Wednesday, May 14, 2008

 

Sometimes, no matter what you do...

by Fred 8:01 AM

Friday, May 02, 2008

 

The ground is hard out here, you can't get no sleep at all, and a man could get lost in the sky sometimes. If you start gazing you better hoof it up the block and see if the barman can't toss you a beer for a buck, 'cuz you're almost too late then. If you start thinking hard about anything at all, the philosophers get all over you like fleas on a dog, like children on a sled, like clouds on a rainy day, get my drift.
Don't draw their attention or you're in the grave already. Keep a foot free and your badge on your chest, you want this to end bloodless. See that man with a pistol, he don't care none for you or what you want out of today and he'll see to it you get nothin he don't set you up for. Cry Havok! Indeed! Totaled bodyshop wrecks piled off his urchin-breath kid, calling for milk and sucking on stones can't stop the flood, don't know what makes you think you can.
Keep it clean, keep it careful says the Activity Monitor, Congrats on your recent answers to our quizzes and surveys, next time answer 'A' more often or you'll get This! Buzzsaws and Chaingangs hang on the walls and careen carefully around the wainscoting, frozen mid-stride in ways that must make you want Shooters Poppers and Zappers. Don't try it, she says with her eyes even as she beckons you upstairs. Don't go, she'll kill you alive and make boots from your face. Oh, child, you're so far out of your league you thinks you got it made. Go back home and beat on fifth graders, they're so much more your speed.
We don't need you here and we sure don't want you none. Chime it, Freddy, this one's done, it's over and he don't have nothing else we can extract. Call it, toss it and tag him before he starts to stink up the joint or it'll be a long wait til the next one.

by MisterNihil 2:57 PM

 

Feebs just like Flime

by MisterNihil 2:47 PM

Monday, April 21, 2008

 

Whistle and Spit

by MisterNihil 11:49 PM

 

But the one that you hit, that's what comes next. But then you spend forty minutes or an hour on the internet looking up what the hell comes after that and after that, and you get bogged down in the Unusual Mrs Spitz which doesn't help you at all, she says, Was you in a play perhaps, a pageant, huh? and that sends you spiraling into the waters of their new stuff, little snips and snails of bigger things and other sounds ringing through the ugly steel pipes of the internets, and you ask yourself again if maybe The Stickmen and Bucket aren't touring again, and then you sort of forget why you were going online in the first place, and it turns out to be because you were going to write a thing for a blog, but what? What blog? Gah! The madness is tensing!

by MisterNihil 11:50 AM

Friday, April 18, 2008

 

Aside from the improvement, nobody will know the difference.

by MisterNihil 9:19 AM

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

 

Child,

I am but a cypher in this world of fools.

by MisterNihil 1:45 PM

Monday, April 14, 2008

 

Two times last week, Jim stepped into a store knowing precisely his mission.
The first, he sought socks. He entered the store knowing only that they carried a selection of clothing, and that his aim was footwear.
"Pardon," he intoned, "me sir, where are your socks?"
"Why, they are on my," replied the well-dressed man in the charcoal suit and orange tie, "feet. Where else? Ha ha!" The man walked away, obviously amused by his own genius.
Jim approached a second man.
"Sir, I," he said, "require socks. Does your store sell such things?"
"Yes, of," the man replied after a moment's thought, which he spent appearing increasingly annoyed, "course we do. Shoo, you silly man!"
Jim looked around the store. Display shelves were piled with literally hundreds of shirts, ranging in color from light green to khaki brown. Most were short-sleeved affairs in cotton, linen and silk, woven in Italy and Monaco, assembled by clever people who put little paper squares with their name instead of their employee number into the pockets of each garment made.
The store, in fact, employed a man whose job consisted only of removing those pieces of paper from those pockets and putting them carefully into a recycling bin.
Jim wandered to the edge of the shirts and saw a forest of pants with names on them which he did not recognize. Some were made in Canada. Jim felt chills just thinking of it. He walked up to one, and touched it. The fabric was cool and had a texture with which he was unfamiliar.
"Those aren't," said the first man suddenly, causing Jim to jump, "socks." He cackled and walked away, holding his stomach and pointing his thumb at Jim over his shoulder. The second man also began to laugh. Jim felt very small.
He left, then.
That was the first time Jim went into a store that week. He knew exactly what he wanted, but he walked into the wrong store.
The second time, he knew exactly what he wanted, too. He wanted revenge.

