[stretch old dusty limbs]
In the town of Ocanonda in the north-northwest part of Pitzmiel, on the coast of the Glaylish plain across from the Buntish Ocean -- where water bubbles of its own accord -- lay a snark den full of snarks. One snark in particular is the subject of this tale. Not just any snark. The snark was four-legged, hairy and tough, with an aardvark's disposition and a man's grasp of physics. Not just any man, but something like Niels Bohr's or Richard Feynman's grasp of phyics. Not just any physics, but quantum physics.
Now the town of Ocanonda was not of this Earth, but thanks to transdimensional teleportation and fibre optic spacetime-shifting the men of Ocanonda -- even ones who would mate with a snark -- had access to iTunes. This would mean nothing, of course, without an iPad. For Feynman in this universe was known only through the digital medium. Books of course, meant nothing along the coast of the Buntish Ocean. And all the better for the trees, particularly the knobblish and the punter trees, which heavily populated the Glaylish crescent, planted by colonial thrompets centuries before, during the Golden Age of Slag, the wanton trade of which conspiracy theorists believed made the Buntish waters boil. Of course, not many worried about such theories five furlongs deep in the lagoons near where our snark did spend his middle decades - at the edge of the waters that touched Ocanonda and made her snark-maidens (fully snark and in no way human) moist-eyed with romance and other rubbish rot. A rather picturesque place - worthy of a postcard, if punter trees indeed had ever been felled for such an industry.
The snark we will come to know -- though only those inside his mind could say so -- was nicknamed Franny and realnamed Frances. He was a solid Glaylish plain-snark who moved to the seaside for opportunity, to work part-time in the Slag mines, and be low-level PR flak for the sub-prefect #4 of Ocanonda, aka His Honour, Commodius Flatus, who was appointed to the post for no other reason than his seaside land holdings which yielded 5% of income (much less than the usual 15%) to the Ocanonda-Pitzmiel SupraRegional Treasury. Commodius Flatus' vast and wind-stubbled homestead included forty hectare fruit-groves of wannabi-dates, but was in no other way extraordinary except for its peculiar road-side construction works that included a tall thin tower of frozen mud which housed a wizened black-nosed Slag-monk who was nicknamed One-Eyed Cecil and realnamed Snert Cecilius.
[unfinished of course]
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
8/18/2010
An Exercise in Foolishness
Part 1 – Scene with no figurative language:
I was at the front of the group of bicycles lined up behind the stoplight, which was red. The cyclists were one behind the other. A blue and yellow City garbage truck pulled along trying to make a right hand turn, but was stopped by the line of commuters who came from behind me and started pedaling before the light turned green.
The driver of the truck braked suddenly. The truck stopped, the driver rolled down his window and shouted a curse. “You filthy hippies!” I hadn’t begun pedaling, so I smiled at the driver and said, “Some people just don’t know how to drive.” I tried to sound apologetic. The driver of the truck spit out his window and it nearly landed on me. I spit my gum into the back of the truck as it went on its away.
Part 2 – Same scene with super flowery language:
An army of bicycles, buzzing hornets on two wheels, were lined up at the intersection of the throbbing urban jungle’s roadway artery, like unpredictable insects just asking to be swatted by the nearest metal death machine. The stoplight shone an ominous red: death would ambush those who might illegally trespass into the roadway before the anointed moment. From behind there rumbled the blue and yellow metallic Gargantua, the beastly transporter of refuse known as a garbage truck, intent on a turn to the starboard side of the road, to carry its stinking orgy of collected goo away from the pathetic consumerist citizens and their throwaway lifestyles toward the cursed burial grounds, degrading the nostrils of those who fell afoul of its sulfuric stench along the way.
The cadre of velocipedic ant-men did the unthinkable and began an assault upon the open intersection before the red lamp had given permission and ceded into a permissive green. The wheels rolled through like snakes slithering into a baby’s crib; it was Caesar crossing the Rubicon; it was a moment of pure effrontery to reason, goodness and the Highway Traffic Act.
The operator of the trash-vehicle was agog and forced to press desperate foot upon the stopping pads of the steel juggernaut, initiating an inhuman screeching blast that echoed across the roadway and ricocheted into every ear: the bicycles had put a stop to this truck driver’s sacred mission, for now.
The fuming man inside, who took the insult as though his fair mother had been debased by loutish buggerers, rapists and freakpeople, rolling down his Plexiglas barrier and unsheathed his anger in broad daylight. “You filthy hippies” was the reprimand, and it stung my soul as true, for I had not washed since the morning. I was overcome with remorse on behalf of my fellow bipedalists, although I had in fact done right by John Law and never an inch did move before my time had come and until the street lanterns above glowed green. Yet I spoke for my wayward compatriots with an entreating explanation: “Some people just don’t know how to drive.” But it inflamed the fellow’s wound all the more, and he let uncurl from his hateful gullet a sopping sponge-bath worth of heinous saliva, that rocketed past my brow and did despoil the road, as though marking the turf upon which Thomas of Canterbury himself had unjustly lost his neck.
Now I was hot, feeling caught unfairly between a man’s wrath and his target, and so did I then launch my counteroffensive, a Trudeauesque pirouette if there ever was one: I lobbed the mass of chewable gumstuff I had been working most diligently on for masticative purposes and it did so humourously tumble into the back of the villain's trash-machine as he mushed away like Achilles chasing down the armour of Patrocles.
I was at the front of the group of bicycles lined up behind the stoplight, which was red. The cyclists were one behind the other. A blue and yellow City garbage truck pulled along trying to make a right hand turn, but was stopped by the line of commuters who came from behind me and started pedaling before the light turned green.
The driver of the truck braked suddenly. The truck stopped, the driver rolled down his window and shouted a curse. “You filthy hippies!” I hadn’t begun pedaling, so I smiled at the driver and said, “Some people just don’t know how to drive.” I tried to sound apologetic. The driver of the truck spit out his window and it nearly landed on me. I spit my gum into the back of the truck as it went on its away.
Part 2 – Same scene with super flowery language:
An army of bicycles, buzzing hornets on two wheels, were lined up at the intersection of the throbbing urban jungle’s roadway artery, like unpredictable insects just asking to be swatted by the nearest metal death machine. The stoplight shone an ominous red: death would ambush those who might illegally trespass into the roadway before the anointed moment. From behind there rumbled the blue and yellow metallic Gargantua, the beastly transporter of refuse known as a garbage truck, intent on a turn to the starboard side of the road, to carry its stinking orgy of collected goo away from the pathetic consumerist citizens and their throwaway lifestyles toward the cursed burial grounds, degrading the nostrils of those who fell afoul of its sulfuric stench along the way.
The cadre of velocipedic ant-men did the unthinkable and began an assault upon the open intersection before the red lamp had given permission and ceded into a permissive green. The wheels rolled through like snakes slithering into a baby’s crib; it was Caesar crossing the Rubicon; it was a moment of pure effrontery to reason, goodness and the Highway Traffic Act.
The operator of the trash-vehicle was agog and forced to press desperate foot upon the stopping pads of the steel juggernaut, initiating an inhuman screeching blast that echoed across the roadway and ricocheted into every ear: the bicycles had put a stop to this truck driver’s sacred mission, for now.
The fuming man inside, who took the insult as though his fair mother had been debased by loutish buggerers, rapists and freakpeople, rolling down his Plexiglas barrier and unsheathed his anger in broad daylight. “You filthy hippies” was the reprimand, and it stung my soul as true, for I had not washed since the morning. I was overcome with remorse on behalf of my fellow bipedalists, although I had in fact done right by John Law and never an inch did move before my time had come and until the street lanterns above glowed green. Yet I spoke for my wayward compatriots with an entreating explanation: “Some people just don’t know how to drive.” But it inflamed the fellow’s wound all the more, and he let uncurl from his hateful gullet a sopping sponge-bath worth of heinous saliva, that rocketed past my brow and did despoil the road, as though marking the turf upon which Thomas of Canterbury himself had unjustly lost his neck.
Now I was hot, feeling caught unfairly between a man’s wrath and his target, and so did I then launch my counteroffensive, a Trudeauesque pirouette if there ever was one: I lobbed the mass of chewable gumstuff I had been working most diligently on for masticative purposes and it did so humourously tumble into the back of the villain's trash-machine as he mushed away like Achilles chasing down the armour of Patrocles.
11/22/2009
Naples
Naples is filthy, but gorgeous—like a lingerie model at a belching contest.
When the garbage syndicates aren’t striking and medieval cobblestones are visible above the trash, when you’re not run down by twelve year old handbag artists scootering on the sidewalk like truant hyenas; when the mafia’s not putting screws to the teeming underclass with every purchase of fresh fruit or cut flowers—you see the city could be an angel in spite of its demons.
You escape the overcrowded afternoon Intercity train arriving an hour late from Rome. Move quickly or be crushed. Your head swims; the sweat of Stazione Garibaldi in your nostrils. The frenzied Neapolitans are everywhere, and—everyone has assured you—none can be trusted. You’ve arranged your cash, passport and credit cards in six places around your undergarments; the signs on the platform warn of pickpockets in six languages. Instinctively putting hands to your wallet, you ironically inform nearby thieves precisely where to strike. Neapolitan trickery at its most subtle? The city is a conspiracy, and the safest bet is paranoia.
