Friday, April 29, 2005

 

Tell me something I don't know.

by Fred 12:41 PM

Thursday, April 28, 2005

 

As he boarded the train,
They confiscated his brain,
Said, "You won't really need this, so just hop inside."

He protested at first,
Thought it death or fate worse,
But they persisted, and soon his arms were both tied.

The rope they used was quite strong,
An inch thick, two foot long,
Looped 'round his wrists, pulled so tight that he cried.

"But I need it!" he said.
"Without a brain, I'll be dead!"
But they just gave him a look, little laugh, and they sighed.

"We've done this before,"
They said, "Furthermore,
We've been without brains for a year and none of us died."

"They just get in the way,
Thinking thoughts night and day.
Thoughts are one thing we hate, that we cannot abide.

"To ride on this train
You simply must lose your brain."
It was at this moment that the scalpel he spied.

They cut with such care,
Though there was still blood everywhere,
And into his skull with their grubby fingers they pried.

They scooped it out with a spoon,
Punched his train ticket, and soon
They'd sewn him back up with just some stuffing inside.

And there he sat with no brain
On the jostling train,
And out the window he stared,
Not a thought, not a care,
Except just to realize that they had, of course, lied.

by Fred 6:11 PM

 

confiscated!

Guess who left her laptop unlocked...

by Sharon 8:34 AM

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

 

Nothing Good Can Come Of This

by Christy 1:47 PM

Monday, April 25, 2005

 

All work done on premises.
Removes stains and spots and blemishes.
Some say, "Best in life is free." --
and for them it is.
But for you, you'll have to pay.

All work done with radishes,
The occasional squash or sprout or cabbages.
Best thing for all of life's
tiny little ravages.
Only $7.50. What'd ya say?

by Fred 8:42 PM

 

All work done on premises.

by Fred 12:32 PM

Saturday, April 23, 2005

 

I've always wanted to fly a plane. Not just any plane, either. I want to fly one of those stealth planes or one of the Blue Angels' planes. Something like that. And I don't want to just ride in one either. I want to be in control of it. I'd like to learn how to do all those wicked mid-air tricks. You know, like when they fly in a straight vertical, stall the engine then free-fall for a few seconds before taking off again in a totally different direction. I can only vaguely imagaine what that would feel like. I imagine it would be one of the world's most amazing adrenaline rushes. At the top of a looping arc, I bet you feel almost weightless, unaffected by gravity, and totally untethered to Earth before beginning your descent back down approaching the ground at speeds that humans are not normally capable of. All of this was brought on because in Louisville, Kentucky, (where I live) today is "Thunder Over Louisville." This day is the kick-off of the Kentucky Derby Festival, and every year there's an hours long air show topped of by one of the most spectacular fireworks shows in the world. I love this day; it's almost a holiday-like atmosphere. I wish all of you could be in Kentucky to experience this with me today, despite the icky weather.

by Christy 4:50 PM

 

I've always wanted to......

by Christy 4:35 PM

Friday, April 22, 2005

 

more or less

by Fred 11:19 AM

Thursday, April 21, 2005

 

So, what's up?

by Fred 8:34 AM

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

 

What is good?
Good god.
Good gravy.
Good grief.
Good boy.
Good girl.
Goodness gracious great balls of fire.
Good thinking.
Good to go.
Good year.
Good shot.
Good thing where have you gone?
(do do be do)
Good wife.
Good man.
Good book.
Good idea.
Good food.
Good friends.
Good thing, you got here when you did.
Good catch.
Good throw.
Good heart.
Good news.
Goodnight, sweet prince.
Good taste.
Good looks.
Good day, sunshine.
Good morning.
Good manners.
Good golly, Miss Molly
(could see Miss Molly rockin' at the house of blue light)
Good music.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Good vibrations.
Good times, bad times
(you know I've had my share).
Good omen.
Good heavens.
Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
Good as new.
Gone for good.
Goody goody gumdrops.
It's no good.
Good to know.
Good try.
Good reason.
Goodnight, Irene.
Good clean fun.
Goodbye to all that.

by Fred 11:52 AM

 

What's good?

by Sharon 7:56 AM

Sunday, April 17, 2005

 

You know that saying? "What he knows could fill a thimble?" I heard someone the other day screw it up, "what he doesn't know," she said, "could fill a thimble." Which to my mind means the guy knew quite a lot, but since Martha was talking about her ex-husband Butch -- a mouth-breather if I ever saw one -- I don't think that's really what she meant. But then there's something else that strikes me as odd. I mean, how much space does knowledge contain anyway?

