Tuesday, October 24, 2006

injures appreciates sank

On the edge of the counter, a glass of warm milk. Misty Malevolent, a teenager, brushed the smooth glass of milk with her slender fingertips, the glass wobbled, she brushed her fingers against it again, the glass of milk tottered but did not wobble. She looked behind her as if to make certain her parents weren't home (even though rationally she knew she'd hear their key in the lock), that she was perfectly alone, and she leaned forward and drew her tongue up the length of the warm glass.

The glass fell. A guilty flood of pleasure raced down her face to the pit of her gut.

Hopefully there was time to clean up the mess before her parents came home.

Monday, October 23, 2006

banner cells simplifying

Down through the dark armpits of history they came, surrounded by infestations of midges and tics, feared for their awful odours, the closest modern equivalent being a blend of excrement and unsanitary pidgeon offal from the unlicensed butcher (Stanley) who worked in the late 2190s behind the abandoned Woolworth's building at the corner of Lucius Ave. and Z street in Bophiliyork, (The old conglomity of Boston Philidelphia and New York but not yet including the state of New Jersey because by then Stanley had finally retired and went on a moon safari he never returned from, deciding to settle on the colony, but that's another story).

The Unwashed Intelligences were a collection of badly assembled parts from several of God's kits, some experimental. They came, the not-working-terribly-well-ones, the seen-from-a-great-distance-and-run-upwind-ones, those ancient cracked beings who had presence, substance and self awareness nearly before the Creator itself.

They came. Nameless but to themselves, known only by titles signifying what to do (run away) if you met one:

run away.

Fast.

They came, they came and they were hungry.

What saved the planet from certain and total doom? What stopped the unstoppable drooling soul consuming odiferous monsters? What, if anything could equal them in raw sewage content?

Was it a bomb? A new 300 Megawatt microwave beam weapon? Any guess?

They ate at McDonalds.

The End.

forbid intermediate weasels

The donkey was old and tough on the teeth. Maximillian Conglomerus Vex, a trader, sighed as he eyed the uneaten remains of his transportation. Pepe had been a good donkey. He was sad to have to eat him.

What saddened Max further was his location. Max was in a mountain pass. Although it was summer in the valley, winter never left these high passes. Max cursed incessesantly at the cold. The cold was a person to Max, a person worthy of hate. Max hated the cold. Would his luck never change?

There was a big ripping sound and then a CRACK and a lightning bolt shot out of the cold blue sky. Max Jumped up. He sensed an oncoming Klee-shay. Although Max had never seen one outside of a zoo, wild Klee-shays had been sighted in these mountains.

Then suddenly there it was, a wild Klee-shay, now appearing as a suspicious looking Greek with a wrapped present addressed to Max, and then looking like a large Goose laying...were those golden eggs?

Max leapt for the Klee-shay, it would fetch a tidy sum at the next marketplace.

Alas, the Klee-shay vanished in a puff of smoke. Max landed in the dust.

"I should have known," muttered Max, and returned to his cold meal of Donkey. Sighing between every bite.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

birch repair butter


20 degrees Celcius in October (Warsaw 2006) Posted by Picasa

zero firmly proceeding

"How do I look?" he asked.
She thought the outfit made him look fat.
"You look Gay," she said.
He didn't think so but put back the tie.
"When are you home?" she said.
"I dunno," he said.
Maybe now he'd know if she still cared.
She would call 8 times that night, but there was no reception at the BananaBamBar and he didn't get her calls.
"Hungry?" he said, "I can make us a couple sandwiches before I go," he said.
You just want me to get fat, she thought.
"No, I'm not terribly hungry right now," she said.
That's because you gorged on chocolate all afternoon, he thougbt.
"Nevermind," he said.
They left at the same time. He to his evening and She to hers.
They would miss each other.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

evens nailed traded

Tara was born on September 23, 2010.

This makes Tara a Virgo.

On September 24th, Doctors injected nanites into both of her auditory nerve bundles, between her eardrums and her brain.

The nanites would lie dormant for the first two years of her life. Then her parents would start feeding her supplements. The supplements would stimulate and feed the nanites. The nanites would grow into wetware DRM circuitry that, when activated, would receive and filter all sounds requiring a license.