You exit onto piazza Garibaldi, the air fetid in summer heat. Plastic bags and empty paper cups collect at your feet. Yet beautiful architecture, centuries old, towers above the mire. Baroque and older, majestic, a gorgeous tradition of grand public building since the 13th century. The list of visual treasures is endless: cathedrals, museums, the colourful palazzi of the Vomero hill, and shopping malls like the Galleria Umberto, that most beautiful outdoor arcade shaped like a holy cross.
But what a falling off. The population has paid for a past golden age by feeding on itself, since 1944, when the Allies were handed control of the city and enlisted the insidious Camorra to reconstruct after all the bombings. They reconstructed, sure, like mad scientists; they built a Frankenstein that serves them to this day.
Two young men on a scooter buzz past, make a coy grab at your fiancée’s purse. You outmaneuver them. The demons turn, cackle and laugh. All the evildoers from the Old Testament were banished here: Every encounter seems to be with usurer from the Book of Numbers, the vendor of impure meats from Leviticus; the catamite owner of fourteen teenage concubines runs the brothel next to your hotel. Sodom and Gomorrah have a run for their money. Where’s prophet Jeremiah when you need him?
But this city was always out of control. You can’t contain its millions of highly involved actors; every inch is a dramatic scene. Collectively the Neapolitans are frightening, but individually each one a studied gem. Each gypsy panhandler could have been Meryl Streep. What performances! These women are all over you with outstretched hands, like Jesus on a leper, aiming to cure you of your earthly possessions.
Refuel with espresso, walk a few blocks more. Don’t even think of pulling out your camera. Try not to get killed crossing the main streets. The motorists are toying with you, skilled and capricious, they let you live. You learn quickly here: to paraphrase Paul Theroux, The Naples Book of Road Etiquette is a very slim volume. Rome in comparison is seven days of Sunday driving.
There are rewards for the brave wandering souls, however. Pizza at Da Michele is the best in Naples, and by extension, the world.
Full of the Queen Marguerita, you navigate street vendors, young men with toothpicks in mouths and wooden crates on shoulders hawking black market frippery; energetic North African immigrants or underemployed locals all ogling your fiancée. They’re saying with their eyes, ‘she’s got a lot of nerve having blonde hair’. The one honest soul in Naples, the guy who works at your hotel, was right to refuse to let her out of the building wearing her bracelet.
You keep escaping, from the spiderweb labyrinth of Spaccanapoli, down the Corso Umberto I toward the port, the spots south of the city centre that let you breathe. You reach the water, outlet for the condensed mass of Europe’s most densely populated city, writhing between the surrounding hills, waiting to be pushed into the sea by the next volcanic eruption.
Most astonishing is that view from the sea: how the city erupts above the bay of Naples. On one end, toward Pompeii, you see Vesuvius, the ornery beached whale promising to spew ash from his blowhole. And like the murderous Camorra, the fire mountain makes good on that threat every so often. 79 AD was the year immortalized for wiping out 20,000 in Pompeii, but Naples has had its kneecaps smashed by quakes every few decades. In 1693, 93000 dead, in 1980 another 10,000, and those are just the highlights. Still the surrounding suburban hills are jam-packed with illegally-constructed housing. The lava hills are deadly but fertile; people survive, thrive somehow, building up their jammed structures like a colony of vain termites destined for collapse.
Naples has a tragic death wish. This lingerie model is not only beautiful, but bipolar. It’s heartbreakingly obvious why they love her so much: I mean, Sofia Loren's from around here.
When the garbage syndicates aren’t striking and medieval cobblestones are visible above the trash, when you’re not run down by twelve year old handbag artists scootering on the sidewalk like truant hyenas; when the mafia’s not putting screws to the teeming underclass with every purchase of fresh fruit or cut flowers—you see the city could be an angel in spite of its demons.
You escape the overcrowded afternoon Intercity train arriving an hour late from Rome. Move quickly or be crushed. Your head swims; the sweat of Stazione Garibaldi in your nostrils. The frenzied Neapolitans are everywhere, and—everyone has assured you—none can be trusted. You’ve arranged your cash, passport and credit cards in six places around your undergarments; the signs on the platform warn of pickpockets in six languages. Instinctively putting hands to your wallet, you ironically inform nearby thieves precisely where to strike. Neapolitan trickery at its most subtle? The city is a conspiracy, and the safest bet is paranoia.
You exit onto piazza Garibaldi, the air fetid in summer heat. Plastic bags and empty paper cups collect at your feet. Yet beautiful architecture, centuries old, towers above the mire. Baroque and older, majestic, a gorgeous tradition of grand public building since the 13th century. The list of visual treasures is endless: cathedrals, museums, the colourful palazzi of the Vomero hill, and shopping malls like the Galleria Umberto, that most beautiful outdoor arcade shaped like a holy cross.
But what a falling off. The population has paid for a past golden age by feeding on itself, since 1944, when the Allies were handed control of the city and enlisted the insidious Camorra to reconstruct after all the bombings. They reconstructed, sure, like mad scientists; they built a Frankenstein that serves them to this day.
Two young men on a scooter buzz past, make a coy grab at your fiancée’s purse. You outmaneuver them. The demons turn, cackle and laugh. All the evildoers from the Old Testament were banished here: Every encounter seems to be with usurer from the Book of Numbers, the vendor of impure meats from Leviticus; the catamite owner of fourteen teenage concubines runs the brothel next to your hotel. Sodom and Gomorrah have a run for their money. Where’s prophet Jeremiah when you need him?
But this city was always out of control. You can’t contain its millions of highly involved actors; every inch is a dramatic scene. Collectively the Neapolitans are frightening, but individually each one a studied gem. Each gypsy panhandler could have been Meryl Streep. What performances! These women are all over you with outstretched hands, like Jesus on a leper, aiming to cure you of your earthly possessions.
Refuel with espresso, walk a few blocks more. Don’t even think of pulling out your camera. Try not to get killed crossing the main streets. The motorists are toying with you, skilled and capricious, they let you live. You learn quickly here: to paraphrase Paul Theroux, The Naples Book of Road Etiquette is a very slim volume. Rome in comparison is seven days of Sunday driving.
There are rewards for the brave wandering souls, however. Pizza at Da Michele is the best in Naples, and by extension, the world.
Full of the Queen Marguerita, you navigate street vendors, young men with toothpicks in mouths and wooden crates on shoulders hawking black market frippery; energetic North African immigrants or underemployed locals all ogling your fiancée. They’re saying with their eyes, ‘she’s got a lot of nerve having blonde hair’. The one honest soul in Naples, the guy who works at your hotel, was right to refuse to let her out of the building wearing her bracelet.
You keep escaping, from the spiderweb labyrinth of Spaccanapoli, down the Corso Umberto I toward the port, the spots south of the city centre that let you breathe. You reach the water, outlet for the condensed mass of Europe’s most densely populated city, writhing between the surrounding hills, waiting to be pushed into the sea by the next volcanic eruption.
Most astonishing is that view from the sea: how the city erupts above the bay of Naples. On one end, toward Pompeii, you see Vesuvius, the ornery beached whale promising to spew ash from his blowhole. And like the murderous Camorra, the fire mountain makes good on that threat every so often. 79 AD was the year immortalized for wiping out 20,000 in Pompeii, but Naples has had its kneecaps smashed by quakes every few decades. In 1693, 93000 dead, in 1980 another 10,000, and those are just the highlights. Still the surrounding suburban hills are jam-packed with illegally-constructed housing. The lava hills are deadly but fertile; people survive, thrive somehow, building up their jammed structures like a colony of vain termites destined for collapse.
Naples has a tragic death wish. This lingerie model is not only beautiful, but bipolar. It’s heartbreakingly obvious why they love her so much: I mean, Sofia Loren's from around here.
11/06/2009
Digit Wails
The walls here are beige brown. The people are painted figures. We stare, silent.
We don't learn by doing but by staring, and we don't learn very well.
We weren't meant to stare all day. We need a treadmill or we'll wither away.
We cry with our fingers. Loud fingers are angry spirits. We tickle the scroll bar in search of love.
The man with shortcuts is an angry man, his keystrokes more ambitious, he wants to use less so he can do more. The shortcut man scares the scrolling, clicking man. Those who master shortcuts become king.
Outside they breath oxygen. It makes us afraid, desperate for electricity again. We need to be on and off and on and again, because we are digits ourselves, processing signals to serve the end user. Our job is to be the current. The process is always being written, for the end user. We wish we could ask him if he likes it. If he doesn't like it we are aborted.
We no longer talk. Our fingers become smaller, hands like pin pricks, we apprehend it by staring. We see everything but feel nothing.
We don't learn by doing but by staring, and we don't learn very well.
We weren't meant to stare all day. We need a treadmill or we'll wither away.
We cry with our fingers. Loud fingers are angry spirits. We tickle the scroll bar in search of love.
The man with shortcuts is an angry man, his keystrokes more ambitious, he wants to use less so he can do more. The shortcut man scares the scrolling, clicking man. Those who master shortcuts become king.
Outside they breath oxygen. It makes us afraid, desperate for electricity again. We need to be on and off and on and again, because we are digits ourselves, processing signals to serve the end user. Our job is to be the current. The process is always being written, for the end user. We wish we could ask him if he likes it. If he doesn't like it we are aborted.