We used to have a pretty good idea. I mean, you could look at a book and see. But compression technology has been reducing the physical presence of knowledge for thousands of years. Yes, thousands -- you try lugging Finnegan's Wake around in clay tablets. Or, for that matter, a hand-copied black-letter edition complete with pig skin binding. I carried a complete "red letter" edition King James Bible to church that was barely larger than my hand, and I was ten. Have you ever seen the Gutenberg Bible? I have, and let me tell you the thing was huge. You know that Oxford English Dictionary you had in high school but you never used because it had too many words in it and anyway you weren't strong enough to open it? Looks like a paperback compared to Gutenberg's monster.

But back to my point. See, we have everyone walking around with these pastel-colored hunks of metal and plastic and they have four gigs of music in them. _Four gigabytes_. I mean we have two hundred gigabyte hard drives and some places even have multi terrabyte servers, which is frickin' huge, so we tend to think four gigs isn't quite that much. But it's a hell of a lot of music and it's also library's worth of the written word. The Bible? Less than a hundredth of that. And the hard drive -- it's quarter sized. Wouldn't fill a thimble. Soon we're supposed to have twenty gigabyte drives the same size. We'll be able to routinely carry around more information than generations of people ever dreamed existed.

So my point is, the thimble is getting larger and larger. The saying doesn't make any sense any more. Filling a thimble with information has become a hurculean task, like swamping out the stables. But. That's not why it's going to fall out of use.

The reason it's going to fall out of use is that, for all their ability to carry on several conversations in several media at once, today's kids don't know what a thimble is. And although I've tried, I can't make that feel like a tragedy to me.

by John W. 5:37 PM

 

What He Doesn't Know

by Christy 11:55 AM

Friday, April 15, 2005

 

"I'd never do that. Never," I said.
"Yeah," she said. "But I would."
And then she did. This chick was going to send me to an early grave, seriously.
Before I even knew what was happening she'd taken hold of my shoulder and bounced herself up off the pavement and onto the railing. She let me go and held her arms out to her sides to balance herself and began to walk along the top of the railing. The scientist in me instantly began calculating her chances of survival should she fall from our seventh floor balcony. The brand-new husband in me wanted to sweep her off the railing and back onto solid ground where she'd be safe. Well, maybe not "safe," but safer at least. "Safe," at this point was pretty useless to hope for.
I didn't dare touch her, though, for fear of actually unintentionally causing the disaster I wanted to prevent. But I sure as hell wasn't going to watch her put herself in danger, either. I gave her one last disapproving look and went inside, solidly closing the sliding glass door behind me.

by Christy 11:59 PM

 

I'd never do that,
but now that it's done,
don't ask how I did it,
don't ask how it's done,
just accept that's what I did
and I'd do it again
if I did things like that,
which I don't,
just so you know.

it didn't take me ten minutes to write this.
this is the sort of thing that takes almost no time.
pen hits the paper, spews ink, with it words.
the tough part is finding a rhyme.

or tougher still, maybe, is writing on the train
while jostled and tossed all about
the pen skews a jagged -- what's that word? -- as we enter the station.
See? I told you rhyming was hard.

by Fred 5:54 PM

 

I'd Never Do That

by Generik 10:18 AM

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

 

"Something is wrong. I don't know what it is, but when you get a chance, fix it."

by Fred 9:40 AM

Monday, April 11, 2005

 

wake up.
failing that,
stand.
succumb to sleep if you must,
but not to gravity.
flip off the alarm,
kick yourself up off the bed
into the shower,
the lather, rinse and --
knock at the door;
"are you almost done in there?
it's getting late." --
no time to repeat.
fall into clothes.
fall through the door.
more awake now but still,
would ten more minutes of sleep have really killed you?
jacket on,
fight the sleeves,
bag tossed over shoulder and
wallet, phone, keys make their way
to appropriate pockets.
make your way
down the stairs,
out the door.
raining? no. leave the umbrella.
walk to the station:
two blocks, if that.
try not to glance at the watch;
if you don't remind the universe you're running late,
maybe it won't notice.
train's not on time:
always late,
never late enough.
nowhere to sit,
so, failing that,
stand,
read.
forty-five minutes, sometimes an hour,
that one morning more than two,
another morning,
so crowded a fight broke out.
blood was spilled.
finally there,
race through that one last paragraph,
book tucked back in bag,
into the station,
off of the train,
up the stairs,
on to the street,
zig and zag around the crowd.
fifteen, maybe twenty minute walk.
then,
at work,
through the door,
up the stairs
(don't these elevators ever work?),
to the desk,
the chair,
the --
no, don't close your eyes again.
stay awake now.
time to work.

later,
for our next trick,
we'll do it in reverse.

by Fred 11:59 PM

 

What is your daily routine?

by Fred 1:38 PM

Friday, April 08, 2005

 

"I have this thing about vampires."

by Christy 12:10 AM

Thursday, April 07, 2005

 

square roots make for peculiar trees
branches curled up like twos and threes
misshapen fours where there should be leaves
that twist like fives in the open breeze

by Fred 11:59 PM

 

running numbers

by Fred 2:49 PM

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

 

Fuck time, thought Jack. Fuck the balance, fuck the order, fuck the natural progression of cause and effect. Fuck it all and let the universe get fucked right along with it.

