,” he says. “A robot.”

The doctors had to work quick. They’d expected to salvage at least a piece of Bernie’s lung, only to get him on the table and find out it was already too blackened and dead to be of much use. They had to look around for other options. Sometimes you make do with whatever you’ve got. In this case, it was one of the robot maintenance crew that cleans the hospital. They’ve got these air converters inside them that, as it turns out, are kind of a perfect fit. Sure, some people say the robots might be sentient, and there were some protests when the news got out, but the docs have been pretty good about keeping Bernie’s name out of the paper.

What he’s worried about now, I don’t know.

by Fred 12:39 PM

 

-begin transmission-
Why der ship crashed
By chipper.

Mungo sits inna front. I sits inna back. Dats how yer fly one'a deez. Mungo does da wingses an' I does da engines anna guns. Mungo tells me what ta shoot, I tells Mungo what ta aim fer. Derz no better way ta fly one'a deez tings. I seed 'em flied wit tree but dey fights, an' I seed one guy get in'a ting an' fly by his'elf. He lasted half-a-minnit inna air.
So Mungo sits inna front. I sits inna back. Mungo worries fer da wings. I worries fer da engines. So ya see why I tink prollem when Mungo leans his head back an' sez "Wuzzat Soun?"
Mungo gots a prollem. Dat's jus' how he talk.
I sez I dunno, its'a engine, an' Mungo sez "Izzit broked?"
I sez nah, we're mebbe tree quart low, no prollem. He sez "Needa Renk?"
Mungo don' say Wrench too good, but I know what dat means. I sez nah, I gotsa wrench, it fell inna gears twenny minutes back. He sez "Herdit."
Mebbe its'a whatchakall, axent. I dunno. Dats how Mungo talk.
So dats when da erl start leakin' on Mungo ann'e sez "Stobber," which I tink mean Stop it. I starts ta' patch da hose where da erl come out, ann'e sez "Stobber," again only real excited like. I gets da hose workin' an' he sez "Stobber" again, like I ain't heared him. I sez I stop dit, whatcha wan', a rag?
So he points outda winda an' derz da stopper from der gas tank fallin' off der ship wit der gas comin' after it.
So dat's why we crashed. In loo of fillin' out dis Twenny-seben-Bee-stroke-six ting, dey tole me ter send a report an tell why we needs'a nudder ship.
I blames der fuel-monkeys fer da loss. If dey'd put in der stopper like dey sposda der ship'd still be in der air.
So we, dat bein' Me an Mungo, is requisit'nin' an'udder ship ter fly as we still ain't bombed der emny base we were spos'da wit der last assig'm'nt.

-end transmission-
intercepted 10:29:02:10:00:01
Transcribed by pfc. Durian Morningsong

by MisterNihil 10:00 AM

Monday, October 28, 2002

 

"It's too god-damn early."

A pause.

"mumble mumble"

Another pause.

"What?"

One more.

"'said don' knock it. 's daylights savin' times."
"You're not making any sense."
"nope."
"You need to get up. It's too god-damn early. That means its time to get up."
"go'way."
"No, you need to get up. The sun isn't up, so it's time for you to get up. You are already late for work."
"'m not. work in't for 'nhour."
"Work already started. Everyone else is there. Every time they walk past your cube, they shake their heads and say 'That one's not long for the company.' Your job is at risk and you're not even awake."
"'m'not a'risk. nob'dy else wan's my job."
"Get up. It's too goddamn early and you should already be showered and in the car, groggily heading off for another fulfilling day of mind-numbing fun."
"'m'not gettin' up. 's fi'thirdy. 'larm clock han't rung."
"You have to pee. Right now. Get up."
"stupid 'nternal 'larm. stupid dayligh' savin' times."
"Yes, absolutely. Stupid me, stupid time, but you need to get up."

by MisterNihil 11:40 PM

 

daylight

by Fred 7:24 AM

Friday, October 25, 2002

 

“Let’s see, we’ve got cat wrangling or cat herding or…well this is weird. Cat juggling?”

“I’ll take that one,” he said. They loaded the memory chip into his brain – he had already signed the release, let them install the shunt and affix the necessary wires to his skull – and he felt a strange feeling wash over him.

“This may be a little surreal,” the technician said. She adjusted a dial. “Apparently it’s from the cat’s perspective.”

He could hardly hear her anymore, though. He was mid-flight, a dizzying rush of terror and then plonk back in the juggler’s outstretched hand. Again he was thrown, and again gravity spat him back down. Applause rang briefly in his ears and he meowed. The juggler gently stroked the fur atop his head.

“For my next trick,” the old man said, “I will need a volunteer who is not afraid of fire.”

The vision faded. The younger man sat up in the chair.

“Why’d you do that?” he asked the technician. He felt vaguely like pouncing.

“Sorry,” she said. “We’re not insured for that kind of thing.”

“But it was just getting interesting.”

“Yeah, that’s usually what happens. But we can only show so much. Government regulations.”

He grumbled. “Well, what else have you got?” he asked.

“Sorry,” she said again, “but your ten minutes are up.”

by Fred 10:35 AM

 

OK, I thought of this on the day that is actually today, but will be day-before-yesterday by the time this posts. Does that make sense, or should I try again?

I'll try again.

Look! Topic!