We no longer talk. Our fingers become smaller, hands like pin pricks, we apprehend it by staring. We see everything but feel nothing.
12/19/2007
Bob the Trowel
(as mindless as I can think it)
Bob the Trowel was an unopened bumpkin on the road to revelry. He sang like a mocha man in an underwater tapestry. Bob divided his loves among the wordly, sang sonatas to the gentry and stowed his cash in Burnaby. Leroy Lambada talked him down from the ledge, after the markets crashed and Bob quite lost his head. Bob the trowel took his cue from the Messiah, turned the other cheek and called his ex-girlfriend Snazz a liar. She was busy wondering about Zoroaster the Short-Circuiting Toaster, smushed in a split-second underneath a rollercoaster. Snazz evicted her guppy and smashed a bottle 'top a table (she was drunk on Irish whiskey and halfway to the label). Freedom fighters arrived and called her 'terrorist', it was ostracism 101 and she nearly slashed her wrists. It was Family Guy that saved her, her laughter did return and she sweated out her love of Bob upon the treadmill's tortured burn.
Bob the Trowel was an unopened bumpkin on the road to revelry. He sang like a mocha man in an underwater tapestry. Bob divided his loves among the wordly, sang sonatas to the gentry and stowed his cash in Burnaby. Leroy Lambada talked him down from the ledge, after the markets crashed and Bob quite lost his head. Bob the trowel took his cue from the Messiah, turned the other cheek and called his ex-girlfriend Snazz a liar. She was busy wondering about Zoroaster the Short-Circuiting Toaster, smushed in a split-second underneath a rollercoaster. Snazz evicted her guppy and smashed a bottle 'top a table (she was drunk on Irish whiskey and halfway to the label). Freedom fighters arrived and called her 'terrorist', it was ostracism 101 and she nearly slashed her wrists. It was Family Guy that saved her, her laughter did return and she sweated out her love of Bob upon the treadmill's tortured burn.
9/08/2007
The Great Gay Peacock flies to Newark
(yet another brilliant story...)
In the town of Littlepocket, New Jersey was a small band of onion-eating postal workers. Postal workers were not popular as a rule, and the onions made it worse. The onions arrived, strangely, not in the mail, but on a bus filled with Mexican sweatshop workers who were employed in the shoe-manufacturing side of the Hudson River.
Littlepocket was home to the Precision Dance Competition, where young men and women stole away and precisely danced the Koochoo, the Wombat and the Delorean [recalls Back to the Future].
One of the great hopes of the dance world was Edgar F. Gunwaddle, who was sympathetic to the Mexican plight and grew visibly reddened whenever his mom made reference to tacos, or hired Mexicans to water her suburban lawn.
Edgar was an activist, and the dancing made his a celebrated cause, for let it not be said that a man's legs have never danced him into the record books.
Edgar worked night and day on the Peacock, a crazed dance that made him sweat. The Peacock was a stinky dance, and it was not without practical and social peril. Edgar was a bashful stinkmaker in his private life who refused to fart or even be caught without deodorant in his over-the-shoulder laptop sack. Imagine, then, the stink of sweat.
Peacocks were plentiful, as it was 1999. The great peacock hunt had not fully decimated the beplumaged game fowl and many fine feathers spread across the eastern seaboard. They clogged the propellors of ships, blocking up the drainage pipes and littering the beach coast.
Storkels Mendacus Mulberry was a beach worker charged with general maintenance and shoreline vigilance. He strutted about the surf's edge like a grand Iroquois chief, or a great janitor from beyond the mists of centuries. Mulberry drove an elevated hovercraft across the glades and bays of the New Jersey peacock-feather delta. He searched for flotsam and jetsam through the lens of his optical X-Viewtron binoculars and cussed at the clouds whenever they threatened his sorties with a contratempal rain.
Obadiah Von Boatwater was Mulberry's liege upon the hovercraft. The man was a grand Ethiopian chessmaster, a top ranked pogo stick-hopper who somehow found himself exiled to the deltas of New Jersey. The Nubian could sing great Sinatra and his plaintive guttural rumbles did not just clear phlegm from his throat but somehow attracted the peacocks of the delta.
These three characters collided one night in mid-river, Boatwater and Mulberry in their patrol craft and Edgar F. Gunwaddle in his bare bones laser. It was a mischance that scuttled a great dancer's career. Gunwaddle drowned and as he choked and thrashed the two shoreline vigilantes splashed at him with paddles to stoke some buoyancy into the man. But this could only aggravate him and Gunwaddle sank to the bottom of the man-claiming Hudson, kicking and thrashing his last glorious Peacock down into the mud.
The police arrived but could not reclaim the waterlogged corpse and their dredgings only returned sundry rotten planks and tires from the riverbed.
[unfinished of course]
In the town of Littlepocket, New Jersey was a small band of onion-eating postal workers. Postal workers were not popular as a rule, and the onions made it worse. The onions arrived, strangely, not in the mail, but on a bus filled with Mexican sweatshop workers who were employed in the shoe-manufacturing side of the Hudson River.
Littlepocket was home to the Precision Dance Competition, where young men and women stole away and precisely danced the Koochoo, the Wombat and the Delorean [recalls Back to the Future].
One of the great hopes of the dance world was Edgar F. Gunwaddle, who was sympathetic to the Mexican plight and grew visibly reddened whenever his mom made reference to tacos, or hired Mexicans to water her suburban lawn.
Edgar was an activist, and the dancing made his a celebrated cause, for let it not be said that a man's legs have never danced him into the record books.
Edgar worked night and day on the Peacock, a crazed dance that made him sweat. The Peacock was a stinky dance, and it was not without practical and social peril. Edgar was a bashful stinkmaker in his private life who refused to fart or even be caught without deodorant in his over-the-shoulder laptop sack. Imagine, then, the stink of sweat.
Peacocks were plentiful, as it was 1999. The great peacock hunt had not fully decimated the beplumaged game fowl and many fine feathers spread across the eastern seaboard. They clogged the propellors of ships, blocking up the drainage pipes and littering the beach coast.
Storkels Mendacus Mulberry was a beach worker charged with general maintenance and shoreline vigilance. He strutted about the surf's edge like a grand Iroquois chief, or a great janitor from beyond the mists of centuries. Mulberry drove an elevated hovercraft across the glades and bays of the New Jersey peacock-feather delta. He searched for flotsam and jetsam through the lens of his optical X-Viewtron binoculars and cussed at the clouds whenever they threatened his sorties with a contratempal rain.
Obadiah Von Boatwater was Mulberry's liege upon the hovercraft. The man was a grand Ethiopian chessmaster, a top ranked pogo stick-hopper who somehow found himself exiled to the deltas of New Jersey. The Nubian could sing great Sinatra and his plaintive guttural rumbles did not just clear phlegm from his throat but somehow attracted the peacocks of the delta.
These three characters collided one night in mid-river, Boatwater and Mulberry in their patrol craft and Edgar F. Gunwaddle in his bare bones laser. It was a mischance that scuttled a great dancer's career. Gunwaddle drowned and as he choked and thrashed the two shoreline vigilantes splashed at him with paddles to stoke some buoyancy into the man. But this could only aggravate him and Gunwaddle sank to the bottom of the man-claiming Hudson, kicking and thrashing his last glorious Peacock down into the mud.
The police arrived but could not reclaim the waterlogged corpse and their dredgings only returned sundry rotten planks and tires from the riverbed.
[unfinished of course]
3/12/2007
More story bits...
A quail staggered to the counter and asked for a pitcher of prune juice. “This is how I stay in business on the telephone lines... You think I can just ‘blam blam’ like it’s target practise all day? But it ain’t that easy." The quail, named Dawson, was an avian prick with constipation problems...
[Then, a novella about telescopes!]
Vernon's Telescopic Pathos
A constellationist named Vernon opened his telescope-cleaning kit only to find the lens oil had been pilfered. "This can only be the work of Nancy the Clod," he thought to himself, and straightaway rang the polymer factory he had on speed dial.
“Jesse,” he said to the voice on the phone, “I need more Bimutex Silver Sheen. Like, this afternoon!’”
There was a spitting noise. "You gotta be kidding me Vern, the boss is gonna notice the missing cylinders."
“I know Jess. But Nancy took my scope oil, and I got XSZK1-Omega on the sked tonight."
"So what," said Jesse.
“So--I can’t afford another night like Foggy Tuesday. I’ll lose 10 more students. Remember what happened?"
A pause. "Ok, no Foggy Tuesday.... shit."
"Hit me, J. You know I'll be your bitch."
"Bitch-Who's who here? Come by the back and I’ll fix you with 750mL."
"Alright! Sunday night, Big Bop--cracker-shakes on me." And Jesse sighed and hung up.
Vernon’s partner, Gonga Gringo, a Papua New Guinean tracker who moonlighted in telescope viewing atop Mount Panorama phoned just then. “Hey, Vern can you go by the polymer place – Jesse’s got--"
“What you’re borrowing more polymer – what happened to the crate of ethylurethene Auntie Galicia got us for the solstice?"
"Borrowed by Ned Philadelphia to clean his GPS sextant."
