Friday, August 29, 2003

 

left lane must turn left

by Sharon 6:58 AM

Thursday, August 28, 2003

 

"You will find fingernails in your carpet. They will not be yours."
It was the kind of thing you'd expect to get from a gag fortune cookie, not from a telephone psychic. I called at 6:27pm of last Wednesday. This weekend, while vacuuming my carpet, I did, in fact, find fingernails in it. They could not possibly be mine.
I am a nail-biter. I have been almost as long as I have had teeth. I know that these long, thick fingernails are not mine. They were sucked up into the vacuum and did unfortunate things to its insides. While cleaning it, I extricated and examined them. They were in my carpet. They are not mine.
I've thrown the fingernails away, but I had to call the psychic again. This time I got some lady who told me that I would live happily until I died, and that I would have many children with a wife I had yet to meet. She wasn't the same person. I thanked her kindly, and tried again and got who I wanted.
This time, the message wasn't so cryptic. This time, I knew what it meant immediately.
"Stop calling or your friends will all die."

by MisterNihil 3:25 PM

 

Fingernails

by MisterNihil 3:06 AM

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

 

"And the Eggoians?" Todd asked.

"Well, they look like waffles," I said. "I don't know how else to explain it. Their skin's a sort of yellowy brown, and it's got these little indentations all over it like you'd get with a waffle iron. And their ships, they're shaped like toasters."

"Really?" Todd asked. He sounded as incredulous as we'd been.

"Yup. It's weird, and it sure takes some getting used to, but they're really very friendly. The Captain was always trying to get them to join the crew for breakfast."

"But I thought -- you said that one of their ships attacked you."

"Well, yeah, it did. But only because they thought we were smuggling weapons and supplies to thier enemies. They've been at war a long time."

"Oh."

"But we straightened that out pretty quick. Central Command's even thinking about signing a treaty with 'em. Heaven knows, they could use all the help they can get against the An'jemimians."

"The Anja -- who?"

"An'jemimians. They're the Eggoians only enemy. We didn't see much of them, but they sure weren't friendly, I can tell you that much."

"And the Anja...what do they look like?"

"Well, it's hard to say. I only ever saw them up close once. Most of the time, they apparently revert to a kind of, I dunno, liquid form. On their command ship, they spend most of their time in stasis in these weird plastic-like containers."

"Wow...that is weird."

"Yeah, but still, they can be pretty mean when they wanna be. Three of our ships got stuck in An'jemimian space once, and it was all we could do to stop 'em from destroying them."

"Why?"

"Nobody knows. We could never figure that out. Or why they seem to hate the Eggoians so much. Doc says maybe all that time in stasis isn't good for them, maybe they're a little, you know, stir crazy."

"Gee. Well, what about -- ?"

"Hang on, in a minute, kiddo. First things first. Breakfast. Whadya want?"

"Um...just cereal for me, please..."

by Fred 4:14 PM

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

 

when they come for me
i don't fight them
they flap about me
all hands, all hands
and i cannot fend them off
nor do i want to
nor do i know how
when they come for me
i expose my belly
pink and warm
because i do not see
their teeth and eyes
i do not see
perils there being
all hands, all hands
as they are
when they come for me
i give them
my throat
and i like it
as they pull and tear
all hands, all hands
and bruise my skin
all hands, all hands
i never see their eyes.

by Sharon 9:20 PM

 

"What about a Manosian?" Todd asked. "You ever seen one of them?"

"Once or twice," I told him. "They keep to themselves mostly. It's not like we ever saw their homeworld or anything. But yeah, some of them came aboard the ship."

"Is it true?" he asked. "What they say about them?"

"What do they say about them?"

"That they're all hands."

"Hmm. Well, not quite. Mostly, but they've got eyes and ears just like us and a vestigial mouth."

"Ves...vestig..."

"Vestigial. It means they don't use it anymore. They used to, but then they evolved."

"But -- how do they eat?"

"Photosynthesis. That's like plants, you know, from the sun? Doc said there's some complicated name for it. All I know is, they loved the ship's arboretum and they're great at climbing trees."

"Don't they talk?"

"Nope. They write everything. Each of them have something like twenty or thirty hands going in all directions, so it's pretty easy for them. It wasn't unusual to see them do eight or nine different things at once."

