Giant Steps

Able was I

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:03:42 GMT

Like everyone, I have a mirror image, and we do not have much to say to one another, for whatever I might say, he would say, and so I think whatever I know, he knows. But we meet every day or so and I help him shave his chin and brush his hair, and he helps me with mine.

One midnight, walking through a park in V____, I turned a corner and found him just turning the corner from the opposite direction. We sat down and talked of this and that, finding that we had much in common—too much, really. We sat at a bench; we were silent a while; we puzzled over the meanings of ”left“ and ”right“, ”east“ and ”west“, and ”clockwise“. It wasn't much of a conversation.

After a while we parted, each of us continuing his stroll.

I wish we had gone back the way we came.

Everything here is backwards. My house is reversed, as are the roads that lead to it. I cannot drive (and now refuse even to try). Every clock poses a problem of one kind or another. I hesitate every time I come to write an S or a 3. I have adapted in other respects, but though I can now read, still my brain rebels when I open a book and see a full page of mirror-type. I have nightmares.

I went back to V___. I could not find the park or the corner.

My mirror image and I still meet daily, separated by glass as in prison. We still do not have much to talk about. I know he is suffering as I am. He looks older.

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:09:41 GMT

She punched me on the arm to wake me up. "I like these cinnamon rolls now," she said accusingly. "With the orange frosting and it's your fault."

I sat up in bed.

"It's like whenever I'm around you, you're making me try new things and stuff that I don't like and it's got to stop," she said. "I'm a person. An individual. I have likes and dislikes. And I like my likes and dislikes. I don't want to be just a clone of you." She took a bite of cinnamon roll and scowled. I rubbed my eyes while she chewed. "It's like you're trying to destroy my soul," she said.

"I'm trying to destroy your soul," I echoed.

"I knew it!" she yelled and stormed out. "It's over between us! I don't ever want to see you again!"

A non-negative review

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:53:24 GMT

The Null Book of Mathematics by J. Orendorff

0 pages

Harwood Press

It is not easy for the layman to determine how seriously to take The Null Book of Mathematics, and curiously enough, consulting mathematicians does not help. Every one this reviewer spoke to cheerfully agreed that the slender volume is completely unreadable, but while some called it “trivial”, others said it was “of fundamental importance”—and then the whole lot refused to admit that they had disagreed on anything.

Despite the raging copyright controversy, with angry claims and counterclaims still flying and the curious expression “contains infinitely many verbatim copies of” being thrown carelessly about, the publisher claims the book has been an unvarnished success and is planning translations in 26 languages. One imagines a rush order for three thousand “Estonian” stickers.

The Null Book is the only mathematics reference book this reviewer has ever read cover to cover in one sitting. It is indeed hard to put down half-finished. It neatly avoids the traps such works tend to fall into, such as uneven editing, errors, dull stretches, or an idiosyncratic choice of topics. One is forced to admit, at the risk of falling for what may be an elaborate practical joke, that The Null Book of Mathematics is a small jewel. A better index, though, would be welcome in the second edition.

Those were the days

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:20:51 GMT

Halfway around the world,

in a city buried in sand three thousand years ago,

after our tools and brushes had been set aside,

after dinner had settled and conversation had quieted,

in darkness,

under a moonless black sky,

we would play flashlight tag.

Eep

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:24:00 GMT

I eeped the beeks and Bart eeped the zooks. That was not the problem. They both needed eeping, after all, and we both needed the money. I guess Bart did his job okay. The zooks didn't complain.

In addition to eeping, Bart liked to itz the occasional kib. That was the problem. On a good day, it got on my nerves. On a bad day, like last Friday, it was more than I could stand.

I had fallen into the beek box three times that day. I was just climbing out for the third time, bloody and swollen, when Bart started in. "Man, you need a sideline," he said.

I was in no mood. "Did I ask?" I said. "You wanna be helpful, pass the antivenom."

He passed it, smirking, and went right on. "Listen to me, Bert. You need to branch out. You want to eep beeks the rest of your life? No, man. With your skills, you should be enting carp or something. You should be unking spulls."

I scoffed. Bart was unfazed. "You're not listening to me, man. You sell yourself short. You got talent. You can ay a mean brickle, man. I've seen you. You got brains, too. I bet you could rink hedges. Heck, you could raid dates. That's something you can do without even getting dressed in the morning, man."

Bart was treading on thin ice, and I told him so. "I'm not going to quit eeping to raid dates in my underwear," I added. "Now lay off."

"Listen, man. You should at least oatle some teats. You know?" He chuckled crudely.

That was the last straw. I set down the antivenom and turned on him. "So let me get this straight," I said. "You're telling me I should be a carp-enter, a spull-unker, a brickle-ayer, a hedge-rinker, a date-raider, and a teat-oatler."

"Yeah, man. Get out there. Be a goag-itter."

"Bart, there's only one thing I want to be right now."

"Yeah, I know. A beek-eeper."

"No. A Bart-ender."

One good, solid shove was all it took. Bart toppled into the beek box. I watched with satisfaction as the beasts ung him again and again until there was nothing left to ing.

When it was over, I went home and made myself a little something to wrive my skroods.

Upon returning home after five forgettable years

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 19:24:53 GMT

He chose the largest styrofoam cup they had. He pulled a spigot. Slowly, ominously, the cup filled with superheated black serum.