"That wacko. You're both wacko. Christ, well Nancy snatched my Bitumex sheen again."
"Nancy. That hobag!" Gonga almost had to laugh. "I’m massively asswenched by these freaks stealing our 'scope oil Vern – it was never like this in the forest."
"Yeah, Gongs. But don't call her a ho-bag."
"Fine. Nancy no-brain.'
"Yeah, well I guess it takes a Foggy Tuesday to smarten us up bout how evil this stargazing can get."
Foggy Tuesday ruined Vernon’s outdoor seminar business for almost a month. It was the year of the Solar Flare, the night comet Flugelheim was streaking directly into Oberon, causing destruction that to astronomers was ballet. But no scope oil and a western fog- after a Monday of prismatic midnight skies-- scuppered Vernon's lenses and the astral dance went unobserved the next night. The veteran constellationists on the Tuesday watch filed a Motion to Impugn and Vern was nearly forced to sell his 900mm Magnum Andromeda in the ensuing scandal . He signed up at the community college to teach Historical Cosmology and for three weeks laid low. Thank god for Jesse and his polymers.
Nancy the Clod was really named Nancy Posie. She loved telescope oil, but didn’t own a telescope. She needed the oil to grease her bike cables. Regular lube didn’t work. she said. Nancy the Clod didn’t follow other people’s conventions. Just like her brother Deacon Noah. Deacon Noah had a python in his robe. No, not a molestation python. An actual snake.
Anyway Nancy the Clod was in attendance at the viewing of XSZK1-Omega. "Hi Vern." She was riding her bike.
"Hi Nancy," he said, but he was thinking you thieving slut.
Nancy and Vernon had had a 9-day relationship a couple years before. It was the year of the Solar Flare...
[unfinished of course... all astronomy-related terms are complete BS]
[Then, a novella about telescopes!]
Vernon's Telescopic Pathos
A constellationist named Vernon opened his telescope-cleaning kit only to find the lens oil had been pilfered. "This can only be the work of Nancy the Clod," he thought to himself, and straightaway rang the polymer factory he had on speed dial.
“Jesse,” he said to the voice on the phone, “I need more Bimutex Silver Sheen. Like, this afternoon!’”
There was a spitting noise. "You gotta be kidding me Vern, the boss is gonna notice the missing cylinders."
“I know Jess. But Nancy took my scope oil, and I got XSZK1-Omega on the sked tonight."
"So what," said Jesse.
“So--I can’t afford another night like Foggy Tuesday. I’ll lose 10 more students. Remember what happened?"
A pause. "Ok, no Foggy Tuesday.... shit."
"Hit me, J. You know I'll be your bitch."
"Bitch-Who's who here? Come by the back and I’ll fix you with 750mL."
"Alright! Sunday night, Big Bop--cracker-shakes on me." And Jesse sighed and hung up.
Vernon’s partner, Gonga Gringo, a Papua New Guinean tracker who moonlighted in telescope viewing atop Mount Panorama phoned just then. “Hey, Vern can you go by the polymer place – Jesse’s got--"
“What you’re borrowing more polymer – what happened to the crate of ethylurethene Auntie Galicia got us for the solstice?"
"Borrowed by Ned Philadelphia to clean his GPS sextant."
"That wacko. You're both wacko. Christ, well Nancy snatched my Bitumex sheen again."
"Nancy. That hobag!" Gonga almost had to laugh. "I’m massively asswenched by these freaks stealing our 'scope oil Vern – it was never like this in the forest."
"Yeah, Gongs. But don't call her a ho-bag."
"Fine. Nancy no-brain.'
"Yeah, well I guess it takes a Foggy Tuesday to smarten us up bout how evil this stargazing can get."
Foggy Tuesday ruined Vernon’s outdoor seminar business for almost a month. It was the year of the Solar Flare, the night comet Flugelheim was streaking directly into Oberon, causing destruction that to astronomers was ballet. But no scope oil and a western fog- after a Monday of prismatic midnight skies-- scuppered Vernon's lenses and the astral dance went unobserved the next night. The veteran constellationists on the Tuesday watch filed a Motion to Impugn and Vern was nearly forced to sell his 900mm Magnum Andromeda in the ensuing scandal . He signed up at the community college to teach Historical Cosmology and for three weeks laid low. Thank god for Jesse and his polymers.
Nancy the Clod was really named Nancy Posie. She loved telescope oil, but didn’t own a telescope. She needed the oil to grease her bike cables. Regular lube didn’t work. she said. Nancy the Clod didn’t follow other people’s conventions. Just like her brother Deacon Noah. Deacon Noah had a python in his robe. No, not a molestation python. An actual snake.
Anyway Nancy the Clod was in attendance at the viewing of XSZK1-Omega. "Hi Vern." She was riding her bike.
"Hi Nancy," he said, but he was thinking you thieving slut.
Nancy and Vernon had had a 9-day relationship a couple years before. It was the year of the Solar Flare...
[unfinished of course... all astronomy-related terms are complete BS]
1/26/2007
Herbert Yeeshmaggots cuts down a tree
(written accidentally about two years ago - glad I found it... unedited for your pleasure)
“Curse the architectural landscaping of this part of Palmerston!”
A tall oak tree was trying to make it home before it got dark, but he was stuck in the sidewalk. He stayed that way for a hundred years, and it wasn’t until he saw a man with a chainsaw walking near a van that said “We chop trees, you be pleased, low low fees!” did he feel any hope. Now the oak tree was called Volvovia. Volvovia cried out using the pharyngeal apparatus for speaking that is located in the bark of every single tree in the world but only oak trees can truly utilize it. He said “halt there, O man bearing my chainsaw of liberation!” And the man, who was called Herbert Yeeshmaggots, did a triple take of confusion and surprise. “I am truly taken aback,” cried man after hearing the voice of the worm-eaten oak tree. The worms had been chewing at him since December 1923, but he was tall enough to survive such annelidic intrusions, and this made the tree, called Volvovia, a bit more intimidating that usual. “Can I believe my ears, a talking oak” wondered the chainsaw toting fellow, “I am the most mystified chainsaw bearer in these parts.”
“Enough pleasantry, enough urbanity,” chuckled the tree, and he summoned an owl to present a list of propositions to Mr. Yeeshmaggots. The demands read as follows: 1) please chop me down ASAP; 2) please take me home to my fatherland, which is in the woods.
Mr. Yeeshmaggots did as he was told, for the oak tree was prepared to pay handsomely. “$100 just to chop you down? That’s pretty generous for an oak tree… you acorn-possessing long-branches are alright!”
“please, Mr. Yeeshmaggots,” said the tree, “cease the flattery, the strokery, and chop me up and take me home.”
So the oak tree fell to the ground with a mighty crash, it was loud and the sawdust covered all the neighbourhood. But this was no ordinary neighbourhood.
As Volvovia came crashing down Yeeshmaggots saw the sign behind the tree: “Palmerston Environmental Freaks (PEF): we freak out about everything!”
And as the oak tree’s branches covered the sidewalk, the doors of the PEF office swung open and a skinny sour-faced woman wearing a hand-knit shawl and hemp sandals jumped out.
“I am filled with puke and disgust at what I am beholding,” cried the sour woman, who’s name was Salome Seldom-Lade
[unfinished of course]
“Curse the architectural landscaping of this part of Palmerston!”
A tall oak tree was trying to make it home before it got dark, but he was stuck in the sidewalk. He stayed that way for a hundred years, and it wasn’t until he saw a man with a chainsaw walking near a van that said “We chop trees, you be pleased, low low fees!” did he feel any hope. Now the oak tree was called Volvovia. Volvovia cried out using the pharyngeal apparatus for speaking that is located in the bark of every single tree in the world but only oak trees can truly utilize it. He said “halt there, O man bearing my chainsaw of liberation!” And the man, who was called Herbert Yeeshmaggots, did a triple take of confusion and surprise. “I am truly taken aback,” cried man after hearing the voice of the worm-eaten oak tree. The worms had been chewing at him since December 1923, but he was tall enough to survive such annelidic intrusions, and this made the tree, called Volvovia, a bit more intimidating that usual. “Can I believe my ears, a talking oak” wondered the chainsaw toting fellow, “I am the most mystified chainsaw bearer in these parts.”
“Enough pleasantry, enough urbanity,” chuckled the tree, and he summoned an owl to present a list of propositions to Mr. Yeeshmaggots. The demands read as follows: 1) please chop me down ASAP; 2) please take me home to my fatherland, which is in the woods.
Mr. Yeeshmaggots did as he was told, for the oak tree was prepared to pay handsomely. “$100 just to chop you down? That’s pretty generous for an oak tree… you acorn-possessing long-branches are alright!”
“please, Mr. Yeeshmaggots,” said the tree, “cease the flattery, the strokery, and chop me up and take me home.”
So the oak tree fell to the ground with a mighty crash, it was loud and the sawdust covered all the neighbourhood. But this was no ordinary neighbourhood.
As Volvovia came crashing down Yeeshmaggots saw the sign behind the tree: “Palmerston Environmental Freaks (PEF): we freak out about everything!”
And as the oak tree’s branches covered the sidewalk, the doors of the PEF office swung open and a skinny sour-faced woman wearing a hand-knit shawl and hemp sandals jumped out.