by MisterNihil 5:10 PM

 

Desperation,

thou fickle bitch goddess,

thy hooks abound.

by MisterNihil 5:00 PM

Saturday, April 12, 2008

 

If there's any one thing that could make me a Yankee, it's the heat. If there's any one thing that could drag me back, it's the speech mannerisms one can expect to find in the northern climes.
I find I wither during the summer months. Today, we seem to be having a wonderfully rare beautiful spell. The sun is shining and the clouds are plentiful enough to cast the kind of shade that keeps ones delicate, Winter-softened skin from broiling to the unhealthy red one associates with these of the United States. The light breeze that wafts periodically across the plaza outside cools pleasantly any heat which manages to accrue upon the skin. This is that rarest of spells in which a young lady in a bikini may lay out upon a towel and enjoy the sun without fear of the Ultra-Violet Radiation which the weather forecasters so love to harp on about. This weather, hot and cold at once and sunny without being deadly serious, is that rare moment when one appreciates the summer. I hear they actually come to expect this kind of day up in the north, even to rely on it. I believe I have heard the rumor that they come to actually be disappointed by the other kind, so used are they to mild weather. Indeed, the siren song of pleasant Summer days is perhaps the only one which could entice me north of that old Mason-Dixon for any amount of time.
On the other hand, I'd be back before one could blink an eye once the pace of their speech met my tender ears. I do have a certain appreciation for a region in which a man is allowed to take his time in speaking. When words jumble as they do so up in the cold reaches of the continent, one can barely think between words, and ones verbal thought becomes so very flat and boring. Myself, I prefer the chance to languish upon a particularly pleasurable word, and more, for the listener to have half a chance to absorb the deeper meanings imparted by my several well-calculated turns of phrase.
If one is confronted with such a fast-talking gent as is so often encountered in the larger Metropolitan areas, one is often faced with the accusation that ones speech patterns defy conventional manners by wasting time. I find that, upon the third or fourth repetition at that break-neck pace they call conversational, one has wasted much more time than one would have by speaking slowly and clearly, as my regional brethren always must endeavor to do.
You see, friend, that is a sly witticism, a level of humor unreachable at lightning pace. There stands simply no time for slyness in its many wicked, enjoyable forms when one must be struggled to be understood for simple velocity. No, I find the highest one can reach with ones words so pressed together is a pun, which I believe we can all agree, is the lowest form of humor.

by MisterNihil 6:48 PM

 

Sun

by MisterNihil 6:47 PM

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

 

The bells chimed in the tower. Janice rushed through the hallway. Outisde the building, her boy was waiting. His name was Charles, but she forgot his name often enough that she'd replaced it in her mind with a series of diminishingly personal nicknames. Yesterday, he had become Bugaboo. Once he hit Darling or lower, she'd drop him, but the fact that he had a car kept him afloat a little longer than his own actual merits might.
Charles wasn't a bad guy, but he had a lot against him. He'd been in a long-term relationship with a woman whom Janice found reprehensible. The other woman had no job, not that Janice did either, but she had no motivation that way. She did little but sleep and eat, which would worry Janice if she held any compassion for Charles' Ex.
That wouldn't be so bad, but Janice kept catching Charles looking fondly at her friends. Fondness for her friends was not so bad in itself, but the look in his eye always verged on the unhealthy, and she felt she had to watch him closely to keep him in line.
She broke through the door and into the sunlight. She blinked in the brightness and threw an arm up to allow her eyes to adjust. She rushed over to the car upon which Charles rested, twirling his keys on his finger like a Western Gunslinger, or so he believed. In truth, most of what he did to try to look "cool" just left people with the impression that he was a little clumsy.
This was because when he twirled things on his finger, as he did just then, they often dropped, as his keys did just then. He stooped to pick them up, and made a little grunt, which worried him. A frown creased his brow.
Janice saw that he was frowning as he stood and had a sudden flash of what he would look like as an old man. The flash worried her.
"Hello, Janice." Charles waved, lamely.
"Hello, Dear," Janice blew him a half-hearted kiss and ran around the car to the passenger side.