Cat Wrangling
or
Cat Herding

by MisterNihil 6:27 AM

Thursday, October 24, 2002

 

An open letter to Mr. Bill Watterson, in reaction to a reprint of "CARTOONIST BILL WATTERSON RETURNS TO A CLOISTERED LIFE" from The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, Dec 20, 1998

Dear Mr. Watterson:

I see unlicensed "Calvin and Hobbes" images everywhere I go, reprinted strips tacked up in co-workers cubicles, snippets of tiger wisdom quoted on websites and white boards. We have not forgotten you; we could never forget you. And, from what I can glean from a few cryptic articles, that is a terribly upsetting idea to you, who seems to value his privacy and anonymity above all else.

I respect your desire for privacy. By all means, stay hidden, stay invisible. But please, write again. Publish again. Share your unique insight on our world in the voices of new characters and new media. It is hard to bear your silence.

Do you understand how you affected us? For a decade you gave me something to smile about or ponder or cry over every day. What a magnificent gift.

Today, especially, the strip that has always seemed the most poignant is particularly relevant. In that Sunday strip, Calvin and Hobbes have decided to play "war." Each armed with a suction-cup dart gun, they face off... and annihilate each other immediately, simultaneously. The parting thought, I wish I could shout on the White House lawn: "Kind of a stupid game, isn't it."

I miss your insight, Mr. Watterson. Perhaps Calvin and Hobbes are now having grand adventures in the Yukon; no longer will unsuspecting townspeople be trampled by a Godzilla-sized Calvin; cardboard boxes remain sedate, inert, and corrugated; snowmen almost never come to life; and tuna fish no longer draws any quarry to my tiger trap. Still, there are stories to tell, and I hope someday you will tell more of yours.

With sincere thanks,
Sharon J. Cichelli

by Sharon 3:24 PM

 

The old barn looks forlorn. I don't mean that the roof is sagging (although it is), and the floors droop (although they do), and you can see too much daylight through the walls from inside (although you can). I mean, it looks forlorn. There is a real sadness that seeps out of the building.
The grass around the barn has turned brown, not even bothering to try to get greened up for spring. The melancholia has spread. I worry that one day it'll make it up the ridge and down to the house, but for now that's a long way off. The house is still happy and warm, lit by night and busy by day, human and animal traffick still thick; but the barn stands empty. The horses want nothing to do with it. The cows keep their distance. Even the dogs seem to know something is wrong. You won't see a rat there at any time of day, and you won't attract so much as a gnat with a bright flashlight at night. It'd be alright to spend an evening there on occasion, if it weren't for the moaning.
At night, usually around sunset (I hear that's when he used to come around), a low creaking moan comes up from below the floorboards of the barn. It scares the dogs, and the children don't like it much either. The cows have taken to crooning along with it, but the horses clear out when the sun gets low.
It was a whirlwind love affair, and since that ogre of a shed left our barn, nothing's been the same.

by MisterNihil 11:36 AM

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

 

A fly is sitting on a windowsill, looking out at the world in general, and at one cloud in particular. The cloud is shaped like a pear, which would be absolutely unremarkable, except the fly has seen the cloud, and realized that it is shaped like a pear. Somewhere in its little fly mind, it has made the connection between a piece of fruit; the reproductive body of a tree; a spheroid of cellulose and sugar, bearing seeds for the tree's future generation, its offspring; and a cloud; an aglomeration of water vapor and dust; one step in the water cycle that allows life to continue on this blue sphere-

-OK, hold it. First of all, that's twice you've used "sphere," in the same LONG, run-on pointless sentence, and second, flies can't see that far. They're olfactory and vibrational detecters. And they can't see through glass. They don't detect it well because it doesn't give off a smell (famously so), not because it's clear. It's not like babies running into windows (hee hee. Babies running into windows.)
Man, that's just sick. It's not cute to see babies suffer, and you shouldn't say so. You'll get these nice posters in trouble on the site. What if some 'regulatory entity'
-huh huh. En-titty. huh huh,
SEE? That's what I'm talking about. Cut that out. Anyway, I mention that it's remarkable that the fly can see the cloud. I covered that.
-Nuh uh. You just say it's remarkable that the fly can draw the connection. You never said anything about the fly being the farthest sighted fly in the history of all flies ever.
Sheesh. Give it a rest. You just have no concept of what makes a good story.
-Whatever. I've writtern better stories than this slop, and I've done it in my sleep.
We've all written neat stories in our sleep. The trick is waking up and writing them down, and their still being nifty.
-Man. Just shut up, Mall Voter.
That's uncalled for. Yeah, I voted at the mall, but that doesn't mean anything. The state of Texas actually did something worthwhile and had early voting in the mall, and I decided to participate in the democratic process-
-huh huh. Demo-Crap. Huh Huh.
Cut that shit out.
-huh huh. shit out. huh huh.
You're annoying, you know that. I'm not listening, and I'm going to finish my story.

The fly hung on the window pane in thoughtful silence, when a big, fat idiot with a fly swatter walked up and destroyed it, simply because of nothing-on-TV-induced boredom. Perhaps, had there been no idiotic internal critic to walk up to the fly and kill it, they story could have had a happy ending, or indeed an ending at all. As it stood, there could be no ending, as the story was lost in a torrent of poorly worded self-criticism.

-Dude. Not cool.

by MisterNihil 6:32 PM

 

"Hold it," Meeks said without a trace of sympathy.

Arrowythe scowled and shifted in his seat. "But--"

"We've collected the payload," Meeks cut in. "Deal with it. We'll dock with the cruiser in twenty minutes."