“I am filled with puke and disgust at what I am beholding,” cried the sour woman, who’s name was Salome Seldom-Lade
[unfinished of course]
1/18/2007
Another unexpected jewel from the archives...
(silliness factor: 9)
The Smelting Panacaea
Smelting was Bob’s obsession. His last name was Toadfeather: Robert Longleggings Toadfeather. How he could smelt! The char destroyed his nostrils and offended his wife’s sensibilities but Bob was stout in his firmness, rigid in his stiffness and thick in his density. It was sanction season at the UN, where Bob smelted, and this brought a touch of ranklish nostalgia whenever discussions turned to Cuba, North Korea or one of the rogue states. ‘My smelting could cure their wayward disobedience,’ thought Bob. And yet his wife was a communist.
Turncoats rankled Bob. His communist wife was chief rankler of his life, or rankless, though she pulled rank. It stank. Bob was a frustrated thespian, a smelter, yes but an actor all at once; his smelting was accomplished during the day, and this left time at night to act. His acting filled the townspeople with bawdy enthusiasms and great oathsmen were heard to utter monstrous items of praise in Bob’s general direction. Patrons and pottymouths shouted at Bob. For he was tall, and stout, like a massive pint of beer that overflows the glass and takes a manlike dimension. So stout was Bob that he took his wife one day by the ankles and flung her round his head like a Chinese butcher tethers a frozen cat. That’s how imposing his figure was. That was Bob: smelter, thespian, communist intolerant and generally flamboyant. While not gay, Bob still pricked his ears at talk of leather chaps. “Sale today at Dwight Von Gaylord’s – are you going Bob?” This kind of question made him hesitant. He was a hesitant metrosexual and leaning toward stick in the mud.
Bob’s wife joined a new communist chapter every week. They sprang up and folded like so many pages of the telephone books. Bob’s wife sauntered from hotspot to hotspot, always with her tea cozies and her hotpots. Bob swore at her to her face, even calling her a ‘Toadfeathered she-hag!’ and wiping her phony eyebrows with steel wool. Bob did not like his wife, but she knew how to drive and he didn’t. For this fact he was trapped- like a man caught in the jaws of a giant cobra will surely be swallowed.
(unfinished of course)
The Smelting Panacaea
Smelting was Bob’s obsession. His last name was Toadfeather: Robert Longleggings Toadfeather. How he could smelt! The char destroyed his nostrils and offended his wife’s sensibilities but Bob was stout in his firmness, rigid in his stiffness and thick in his density. It was sanction season at the UN, where Bob smelted, and this brought a touch of ranklish nostalgia whenever discussions turned to Cuba, North Korea or one of the rogue states. ‘My smelting could cure their wayward disobedience,’ thought Bob. And yet his wife was a communist.
Turncoats rankled Bob. His communist wife was chief rankler of his life, or rankless, though she pulled rank. It stank. Bob was a frustrated thespian, a smelter, yes but an actor all at once; his smelting was accomplished during the day, and this left time at night to act. His acting filled the townspeople with bawdy enthusiasms and great oathsmen were heard to utter monstrous items of praise in Bob’s general direction. Patrons and pottymouths shouted at Bob. For he was tall, and stout, like a massive pint of beer that overflows the glass and takes a manlike dimension. So stout was Bob that he took his wife one day by the ankles and flung her round his head like a Chinese butcher tethers a frozen cat. That’s how imposing his figure was. That was Bob: smelter, thespian, communist intolerant and generally flamboyant. While not gay, Bob still pricked his ears at talk of leather chaps. “Sale today at Dwight Von Gaylord’s – are you going Bob?” This kind of question made him hesitant. He was a hesitant metrosexual and leaning toward stick in the mud.
Bob’s wife joined a new communist chapter every week. They sprang up and folded like so many pages of the telephone books. Bob’s wife sauntered from hotspot to hotspot, always with her tea cozies and her hotpots. Bob swore at her to her face, even calling her a ‘Toadfeathered she-hag!’ and wiping her phony eyebrows with steel wool. Bob did not like his wife, but she knew how to drive and he didn’t. For this fact he was trapped- like a man caught in the jaws of a giant cobra will surely be swallowed.
(unfinished of course)
10/08/2006
What's Troubling Marjorie
(short story squiblet, best not to read this... I haven't bludgeoned y'all over the head in weeks)
Big asses troubled Marjorie Gold. That was for starters.
For example the 62-inch ass of her cousin Desmond was a source of consternation and regret. His ass glowed in summertime, as a result of sunburns on the superfluous flesh that extruded from Desmond's jeans. This ass made a fool of Desmond - who was presentable but for this troubling fact. To Marjorie, Desmond was more foolish than a toad with a top hat who spoke lousy English (and whose ass was bigger than acceptable). Marjorie wrote notes for Desmond - which she never sent - advice on how to disguise himself with foliage, perhaps twigs, or judicious drapery. But she was much too shy to rebuke her cousin openly about his copious rearage.
The uneasiness over Desmond was not the end of her neurosis. Marjorie was a self-conscious girl who often vomited in public. This made her very shy. She vomited during prayer meetings at her parish; she vomited on strangers on the sidewalk if they moved too quickly from side to side to avoid Marjorie while she returned from the grocer with a large basketful of spinach or plums. She vomited a lot, and her stomach lining was in ruins. She consulted the internet on a thrice-weekly basis to find naturopathic cures for damage due to bilious discharge. Hers was not an easy lot, but then many teenage girls had it difficult. Some girls did not grow very big chests, and had to obtain special brassieres. Other girls had braces which made it impossible to kiss boys. Then there were the girls with embarrassing parents, transitional complexions, braces and small chests who did not want to exist at all. These girls were sometimes sad, yet were often interesting and always had an inner beauty which writers like to mention - because people like an underdog.
Asses and puke were thus the two extremes of Marjorie's exotic teenage life. And yet to call Marjorie 'exotic' is a blatantly sarcastic reference, and Marjorie feared sarcasm most of all.
One day Marjorie was avoiding sarcasm by paddling a canoe along a river. The river was an urban estuary that local activists had revitalized with applause-worthy endeavours like “Wish for the Fish and Switch from Filling the Ditch with Garbage, Bitch!”which had reintroduced salmon spawn to the downtown marshland. Not all such activist endeavours had rhyming names, but most were well-received. The estuary in question had recovered its ecological vigour, and Marjorie saw a turtle flapping its tiny limbs beside her metal canoe. “How I love the simple turtles,” she said to herself, “they remind me of myself – with their tough exterior and soft underbelly... Or is it vice-versa?" And she sighed, continuing this 'canoe of thought', "Not to mention some of the boys have complimented me; they say I have the nose of a tortoise.” This last thought was true: Marjorie had the nose of a tortoise. A strikingly tortoise-nosed, but nervy and puke-prone girl was Marjorie Gold. It was the new millennium, she thought, and Reality TV shows could be made that featured even girls like her.
It was an idea, she thought. Reality television would be an escape from her 'exotic' life. Marjorie had connections in the television industry. She had bought a television once at Radio Shack, now called the Source. “That man who sold me the TV – maybe he knows how to get me a reality show,” she thought. Marjorie was tenacious, like a turtle-nosed wolverine. What she lacked in knowledge she made up for with a turtlish, dogged wolverine-like donkeyheadedness. Marjorie was, indeed, a complex girl.
Big asses troubled Marjorie Gold. That was for starters.
For example the 62-inch ass of her cousin Desmond was a source of consternation and regret. His ass glowed in summertime, as a result of sunburns on the superfluous flesh that extruded from Desmond's jeans. This ass made a fool of Desmond - who was presentable but for this troubling fact. To Marjorie, Desmond was more foolish than a toad with a top hat who spoke lousy English (and whose ass was bigger than acceptable). Marjorie wrote notes for Desmond - which she never sent - advice on how to disguise himself with foliage, perhaps twigs, or judicious drapery. But she was much too shy to rebuke her cousin openly about his copious rearage.
The uneasiness over Desmond was not the end of her neurosis. Marjorie was a self-conscious girl who often vomited in public. This made her very shy. She vomited during prayer meetings at her parish; she vomited on strangers on the sidewalk if they moved too quickly from side to side to avoid Marjorie while she returned from the grocer with a large basketful of spinach or plums. She vomited a lot, and her stomach lining was in ruins. She consulted the internet on a thrice-weekly basis to find naturopathic cures for damage due to bilious discharge. Hers was not an easy lot, but then many teenage girls had it difficult. Some girls did not grow very big chests, and had to obtain special brassieres. Other girls had braces which made it impossible to kiss boys. Then there were the girls with embarrassing parents, transitional complexions, braces and small chests who did not want to exist at all. These girls were sometimes sad, yet were often interesting and always had an inner beauty which writers like to mention - because people like an underdog.
Asses and puke were thus the two extremes of Marjorie's exotic teenage life. And yet to call Marjorie 'exotic' is a blatantly sarcastic reference, and Marjorie feared sarcasm most of all.