He emptied three sugar packets into it, then made the mistake of trying to use a plastic stirrer. The cup was too deep. He dropped it. Involuntarily he pictured it twisting as it sank, its candy-red surface warping, bubbling, and cracking in the boiling-hot liquid. It settled in a heap of plastic slag at the bottom and the coffee commenced to leech out the potent petroleum-byproduct nerve toxins that are the molecular building blocks of plastic stirrers. The coffee would be bitter at the top, sweet and brain-damaging at the bottom.

He left, turning away from the dizzying lights of the Exxon and starting across the pitch-black field behind it. He could see nothing but the burned-in afterimage of the gas station's sodium lamps. He imagined the field full of rabbit holes and land mines. On he walked. The wind howled. In one stiff, freezing hand he held his bookbag. In the other hand, the styrofoam cup patiently burned through the various layers of epidermis and dermis.

He keyed his way into the lab, set down his things, sat at his desk in the dark, and took a sip, instantly obliterating every taste bud on the top surface of his tongue. It would take months for the damaged tissues to heal, during which time he would taste nothing. He swallowed. The coffee laid second-degree burns down his esophagus, ignited the lining of his stomach, pooled at the bottom of his gut, and began releasing its payload. One by one his horrified internal organs recognized the potent mix burning its way through his veins. His heart pounded. His liver shuddered. The skin on his torso registered the heat radiating from within. He glowed fiercely in the infrared.

As the last traces of California in his system screamed and died, a muscle somewhere on his face twitched. The briefest impression of a grin, or a sneer, flickered there. The hour of fate had struck. He was back. It was time to get to work.

Wandering Ones

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 21:57:09 GMT

Senator Phibbs had gone astray.

It had happened once or twice in his life before, but it had never involved quite so much sex, money, or media attention.

One snowy January morning when he was six—he would never forget this—he had wandered away from home and gotten lost in the woods. It was a gray, shadowless day, the sun lost in a bright gray sky filled with soft, heavy storm clouds. He had traipsed through the snowdrifts for hours, hungry and afraid. At dusk, he had met an elderly couple out for a walk in the dwindling light. They had not spoken to him, he recalled, and he had not told them where he lived, but they led him silently home to his (by now panic-stricken) parents.

His mother snatched him into her arms and hugged him fiercely, shaking with sobs of relief. His father embraced them both and ran his hand through his son's hair. Neither of them noticed the elderly couple, and by the time the boy turned to look for them, they had vanished.

As the Towncar slid into traffic, Senator Phibbs shook his head. He remembered the shock and bafflement he had felt at his undeserved good fortune. He remembered it often. He thought it was the truest and wisest emotion that had ever struck him. He had felt much the same way, or wanted to, when the people of North Carolina had first elected him to his current distinguished post, ten years ago. In spite of himself, he felt shocked and baffled now.

He watched the Chinese restaurants and record stores slide by in the rain. "Where are you now?" he muttered. But such unconditional redemption, he knew, is reserved for children. Adults have to choose the right path.

With a start, he realized he was not alone in the car. A white-haired man occupied the seat next to him. "I'm sorry," the Senator said. "I—uh—didn't realize you were here." He gave the older man the tentative look that means, Save me some embarrassment and tell me your name.

"We've met before," the man said, "but I never introduced myself."

"You're with the party leadership?" Phibbs ventured.

The man smiled gently. "I'm here to make sure you get home okay," he said.

Home. Phibbs knew instantly what he meant. In a way, the word was a punch in the gut. His career was finished, hopes dashed, ambitions cut off. And yet, home: Abermarle, the ranch, Katie and the kids, the lab puppies, an ordinary life. It was still there, quite possibly still within reach. Suddenly his breath caught and his eyes filled with tears. Was it possible? If anyone could forgive him, it would be his family. But it would be awfully hard.

It would be such a relief just to see them.

Aftertaste

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 19:52:50 GMT

Artur carried limes with him everywhere for weeks. At every meal, he squeezed fresh lime juice onto his food. Every drink he took was adorned with a slice of lime. His taste buds adapted to it. He claimed he could no longer taste lime juice. Strangely, we became similarly accustomed to Artur's unusual habits, and often failed to notice as he went through his pre-meal ritual.

Artur had a purpose. At the end of two months, he said, he would drink a glass of water, and at that moment he would experience something no other human being had ever experienced: the taste of not-lime.

Artur died suddenly of a heart attack. One day he was at work with us. The next day he was gone. I am sure he died with lime juice on his breath. He never got to taste not-lime while among the living. But the undertaker cleans a man's teeth very carefully. Perhaps that counts for something.

As for us, we miss him. We had grown quite used to Artur's bright smile, his overgrown mustache, his quiet joking way. This world without him was suddenly thrust upon us: our first taste of not-Artur. It is bitter. We don't like it.

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 14:16:38 GMT

Among my baby's favorite toys are his honey stirrer and his spatula. (Actual baby toys he spurns.)

Today I thought I'd start teaching him about opportunity costs (after all he is seven months old now) by offering him both, and when he grabbed one, I'd take the other away. So he grabbed the honey stirrer, and I started to set the spatula aside, but then he reached for it, and I didn't have the heart to deny him, so he ended up with both.