"Like what?"

"Well, like climbing for one. We met a Denebali freighter captain who'd been to Manos Prime once, and he said it's nothing but forests. The Manosians swing from tree to tree better and faster than monkeys."

Todd giggled.

"And they're always writing something, or fiddling with something else. The Denebali captain said they don't need big crews on their ships like we do. They just need a pilot, a medic, and mechanic, and that's enugh hands for everything."

"Do you -- do you think they'll ever come to Earth?"

"I don't know. Like I said, they keep to themselves mostly. We only ever saw five or six of them in all the time we were out there."

"Wow," said Todd. "Real-life Manosians... What about--"

"I think that's enough questions for one night," I said. "Your mother'll have a fit if I don't get you to bed soon."

"Aw!"

"No, kiddo, I mean it. You'll have plenty of time to ask me all the questions you want in the morning. I'm on a three-week leave, so I'm not going anywhere. Go brush your teeth. Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about the Cerebrians."

"What're they?"

"Big floating brains that tried to take over the ship."

"Cool!"

"Yeah. Now, c'mon, it's time for bed."

by Fred 3:15 PM

 

all hands

by Sharon 12:01 PM

Monday, August 25, 2003

 

Shawn suffers from lack of connectivity and sends us

threshold

with his apologies.

by Sharon 1:20 PM

Sunday, August 24, 2003

 

Lot 472: Untapped treasures lurk within this unassuming packaging. Look beyond the plain exterior and too brief service record to recognize what true connoisseurs divine at a glance: Here stands quality. Ably suited to your technical needs, this model specializes in translations, interpretations, metaphors, and spin. Gathering business requirements from your customers? You'll wonder how you ever got by without it.

As if that were not enough, this compact dynamo can be turned to any number of other tasks. Watch it expand into new roles--you will be amazed. Project plans, software design, training modules: There's no limit to its diverse applications. It has even been known to venture into fiction.

Yes, I can see by your anxious faces that you are consumers who demand quality. This, friends, is your opportunity. We will start the bidding at one hundred...

by Sharon 11:59 PM

 

writer's block

by Fred 8:31 AM

Friday, August 22, 2003

 

I remember the server rooms. Big, mysterious places of great importance, where you must not touch anything. Always cool, always noisy with a rushing wind sound, always smelling the same smell that evokes rubber and linoleum and data. This is where work happens, in the server room, and don't. Kick out. A plug.

I remember the servers at ANPA, and the big tape backups. I remember the funny sign in fake German, about der blinken lights and kein gefingerpoken. I remember a machine that was taller than I was in our basement, and I remember turning it off one day, just flipping the appealing silver switch on the side, a toggle like the one on an old blender, the kind of switch you don't see anymore. I remember my mother's employee being very angry with me. But he ruined all the wooden chairs by always leaning back in them, straining their joints. I helped my dad glue those chairs back together. I never lean my chair back on two legs.

I remember the server room, back and to the left, in the rented space at the Ben Franklin Technology Center, which Dad named. I remember the yellow write-protect rings, because they fly well. The Ben Franklin Center was an incubator for small businesses, which always made me think of chicken eggs.

I remember getting to sit at a terminal and type--and work--in the server room in the Michael's School building. Dad owned that building, and built an addition.

I've never seen the server room in the new building, renting again. Dad has a parking space next to Mario Andretti now. This makes me smirk.

Now I help a company build the enigmatic inhabitants of those server rooms. Here, they call them server labs, and you have to wave your badge next to a panel to get in, and I don't have access to most of them, and they're carpeted, and they don't smell the same, and the machines don't even remember their Cro Magnon predecessors by which I mark the milestones in my life.

Today I hold in my hands a pulped and battered piece of meat that used to be something fine, and I don't even know how I tripped and stumbled over it to crush it, like an elephant, realizing too late that it has blundered into the midst of the mouse ballet. I sit in a sea of cubicles infested with humanity, and I feel alone. I miss the comforting server rooms, where quantities are known and results are predictable. I want problems I can figure out, through the clever application of entity diagrams and flowcharts. I want interactions that I can draw a box around and nestle into a swim-lane.

