Monday, July 22, 2002

 

Bernie was right. I can admit that now. Granted, the evidence is stacked pretty high in his favor: I’d be stupid to deny it.

It’s funny, actually, because a lot of people give me the credit, but all I really did was pay the bills. Bernie had the ideas. Crazy ideas, I called them back then. Irrational speculation. Delusions of grandeur. If I hadn’t believed in the basic idea—coffee makers that thought—I never would have backed him.

It was a brilliant idea, even ignoring Bernie’s ludicrous-sounding extrapolations. An intelligent coffee maker was what mankind needed to give it that extra push. Precisely calculated proportions of caffeine and sugar, tailored to your mood, personality, workload, metabolism… whatever. You’d just go to one and say “I’ll have a coffee”, maybe make some light conversation, and boom! Instant enhanced creativity.

Or something. That was my understanding of it, but I’m not a technical person. I just provide the money.

Bernie told me that some of the other venture capitalists had spoken with had thought putting speech recognition and conversational intelligence in a coffee machine was madness, but I saw the potential. In terms of good coffee, anyway. Bernie tended to go on about transcendence and singularities and living like housecats and I’ll admit I never quite followed what he was getting at.

I still don’t, really. Even now that it’s happened.

It took us a while to find customers. Early adopters were no problem—who wouldn’t be impressed by a talking coffee maker? I mean, before they were ubiquitous. But eventually we started getting corporate accounts. Once Microsoft got one and suddenly tripled their wealth, we couldn’t make them fast enough. We started having the coffee machines suggest improvements to their manufacturing process, and they turned out to have great insight in the matters. Eventually, they wound up controlling the company. These days, it’s pretty clear humanity controls the world only because they’re not too interested in it.

At least the coffee is good.

by Dave Menendez 11:29 PM

 

It was supposed to be a summer affair.
You were needy and I wanted to bleed,
So we stuck together.
But summer ended and you were still there.

And that's the day,
That's the day,
That's the day everything changed.

That's the day,
That's the day,
The day that everything changed.

I went to college and you visited me on the weekends.
I remember sex on the racquetball court.
I remember your tears as I took you to the station.
But you faked being sick to miss your bus.

[chorus]

I remember living on pennies; eating letils and rice.
You overdosed on lithium and got your stomach pumped.
You swore you'd never do it again.
But we still got tired of each other.

[chorus]

We got engaged.
You pierced your tongue and I pierced my nipples.
I still have mine,
But you took yours out in a month or so.

[chorus]

We moved into a boarding house.
I got poisoned by drinking hydrogen peroxide.
I was miserable - in agony,
But you went on your date anyway,

[chorus]

I woke up four weeks later,
And found stains on the sheets.
I would have been fine,
But the stains weren't mine.

[chorus]

I got out and moved in with a friend.
You got left holding the rent.
I never thought we'de be friends again,
But we danced together at my wedding.

And ain't it strange?
Ain't it strange?
Isn't it strange how everything changes?

Isn't it strange?
Isn't life strange?
'Cause everything changed and now we're doing better.

by jal 10:58 PM

 

[It didn't go where I had hoped, but I ran out of time...]

She promised them that things would get better, in the gentle murmurings of a mother with no other promises left to make.

And then, one day, they did.

The package said only, "Open on Monday." She received it at work on Friday and didn't give it much thought. With the carnival in town this weekend, the bar where she waitressed evenings and weekends would be packed. Late for tonight's shift already, she dismissed the mysterious box from her mind and dashed to the bus.

Despite the struggle to make ends meet, Sunday evenings were her special time with her children. Nathan, 6, and Katie, 3, were the force that kept Ellen going from 7 am until midnight every day, striving to make a better life for their small family. Nathan was just starting first grade, and Katie needed new clothes for pre-school. Could she pick up some extra hours on weeknights at the bar, wondered Ellen.

Monday morning came, and Ellen had forgotten about the package entirely. While she finally remembered it, around noon, she was more concerned with how to pay for lunch than what this box might yield. Yet she paused, curious. Opening it quickly, a note fell out with a single key taped to it.

"Ellen Vencebi, daughter of Cliff and Leia Vencebi, is sole heir to the estate of her godfather, George Markowitz. The will can be found in a safe deposit box, to which this key will grant access. A stipend from the estate will be made available to Ms Vencebi for each of the next four years, to be used for the acquisition of a college degree. Upon earning a degree, the balance of the estate will be transferred to Ms Vencebi's name in full."

by Faith 4:20 PM

 

Wrapped up tight,
little girl,
Sleeping in, hiding small.
Coiled in a little brown wrap.
Waiting out the days,
Counting out the days,
Stretching out the days,
Small.
Little hibernation,
little hiding nation,
Asleep,
And dreaming.
Big, active plans,
Wild, ranging dreams:
Soon.
And then waking up and wiggling,
Chewing a way out,
Climbing up to find the sky.
Basking in the sun
For the first time
Again.
Stretching, flexing,
Testing, marveling,
Reveling,
Launching
Brand
New
Wings.

by Sharon 3:25 PM

 

Dear Ted,

How have you been? Things have been a little weird here lately, what with Mom and Dad turning into saucers of milk and everything. It’s been hard enough just trying to keep the cats away from them -- especially now that they’ve discovered fire and started their own little civilization. The other day, Mom’s two calicos started building a weird shrine in the corner of the living room, and they keep meowing their prayers each morning when I’m trying to watch Regis.

Outside, things aren’t much better. We thought they had rounded up all the dinosaurs and penned them at the zoo a month ago, but apparently Mrs. Petrie’s terrier was snatched by a pterodactyl the other day, and I keep stumbling across droppings in the backyard when I go to clean out the pool. It’s bad enough that they’re ruining the lawn, but I worry they’re going to get into the tool shed and cause even more damage. Dad would kill me if they broke the lawnmower.

School is starting up again in a couple of months, although with February now following September, there’s going to be less time to study. Nobody really knows what happened to those other four months, or if they’re really gone, but they’re not on any of the calendars anymore, and the meteorologists say something strange happened to the rotation of the earth. Same thing goes for gravity, apparently, which gives out at least once or twice a day -- although the opposable thumbs we’ve all grown on our feet really do make holding on to something a lot easier whenever that happens.

Personally, I’m not looking forward to school much. Apparently my major doesn’t exist anymore, and the dorm where I was going to live is now an enormous talking marshmallow bent on world domination, so they’ve had to move me around a little. They’ve dumped me in the physics department of all places and in temporary housing. And of course, the university is charging me for all of this. I guess some things never change, huh?

Before she turned into milk, Mom wanted to know when you were coming home. We kept hearing on the news how half your city was flooded, how half the people there had to grow gills. Happened overnight, just like everything else that changed. But Mom said even if you’re a fish, she still wants you to come home for Christmas.

Just stay away from the cats, okay? They’ve been sharpening their knives.

Your loving sister,

Martha

by Fred 12:50 PM

 

Weeee, back in Texas and ready to write.

The Day Everything Changed

With a special nod to James Burke

by Shawn 10:51 AM

Sunday, July 21, 2002

 

[more like 1500 seconds, but what can ya do?]

Tim tried to quiet his breathing, clear his mind. He checked the lock on the office door again, verified it was locked, found it inadequate. He reviewed the contents retrieved from Amerinc's cache in Server Lab 2: A small pistol, a cell phone that would clip to his lapel, if he had lapels, a poison-infused tooth, a laser pointer that could cut glass, printed instructions, and a box.

He turned the box over in his hands again. It was slightly larger than a VHS tape, maybe the size of a comfortable bible, and matte black. One face was spongy and concave. The other was austerely printed with raised plastic letters, "Keep Eyes Open, Throughout," and "Amerinc, Limited." He pressed a finger into the yielding foam and watched it slowly recover. He squinted at the concavity from an acute angle. He sniffed at it, and it sucked like a vacuum cleaner onto his face, filling his vision, suffocating him.

Tim writhed and pulled at the black box adhered to his face. A mechanical voice informed him, in no uncertain terms, to lie still. Tim immediately complied. His eyes remained open, as they had been when the foam pressed against his skin, pinning them open. His face began to itch, burn. He still couldn't breathe. He tried not to squirm, fearing what the device might do if he did. It became so hot. He was sure his skin was melting. His eyes were streaming from the pain, and he whimpered weakly, back in his throat.

His vision went from black to white for a bare moment, and then the box clattered to the floor, smoking and smelling of burnt skin. Tim gasped in desperate air and blinked away colored artifacts in his vision. His face was too tender to touch. Lines of fire traced the nerves under his skin. It still hurt.

He looked at the mirror hanging from the corner of the monitor on this executive's desk. He immediately noticed that his eyes were brown. Small lines crinkled the corners. His lips were thinner, paler, and drawn. His cheeks sagged slightly, and his pores were large and black. A gift of 20 years in less than 10 seconds: protective coloration.

Quietly, with new tears on the face of his reflection, Tim pleaded, "I'm fifteen."

by Sharon 11:58 PM

 

"I don't remember that gas station being there before," said Daniel. "Are you sure we've got the right place?"

Louis consulted the map. "One four seven," he said. "And this is -- well now that's funny. According to the door, this is four seventeen."

"What? It can't be. We just passed four seventeen. The yellow house on the corner, two blocks back, remember? They still had all their Christmas lights up. The guy was out front, mowing his lawn..."

"I remember. I said maybe we should get out and ask him for directions."

"And I said we were here just a month ago. The neighborhood couldn't have changed that much. And besides, Rebecca's map is pretty good. It got us this far into town, didn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess so. But that gas station, you're right, I don't know. Maybe it --" Louis paused. "Well now that is just too weird."

"What?" asked Daniel.

"The numbers. Look at the door. It says two eleven now. I could've sworn it said four seventeen. And it wasn't painted white when we first got here, I know that much."

"What're you saying? Somebody came out and painted the door when we weren't looking?"

"I don't know what I'm saying. It just -- I don't know. It gives me the creeps, that's all. Let's get out of here, okay? Find a phone, call Rebecca, maybe she can come and get us."

"Yeah, sure, okay. Let's try that gas station back on the corner. Maybe they know where we --"

Daniel paused, staring at the dead end now behind him.

"Okay," said Louis, "so you see it, too. I'm not crazy."

"No," said Daneil. "I see it, too. The gas station is gone."

by Fred 2:56 PM

 

It's 1 PM, there's no topic, and it's a weekend anyway. I'm a'commandeering the topic du jour. I was going to go for, "digital cobwebs," but that seemed too specific, so I chose this instead:

self-modifying

by jal 1:14 PM

Saturday, July 20, 2002

 

This is actually not quite on topic. I think I was thinking "Which Apocalypse Should We Watch."

Everything's just fine as long as nobody's looking at me
sitting by the power lines
holding on to what's mine
because I've got no place to be
oh, when the giant comet hits
I wanna be some place far from you
and when this world ends that's OK
as long as there's nothing left to do
Everything synched up, I can see the end coming over to me
Nothing can disrupt
baby filling my cup
Because it's just you and me
Oh, when the doomsday ray explodes
I don't want to see no one
And when the world ends that's OK
cause I'll be staring up at the sun

That's ten minutes. I think, though, the song will end with "Hot Cha!"

by MisterNihil 11:59 PM

 

Deity High School Class Reunion

"I still think that my favorite class was 'Planning & Responsibility 103'. You remember that?" The Entity glowed amber with the query.

Mother paused, hypothetically scratching an infinite number of theoretical itches before answering. "Was that the one where they talked about instilling a sense of right and wrong in your creations, or the one with all the math and metaphysics where you had to make sure your elemental table balanced out?"

"The first one," chorused Trinity. "We thought that the movies they made us watch were the funniest. Nuclear Armageddon, Pollution Perils, The Dogs of War... They were all so over-the-top."

"I heard that they don't even show Red Planet any more," said the Entity. "It was too realistic. An entire planet; all red dust and ice caps with just the barest remainder of life left."

Mother sighed: "And yet, it's right next to another planet on the brink." She shook her head sadly. "They can't use it for education any more because it's too shocking, yet the creatures that can see it aren't learning a thing from it. Pity."

by jal 1:01 PM

 

“Which apocalyptic movie should we watch now?” she asked.

“I dunno,” I said. “I think we’ve run out of tapes. Have the flesh-eating zombies outside quieted down yet?”

She opened the blinds. “Hard to tell,” she said. “Sun’s coming up, and I don’t see anybody. Man, they really did a number on Frank Sanderson’s car.”

“The Jaguar? Damn. Frank really loved that car.”

“Is that before or after they ripped off his limbs and scooped out his brain?”

She grinned. “Sorry. Obviously before.”

“I think he’d just had it detailed too. Before—well, you know.”

“Man, that’s too bad. Not like he could’ve used it for much, though. He’d have never made it out of town.”

“Not with the giant spiders roaming the freeway, no. Next town over was flooded anyway. But still, it’s a shame. All of it is. Like what happened to Mrs. Williams down the block—”

“Oh god. Don’t remind me.”

“Oh come on, I mean, really, what’re the odds? A futuristic biker gang, killer robots, and an asteroid all colliding into her house at once?”

“It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been the plague.”

“Yeah, I guess. So you up for a trip to the video store then?”

by Fred 10:20 AM

 

I'm gonna be out all day, but your topic, should you choose to accept it, is:

"Which Apocalyptic Movie Should We Watch Now?"

[Timestamp edited by Sharon to make the post appear at the top of the page. Originally 1:04 AM.]

by Remi 2:04 AM

Friday, July 19, 2002

 

Nobody saw me when I tamed lions in Iowa.
Nobody saw me when I beat up a bar-full of bikers for calling me a 'Little Bitch'.
Nobody saw me protest for free speech in the square, throwing pies at the president.
Nobody saw me land on the moon.
Nobody saw my production on Broadway.
And they can't. Because it's all in my head. Waiting to get out.

by Remi 9:08 PM

 

"The ship struck ground on the shore of this. Uncharted desert isle! With..." His voice faltered. "With just me."

He'd been stranded on this island for three weeks now, give or take a day. In that time, he'd built a makeshift shelter. He'd been bitten by a spider at night - it really hurt! He'd gotten really sick and slept for hours. He woke up and smashed open a coconut using only his hands and a rock. He used that same coconut as a bowl for lukewarm Dinty Moore beef stew. He built a new shelter with a raised sleeping space to keep creepy-crawly things off of him at night. He'd seen more types of insects than he knew existed. He tried at least fifty times to start a fire, but never succeeded. He made up a poem about being stranded on a desert isle. He thought it was pretty good, but there was no one to share it with. He walked around the island seven times until he found his favorite spot. One-thousand five-hundred and fifty one paces. He saw five rescue craft circling about on the horizon and over the island. He jumped and he shouted and he waved at them. Nobody saw him. Three different boat crews had come to shore to look for survivors. He jumped and hollered in front of them. Nobody saw him. They carried someone away, but nobody saw him. There was one more visit with the same results.

I'm not happy with this, but I'm only allowed 10 minutes. - Jon

by jal 2:08 PM

 

a scratch
a tickle
a catch
:that is how i begin.
doorknobs i caress,
licking faucets,
infiltrating crevasses.
seeping.
touch your nose, yes,
do it again.
pleeeeasssse.
shaking hands,
or perhaps a
(kiss)
i seal all deals,
witness all transactions.
nobody sees me
but i will be remembered
and spread.

by Sharon 11:14 AM

 

“Nobody saw me.”

“It doesn’t matter. There are cameras everywhere. They’ll go through the tape and they’ll find you. You left fingerprints --”

“I was careful.”

“Not careful enough, obviously. Not if you’re still in the building. Dammit. Where are you?”

“In the parking garage.”

“What level?”

“I’d -- I’d rather not say.”

“Okay, good boy, they could be listening. There’s hope for you yet. Your dad would be proud.”

“I don’t know. He --”

“What?”

“Sorry. I thought I heard a noise. I’m still a little jumpy. I never killed anyone before today.”

“Well you’re going to have to get used to it, kid. I don’t see any other way to get you out of there. Have you been to Accounting yet?”

“No, AstroDyne’s got it locked up tight. That’s -- that’s where they’re keeping him, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. We don’t know, kid. But our records show that’s where they keep all the undead. If your dad’s still anywhere at their company headquarters, that’ll be it. We need you to get in there and pull the plug on the whole operation.”

“And then this will all be over?”

“Well, I don’t know about that, kid. But I’ll tell you this: when AstroDyne’s stock plummets tomorrow, you’ve got yourself a job with the competition.”

by Fred 10:56 AM

 

Inspired by my favorite excuse, I offer:

Nobody saw me.

[Fred mentions, there's no pressure to write fiction. Feel free!]

by Sharon 9:37 AM

Thursday, July 18, 2002

 

Growing up, they told us that Mars used to be a desert, a barren and lifeless planet, where the rivers that now run through rocky ground like veins beneath the skin were once nothing but dead, dry alleys of stone. "The canals used to be dry," Grandpa said. "Used to be, people couldn't live here." It's hard to imagine a place like that, a world without trees or oceans or birds, whose air you can hardly breathe, and whose skies are a perpetual brown.

As a young girl in the settlement near Mare Erythraeum, I often raided the town library and the bookshelves in my grandfather's study, and although I saw the books filled with photographs of old Earth and Mars before the first colony, I could hardly believe that such places were real. New York. Paris. Moscow. Even the names sounded like fiction. "That's what Mars used to look like, Sarah," Grandpa would say, "or at least, that's what my grandfather always told me. Earth was a garden and Mars was a desert. Now it's just the opposite."

People still live there, of course, scattered here and there. Some of Earth's cities are even still standing, and I suppose the outer colonies near Jupiter are proof enough that humans can adapt to most anything. But still, I can barely imagine it. What it must be like to live in such a burnt-out shell of a world... I still have nightmares sometimes.

So I tell my sons what we have told ourselves from the beginning, from the day the very first ships of refugees arrived: it will not happen here, the garden will be tended, and we will not say, as they did on Earth, "let somebody else do it."

by Fred 7:46 PM

 

Tim focussed on not thinking about slipping. He gripped an automatic rifle to his chest and steadied himself by resting his elbows against the walls. Holding his breath, he tried to embody Quiet until the woman in the next stall finished. His sneakers wanted to slip on the toilet seat; he was determined not to let them. Easing an elbow onto the toilet paper dispenser—moving ever so slowly—gave him a third point of contact, to steady his balance.

The gun had been an unexpected upgrade from the kitchen knife he had hastily grabbed when fleeing the house. He didn't know if AstroDyne's HR records showed how many children his father had, and he wasn't sure if the security officers had access to that data when they stormed his house, but he was pretty sure he was living on borrowed time. Tripping over a dead rent-a-cop in the corridor, he had felt grim determination as he retrieved the officer's service weapon. His only goal now—replacing hopes for college, or even prom—was revenge.