And then I thought, maybe I'm teaching the wrong thing here. Maybe I should be learning from him. Maybe there don't need to be opportunity costs in life at all. Maybe, when faced with a dilemma, it's always possible to choose both. You could base a whole philosophy on the premise that all supposedly exclusive choices are false.

But I wrote this journal entry instead.

Puzzle

Sat, 08 May 2004 01:45:14 GMT

Ted wrote half. I wrote half. Which is which?

1a. I felt the kick against the inside of my belly. It's not going to be much longer. If only Johnny would get home from school, I'd feel safe. Where is he?

1b. When I woke up, Harvey was strangling me with his cord. I elbowed him in the ribs, back-flipped free, then crane-kicked his face for the KO. Who rules the womb? Who?

2a. It looked so smooth as she glided across the ice. There was no way she could perceive the subtle indentation a few meters in front of her. She fell skinning her arm to her elbow.

2b. Jon plunged thru the doors and cried, "It's Billy! He's fallen through the ice! He's drowning!" I was sure he was already dead, but Jo was lacing up her skates. Out she raced. We have a good view from here. The [...]

3a. Franz was the discount tobacco godfather. There was a little of everything in Franz tobacco—pencil shavings, confetti, Cheerios, fish food—and the occasional human body part.

3b. The trash that walks into the discount tobacco store never stops intriguing me. This crazy redneck bitch and her inbred boyfriend strolled in the other day. Before they had set fo[...]

4a. The boulder fell in behind me with a sickening thunk. The air felt thinner as the light evaporated, and I was breathless. I screamed until the echoes made my ears ache.

4b. I unloaded the boxes all day Thursday. If anything was romantic, this was. Straws filled her apartment. Straws in vases. She came in. She gawked. "I said I can't get enough Strauss."

5a. A rope bridge spanned the chasm. Out we crawled, wobbling. Cortez slipped. The bridge swung wildly. He hung, legs dangling, then proceeded as on monkey bars. Soon we all followed suit.

5b. Our guide left us in the dense foliage that surrounded us. The vines limited our motion as if we were giants entangled in a playground's jungle gym. We were hopelessly lost.

6a. It was a hardscrabble existence, hawking lemonade on the Saharan sands, but damn it, that was my family's profession dating back to the dawn of time, and I was going to keep on in the tradition or die trying.

6b. Her hardscrabble lifestyle had left her bitter. Still under twenty, she had seen more in her life than the sheltered children she now was in school with. She wondered how she would make friends with people so alien to her.

7a. Art dealers evolved to have no eyebrows so they always looked excessively enthusiastic, regardless of what they were talking about. It was fun to watch them waiting in line at the movies, changing their oil, [...]

7b. Effusive expression had always been the bane of her relationships. Guys just didn't seem to understand that she had to express her fears. Especially around the 14th. That's when nature had seen fit to make her uncomfortable and God forbid if she was going to let the worthless bastard she was with not know it.

8a. It's not like they were ever very good at talking since they were angel fish, but Hannah loved Jake and thought they should be everywhere together. He was a fish of a different mind sort.

8b. They had a rapport. An understanding. He washed her shoes. She stared at him in terror. It was the natural order.

9a. She led a discursive love life. People wondered if she really had such diverse tastes. Maybe she enjoyed the taste of change. Maybe she was searching for something that didn't exist.

9b. Without Caprice, his mind rambled without purpose. Today have jelly for dinner. Tomorrow polish the silver. Truxan, their doglet, missed her disordered logic too. They pined away without her.

Ode on a Data Structure

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 14:21:11 GMT

A lovelier poem I never shall see

Than a red/black self-balancing binary tree.

To implement map<> or to implement set<>

No finer arrangement of bits have I met.

Her nodes, how they magically rotate in place,

With down-to-earth purpose and heavenly grace.

'Tis proven with strict mathematical rigor

The max/min height ratio shall never grow bigger

Than two --O ingenious! O marvelous Tree:

A lovelier poem there never shall be.

Snotty Pillow

Sat, 03 Jan 2004 13:26:57 GMT

Snotty Pillow is intended to be read as a comic strip. Each strip has four panels, all of them completely black except for the dialogue. The two characters are Lydia and Derf.

1  D:  Am I self-centered?
   L:  Yes.

2  L:  In fact you're probably not paying attention
       to what I'm saying right now.  Ever since you
       asked the question, you've been absorbed with
       thinking about how you would answer it.

3  D:  I don't think I'm self-centered.  I'm always
       thinking about other people's feelings.

4  L:  That would be love, mixed with a touch of pity.
       In case you were wondering.
   D:  I'm feeling a bit depressed.



1  D:  I wish I was dead.

2  D:  My friends all say I'm fun to be around and I have
       a good sense of humor.  They just don't get it.
       Those things aren't really important when you stop
       and think about it.

3  D:  What really matters is that I'm a shallow,
       conceited, self-obsessed, fragile, blood-sucking
       psychic parasite.

4  D:  I don't mean to imply that I'm actually psychic.
       Also I think grammatically the right thing to say
       is "I wish I were dead."
   L:  The soliloquy draws a 0.4 from the Australian
       judge.



1  D:  What are you most afraid of?
   L:  Losing you, probably.  Why, what are you afraid of?

2  D:  I'm terrified that the remaining four people on
       earth that don't realize what a loser I am will
       suddenly have the scales lifted from their eyes and
       I'll be left all alone with nothing to deny my
       crushing loserness.