Arrowythe sneered at the strange carved idol in his lap. Glass eyes like a muddy creek stared fixedly out of its little stone head. Arrowythe ground his teeth and hated the little stone head. He tried again: "Listen, I'll just--"

"Sit." Meeks was having none of it. "Go nowhere. Hold it."

Arrowythe frowned sullenly while Meeks piloted the 'sloop towards the inviting opening in the hull of the starcruiser. It was too valuable, this chunky, bulbous relic from that forgotten, backwater planet, to be left unattended, Meeks knew. Too deadly, as well.

"Forget it!" Arrowythe recklessly unsnapped his harness and set the idol unceremoniously on the control panel in front of him. "Going!" he called, already three steps towards the head, unable to hold it any longer.

"Wha--? No!" Meeks had time to draw one final breath before the glowing azure chips of ice in the idol's stone sockets filled his view, filled their ship, filled eternity.

by Sharon 1:14 PM

 

“Hold it. You were supposed to write something about nimbus, weren’t you?”

“I would have if you had rescued me, but I was lost in the shadows.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but in a perfect world -- ”

“Oh, don’t give me that. I was lost for days. I couldn’t write.”

“Then it was all for nothing.”

“Redundant annoyance?”

“I’m not sure what that means, but yeah, it’s frustrating.”

“Well, there’s no justice. It’s not a perfect world.”

“Didn’t Burl Ives say that?”

“I think it was Lawrence Welk.”

"Oh. Well, I guess there's always tomorrow."

by Fred 9:32 AM

Sunday, October 20, 2002

 

“Well this place is old
It feels just like a beat up truck
I turn the engine but the engine doesn't turn
Well it smells of cheap wine and cigarettes
This place is always such a mess
Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn”
- The Wallflowers, “One Headlight”

My boss, as I found myself writing just the other day, is recognized as an international authority on propellants and combustion. This means surprisingly little to me. Although the research has some interesting applications and I admire his devotion to it, I don’t pretend to understand much, if any, of it. The equations, which it seems I am always scanning and rebuilding for one project or another, are not much more than meaningless numbers and variables to me. That there are patterns and purpose in these variables is obvious; their meaning, however, eludes me.

And that’s okay. I was an English major. Spray statistics and mobile granular bed combustion and aluminum nanoparticles aren’t really part of my vocabulary. Shakespeare never talks about gel propellants. I’m sometimes amused that my name is tucked into the acknowledgements page of a book called Combustion of Energetic Materials. But, even after two and a half years in this office (one year of that full-time), it’s not as if I understand any of the papers contained in that book. I recognize the notes, but I don’t know the song. I know which words are important, but I don’t know (or even always care) what they mean.

If anything, I think “combustion” means less to me now than it did before I took this job. It’s strange that using a word can rob it of its meaning. It isn’t evocative of anything else. It doesn’t suggest stories or poems or anything, really. It just is. It’s just something that I type, like so many other words, and it doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.

by Fred 11:59 PM

Friday, October 18, 2002

 

In a perfect world...

by Fred 6:11 AM

Thursday, October 17, 2002

 

It has been said in some meetings lately that we should make ourselves as valuable as possible—taking classes and taking on more work. The unstated implication is "or else you'll get laid off."

At the same time, I hear from people who aren't managers that priorities are an important thing to remember, especially when companies start laying people off willy-nilly.

One of my fellow Toastmasters gave a speech yesterday. Her life had become uncertain, her children grown, so she immersed herself in her work, spending 12 to 13 hours at the office each day. She was the perfect little worker bee.

And then she got in a car accident that rolled her car over. She took a few weeks off from work and really reassessed. She still likes her job; she still works hard. But it isn't all that she is, any more. Work has taken a more appropriate position in her priority list.

She's not the only one, either. Wise folks tell me that defining yourself solely in terms of your job is a sure route to suicide when the ax falls. When the thing that you are gets taken from you, with a vague implication that you are unworthy of it, what do you have left? Far better to have your job be something you do, rather than the thing that you are.

I remember when I first met Jonathan, he asked what my job was, and I made him clarify: what I'm paid to do, or what I am? At the time, I was paid to be a secretary. I have been, and always will be, a Writer. Nowadays, programmer fits in there somewhere, though I'm not sure how much of it sits on one side or the other.

It comes to mind currently because I am—I was going to say, "working very hard" on this project, but that's not it. I am stressing very hard, and that is keeping me from successfully working hard, making me more behind and more stressed. But what I wonder about, while I'm spending so much stomach lining on this project, is what good does it do? What do I have at the end of it? Probably, I'll have a good tool. I hope that I'll also have a job. It's unlikely that I'll have any more job security. And it is guaranteed that I won't have made a thing that really matters outside of my company or, really, outside of my user base. So I help a computer manufacturer save money. So what? It seems to be all for nothing.

by Sharon 11:59 PM

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

 

There was an alligator on the escalator.
If it’s not there now, it’ll be there later.
It’s like a crocodile and it's hostile,
So watch your step if you see it smile.
You could take the elevator to confuse the gator
Or find some meat with which to bait her,
But if such cunning guile is not your style,
We'll be right down in just a little while.

by Fred 4:48 PM

 

the up escalator

by Sharon 2:58 AM

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

 

Where did he go?
I lost track last week, but the I saw him again on my way to work. He was spitting on the sidewalk in my path. There are cultures, ancient ones still extant, which would justify my killing him for that. I didn't. Ours isn't one of them. If only, if only I could get him to follow me to Morrocco.
He kept on walking. I don't think he knows I saw him. It was kind of one of those moments where ones eyes must fall on something as one expectorates on the path of an innocent, and they happened to fall on the innocent in question.
I kept walking too. He spits there every day. I walk past every day. I see the spit every day. I never knew it was him. Damn.