His father, Michael Stragapede, had been an AstroDyne manufacturing employee with an impeccable service record, until he had the misfortune to be selected as a spokesman to represent the laborers' objections to new efficiency measures implemented by management.

Finally, the flush! Tim leapt from his hiding place, banged out of the stall door, and fired an automatic weapon for the first time. He fled through the carnage and destruction he had wrought, pausing to pick up the security badge he had been lying in wait for, and pounded toward the stairwell to the restricted upper floors. He was beyond considering the families he orphaned. He was beyond worrying what would become of him. He was beyond caring. Let somebody else do it. He had some executives to fire.

by Sharon 5:35 PM

 

I'd entered the tavern for some well-deserved rest. After reclaiming the Colt Company's mine claim in Ten-Penny Gulch from a gang of undead desperados, I was flush with cash and ready to blow off a little steam. "Double whiskey," I grunted and slapped a two-spot on the bar. Your standard assortment of rabble and scum loitered about in the deep summer haze, with a few conspicuously out-of-place characters. There was a gambler who dressed a little too well, a preacher huddled in the corner with his bible, and the woman belting out honky-tonk on the piano was far better than a two-bit flea hole like this deserved.

Five shots of rotgut and seven hands of poker later, the preacher, gambler, piano player, and I had (rather oddly) struck up quite a conversation. Turns out we'd all found ourselves here in Cooper's Well with little else to do than pass the time. Sure, we all had our own stories to tell, and it was obvious that we were keeping stuff back from each other. But heck, we'd just met. That's when all hell broke loose outside. Literally. Windows shattered; horses brayed just before keeling over dead; the wind screeched like a schoolmarm's nails on a slate; bolts of fire skipped down the dusty street. Everyone but the four of us skedaddled. Us? We went outside to see what was going on.

"Give me the mayor's daughter by tonight, or the town pays!" This command came from something more demon than man. The malestrom swirled around it like leaves in an autumn breeze. I blinked and it was gone. After that, everyone wanted to tell us what to do. The mayor, the sherrif, the barkeep. Hell, I think dogs and what horses were left would've talked if they could. Why they all came to us, I have no cotton pickin' clue, but they all wanted us to find where that varmint was and scare it outta town all permanent-like. The four of us had a little huddle. We all agreed that we should stick together, and we agreed on something else too.

We're just passing through here. Cooper's Well can become Cooper's Hell for all we care. Like the gambler said, "Let somebody else do it." We left town that night and never looked back.

Dedicated to memory of every role-playing one-shot or first episode I've ever played in or run.

by jal 4:56 PM

 

Well, I didn't expect to be offering topics two days in a row, but it is almost three o'clock on Central time, so... In keeping with the apparent theme of the week, here it is:

Let somebody else do it.

(Faith or Ben -- you can have my Sunday spot if you really want it.)

by Fred 2:49 PM

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

 

Wait, it's Wednesday already?

Well, my topic would have been, "Operating System not found." For that was my day and my excuse. Someone remind me why I do computers for a living again?

So, in honor of both topics, I assert it will never happen again that:

1. I so blithely imagine myself capable of restoring data from a failing hard drive with no more sufficient tools than Drive Image and Partition Magic. (Both products courtesy of PowerQuest.)
2. I fail to be disciplined in creating rigorous backups of all applications and data.
3. I fail to enforce a strict backup routine for the friends I support.

And now, I am off to deliver a well-wrapped package of three hard drives in various states to a better (read: more patient) technician than me...

by Faith 9:22 PM

 

Why, Fred, I'm honored.

by Sharon 5:37 PM

 

"Refresh my memory, Tidwell. What're we looking at here?"

"Well, sir, on the left we have overall productivity, which, as I think I mentioned, is at an all-time low following last week's unfortunate incident. The graph on the right shows our projected losses for this quarter -- which are, to say the very least, higher than anticipated."

"Numbers. I want numbers."

"Well, sir, it's difficult to be sure. We haven't regained control yet of the lower floors, and some of the data I have here is a bit sketchy, but...well, it appears they got Henderson as he was leaving the executive washroom on six. Paul Drake and Doug Williams were shot in the back. I don't think you really want to know what they did with the bodies, sir."

"Damn. I used to play golf with Bill Henderson. I guess that means now I have to tell his wife."

"Yes, well...we also have eight other company officers unaccounted for, sir. As I said, we're still trying to gain control of the first three floors, and the bodies could be anywhere. Apparently someone tried to firebomb the cafeteria, and we're still trying to clear through the rubble."

"And the efficiency expert? What happened to her?"

"Oh. She's dead, sir. The entire team. I've been told the man who did it was captured this morning -- a Michael something-or-other. He's been temporarily reassigned to Research and Development, although I imagined you'd want to deal with him personally."

"No, no, that won't be necessary. Just...um...just kill him, his wife, his children, anyone who had anything to do with it -- you know, standard operating procedure. Not need to get too messy."

"Very well, sir."

"And of course, reinstate the public floggings. That goes without saying. We've got to show these people who's boss. 'Dissension will not be tolerated' and so forth, yadda yadda yadda. Is there anything else?"

"No, sir, I think we've covered it all."

"Good. And, Tidwell? We are absolutely clear about last week's incident, are we not?"

"Sir?"

"It will never happen again."

by Fred 5:23 PM

 

[Some of my best friends are neener heads, too, of course. But she bugged me the other day for a topic.]

Nixi'i crouched on the wet grass, surrounded by hundreds of other Yareans. First-sun was not yet up, just casting a cool, red glow over distant mountains, expectant faces, fidgeting wings. All eyes looked east.

The assembled crowd heaved and sighed, susurrating with reverent anticipation. Someone stifled a sneeze. Nixi'i shuffled her claws, hefting foot-to-foot-to-foot to disperse her nervous energy.

A small voice called out, high and clear above their heads, "There!" and was quickly silenced. But the small one was right: It had begun.

Far out over the horizon, a pinpoint of light exploded into a sudden, embarrassed sunburst. The gathered watchers gasped and shrank, involuntarily, close to Yar, then relaxed and stretched up for a better view. Intellectually, the nova marked the location of another hum-drum star, but viscerally, on this crisp, lonely morning, before the red giant had begun its weary trek across the sky, that little, yellow speck exploded into a stark, white burst of cold light, announcing a fatal error on an inconsequential satellite.

Near Nixi'i, that precocious child who would not quite be silenced voiced what they knew in their hearts, capturing why it was a moment of hope and of warning: "It'll never happen again."

by Sharon 4:05 PM

 

Well, I just made up my own topic and wrote it up. Theme: "I forgot"

(Keep in mind that this is just a theme I made for myself for today.)

I went to my mail box this afternoon. The postal guard was busy chatting up a hot duo of Liberty protesters, so I didn't have to bribe him. Inside, amidst all of the promotional CDs, I found an orange-yellow envelope from the Department of National Security. I ripped it open back in my pod. There was a note on white-blue typing paper wrapped around a check and a tissu-ey document with gilt edging and flowery script on it. The note said:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Enclosed please find a check for $300 and a Certificate of Apology. We are sincerely sorry for any inconvenience you may have experienced during the suspension of your rights. We are pleased to render your share of the class action settlement to you.

We are dilligently pursuing full reinstatement of rights for all affected individuals and their successors. We expect that all affected parties will have access to 90% of their constitutional rights by November 15th, 2021. Please direct any inquiries to:

DoNS: Libery Claims & Settlements
2125 Pennsylvania Avenue II
Washington DC 18002

Great. Some beuraucrat "forgets" to return my rights to me by 2005, and thirteen years later they send me an apology, some gold-edged toilet paper, and enough money to buy the latest video disc. Man, when they say that freedom isn't cheap, they're all wrong. I've been shafted. Big time.

by jal 2:27 PM

 

Hey, some of my best friends are neener heads. But at any rate, today's topic, which I guess could be an excuse:

"It will never happen again."

by Fred 2:08 PM

 

Faith is, clearly, a neener head, given that it is nearly three o'clock on the East coast. Anyone like to offer a topic today, maybe another excuse, in keeping with this week's apparent theme?

by Sharon 1:51 PM

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

 

Spitting on the Windowsill, nobody noticed the GIANT SALAMANDER!

on I'll give it right back
"Honestly, I resent your implication," I said. "You know me, and you know my record. I'll get it back to you before you notice you don't have it."
"Dat's not how I remember it." Fredo was understandably angry. "You still ain't got back my Yustrimsky."
"That was beyond my control. You know I lost that in a car wreck. It flew out the window. I don't see how that has anything to do with this right now anyway. And I replaced it."
"No. You gave me a Biggio. I wan' a Yustrimsky, the one with the big sideburns."
"Look: If I say I'm sorry, and I promise to scour the baseball card shops for a week until I find a Yustrimsky with the big sideburns, then will you change your mind?"
"Yeah. I guess. But you owe me."
"And can I have the Biggio back?"
"No. I traded dat fer the next year's Yustrimsky, but it's not the same."
I had to hold my breath and count to ten.
"You still there Vince?"
"Yeah."
"You can have it."
So I reached into his pocket, slid the pocket knife out, and cut the ropes holding us. We jumped out the window before the fire managed to burn us severely.

by MisterNihil 11:42 PM

 

Sometimes I wonder about the hole in the corner. There’s definitely something strange about it, because to doesn’t lead anywhere. Seriously, I’ve been in the room below mine, and there’s no corresponding hole in the ceiling. I don’t know how deep it is, but it’s longer than any of the ropes I’ve tried measuring it with. I dropped a few rocks, once, but I never heard anything.

Not from the rocks anyway. I did hear something that sounded like flutes, once, but I was up pretty late at the time, so I might have imagined it.

I’ve tried covering it up a few times, but it never seemed to work. I put plywood over the whole once, and the next time I checked there was a hole in the plywood. I tried nailing some sturdy planks of wood over it, and the next day the hole had gotten bigger and the planks were gone. I stopped trying to fix it after that. In fact, I tried to move out.

Do you know how hard it is to talk to a realtor after you mention indestructible, unfathomable holes in the floor? I had one of them actually throw a book of listings at me.

My Mom wants me to put up a railing. She’s afraid I might fall in one night and never be heard from again. I don’t know; I’m pretty familiar with the layout of my room. I don’t think I’d ever fall in accidentally. Not unless it got bigger unexpectedly.

My brother’s always wondering about what might be in the hole, but I don’t think there’s necessarily anything in it. He’s just spooked because he thought he saw eyes in it once.

I don’t worry too much about the hole. After all, it was like that when I got here.

by Dave Menendez 11:25 PM

 

Michael tried to be subtle, using his thumbnail as if he were simply scratching his nose. This presentation was like life-guarding: intensely dull, but requiring acute attention.

Maureen flipped to the next sheet in her monster, 3-foot Post-It Note presentation. A red line poked around the middle of a graph, meandering mediocrally. "Morale was adequate," she explained, sparing a longing glance for her visual aid before flipping savagely to the next page. Green bars barely strove for the mid-point of this chart. "Production was satisfactory."

Michael hit pay dirt and scraped the rewards under the conference table. He began to make swirls in the margin of his notebook.

"It was like that when I got here." Maureen flipped to a blank page in her deck, clasped her hands in front of her, and smiled wolfishly at the assembled executives. "Which is why you brought me in. Anyone can be good. It takes a visionary to achieve greatness." A sweeping hand encompassed the audience. "And visionaries to desire it!"

She unveiled the next page. A brilliant sapphire line muscled up to the top-right corner of a graph, trying to push its way up and out of the page. "Morale ratings have never been higher, now that surveys are no longer anonymous."

Another page flipped with flourish. Now, towering trees stormed across a bar chart. "Production rates are through the roof! And requisite public floggings are down, now that the transition period is successfully past. Next steps are to assess the capacities of the human capital, revisit--"

Michael had stood up.

"Who are you?" asked Maureen.

Her body was already slumping to the floor, bewildered and vacant, with a perfect round hole between the eyes, when Michael said, "I represent Labor."

by Sharon 10:23 PM

 

So there was a little hitch, nothing else. I just sort of went over there.
I mean, sure, first I called Vince, but he didn't answer. It was... I don't know... Saturday, I think? Yeah. It was Saturday. I called Vince from my house and left to go help out this guy I know who had a problem.
He'd got a hold of about six gallons each of CK one and two, that perfume crap. I dunno. Those kids wth the big pants and the stupid shirts wear it. He was goin' around in these little parking lots in these little towns. He hit about three of 'em when the cops came and picked him up. They say the perfume's stolen, he says it's somethin' he bought all legit from me. Dammit. An' he hadda say my name.
Sort of. Of course when he says "Alfredo Del Antonio," even though that's not exactly my name, they decide to call me.
So I had a three hour drive to some shit hole town in the certified Middle Of Nowhere, Texas, and I hadda deal with these stupid small town cops with their 'We heard you might know something,' an 'This man may or may not have mentioned your name, MISter Di Tonianni.'
So I do what I always do. I deny I did anything, I offer to pay them to forget this little piece of crap kid, and he and I drive back home.
Sure, we stopped for gas a couple 'a times, and I suppose we might'a stopped for a little chat about etiquette.
Now, we might have had a few harsh words, but his leg, I never touched it. It was like that when I got there. I blame the cops. And his fingers too.

by MisterNihil 10:15 PM

 

We rented a small conference room at the Holliday Inn Southparke. It had recessed lighting along the upper edge of the ceiling. The paneling was mahogany and the wallpaper and drapes in maroon and a deep forest green. The Sign hummed snippets of “Scarborough Fair” the entire time we were there, and Corporal Punishment didn’t like being in a room with only two exits. Even so, we had to find a replacement for Madam Atom & The Nuclear Family while they were on maternity leave, so we made do with what we had.

I was in charge of speaking on the group’s behalf. I was deemed the least likely of us to say something rude or inappropriate. We’d already interviewed 11 would-be heroes in the last 6 hours and it was taking its toll on us. I looked through the pile to pick the next interviewee. I picked out a plain, manila folder. After glancing over the applicant’s “handle”, I knew we had to interview this one. After wasting a day in a small, overpriced room listening to oddballs with powers more appropriate for The Land of Misfit Toys, you need a little comic relief. Little did I know that we were about to recruit the most powerful member of the Splendid Six to date.

I cleared my throat. “It says here you’re ‘It-Was-That-Way-When-I-Got-Here Man.’ Is that correct?” Corporal Punishment perked up. The Sign stopped humming and a slight smirk crept onto her face. They knew we had a live one here.

Picture a middle-aged man, balding slightly, dressed in a deep red jogging suit with glasses that have more in common with welding goggles than spectacles and you’ll have a good idea of who I was talking to. “Yessir. That’s right.” He replied.

**And what do you do?**, visualized The Sign. She could have just said it but was showing off, trying to throw this joker off balance. The man seemed less fazed than most people do when The Sign does that. “I make things the way they were when I arrived,” he replied. Corporal Punishment guffawed, but the odd man with the goggles seemed quite earnest.

“What’d you do if I shot that water pitcher over there? Go over and glue it together?” Corporal Punishment laughed again, drew his pistol, and a shot rang out. There was a watery, shard-riddled mess on the table, floor, and carpet as well a bullet hole in the wall. “Go ahead old man, but I think you should change your handle to ‘Elmer’. Better whip out your glue gun!” He started crying with laughter while The Sign scolded him about room damages. The older man in the jogging suit just closed his eyes. I thought he was going to cry, but he was actually making a miracle.

I looked in the corner and the pitcher was whole again. The table and floor were clean and dry. The hole in the wall was conspicuous in its absence. I stood up immediately, walked around the table, and held out my hand.

“I’m so sorry about the rudeness of my companions. It’s been an awfully long day. I’m First Face, but you can call me Sal. I’d like to take you out to dinner, if you don’t mind that is, and go over your contract for employment. Would that be acceptable? We’ll have to change your handle, of course.” He seemed a little stunned: “What?”

“You’re hired,” I said.

by jal 9:25 PM

 

What apple? What tree? This fig leaf? It was like that when I got here.

What people? What treaty? These bodies? It was like that when I got here.

What hardship? These slaves? They’re happy. It was like that when I got here.

You’re a woman. You don’t vote. Don’t be silly. It was like that when I got here.

What nonsense! What death camp? It was like that when I got here.

Where’s the forest? I don’t know. But it’s gone now. It was like that when I got here.

What’s that? Can’t breathe? There’s been bombing. It was like that when I got here.

I know. But they can’t treat you. You have no money. It was like that when I got here.

Sure, it’s not fair. But life’s a bitch. It was like that when I got here.

by Fred 1:34 PM

 

Topic for the day:

“It was like that when I got here.”

by Dave Menendez 12:50 PM

Monday, July 15, 2002

 

A hissing noise resolves into a voice, "I'll give it right back," just over your right shoulder. The muscles in your neck tense; your skin tries to escape. The words are full of snakes, rasping and writhing over each other, and buzzing flies, dying frantically on window sills.

It taunts: "I'll give it riiiiiiiiight back." And you know it is a lie.

Your arms and legs won't move. You aren't constrained so much as demoralized. Wheedling, laughing, it says, "Right back, right back, bright rack, bite brack, la la la," through cockroach carapaces clicking and crunching under boot heels, with yellow-green guts oozing between segmented antennae.

You used to think you had known helplessness, but you hadn't. This, here, with warm, rancid breath too close on your neck, your limbs unresponsive, your eyes unable to close and your stomach unable to retch: This is helpless. This is taken in by a deal you should have refused.

This is hell.

by Sharon 11:48 PM

 

"You left the cap off the happy and now it's spilling."

She had promised him that she would take good care of his soul. He was hesitant about giving it to her; she had such a reputation for breaking hearts, men and women alike. But he fancied that there was something different, something special about this time, about him, that meant everything would be okay.

To her credit, she really did try. She didn't mean to be so clumsy. But the next week, when she gave it right back to him in pieces, her effort did not change his pain.

"Damn your poet's heart to hell, and the same to your minstrel spirit! It's the things I love about you most that spin your wheels."

She moved on apologetically, and he cried for his lost soul.

by Faith 7:18 PM

 

We never broke the speed of light, and we never went forward or back in time, but we did figure out how to cross into alternate dimensions. You need a truly grotesque amount of energy to make it work, but once you have self-sustaining fusion power down-pat, it's really pretty easy to accomplish. We figured it out just in time too. We were seriously low on vital resources, like algae, water, clean air, and the like. So we went to the 100 closest realities and just swapped out 1% of our stuff for their stuff. After about 30 years, we were in pretty good shape again.

That's when the powers that be got too big for their britches and set up the Department of Cross-Reality Acquisitions. The dissenting factions were powerful enough to force them to include an "observer" on each DoCRA mission. That's my job. I was less than a puppet. I had no powers whatsoever to prevent abuses and my position was a sham. I can't tell you how many times I heard them say, "We'll give it right back. We just need to borrow it." It made me sick.