3  D:  On the second tier, I'm positively petrified by sex.
   L:  Could be worse.  Petrified is good.

4  D:  And in a seven-way tie for third, it's public
       speaking, death, my parents, flying, gum disease,
       nuclear apocalypse, and clowns.
   L:  This is why I love you.



1  D:  Lydia, are you awake?  I think I need to be reassured.
   L:  Yeah?  What about?

2  D:  Everything.
   L:  Okay.  Everything is fine, Derf.

3  D:  How do you know?  Something could be going horribly
       wrong right this moment and we would never know.
       Right now somebody could be deciding not to invite us
       to a party because I'm such a dork.

4  D:  Not that I blame them.  I did throw up in their potted
       plant last time.  What are those things called, again?
   L:  Aloe.



1  D:  I hate my life.
   L:  Why's that?

2  D:  Every night I cry, and my pillow gets all wet with
       tears and snot.  I hate that.  Also it gets in my hair.

3  L:  You could try Kleenex.  Or handkerchiefs.
   D:  Too much trouble.  Anyway, that's like treating the
       symptoms and not the disease.  The real solution is not
       to cry all the time.

4  L:  But as long as you hate your life...
   D:  Exactly.  It's an endless downward spiral of snot and
       self-loathing.



1  D:  What if love fails?
   L:  I'm sorry?

2  D:  I mean, what if the world decides that being with
       someone is just too painful, and we all dissolve into a
       quivering dust of miserable individuals, too stung to
       risk talking to one another?

3  (blank)

4  L:  Um, I guess I'd have to invest heavily in Ben & Jerry's
       stock.  In that truly, truly absurd scenario.
   D:  But is it really so absurd?



1  D:  What do you hate the most about me?
   L:  How cute and cuddly you are.

2  D:  I'll enumerate some of my despicable traits that you
       might want to consider before answering.  I'm depressed
       all the time.  I'm neurotic.  I'm often paralyzed with
       fear and self-doubt.  And I have no self-control
       whatsoever.
   L:  Your sweet smile.

3  D:  I'm in a dead-end job that I constantly gripe about, but
       I never do anything about it.
   L:  The way you linger just a bit on my upper lip when you
       finish kissing me, and how it makes my toes tingle.

4  D:  I put silverware in the dishwasher wrong-side-up.  I
       never plan trips in advance, so we're always...  I'm
       sorry, what did you say?
   L:  Hush, you dork.



1  D:  I'm depressed.
   L:  But you're not depressed about anything in particular,
       just depressed in general.

2  D:  But I'm not depressed about anything in particular, just
       depressed in general.
   L:  I don't think you're predictable.

3  D:  I'm beginning to feel like I'm just too predictable.
   L:  For example, the next thing you say is bound to be
       something I never would have seen coming.

4  D:  Like the heat death of the universe.
   L:  Love is in full bloom.

Ozzylicious

Wed, 31 Dec 2003 21:22:02 GMT

Amid lost armies from the game of Risk,
Where ancient coins and M&Ms abound,
Between the cushions of my couch I found
The plastic wrapper from a compact disc.
"My name is Ozzylicious Double Wide!
Behold my white-hot beats, yo, and despair!"
The sticker screamed. "Don headphones if you dare
And listen as your brain gets deep-phat-fried!"
Beneath this boast, a second sticker read,
"Includes the hip-hop smash The King Is Dead!"
And yet another sticker, by the spine,
Proclaimed our price was fifteen ninety-nine.
Nothing beside remained. No disc, no beats,
Just endless cat hair, lint, and dryer sheets.

Sun, 21 Dec 2003 05:32:56 GMT

Somewhere a door opened. Light poured into Jacob's dusty prison cell from above. It struck the wall and splashed onto the stone floor. It got all over Jacob, who was sleeping there. He got up, cursing, and stood on a rock in the corner as the light sloshed around and (once the door, wherever it was, finally closed) drained out through the hole in the center of the cell. He was soaked. It had gotten all in his hair. He didn't get back to sleep the rest of the night. Everything glowed yellow.

He lay there still, half asleep, when a rooster crowed. Shortly after that, a crow roostered. Jacob groaned. The same cacophonous fracas was joined every morning. The rooster crowed again, a bit more emphatically. The crow roostered again, much louder. Jacob put his hands over his ears but it didn't help. Finally he grabbed a small stone from the floor, scraped and clawed his way up the wall, using the corner, and pitched the stone at the crow through his tiny window. He nearly hit it. Surprised into sudden flight, the crow cawed its annoyance. Somewhere, a cod crowed in response. Jacob groaned again and clambered down the wall to the floor of his glowing cell.

No one liked to live in a neighborhood with a prison, so all modern prisons were built on wheels. A little stone unicycle was built into every cell. Each cycle was coupled, via a gallimaufry of gears and chains, to one of the prison's many heavy stone wheels. If enough prisoners pedaled at once, the prison could achieve a steady crawl, moving perhaps a mile in a day. Wherever the prison came to rest, it would eventually outstay its welcome, and the villagers would heap abuse on the hapless prisoners until they had had enough and pedaled off to some other place. In the good old days, the villagers would throw good tomatoes and cabbage, and sometimes apples, to signal their disapproval. The prisoners would work the crowd for every morsel they could get, until the villagers lost interest, and then they would quietly pedal away. These days, the villagers were savvy. The things they threw now had not been smelled before on land or sea. It was awful.