Tara's DRM would activate sometime around her 6th birthday. She would only be able to listen to broadcasts if she had purchased a license, the signals would be sent directly to her audio wetware.

Fastforward a decade: At a local concert.

"Hey Tara! Glad you could make it! How 'bout this band!" said Michael, a boy from school Tara thought was totally cute.
"Yeah, it's really heavy," said Tara, having no idea what kind of music was playing because her parents hadn't given her enough cash to pay for the digital rights to the concert so all she picked up was the sqeaky unamplified voice of the singer and the weak, unamplified undistorted, unflanged sounds of the singer's band.
"Uh, right," said Michael, who couldn't understand how such a cool girl could misread a slow romantic ballad so badly, he couldn't admit even to himself the possibility that she just hadn't paid for the concert.
"So Michael, I gotta run, I promised my friends I'd get back right away," said Tara, who'd come alone but was now desparate for a means of escape.
"Yeah, sure," said Michael, sensing there were questions better left unasked.

Tara walked home burning with humiliation, why hadn't her parents paid for the full DRM service? Then she could have heard the concert the way it was meant to be heard, but with their outdated hippy ways, all she could hear was unmodified acoustic instruments which meant she was limited to the occasional string quartet. At least they'd bought the tv/radio package, otherwise she wouldn't even have been able to aspire to normalcy.

Sometimes she wanted to rip the wetware circuitry right out of her head. Even though she knew it would only make her deaf.

Sometimes she felt the urge.

And tomorrow, was she going to say to Michael?

technical romance void


Modern Warsaw is architecturally fascinating (Warsaw 2006) Posted by Picasa

cattle skull babies


Another gorgeous restored pre-war Warsaw apartment (Warsaw 2006) Posted by Picasa

thorn swiss talent

There he went, down the street like a bad simile, a rickety concoction of backyard genius, school supplies and leftovers from the junk metal yard around the corner.

That summer, Finn Johnson, Ronald and Mary Johnson's kid, built himself a scooter.

And it was fast.

He was only 13 years old and already a mechanical wonder, most kids left alone at home have taken things apart. Parents come home to find a toaster or a camera disassembled. Kids discover it's harder to put these things together again. Finn's parents only discovered he'd been at it when Mary Johnson turned on her television one morning and noticed that all the fuzzy channels were clear and sharp.

and there were hundreds more channels.

Ronald made Finn decouple the full cable service Finn had patched into including the video on demand service but Mary missed her HBO so Ronald reluctantly asked Finn to put it back. Eyes averted, they hoped Finn knew what he was doing.

So that's how a 13 year old got a speeding ticket on a homebuilt scooter.

When the Police stopped Finn. He was travelling 110 miles an hour.

In fourth gear.

His scooter's engine is 88cc's.

God knows what he'll do when he grows up.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

clip mode conceived

15,000 years ago, on an island that would be blown into space by a volcanic eruption in just over 10,000 years, 2 time travelling citizens of a futuristic society fell into conversation.

"What do you think of the new restaurant down by the pier?"
"Lovely view, if only those primitive humans didn't keep getting so close in their reed boats,"
"Reed boats you say? Did they have that technology last time it was this time?"
"I hear Spraggleblat down in the tool shop has been slipping them hints during his off-the-rez trips."
"Unbelievable! Have you got any proof?"
"Well, not now, but 14,000 years from now there's currently a world government run by Canadians."
"Whoa-ho! Cerainly a few full deviations from the main!"
"And the world anthem is sung two ways, one way takes 3 days and is in 77 languages and the other takes 'only' 90 minutes and uses all 77 languages in an artificially generated grammatical matrix."
"The horror, somebody has to talk to Spraggleblat!"
"Or our ancestors will be eating back bacon and pancakes forever."
"Unspeakable!"

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

formula clues vanish


'formula clues vanish' original artwork 2006. Click to view larger (344k) image.

B8A urges comments. This is a colourized 8 minute sketch. Took too long to colour to qualify for regular B8A rules but if a positive reaction is received, may repeat experiment. Note: B8A is an all-genres experiment, this time the genre was the Frank Miller/Alan Moore Graphic Novel. One cannot expect further scenes of graphic violence and nudity again in the near future. Thanks for your comments in advance. For those who are curious about the process, I sketched, then colourized, then added text. In other words completely bass ackwards. Posted by Picasa

halloween portrayal steadman

'monster of energy' original artwork 2006 Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

humane dog theft

Karta Leiben was an old school friend of mine, I hadn't seen him in years, then out of the blue he lands on the bench next to me in the park and without bothering to catch up with where I've been or what I've been doing he hands me this slim little book and says it was nice to see me and then he's off. The bench barely had a chance to get warm.