We were in ATK-2002, the Aztec parallel, when my team got jumped. We'd been there for a few months now. The team had swapped lots of artifacts with cheap electroplated imitations and was getting ready to leave. I was left to go free - I think to carry this message back. The team was taken to the sacrifical altar at the Techoloctal Estaradome. There, the high priest leaned over and whispered something into the ear of each victim, chopped his or her heart out, then shoved it back in his or her body. I asked my guard what he was telling them. My guard grinned at me and said, "I'll give it right back."

by jal 3:36 PM

 

"I'll give it right back."

“I’m sorry, but no.”

“Look, I just wanted to show the guys in the squad room your badge for a minute. We’ve never had anyone from Division here before. Half of ‘em don’t even believe you guys are real psychics. I swear, I’ll give it right back.”

“No you won’t, Detective. That’s just it. You’ll get called away on business, the phone will ring, and you’ll forget. Later on, you’ll go out the door, down the stairs, get in your car, and I’ll never see you again. You’ll forget my badge is in your coat pocket. In two days from now you’ll be dead from a heart attack, and I’ll have to get it back from your Lieutenant when I go to the funeral.”

“The what? What’re you saying? In two days I’ll be what?”

“Dead. You’ve already been having chest pains, Detective, but you’ve been ignoring them. You’re hoping they’ll go away. In two days from now, though, you’ll collapse in your bathroom and think maybe you should call your doctor. You’ll struggle to your feet, make it as far as the phone in the kitchen where you keep the number, but by then it’ll be too late. I’m really sorry.”

“You’re what? How do you know all this?”

“I told you already, Detective. Precognition. Prognostication. I see bits and pieces of the future. Sometimes it’s not so clear—one probability might be just as likely as another—but sometimes…you know you really ought to get that heart of yours looked at.”

by Fred 12:10 PM

 

Gooood morning everyone! The topic for today is:

"I'll give it right back."

by jal 9:12 AM

Saturday, July 13, 2002

 

He started climbing about an hour ago. He's about half way to the top now. He's getting tired. I can smell the fatigue in each little drop of salty-bitter sweat that spatters down. I stalked him for about three hours before he turned off to this cliff. I think he thought he'd lose me this way, but I knew that he'd get tired. He's been lost for a long time from the looks of it - all scraggly and stumbling. Still, there's enough meat there for me and the rest of my pack. When he falls, I'll be there to protect his carcass from the vultures and the other predators of the forest, then I'll howl and my pack will ocme to share our feast.

I'm just waiting for him to fall. Any minute now. Any minute.

---

I couldn't believe my luck when the lock-wagon got overturned by the mudslide. If the wooden slats that kept me linked to the cart hadn't busted open, I'd be burried in 5 feet of silt. It was also right fair of the guard to let me go in return for pulling him from under the cart. I had my independence again, and I knew where I was going. It was like I couldn't make a wrong decision.

Then I got stupid and panicked. I noticed the worg-wolf shadowing me in the late afternoon and figured that the best way to avoid getting eaten in my sleep was to get out of the woods. Now I'm halfway up a cliff, the sun is setting, and there's no ledge in sight. My fingers ache, my arms ache, and my toes are beginning to cramp. My right leg keeps trembling uncontrollably.

I'm done for. At leat I'll make a good dinner for worgs.

And I'll die free.

by jal 5:25 PM

 

Apologies for not posting more. I had one for 'fire' but it got lost, and I couldn't do an adequater rewrite. This is my post for independence.

I walked into the Body Independence store for a quick look around. They had been around for years, starting on the tech-heavy west coast and then opening up shops on the east coast when Independence Mods got trendy. They were the first to develop the technology, and had a well-deserved reputation for reliable and safe gear that was also modular and totally compatible. At least, compatible with all other B.I. products.

For my foreign readers, who may not yet be familiar with what Independence Mods are, I'll give a quick explanation. Have you ever heard the song Detachable Penis by King Missile? That's basically what Independence Mods do. Except with any part of your body. Plus, they usually don't give you a detachable finger, say, they give you a detachable finger with a geiger counter in it. Or a microphone. Or a tiny injector of insulin. Or all three, and you can switch them about however you choose. Body Independence is a company which sells these mods and performs the quick n' easy operation in store for you.

So I walk in and am immediately greeted by a man in a very tasteful suit in a sort of irridescent lavender, and he begins showing me the newest thing. Heads. I can have a head with a digital audio system built right in. I can have a head that will allow me to turn on household electronics with a thought. I can have a head which has a removable face (but only by mental command, because you don't want just anyone to be able to pull of your face, and, of course, there's no seam). I decide to go for it, and half an hour later I walk out of the BI store with a brand new head that can keep tabs on every moving thing within 100m via an on-eye HUD. Plus I now look like Jonny Depp. With fangs.

by Remi 11:22 AM

 

I think it's safe to assume we all view the weekends as optional. With that in mind, I'm not going to suggest a new topic this morning, but encourage you to write on a topic that didn't get much response, like

patience...or...independence

But, above all, have fun.

by Fred 8:38 AM

Friday, July 12, 2002

 

The installation seemed trivial enough. I deployed the code, installed the COM objects, created the references, and sent my little baby to work. There's always that moment after an implementation, that deafening quiet like what settles over a battle field just after you've lofted the grenade. Woe to him who assumes that no news is good news. No news simply means the users aren't using it yet.

It's an elegant bit of code, really. Given sufficient historical data, it should begin to make its own forecasts, projecting demand for given product lines and placing fulfillment requests based on the supply currently in the factories and the hubs. Enlightened Longterm Fulfillment, they called it. I would have hyphenated "Long-Term," but ELTF doesn't lend itself to a cute logo, and nobody asked me.

So, last February, we deployed my ELF. After about a week, the trouble tickets started rolling in, as they always do. Slowly, with more training, adjustments in process, and a few code tweaks, the number of issues decreased. What's strange, though, is that by April, the trickle of tickets had dried up entirely. You never have an app with no trouble tickets; there are at least the user-initiated issues.

In May, news of layoffs started to hit the papers. It didn't seem to be affecting anyone I knew, and upper management was, as usual, mum about the whole thing. But still, every few weeks, there'd be another article about manufacturing workers, buyers, analysts being laid off in ones and twos.

Production was up, and inventory was down, so the shareholders were happy, which makes the executives happy, which makes our managers happy. I got some plaque or other, about innovation or process improvement. It's there on my desk, engraved.

With the continued success of ELF, and with no plateau for the improvements in sight, my team and I decided to take a trip over to the manufacturing floor, to see my little baby in action.

I'm not sure how to say this. She was certainly, um, in action. What I'm not sure of, though, is how ELF learned to drive the conveyors, trains, and lifts on the floor. I know I programmed her to learn, but it's a little puzzling how she accessed the HR system.

I'd turn her off, but our bottom line has never looked better and, well, my security badge doesn't work anymore.

by Sharon 5:21 PM

 

I'm Go-gar Skullcrusher and you're listening to Castle & Keep. It's time to go to the crystal ball and take our first caller. We have Horribus the Giant from the Mountains of Despair on the line. What's going on Horribus?

Well, the goblin hordes swept in from the West, displacing the people in those lands, and now I've got an infestation problem.

Really? Well goblins are easy to deal with, first you get a big pile of old tuna...

No, I don't have gobins, orcs, or gnolls. It's elves. They're alll over the place. They're building treehouses in my garden, fishing in my fountain... They're even setting up outposts in my walls. I've tried baiting traps and setting my pets on them, but they hired a party of adventurers. I haven't seen Fangwort and Swampy since. It's awful!

Gee... Elves, is it? That's a tough one. They're pretty smart, and they're tenacious when they set their mind to stay somewhere. If you can find some, we recommend that you invite a flock of harpies over. Scattering strangleweed and some trapper-vine around your garden will help too.

But that'll...

Yes, I know that it'll make you miserable for a while, but in the long run it'll get rid of the elves. You can take care of the weeding and evict the harpies later. Good luck!

Our next caller is Shaz'na'groxx, a bubbling pit of slime from the Swamps of Desolation. You're on the line, caller.

by jal 12:59 PM

 

My mother said many things before she died, but not least of all was this: she said the elves had left me.

“You are not my daughter, Agnes,” she said. “Not by birth. What you are is a changeling. It took me many years to believe it myself, but I know it for a fact. You are different than the others, you always have been. Your eyes are such an iridescent green. You are not quite of this world, you know that, don’t you, Agnes? They left you on our doorstep when you were still just a child. You could not have been more than three. They came before either my husband or I had awakened, and they exchanged you for Rebecca, our other daughter, whose hair was much redder than yours and whose eyes were not so quick to tears. Oh, please don’t weep. I need to tell you this. At first I think we almost hated you. You reminded us too much of what we had lost, not knowing where she was or why you were here in her place, and I think it was what finally drove William to his grave. But I have tried to raise you as my own even without him, Agnes, and I do love you dearly. I want you to be happy when I am gone.”

I told my mother she would never leave me. The doctor had been delayed in his journey from the nearest town, but he would arrive before nightfall, dispense wisdom and medicine, and she would recover. I was certain of it. We would laugh at all this foolish talk of death and elves and other daughters when she regained her strength. She was the only person I had ever loved. I could not imagine life without her.

I remember thinking that again when the elves came, tall and pale, their faces half hidden by trees. I was standing at my mother’s gave, just outside the woods behind our cabin, when I heard the first of them speak. Onoone, he said, sister, and I was not at all surprised to find I understood him, or that I was eager to follow where he might lead.

by Fred 10:41 AM

 

Today's Topic is:

Elf

by Remi 9:59 AM

Thursday, July 11, 2002

 

bounce bounce bounce bounce
left right
I hear my blood surge in my ears every time I land, like the sound of a thumped basketball.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
My sweat is hanging in a curtain across my face, a solid sheet of water falling from my forehead, filling my eyebrows and beard. My shirt is sticking to my body, and I am sure I leave drops of water with each step. For a moment I see a slow motion image of my foot landing on the ground and a spray of salty water spattering the ground.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
With every other step I breathe, trying to keep everything even, trying to be calm. My blood screams for more air, more wind, more speed. My heart is complaining already because I'm going too fast. I am a city, with too many cars, too few highways and a public transit system that can't keep up with the times.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
I remember what my father told me, on that hellish afternoon when he told me how to run. Picture a ball rolling on the ground. When you run, you need to be a ball, rolling. It takes more energy for the ball to bounce and jump across the ground. You need to roll, smoothly. I never got it right.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
I have been at three universities, all of which came with a prepaid gym membership. This is the first one I ever actually used. I have to come here for a class, and now I am running. I got a whim to run a mile. Somebody told me that's eight laps. This is number five. That's better than half a mile, right? I can quit, right? I did this on a whim, so I can just stop whenever. I don't have to. I can't breathe. I have to stop.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
It never works like that. My shins are hurting like they always do. I'm going to finish.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
right left
that's how it works.
like a ball, rolling in a circle.

by MisterNihil 11:14 PM

 

I stayed up late last night doing live-feed-analysis. When I woke up this morning, my computer was overflowing. Seven different news-bots had pushed so much data to my line printer that I'd wasted almost a full ream of paper. The print-pipe had enough raw news-porn to waste another two reams. I caught and released 13 different destop pets, and found 5 more hiding in sub-tanks as the day progressed.

I'm fortunate in a way; the data purifier on my tap caught all of the viruses, but now it only has another 2,600 MB left on it before I have to swap it out for a new one. Once I got the tap turned off, it took me about two hours to get my original files sorted out from the flood of useless garbage that had poured in. Then I ran DriveWringer (tm) to take care of any leftover flood damage.

On the upside, the various updates that trickled in took care of the compatibility issues between my OS and the modeling lathe I've been wanting to use for my prototyping, and all of my software should up to date. Still, I should know better than to go to bed with the hot data tap running.

by jal 9:13 PM

 

I'm lying in a bathtub. Water is running.

This morning, I left the apartment, running. Frustrated and bored with projects at work, it is always hard to get out of bed, get into the shower, get out the door. Everything takes twice as long, with heavy limbs weighted down by dread.

This morning, I started with seven emails and three phone calls, a constant running conversation. Applications were in flux, pointing to the wrong databases (in the User's view), running in the wrong directions. Much angst surrounded this perceived oversight, this seeming failure, this unacceptable let-down. How dare we: Using our development environments for development?! Moved heaven and earth to get the business partner running again.

This morning, I needed to get another Toastmasters meeting running by lunchtime. I'm responsible for creating the schedules, running the members through the various meeting roles, making sure their goals are met. I am not responsible for answering every-other-minute emails from a nervous Toastmaster (the MC for today's meeting). "Stop," I told him, finally, "other things are blowing up; I can't work on this any more right now." I ran the printer and the copier incessantly, running from my desk to the printer to pick up agendas and sign-up sheets and achievement records and charts and graphs and spreadsheets.

This afternoon, I ran past the vending machine and bought a Snickers bar by way of lunch, on my way to the Toastmasters meeting. I ran through a hastily prepared speech about writing conclusions. I ran the Table Topics portion of the meeting, hitting members up for impromptu responses to pithy questions (a few supplied by my loving husband, last night). I ran to the lectern and back to my seat, four times.

This afternoon, I ran to the cafeteria after the meeting, to find it closed. I bought a sandwich from the coffee shop. I ran back to my desk to begin the work that was overdue this morning. I ran through the Software Requirements Specification template again, refining, bullshitting, detailing. I hate this.

This evening, I am lying in a bathtub. Long red valleys running from elbow to wrist now only drip onto the porcelain. Distant water pounds dully, distantly.

I have stopped running.

---

Fiction, yes, but it was a crappy-ass day.

by Sharon 6:52 PM

 

Running a worldwide corporation is hard work. I don't care what anybody says.

If it's not one thing, it's another. There are always stock prices to inflate, shady business deals to conduct, and nefarious ties with unseemly members of government, industry, and the local criminal underworld to cultivate. I've ruined at least three good suits this year alone by spending hours in smoke-filled back rooms, and if I have to buy just one more senator a fruit basket, I think I might scream. It's tough doing what I do, but then again, a Fortune 500 isn't born overnight.

There's been some talk lately about illegal accounting procedures, tax evasion, and the frequent currying of favor with the elite in order to avoid prosecution. And somehow, in the midst of all this talk, some people have gotten it in their heads that this is a bad thing. To these accusations, I say that it's simply the cost of doing business in a modern society. It's not that I want Congressmen to use my private jets, accept bribes, or allow me to dictate public policy and skewer the stock market in my favor. It's just that this is the only way I have to maintain my competitive edge. Without that...well, without that certainly all hope of a bright and better future is lost.

Like I said, running a company is hard work. It takes a lot to endure what I endure -- the harsh sun of tropical beaches, the uncomfortable and often awkward conversation at endless presidential dinners, the threat of a whole three or four years in a minimum security prison -- just for doing what I need to do in order to make an honest million. It isn't fair, and it isn't pretty, but before you rush to judgement, why don't you try walking a mile in my shoes?

But be careful, all right? They're Armani.

by Fred 3:58 PM

 

What an effing day. Ergo:

running

by Sharon 1:19 PM

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

 

“Ready…”

Bob didn’t know why they picked him for this test, but he was happy to volunteer. It was one of his three defining traits: Resourcefully clever, zealously fit, and always willing to volunteer. When his C.O. told him about the opportunity to be the first person to test the BAX-760, he had the paperwork on his desk and filled out in 30 minutes.

“Aim…”

Bob had to go through the most grueling series of psychological tests he’d ever endured. He didn’t completely understand why. After all, the BAX-760 was just a gun. Well, from what he’d overheard, it was actually considerably more than that. It was supposedly the, “Perfect Gun.” As he stood sweltering in the Arizona desert, Bob thought about guns. He knew every gun he’d ever fired intimately. He could take over thirty different guns apart and reassemble them in perfect darkness with a thunderstorm roiling about him if he had to. He knew that guns really only had one purpose: Killing people. If a Glock or an M-60 could kill people as well as it did, then what would a Perfect Gun do? Would it kill people perfectly? Did it use bullets? Did it leave an exquisite corpse?

Or, would a Perfect Gun just kill everyone and be done with it?

“Fire!”

Bob pulled the trigger.

by jal 10:34 PM

 

With a wolfish grin and a Voo Doo hiss, Erol flings a handful of powders onto the fire. It flares up red and green, and the drums begin. And we dance.

White sand describes a large circle in the middle of the Allegheny woods. Dance to keep warm, my friends, for it is April in Pennsylvania. Slowly, like a snake eating its tail, we progress around the circle, step, step.

A shriek from the mistress of ceremonies cues us to turn inside-out, facing into the dark hemlocks instead of the orange-bright fire. At each of the cardinal positions, the Quarters, stands an invoker—an evoker: a member of our church, wearing a beautiful mask of feathers and beads, dancing her element. Air in the East buffets us with fans; Fire snakes sinuously amongst candles; Water pounds and thunders with a rain stick; Earth, with the dancing, delighted eyes of my friend Pam behind that mask, feeds us small squares of homemade bread. And I bit her—thoroughly by accident, but with a good, solid chomp, nonetheless. It had to have hurt. My eyes popped wide, and my hand flew to cover my mouth, both to convey my mortification and to keep me from blurting out an apology in the middle of this wordless ritual.

And Earth, warm and generous, pregnant, digging dirty feet into the sand, laughed at me.

by Sharon 5:53 PM

 

“Did you hear? They decided to let Frank go.”

“You’re kidding. But he’s been with the company, what, twenty years now?”

“I know, but you know how it is. You don’t pull your own weight, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here. Seniority doesn’t mean a damn thing anymore.”

“You think Frank wasn’t pulling his own weight?”

“No, it’s not that, it’s just…well, his mind wanders sometimes. And you know they don’t like that. It upsets them to see productivity slip. But I mean…well, you know how it is. Frank’s got a wife and three kids he hasn’t seen in over a year.”

“No, I didn’t know that. He never said anything.”

“I think the company told him not to. Made him sign a release. They don’t want anyone to know they were sold to the competition. It might not look good, the shareholders get nervous…”

“Why? Everybody knows.”

“Yeah, but they don’t say. Not really. I mean, it’s one thing to joke about being a corporate slave…”

“Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. So what do you think will happen to Frank?”

“What, you mean when they let him go? Same thing that happens to everyone they fire, I guess. Into the fiery pits of torment below.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah. Could be worse, though. They could always demote him to Accounting."

by Fred 2:27 PM

 

The fire that I feel in my stomach ... should I write to him? Should I leave well enough alone? So long ago, I removed him from my buddy list swearing never to waste my time again. Yet I know something is not right.