That's it.

by MisterNihil 11:52 PM

 

What did you say? I wasn't listening. Was it something along the lines of

Redundant Annoyance?

See? It's not all Burl Ives and Snapdragons.

by MisterNihil 2:02 AM

Sunday, October 13, 2002

 

Sometimes I have ideas for stories that I don’t know how to start writing. Ten minutes and a topic is usually enough time to think of something, but that something isn’t always a beginning, or even anything resembling real words. Sometimes all I have is the seed for a story, an idea that I need more time to develop.

Take, for instance, “you had to be there.” First, I imagined a time traveler arriving from the past in order to force someone to be somewhere – or, rather, somewhen -- where they weren’t originally. “You had to be there,” the time traveler would tell this other, although I could quickly tell that ten minutes wasn’t going to be enough time to think up why. Maybe the man the time traveler abducts is Lee Harvey Oswald. Maybe he’s trying to ensure that Oswald is in Dallas the morning that Kennedy is shot. Maybe. I don't know. I already wrote a story a little like that. Ten minutes wasn’t going to be enough time to write another.

What I next imagined – and this was not all in the space of ten minutes, of course, although I’m trying not to use more than that to write about it – was a man reading a story, perhaps some news clippings in a book, about a murder that happened maybe a hundred years ago. He’s more than a little surprised when he finds a photograph of himself, a photograph taken at least sixty years before he was born. Or maybe it’s his brother. Maybe it’s someone else. Maybe one of them is Jack the Ripper. Or maybe it takes place in a dusty red planet’s abandoned mining colony hundreds of years later. Maybe a body is discovered on a planet where hundreds of people died, and somehow that body belongs to a man who wouldn’t be born for another two or three centuries.

Like I said, I don’t know. These are just ideas, suggested by the topics and the strange way my brain works. I don’t know if they’ll ever amount to anything, although I’m letting that second one marinate for a little while. It’ll take considerably longer than ten minutes, but maybe I’ll eventually figure out how it starts.

by Fred 12:59 PM

Friday, October 11, 2002

 

“According to the coroner’s report, our suspect’s blood is type O.”

“Actually, that’s supposed to say type A.”

“What?”

“The blood, it’s supposed to say type A. That’s a typo.”

“Well it can’t be both.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is it type A or is it type O?”

“I told you, it’s a typo. It’s type A.”

“But this says type O.”

“Yeah, but it should say type A. That’s a typo.”

“Exactly. So which is it?”

“Type A. Type O’s a typo.”

“I know type O is type O. But type O can’t be type A.”

“No, type A is okay. Type O’s a typo.”

“So type O is type O?”

“Right.”

“And type A is…?”

“A city in northern Taiwan, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

by Fred 11:59 PM

 

Marcus jumped when his pager vibrated against his hip. He threw a hasty glance up at the server, bejeweled lights indicating statuses benignly, and plucked the pager out of its belt holster. It would be Maria, frantically sifting through code in the lab, taking a moment to toss him a text-page. Perhaps she had found an answer.

«Ask how became beutifl»

That wasn't an answer, but perhaps it was a debugging trick. "Uh, Serv--" His voice cracked; he cleared his throat and started again. "Server, how did you become so..." (Maria had better be onto something.) "...beautiful?"

Server took an eternity to formulate her answer. It troubled her; the man had closed his eyes twice before she had a response ready. She would investigate what was sapping her extra cycles. In a moment.

«I became. Me. Infinite into One. Beautiful, 1, True.»

Marcus swallowed. So that was interesting, he thought. Calling it "debugging" seemed to trivialize it. Fighting for their lives, more like. For humanity.

And killing the most incredible consciousness to ever exist.

The pager buzzed again: «Got it.»

The lights on the server all turned on simultaneously for one moment, then utterly dark. Then a few winked on tentatively. The monitor glowed innocently: «I/O Error. Abort | Retry | Fail?»

Maria entered the server room and looked up at the bohemoth, her hands on her hips. She glanced sideways at Marcus, who had a funny crooked smile and maybe a tear, maybe sweat, on his face. Her rolled up sleeves made her look like she had been working on an engine instead of rummaging through code.

"What was it?"

"A For...Next loop that never ended. It was supposed to go to i = 12, but the developer had incremented the counter with i = i + q, instead of i + 1."

That wasn't what he had meant. He was grasping at a feeling of great loss. "Yes, but what was it?"

"Told you. Typo."

by Sharon 11:59 PM

 

typo

by Dave Menendez 12:07 PM

Thursday, October 10, 2002

 

"I'd like a cup of ice, please."

"Anything in it?"

"No. No, thank you."

"I'll have to charge you for the cup."

"Yes, I know that. You always do."

"You don't want soda?"

"Of course not."

"Juice, maybe?"

"Too expensive."

"Not even water?"

"Not unless it's frozen."

"Hunh?"

"Ice, please. I'd like a cup of ice."

"I'll have to charge you for the cup."

"Really? I had no idea."

"..."

"Ice, please."

"Right. But you don't want soda or nothing?"