One day Marjorie was avoiding sarcasm by paddling a canoe along a river. The river was an urban estuary that local activists had revitalized with applause-worthy endeavours like “Wish for the Fish and Switch from Filling the Ditch with Garbage, Bitch!”which had reintroduced salmon spawn to the downtown marshland. Not all such activist endeavours had rhyming names, but most were well-received. The estuary in question had recovered its ecological vigour, and Marjorie saw a turtle flapping its tiny limbs beside her metal canoe. “How I love the simple turtles,” she said to herself, “they remind me of myself – with their tough exterior and soft underbelly... Or is it vice-versa?" And she sighed, continuing this 'canoe of thought', "Not to mention some of the boys have complimented me; they say I have the nose of a tortoise.” This last thought was true: Marjorie had the nose of a tortoise. A strikingly tortoise-nosed, but nervy and puke-prone girl was Marjorie Gold. It was the new millennium, she thought, and Reality TV shows could be made that featured even girls like her.
It was an idea, she thought. Reality television would be an escape from her 'exotic' life. Marjorie had connections in the television industry. She had bought a television once at Radio Shack, now called the Source. “That man who sold me the TV – maybe he knows how to get me a reality show,” she thought. Marjorie was tenacious, like a turtle-nosed wolverine. What she lacked in knowledge she made up for with a turtlish, dogged wolverine-like donkeyheadedness. Marjorie was, indeed, a complex girl.
5/09/2006
Ogre Slayer in the City
A tall ogre sat grimly in the internet bar around the corner from the 24 hour copy centre where I worked. I was employee to the Man but I was also ogre slayer in my spare time. I had killed 15 ogres in May alone and it was not the end of the month yet. Indeed I was hoping to collect a bonus. I went to my boss and asked for more money explaining my good work in killing ogres, but my boss Jonas Hogmass said “You are nor paid to kill ogre, my friend - you are required to sit at the till and deal with customers.” Clearly my talents were being wasted, and so I quit the copy centre that day, exited onto the sidewalk with my dagger to find ogres to feast on.
There was one at the internet cafe, bar CyberNutz, and he was a big ogre. The ogre was downloading new software into his memory stick and I thought it a good opportunity to disembowel him. I entered the cafe and attempted to plonk a dagger into his buttocks. But his ass was too sturdy, and the metal of my shiv clattered into bits. I was agog at this ogre’s buns of steel, and in order to survive I hastily apologized. "My man, there has been a mistake,” I said, “for I have tried to insert my dagger into your rear, but you still sit happily and download your shareware.” And he looked at me crossly. I continued, “You must be a great man, or an ogre at least.”
The ogre was magna cum laude, or so said his laurel that read ‘Harvard Ogres 2004.’ This was no ordinary stupid cave ogre. The ogre was eventually forgiving as he looked at my broken dagger and recommended a good metalsmith - in the central business district. “There is a lore passed down since the centuries,” the ogre said, “right at the corner of Dundas and King." I nodded but inwardly thought him a fool - those two streets did not intersect. Although perhaps this ogre possessed a greater wisdom: His ass had already proven to be tough and turgid.
Towad the central business district I discovered a whoring parlour. I thought it politic to ingress and fetch myself a wench. I needed help fluffing my daggers. As a freelance ogreslayer I had many weapons and I need help carrying them all. But the parlour was vacant of wenches; it was filled only with radio broadcasters and advertising executives. Hmm, I thought, perhaps one of these could carry my standard, and also give me advice for jazzing up my CV. It was employment I also needed having quit the copy centre. So I approached a marketing vp. “You there, you shall be my metal-wench” I said to her, but she talked about quarterly earnings. I was frustrated at her insouciance and so tried to disembowel her. Alas my dagger was still in pieces. She scoffed and said “There are metalsmiths at Dundas and King!” Now, that intersection again! This wisdom from the Harvard ogre was proving a bit pedestrian.
On my way to the promised intersection I alighted at a meadow. A long meadow filled with gigantic trees and also video games from the bygone Epoch. There was Super Mario Bros and Bubble Bobble and even Excitebike, blinking at full squeal. I was filled with a sweeping nostalgia at the glories of a bygone age, and how bittersweet were the times knowing the peak of VideoGame Genius had been achieved and real-time first person shooter could never be more stunning than it was right now. But enough head-in-the-cloudery I thought and I continue to search out my wayward metalsmith.
At Dundas and King stood a wizard, robed in velvet, blue velvet, and covered with enchanted symbols such as the legends have described. The wizard was selling instrumental cds out of a case and asking for change. This wizard’s name was Dirkwald the Dirigible; he was of a blimpish countenance, for which reason I nicknamed him Zassy the Zeppelin. I asked Zassy the whereabouts of my metalsmith, and showed him the pieces of my dagger. He said, “Son, put down that weapon and enter my trailer.” For he had a trailer on the roadside; it looked welcoming and emitted the aroma of 100 per cent angus frozen beef patties wafting off his easy-clean George Foreman Grill. I stared at the wizened wizardly face and he began to incant, “uhmah, laga, the shazakl and the threwr” This man possessed secrets from the beyond the mists of centuries, I thought, and I should acquiesce. This was not the result of a narcotic hallucinogen, I assured myself, being stuck with a wizard in his trailer in the business district of a great North American city. No, it was not drugs. In fact everything was all too ordinary.
It has been 17 months since I had been given my charge: to rid the world of ogres and cleanse the universe of all overbearing ghoulishness. I was sent on my mission by the great sage Margot the Mad who had entrusted to me his silver shiny shimmering shiv. I was the Knavish Knight who would call down the wrath of the righteous and deliver justice to the arms of the innocent, or so it was written on my email signature. I was honoured to be chosen but I also desired some sort of pamphlet, online tutorial, or primer to explain which enemies exactly I was to disembowel and which innocents I was to spare. For I was a recent graduate of an east coast school and was nowhere accustomed to plunging daggermetal into the obstreperous buttocks of a loathsome ogre.
[unfinished of course]
There was one at the internet cafe, bar CyberNutz, and he was a big ogre. The ogre was downloading new software into his memory stick and I thought it a good opportunity to disembowel him. I entered the cafe and attempted to plonk a dagger into his buttocks. But his ass was too sturdy, and the metal of my shiv clattered into bits. I was agog at this ogre’s buns of steel, and in order to survive I hastily apologized. "My man, there has been a mistake,” I said, “for I have tried to insert my dagger into your rear, but you still sit happily and download your shareware.” And he looked at me crossly. I continued, “You must be a great man, or an ogre at least.”
The ogre was magna cum laude, or so said his laurel that read ‘Harvard Ogres 2004.’ This was no ordinary stupid cave ogre. The ogre was eventually forgiving as he looked at my broken dagger and recommended a good metalsmith - in the central business district. “There is a lore passed down since the centuries,” the ogre said, “right at the corner of Dundas and King." I nodded but inwardly thought him a fool - those two streets did not intersect. Although perhaps this ogre possessed a greater wisdom: His ass had already proven to be tough and turgid.
Towad the central business district I discovered a whoring parlour. I thought it politic to ingress and fetch myself a wench. I needed help fluffing my daggers. As a freelance ogreslayer I had many weapons and I need help carrying them all. But the parlour was vacant of wenches; it was filled only with radio broadcasters and advertising executives. Hmm, I thought, perhaps one of these could carry my standard, and also give me advice for jazzing up my CV. It was employment I also needed having quit the copy centre. So I approached a marketing vp. “You there, you shall be my metal-wench” I said to her, but she talked about quarterly earnings. I was frustrated at her insouciance and so tried to disembowel her. Alas my dagger was still in pieces. She scoffed and said “There are metalsmiths at Dundas and King!” Now, that intersection again! This wisdom from the Harvard ogre was proving a bit pedestrian.
On my way to the promised intersection I alighted at a meadow. A long meadow filled with gigantic trees and also video games from the bygone Epoch. There was Super Mario Bros and Bubble Bobble and even Excitebike, blinking at full squeal. I was filled with a sweeping nostalgia at the glories of a bygone age, and how bittersweet were the times knowing the peak of VideoGame Genius had been achieved and real-time first person shooter could never be more stunning than it was right now. But enough head-in-the-cloudery I thought and I continue to search out my wayward metalsmith.
At Dundas and King stood a wizard, robed in velvet, blue velvet, and covered with enchanted symbols such as the legends have described. The wizard was selling instrumental cds out of a case and asking for change. This wizard’s name was Dirkwald the Dirigible; he was of a blimpish countenance, for which reason I nicknamed him Zassy the Zeppelin. I asked Zassy the whereabouts of my metalsmith, and showed him the pieces of my dagger. He said, “Son, put down that weapon and enter my trailer.” For he had a trailer on the roadside; it looked welcoming and emitted the aroma of 100 per cent angus frozen beef patties wafting off his easy-clean George Foreman Grill. I stared at the wizened wizardly face and he began to incant, “uhmah, laga, the shazakl and the threwr” This man possessed secrets from the beyond the mists of centuries, I thought, and I should acquiesce. This was not the result of a narcotic hallucinogen, I assured myself, being stuck with a wizard in his trailer in the business district of a great North American city. No, it was not drugs. In fact everything was all too ordinary.
It has been 17 months since I had been given my charge: to rid the world of ogres and cleanse the universe of all overbearing ghoulishness. I was sent on my mission by the great sage Margot the Mad who had entrusted to me his silver shiny shimmering shiv. I was the Knavish Knight who would call down the wrath of the righteous and deliver justice to the arms of the innocent, or so it was written on my email signature. I was honoured to be chosen but I also desired some sort of pamphlet, online tutorial, or primer to explain which enemies exactly I was to disembowel and which innocents I was to spare. For I was a recent graduate of an east coast school and was nowhere accustomed to plunging daggermetal into the obstreperous buttocks of a loathsome ogre.