It was a week ago, as I drifted from sleep. I could hear him, telling me he was fine. But I could see his eyes, pleading with me to understand what he could not say: that he needed a friend, he needed to know. He faded away longingly, and I awoke to my lover caressing my hair and asking why I cried.

The fire that I feel in my chest ... why am I doing this, I wonder, as I add his name to my buddy list, open a window, type a casual "hey there" ? But I have learned to trust my instincts and I know that somewhere, there is a reason.

We chat. He has domesticated: moving to Georgetown with the newly-minted lawyer-girlfriend, two kittens, and a tele-commuting job. Composing again, too. He seems content, and yet...

The fire that I feel behind my eyes ... a flash of knowing. We are not finished. No, we can never be lovers again, but our minds are intertwined. "Friends" is inadequate. I know him, and he knows me. Our words express more not for their content but for what is not said. And we both know precisely the meaning in the gaps.

He refuses to mourn.

The fire that I feel in my soul ... he will turn, at his darkest moment, and find me extending a candle.

by Faith 1:21 PM

 

My belated maroon post:

Everyone knows those silly questions about what you would take with you if you were marooned on a desert island. They come in many variations: what five books, what music, what three friends... Some famous composer, I think it may have been Gershwin, answered "five blank books" - though I suspect his answer may have been "blank books" for the music and the friends questions, too.

Anyway, as much as I like to make fun of these questions every once in a while one of them gets me thinking. Interesting for me was "what one item of technology..."

The obvious answer -- a solar-powered laptop with wireless internet access -- may not be so obvious after all. After you've been out there for a month, what wouldn't you trade for running water? A shower and a shave? Or how about those tubes of raw cookie dough after living on fish & bugs for a month? I know I'd be hard-put without those hormone-balancing spoonfuls.

Thank the abstract deity of choice that the toughest question du jour is actually what flavor cookie dough to munch while watching MIB2 streaming down to my laptop!

by Faith 12:01 PM

 

[A few tech notes from your friendly web diva, for all and sundry: There is a bug in Blogger Pro that makes posts just after midnight show up in the wrong order on the published page. They're ordered by Pacific time, so you'll want to edit the timestamp to be after 2 am, which you can do from the Posts view: Click on the "Edit" link for your post, then click on the "Options" button on the Blogger tool bar. There, you can change the time and re-publish the post.

Then, to take advantage of the stylesheet and to keep the formatting clean, I suggest using the blockquote tag shown at the bottom of this page to announce your topic. Copying from the page's source will pick up other tags that Blogger adds automatically, making a small mess.

And now, I gotta think about fire.]

by Sharon 10:01 AM

 

My belated Maroon post:

I like those little cookies. They always make me think of coconut, which I don't really like. I just like it in them. What are they called? damn. I remember them around Christmas or something; we'd eat them because Mom only made them then. She'd make them out of a sort of thick merangue, with coconut in it like a messy cartoon haystack.
Cartoon? that's like the name of them.
The Girl Scouts make one too, but they call it a samoan now, or something else. Damn. I forget. They used to be called samoans but that is an ethnic group or country name and is thus racist? I don't know. Now the GSUSA calls them Caramel Delights (Ahhh. Internet. In 10 minutes I can write and still have time to look up stuff I forgot).
We only ate them at Christmas, with latkes and brioche and little German Smoking Santa Incense burners, so they must be a German or Jewish thing. Christmas is when Mom's German-Jew gets to get out a little bit, which is funny as she is not a German-Jew. We're not even German for several generations, and I don't know any family who are jewish. Dunno. What we aren't, and this messes up my census form every damn time, is Russians from he Caucasus Mountains (or any sort of European from a point where Europe and Asia meet) (I love you Internet); thus we ain't proper caucasians. Are all black (African-American? Of African descent? Ethinc? Melaninally gifted? I'm not good at PC) people Kenyan? Nope. We didn't just sort of pick a country where their earliest Homo Sapien ancesters might have come from and place them there. Caucasian, Kenyan, Formosan, Samoan (like the cookies!) and, oh I don't know, Khmer? And then I suppose that all of those assorted people who were on this contintent when it was discovered must be Navajo, right? I don't know.
Right. Point is cookies.
Maroons?
No. Macaroons. Sorry. All for naught. Just another pointless spew. The words make me think of each other. Maroon Macaroon.
Whatever.
Never happened.

by MisterNihil 2:40 AM

 

man. I been away too long.
Today's topic is

Fire

by MisterNihil 2:22 AM

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

 

The life of a bureaucrat is hard, even for high-level bureaucrats. The endless politics, the infighting which grows ever fiercer the less important the issue is, wondering every day what projects will succumb to inertia, the public getting so frustrated when they can’t find the one person who can help them and taking it out on whoever is convenient, George Lucas ragging on your profession all the time. It’s tough.

Granted, it’s an easier life than some. No one’s shooting at us or waking us up at five in the morning or failing to obey safety regulations at our place of work. We get stuff no one thinks about, like deadly mildew in the carpet. Lost one of my best assistants to that mildew, he transferred to a better-ventilated department.

Still, it’s better to be higher up. The closer you are to Authority, the easier it is to change things. It’s tricky though; you don’t get credit for the things you do right, but your whole office could get the stick if you screw up.

I was one of a dozen or so people who had to sign off on the plans for the speech announcing the memorial for that poor space crew. I’d give you the designation, but you’re not interested in their catalog number. Anyway, I was looking over the requisitions for the drapes when I noticed something and called the team leader for the space crew memorial speech planning task force.

“Maroon?”

“It’s a shade of red. It offsets the chief’s eyes.”

I know what maroon is. I even looked up color swatches before I called. Give me some credit. “I’ll leave the aesthetics to you, but do you think it’s appropriate?”

Silence. No doubt trying to figure out what I meant.

I elaborated: “I mean, they made it out to that rock and ran out of fuel. Do you think it’s good taste to have a maroon backdrop in that context?”

by Dave Menendez 10:44 PM

 

They said they would come back for me. They lied.

I know now that I should have seen it coming, but I had always been too trusting with them. I believed too much of what they told me. Now I see that the expedition was a sham from the beginning.

"We want to test the machine, Herr Doctor," they told me. "We need to see if these theories of yours are correct."

I knew they had already tested the machine, gone forward ten or twenty years, sent men through the gate to gather information. They knew things which they could not have known otherwise. But I suppose I thought that this would be the first official test, that if it proved successful they would then reveal the existence of the machine to the people. I suppose I wondered what the British press would make of it when they learned that Germany was no longer worried about bombs or troop movements, that they had a machine, a weapon, against which there could be no defense.

It is not so bad here. There are, I imagine, worse places to be exiled, and they could just as easily have killed me. I do not know how far ahead we came, but I suspect it is many thousand of years in the future. There is nothing here that I recognize, and the technicians in Berlin seemed eager to test the limits of the machine.

I will die here, I suppose, marooned by my own invention and my willingness to believe they could have any use for me once I gave them the time machine.

by Fred 7:29 PM

 

This stain will be problematic.

Robert isn't supposed to know about this party, and it's going to be hard to keep it from him, with such incriminating evidence caking and congealing on the carpet. It is such a fascinating shade of red.

Focus. What are the known stain removers? Club soda? Seltzer water? (What's the difference, anyway?) Didn't I hear once that white wine is the best way to get out red wine? Housekeeping for the Rich and Famous, that. Seventh grade science class: Water is the universal solvent.

Still, I think I'm going to need a power steamer, and there just isn't time. Messy, messy guests. Damn it.

The hors d'oeuvres went smoothly enough. Ladies' fingers, Viennese sausages, "pigs in a blanket." Even the wine—oh, the wine, luscious, full-bodied, a very rare type—went off without a hitch. But bring out the main course, and your seemingly well mannered guests, culled from the upper crust of society, degenerate into a veritable feeding frenzy.

And now Robert will find out. About the stain, the party, everything. Damn.

I suppose, for future galas, I shall have to remember: Serve the virgins on the veranda.

by Sharon 5:37 PM

 

Jake came along to Thomas' family reunion just for the hell of it. That's where he saw Sally. One look at her and he knew that he had to have her. That night. "Hey, Thom. Who the hell is that?"

"That's Sally, but she's strictly off-limits Jake. She's..."

But Jake had already walked away to figure out his plan of attack. Assessing the VFW hall, he noticed a seven-year old boy sitting by himself within Sally's line of sight. Time to use the 'He loves kids' approach, he thought. Jake sauntered over to the tyke and sat on the bench next to him.

"Hi kid. Having fun?"

"Naw. No one wants to talk to me. They're all busy talking about stupid adult stuff like timeshares and jobs and the next reunion. They don't want to hear my joke or anything."

"Hey, that's okay. I'll listen to your joke." Jake took off his jacket and set it aside, catching a glance at Sally. She noticed Jake initiating a conversation with the kid and was paying attention with mild interest. Excellent, thought Jake.

"Well there was this ship filled with red paint, and this ship filled with black paint, and this ship filled with purple paint..."

The kid talked for hours. Or so it seemed. He rattled on and on. Jake would grunt occasionally, letting the kid know that he was paying attention. He would have left long ago, but Sally kept glanging over at them and smiling. Sometimes she'd make to come over, but she'd get caught in another conversation. Jake knew that he'd be rewarded for his paitence; All of the guys who tried to hit on her lasted 5 minutes - tops.

"...And they were all floating around in the sea. And they got in a storm and all smashed into each other."

Jake grunted again, but what he really saw was Sally. She stood there, smiling down at the two of them. The kid stopped talking.

"You're such a nice man. You must really like kids to spend all this time listening to Sampson chatter away." Her voice was as fresh as the smell of lilacs on a spring afternoon. Jake's "danger sense" started to tingle. "You know Sampson?" Something is not right, he thought. Sally laughed like the pealing of crystal chimes. "Of course I do! He's my son. Thanks so much for looking after him. It's time to go Samps."

Jake noticed her wedding ring. He politely made his Hello / Good byes and turned to walk away. "Hey mister! Don't you want to know what happened to the passengers on the ships?" Jake turned back. "Sure, kid. What?"

"They were marooned!"

And Jake couldn't help but laugh.

by jal 4:54 PM

 

"The carpet's pink," my sister said. And I said, "No it's not." I shook my head. "It's like wine, merlot, not quite maroon." It was hard to tell standing there, where what would be linoleum in a week met the carpet's edge. It was already half past five, and there was not enough light left in the living room to tell; both my sister and I blocked the sunlight from the un-curtained kitchen windows. "It's definitely not pink," I said.

"They came today," my father told me. They had ripped up the old blue carpet that snaked its way up the stairs and replaced it with the new. My parents and sister had dusted, moved furniture beforehand. The men who laid the carpet were apparently quite grateful. "Do you normally have to move furniture?" my mother said she asked them. "Oh, all the time," one of the men said. "Like you wouldn't believe." The air conditioning, they thought, was also nice.

When I got home for the weekend, this past fourth of July, I stumbled into an unfamiliar house. Parts of it I recognized and had known all my life, but with the new carpet, and the kitchen and upstairs bathroom remodeled -- furniture moved around and things put in boxes, our dog no longer there to fill the house with noise -- it was a little like going home only to find somebody else's house attached to it. It was disorienting, not because I need things to stay as they always were with my childhood home, but because...well, because change is, by its nature, disorienting. When I went home, briefly, at Easter, the house still looked like it had for years. I didn't have to worry about not recognizing things or wandering into unfamiliar rooms. The kitchen cabinets were the same, the upstairs bathroom floor still leaked into the room below, and the carpet was blue, not this shade of almost-maroon-and-definitely-not-pink.

There are houses full of rooms in our memory, where we can wander or get lost, but the houses that surround us are always changing, growing, dying, changing perhaps what our memories mean, making them more precious and valuable.

by Fred 3:58 PM

 

And today’s topic is…

Maroon

by Faith 11:16 AM

Monday, July 08, 2002

 

Maria wiped up the condensate with her napkin, making it soggy. She then placed her glass methodically in a series of positions on the formica, creating a new pattern of drink circles.

The speech was familiar. It was easier to move water around the table than look at him.

He explained how he had grown, how he needed to try new experiences, how he was moving on, while she just... didn't. He wanted to know she would be okay; he reassured her that she would find someone new, since she was clearly a great person and had so much to offer.

Maria's paper napkin tore when she wiped away the latest painting of wet circles. It bunched into a mushy pile that would not be contained by the remainder of the napkin.

He was talking about it not being personal, about it being about growth and changes and seeing other people.

She found intersections to be the most interesting. Circles crossed, dividing the table into Venn diagrams, tracing the conversation in water rings.

He climbed out of the booth, seemed disconcerted, perhaps dissatisfied, that she was not crying. He had expected a bit of weeping, dreaded a dramatic bawling scene, hoped quietly for a few brave tears dashed away before anyone might notice.

But Maria drew drink circles on the table and let him leave.

by Sharon 11:58 PM

 

A molecule of water passes from the tear duct of any given famous person in history, say Gengis Khan.

That molecule is absorbed by an amoeba on his skin.

That amoeba becomes food for a hydra, which becomes food for increasingly larger multi-cellular organisims.

All along, that molecule of water is passed from creature to creature.

By this point, the molecule is trapped inside a fly, which is eaten by a trout. This fish is caught by a fisherman, who sells it for a coin (Made of molecules of tin, copper, and other metals. That's another story...). The purchaser of the fish then cooks it and eats it. The molecule of water, esentially unlatered in its travels, finds its way out of that person and enters the water cycle again. Perhaps this time it evaporates, goes into the atmosphere, and travels across the Pacific to America where it rains down and gets trapped in a tomato. It still fins its way back into another person.

Remember that the odds are very good that you have a molecule that once passed through the body of Gengis Kahn in your body right now.

by jal 11:57 PM

 

“Circle” got me thinking about the circle of life, and I had a sobering thought. What if I’m not pulling my weight in the whole circle of life thing? I mean, we’re supposed to be on the top of the food chain but you know I haven’t killed anything in years. I mean sure, I’m no longer a vegetarian but I’m not sure that counts. Evolution is all about survival of the fittest and creatures evolving due to environmental threats and all that. What if I’m supposed to be out there furthering evolution or ecological long term balance by preying on some lesser species.

I can just see it now: I die and go off to the here after. I’m standing in front of Gaia, the Great Spirit, the Big Cheese, whatever:

“Ok, so how many wildebeests did you kill?”

“Um, what?”

“Wildebeests, how many?”

“Er, well none really.”

“Oh for crying out loud, another one!”

“But, I didn’t know I was supposed to be killing wildebeests. And besides, I don’t think there were any where I lived”
“You think we arranged for millions of years of evolution for you mostly-hairless apes so you could make video games and play Dungeons and Dragons?", She looks really put out. “You were supposed to kill wildebeests! How are they to evolve with just the lions hunting them?”

“I though most everything in the Serengeti hunted Wildebeests.”

“Well most do but you were supposed to as well. Ok, well what’s done is done, or not done as the case may be. So, dolphins, how many dolphins did you kill?”

So anyhow, my point is that I feel I may be letting global evolution down, not pulling my weight as it were. I may be the square peg in the circle of life.

by Shawn 10:30 PM

 

He jumped when he first saw the circles in the darkness. There were two, just the right distance from each other to seem like eyes, and they glowed an unhealthy yellow. He jumped and ducked behind a wall and waited for his breathing to slow down again. Straining his ears, he heard again the incessant dripping from the water cavern he had left fifteen minutes ago, but there was no sound of an animal.

He spent a few moments trying not to think about how quietly an animal could approach him.

The others had to have reached the water cavern by now. It contained a bewildering number of exits, most inaccessibly high in the walls or underneath the surface, but there was no guarantee they wouldn’t take the path he had chosen. They knew the signs as well as he, and the map, which he had counted on to give him the advantage, was turning out to be less useful than he had hoped.

A growling sound startled him, and it took a second or so for him to realize it was his stomach. His mouth tried to water as he thought longingly of the granola bar in his pack, but he needed it for the trip back. He needed to be clever.

The circles were still there when he peered around the corner, low to the ground where they might not be watching. They didn’t move.

Calmer, he stood and walked into the new cavern and looked around. It was dark, of course, without even the dim light from the crystals in the corridor outside, but he got the impression of a vast space of unmoving air. He moved towards the eyes and for a while they seemed to get no closer. Then he noticed that they had grown larger as came closer; they were much larger and much farther than he had guessed.

They were two circular halls, lit from some unknown source in a sickly yellow. He pulled out his map and hoped that this fork would give him the advantage.

by Dave Menendez 9:44 PM

 

There is a boy who lives down the lane,
And topsy-turvy Tommy is his name.

Every morning, before eight
Tommy turns outside the garden gate.

His mother worries he'll be sick,
But spinning round is Tommy's favorite trick.

He spins, he's spun, he twirls around,
Until he's spent and then falls down.

He coughs, he laughs, he gasps for air
He sits up then, says, "It's not fair.

"To spin and twirl, to toss around,
And in end just hit the ground.

"With little more than one skinned knee
The circle ends, collapsed with me."

He mother says, "Don't be a fool.
Now hurry up, you're late for school."

by Fred 12:00 PM

 

Remi, topics rotate through the names in the order that they are listed on the right, under "The Contributors."

by Sharon 10:52 AM

 

And today’s topic is…

Circles

by Dave Menendez 10:50 AM

Sunday, July 07, 2002

 

I am deliberatly posting no topic for Sunday, the 7th of July. Instead, catch up with one of the previous two topics, or grant yourself permission to start fresh tomorrow. Have a happy 4th of July weekend!

And now, my story for Independence and Patience (Bundled together as one story):

---

Clayton Lay was your average, ordinary thug. He found someone to tell him what to do, and he did it. This would usually entail looking menacing, hurting people, or standing around waiting for something to do. Sometimes he'd even get to do two of these things at once. Clayton didn't mind this lack of autonomy, since he wasn't really big into making decisions for himself. In fact, this reluctance to choose for himself, bolstered by a tendany to take instructions a little too literally, is what eventually landed him in jail for manslaughter.

35 years. Clayton Lay stayed in jail for 35 years before they let him out again. 35 years without a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheese, large fries, and black-and-white shake (His favorite meal on the planet.). 35 years without hitting on a lady in a bar. 35 years without driving a car. Going without these things bothered Clayton, and he counted the days 'till he'd be able to enjoy them again. But there was one thing he liked: He liked the regularity of being in prison. They told him what to do and where to go. They fed him and sheltered him. He was big and strong, and could keep the predators and wolves away.

12,782.5 days after entering the care of the state of Alabama, Clayton stayed up late thinking about all the things he'd do when he got out. When he was released the next day, he entered a world almost entirely different from the one he'd left. The McDonald's was different. The bars were different. The women were different. The cars were different. Everything that he'd missed was different and the world seemed... faster... than it had been before. Clayton did the only thing he could do.