He wasn't usually so angry. One of the first things they taught you at the Academy was, don't drive the time machine when upset. It was good advice and had probably saved Jack's like half a dozen times, or at least ensured he'd always had a life, time-wise, there to be saved. The machine was a delicate thing, difficult to work, persnickity to no end, and it was best that reason not be clouded by emotion when behind its wheel. Or whatever that glowing things that looked like a wheel was supposed to be.

Jack no longer knew how long he'd been licensed to drive the damn thing. "How long" was something of an alien concept nowadays. The Academy tried to drum that kind of thinking out of you, tried to get you to think past individual years and look at eons, look at each moment only in so far as it connected to the whole. The Patrol itself went a step further: accepted, you became an operative without a true time or place of your own; you had history, but they muddied it up, obsfucated it, discouraged visits to your own past and even penalized officers who disobeyed.

Officers like Clara, Jack's one-time future wife.

The bastards had undone her. They'd done her in. For want of a better word, she'd been erased.

So, yeah, thought Jack. Fuck time. It had never been on his side.

by Fred 6:19 PM

 

Time is not on my side

by Generik 1:18 PM

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

 

Eddie had never been to Montana, so when Nick asked, wanna go? his brother said, sure, why not? If Nick was driving, Eddie was game. It wasn't like he was going back to work after what had happened anyway. A little road trip to God's country might be just what he needed.

It was Montana they called God's country, right?

Eddie had no idea, and Nick couldn't say for sure. He hadn't hear anybody call it that the last time he'd been, but then he'd only ever done this run for the boss once before, and he never got to see much more than the warehouse at six am where they'd loaded the truck. Nick definitely wasn't supposed to be taking Eddie along, but he figured his little brother could use a little change of scenery. It wouldn't hurt to get him far away from Ms. Carlson, or the shop, who were still talking maybe about pressing charges.

To Eddie, Montana was...nothing, really. He pictured it as something like a long string of pale brown mountains underneath a wash of colorless sky. Maybe some horses, maybe some snow. He couldn't have guessed where the capital was, or even which of the other states surrounded it. Nick had said the trip would take maybe a day, depending on traffic, but Eddie's idea of geography pretty much began and ended in the same town he'd grown up in and lived all his life.

Montana just was, something maybe better because it was different, because it was unknown at a time when the known had been pretty much just dicking Eddie around for weeks. Montana was a thing, not a state, or even a concept -- just this vast unknowable expanse that lay ahead of them.

But it was waiting, and Eddie liked that.

by Fred 5:59 PM

 

Montana

by John W. 12:59 PM

Monday, April 04, 2005

 

Just like that plate full of half-eaten scrambled eggs and ketchup left overnight in the sink, where the tap has dripped on it for twenty-two hours straight and you know you'll have to clean it all up before you can fill your empty coffee carafe, down your coffee, and slog your way through another rainy monday morning, it wasn't a pretty sight. The murder I mean. You may have lost me there in all the egg metaphor. I'm sorry. It's been a long day.

"So, what I have we got here?" I asked the noun in charge.

"Gang action, looks like. Classic drive by, a few bad adjectives from down the road. Drove by, hit the house with some unneccessary punctuation."

"Witnesses?"

"Plenty, but it happened so quickly they didn't have a chance. The shooting was over before you could say 'gerund.'"

"What's this?" I said, nudging a few dots on the ground. "Periods?"

The noun shook his head. "Naw, too many of them for that. They used ellipsis."

"And the victim?"

"Over here," said the noun, taking me over to the other side of the couch. It's Agreeance. Old codger, mostly harmless, but he must have offended someone to get rubbed out like this.

"Agreeance? That's not even a word, is it?" I asked.

"Not any more," the noun said. "As long as you're here, maybe you can help me load him in the scrabble bag."

by John W. 5:08 PM

 

bad words

by Fred 12:59 PM

Friday, April 01, 2005

 

The thing in the box was going to be a problem.

by Fred 12:29 PM