Instead I stare at a cursor blinking at me insistently, asking "Abort, retry, fail?"

by Sharon 11:06 PM

Thursday, August 21, 2003

 

Still looking for volunteers...

by Sharon 5:35 AM

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

 

Fed Ups

by MisterNihil 3:05 AM

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

 

Y'know what Jon's doing today? Jon's

Driving

by Sharon 11:23 AM

Monday, August 18, 2003

 

Chip peered over the edge of the well. Maria fidgeted behind him, a safe distance away in the grass. He held a small rock at the ready and rolled it between his finger and thumb. The well fell away quickly into invisible darkness that swallowed the steamy July sun. Chip licked his lips. Maria said, "Don't--" just as Chip released the rock. It promptly disappeared.

Maria stepped forward to listen. Neither child breathed. Still, it fell. "Maybe--" Chip shushed her and turned his ear towards the well, the other ear pointing towards the sky. He strained into the wet silence. He started to wonder if the bottom were too far away to hear. Without leaving his post, he scanned the tall grass amongst the rotten boards they had displaced to uncover the well, looking for another rock, a larger one. He sighed and started to sit up, when-- plink. The pebble hit the water.

Maria had heard it, too. When Chip looked at her wide, frightened eyes, he became annoyed with her, clearing away his own nervousness about the forbidden well. "Jeez, Maria. Help me find a bigger rock." The more she resisted, the bolder he became. What was the point of all that work in uncovering a well if you weren't going to drop stuff down it, he wanted to know. When she suggested it was time for her to go home, Chip became insistent. "It's safe, I'll show you," and he turned and bellowed "Hallo!" down the narrow well.

It echoed back, murky and distorted. But then it didn't diminish. The fetid water, far below, hallowed back at them, louder and louder. Amid the noise, something shifted its weight, splashing in the water. Chip's reflected voice died abruptly. Something with sludgy green handholds began to climb.

by Sharon 3:28 PM

Saturday, August 16, 2003

 

Ziggurat of Doom

Don't say I never did nothin' for ya, Shawn.

by Sharon 12:08 PM

Thursday, August 14, 2003

 

forgotten

by Fred 1:30 PM

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

 

It's because of the windows.

I'm a writer, as you can see by my file, and I was freelancing. What? No, freelancing. Right. Freelancing in the summer, writing to spec, writing someone else's dreck. It was okay during the winter. But then it came on summer... Why did there have to be windows?

I think you're taking a bit of a liberty there, with that word "gleefully." I would say "doggedly." Maybe "fixedly." "With grim determination," that's a nice one. A little overused, though, if you ask me. What other sorts of determination are there but grim ones? People get these little phrases in their heads and they start to get stuck together like a big compound word, like German has. Have you seen those crazy-long words that German has? Like Fenstermacher... Window-maker...

Well, alright, perhaps I was beating that car gleefully. You can write that down if you want to. That bat and I had gotten into a comfortable rhythm. Me and that slugger were on a City Improvement Project, bound to do some good. Really, I'd say I was just showing my civic pride with a little community beautification.

Noise pollution is a kind of pollution. And don't I know it, living in an apartment complex. Those damn car alarms go off three and four times a night. They start to set each other off. I just wanted to do my bit, make it better for everyone, offer up a Buick sacrifice...

I was fine when the windows were shut. But I was writing, you see. And the air was so sweet. How could I keep the windows shut? But it let in the sound of those car alarms. You can't imagine--

You can imagine? You, too? Well. I knew you'd understand.

Free to go? Delightful. You want to get a bite to eat?

by Sharon 11:59 PM

 

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

by Sharon 7:45 AM

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

 

Still Sweet & Fresh to the Core.

i tried. i gave up.

by MisterNihil 3:26 AM

Monday, August 11, 2003

 

a small metal tin, with a lid

by Sharon 12:19 PM

Friday, August 08, 2003

 

"That, my friend, is impossible."

by Fred 7:46 AM

Thursday, August 07, 2003

 

"Record" is a really neat word, and I've been turning it over in my head since yesterday. The noun and the verb are homographic (written the same) but not homophonic (sounding the same). We have lots of non-homographic homophones, like blue/blew and there/they're/their--I mean, lots. You see them as typos all the time. But there aren't so many non-homophonic homographs. "Read" and "polish/Polish" come to mind. I wonder how synthesized-speech readers (like, for the blind) deal with these words.