by MisterNihil 2:31 PM

 

Strawberries and Cream

by MisterNihil 2:25 PM

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

 

Fury is amusing, when it's directed at somebody else. Fury is beautifully infantile, no matter its form. Distance is the best punch line, especially when something as pathetically, biologically chemical as fury takes over.
Do you remember how mad you were? Don't you feel silly now? No? That's Ok. Give it a little time, and you certainly will. That's really the beauty of fury, when you get right down to it. It always turns into maddening embarrasment, it just takes a little while sometimes.
I like stories where people stay mad at one another for years at a time. I like the idea that some people have that capability. Heck, I believe it, having met some people who seem to have, and even having some of them be mad at me for, gosh, is it a decade now?

by MisterNihil 7:45 PM

 

Eat worms, dummy!

by MisterNihil 7:44 PM

Monday, April 07, 2008

 

The year I was born, people born before the turn of the century were in their seventies. We were used to the convention of the two-digit year. We assumed that the year in which you were born began with a 19, and if it didnt, that you would say something to that effect.
Now it's the beginning of the next century. Kids born this century can't be more than 8 years old (7 if you're nasty). Unless you're meeting a young kid, a member of the oldest 1% of the Earth's population or a turtle, you can still pretty safely assume that people you meet weren't born in years that begin with other than 19s.
Not for long, though. Enjoy your security while it lasts, children. The twenties are coming fast and they hold no pity for us, the dinosaurs of ages gone by.
It's a new world, children, and it will eat you alive.

by MisterNihil 3:36 PM

 

Engine sputters ghosts out of gasoline fumes, They say you had it but you sold it, you didn't want it, no,

I'm half drunk on static you transmit

Through your True dreams Of Wichita.

by MisterNihil 3:31 PM

Thursday, April 03, 2008

 

This is not a spam blog. Every day (sort of), we put up a topic upon which we write. It's been a little while since we did this regularly, but we're trying. Today's topic, just by way of example, is

Voluminous Omphaloskepsis

which sounds like a random spam topic, but it's actually more of a description of what I do, and what many of us do, I hope. I'm being snide, but please don't take it personally.

by MisterNihil 1:09 PM

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

 

Was it the going-away party of the year? Maybe. Maybe that's not an appropriate question to ask, though. Lots of people were there. Hell, plenty of people were there.
They gave her a gold watch, even though she'd only been with the firm for ten years. A little over ten years, in fact, said Paula. Why, hadn't it been in January of 98? Maybe it was Christmas. She couldn't remember. Everyone clapped.
They brought out the salads and sandwiches, soups and green-corn cobblers. Everyone partook. It's how these things are done. You look hard at the watch, ooh and ahh and then you eat your cobbler, then go back to work.
It was back at work that the real gathering happened. Just three there, lifers all. They remember the time she walked in on Pete in the copy room. They remember how many times Paula had to tell her not to make calls on company time. They remember all of this and they whisper it, venomously under breaths heavy with coffee but empty of green-corn cobbler.
When you walk into the room on this, the real gathering, their voices drop and they look guilty, but when you walk around the corner, if they can't see you in the mirror down the hall, they start talking again. It is delicious and awful, that talk, listening to them hiss and spit as you pick kernels out of your teeth.

by MisterNihil 1:44 PM

 

Well, not all of the chairs...

by MisterNihil 1:16 PM

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

 