[unfinished of course]
4/16/2006
The Cloud and The Sun (for Kat)
Totality had enveloped the earth, there was no room for fragments. Orthodoxy was the norm, which was to be expected. And yet there were loopholes.
Dry things were at an all time high. The forest was about to set into a kind of blaze. It was that time of summer where parched lands foment a revolution, or a teenager smokes a cigarette and burns down a million acres, just for the hell of it. So dies and is reborn an ecological symbiotic biospherical stasis. Or whatever
Into this equilibrium floated a cloud, who was named Klaus. Klaus was the only cloud in the sky, which had long gone grey with perpetual blankness. The horizon for example was on vacation, for all objects had lost their vanishing points. Rainbows were mere figments and 98 per cent of the Earth’s leprechauns were in hibernation and the other two percent had had sex change operations. It was like one giant hand had clapped itself into a self-destructing paradox, imploding all consciousness, stealing all sensibility until the Great Brain of the Universe suffered neurological collapse.
The sky, formerly a most excellent canopy, was more like a cesspool of blue-coloured urine. Who indeed could appreciate the sky, when all that roamed the world were worms and cockroaches? Indeed, few could appreciate much, since there was little of substance, but rather a glut of nebulousness.
Klaus the Klaud looked down and began to cry, each raindrop seeding a technicolour pyrotechnic. The ground was a giant piece of Kleenex, absorbing the cloudy droplets like a gigantic piece of gauze soaks up gallons of sprinkler mist. Klaus could not appreciate the pathos, however and no one was there to witness the flowering of the Earth. Things were not as they seemed.
The Sun did then speak:
“Hey there,” said the Sun to the Klaud, “you and I are antithetical.”
The Sun had a piercing presence. If Klaus had had pants, he would have soiled them.
“Anti-thetical - that means that you is my biotche,” explained the Sun, who was influenced by hip-hop videos.
No match for the sun’s confrontational patois, Klaus began to disperse. But as he did he made a summary of natural existence:
“O Mr Sun, Mr Golden Sun, here is what I think of thee:
You shine a light for no one and no thing, you grow plants in a stagnating swamp... your Vitamin D propaganda is the biggest joke in three time zones and you can’t even rap like a killa-ghat shorty. You will be eclipsed, mark my words – whether in this century or the next...If any cloud comes by to take my place, and you resume your campaign of intimidation, why then the joke is on you. We will drizzle our innards, we will block you out, and if the moisture in me will ever return, I personally will steal your thunder and chillify those sunbathing cockroaches far below.”
The Sun look at the cloud and winked. “Ah-ight, cracka!” and he took off down below the horizon. The ocean rolled and the volcanoes snored. The sky let out a sigh. And leprechauns were as flamboyant as ever.
Happy Easter!
Dry things were at an all time high. The forest was about to set into a kind of blaze. It was that time of summer where parched lands foment a revolution, or a teenager smokes a cigarette and burns down a million acres, just for the hell of it. So dies and is reborn an ecological symbiotic biospherical stasis. Or whatever
Into this equilibrium floated a cloud, who was named Klaus. Klaus was the only cloud in the sky, which had long gone grey with perpetual blankness. The horizon for example was on vacation, for all objects had lost their vanishing points. Rainbows were mere figments and 98 per cent of the Earth’s leprechauns were in hibernation and the other two percent had had sex change operations. It was like one giant hand had clapped itself into a self-destructing paradox, imploding all consciousness, stealing all sensibility until the Great Brain of the Universe suffered neurological collapse.
The sky, formerly a most excellent canopy, was more like a cesspool of blue-coloured urine. Who indeed could appreciate the sky, when all that roamed the world were worms and cockroaches? Indeed, few could appreciate much, since there was little of substance, but rather a glut of nebulousness.
Klaus the Klaud looked down and began to cry, each raindrop seeding a technicolour pyrotechnic. The ground was a giant piece of Kleenex, absorbing the cloudy droplets like a gigantic piece of gauze soaks up gallons of sprinkler mist. Klaus could not appreciate the pathos, however and no one was there to witness the flowering of the Earth. Things were not as they seemed.
The Sun did then speak:
“Hey there,” said the Sun to the Klaud, “you and I are antithetical.”
The Sun had a piercing presence. If Klaus had had pants, he would have soiled them.
“Anti-thetical - that means that you is my biotche,” explained the Sun, who was influenced by hip-hop videos.
No match for the sun’s confrontational patois, Klaus began to disperse. But as he did he made a summary of natural existence:
“O Mr Sun, Mr Golden Sun, here is what I think of thee:
You shine a light for no one and no thing, you grow plants in a stagnating swamp... your Vitamin D propaganda is the biggest joke in three time zones and you can’t even rap like a killa-ghat shorty. You will be eclipsed, mark my words – whether in this century or the next...If any cloud comes by to take my place, and you resume your campaign of intimidation, why then the joke is on you. We will drizzle our innards, we will block you out, and if the moisture in me will ever return, I personally will steal your thunder and chillify those sunbathing cockroaches far below.”
The Sun look at the cloud and winked. “Ah-ight, cracka!” and he took off down below the horizon. The ocean rolled and the volcanoes snored. The sky let out a sigh. And leprechauns were as flamboyant as ever.
Happy Easter!
4/10/2006
Trying to write a story for the Mighty Kat...
A story on demand, an interesting concept, like a free pizza that materializes out of the sky whenever you're hungry, but with plot instead of dough and probably twice as saucy. I work for hours in my hot ovens but I'm at a loss for crumbs even. And she wants a story not a crummy metaphor.
She wants a story with no people, and I only write stories about bizarre people named Moses Drecksnider or Ethan Pelletier the Very Silly Man or Jenkins Tomaso Burnbranch or El Santos the Mexican Vampire.
Here's a stab at a story with no people:
The wind was tired and still. The sun was asleep on the far side of the moon. The ocean was known for its dry sense of irony. And the newborn mountains had horrendous acne.. It was a world with no people but plenty of potential for conflict...
Unless you anthropomorphize the wind, and make it a person, how do you get a story? That takes more skill than a cupcake man possesses.
Or how bout this, about pickles (a reliable topic):
A squad of pickles thrust themselves forward from a jar. It was the Pickle Derby, the morning before the big race to be precise, and the kitchen was in the late preparation stages...
No that's no good. Still too humanish. Scores points for being about pickles, but pickle parodies tend to scare up protest from the cucumberphobes and I got enough hassles than to cater to patch-vegetable lobbyists from rural postal codes, no shit.
A verb acted. Very adverbially, almost adjectival until it became a noun. The prepositions had been there before, but conjunctions and the definite article. ! Interjected the full stop. Any questions?
Shockingly direct, but not enough sex. I think my dear grammarmother would like it.
Erp, I'm dry. As Yoda said when he worked in Starbucks and they ran out of fancy tea: Boo, or boo not - there is no chai. But I swear Kat I'm not just chaiing.
She wants a story with no people, and I only write stories about bizarre people named Moses Drecksnider or Ethan Pelletier the Very Silly Man or Jenkins Tomaso Burnbranch or El Santos the Mexican Vampire.
Here's a stab at a story with no people:
The wind was tired and still. The sun was asleep on the far side of the moon. The ocean was known for its dry sense of irony. And the newborn mountains had horrendous acne.. It was a world with no people but plenty of potential for conflict...
Unless you anthropomorphize the wind, and make it a person, how do you get a story? That takes more skill than a cupcake man possesses.
Or how bout this, about pickles (a reliable topic):
A squad of pickles thrust themselves forward from a jar. It was the Pickle Derby, the morning before the big race to be precise, and the kitchen was in the late preparation stages...
No that's no good. Still too humanish. Scores points for being about pickles, but pickle parodies tend to scare up protest from the cucumberphobes and I got enough hassles than to cater to patch-vegetable lobbyists from rural postal codes, no shit.
A verb acted. Very adverbially, almost adjectival until it became a noun. The prepositions had been there before, but conjunctions and the definite article. ! Interjected the full stop. Any questions?
Shockingly direct, but not enough sex. I think my dear grammarmother would like it.
Erp, I'm dry. As Yoda said when he worked in Starbucks and they ran out of fancy tea: Boo, or boo not - there is no chai. But I swear Kat I'm not just chaiing.
3/20/2006
Blame It On The Bubbles
(as requested by ers)
Blame It On The Bubbles
In the dark cave of Grendil by the swamp of Megamonsmaxilon in the Valley of the Orthopucky lived a man known as the Arbiter of Straight Lines. His proper name was Draco McSirius, a warlock from the Cement Swamps of Rote, who studied chemistry and was obsessed with forms. McSirius conjured all things in an iron determined manner, with his reliable chemistry that allowed for no guesswork. Until a Pixie named Brenda Bubbles arrived in the valley and made poppycock of everything.
Draco McSirius wasn't accustomed to visitors, and as a warlock chemist he had no idea how to flirt. He sat in his cave and thought about shadows. He thought about how great it was to have no visitors to argue with. And when the Brenda Bubbles came, he thought of how very much he wanted her to leave.