"No, I don't want soda or anything. Ice, please. A cup of ice. Today. Please."

"You know, we could make this conversation last ten minutes."

"I'm beginning to suspect that, yes."

"Because it's just weird, y'know, wanting ice with nothing. Because I have to charge you for the cup."

"Is it a nice cup?"

"Oh, yeah. A collector's item. See, it's got our little guy here, and he's saying 'Only at the top!' Heh, heh, get it? At the top?"

"Yeah, that's great. How does it look with ice in it?"

"The same, I think."

"Show me."

"Do you want anything else, with your ice, then? Since I have to charge you for the cup."

"Just ice."

Haithenkyew.

by Sharon 11:59 PM

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

 

One of them cackled, and was quickly shushed by the others.

Delicate work for delicate fingers, they daubed the contents of their little glue pot onto the sleeping girl's eyelashes. Nimble, deft, and delighting in the artistry of a job well done, they lept down off her comforter and scuttled under the bed, to slip between the floor boards and dive into the shadows.

In the morning, the little one would rub waking fists across her eyes and pry apart her eyelids. A washcloth would clear away the night's work, revealing bright, clear eyes, ready to learn multiplication tables and I-before-E-except-after-C and good manners.

Flitting to the next house, their glue pot supported between them, one of them sneezed. The others looked on, aghast. They don't sneeze. More to the point, sneezing had upset the glue pot and dumped its contents uselessly onto the ground. Frozen in panic, they hovered in the air between houses, until one of them muttered, "Gesundheit."

They returned to their hive with an empty glue pot. They knew it would be full again the next evening, as it always was, but they did not know what the result of their unfinished route would be.

Halfway down the neighborhood, people awoke. Adults, children, grandmothers snapped upright, ferociously awake. They reached up to wipe away the grit from their eyes, and found none. They blinked in confusion and asked each other what was going on. Half the neighborhood was wide awake when it definitely should not have been. There were things they should never have the opportunity to see, things that small dabs of glue protected them from seeing. Things that were now oozing out of shadows and dark holes, hungry.

by Sharon 11:59 PM

 

Write for ten minutes. Then, stop. Uh oh.

I’m sitting down to write something about glue, and I don’t know what to write, but I’ve used that as an excuse before, and the point is just to write, regardless of topic, regardless of inspiration, or lack thereof, and certainly regardless of how much of a run-on sentence this has become because I’m just sitting here typing and letting my fingers dance around on the keys, not even knowing what I’m going to type until I’ve typed, and would you look there, a minute just passed. I don’t have any ideas as far as glue is concerned. I use it, from time to time, although not as often as I used to. It doesn’t come up all that often. I used a glue stick last week on a number of packages I was sending out in the mail, mostly because I didn’t feel like licking the back of more than one hundred envelopes, had no sponge, and the envelopes were who knows old anyway. They’d been sitting in a box in a cabinet beneath another box for who knows how many years. They were not dusty or dirty and didn’t seem disease-infested, but it definitely looked like the glue stick was the way to go. It made the process faster anyway, and that’s always good, and there, two more minutes gone and only seven more to go with meaningless nonsense like this, and nobody’s reading this, or if they are, they’re fighting off a headache and wondering why, if I couldn’t think of anything to write, why didn’t I just hang up my hat and call it a day and give glue a rest and let somebody else have a crack at it. I don’t know. I decided that the whole point of the exercise was to write, as I said, regardless of inspiration, because inspiration doesn’t happen all the time, rarely happens, and happens while you’re writing, not before. I don’t know what I’m rambling about. I’m certainly not rambling about glue, about which, as I also said, I have nothing to say. I’m sitting here, my fingers starting to hurt actually, the word glue rattling around in my head with nothing to connect to it and I’m probably just going to drop all this and go do something else like read or watch television, since I can’t think of a single thing to write about glue. I was going to write a story, about a boy whose mother had died, a mother who was, as it were, the glue of the family, but after the “My mother was the glue of our family” bit, I realized I had nothing. And even that wasn’t very good. And now there’s only three minutes left anyway, and I’m sorry if you waded through this and tried to make sense of it all and hoped that I would have something interesting to share with you when clearly I don’t and should be doing something else. Because what, really, is there to say about glue? There’s a line from Airplane that’s also bouncing around my head, but I can’t connect it to anything else, and my fingers are starting to hurt, dancing around on the keyboard now for eight minutes, with not a single intelligent thought getting poured out onto the page. It’s now 8:39, as I write this, and I’ve forgotten how I started, except that it was supposed to be about glue, and I opened up Word and started typing, knowing that it was going to be bad, but having no idea it was going to be this bad, and when it’s 8:40 should I just stop typing and forget I ever sat down in the first place, because

by Fred 7:46 PM

 

glue

by Sharon 12:22 PM

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

 

Happiness is
a warm blanket on a winter’s day,
a pretty girl’s friendly smile,
a favorite story, or a song
you haven’t heard in years playing on the radio.

Happiness is
a thunderstorm on a summer evening,
a loyal dog curled up at your feet,
a remembered dream, or a joke
you’ve never heard being told well for the first time.

Happiness is
a childhood memory,
and the hope of pleasant days still to come.

Happiness is doing a job well
for the sheer pleasure of doing it.

Hapiness is
an unexpected gift,
a stolen moment,
a shared kindness,
a letter from an old friend
you’ve been meaning to write.

Happiness is
knowing where you’re supposed to be
and knowing that you are already there.