Meanwhile, the slim little book in my hands was very warm indeed, like he'd been carrying it in his shirt pocket, it was that slim.

As I examined the teeny volume I couldn't help but notice it's fine quality materials and loving craftsmanship, it reminded me of handmade leatherbound italian diaries that can be purchased in Sienna or Florence, their soft leather and careful stitching signifying that whatever was to be written inside was very important to the owner.

This book was like one of those, and owing to the fact that Karta disappeared without a trace and given that this book is almost certainly one of a kind, I feel I must reproduce at least a fragment of it here, because I fear it may not be long in my hands.

It's a book that seems to want to be passed on.

Excerpt from The Art and Science of Marriage by Andrew Nomenis

...Marriages are not meant to be fun all the time, they are meant to be a challenge, not in the sense of neverending strife but rather an ongoing dialogue on many levels between two people with deep and vested interests.
Marriage provides an endless source of insight into the mysteries of human behaviour and interpersonal interaction. Your marriage brings many tangible and intangible rewards certainly, however even a cursory inspection of marriage throughout history and right up to contemporary times shows (it is a startlingly obvious fact) that marriage is a difficult institution to occupy and defend and so it should be.
Like many great things in life it is meant to be hard because if it were easy, wouldn't everyone be married?
Explore your marriage, experiment with your marriage, study your marriage, take risks with your marriage and then the question of whether you remain in your marriage becomes moot. Vibrant living things struggle. Only the dead stagnate. Marriage is a process not a goal...

Alas, that's all I got to read, it was such exciting stuff I passed it on to Felix Flix, an old friend I ran into the other day and well, you get the point, maybe someday this book will come to you?

guest appearance writing

B8A has the pleasure of introducing a guest writer today.

Helmut

By Beata Kuzminska

It all started when I heard a knock at my front door. It was about 11 pm. I didn't expect anybody. I had to think a few minutes: open the door or not? The knocking didn't stop. At last I decided to open the door. At the door stood a very strange person, a creature. He wasn't tall, he had big green eyes, blue hair and was wearing strange clothes. He wore woollen yellow jeans and a blue jacket, he had a hat on his head. He looked scary and he was completely wet. I was standing there looing at him when he said, "Good evening, could I have something warm to drink and dry my clothes?"
"Yes," I said, completely surprised and closed the door.
The strange creature sat on my sofa and started looking around my house. He was as small as a child but he looked like an adult person. When he was sitting on the sofa his legs didn't touch the floor. I went to the kitchen and I started to prepare a tea for my guest. I waited for the hot water and I was thinking all the time, "who was he? What was he doing in the city? What did he want? Why did I open my door to him? What was he doing now while I'm making him his tea? Is he still in my living room? Maybe he left?"
The water boiled. I took a cup and came back to my living room. The strange person was still there.
"This is for you. Your hot tea," I said.
"Thank you."
"I'll let you drink and I'll look for something you can wear," I said.
"You are very kind. Thank you. I didn't tell you my name. I'm sorry. I'm Helmut."
"Nice to meet you. My name is Pola," I said.
Helmut offered his hand. I shook it. His hand was small and cold, too cold, like the hand of a dead man.
I left Helmut again. In this time I went looking for something he could wear. I didn't have any children so I didn't have little clothes but I found a t-shirt belonging to my younger sister. When I came back to the living room with the t-shirt in my hand Helmut was sleeping on the sofa. I'll not wake him up, I thought, so I brought a plaid blanket and covert my guest. For a moment I thought whether to go to bed, at last I decided to go.
The next morning I went quickly to the living room but Helmut wasn't there. The t-shirt and the plaid blanket lay on the sofa. The front door was closed. I started looking for Helmut in other parts of my house but he was nowhere. He should have written some words of goodbye, I thought, but at once I understood that it was stupid because didn't know if helmut can write. Maybe it was my dream, maybe Helmut didn't exist. I didn't meet Helmut again and to this day I don't know if it really happened or if it was only in my dreams.