Lunch was a strip of shoe leather and some grime. Old Joe came around afterwards. Years ago a townswoman in Blerth had thrown a funny-looking contraption into Old Joe's cell. It was made of two horseshoes, a length of iron chain, a few rods, and three brass rings. Jacob had seen this kind of thing before. It was a puzzle. The goal was to unhook the two horseshoes from the rings, or something, but Old Joe was able, by putting the horseshoe around one bar like so and bringing one end of the chain around like such, to move objects from one side of the iron bars of his door around to the other side. Including himself. He had tried to show Jacob the trick, but there was an essential part that Jacob's eyes could never quite catch because Old Joe always did it a bit too quickly.

"Rise and shine, lazyhead," Old Joe said. Jacob looked over his shoulder to see if Old Joe was making a joke. He couldn't tell. Old Joe just stood there smiling. "I was up bright and early today," Jacob said. "Did ye enjoy your filet of sole?" said Old Joe.

Then, "Speech, speech!" croaked Old Joe, his creaky voice initially muffled by uncontrolled white whiskers but ultimately amplified, distorted into the cry of a chain-smoking harpy, and conducted resoundingly to every corner of the prison by the polished stone corridors. "If yer glowing, ye must be radiant, and if yer radiant, ye must have spokes," Old Joe explained incomprehensibly. "And since ye have spokes, ye'll be our spokesman. What say ye then?"

"Let's pedal to Ichmere," Jacob said.

"We'll pedal to Ichmere!" exclaimed Old Joe, and disappeared. "You cain't peddle if you cain't sell," his wicked voice rang down the hall, becoming louder and more unearthly with each step. "But if there's one thing we know about it's cells! Pedal, men! Pedal like a church lady on an organ! Yessir! We're a-pullin' out all the stops today. 'Cause an organ's nothin' but a bunch o' pipes, and pipes are fer smokin', and where there's smoke there's fire, and if ye get fired, ye've been let go, and don't we all want to be let go? Let my people go!"

The inmates reacted variously. Some pedaled. Some railed at Old Joe to shut up. Some fulminated invectives against Old Joe's mother. Some covered their ears and wailed to ward off the noise, and when wailing failed, they beat their fists against their doors, and when being brutal proved futile, they bounced off the walls awhile, and when slow self-pulverization proved... well, painful, they gave up and pedaled. The prison ground into motion and trundled wearily away. Jacob held his sleepless head in his hands and groaned and groaned and groaned.

Contest winners!

Fri, 12 Dec 2003 03:34:45 GMT

The interesting story contest is over.

Without further ado, the winning entry is... poormattie's story aptly entitled "helping people".

Phew. How did you guys make these so good? It took me forever to decide.

Even xenoweeno gets props - longest entry.

Torrh

Wed, 10 Dec 2003 01:19:16 GMT

Ichrosh rose to power as a warlord of the hills

His people seized the City Torrh and he became the first emperor

Mrush killed him and usurped the throne

Mrush's son Perezaltus, a great general, succeeded him

Under Mrush Torrh conquered the Alaian and Doltan lands

But Mrush was betrayed by his own men

And the empire fell apart

Qulon poisoned all his opponents and gained control of the army

But the Besh Avo invaded in force then

A thousand men perished in their own doorways, fighting

The Besh Avo ravaged and destroyed Torrh

Their leader, Beth Prokajo, declared himself emperor

Under him the empire became stable

His sons followed him

Until Auletso his great-great-grandson was murdered

His throat slit by his lover Lei

Lei took a consort Cygnos and ruled through him many years

When they died in their time, Cygnos' son was emperor

He was a weakling though, and was slain in ill-considered battle

Running for his life

The general Motero seized control of Torrh

And set up a system of patronage

Rewarding governors who built fortifications

Soon Torrh ruled the five lands and the six seas

Motero disowned his son Folus and appointed Obrodo his successor

Folus became a governor in Doltar where he sold the city to Mezh

Mezh marched on Torrh but was met and crushed by Obrodo's army

However Obrodo was slain in battle

Pokov succeeded him but his excesses brought a revolution of the governors

Blood ran in the streets of Torrh again

They put in their own man, Molajus, and wrote a constitution

An ambitious Torrhan army lieutenant saw weakness in the new government

This man gained prominence fighting the tribes of Mezh's children

He marched home

Molajus soon made him the high commander

But all feared him

He gained political power

He had friends and spies in every corner of the city

One by one the governors fell under his control

Or were eliminated

When the plague came Molajus became sick and died

And I became Emperor.

Things will be different now.

last call

Tue, 09 Dec 2003 22:29:35 GMT

You have just over 24 hours left to enter the interesting story contest. It closes at 5:30 ET tomorrow.

The competition's pretty tight, but so far nobody's used cross-country bowling, the permeability of free space, or rob zombie.

Tue, 09 Dec 2003 02:18:27 GMT

The year was 1972. The doctor showed me Rorschach plate number one.

I felt refreshed. I had taken a full hour to drink my morning coffee. I was in a good mood. I wanted to cooperate. But the card didn't look like anything. I turned it upside down and suddenly it made sense. "It's Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand. He's sitting on some sort of throne or dais."