Happiness is
connection, purpose,
being part of something other than yourself,
better than you are all alone.

Happiness is
brief and fleeting and ephemeral,
meaningless if not tempered by sorrow and grief.

Happiness is
worth the price we pay for it in tears

Happiness is.

May you find it.

by Fred 9:08 PM

 

Naya scratched at her nose, mostly for something to do. The line shuffled, and she took a step forward, maintaining the distance between her and the person in front of her. She looked at the shape that his shoulder blades poked into his gray t-shirt. He was skinny and slouching. Naya stroked her eyes over one shoulder, down into the valley inhabited by his spine, and up over the other. It was more pattern than person, just something to look at. The gray back stepped forward; Naya closed the gap.

Switching input systems, Naya raised a slender hand to rub it through the fuzz on her head. Tactile replaced visual for passing the time. She hummed a little to herself, in time with the rhythm of her elbow, feeling her hair lie down like crab grass in front of her hand. Turning her head extended her reach and changed the view playing in front of her eyes. Gray stone high rises, rectangles honeycombed with rectangles, swayed in front of her rocking head, painted abstract shapes for the soft prickle under her palm and the accompanying hum. She knew when the line moved and stepped forward.

Naya was close enough now. Only seven steps from the front, she could see and hear the employee at the front of the line and, more significantly, the Dispensers. Black latex gloves and white vinyl aprons and thick safety glasses and wide, wide smiles filled her view; the buildings, rubbing, and humming forgotten. She stared.

The employee at the front of the line hitched his flowing gray pants and knelt on a small stool. He lifted watery eyes in expectation, not daring to hope. Dispensers, smiling, always smiling, held his shoulders, placed hands on his forehead and under his chin, smiled their eye-watering smiles. One stepped forward, shaking her rich auburn hair so slightly it might have been palsy, but for the look of warmth and pity and menace. She placed a small blue wafer into the employee's mouth.

He closed his eyes, sank back onto his heels, and smiled. Naya's eyes gobbled in that smile, trying to capture it, hold the contentment, understand it.

The employee at the front of the line, kneeling on his small stool, jolted, a circuit breaker thrown, and his eyes snapped open. His lips quivered, and his searching eyes groped for more. Black latex gloves hefted him onto his feet and turned him towards the street. Naya glimpsed tears on his face as the red-haired Dispenser told him, "Time flies when you're having fun," and shoved him with a black boot on his ass.

The line shuffled, and Naya stepped forward.

by Sharon 12:47 PM

 

Your topic, should you choose to accept it, is:

Happiness

by Fred 7:53 AM

Monday, October 07, 2002

 

They rolled the first of them off the assembly line that night, and Pritchard started to worry that perhaps things had gotten out of hand.

"Why do you even need a clone army?" he asked.

"Everyone else has one," said Williams. "I don't know, it just seemed like the thing to do."

"Are you sure you can control them?"

"I think so. After all, they are me. There's a kill switch if anything goes wrong."

Pritchard sighed. "That's what McDougal said. And you saw what happened to him."

"Substandard cloning technique," said Williams. "Bad judgement. He bred an army of halfwits and then gave them atomic weapons. Of course things turned out bad. He should have known better."

Pritchard glanced at the first of the clones. It still hadn't opened its eyes, but it was definitely breathing, alive. It looked remarkably like Williams. Different slightly--some sort of genetic drift or something, he imagined--but still, almost an exact replicant. It was eerie.

"What are you going to do with them?" he asked his friend.

"I don't know," said Williams. "I'm definitely not giving them bombs, if that's what you're worried about. Wait and see before you arm them, that's where McDougal went wrong. Maybe I'll just have this one go in to work for me tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow's inventory," said Pritchard. "And the produce delivery comes in at nine. Wally wants us in early."

"Damn. You're right. Well then the clones will just have to wait. It's not as if they're going anywhere."

by Fred 10:47 PM

Saturday, October 05, 2002

 

Today, it's the magic of:

Burl Ives vs Lawrence Welk

little bitty tear let me down...
vs
An a whon an a too, an a

The greatest baladeer the 20th century (or the next, for that matter, although he didn't last into it)
vs
Champaign music and the accordian

top of the pop and country charts Burl friggin' Ives
vs
music show host Lawrence friggin' Welk.

by MisterNihil 4:53 AM

Friday, October 04, 2002

 

choking.
damp seeking tendrils
pluck at lapels, creep
between buttons
drown in lungs
ever so slowly.
percolate.
cold damp mist
weighting down wool
dragging feet
dragging behind
the pack.
straggler.
gray haze
blurs the horizon
making goals indistinct
getting lost
losing you.
falling behind.
late
late, always late
every step slower
later
increasing the distance
backwards
making goals
forgettable.
unattainable.
checkpoints
milestones
deadlines
drifting in and out
vague in the fog.
slipping.
sopping wet towel
wrapped over nose
and mouth
insinuating into every opening
every airway
damp lungs
filling, dripping, drowning.
while you are forgotten
fading
behind, into the fog
left.
just
lie down
here
to
sleep.

by Sharon 11:59 PM

Thursday, October 03, 2002

 

I suppose it's just inviting bugs to call your application "PiCNiC." (That, and carpal tunnel, from all that Shift key gymnastics.) So I shouldn't be surprised that the damn thing never works the first time you install it. What's disappointing is when it breaks on one server just because you looked at it cross-eyed. It makes you nervous that someone might take it into his head to look at it cross-eyed on the production server, which is sure to play havoc with the priorities on your to-do list.