But "record" is cooler yet. A change in inflection distinguishes the noun and verb forms of the same word. And it's legitimate--historically established, at least--unlike so many instances where a noun is pressed into being a verb, like "access" and "loan."

The reason I've been rolling it back and forth across my brain for over 24 hours is that I am trying to think of other words that act like "record." And the fact that this is hard calls out another interesting aspect of the way our language processors work. It's not a two-way module. You can get information in one direction, but you can't stuff the result back in and get the starting point again. It's like a meat grinder, turning steak into hamburger, but falling pretty short when trying to moosh the hamburger back into ribeye. So I can look at the two pronunciations of "record" and think, "Huh. Non-homophonic homographs. And a noun and a verb, with the same root meaning, distinguished by inflection. Interesting," but I can't feed those criteria back in and easily retrieve other examples.

Which is what those damn Mensa puzzles are all about. It's just not natural, I tell you.

by Sharon 11:59 PM

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

 

Midge propped her hands on her hips and chewed the inside of her cheek, surveying the pile of boxes and plastic-wrapped furniture. So, they'd arrived. Now it was just a task of turning the place into a home. It had stood empty for two years, and smelled like it.

Late sunlight cut across the living room, sparkling off the lazy dust motes. The front room had grown warm. Midge clicked her tongue and stalked over to a window. She ripped two fingernails when it refused to open. She set her shoulder under the top bar of the window frame and grunted. She ran her fingers over the locks again, verifying that they were not latched. The sun beat on her face as she strained again. She was sweating when she stepped back to evaluate the stubborn window. Her eyes lit on a nail wedged at the bottom of the window, and traced the seal around the perimeter, counting 23 nails in all. Midge shook her head and tromped off to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Just before the heavy, black lightswitch clacked into the "on" position, Midge heard a scuttling in the shadows that made her think of cockroaches. When the feeble bulb, hanging dirty and bare from a ravaged light fixture in the ceiling, cast a brown light over the warped linoleum, the kitchen was empty, and silent, and still. Midge paused on the threshold, scanning the corners and baseboards. Then she crossed to the counter and fished a plastic cup with a scuffed and faded fast food logo out of the crumpled newspaper in a cardboard box.

When she cranked the tap, it coughed, hesitated, and then rallied and vomited brown water into the sink. Midge let it run. Everything in this house required patience. She watched the rust-colored water flow into the drain.

A sound made her turn. The image that had come to her mind was a memory of childhood: a furtive whisper and a hasty hush. Midge could feel her pulse in her throat. The sink sputtered and redoubled its efforts behind her. The faintest shuffle drew her attention to the cellar door, still shut, still dark behind it. Her eyes fixed unwaveringly on the door, she fumbled behind her to turn off the faucet.

The silence grew much louder. Midge held her breath. Hawklike, she homed in on movement at the gap beneath the door. Something was feeling along the bottom edge, testing the air like a serpent tongue. Midge stood frozen, unable to identify the creature. And then it emerged, forcing itself through the two-inch crack: a tiny, precious, skeletal hand. Small, perfect finger bones gripped the bottom of the door, digging into the wood. Midge screamed.

by Sharon 11:59 PM

 

very quiet children

by Sharon 12:06 PM

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

 

I am a committee, and we are very strong and we are very weak. We know what is wrong, and we review the ways to fix it. We are dependant on a foreign substance. We know several ways to obtain it, depending upon our cost-product projections, cash-in-hand and social situation, and we know that we must not. We are strong. We will not give in. The decision is made and our health is deemed worthy of our not obtaining said substance.
As soon as the decision is made, another decision is made behind the closed door of our collective mind. We will feel strong long enough that our spirits will be bolstered, and then we will "find" that we have obtained said substance against our will. "Before we know it" we will be outside, introducing addictive toxins to our system. "Without realizing what we were doing," we will find ourselves enjoying a second dose. "As if in a dream," we will find that our will is broken not by some insidious outside force, but by our own committee members who were, just minutes before, so adamantly against the fueling of our addiction.
We realize that the decision has been made, but we realize it far too late, when, in special session, the measure is pushed through, and we head outside, thinking we "just need fresh air."
One day soon, I will disband the committee and reintroduce the tyranical monarchy of the previous administration, but in the meantime, I'm shaking lightly, and the air is getting thin. I need to go outside, just for some fresh air, just to get a break from work. Just to rediscover the joys of withdrawal.