This was clearly what the picture was, and it was good to have an answer. The doctor wanted to know if I saw something else, so I turned the card around and around and eventually I think I muttered something about some dog heads.

He handed me the next card. This one had red splotches all over it. But it was pretty clear what it was. "This is Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand yelling at himself in a mirror, and it looks like he's wearing some kind of hat." Once I started thinking about the answer I'd just given, I was a little worried. Why were they giving me pictures of Durand? Well, they were trying to gauge my response, apparently, but it was a little creepy, wasn't it?

The next card was Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand and his twin lifting a heavy bowl or cauldron.

The next was Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand riding a motorcycle. The perspective was from nearly underneath the front tire.

The fifth card just had a butterfly on it.

But then the sixth card was Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand, rendered in photographic detail, sitting at a desk with a newspaper in front of him, and this time he was laughing at me. Or maybe he was laughing at something he had just read, but anyway he was laughing. I had to admit, if the doctor was trying to get at me, he was succeeding, at least in some small way. There isn't much that makes me nervous, and people have to seriously work at it to get me angry. But I was starting to feel a little hot, and when I feel hot I tend to get very conscious of how tight my shirt collar is. I think this is pretty normal. At least it isn't outright abnormal. I don't wear a tie very often, so when I do, it's easy to get conscious of the tight collar.

I said, "Do you think I could have a cup of water or something?"

Now if I had been at my buddy Steve Higgs's house, Steve would have said, "Oh, sure, dude, grab whatever you want, I think we got some Beast in the fridge." He would have said it in this great offhand way Steve has, not too pushy, not trying too hard to make you feel any particular way, just sure, dude, grab whatever you want. That's the kind of guy Higgs is.

The doctor said, "Sure." His voice oozed with understanding and kindness. He poured some water from a pitcher into a Dixie cup and handed it to me.

"Take your time," he said.

I tugged at my collar and cleared my throat.

To be honest, the amount of water that can fit in a Dixie cup doesn't make but about two sips.

He handed me another card. I had lost count at this point. It was eight or nine, I guess. This one was also very clear. I couldn't help sneaking a look up at the doctor. He wasn't looking at me; he was scribbling something down on his pad. "It's another mirror image," I said. "The one on the left is the real Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand, because he's making that little gesture with his right hand. I must have seen him do that a thousand times. You can't see it from here, but his other hand's in his pants pocket, and he's standing at a little bit of an angle." Jaunty angle, said a taunting little voice inside me. Not a real voice-- I mean, not an imaginary voice-- that is, it's just a figure of speech. To distract myself I held the card right up to my nose and squinted, and then I covered up the top half of the picture with my hands. "This bottom part looks like the garage he has at the Durand Building. It's in the basement." I don't know why I had to mention that it was in the basement. The doctor was really on a tear now, scribbling like a madman. I had to think that this wasn't going well. Still, as long as I kept my cool, everything would be fine.

The doctor handed me the next card. My voice cracked as I said, "This is Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand, standing with his head thrown back in ecstasy. There's a sinister power radiating from all the bones in his chest, and he has his hands balled up in fists in front of him." But I managed to end casually enough. "That's one hell of a pose. It's like something out of a comic book, actually. How did you get him to pose for this picture?" Despite my cool exterior, though, I was getting, frankly, anxious. My eyes felt like I hadn't been blinking enough. My insides felt like I hadn't been breathing enough. I had to focus.

I looked at the next card and immediately said, "Grateful Dead poster." The doctor didn't smile. I turned the card over. "Mushroom cloud," I said. I got to thinking about mushroom clouds, and eventually the doctor said my name, making it a question, as though I'd been staring off into space or something. There was no use beating around the bush. The picture was of a small human figure in command of a vast, intimidating array of malicious forces. At the front was a gigantic banner of Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand's enormous grinning pink face. I toyed with the thought of not mentioning it, but if I held back, they'd know they'd gotten to me. I had to stay calm. It was a test of how quickly I could bring myself to face the reality of the situation. I got a hold of myself and matter-of-factly described the whole scene, every detail.

The last card looked like an abstract painting of Hell until something clicked in my head and I saw this incredible collage combining pictures of my ex-wife, Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand, my eighth-grade art teacher, and Sinead O'Conner. They were all naked. I'll leave it at that.

And that was it. I sat back and took a few deep breaths. It hadn't been so bad, actually. Thirty or forty cards, tops. And it couldn't have taken more than about five hundred years to go through them. The doctor babbled a few sentences about something and got up to leave, and it was just then, as he opened the door, that I saw him. Standing just on the other side of the door, barely visible for the glare on the tiny rectangular window in the door. Jonathan Saint-Aignan Durand.

Had he been watching me the entire time? Had he set up this entire thing? What was it, some kind of cruel joke? Was the room wired for sound? Horror-stricken, I looked around, aware of my surroundings for the first time. Had I been recorded? Did the doctor have a tape recorder? In the little window, Durand grinned at someone I couldn't see, and gave his great phony laugh. I swallowed and felt the pressure of my shirt collar on my Adam's apple. I had seen enough. I got up from my chair angrily. It fell over behind me; I made for the door. I slammed it open forcefully, shoved the doctor aside, and charged into the waiting room.