On the very first day this pixie held a dance. She called it the “Pretendo Pokeroo.” She shot bubbles from her mouth and ears, and they flew up to the sky until she climbed up on the bubbles and poked them with her eyelashes. She was the only one at the dance but she laughed the whole time.
The warlock was livid. The bubbles gave him apoplexy. He cursed in the inner part of his cave "That frivolous pixine Poof, that insubstantial trollop – her bubbles are mere dreamthings and upset my pious army of wolfhounds!"
The dogmen who served lord McSirius were an unquestioning cadre, accustomed to the Arbiter's simple plans and direct methods. Hunt a live animal, kill it till it's dead, eat the animal, chew out bones, take a dump to mark terrtitory was all in their days’ work. But the Bubbled Princess neutralized their blunt edge and made the wolfmen aware they were possessors of an insane magic. For dogmen could laugh at bubbles too! There was more to the swamp than Draco the warlock's plodding and questing. When a bubble appeared, so came with it an inspiration, feeble flickering amid a dogman's braying and barking, but welcome for its tiny roundness nonetheless.
"Don’t blame it on the bubbles,” giggled the pixie, "I have more than enough candy to make you all my friends."
But McSirius said No:
"She will turn you into a swine, my dog creatures," he pontificated; "you prefer the slop to the chase, the pen to the well-tended field?" He was high and mighty: "Go blow at bubbles then, but you'll be fuzzy, lethargic and fluffy, so oofy, goopy and soupy, and silly - like a pillowcase full of pickles in a pennypotion..."
And by the end of that sentence he was choking on sulphur from his chemical stoke ovens.
Then the Pixie sang a song:
Oh it's better to be a wizzle
And to wuzzle away the day
Than to frown like Lord McSirius
And turn grey in a cave
McSiri is obsessed with shadows
Of a land that don’t exist
My bubbles are the crystal ball
And one day he’ll do the twist!
And the wolfmen in the valley did some pretty hardass barking. Brenda Bubbles smiled. “Woof! There it is,” said the pixie. But the Arbiter of Straight lines was pissed.
McSirius tossed a thunderbolt. Well he was upset after all, and prone to fits of lightning. The wolfmen yelped and scattered, and the pixie frowned. She floated a gigantic bubble that danced from her fingertips into his cave and got oh so close to McSirius.
"Look! Something floopsy and pink," she sang.
The lip of her orb nearly kissed him; when it got close he screamed. “Oh please oh please don’t let it touch me!”
McSirius shot another bolt of lighting, but the funniest thing happened. The thunderbolt got trapped in the bubble. Like lightning, in a light bulb!
The shadows at the edge of the cave instantly disappeared. One of the wolfmen quoted Shakespeare. or was it Sophocles? “And then the scales fell from his eyes,” he said. But actually it was the Bible.
McSirius couldn’t take it. He went in his cave, slammed the door, cooked up a potion and boiled alive ten-dozen lizards. One of the wolfmen cackled, "Such a hungry little bitch!"
The rest of the wolf crew stopped barking, and started singing!
Sometime bubbles seem like trouble
Master McSirius? got a beard of stubble
lives in a cave and chews on rubble
but lookin at this pale blue bubble
from as far away in space as Hubble
and
it seems
we’re just a bunch of mopy poochies…
The pixie clapped her hands. “Yes!” she said, and pumped her fist like Wayne Gretzky. The next day she was elected mayor of Grendil. Her first act was to drain the swamp.
She boiled the bogfilth with her bubbles filled with the warlock's lightning, until the stagnant cement evaporated completely.
“Now,” she said, "let’s fill that hole with warm water, and have a nice bath.”
END
Blame It On The Bubbles
In the dark cave of Grendil by the swamp of Megamonsmaxilon in the Valley of the Orthopucky lived a man known as the Arbiter of Straight Lines. His proper name was Draco McSirius, a warlock from the Cement Swamps of Rote, who studied chemistry and was obsessed with forms. McSirius conjured all things in an iron determined manner, with his reliable chemistry that allowed for no guesswork. Until a Pixie named Brenda Bubbles arrived in the valley and made poppycock of everything.
Draco McSirius wasn't accustomed to visitors, and as a warlock chemist he had no idea how to flirt. He sat in his cave and thought about shadows. He thought about how great it was to have no visitors to argue with. And when the Brenda Bubbles came, he thought of how very much he wanted her to leave.
On the very first day this pixie held a dance. She called it the “Pretendo Pokeroo.” She shot bubbles from her mouth and ears, and they flew up to the sky until she climbed up on the bubbles and poked them with her eyelashes. She was the only one at the dance but she laughed the whole time.
The warlock was livid. The bubbles gave him apoplexy. He cursed in the inner part of his cave "That frivolous pixine Poof, that insubstantial trollop – her bubbles are mere dreamthings and upset my pious army of wolfhounds!"
The dogmen who served lord McSirius were an unquestioning cadre, accustomed to the Arbiter's simple plans and direct methods. Hunt a live animal, kill it till it's dead, eat the animal, chew out bones, take a dump to mark terrtitory was all in their days’ work. But the Bubbled Princess neutralized their blunt edge and made the wolfmen aware they were possessors of an insane magic. For dogmen could laugh at bubbles too! There was more to the swamp than Draco the warlock's plodding and questing. When a bubble appeared, so came with it an inspiration, feeble flickering amid a dogman's braying and barking, but welcome for its tiny roundness nonetheless.
"Don’t blame it on the bubbles,” giggled the pixie, "I have more than enough candy to make you all my friends."
But McSirius said No:
"She will turn you into a swine, my dog creatures," he pontificated; "you prefer the slop to the chase, the pen to the well-tended field?" He was high and mighty: "Go blow at bubbles then, but you'll be fuzzy, lethargic and fluffy, so oofy, goopy and soupy, and silly - like a pillowcase full of pickles in a pennypotion..."
And by the end of that sentence he was choking on sulphur from his chemical stoke ovens.
Then the Pixie sang a song:
Oh it's better to be a wizzle
And to wuzzle away the day
Than to frown like Lord McSirius
And turn grey in a cave
McSiri is obsessed with shadows
Of a land that don’t exist
My bubbles are the crystal ball
And one day he’ll do the twist!
And the wolfmen in the valley did some pretty hardass barking. Brenda Bubbles smiled. “Woof! There it is,” said the pixie. But the Arbiter of Straight lines was pissed.
McSirius tossed a thunderbolt. Well he was upset after all, and prone to fits of lightning. The wolfmen yelped and scattered, and the pixie frowned. She floated a gigantic bubble that danced from her fingertips into his cave and got oh so close to McSirius.
"Look! Something floopsy and pink," she sang.
The lip of her orb nearly kissed him; when it got close he screamed. “Oh please oh please don’t let it touch me!”
McSirius shot another bolt of lighting, but the funniest thing happened. The thunderbolt got trapped in the bubble. Like lightning, in a light bulb!
The shadows at the edge of the cave instantly disappeared. One of the wolfmen quoted Shakespeare. or was it Sophocles? “And then the scales fell from his eyes,” he said. But actually it was the Bible.
McSirius couldn’t take it. He went in his cave, slammed the door, cooked up a potion and boiled alive ten-dozen lizards. One of the wolfmen cackled, "Such a hungry little bitch!"
The rest of the wolf crew stopped barking, and started singing!
Sometime bubbles seem like trouble
Master McSirius? got a beard of stubble
lives in a cave and chews on rubble
but lookin at this pale blue bubble
from as far away in space as Hubble
and
it seems
we’re just a bunch of mopy poochies…
The pixie clapped her hands. “Yes!” she said, and pumped her fist like Wayne Gretzky. The next day she was elected mayor of Grendil. Her first act was to drain the swamp.
She boiled the bogfilth with her bubbles filled with the warlock's lightning, until the stagnant cement evaporated completely.
“Now,” she said, "let’s fill that hole with warm water, and have a nice bath.”
END
3/15/2006
I Dare You To Read This!
(a limited offer: comment on this grotesque story and you may get a 1000 word short-story written just for you. leave your literary criticism and your story request below)
*ahem*
Beavers in my Kitchen
A crash in the garage alerted me to the invasion. The toppled recycled pop cans meant a beaver army would soon be at the inner citadel that was the kitchen. I sounded the alarm. “Alert! Alert!" it sounded, "we are all about to be hurt!” I clutched some fabric near a window; it was the curtain, I ripped it to pieces and chewed on the ragged morsels. It was December and I needed more fibre in my diet. The curtainy bits were delicious and I belched Fur Elise. But the chewing beavers would be equally ravenous.
On
I was dumbfounded. “I must scold you,” railed Znoosle, “so be shamed at my grievance!” In this way he chided, and in truth I felt a sting. I saw my digital watch’s electro-calendar: the date was March the 4th - my first encounter with an anthropomorphized fish.
Not much later I would be dealing with beavers who also spoke, were grouchy and made grievances like so many plaintive elderly voters. Beavers would plague my house, and not even my precautionary ‘Beavers Beware’ signs could sway them from such noxious sorties into my sacred innerspace. Instead they razed my home and left me exposed to winter cruelty.
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