by MisterNihil 2:17 PM

 

sweats and stomach cramps.
squeezing each cell
like a ripe zit
to yield the poison
and flush it out
and learn to get by
without it.
counting days,
tick marks proclaim a success.
hands move over old patterns,
well learned and ingrained,
and a gut full of acid,
compensating,
rumbles hollow.
betrayers.
gears slip
and grip,
a whirr and a click,
finding a new algorithm,
missing a component.
ambling ever onward.
fever dreams
hark back to old times
with sunlight,
making the dawn
more gray.
I wonder how long it will be
until I no longer crave
you.

It's been years and years since this was relevant. Caffeine is a snap, by comparison.

by Sharon 11:03 AM

 

Withdrawal

by Sharon 10:09 AM

Monday, August 04, 2003

 

He jumped from one branch to the next. The monkeys pursued. He turned back to look and accidentally made eye contact. This enraged the largest monkey. It shrieked and lept toward him. He dodged to another branch. He asked himself, "Is there Juice in your Camera?"
He clambored down the trunk of the tree. He glanced above him to keep the monkeys in view. Better to know where they were than to know where they were not.
His grandfather told him that, on his death bed. He had lost his mind in the end. His grandfather had called him Jennifer. He knew there was no malice. This was a sympton of the disease that had eaten him from the inside out.
He jumped down from the tree and began running along the ground. He kept low and watched for the monkeys. He knew that he only had a little over two miles to run before he was clear of their territory. Again he asked, "Is there Juice in your Camera?"
His grandfather had asked him that. He said, "Jennifer, Is there Juice in your Camera?" He didn't understand and said so at the time. His grandfather tried to explain. "Go to Africa and piss off a couple of monkeys. It'll make plenty of sense, Jennifer. You go piss off them monkeys and they go chasing you through the trees. You get clear of them monkeys and you'll know if there's juice in that camera. You'll know."
He ran toward the clear. The monkeys gave noble chase. He evaded them several more times and kept always his mind on his goal. He reached the clearing past which the monkeys would not go. He ran another two hundred yards and turned around. The monkeys sat in the trees and threw rocks at him. They squawked like children on a playground.
He cupped his hand to his mouth and screamed, "There Is Juice!" And he knew it was not true.

by MisterNihil 11:57 AM

 

You gotta believe. You gotta get your butt in gear, and you gotta do what's right, whether it's right or not. You gotta ask yourself, seriously,

Is There Juice In Your Camera?

by MisterNihil 10:32 AM

Friday, August 01, 2003

 

Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe, the fabled Geek Legion was as unlikely a band of superheroes as one was likely to find. But so, too, had been most every other successful superhero team in the history of spandex-clad champions -- a fact which the mighty Captain Graphic Novel had rarely failed to point out to them. They were the most powerful forces of dorkhood ever assembled:

Johnny Trek, whose Vulcan ears and staunch adherence to the Prime Directive cast fear into the hearts of ne'er-do-wells and convention-goers everywhere;

Captain Graphic Novel, sworn defender of comic book-style vigilantism, whose zap-bam-pow ferocity, well-stocked utility belt, and form-fitting tights were the bane of criminal masterminds the world over;

Lady Mathematica, a stunning beauty and scientific wit, whose ass-kicking calculations and crime-fighting Venn diagrams had proven her to be a prime number to be reckoned with;

The Roleplayer, a veritable jack-of-all-trades and master of disguise, whose true identity was known only to the ancient tribe of Game Masters who had first bestowed upon him the dreaded Twenty-Seven-and-a-Half-Sided Die of Justice;

Dorkian Gray, who would stay perpetually young as his Magic the Gathering card grew steadily older;

and of course, the Wonder Twins, with their space monkey, Geek!

They were the Geek Legion, proud champions of the dorky faith.

by Fred 5:38 PM