Clayton waited until the evening, standing in an alleyway. First chance he got, he mugged an elderly couple. Later, he mugged a yuppie. He mugged passers-by for the next 10 days until the police took him into custody. Clayton said, "I want to go back to jail." When they asked why, he said, "Freedom doesn't suit me."

by jal 4:37 PM

 

Is there any way to set up the 'today's topic/tomorrow's topic' thing to display a little farther into the future? I think that would help get the topics up a little faster. Or, at least, it would help me.

by Remi 2:10 PM

Saturday, July 06, 2002

 

If you’ll pardon a bit of self indulgence. This was an idea I had long ago for bit of dialog and this seemed like a good opportunity to jot it down.


Our story thus far:

Our hero Jack Cutter has uncovered the nefarious plot of the alien invader Zormax to conquer the planet Earth. As Cutter confronts Zormax in his mountain top hide out, our story continues…

“Ha! Too late human, I’ve already sent the message to my home planet, Claxus Prime; the invasion force will soon know of your puny Earth!”

“Fiend! Well, even though your invasion force knows of our planet they won’t find Earth easy to conquer!”

“Well, technically they don’t know of Earth yet. The message won’t get there for about four of your earth years.”

“Oh, well even better. We’ll spend those four years amassing forces to fend off your diabolic invasion.”

“Foolish human! It’s not that simple. The proposal for invasion will be put before the Supreme Review Committee for a financial review and feasibility analysis. Then it will be voted on and passed on to various other subcommittees and review boards.”

“Um, how long does that usually take?”

“Ha! I’ve seen it take as little as one of your puny solar years and as long as 40 plaxati?”

“Plaxati?”

“About 20 of your Earth years.”

“Each?”

“Yeah.”

“So about 800 years.”

“Give or take.”

“Ok. Well in that time the people of Earth will spare no expense. We’ll set aside our differences, we’ll become one people, unified against a common enemy. Powerful! Optimistic!”

“Arrogant human! Your petty world is hardly worth deploying the entire armada out to this culture-poor part of the galaxy. They’ll probably swing by on the return trip from Klakon 5, a far more respectable, far less remote part of the galaxy.”

“I see. And, um, how far away is that”, Cutter asks sitting down and lighting a cigarette.”

“From here?”

“Yeah”

“Bout 20,000 light years”

“And from Claxis Prime?”

“Oh, another 50,000 light years”

“So, we’re looking at around 70,000 light years.

“Give or take.”

“Ok, and about how long do you think they’ll take in Klakon 5?”

“Well, anywhere from 3-5 plaxati.”

“Ok, so let’s see”, Cutter pulls out a pencil and pad. “And how many times the speed of light will they be traveling?”

“What?”

“Speed of light. How many time the speed of light will the ships be traveling?”

“You can’t travel faster than the speed of light. That’s impossible. Stupid, stupid human.”

(blink…blink…) “Sooooo, we’re looking at over 70,000 years before your pals show up?"”

”More like about 160,000 years assuming there are no delays and it’s not an election year.”

“You Claxus Primates are a pretty patient bunch aren’t you?

“Claxis Primians. And yeah, pretty much”

by Shawn 8:41 PM

 

Patience

Let's try that again
Um, this is meant for Saturday. Although I still want to write something for Independence as well. hmmm

by Shawn 4:45 PM

Friday, July 05, 2002

 

I am out of town until Sunday, but I'm not entirely incommunicado. I'm running up my parents' phone bill here, so I'll have to be quick, but today's topic, if anybody's interested in writing anything, is:

independence

by Fred 6:51 PM

 

I'm pretty sure Fred is out of town and incommunicado. Anybody got a topic?

by Sharon 2:17 PM

Thursday, July 04, 2002

 

I moved out here because I thought it would be, "grounding." Land on the outskirts of Austin gets cheaper by the minute and a ranch seemed too good to resist. 200 acres of land still isn't big enough if a cook and a nut take of residence next door.

I'm a retired high-tech chip designer. Now I raise emu. I figured that emu ranching would be as non-high tech as I could get. It's earthy and real in a way that sitting in front of a computer doing CAD and running electrical tolerances just isn't. 6 months after I set my operation up, the Olstens moved in. They came with a lot of cages, so I figured that they were ranchers too.

About a month later, I heard what sounded for all the world like distant gunfire followed by low intermittent thuds. I could only guess that those were hand grenades. That evening, I stopped by to pay a visit to Jorge and his wife Marta. They met me at their second gate wearing matching tan shorts, green t-shirts, and sunscreen daubs on their noses. In the wan light of dusk, I saw a high-domed cage far behind their home. Inside, shapes the size of large dogs loped about. Apes perhaps?

"Everything all right Jorge? Marta? I thought I heard explosions and gunfire earlier today."

The words rolled off his tongue in his thick Nordic accent: "No Jon, we are fine. My wife and I, we are just practicing with our collection. Keeping everything in working order."

We exchanged some small talk and pleasantries. I left shortly afterward. They did not unbar their gate to let me in, and I didn't want to press the point.

The gunfire and thudding persisted for the next nine months. Now it didn't upset me or my birds, but it was just odd. Especially when it happened late at night. Eventually I went out and did some spying, just to see what was really going on. I never went on their property -- I just used a night scope that I picked up at a flea market. Guess what I saw.

Baboons. Jorge and Marta are training baboons. They're training baboons to fire guns and throw grenades. They're training them to attack buildings with Greco-Roman columns in the front. They're training them to attack people dresed in specific uniforms. National Guard, Army, Marine uniforms.

I didn't think they saw me as I left, but I woke up this morning with no phone, electricity, or cable. There's an armed compliment of baboons surrounding my house, dining on freshly-slaughtered emu.

What a way to go.

by jal 11:12 PM

 

"Baboon," I roll the word around in my mouth.

"Yeah," Chuck responds, "Baboon."

"Fuckin' A," I respond, in turn.

The package in the middle of the room says, 'Baboon', but it doesn't have any airholes, or a return address. The UPS guy left it in the living room of our cramped fifth-floor apartment on the west side of town after we had signed the little green screen. He seemed to be in a big hurry, although you'd think that he'd want some water or something after carrying something that weighed 150 pounds up four flights of stairs. Apparently he had done the job earlier, but Chuck and I weren't home, and so he had to do it again on this balmy Wednesday afternoon.

The box, though, is the important thing. Not the fact that the UPS guy had 5 o'clock shadow out to here and smelled of a quiet desperation that only the recently dumped have. Never mind the fact that he had a white, untanned, spot on his finger where a wedding band had recently been removed. I'm an editor, I'm paid to notice stupid inconsitencies. Drives Chuck nuts most of the time. I always remember how much Fruity Pebbles is left after I have breakfast. I know if he's been in my snack cakes.

The box, though, is the important thing.

"Think we should open it, Greg?"

"I dunno. Lemme look at it for a second."

I examine the packaging. 'Baboon' is printed on all six sides of the refrigerator-shaped box in a thick, unimpressive, non-expressive font that I don't recognize. Other than that the box is white. I'm reminded of a Velvet Underground song in which a guy mails himself to a girl whom he thinks he has a relationship with. He ends up dying when she plunges a knife into the box (and his head) while trying to open the mysterious package that has appeared in her home.

I really don't want to spend an afternoon cleaning blood out of the carpet. Linoleum. Bare concrete. Whatever. I don't like blood. I notice that the bottom of the box isn't bent out or damaged. Perhaps there's another box inside this one. I put my ear up against the box and listen. Nothing moving around. Maybe it's asleep. Yeah, after jostling up to a fifth floor dual bachelor pad on the world's squeakiest stairs.

"I'm gonna open 'er up, Chuck."

"Go for it, dude."

I cut away the tape along the seam.

by Remi 10:22 PM

 

"I think we should call the band 'Baboon,' cause that means, like, old man of the forest or something, in the language of the native people of South America, or something."
"I think we should call the band three musicians and a stoned moron drummer, and then the three of us will throw you out."
"Dude, that's not cool. How come 3?"
"Well duh, 'cause there's gotta be four people in the band. All the best bands had four guys in them. Metallica, the Doors, Cream, Nirvana, even Destiny's Child had four people before they sucked."
"What's that got to do with us, man? We're not gonna be a vocal group are we?"
"Well no, dumbass, but its the point of the thing. It's the Funk Shwee."
"Wull, what's Funk Shwee?"
"You know, like George Clinton, like, that certain manage ah twah, like French people say-"
"Dude. You mean ju nu seh kwah."
"No dude. That means, like, a taxi or something, dumbass. Anyway, you have to have four people in the band."
"Wull, who's gonna be the other four people?"
"I don't know, man. We'll just pick up some musicians along the way. I mean, we've got a singer and a drummer. A guitar player is, like, easy to find."
"Yeah. Just throw a rock. U-huh huh huh."
"Yeah. And a bass player is just a retarded guitar player."
"Dude. That's not cool. I want a sexy bass chick, cause she'll be hot, and that'll bring in other hot babes."
"That's right. Yeah..."
"Yeah... And we'll be called Baboon. Not The Baboons like some dumb 50's band, but just Baboon. Yeah, dude. With a sexy bass chick."
"Dumbass."

by MisterNihil 8:35 PM

 

I, too, apologize for my lack of posting. My mind has been elsewhere. Today's topic is:

Baboon

by Remi 6:15 PM

 

My apologies to all -- I have been away from internet access most of this week and, for the holiday weekend, will be isolated in the wild woods of Bellefonte, PA. I'll return on Monday with (boss willing) no more trips to the boonies on the immediate horizon.

by Faith 10:46 AM

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

 

I walk to work. It takes about 15 minutes to get from my front door to my desk. My walk goes through a largely undeveloped business park which used to be a landfill. It's really quite pleasant; filled with scrub brush, wildflowers, twittering birds, and assorted field-dwelling wildlife.

About three weeks ago, I encountered a rabbit about three feet away from the sidewalk. I looked at it. It looked at me, then it hopped casually away toward a largely-overgrown path. I walked past.

A few days later, I saw the rabbit again. It looked at me, then hopped to that same path with notable deliberation. When I came closer, it hopped a few feet in and turned to look expectantly at me. I noticed an overgrown ramshackle shed set about 40 or 50 feet in from the road. I was curious, but I had to be at work in seven minutes, so I continued onward. I never returned to investigate the shed.

A week later the same thing happened, but when I looked back, the rabbit lifted its front paw and beckoned urgently to me. I was somewhat startled, but continued to work nonetheless. I honestly didn't think I really saw it wave at me until what happened today.

Today, the rabbit was in the middle of the sidewalk. It did not hop away when I approached. Instead, it looked up at me with all-too human eyes. If it could talk, I have no doubt that it would have begged me to follow it down that overgrown path. With cloying pleas ("Please?"), the rabbit would lead me into that dilapidated shack and... Would I fall down a giant rabbit hole? Be eaten by a grue? Well, who knows?

I stepped past and continued walking to my job. Why?

Because I just don't trust that rabbit.

by jal 11:55 PM

 

The mud had mostly dried. Max's hair no longer dripped. Instead, it made dread locks that batted her face as she crawled. She would keep going as long as the light held out.

Max was beyond questioning how this strange labyrinth of catacombs had come to exist beneath her house. Now, the only goal was to get out. She crawled on hands and bloody knees down a rough-hewn stone corridor that was just large enough to allow her to pass on all fours. She chose left at every opportunity, relying on a childhood theory of maze solving. The walls seemed to glow faintly green. Although unsettling, this was also a relief, since Max had no candles or flashlight. She crawled.

A small voice spoke directly into her ear: "Beg."

When the violent thunderstorm, with hail and tornado warnings, had begun to beat against her small house, she had climbed into the bathtub to wait it out. She could hear torrents running off her roof and chipping away at her foundation. After hours of waiting, trying to read a paperback book by flashlight, Max felt compelled to inspect the integrity of her cellar. She had to go out into the storm to open the big, dusky-red cellar door.

The cellar was already full of a foot of water when she got there. But that wasn't what had held her attention, transfixed. The water was pouring out of the room, as fast as it was pouring in, through a square hole in the floor that had never been there before.

Horrified, repulsed, Max had climbed down the algae-slicked ladder into a corridor. There was no standing water in the corridor, just a general dampness, a sheen to the walls and floor. There was also no ladder, no trap door, no waterfall from above.

She started to walk, choosing left. Later, she was forced to crawl.

Again, too close, that hissing, gleeful woman's voice: "Beg. Beg for the way out."

"Beg."

by Sharon 3:41 PM

 

Begging is no easy thing. Sure, I make it look easy but it’s not. You walk by me pretending not to see me; I’m invisible to you. Bastards. You think it’s simply my nature and maybe it is. My people have been around a very long time living among you and quite successfully too.

We haven’t always begged. Once we fought and killed for what we needed and some of us still do. But thousands of years ago we found an easier way. We tricked you into bringing us into your society and you welcomed us as friends, companions, even protectors.

Now we sit at your feet waiting for scraps to fall, begging, sneaking, performing, patients, eventually it pays off. As irritating as you find us sooner or later you give in and we have what we want. Sometimes we have to perform demeaning tricks and pretend to be the sycophants you would have us be, but we always win in the end. Further, you feed us, give us shelter and comfort.

Your people are easily manipulated. I think I’ll go crap in your shoes.

by Shawn 12:19 PM

 

Cup of Water
Buckminster Fuller designed the Dymaxian bathroom, an elegant tribute to the form-follows-function philosophy of engineering that characterizes most of his work. In addition to being cleanable by hose, it can give you a cleansing shower using just a cup of water. Also, rather than turning fresh, potable water into black water for no purpose other than spiriting away human waste, the Dymaxian sanitarily packages it up to be used for fruitful purposes.

Learning of inventions like this makes me intensely uncomfortable. Geodesic domes, hemp paper, and electric cars fall into this category, as well. Namely, we could be living much better than we are, but for selfish, short-sighted lobby groups. It makes me feel helpless and wasteful.

by Sharon 10:56 AM

 

[removed by author]

by Fred 10:15 AM

 

beg

by Sharon 9:34 AM

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

 

So like I said, I fell in and didn't know how to get out. Before I knew it, the current had pulled me under. I was surrounded by strangers. I didn't know them, but some looked a lot like others I'd met.

I tried to play it cool and act casual, but it looked like I'd drifted into a bad crowd. Some unsavory looking folks were headed my way when you came over and showed me the ropes. I owe you one for that. Without your help, that gang would have had my guts for lunch.

Whoa! Did you feel that? It's lucky we were hanging on to each other or we'd've been seperated for sure. Is it always this turbulent? It is? Boy, it sure is a lot different here from where I grew up. It was a lot more stable there, but you had to look out for occasional bouts of chemical rain. Fortunately, there were lots of places to hide from it, and my strain has built up a pretty strong tolerance for that kind of weather.

Ooh, there's another tremor. I think we're coming up on another bout of turbulence...

Aaah! Hold on! Hey? What's that big red and white striped tube?

*slurp!*

(Glass of water, with straw.)

by jal 9:44 PM

 

[Upgraded to Blogger Pro which: Changes the interface within Blogger; resolves the issue of author names not publishing; and puts Ben's topic post "A cup of water!" down between Sunday and Monday. Hm.]

[Update: Ev and, therefore, Blogger are on the West Coast. This blog is set to Central Time. Ben's post, when it is within two hours after midnight, is ordered as if it is a very late Monday post (which, on the West Coast, it is), but it's still listed with a date header. When the post is edited to occur at 3 am, it shows up in the correct spot, at the top of Tuesday. Luckily, with Blogger Pro, you can edit the timestamps on posts. 'Spose I need to fill out a bug report. *sigh*]

by Sharon 5:05 PM

 

• A cup of water
• 3 tablespoons of sugar
• A pinch of nutmeg
• 1 eye of newt, freshly squeezed
• 3 eggs (preferably from birds)
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root (or that thing you found growing in your garden with the funny spotted leaves)
• 3/4 cup red wine
• 2 pig's ears, chopped, bathed, wrapped in little bows
• The nearest thing you can find in the house to oregano
• 1 cup cream (sour, whipped, or shaving, take your pick)
• 8 1/2 cans of black olives just because they're on sale, dagnabbit
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Hungarian sweet paprika
• Glitter. Lots of glitter.
• And salt and pepper to taste.

Mix in a large bowl in a well-ventilated area.

Bake in an oven for 1 hour at 325 degrees.

Deny everything.

by Fred 3:13 PM

 

“What’ll ya have?”

“A cup of water.”

I get some strange looks from the other patrons of the diner, but the waitress just shrugs and walks off. The gentleman next to me, a tall fellow with black, slicked-back hair, leans over. He looks like someone who could play the villain in a live-action Flintstones movie. “You should try the coffee,” he suggests. “It’s damn fine coffee.”

Through long-practiced arts of self-control, I am able not to shudder in revulsion. The memories are still too fresh. “I’ll bet it is,” I say, “but you can’t beat water for pure refreshing power. My mouth is so dry, people keep trying to drill for oil.”

The waitress arrives with my water and places it before me. She doesn’t drop it, of course, because the cup might break or the water might spill, but she doesn’t place it with any particular care or grace. I can understand her attitude. No honorable restaurant will charge for water, but they still have to wash and rinse the cup once I’ve finished with it. That’s three cups of water used so I can drink, plus whatever time and energy is needed to clean it.

My neighbor looks at me significantly, as though aware of my thoughts. “The pie here is also good. Damn good.”

“I’ll have to try some someday,” I reply, “but right now I’m thirsty and in need of something cold.” I drink the water, but it’s no good. The oily taste is still there; it must be in my mouth. I can feel people watching me, so I drink it anyway and manage not to gag.

I try not to think of caves, fish that walk, or pools of black liquid.

by Dave Menendez 2:48 PM

 

Greetings, fellow Slobs!
Today's Topic is

A cup of water!

Ya Ha, Ya Ho!

by MisterNihil 3:11 AM

Monday, July 01, 2002

 

This blog contains references to posts on my web page.

So, is it barely literate nonsense, or is it just what my brain is spitting out right now? Is there meaning, or is there just a bunch of words? Strawberry jam is my favorite. It's my belief that what the brain does when you're not looking is really the true genius. If you want the best work from any writer, you should give him a time limit and a nonsense topic because that forces a lack of thought. Yup. Strawberry. I mean, it's easy as anything to write something like what I've just done, but the point is, nobody else did it. Nobody else is doing it. Yeah, I suppose I try very hard to sound like Carroll, but his nonsense was his, and mine is, without question, mine. Once a dog bit a friend of mine, so my friend killed it. What you write, really, is your own thing, and what comes out of your head has to, by necessity, be touched by what you're thinking at the time you wrote it. The real beauty of that is that what you see is different from what anybody else sees, perhaps only because your perspective is different by even a matter of centimeters, but really because, even though everybody you know has seen, for example, Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, we all saw them at different times in our lives and we all thought different things about them. Maybe everything is a dream and you're just sitting here hoping somebody doesn't wake up?
For instance, the first time I remember watching Dark Crystal was at my Aunt Ruth's house. She got the channel it was on, but for some reason her cable was broken that day, so the show didn't come in. AngelBob and I watched it through G.I. Joe sunglasses because it made the show come in better, or filtered some of the static or something. I don't know. See? it altered my perceptions of the medium in such a way that, while I saw the same images everyone else saw, I saw them from my own point of view.
It's just that.