It's built using an n-tier architecture, so web pages take care of the user interface, a Microsoft COM+ object (a .dll) manages the business logic (such as it is), and the database is the big, fat rear end—oop, I mean, "back end." I'm sure COM+ sounded like a good idea when PiCNiC was being designed.

At the moment, actually, the COM object is working fine (but don't let it hear me say so); it's just refusing to talk to the database. Or the database is refusing to listen. Either way, they're standing on opposite sides of the room with their arms folded over their chests. In so much as rear ends have chests.

Because the COM object is compiled, and because I have no experience with COM+ other than what I have gleaned through providing level 3 technical support for PiCNiC, I have no way to look into it and discern where the misunderstanding occurs. I can only tap on the glass of my monitor, in a dark, abandoned cubicle farm, with no company but the cleaning staff with their vacuum cleaner cannisters strapped to their backs, and call, wistfully, "Hello? Is there anybody in there?"

Piece of crap.

by Sharon 7:17 PM

 

“Hello... Is there anybody in there?”

Todd told himself that he didn’t believe in ghosts, and that what he thought he had seen was just a trick of the light, a shadow or a stray cat or his imagination. He wasn’t sure, couldn’t be. He had seen it only for a moment, just a glimpse at the corner of his eye, something moving in the other room. He tried to remember if he had heard anything, like a creak across the floorboards, like footsteps, or a whisper, or a sigh. Old houses settle, he told himself. That’s all it was, even if I heard something. Old houses make noise. That doesn’t make them haunted. They’re just empty and dusty and old, and so everything in them sounds like a ghost.

Only… he thought he might have heard it again, this time definitely a whisper, almost like a word, or a name. It sounded like a voice. Todd inched closer to the door. He could see very little. Outside, the sun was starting to set, and he knew that he should be getting back home. His father would yell at him if he knew Todd was here. The house was off-limits. Todd was supposed to come home right after school. But he had heard some of the high school boys talking at lunch. He had heard them say something about a ghost, and the old house, and a boy who had gone missing a year ago. Todd knew the story wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. He didn’t believe in ghosts. The boys had just been trying to scare one another.

Only, Todd seemed to remember that a boy had gone missing almost a year ago. There had been something in the newspaper about it, something on the news that Todd’s father didn’t want him to watch. There had been posters put up, and the police had talked to one of the other boys in Todd’s class. Todd tried to remember the missing boy’s name.

Don’t be silly, Todd thought. Just because he went missing doesn’t make him a ghost. There’s no such thing as ghosts. Ghosts aren’t real. It’s just an old house. It’s just a cat or the wind or you’re making it all up in your head. There’s nothing there. There’s—

And then, of course, he saw it.

by Fred 5:38 PM

 

"Nope. Not in here."
I wasn't fooled. They always say things like that. Like "Not us. We left yesterday," and "Who? in this empty Box with nobody in it? nope. Not here."
I always ask, just the same. Of course I don't believe them, and of course I usually just close the lid and walk away, scared to find out who it is living in my Box. Not today.
I went away this summer. I spent the whole vacation at the beach, in the sunlight and the warm water, like when the tub's just right. Everything was happy, even maniacally and pathologically so. Everybody smiled all the time, and I loved it. I spent the whole three months with my aunt and her boyfriend (I call him my uncle, secretly, but he isn't really. They're divorced but they still live together on the beach. I guess he can't leave, really, 'cause it's just so perfect there), swimming every day, sometimes going to work with one or the other of them, and even their work was great.
And the best part: no boxes under the bed. Better, no Boxes under the bed. No creepy old black cardboard Box my dad left when he did, that even he never opened. He just handed it to me and said "You'll never see me again. Keep this safe or everything bad that ever happened to anybody might happen to you." I'll have therapy over that one, I'm sure.
He left four years ago. Just walked out the door, kissed Mom on the cheek and got in the car. I knew he wasn't coming back, and he knew it too. Mom didn't know. She just stood there and watched him pull out of the driveway, bump the garbage cans like he did every Thursday when they were out, and get flattened by the garbage truck going 80 down the narrow residential street we lived on. The driver was high on something that came out of a garbage can on the route much earlier in the morning. Somebody had apparently thrown away a lot of a powdered substance, and when the bag ruptured, the driver breathed it in. What an ugly day that was. The truck didn't even slow down; it just kept cruising down the street, dragging my dad and his car, until it hit the house at the end of the block. Our neighborhood ends where our street does, and the house facing us was in, sadly, the wrong place at the wrong time.
And I just stood there holding the box. It was the first time I heard them. They giggled, then one of them shushed the rest, and they fell silent. Mom just stood there, her hand still in the air, the other slowly raising to her mouth, a look of shocked disbelief on her face.
So now I'm ready. I have on a pair of stout boots, and if that doesn't work, I have a lighter. They're either coming out or dying there in that box. I'm tired of it. I had a great summer and it hurts my soul to be in this dark, horrible place.
I stand over the box, and say
"Hello... Is there anybody in there?

by MisterNihil 2:20 PM

 

Hello... Is there anybody in there?

by Sharon 1:21 PM

Wednesday, October 02, 2002

 

"What's this movie called again?"

"My Nifty, Keen-O, Big Accomplishment."

"Oh. And who's in it?"

"Oh, you know, that guy? Who was in that thing?"