The End.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

ugly valuation rough

Rot. It was moral rot. Two anonymous rotten tomatoes sat in the back booth of a dirt bar and conditioned their stalks.

"That's about it," said one.
"Are you joking? I did all that?" said the other.
"I'm afraid so," said the first.
"Do you really think I'll have to swear off the ketchup?"
"Sorry buddy, I'm afraid so."
"But the other rotten tomatoes saw the evening differently, didn't they?"
"Not the point old boy, there's a time for all things in the world and it's time for you to turn over a new leaf."
"I don't know if I can, I've been rotten for so long, do you think I can do it?"
"Sure, you were never really rotten in your center, you can be ripe again, maybe even raw."
"I suppose there's no choice, I've got to become a raw again tomotoe, what choice do I have?"
"If you want to keep the fruit you love, I think it's the only way,"
"totally raw? You think I'll have to go cold vegetable?"
"Naw, well, yeah actually."

The first rotten tomatoe finished his drink and got up as if to leave. The second left his drink unfinished and did the same.

"Cheer up kid, you'll make it, I'll see you around."

The raw again tomatoe left the bar.
The rotten tomatoe stayed.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

valid strain frowned

It was a time of magic. Superstition ruled the world. A dark time. After the empire and before the age of reason.
It was a clouded time. When life was nasty brutish and short.
William McLarty was born into this time with a magical power so dangerous that by the time he was in his early teens, everyone, from the church to the king's men wanted him dead.
William was cursed with an awful power.
William could think.
Nearly 1000 years later, one of William's decendents was having lunch with a collegue from the laboratory when the curse manifested itself again.
"So Jack, get it like this, if time is like a cloud of probability with the present like an endlessly moving point of maximum collapse, then it should be possible to travel in time without affecting causality," said Bill McLarty.
"Come on Bill, even if what you say is theoretically possible it would still be impossible in terms of the energy needs of such a device," said Jack, Bill's co-researcher at the laboratory.
"Oh, so it takes a lot of energy to travel in time?" said Bill.
"Enormous quantities, and huge machines," said Jack.
"Are you sure?" said Bill.
"Absolutely," said Jack.
"So where's the big machine moving us in time now?" said Bill.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

raw near darling

She was going to be the ruin of him, but Jeremy Jones just couldn't stay away from Claudette Sikorska.

Claudette was whimsical, tragical, uptight, a little snooty, just like Beck predicted.

Jeremy was a big fan of Beck. He didn't say that out loud where he worked though. Water quality technicians were clannish and didn't favour west coast experimental rock at the moment.

To Jeremy it was like a 37 year old being forced to live at Kindergarten.

They met for lunch one day. After a dozen maybe's and I don't knows on the part of Claudette.

"I'd meant to meet you sooner Jer, it just didn't work out that's all," she said. Why did it sound like she was breaking up with him on the first date?
"I understand you're busy Claudette but I respect my time and for you I made a special exception," he said.
"Oh, and what's that supposed to mean?" she said.
"I know I don't look like much and I also know when someone's holding out for a better deal," he said.
"So why should I stay now?" she said.
"Because no one you ever meet will be willing to put up with your nonsense," he said "
"So you think it's nonsense now?" she said. Jeremy had gotten through to her.
"Yeah, when did you start to think I could respect someone who treats other people like you've treated me? I only met you today to tell you I'm glad I found out what kind of a person you are now before I make a big mistake and get into something serious with you" he said. Whew, he was nearly out of breath on that one, he'd been saving it up.

Her beautiful eyes turned black. Then disappeared behind her lowered lashes. She seemed to shrink inside herself, her cheeks blazed, the next thing she said sounded brittle and plaintive.

"Can we at least sleep together?" she said.
"Maybe" he said, "if you ask me nicely."

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

farm cave allies


farm cave allies (Kalkan 2006) Posted by Picasa

advising pipe activating

In the long years through deep space, sometimes I thought we'd lost our sense of humour.

"Good to see you Niall," I said to my old friend, a genuine wooden owl from Earth.
"Cuckoo," said Niall.