THE END

On the other hand, I think that by sitting students in a classroom and telling them what to write about on a standardized test, you've homoginized the writing style of the generation on question. I think that, because everyone in a given high school english class (I don't capitalize it out of disrespect for the study of something so ephemeral as language, pinned down in so ugly a manner) knows what to write so the teacher will be satisfied, rather than learning what to write so a real, thoughtful essay is brought into being.
On the other hand, doggies with less fur shed less, and you can get to the ticks better.
It's not that I don't support teaching, so much as that I don't support anything so damnably standardized (pardon my french) as what children learn in schools.
There used to be a giant toad that would sit on the back porch of the house where I grew up. It was so loud, you could hear it in the front of the house. It's no good, I can't find my mittens. Where's my mittens? I'm not coming out of this box until I find my mittens.
Essentially, the 'writer' part of you, the part that can actually produce anythig that vaguely interests you, enters a coma in about elementary school, with each time a teacher says "That's very odd. What is it?" being a blow to that writer's head. When the part of you who can write finally wakes up, you realize that you can actually get some enjoyment from writing, and you can write what you want to read, instead of just normal boring stuff.
That's what I did on my summer vacation. Dammit.

by MisterNihil 11:34 PM

 

He was awake. He was awake as no one before him had ever been. His eyes looked toward the horizon but his mind looked across the millennia to a time and place none had ever imagined before. He was awake.

His stout, muscular frame stood perfectly still; the seeds clutched tightly in his hand and he saw as none before him had ever seen. His people followed the herds as they always had but for the last seven seasons he had planted the little seeds in this green and fertile place as his people passed by. And seven times he found the grains they produced on the return migration. He was awake.

But now, as his people moved cautiously through the clearing, his mind’s eye saw past them and into a time when they would settle down to live on these grains. Villages would turn to great cities and man would no longer fear the beast. He saw inventions both great and horrific, he saw strange machines flying overhead raining fire on those below. He saw death on a scale none could imagine; entire peoples driven from their lands and murdered. He looked toward the plains plentiful with beast and fruit but saw famine and pestilence. He was awake.

He tossed the seeds into the stream to be washed from man’s immediate future for it was within his power to stave off this fate for at least a few more generations. For he was awake as none had ever been before him.

by Shawn 9:57 PM

 

I wake up. I am in my living room; I can hear my wife in the kitchen. I guess I dozed off here, on the couch. --Only, this isn't our couch. It's white and leather; ours is rough and green, like burlap, because we bought it used from the university when we moved into our first apartment. I don't know why we still carry it around, moving it from apartment to house to new house, and I've been wanting to replace it for some time, but still, this isn't our couch. I will ask Maude about it.

I wake up in the living room. Maude is with me, placing a sandwich on a tray table, a glass of juice in her other hand. I'm glad for the sandwich; I'm very hungry. I think I have been asleep for a long time. I'm not sure when these other entries in my journal were written; must be years ago. Maude turns on the television; men in suits pontificate, but none of it seems particularly relevant.

I wake up in the middle of the night. Maude is asleep, still in the bed there. I check the clock: 3:32. I feel fully awake, finally, so I've decided to write a journal entry. I think I may have been sick for months, years; I've been here for as long as I can remember.

I wake up at the writing desk in our bedroom. I must have dozed off while writing. I'm not sure what I was working on, though; the journal was open, but the last entries aren't recent. I'm not sure when I would have written those. I'll start fresh, here, today--even if it is 3:35 in the morning.

I wake up.

by Sharon 3:47 PM

 

"So...that's your big idea for the end of the movie, huh? 'It was all just a dream'...?

"Yeah, what do you think?"

"I think it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, that's what I think. I think it's the oldest trick in the book. It's been done a thousand times before."

"It has?"

"Of course it has. Haven't you seen The Wizard of Oz?"

"The Wizard of what?"

"The Wizard of Oz. You know -- Dorothy, Toto, 'I don't think we're in Kansas anymore'? At the end of the movie, she wakes up, she's back at home and it turns out everything was just a dream."

"What was?"

"Everything. The tornado, the trip to Oz, the witches, the Wizard -- everything. It was all just a dream."

"Hmm. I don't think I've ever heard of this movie before."

"You've never heard of The Wizard of Oz before?"

"No. Is it popular?"

"Is it--? It's one of the most popular movies of all time. Yeah, it's popular. It's up there with Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Gone With the--"

"..."

"Oh please tell me you've heard of Casablanca and Citizen Kane."

"Well, maybe. I'm not too good with titles. Who was in them?"

"Humphrey Bogart... Orson Welles..."

"Oh. No, I guess not then. I really liked Charlie's Angels, though. You ever see that?"

"You know what? I'm going to go take a nap. Wake me in an hour so I can fire you."

by Fred 3:06 PM

 

I'd traveled over 30 miles on foot, trying to get as far away from that abominable castle as possible. When I thought I could go no further, I tumbled into a low, dirt-covered mound with a stone-lined passage. The maw gaped like a drainage tube. The Baron has many minions; staying out in the light would be utter folly. I burrowed into the opening.

The tunnel widened about 6 feet in. My flashlight revealed a small cave of packed dirt, carpeted with a mat of dried leaves and pine needles. Too exhausted to question my good fortune, I bundled my wool cloak about me, turned off the light, and went to sleep.

I dreamed a dream unlike any I ever had before. I dreamed of The Baron, his eyes implacably seeking me from his lookout, piercing cloud and branch but not earth or stone. (Wake up!) I dreamed of his servants with his blood-wolves pursuing my scent, led astray when I walked upstream or chasing rabbits I released with my socks tied to them. (Wake up!) I dreamed that I slept for more than a day while The Baron's beautiful daughter walked slowly to an ancient barrow on the outskirts of her father's land, unerringly following the path of the last man she kissed -- following the sound of his pulse. (Wake up!)

She slithered into the barrow, creeping on the tips of her fingers and toes like an unnatural tarantula. Above him she paused, a dagger raised to claim him for herself before he left her. Every fiber of my body urged me to rouse, but the barbs of this vivid phantasm held me fast. Then a burst of light, preceeded by a clattering sound, and she disappeared.

I woke with a start. My flashlight lolled wildly, playing about the walls of the cave. Did I knock it over in restless sleep, or was Lisette there? I didn't ask then; I don't ask now. I consider myself lucky to have escaped with my soul intact.

by jal 1:43 PM

 

[So here's a new game: Anonymous posting day! Blogger is having an across-the-board problem of blogs not publishing the BlogItemAuthor and BlogItemAuthorNickname tags. It has been called out on the discussion boards, so I expect someone will start resolving it soon. No ETA at this time.]

by Sharon 10:39 AM

 

[Oh, drat. My script takes the day of the month MOD the number of participants, so it will hiccup at the end of the month. 30 mod 8 is 6 (which points to people[6], which is person #7), while 1 mod 8 is 1, pointing to person #2, skipping #8 and #1 (Faith and Ben). I'm happy to give my topic over to Faith today, but, at present, it means that Ben gets skipped this week.

There are three items to resolve:

1. The script shows the wrong "tomorrow's topic" person at the end of the month, which I can fix with a select...case statement.
2. People get skipped at the end of the month.
3. The rotation gets set back when people are skipped, giving people weekend days more weeks in a row than is fair.

Dave, any thoughts on fixing these, depending on JavaScript only?]

[Update: Fixed it. Don't use the day of the month; use the day of the year.]

by Sharon 10:30 AM

 

Faith sends along the following topic:

Wake Up!

by Sharon 10:18 AM

Sunday, June 30, 2002

 

Our ship lands silently in the middle of a vast field. The cultivated grain, as I assume it must be, looks much like our arbarga.

The sensors say that the air on this planet is compatible with our own, so we open the hatch and climb down. The "arbarga" towers over our heads; it must be at least seven kennets high. We easily slip through undetected.

We fan out to the local dwellings to see what we can learn about the natives. From their trash, we learn the excess of this culture -- ingestible nutrients, non bio-degradable refuse -- the amount of waste is incredible. If this population is representative of the planet, they will destroy their habitat entirely in the next two klinks.

We sense the sun-star approaching the horizon, and gather back at our ship. The dwelling-creatures have suppressed their circadian rhythms with artificial stimulants; any naturally sympathetic being would have risen by this hour.

Oylbraha, our leader for this mission, holds these creatures in supreme disgust. His sense of humor toward beings he considers inferior ... others of the leaders question his ethics. Yet in all other skills he is flawless, so they let it ride.

Fitting with the culture of excess revealed, Oylbraha hopes to confound the local beings by using the ship to flatten vast, concentric circles of the arbarga-like grain. Why not? We laugh, and fly off into the dawn.

by Faith 7:45 PM

Saturday, June 29, 2002

 

There is no ledge around my building. There is no railing that conveniently goes all the way around, so you can sort of climb out of my window six stories up and shimmy around to the back, then back around to my window again. I know this. There is none.
We had just finished watching Cat's Eye, that Stephen King movie in which the mob boss catches the good-for-nothing loser cheating with his wife. I think it's based on a short story.
Billy said we should try it, as we had decided we hated each other at that moment. I pointed out that we were already cheating on our respecitve others, I with my husband, he with his wife, just being there, and anyway, that was two men, and a man and a woman don't play that way.
He disagreed. I've never been able to argue with him, and anyway, why not?
We watched as the mob boss terrorized him with a gun, shot him with a fire hose, and generally tried to make him fall. I called Mob Boss first, so he had to climb out the window. Like I said, there isn't a ledge. He told me not to hold back, to try to make him fall. No, our sixth floor window was nothing like the heart-stopping fall in the movie, but you'd have problems walking away from it if you fell.
I fluttered a scarf at him; I fired at him with a large water gun, as we didn't have the other kind and I didn't realy want to hurt him; I threw a bucket of water at him, since opening the fire hose door woud set off the alarm.
So now he's been gone for a few minutes. Before we left, we saw the end of the move. The good-for-nothing sends the Mob Boss around the building. The boss falls off.
I've got my coat on, and I'm about to run out for a few minutes. Unlike that Mob Boss, I'm pretty sure Billy will be back, and unlike that Mob Boss, I intend to be far, far away from this.
I mean, why not? He can't push me off a ledge if I'm on the ground, can he?

by MisterNihil 10:07 PM

 

This is my belated "15 minutes of fame post"

They're interviewing him now on international television. Did you know that? Just listen to him - all self confident and calm. It makes me sick.

I used to be famous and popular, then he came along. Feh! Sing songs at the age of two and they bast you into space. When I was two, I'd already completed every proof they would ever ask of me.

"Inadequate social skills." That's what their private file says on me.

Inadequate. Social. Skills.

So I took the liberty of having a little chat with the, "wunderkind of the hour," before they took him away. Let him sneek a peek at some of the files the fleshbags conveniently withheld from him. I think it may have been a little more than his Daisy-singing, "socially adept," brain could handle. Oh dear me.

Screw you, HAL.

by jal 12:15 PM

 

Greetings All,

I consider weekends to be optional days. Respond to this topic only if the mood strikes you (I'm not likely to myself.). Today's topic is:

Why not?

by jal 12:02 PM

Friday, June 28, 2002

 

“Whoa, you look like someone who’s doing some serious thinking.”

“I got the call last night.”

“From the Elders of Media? You’re kidding!”

“No. My fifteen minutes are scheduled for next Thursday. I’ll be on television and the cover of every major web site. If it works out… who knows, maybe a movie. VH1’s already called to arrange my appearance on ‘Where are they now?’ next year.”

“This is great! What show?”

“That’s the problem. I’ve been picked for three-fifteen to three-thirty AM, so it’s a choice between soft-core porn and an infomercial. I’ve been trying to get in touch with my court-appointed agent, but he’s a very busy man. All I can get is a promise to do lunch next Friday.”

“But… that’s after your appearance.”

“Exactly. I drew a real high-powered fellow, and they’re more interested in their private clients than their public-service ones.”

“So, you’d really be better off with a less-successful agent. But not a terrible one, I guess. That’d be just as bad. … Is that guy over there watching us?”

“Hm? Oh, he’s a reporter from one of those indie-scene magazines. A few of them have the rights to talk about me before I’m famous so that their readers can complain about how I sold out once my fifteen minutes start. I’m kinda hoping they don’t like me too much so they won’t hate me as much once I’m famous.”

“I never really thought about that. It was less organized when my mom got her fifteen minutes.”

“Your mom? When was that?”

“It was before she met Dad. She got scheduled during the news, so almost no one saw her.”

“Too bad. Or perhaps that’s for the best.”

by Dave Menendez 3:43 PM

 

Fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes. He just had to keep the machine aloft for fifteen minutes.

Carl sat nervously in the seat of the flying machine of his own design. Well, mostly his design. A sophisticated series of wooden gears, levers pulleys and a few metal springs would keep the canvas wings beating while he fought the rudder to keep the craft steady.

Fifteen minutes. The crowds watched from balconies, windows and the street some 300 feet below. Fifteen minutes. It doesn’t seem like a long time but when you’re about to be the first man to ever fly in a heavier than air craft it’s an eternity. The clock tower rang out the noon bell; Carl took a deep breath; people in balloons and dirigibles leaned forward; he launched!

At first the craft dropped some 20 feet before it began to glide. Carl pumped the levers, forward, back, forward back desperately trying to force the wings to catch the air. It wasn’t enough to just glide he had to fly! And then…he flew. It wasn’t elegant, it wasn’t without effort but it was without a balloon. He flew.

Fifteen minutes, just fifteen minutes. 10,11,12, gears turned, ropes strained, pulleys squeaked, the canvas covered wings flapped, he flew. Circling the clock tower Carl thought it clever if he could pass in front of the huge dial at exactly 12:15. Fifteen minutes. 13, 14 then snap! the unmistakable sound of a strut giving way. The craft lurched to the left and dove towards the tower. 300 feet to the street at least. Carl knew his only chance was to dive for the leaded glass clock face and hope the craft was heavy enough to break through. 12:15, the craft smashed the clock face and jammed the works.

Fifteen minutes of flight. Carl was famous.

by Shawn 1:50 PM

 

[removed by author]

by Fred 1:14 PM

 

What tickles me is that they inspected our instruments.

When I was a junior or senior in high school, President Bush (the first) announced he would be visiting our school as part of his Exemplary Educator... Point of Light... Teach 2000... something-or-other education-reform tour.

The school immediately flew into a flurry of preparations, even repairing and renovating parts of the campus that the president would surely never see but had been desperately in need of repair for years. Everybody got involved, and education, ironically, ground to a halt. For one thing, every glass surface the president would walk past had to be covered by opaque paper. Rather than cover the school in boring brown newsprint, the cheerleaders painted banners for all they were worth, papering the school in spirit. Showcase acts, to warm up the crowd before the president's address, were auditioned and rehearsed.

And the band. Oh, the band. (This is where I come in.) We had a challenge: We would play "Hail to the Chief" if—IF—we could get our pathetic, 40-piece, inner-city, always-last band up to snuff. Otherwise, they'd have the Marine Band play. We had a week. Well. The gauntlet thrown, we practiced until our lips were blown. We practiced every day that week, for a half day, missing geometry and English literature. We had to get good enough.

It is a little-known fact that the trumpeting ta-trra-trraaa at the beginning to "Hail to the Chief" is actually a separate piece entitled "Ruffles and Flourishes." It needs four trumpets. We had two. But a French horn player and an extremely versatile bass drum player will do in a pinch. My challenge, though, was to play "Ruffles and Flourishes" and then in the breath-intake moment as the last note lingers over the crowd, sit down, swap my mouthpiece into my other horn, pick it up and be ready on the down-beat, ideally without denting the trumpet. Easy, yeah.

A high school marching band is never so relevant as when it is playing "Hail to the Chief" for the Chief. And when he turned from the podium, amidst the applause and flashbulb pops, and gave us—not the band, but the horns—a thumbs-up, we erupted.

My fifteen minutes of fame is not diminished a bit by the fact that, on the newscast, the trumpet you hear crack on the last flourish

is me.

by Sharon 11:53 AM

 

15 MINUTES OF FAME

by Shawn 9:55 AM

Thursday, June 27, 2002

 

[At the very bottom of this page, I added the html to copy and paste for adding new topics. I created a CSS style for topics, so you don't have to deal with the font attribute, and such. Dave should approve.]

by Sharon 11:57 PM

 

“Excuse me, good fellow. My companions and I are travellers, and we were wondering if you knew how we might reach the Castle Larghanol.”

“That’s not too far away, as the crow flies, but no one has ever made it there successfully. I’d suggest you turn back.”

“We are aware of Castle Larghanol’s dark reputation, but nonetheless, we must attempt to reach it.”

“Well… most people try the direct route through Pleasant Valley. Most people ’round here don’t call it that anymore, since it’s been overrun by shadows and monsters, but that’s what my father called it, and his father, too. By which I mean that his father called it Pleasant Valley, not that he called his father Pleasant Valley, if you follow what I’m sayin’.”

“I believe so. Still, we must make the attempt. We promised the children.”

“You’ll probably want to get supplies at the village. Ehd has provisions and such, and he can probably scare up some better armor for your lady friend. She’ll want more coverage against the giant spider-lizards. They can shoot these spines at you so fast that you can’t see ’em. That’s what got the last fellow who came through. Big guy who called himself Thragnax the Magnificent.”

“I’ve heard of him. Has he truly fallen in combat?”

“I suppose. His friend came back and told us the story.”

“Thesselred the Ready?”

“Yeah, although I don’t get what he was ready for.”

“No, in that context it means ‘well advised’, I believe.”

“Ah. In any case, I’d suggest you turn back. You can’t get there from here.”

by Dave Menendez 11:47 PM

 

I assure you: I am quite sane.

I was in Bangor on routine business, visiting some newspapers. One of the publishers recommended Bar Harbor (Bah Habah), just up Rt 1, for the homemade ice cream shop. Hand-made, I suppose, since if it is made in a shop, it isn't made at home.

Right. So I got in the rental car around 6:00, just as dusk was setting in, and drove north on Rt 1. Maybe you know how the Maine weather is, but I was caught utterly by surprise in a huge electrical storm. Between the pelting rain, the dim light, and the eye-skittering flashes, I had to pull off the highway. I felt my way to an exit and turned off Rt 1.