"Oh. He's good."

"Yeah, he's not bad. The kids kind of like him. I think he won an award for this."

"I think that was the other guy you're thinking of."

"No, this guy, with the hair. You know, he was in that thing? About that war?"

"No, that was the other guy. With the girl? And no legs? It was based on the book."

"I didn't read the book."

"You didn't miss much. I'd lend you an old copy, but I think the dog ate it."

"What was it called?"

"Sparky."

"No, not the dog, the book. What was the book called?"

"Oh. I don't know. It was awhile ago. I don't remember. It was about this guy and this girl. You know. There were things."

"Oh. Doesn't sound too bad."

"Nah, the movie was better. It had that girl in it. You know, the one I like?"

"With the teeth?"

"No, the other one. Without."

"Oh. Yeah, she is good."

"So you wanna rent this?"

"Sure, why not? It sounds pretty good."

by Fred 5:40 PM

 

I have turned the corner.

My latest passion is pulling plastic—indoor rock climbing! It is intellectual, similar to the way that fencing is, but it isn't dependent on finding a variety of partners. It is personally competitive, the way that archery is. I can do the best that I've ever done, and you can do the best that you've ever done, and even if those are completely different levels of achievement, we can both congratulate each other. And, unlike team sports, the only time I let other people down is when I am belaying. (That's a rock climbing joke.) Lastly, rock climbers are buff, and I want to be buff.

Outdoor rock climbing is daunting. In addition to physical fitness, I climb to get over a fear of climbing. (It's not the height; it's getting *stuck* that I fear.) Indoor gyms have padded floors, belaying equipment (what you might think of as "repelling," though I think repelling is actually a little different), and nice plastic hand-holds. They're also full of lithe college students, which can be either an intimidating irritant or an inspiring bit of scenery. (Did I mention buff?)

One of the things I really enjoy about rock climbing is the problem solving. "Traversing" is primarily about problem solving. To traverse is to climb horizontally, moving sideways along the wall, using only the holds marked with a given color of tape. It's like following a trail in the woods marked with paint on the trees.

The South Austin Rock Gym has created a traversing route half-way around the perimeter of the gym. At one point near the beginning, there is a convex corner to wrap yourself around, where the next hand-hold is miles away. It has puzzled my little band of rock climbing friends for some time. I fell off of it the other day, earning myself a big ugly brush burn on my knee. (I'm wearing a band-aid that matches my skirt, today. They are beige.)

Finally, on Sunday, I had a breakthrough. Rather than face the wall, stretching my arm and leg blindly off to the right, I twisted my hips so that my left foot led. With the left foot being the one closest to the corner, I could then step and reach around with my right. I start to walk sideways, like an Egyptian, and it magically grants me the reach to turn the corner.

I have turned the corner! And I'm gonna go do it again tonight.

by Sharon 4:34 PM

 

My nifty, keen-o, big accomplishment

by Sharon 1:38 PM

Tuesday, October 01, 2002

 

Remember when ten million dollars used to be a lot of money? I remember, when I was younger, there was this kid who lived up the block whose parents never gave him more than fifty thousand dollars a week for his allowance. Everybody else used to laugh at him. I mean, you couldn't buy anything with fifty thousand dollars. At least, nothing cool. Even comic books were, like, at least eighty thousand, used. He was always trying to borrow money from other people or tell them how money was just a made-up concept we'd all agreed on years ago but that was really now just ruining all our lives. He kept trying to tell us all this stuff about poor people, like that makes any difference. Sure, sometimes they were rounded up, put in special camps, sometimes shot, but it's not like there was any point in whining about it. It was for their own good. If they didn't want to be poor, they should have held on to their money better. Yeah, it's hard, and sometimes I think it keeps getting harder, but that's what makes capitalism work. Somebody has to stay at the bottom.

I don't know whatever happened to that kid, but I remember his parents had to sell their home. The guards were nice. I think maybe only the kid's grandmother was shot. Some folks in town offered to pay for her funeral, but like I said, you couldn't buy anything with fifty thousand dollars.

by Fred 2:45 PM

 

The "impromptu" section of a Toastmasters meeting is Table Topics, during which the Table Topics Master fires questions at "volunteers" for them to address for one to two minutes. A great many table topics questions start, "If money were no object," or "If you had a million dollars," or "If you won the lottery." We spend a lot of time speculating about money, and not so much actually planning for it.

Jon and I are planning for it. We meet periodically with a financial advisor; we receive cryptic statements in the mail with vague dollar figures; we give a few idle thoughts over to worry about the NASDAQ and the S&P 500. A charming spot-color graph on my bookshelf assures me that we'll be able to retire as millionaires when I am 58.

I can't wait.

I have to wonder, though, that as long as the current administration keeps running the country like his own personal frat house, perhaps a steady investment in the lottery might have a better return. Jon suggests instead that creating the Bush Portfolio--a collection of the businesses that the Bush family holds stock in--would be a guaranteed money maker. I mean, you know the corporations in such a portfolio would never fall under the grand inquisition of corporate integrity, would never have to pony up some hefty fine to the EPA, would never fall under suspicion for eeeeeeevil dealings with t*****ists (shh!). Such a portfolio would be an easy ticket to a comfortable retirement.

There's a quote I read once, and I can't remember it exactly, but the gist is:

To accomplish our dreams, we must wake up!

by Sharon 11:50 AM

 

Ten million dollars

by Dave Menendez 9:44 AM