So, the difference between horror and epic fantasy, from the point of view of an uneducated person who has recently checked out the first part of Joseph Campbell's Hero w/K Faces is this:
In epic fantasy, the old master, the source of the new way of thinking and the author, at least in the examples he uses, of the demise from which the hero will Save us All, actually knows what's happening and is useful. In horror, or at least Stephen King's horror, which is usually a good literary example even if you don't like 'em yourself, the master who draws the character in is clueless or worse, serving to draw the hero into the problem without offering any kind of help or advice.
I take the following couple of examples: In Campbell's book, he uses the story of the Minotaur as the first example, at least in the edition I've got. Daedalus is the master who authors the problem and offers Ariadne and Theseus the solution of the ball of twine. Sure, he created the problem, but he also helps solve it.
In King's new book, Duma Key, Mr. Wireman, the lawyer, serves to draw Freemantle into the story, but really offers no help that the young Cantori cannot and does not provide.

by MisterNihil 1:17 PM

 

No foolin?

by MisterNihil 1:06 PM

Monday, March 31, 2008

 

So, yeah, I used to be one of those. I mean, that commercial, where they take the burrito with the appetizing-looking lettuce and stick it in the grill, I mean, I used to get the shivers. I still don't like that one, I mean, why ruin perfectly good lettuce with perfectly good flame grilling? That doesn't make any sense, right? I mean, like, I used to be a cold lettuce, cold tomato, cold plate, cold fork, cold room kind of guy. If the server wasn't aloof enough, I couldn't get started.
See, but then I discovered the reason it happens. I got my first salad with instructions.
What beats hot fat, right? I mean, as far as food. Or sex. Or skin care. Or siege weaponry. Nothing, right? Hot fat is just good stuff, that's my take. I hadn't tried it before, but now I'll never go back.
You just get about a tablespoon of dressing. See, I used to be a sinner that way, too. I used to be one of these, two cups per three cups of salad blasphemers, and my sans-a-belt pants and shirts size 'big' told the tale to any lookers. You don't need cups. Heck, you don't need much dressing at all. A tablespoon feels sinful, once it's hot. It feels like too much, like you actually need those croûtons, a foodstuff I've never been able to get behind, fresh, canned, frozen or bacon, crunchy shit on my salad has never quite sat right.
Now I'm a lettuce, tomato, pickle (right? but it works), raisin, pistachio, radish and most of a tablespoon of some tasty dressing kind of guy. It's done me in, as far as the cold salad goes. You gets no flavor when you eats cold food. It's a sad fact, but ooh, that hot fat and lettuce does things for me.
I wouldn't have believed it, and didn't until it was sitting in my mouth, delighting me. So there ya' go.

by MisterNihil 3:23 PM

 

Once, maybe, but no more!

by MisterNihil 3:22 PM

Thursday, March 27, 2008

 

When the strains of music first hit his ear like a feather made of pure razor blades, he was sitting in a cafe, typing on a laptop not unlike this one. His fingers whizzed madly on the keys which clattered and creaked under the unaccustomed pressure of creation. The story he wrote wasn't good. He knew it wasn't good. He felt he must keep writing, though, under the possibility that it didn't know it wasn't good, and that he might hurt the feelings of his fickle muse if he did not commit fully to the first inkling he'd had in weeks.
The story was one of tears from the eyes of the jolly: a huge, fat man sat on a porch, drinking a mixture of lemonade and bourbon and thinking about the previous years of his fat life. The entire conflict of the story was so internal as to be communicated only in the movements of the fat man's stubby fingers and his piggy eyes. After two thousand or so words, the fat man began to weep, spilling big, greasy tears down his face.
It was at precisely that moment, though, that the music broke his concentration. It drifted on a stray wind and struck his ear drum, making the tiny bones in his head rattle and hum. He looked away from the screen upon which his story had been maniacally unfolding, and looked up into the sky.
It was in that instant that he felt his muse stand from her seat opposite him, sniff once, insensed, and leave. He looked back to the screen just in time to see her flip him the bird as she danced out, already panting hard and looking for another conduit. His shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. He finished his coffee in a long draught and turned again to the story.
He finished it lamely with a simple "But then the fat man died, the end."

by MisterNihil 12:27 PM

 

Sound my barbaric Yip under the floorboards of the world

by MisterNihil 12:17 PM

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

 