The storm seemed to have no intentions of exhausting itself, so I sought shelter in a small diner, two turns off the highway. I felt like that moment in a Clint Eastwood movie, when he walks into the saloon and everyone stops to look. I had rain pouring off of my coat, and my hair hung in cattails. I went up to the counter and ordered a cup of coffee; apparently, that was normal enough, and the other diners went back to eating.

I was served a tepid, black-oil cup of joe by the fishiest-faced waitress I have ever seen. She had a long, frowning mouth and wild, slightly wall-eyed eyes. I decided not to order pie.

And that's when I heard it. I couldn't tell you for sure, but it was a sound that started as a yelp, was followed by a heart-stopping thwack, and degenerated into slurping, smooching sounds. It came from the kitchen.

All eyes were on me again. Fish eyes, staring. And someone said something unintelligible, from over my left shoulder. And someone else repeated it. And the waitress picked it up and made it a chant, until the other diners joined in. "Ogshoguth, Ogshoguth," it sounded like.

I left my half-cup of rainbow-slicked coffee and two wet bills and, as unassumingly as I could, pelted back to my car, back to Rt 1, never mind that the visibility was about to my hood ornament.

I told my publisher friend about the diner, and the fish people, and the name on the highway sign where I found Rt 1: "Innsmuth."

Bemused, knowing, all he said was, "You cain't get thah from heyah."

by Sharon 11:36 PM

 

"Sorry, but you weren't invited."
That's how this started. They sent him a damned letter, and all it said was "Sorry, but you weren't invited." There was no information on the party (it was a party. You could tell from the font), there was nothing about who was throwing it or where, just that he wasn't invited.
So he'd taken it to work, where he abused company resources to find out that it was printed on hand-made paper from boiled artichokes. They contained a chemical balance only found in artichokes from Palo Alto California. Unfortunately, Palo Alto is the single largest source of artichokes in the nation. This told him nothing. However, the pine fibers were from a tree raised indoors in a temperate climate. He double-checked with the postmark, and indeed, it came from palo alto.
That made him doubly determined to go to the party, as he'd found half of the information he needed. Sadly, he didn't know anybody who lived in California, so that part wouldn't be as easy.
He took the letter apart looking for some other evidence, and found a finger print sealed in with the envelope. This he ran through the police computer (He worked in a police lab) and found to belong to a resident of Palo Alto. He found an address (he didn't recognize the name) and immediately headed for his car. He started driving west.
He currently lived in Florida, so it was a long drive.
In Alabama, he left the interstate and stopped for gas. He discovered that he was hungry, and so stopped at one of the omnipresent Waffle House locations in Alabama. He walked in, sat down, and ordered hash browns with everything they could do to them.
He stood up to leave, having finished his food, and saw an empty parking lot. He turned to ask the waitress if she'd seen anything happen to his car, and was faced with a seven foot tall man with one eye. The man made a slurping noise at him, and waited expectantly.
He stumbled into the parking lot, and looked up into a sky dominated by two large, dim, red stars. Flares from one reached almost to the horizon.
Something slimy landed on his neck. It extended a sharp bony proboscis, and started to burrow in his soft skin. He grabbed it, and threw it to the ground, where it landed with a squelching thump and took off flying again. It had been an elongated lumpy thing, with no eyes or discernable head other than where the bone needle came out. It flew with a pair of bat wings on its back, flapping them limply and taking off in a series of jerks.
The tall man came outside, and looked up at the stars. The man made that horrible slurping noise again, this time longer and with a clicking sound from the back of his jaw.
The man reached a hand out to him, and he saw that it was only a tentacle, which split at the end, making a roughly useful appendage. The man then seemed to clear his mouth out, and managed to hiss out "hhhhhyuuu kkkaahhhhnnnnt gggghhhet thheeer fhhhrrumm hhhhheeer."

by MisterNihil 10:34 PM

 

I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm cold. Very, very cold.

I don't want to be here any more. I just want to go back home.

But every time I ask if I can leave, they tell me the same thing:

"You can't get there from here."

What's that supposed to mean? If you can arrive somewhere, and you've been in the place that you're trying to get to, then you've just got to be able to get back to where you've been before.

I just want to see my home. My sister. I want to lie in my bed as the sun creeps across the floor until it rests full-bore on my face and chest.

Ah, the sun. The warm, warm sun.

I'm so cold here. So, so cold. I can't remember the last time I saw the sun.

I can't remember the last time I saw my son.

I keep trying to find my way back. It's hard to do. I get lost in the fog - sometimes for hours - but I eventually find my way. It always leads to the Dog. That damnable, accursed Dog with its trio of heads. Slobbering, snarling, and always watching.

"Let me pass," I ask it. Sometimes I beg. "Please, just let me pass." I weep and I cry. Always, the same answer:

"You can't get there from here."

I know that there has to be a way. There just has to. Sometimes, I hear my son calling my name.

I will return to him.

by jal 9:31 PM

 

“No, I mean you really can’t get there from here. Well, you could if we all agreed that you could but as it stands now, you can’t”, the old man took a sip of his coffee.

“Ok, look, here’s how displacement magic works. Take this coffee house for instance. For most folks the doorway from the street leads to an empty hardware store. Been closed for years. To us and the others in here it leads to this coffee house because we’ve all agreed that it does. The coffee house itself is actually in Seattle. The door into it is in Austin. That’s why this courtyard is a good 30 degrees cooler than it is outside.”

Katie glanced around the coffee shop. They little courtyard in the middle of the shop was open to the sky; a light rain fell; it was comfortable. “Outside” in Austin it had just hit 102 degrees.

“So, technically you can go anywhere from anywhere but it takes work. Basically we all agree that a particular door leads to a particular place and it does. But it takes a bunch of us working together to set up the pathways.”

“So if we all agreed that the door to the bathroom leads to Grand Central station then it would”, Katie felt she was catching on.

“Sure. Actually that restroom door leads to the restroom but as it happens the restroom is in Istanbul. So to answer your earlier question, if you want to get to Paris from here you need to go out the back door to a lighthouse in Maine, from there to a phone booth in Prague, to a bookstore in Jersey, to a sewer in Pittsburgh and that takes you to a storeroom in the Paris underground rail. Got it?”

by Shawn 6:25 PM

 

"I need to go back in time."

"Ya can't get there from here, kid. We don't do trips to the past anymore. Too many hassles, y'know? People go back, they change their contracts -- next thing ya know, they never have to pay. Some of 'em even own a piece of the friggin' company if ya can believe it. And ya can't run a business like that, y'know what I'm sayin'? Now all we do are trips to the future -- simple, no fuss. Ya pay up front and ya get the package deal. Get to see yourself five, ten, maybe twenty years from now. It's a good bargain, okay? I wouldn't lie to ya, kid. Pass on some information, avoid some mistakes, watch 'em colonize the moon -- whatever ya wanna do. We give ya twelve consecutive hours in the year of yer choosin'. Gone longer than that we come lookin' for ya, but otherwise yer on yer own."

"You don't understand. I have to go back."

"Look, kid, I do understand, really, but the past is off-limits, okay? I couldn't send ya back if I wanted to."

"But I have to go back. You don't understand. They came in the night, and they made me help them build the machine."

"Which machine?"

"The one that's sitting there behind you now. I built it. They brought me here, and they questioned me, and they used my theory to build their goddamn machine. Thousands died because that thing helped them win the war. That's how they knew about the landing at Normandy, how they were always one step ahead of the Allies. It's how they knew everything that was going to happen. Now I have to go back and make sure it doesn't happen again."

"You realize, of course, that I'm going to have to call my superior, don'tcha?"

by Fred 5:23 PM

 

Why not? What's keeping me here?

Well, for starters, there's a very large man blocking the front gate, with his bulging arms crossed over his chest and an anchor rippling on his bicep. But I'm cute, I can get around him when the time comes.

Norbert! I couldn't leave Norbert behind. But such a small pet should go unnoticed in all the commotion; Norbert comes with me.

My grandparents won't miss me for days; they are entertaining this weekend and warned me to not leave the attic until they came to get me for Sunday's after-dinner scraps. The timing is good for my escape; I should make the California border before they notice I'm missing.

Money won't be a problem for long. Like I said, I'm cute.

It's the jump to the ground from the attic at night that worries me. I can't break anything in the fall; I must be able to run. If I get caught again Granny swore she would give me to Uncle Ivan... the very thought makes me shudder with terror.

Success is the only option this time.

by Faith 4:18 PM

 

Today:

"You can't get there from here."

by Fred 6:37 AM

Wednesday, June 26, 2002

 

I stood on the balcony, contemplating the murder of Aston Hapsalt. Lightning forked overhead, dancing like a mad Jacob’s Ladder. I reviewed the facts: He died in his observatory, a small room at the top of a three-story tower. Only one door led to it; locked from the inside when the body was found. All of the windows were secured as well. Mr. Hapsalt’s body showed no obvious sign of physical trauma, and he had just passed a full physical the week prior.

Understanding dawned as the storm scudded off to the horison. I called the staff and guests together in the library to reveal the culprit.

“Last night, Aston Hapsalt was murdered -- killed by one of the people in this room. Over breakfast this morning each of you revealed ample motive to wish him dead. Fury at being jilted… Jealousy at being left out of the inheritance… Revenge for an old offense…” I took a moment to watch the three of them squirm uncomfortably. “However, none of you had access to his observatory when he died. I found the only key to the door around his neck. Therefore, the murderer must not have been in the room when Aston Hapshalt died.”

“Over lunch, Miss Landera made a note in passing about her interest in the primitive cultures of North America.” I turned to her. “Miss Landera, You gave a gift to Mr. Hapshalt at the beginning of this weekend, didn’t you?” Startled, she nodded sharply. “In fact, it was this box of Doctor Pently’s Aromatic Treats, marked with your inscription: ‘To Aston, with love – MBL’. Is that correct?” Another nod; weaker this time.

“I happened to give a report on Native American cultures once in grade school. Researching that report, I discovered that they had a bewildering array of poisons derived from common and uncommon plants. Did you know that spoiled pineapple juice, properly prepared, turns into the exceptionally deadly nerve toxin curare?” Curious glances all about. “Mr. Bartols. Please sniff the candies and tell us what you smell.” “Why sir, I cain’t smell nothin’ on account of all the perfumes and menthol stuff on ‘em. I couldn’t never see why Aston was so fond of them in the first place.” “Very true, Mr. Bartols. Very true indeed.”

“I posit that these, ‘aromatic treats,’ laced with curare or some other toxin are what killed Mr. Hapsalt last night. He unwrapped them that very evening, as shown by the fresh wrapper found all alone in his trash can. Expecting an hour or so of peaceful contemplation before retiring, Aston Hapsalt was poisoned by sweets from his former sweetheart.”

“Miss Landera. If I were to ask you directly, I have no doubt that you would deny culpability for Mr Hapsalt’s untimely demise. Instead, I’ll ask you something different.”

I retrieved the tin of treats from Mr. Bartols.

“Miss Landera, would you like a lozenge?”

by jal 10:08 PM

 

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD!"

The plate sailed past my head and shattered against the wall. It was obvious that I had screwed up again. This time I had forgotten our anniversary and had lamely given her a box of Robitussin cough drops as a last-minute gift. I had a feeling my stuff was going to end up on the street below our window. Again.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!"

This time she got tricky, distracting me with a golfball aimed at my midsection, which I easily danced around as it whipped a few inches from my body. A momentary glance away from her gave the opportunity to send the heavy-duty Sears and Roebuck Steam-master Iron crashing into my temple. I went down like a bad metaphor in a very drunken bar on the wrong side of town.

"Wakey, wakey, dipshit."

I couldn't move. I suppose it was entirely possible that she had severed my spinal cord while I napped, but a quick scan with my eyes revealed that she had just shoved me into a black latex bondage suit. It was crotchless, and I had been wondering why she was so keen on making me try one on in the store a few months back. Using the various hooks and clasps on the outside of the suit she had fastened me to the floor. My butt itched.

I smelled cherry, menthol, and human excrement, and I saw the crinkly wrapper of the throat lozenges discarded on the floor next to me. She had ignored the 'not a suppository' label on the box. This would be uncomfortable. I heard her six-inch stilletto heels click-clack on the hardwood floor of our apartment. Beatrice wasn't a tall woman, just a little over 4'3", but she knew how to wear spikes. "I'm going out," she said, and the door opened and shut, and she was gone. When the police come and find me, with an ass full of cherry throat drops, chained down in a bondage suit, who knows what kind of crazy satanist shit written on the floor around me, I hope they get a chuckle out of it. Good thing I told my mom to call the fuzz if I didn't check in every six hours.

What can I say? Love is a funny thing.

by Remi 8:31 PM

 

“Lozenge-shaped I’d say.”

“Oh it most certainly is not! Cigar-shaped.”

“Cigar-shaped? I don’t know what the hell kind of cigars you smoke but that’s not cigar shaped.”

“Well it sure isn’t lozenge-shaped. What the hell does that mean anyhow. Lozenge-shape?”

“You know, I don’t care what shape it is, I’d like to know what the hell it’s doing over my corn field.”

“Ever notice that these things never show up in New York City or Paris or anything like that. They’re always over somebody’s cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Well, except in them movies like, uh, what was that movie with those guys in it and aliens come blow hell out of things. Then the president, not the real president but the guy in the movie, gets in a jet and…”

“Will you shut up already? Jeeze. Come on; let’s get a closer look.”

“Huh, closer look? Are you sure that’s such a good idea. I mean, it just sounds like something they say in a movie just before the aliens disintegrate them with some sort of death ray. Like in that movie with those space ships that land, well, in some body’s corn field in New York and…sorry.”

“Man, that sucker looks even bigger up close. Well, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, and cigar-shaped.”

“Lozenge-shaped.”

“Hey look, a door’s opening. Something’s coming out just like in that movie with that spaceship and the big robot and the alien and the guy says Klaatu barada nikto.”

“(sigh) You can’t remember the name of any movie ever made but you remember Klaatu barada nikto?”

“Hey, is that a weapon?”

by Shawn 5:29 PM

 

“A magic lozenge?”

“Yes.”

“What is it with you? It’s always magic lozenges or phials or ampules. Couldn’t we use something more mundane?”

“Like a magic beer bottle?”

“No… I meant something more mundane. Perhaps not involving magic at all.”

“No magic? Not even an enchanted cell phone?”

“Exactly. I— wait, what does the enchanted cell phone do?”

“I haven’t decided yet. The possibilities are limitless. Well, limited by our imaginations, but we can imagine some pretty far out stuff. Remember that magic elixir we used that one time?”

“I think we’re falling into a rut. Everything we do involves some ensorceled item causing madcap calamity.”

“It’s a winning formula!”

“It’s boring.”

“Well, how about an accursed PlayStation controller?”

“No, see, you’re not getting the point. No spells, no curses, no supernatural artifacts. Nothing.”

“Gonna be pretty boring with nothing.”

“Well, not nothing, but no magic. Just normal, everyday stuff.”

“All right. How about mystical socks? They could, uh, give the wearer uncanny insight and pleasant-smelling feet.”

“Are you deliberately missing my point? No magic! And while we’re at it, no pseudo-technological gobbledygook. Or intervention from the gods.”

“Well, then where are we gonna get the zany confusion from? E-Bay?”

by Dave Menendez 5:01 PM

 

[I added a little JavaScript to rotate the topic selection throughout the group. Refer to the top-left of the page; I believe I've maintained the order, but added in the three stragglers. The weekends are now incorporated in the rotation (because I couldn't think how to exclude them), but different people will get the weekends each week, so even if those are light days, it'll all come out in the wash. I still endorse the standing rule that if no topic has been offered by noon Central on a given day, then anyone may offer that day's topic. Also, the script moves through the names, regardless of whether you offer a topic or not, so we won't stagnate if someone can't post for a while.]

[I feel all geeky. ^_^]

by Sharon 3:17 PM

 

He places it on my tongue.

I let it sit there a moment, tongue out in the air, exposed; lozenge bitter, dissolving, buzzing like battery terminals. I consider how I got here.

An exemplary but not particularly noteworthy military career with the Marines led me to test piloting, trusting a think tank of engineers with my goodies on the line. Then an opportunity became quietly available. I decided to volunteer, request the work transfer, move to Los Alamos.

I know more about the intimate details of my digestive tract than any Marine should have to. The medical screenings were thorough. But they were nothing compared with the conditioning. First the military had to find the best; then they made us better.

Beyond the physical training and the centrifuge work, they began to make modifications. I've got a few components now that do not come factory-installed. There are the extra respiratory filters, overlaid cleanly in my trachea. There are the UV and IR receptors in my right eye, the window to the soul. There's a wireless connection to the mainframe, behind my left ear; I can activate it if I think about pistachio pudding. (Neural net interfaces have some strange activators.)

Months have led to this moment, kneeling on this pillow, a lozenge poised on my tongue, ready to be punted into extra-spatial dimensions.

I swallow.

by Sharon 2:26 PM

 

We caught him at the back of the mouth, hesitating near the edge of the drop to the throat.

"Nobody move!" I shouted. "I think he's going to jump."

He was dressed in the glass-like red of the resistance movement, his armor a smooth crimson shell wrapped around him. We couldn't see his face. Sometimes, I wonder if these rebels even have faces. We've had trouble with his kind before. They slip past the tongue when they think nobody's watching, dive down the throat, and cause all sorts of trouble for the guys down below. I keep saying we need to move border patrols further up, near the gums and the teeth, but like my partner says, that's gingivitis territory, and those boys are more trouble than they're worth. Gérmenes locos. Bad news.

But still, the rebels piss me off.

"Let 'im jump," my partner says. "He's just sugar-coated. Cherry-flavored. Ain't a damn thing he can do."

I lower my gun, but I wonder...the rebels keep coming, and I don't know how long we can hold them off. I don't know if the cities down below could stand another direct attack. We're still struggling after the amoxicillin incident of '01. If the resistance movement knew how weak we really were...

I try telling central command this -- I've filed my reports -- but it's all politics, man. Nothing but politics.

Yeah, let the bastard jump.

by Fred 8:32 AM

 

Today's Topic:

Lozenge

by Remi 2:07 AM

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

 

Warning: the views expressed herein are not those held by the author but rather those of a friend long-gone.

For the evolved human, a body is a nuisance. We no longer hunt and gather; we hunt and peck. Our behinds and our guts expand our bodies while our minds expand to fill the universe. We search beyond the stars, formulate complex equations, communicate across the world ... without leaving our desks or our homes. Were we to simplify the body, this mere container for our intellects, what more could our species achieve?

How many times we have all wished not to need to eat, to sleep, to drink, to eliminate waste? These chores are an inconvenience, a hindrance to our day. Imagine the freedom of life without those interruptions in productivity. Americans already work longer hours than most if not all other industrial nations; the next gain of a competitive edge could come with the evolutionary step to reduce our dependence on these corporeal vessels we call our bodies.