Durand was gone. I picked a corridor at random and stormed off down it, but there were nothing but empty rooms. I came back, stomped past the doctor trying to pick his cards up off the floor, and went another direction. He had gotten away. "Where is he?" I roared. I confronted the doctor. "Where did he go?"

The doctor just looked at me, blank, stunned, uncomprehending, unable to speak. He shook his head.

The next day I set out on the hard, neverending road back to sanity.

Contest

Sat, 06 Dec 2003 14:56:50 GMT

This is your big chance to win fame, glory, and the admiring belly laughs of your peers!

Just reply to this post with a story. It doesn't have to be long, just a few words will do. The catch: your story must be composed entirely of my friends' interests. Style points for using mostly other people's interests and not your own.

For example:

guys with nice smiles
girls who kick ass
flirting
silliness
kissing
cuddling
necking
biting
tasteful nudity
graphics

babies

(Thanks to sawahbean, delitescence, and xenoweeno for these interests.)

No fair changing your interest list for the purposes of this contest. Play nice.

For your convenience, links to my friends' interests: alarmist, cmeador, crunchymama, damnange, daniele, delitescence, eeshroyer, fishsupreme, hal23x, jorend, justbek, magicalmo, mclaw666, oliviao, planx_constant, poormattie, sawahbean, schie, shishuu, taigh, tedshroyer, tuxmatt, underdamped, xenoweeno

The Tragic End to the Spectacularly Hazardous Career of Blunt Trauma Jackson

Tue, 02 Dec 2003 05:31:04 GMT

On the heels of "Blindfold Drag Race" came the 12x-platinum collection "Houdini Never Fought Sharks". The second single from that disc, fast-grinding punk anthem "Shooting Bottle Rockets In Uncle Z's Meth Lab", made the Top 40 and stayed there all summer, a feat unique in the history of the genre. It seemed Blunt Trauma Jackson could do no wrong.

The stunning reversal came in the autumn of 2004 when Jackson, convicted of a series of traffic violations, was required to attend a two-day driver safety course. He emerged a visibly shaken man. According to Jackson's friends, he was completely unable to work, had a gaunt, hangdog look, and was prone to bouts of sobbing.

Jackson's next album was the abysmal "Driving at a Responsible Speed on the Right Side of the Road". Released in July of 2006, this uninspired and depressing disc was panned by critics and deplored by Jackson's own fans. It also spurred those who knew Jackson to encourage him to get help. A group of his friends staged an intervention which culminated in their throwing Jackson from a plane at 20 000 feet. Nothing helped. On 23 January 2007, EMI dropped Jackson's contract. The move only made official the sad end of a career that had evaporated years before.

Leaving behind the "Blunt Trauma" moniker, Ernest Jackson went on to record several lackluster discs under his given name, all of which are better forgotten. Jackson died peacefully at his home in Poughkeepsie, New York, on 22 April 2012, after using pressurized oxygen tanks to jet-propel himself from the top of a speeding '64 Ford Mustang into a wall of knives.

Sun, 30 Nov 2003 20:35:28 GMT

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Rob rolled over and slugged the alarm clock. It shut up. He peeled one eye halfway. Seven thirty. He rolled back over; bedsprings groaned. Just fifteen more minutes.

Caroline took the elevator from the garage down to second floor Cosmetics and shuffled to her counter. A concave mirror stared at her. Dark circles showed through the foundation under her eyes.

Tag's kids threw Honey Smakz at each other as he unfolded the paper. The headline read, "Brattler to lay off 1200". It didn't say which plants might close. Tag's coffee grew cold.

The Spider was dark, loud, smoky, and sweaty, just like any Friday night. Lisa grinned as she slipped a hundred from the register into her pocket. She'd put it back later. Probably.

Top of the eighth and Alvarez was looking tired. Packard chewed his lip. "All right," he finally said. "One more inning. Let's put this one away." He loped back to the dugout.

Peter came in early. He turned on the lights and started the coffeemaker. He checked the fax. Then he went to his cubicle. A gray envelope sat on his keyboard. He hesitated.

Sharon had to finish the drafts, so she arrived late to the company-wide meeting. The atmosphere wasn't what she'd expected: too quiet and formal. The president was making some kind of announcement.

"—every single job—" "—rebuild the whole stupid engine—" "—how many times—" "—not my fault—" "—tell you not to use—" "—that drive train—" "—interrupt me!" Fellino jabbed a fat finger at Joe. "YOU'RE—"

"—just not making your quota," Mr Fitch finished. "I'm sorry, Jerome, but with these numbers, I just can't afford to keep you on." Jerome fidgeted helplessly in the black leather overstuffed chair.

Darla Maples held her head erect. "I can at least stay out the week, can't I? I need at least that long. I think I deserve that long. At least. Donald. Please."

Jesse Moorecock stood there, sweating in the ridiculous full-body Iron Beak Music rooster suit, and boggled at the absurdity. "You can't fire me, buddy!" he screamed, flapping his wings insanely. "I quit!"

Stung and numb, Donna sat and stared at the photos and memos she'd tacked to the cubicle walls. The mail boy woke her from her reveries. He had an empty cardboard box.

Jason Bowers grimaced into his cell phone. "I accept the board's decision," he said cheerfully. "No, I think we had two great years, actually. DGI's position today— No, I understand. Sure. Ciao."