Last night, over breakfast, Stanton had lured me into another of his sociolinguistic arguments. Kay Stanton was always willing to drag out the same old hash, why we bothered with a 24 hour cycle on board a spacecraft when we could pick 25 and give everyone a little more time in the day.

Stanton like myself was on an antipodal timeshift so we ate our dinner in the morning and our breakfast at night.

Which on a spacecraft is purely a semantic discrimination.

I didn't worry like Stanton, I worried about other things, like had our language become stilted and reserved having dealt so long with the logic and abstraction which defines our episteme?

As I often wondered, with our heads so full of centuries of knowledge, had we lost our sense of humour?

"Come on Stephen, just because we have the same laryngeal position as our forebears doesn't mean we have to retain all their eccentricities!"

As a professional historian and closet libertine, it was exactly such language that 'freaked the bejayzus out of me.'"

Monday, October 02, 2006

shouts opus infection

"And then, when Troy Ludlove got into his Mercedes, everyone just laughed and laughed," said Mickey Henkle.

Mickey was holding court again. Who could put up with his preposterous stories? It made Sammy Johnson wonder if maybe Mickey was hiding something, something dark and juicy, something that smelled like old gym socks, something that smelled like a story.

Sammy was a journalist.

Mickey had grown up on the questionable side of the railroad, his lushious lifestyle the product of questionable dealings with criminal elements.

Or that's what people said.

Sammy sipped his Pol Roger and wondered whether Mickey knew he was having an on again off again affair with Mickey's fiance, Julie Smalls. Julie had been an off-broadway actress when Mickey met her. She had been frail and innocent.

By the time Sammy met her she had turned hard. Like concrete, like steel. In bed he called her his Iron maiden, she liked that. She saw in him a way to escape. Mickey was always on the edge of trouble, that's what she said, although always on the gleaming edge of respectability as far as the equally rich and paranoid neighbors were concerned.

But Julie knew better. She knew Mickey from the old days. From the big pipe days. She'd confessed as much to Sammy.

Mickey ranted on and on about Troy Ludlove, from across the room, Sammy felt his cold fishy stare.

"And then, we put his feet in cement and sent him to the bottom of the Hudson!" he said. In a tone signifying hilarity, pretense, not-to-be-taken-seriously talk.

But his eyes were all on Sammy.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

superb shallow screws

Felix got up that morning the same way he always got up. Breakfast was also uneventful.

Then he grabbed his things for work and locked the door behind him.

Once in his car, he drove very slowly in the far left lane or very quickly, tailgating, in the far right lane. When he got to work, he parked in someone else's spot then went to his fiftieth floor office directly from the parking level.

Although people hurried to catch his elevator, he held his finger (guess which one) firmly over the 'close door' button and nobody made it in time.

Once at his desk he rose immediately and walked to the reception area and borrowed several pens he would not be returning. He then walked around the office looking for collegues busy working and whenever he found one proceeded to talk at them until they couldn't work and had to excuse themselves to either the kitchen or the washroom.

He did this all morning.

At lunch he went for a walk on the bicycle path completely ignoring the angry cries buzzing past him. In fact, the furious cyclists inspired him. He 'borrowed' a bike that had been left outside a convenience store and cycled over to the nearest intersection where he very carefully and slowly fell on top of a pedestrian who had been waiting for the lights to change.

He didn't give the pedestrian an opportunity to hit him but rather quickly cycled back to work.

Along the way he scratched and dented several parked cars.

All afternoon he surfed porn on his computer and whenever the receptionist asked about the missing pens he claimed not to have them anymore.

On his way out at the end of the day he yelled at the receptionist for not informing him about something everybody else somehow knew about and the shamefaced poor creature didn't have the courage to correct him.

As he backed out of the parking space that wasn't his he ignored the note on his windsheild and rather focused on ensuring that in backing out he scratched (quite badly) the car beside his.

Once he got home, he yelled at his neighbors and slammed his door shut.

All in all a productive day.

creating text lyrics

"Girls are people too," he said.
''That's it? That's the story?" we said.
"Either you're both total idiots or I'm a sexist pig," he said.
"Given those options, you're a sexist pig," we said.

The First University of the Built Environment was Göbekli tepe

"Only good is good, it is easy to be a Buddha when you are a prince. Don't follow me, if you find Buddha, kill Buddha, by which I m...