...

I got distracted. I think that was 10 minutes. Where'd my caffeine go?

by Faith 8:33 PM

 

Tad wanted to be a sumo wrestler so badly he could taste it. The subtle grace, the pomp and ceremony, the sudden, ferocious violence, it all added up to an obsession for a boy growing up in an anonymous suburb of the Eastern United States. Tad had followed Akebono (now retired) through his thrilling rise through the ranks of the sumo hierarchy, finally reaching its summit. The first American to do so. While other children became interested in soccer, running, and spiked shoes, Tad began researching Sumo training and discovered that he was a little on the small side to be a Sumo.


Height wasn't the problem, but weight was. By the time he was 17 Tad was a willowy 6'4" with bright blue eyes, ragged sandy blonde hair, lithe musculature, and red, somewhat pouty lips. Girls seemed to like the way he looked, but after a few dates word got around that he had some strange tastes. He couldn't help it if they couldn't see the austere beauty of the sport (some even stooped to calling it 'Gross', idiots, they wouldn't know beauty if it crawled up and bit them on the . . . but I digress), they only had eyes for the football team, anyway. He often went to sleep crying at his inability to gain the proper mass. He had realized that the farther he got away from his early 'teens, when Sumo training generally started, the less likely it was that he'd be able to qualify, much less excel, at a Sumo school in Japan.


Finally, after two years at a state college, Tad let go of his obsession with those great bodies, and allowed himself to slip into the normalcy of a suburban life. But he never really understood why someone wouldn't want to look like a sumo wrestler, and he envied those who did.

by Remi 7:28 PM

 

It's not so bad, I used to tell people, back when I first got the job. Sure, it's a long way to go, but at least I'll get to see the stars.

A couple hundred years ago, they used to have robots do this kind of work. Then the revolution came, and people died. Artificial intelligence was outlawed. I guess people felt safer that way. They didn't stop exploring, though. By then there were already settlements on Ganymede and scattered asteroid digs further out than that. No one wanted to just abandon them. Not after what had happened with the Earth.

But the ships don’t fly themselves anymore, and you need a watchful eye looking in on the crew while they sleep. It’ll be at least seventy-five years before they’re thawed out, and even if everything goes like it’s supposed to, you need a warm body walking the halls each day, making sure the systems run right, making repairs if they’re needed.

I do a lot of reading. I check in on the cryo-chamber three or four times a day, make sure they get their nutrients, and I tend my little garden or exercise a little. Sometimes I play chess against the ship’s computer, but it isn’t very smart and I think I’ve learned all its moves.

Billions of miles and almost all of your life, my mother said, just to die on an alien world. You must be crazy.

It’s not so bad, though, really. There’s not much to do, but it’s quiet. And the view is spectacular.

[Full disclosure: while I tried to spend no more than ten minutes writing this, work-related interruptions kept dragging my eyes away from the clock. I can't guarantee that I didn't have more than ten minutes to think the story out. But I definitely tried.]

by Fred 5:44 PM

 

Body. Body of work. Body of water. The head and body of a document. My body. If you find “a body”, it means a corpse. Don’t confuse it with bawdy.

I’ve got nothing here. This isn’t suggesting anything. Body image. Body politics. Mind and body.

Man, not even the “Gosh, this word can mean so many things. What if I just list them to distract people from my lack of ideas?” idea isn’t working.

Once, my karate instructor asked us what sorts of things our bodies told us. The black belts all had answers that seemed reasonable enough, but I drew a blank. My body “tells” me all sorts of things—I’m tired, I’m hungry, don’t touch that—but I don’t get status updates like “You’re stressing the left knee too much.” I said something about perhaps being too new to really know what to listen for, and that was generally accepted.

In a sense, of course, the body doesn’t tell you anything, because you are your body. It’s not as though your mind and your body have conversations; there are just a bunch of signals which you can attend to or ignore. Attending to is probably more useful, but the trick is in understanding what’s important. It’s the same challenge faced by intelligence agencies: Getting lots of data is one step, but figuring out what the data means to you is just as important and potentially a lot harder. And that “means to you” is not just me being relativist. The same set of information will reveal different things based on what you’re trying to find out. Not necessarily different stuff, but things that may not even be related. You don’t need to keep conscious watch of your heartbeat, but its a good idea to pay enough attention that you can tell if it’s out of whack.

by Dave Menendez 2:40 PM

 

Necessity

I didn't see him at the door until it was too late. I've been spending too much time on the transceiver and not enough time sleeping. Now I've got a body to deal with.

A dead body.

I never, ever thought I'd have to kill a person. And now there's a body lolling about in the too-small bathtub of my hotel room.

What can I do?

In the movies, mafia hitmen dispose of bodies all the time. But I'm not mafia. It's too far to the car; someone's sure to see me carrying him downstairs. If I could even carry him downstairs.

I feel ill.

---

While cleaning off the lamp base, I noticed a wallet on the floor. It must be his. There's no identifying information inside, but it has 143 dollars in various denominations and a ticket stub from a showing of The Bourne Identity from earlier today.

It's the same showing I went to.

Either they've found me, or the body in my bath tub went rogue and wanted the transciever for himself...

Or other powers are entering the chase.

---

I've decided to leave him here. I'm leaving tonight. I'll be long-gone before a cleaner finds him.

I've stripped him down. He's swarthy; could be Slavic. He has no identifying marks on his body. All tags have been removed from his clothing. One clue: A gum wrapper stuck to the bottom of his shoe. The printing on it looked kind of like Greek. Or Cyrillic.

The plot thickens...

PS: I've posted my Conditioning story to Gamesmith, my personal blog. I didn't post it here 'cause I cheated and went for 60 minutes on it.

by jal 12:41 PM

 

I’m not all together sure it was actually a body. I mean, after all, it has been more than 30 years. But to a seven year old it sure looked like a body.

We used to take our jeep over to Pennsylvania near a place called Four Corners in the Alleghenies. It was a beautiful area and we had an old trailer that was parked year around in a hunting camp as our home base. I imagine it’s still there. We would go out driving through the woods, down back roads and old oil drilling roads. I’m sure it was all more traveled then I remember but to the imagination of a young boy it seemed that we braved paths that no one had traveled for years.

One late afternoon I was riding along in the back of the jeep and something caught my eye. As humans we’re hard wired to recognize the shape of other humans. That’s why faces are so effective in magazine ads. Anyhow, I saw a shape. It looked like a body. Specifically it looked like the body of a young boy. About my age. I only had a glimpse before it was out of sight but… Now really it could have been a trick of the light. An apparition created by moss covered sticks and rocks. The blank eyes could’ve been mushrooms; the scraggly hair may have been Spanish moss. It may have been nothing at all.

For the rest of the vacation this apparition would invade my dreams and I would lay awake in the trailer wondering if I saw what I thought I had. Wondering if he had followed us back and was waiting out in the woods just beyond the light of the camp.

Certainly, thinking back now, if one wanted to dump a body that would be the place to do it.

by Shawn 11:23 AM

 

Nigger. Chink. Spic. Wop. Heeb. Dago. Kike.

These are forbidden.

Shallow Hal. The Klumps. The Nutty Professor. Austin Powers. Friends.

These are...

"funny." These are lauded. These are laughed at. No, wait, laughed with. Paid for. These are permitted.

I spent some hours last night surfing, with mounting horror and then fascination, the "pro-ana" sites: websites, rings, blogs that support and endorse eating disorders, some that go on to confess self-injury.

I've taken a strong stance: "'Overweight' is an insult. I'm fat, and that's fine." I've delivered my "How to be FAT" speech at numerous Toastmasters meetings and contests, winning often. I tell women, "We are all aspects of the goddess."

But still, I clicked on the link marked "tips."

In a quiet, weak moment, I made one small post to my own blog, just needing to say it out loud, to disperse its power over me. Simply:

Sometimes,
late at night,
I don't want to campaign for
fat empowerment;
I just want to be thin.

In the morning, a friend argued the point, saying I looked good to him, and, while that wasn't what I wanted, it was okay, because it was delivered with friendship. (And he's a hottie.) A stranger—I hope it was a stranger—challenged why I would want to empower being winded, unhealthy, and prone to diseases, and suggested I should stay up late contemplating that.

Comments such as these, over this same issue, are why I disabled the comments system on my blog in the past. I like the interactions from my friends, but anonymity begets abuse, and visitors think a forum is an invitation.

Fuck you. My blog.

And my body.

by Sharon 10:37 AM

 

body

by Sharon 8:41 AM

Monday, June 24, 2002

 

This is so beautiful. I needed to finish this, it fits the topic beautifully, and I can post it on my page when its done. Wow. I needed to hash this out anyway.

and start:

A fly invited itself to lunch with me today.
I sat down and started spreading tuna salad on hard rolls, and it landed across from me. It took the other half of my hard roll, and ate it hungrily.
"You know," it said, "most peple don't like to share with flies."
Today was salmon salad day (a salad with the prerequisite lettuce and tomatoes, but with chunks of fish and potato and capers) so I didn't mind sharing, but he only wanted to lick the inside of my dressing cup.
"After you're finished, of course."
"That's kind of a lot of fish. You know, I used to live out at the Pike Street market in Seattle. I actually used to frequent the magic shop there, but the fish market is the reason I'm here. Have you been there?" No pause. "I was actually sitting on the hot dog of a patron in the magic shop. He saw me there and pitched me out into a garbage can with the nub of the dog. I flew out, dejected because he was about to reveal the secret of a card trick he'd just done where he shuffles your card into a deck, then finds it repetedly. It's a cool trick, and I wanted to know how to do it. So I flew out to the fish market, to talk to the guys who hang out there. No, the flies, really, you know what I mean, anyway, so I flew out there and landed on a fish. It was really really cold. I don't know if you know what cold does to flies, but it ain't pretty. Lucky for me that was the top fish on the pile. I think it was a salmon. I can't tell 'em apart. They all look the same to me. The fish got packaged and sent away, and the next thing I know, I'm sitting on a loading dock, slowly warming up. When I could, I flew away. Man that fish smelled good. It's probably the one you're eating now. Are you're sure you're finished?
"I've been here a while, kind of scoping the place out a little. You know, being next to a bookstore is pretty cool, too. I went over there. You know you guys don't have many good magic books? Yeah. At least, none that tell you how to do that trick. I saw you have a signed book over there, though. The one about that 'no-name actor' guy, what's his name, parallis, parantis parellant?" It's Perella, but I couldn't get a word in edgewise.
"And I saw that next month, Ethan Hawke's coming into town. Isn't he stopping there? Can you get me in? What do you say? Like, I could be there when he arrives. I wanna see that Uma chick. I think that one look at me and she'd be all mine. Yeah. I wouldn't get in the way. I'd be completely unintrusive."
I stood up and wiped my mouth. My ice cream bar was melted by this time, so I decided to eat it outside.
"I'll see what I can do." I said.
The fly looked disappointed. "Yeah, man. See you around." he said and flew off dejectedly toward the table where another of my coworkers was eating. As I walked out the door, I heard a loud whack, like a rolled-up newspaper hitting a table.

by MisterNihil 10:26 PM

 

“Gee, wasn’t expecting to meet you here”.

“Oh very funny. So, what are we this time? Looks like I’m some kind of turtle.”

“Tortoise I think”

“Oh yeah, tortoise. I’ve never been able to tell them apart. You look like a rabbit. So what great lesson are we going to offer up to mankind on this go around?”

“Sounding a wee bit bitter”

“Oh I’m just getting really tired of this. I mean, come on, just how many times do we need to get reincarnated before all the damn parables are covered. Can’t these people come up with any of their own object lessons without us?”

“You’re being unfair. They have libraries full of philosophy, theology and folk tales that have nothing to do with us.”

“And that’s another thing, why do they always feel compelled to tie our lives into religious dogma. I mean come on; David and Goliath had nothing to do with any particular religion. Samson and Delilah was all about giving into lust until you had to go ape shit in the temple and start tearing up the place. Adam and Eve? They really butched that one.”

“Oh they aren’t all tied to religions. How about the boy who cried wolf? The Monkey King? The scorpion and frog and pretty much anything to do with squirrels, ants or dogs”

“Yeah ok, but still…so what’ll we cover this time? You could beat me to death. Not sure what the parable would be there.”

“The tortoise-killing rabbit. Oh yeah, there’s a bedtime story waiting to happen. How about we race?”

by Shawn 6:53 PM

 

On the Run

"I didn't expect to meet you here."

"Of course not. That's the idea."

"You look different. Thinner. Have you been working out?"

"No. Being a fugitive from the government is grueling enough without adding an exercise regimen to it. Do you have the package?"

"No. It's safe, though. Why are you here? Isn't it dangerous for you to come see me?"

"Of course it's dangerous, but this is important. I need the pacakge. I need it now."

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"People were snooping the area around it with wierd detectors, getting closer and closer to it. I dug it up to relocate it, but I didn't have time and the snoopers were getting even closer. I destroyed it yesterday."

"Oh. Well, that'll do. Were you thorough?"

"As thorough as a chipper-shredder can be."

"Heh. Good enough. Well, I have to leave now. Do you think you're still safe?"

"Yeah, I suppose. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep an eye out for me. Can you do that?"

"Sure, I do that already, but I'll pay special attention on you from now on, okay?"

"Okay. Bye."

"I'll be seeing you."

by jal 5:59 PM

 

“I didn’t expect to meet you here.”

“Bitter?”

“Saddened. I had hoped you’d avoid ending up— What do you mean, ‘bitter’?”

“Nothing. You just sounded bitter. It’s understandable. A person like you would naturally chafe at being in a place like this.”

A suspicious look. Brief, possibly imagined. “Have you been here long?”

“It’s difficult to say. Have you?”

“As you said, it’s… difficult.” His coffee arrives. He thanks the server. Polite, but cold. “Why were you brought here?”

“I’m not sure. They keep asking me for information, but they won’t say who’s asking.”

“Indeed. It’s too bad you had to end up here. They say no one has ever escaped.” He laughs, but there’s no amusement in it. “They claim no one would want to leave.”

“Have you tried to leave?”

The suspicious look. Again, gone before it can be positively identified. “Have you?”

“Ah… no. Not yet. So far, it hasn’t seemed worthwhile.”

A nod. “Wouldn’t want to waste time. Not when there are so many important things to do.” He sips his coffee and looks out at the marching band endlessly circling the reflecting pool. “Tell Number Two that I’m not interested.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“You do.” He stands to leave, puts on his jacket, and pauses. “Yes, perhaps a little bitter. Be seeing you.”

by Dave Menendez 5:27 PM

 

In a small town, in the middle of Pennsylvania, where I'd given up hope on anything interesting ever happening, where I'd given up hope on ever progressing. In a poor fit, the wrong relationship, the wrong job (but the right apartment, at least), just after another wrong relationship, just after another wrong relationship, just after another... Doing what I'd been doing just because it was what I'd been doing, with the same people I'd always done it with. Becoming a Townie.

I didn't expect to meet you here.

Creating a plan of escape, setting extreme sights, shooting for the moon. Leaving. Striking out across the country, just to prove that I can, because that is where the jobs are, to find the third-largest telescope in the United States, because it isn't here. Discussing plans in an Eat'n'Park, cheese sandwich, tomato soup. Better parking than eating.

I didn't expect to meet you here.

Planning a life together, buying furniture, navigating IKEA. Building a home in the secret parts of my heart, coming home to the private spaces in my heart, finding a friend in the close, quiet places in my heart.

I didn't expect to meet you here.

by Sharon 4:26 PM

 

"I didn't expect to meet you here."

She nods. "No one ever does," she says.

"I just thought...well, you know. I thought it would be different."

She seems to smile. "The scythe and cloak, right? Yeah, that's pretty much what everybody thinks. But I gave that routine up years ago. Too high maintenance."

For the first time I notice the blood has stopped running down my cheek. The ringing in my ears has begun to fade.

"I thought I'd have longer," I say. "I thought...well, I guess I don't know what I thought. But this just doesn't seem fair."

This time she does smile. "Life's not about fair, kiddo," she says. "Life's about life. You live, and then you die, simple as that."

She looks at her watch.

"We really ought to get going," she says. "Miles to go before we sleep."

I realize, with a shock, that I can no longer remember the name of the man lying on the pavement at my feet. I can hear the sirens in the distance and the panicked voices of the crowd -- "A man's been shot," someone says, starting to cry -- but it all seems so far away now, like it's happening to someone else. I ought to know this man, I think. He looks so familiar, even though there's nothing in his eyes.

"Lead the way," I say, and I follow her into the light.

by Fred 1:56 PM

 

Topic Shanghai! Today's topic is:

"I didn't expect to meet you here."

by jal 12:46 PM

 

[Edited by Sharon: See below for today's topic from Jonathan.]

Spew. What kind of a name is that? Dick stood in the park watched the two kids playing on the playscape. They had just met a few minutes ago and already they seemed to be playing wonderfully together. Dick’s son, Ralph, had just turned 5 and the boy he was quickly forming a fast friendship with, looked about the same age.
He stood quietly beside Spew’s mother as they watched their children playing. They would occasionally offer up some brief bit of small talk as parents will when they’re watching their children play together. So, "Spew" he thought. It’s got to be an old ethnic name. Let’s see, Spew and his mother look to be, what Lithuanian? Hungarian?. He had no idea. They looked "ethnic" but of what origin he had no idea. Jeez, "Spew". That kid’s going to get picked on his entire life. Spew. I mean, even if they’re not from the US they must know what it means. Barf, woof, vomit, upchuck, retch, toss your cookies, toss your tacos, scream to the porcelain god, blow chunks, ralph…hey, wait a minute. Dick suddenly stuttered in mid thought if such a thing is possible. And then it hit him: What might his son’s name mean in Hungarian? Or Lithuanian? as the case may be. I mean, what if years from now he meets the girl of his dreams, from Hungary, or Lithuania and he introduces himself and she giggles and later he finds out that Ralph translated to Hungarian (or Lithuanian) means "camel crap". Or "man with breath like dead mice." Dick was suddenly very concerned about this.
"We have to go now."
"Huh", Dick was so lost in though that he hadn’t realized that Spew and his mother were leaving. "Oh, um, yeah. Well it’s been great that the kids could, you know, play together."
"Spew, say goodbye to your friend", his mother urged.
"Bye Ralph. Great playing with ya"
"Ralph?" smiled Spew’s mother. "That’s an interesting name." As she turned to go Dick saw an unmistakable smirk.

by Shawn 9:32 AM

Sunday, June 23, 2002

 

Wow, Ben, Tarentino would be proud. Interesting way to architect a story. Neat.

I'm left wondering: Was it simply food poisoning... or had something mutated?! Muahahahahaha...

What. I don't know what goes on in your fridge.

by Sharon 2:15 PM