You can't find the source of the fire until you put it out. See? Your limits are insane. What kind of silliness is that? It's like not knowing who you are until you're dead. OK, so maybe it's not like that.
Maybe it's like waking up on the East side of the tracks when you went to bed on the West and you have no memory of moving. It can't be much like that, though, 'cuz it's more like opening a large box of coat hanger, all lined up and perfect, all white plastic and yellow wire, full of potential and possibility, but then actually only full of the potential and possibility of clothes hung up in the closet. No, it's not like that.
Maybe it's like being drunk on a pole twenty or thirty feet in the air, and needing very badly to eat a pizza, but having only miles and miles of green crepe paper whistling in the breeze, smelling of dust and pressed wood, just generally not being useful. Perhaps it's like driving a little car up the side of a glass wall while a Peruvian Lion licks the bottoms of your feet, slowly and sensually, clearly trying to get you to crash the damn thing.
No. It's not like any of those things. Maybe it's like not knowing who wrote a particular little snippet of language until you get to the bottom. No, nothing's like that:

Labels: Absolutely Chuffed

by MisterNihil 10:22 PM

 

Absolutely Chuffed, Your Honor

by MisterNihil 10:21 PM

Monday, March 10, 2008

 

"I've lost my way." He looks puzzled, but not unpleasantly.
"No, you're in the right place." She stands in the doorway, blocking the traffic which consists, at present of one. Her robes are black and fall to the floor in sheets.
"No, I'm not supposed to be here." He turns his head to the left, like a curious dog.
"You are. I have the list, and you're right here. See." She makes no motion, moves only her mouth.
"Where? I don't see anything." He cranes his neck to see if she has, perhaps, moved an arm.
"Nothing? Well, maybe you're in the wrong place." Her tone betrays nothing.
"Well, I was told that I was to be here. I was told that this was the right place." He relaxes, visibly more comfortable.
"Who told you that?" She moves her elbows up to cover the entire width of the jamb and sets her feet further apart as if preparing for a charge. She bends her knees and lowers her center of gravity.
"Well, some lady in a doorway. I didn't get her name. She was quite adamant." He smiles and puts his finger to his nose.
"Well, what are you supposed to be doing here." Her voice sounds steady, still as sure as when she first blocked his way.
"I have no idea why I'm here, only that I was told to be here." He laughs a little on the last word, spiraling it into several ghost syllables.
"Well then, you'd better stay." She bends her knees still further, setting for a charge that doesn't materialize.
"I'll do that." He turns and slides down the wall, moving to a sitting position.
"You do that." She relaxes a little, but remains vigilant, "but you'll need to clear the hall for the other people. They'll be along soon."
"What other people?" He smiles up from the ground.
"The others who are coming down the hall. You can hear them if you try." Her voice finally takes on a note of agitation although in the main it remains calm.
"They will step over me." His eyelids droop.
"They will not. I have seen them before, and they are not the type to step over ones such as yourself." Her eyes dart from him to the inky distance.
"Oh, they're not so bad. Just give them a shance." His speech begins to slur.
"No, sir, they are quite as bad as all that. Please sir, go back the way you came!" She shakes a raised finger in his direction, her gaze now held by the hallway.
"Nigh-nigh," he says, and his body fades into the stucco of the wall.
"Well, he can't say I didn't try," she says, and shrugs.

by MisterNihil 3:49 PM

 

"I don't even know why I'm here."

by Christy 2:41 AM

 

“I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Well, that might be a good place to start.” He was angry and sarcastic, and looked as if the one thing he truly wanted to do was slam the door in my face. He didn’t, but I could tell that he wanted to. It’s not that he doesn’t have a good reason, really. If our roles were reversed, I’m not sure I would have been able to show the same restraint. After all, I did practically rip his heart out of his chest and do my own special version of “Riverdance” all over it. And I don’t suppose sleeping with his older brother helped matters much.
Why had I gone to see him that day? Was I looking for some sort of forgiveness? I seriously hoped not because I doubted that it would be forthcoming given the barely restrained anger dancing across his face. Or maybe I was just looking to torture myself further by reminding myself of what I’d given up. And for what? What did I get out of the whole situation?
Absolutely nothing, unless you counted the guilty conscience that has become my closest companion.

by Christy 2:40 AM