Security hauled Bud off, kicking and ranting. "You done crossed the line now! Elliott Motors ain't heard the last of me! I'll be back!" He roared wordlessly, inhumanly, and started throwing punches.

She plunked her box of junk onto the bar. "The usual, Jimmy, only line 'em up, will ya? I'm celebrating tonight." She gave him her devastating sexy/vulnerable smirk. He started pouring.

Rob slumped back to the bedroom and climbed under the covers. The springs complained again. When he stopped moving, there was silence except for the low, neverending, guttural moan from his pillow.

NaNo results

Fri, 28 Nov 2003 23:43:36 GMT

Tonight I finished the first part of my NaNoWriMo novel: eleven thousand words, about a third of the book's intended length. This is about as far as I suppose I'll get this year.

Morbidly curious? Download Part One - zipped text files. Or read it online. (But not if you're looking for an actual plot or interesting characters.)

So much for that.

Overheard in an airport

Tue, 18 Nov 2003 04:51:12 GMT

GRANDPA tends to speak too loudly. He is stern and serious throughout. He moves stiffly.

RUBY is seven years old. She instinctively knows GRANDPA is joking. She never stops fidgeting and bouncing about.

They start on, center.

GRANDPA: Now let us play a game.

RUBY: Ring around the rosie?

GRANDPA: Mmm. No.

RUBY: Please, Gran'pa?

GRANDPA: Here is the game we shall play. I go 'Blaah,' and you go 'Mee mee mee mee mee mee.' We take turns. Are you ready.

RUBY: Yeah.

GRANDPA: Blaah.

RUBY: Mee mee mee mee mee mee.

GRANDPA: Blaah.

RUBY: Mee mee mee mee mee mee.

GRANDPA: Blaah.

RUBY: Mee mee mee mee mee mee.

GRANDPA: Blaah. —I win.

RUBY: You do not! I win!

GRANDPA: I beg your pardon.

RUBY: Mee mee mee mee mee mee! (giggles)

GRANDPA: Now we shall play 'Ring around the rosie'.

They face each other and join hands.

GRANDPA and RUBY (singing and spinning):

Ring around the rosie

Pocket full of posies (GRANDPA says "A pocket...")

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down! (RUBY falls down.)

RUBY: You're supposed to fall down, Gran'pa.

GRANDPA: I don't do that part.

RUBY: Then I win!

GRANDPA: You should consult the Americans with Disabilities Act.

RUBY: Can we get some ice cream, Gran'pa?

They begin a slow exit right.

GRANDPA: We can get slug salad.

RUBY: Ice cream!

GRANDPA: I suppose we must compromise. Liver and onions.

RUBY: Ice cream!

GRANDPA: You strike a hard bargain, sir.

RUBY (off): I'm not a sir!

End.

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 01:36:55 GMT

Every day, just as we expected from the start, several hundred people pull up to the pumps wanting gasoline, despite the sign that towers over the street, declaring "Gasoline not sold here" in foot-high letters to all who have eyes—just underneath the even larger and more colorful sign announcing what we do sell, namely "CANOLA OIL". It's hard being an installation art project.

To be sure, we expected confusion, disbelief, annoyance, and even rage from the "customers", but I believe we all expected to take a dismissive attitude toward it. After all, our goal was to shake people up. But I am surprised at how annoying it is, and how early in a twelve-hour shift emotional fatigue sets in. I'm not sure words can express. The worst part is my secret realization that the customers have every right to be angry. If the pumps, the lights, the towering sign, all those symbols we set out to deconstruct, have any meaning to them, then from their perspective we are lying to them by using those symbols to mean something else. Well, we all knew we'd be lying to people when we showed up. I just hadn't experienced how gut-angry it makes people.

It would be easy to become resentful of M. H., who came down to experience the installation for about fifteen minutes on the first day and hasn't returned since. I believe it's enough for him to know that the canola oil station exists, to see it in the papers, and to give the occasional hopelessly esoteric interview about it. This is his personality. Once he has breathed life into the project, it is no longer relevant to him. The project is particularly interesting to me, though: I can't tell if it has any purpose anymore. I had come to think of this whole project as a social statement. It's disappointing to realize it's just some Andy-Kaufman-esque psych-out. That sort of thing always appealed to me before, but this time I have a deflated, why-am-i-here feeling that I can't shake. It's quite the existential dilemma. And it gets worse.

The last thing I could ever have expected is for people to pull up in homemade, canola-oil-powered vehicles and buy ten or twenty gallons of our oil, quite seriously, for fuel. We've had four different people do this now. It gives me the feeling I'm living on a different planet than I thought I was. I clean their windshields, dutifully maintaining the charade. I then hop in my gasoline-powered Honda Civic and go buy more plastic bottles of canola oil from the Shop 'n Save so we don't run out.

And as I'm doing this, I think: I have unconsciously conceived of this project, all along, as doing art to people, planting an elbow firmly in the ribs of the sheep who never think much about the gas their car consumes or the real cost of what they're burning. Now I find there are people using my project to "do art" to me. The tables are turned. Their project encompasses ours completely. Whether the media knows or not, whether the other grad students working with me on this even care or not, I know we have lost some unspoken game of relevance. By turning our collective fantasy into reality, they have punctured it. Great art is transformative. I am transformed.

Foolishness

Wed, 20 Aug 2003 04:50:11 GMT

Ramp