Tuesday, February 27, 2007

trouble eared uncinus

"Where have you been Charlie?," said Frank, a radio presenter.
"Try not to mock me when I tell you, I've been on an existential vacation," said Charlie, a dentist.
"Huh? Is that like where you go somewhere and ask yourself what it all means?"
"Basically, only I didn't really go anywhere, I just cleared my social schedule for a week, spent my free time thinking about 'what ifs' and stuff," said Charlie.
"Ah Charlie, not the 'what ifs' again," said Frank.
"Sorry man, they just crept up on me," said Charlie.
"Why do you always have to pull this stuff when everything's going fine? Everything's fine, right?"
"But that's how it is Frank, I only get that way when I'm not in a hurry, when I'm-"
"-on top of things."
"Yeah, on top of things."
"So you came to any conclusions on your 'urban retreat' or did you just go full circle?"
"Full circle, but that's alright, nothing wrong with reaffirming your life choices and-"
"Your life accidents."
"Yeah, that too," said Charlie.
"Just don't pull a Vonnegut."
"A what?"
"You know, a Kurt Vonnegut Jr., like when he'd get drunk and call up old girlfriends from something like 30 years ago and hang up when they answered."
"What about when someone else answered the phone? People move, Frank," said Charlie.
"Ah, well I suppose he'd have a conversation."
"What'd his wife think about this?"
"She kept quiet about it, anywayI don't think he ever knew he got caught, you didn't pull a Vonnegut did you?"
"Nah, that would be pathetic."

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

rushing permeating smegma

Frankie Provalone, a con artist, shuffled his feet to the jukebox playing 'Oh what a wonderful life.'

Outside the bar, grim shapes resolved themselves in the shadows into a jigsaw puzzle of a man in a long green coat.

Across town, Chief Inspector Barnswell signed the duty roster for the night shift and wondered where Detective Sergeant Russo was sleeping tonight.

Illegal aliens from Bohemia had taken up residence in a downtown newpaper vending stall, a family of 8 in a space built for one.

Birds nesting in the skyscrapers watched them all and said nothing, except to themselves.

Frankie stopped two-stepping a beat before the song ended.

Jigsaw man entered the bar and raised a blurred arm at Frankie.

Det. Sgt. Russo dived at the assailant in a beautiful mockery of ballet.

Chief Inspector Barnswell got a report involving suspicious activity around a newspaper vending stall downtown.

Russo dragged the injured Frankie to the door of the vending stall just outside the bar and illegal aliens rushed forward to tend to the bleeding Frankie while Russo inspected Jigsaw man's weapon, some kind of pistol but unlike anything she had ever seen.

Jigsaw man began to piece himself together in the now desterted bar. Russo realized she'd gotten lucky, Jigsaw man wouldn't give her a second chance, she hurried Frankie to her unmarked while the illegal aliens scattered.

Barnswell heard over the scanner that Russo was taking Frankie to Mercy Hospital. As he listened further he understood the significance of the unusual activity around the newspaper vending stall.

He made a personal call on his private line as he grabbed his jacket and launched his considerable bulk at the garage.

Within minutes which dragged like hours he was bedside with Frankie and getting debriefed by Russo.

"He'll just keep coming for him, Jackie," said Barnwell.
"I know Fred, but maybe this will stop him," she held up the strange pistol with its smooth contours and lack of either ammunition clip or barrel. It looked like a long, apparently solid, cylinder on top of a trigger mechanism behind which was the grip.
"Like a cheap toy gun," said Barnswell. Jackie pointed the 'barrel' at a bedpan lying on an empty bed.
A slice of bedpan the width of her finger vanished, along with much of the bed beneath it. Silently, Barnswell looked under the bed. There was no damage.

"I figured out it has some kind of rangefinder, you set the distance with this thumb-wheel on the handlegrip, I haven't figured out how to change the power setting though, maybe there is no way," Russo realized she was babbling, she stopped. Waited for Barnswell to say something.

He didn't, in the end it was Frankie who broke the silence.
He wasn't even finished before they hurried him out of his hospital room and towards Russo's unmarked in the garage.

Frankie had made it perfectly clear, tonight was far from over.

In fact, it was just beginning.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

damn grump capillaceous

''Why do you read that escapist trash?"
"Is this a wind-up?"
"No, seriously,"
"Then lemme ask you, figured it all out? Life? Relationships? Everything?"
"What, you kidding me?"
"I read this 'trash' because I like to read about simple lives with big, clear problems."
"Like the bug-eyed-"
"-monster under the bed, exactly,"
"So you don't read Roth because-"
"-people who read Roth don't live a Roth life,"
"So the geek reads 'Guns & Ammo' and-"
"-the real mercenary reads gardening magazines,"
"So whaddya read when you're not reading trash?"
"Cookbooks, I read cookbooks, 'The Silver Spoon' at present, for hours on end, sitting on a hard chair in my kitchen,"
"Jayzuz, Henry, I had no idea things had gone that far between you two,"
"We're not Agatha's 'rare production' but it suits me fine, pass the chips, willya?"

Friday, February 02, 2007

convincing dictum prancer

"So, I had two nightmares last night."
"Yeah?"
"Uh-huh,"
"In the first, my left hand was cut to ribbons, like it was made of latex or something synthetic, because there was no blood and no pain."
"That's disgusting,"
"I told myself this must be a delusion, and then I convinced myself I could test the theory by finding a mirror,"
"Lemme guess, by the strange logic of dreams you found yourself-,"
"-In front of a mirror, exactly, and I told myself that if my hand in the mirror was okay then my hand must be okay,"
"Was it?"
"Yeah, when I looked in the mirror my hand was fine and then when I looked at my own left hand it too was fine,"
"Whaddya suppose it means?"
"Well, I can't say for sure but I'd guess it means that either I believe some part of my perceptions of the world are delusional or..."
"Or what?"
"That some part of my subconscious is trying to tell me I'm living a lie, that it's not my perceptions of the world that are delusional, it's my perceptions of myself,"
"What was the second dream?"
"That one only seemed to point in the same disturbing direction,"
"Come on, a serial dream?"
"Who can know for sure? I intuitively know that there is a connection, I just don't know for sure,"
"So what happened?"
"In the second dream I was an inmate in a prison, I think I was in there for murder, but this was in some archetypal 30's and I had found a way to come and go as I pleased,"
"Dream logic again?"
"Yeah, apparently the guards allowed anyone in street clothes to come and go so I had apparently smuggled some in and was making frequent trips home, but in the dream, I had forgotten to drive back in my prison clothes and realized that the guards would notice me changing in my car and I wouldn't be able to come and go as I pleased anymore,"
"all this thinking while ignoring the facts that they would have noticed you driving towards the prison in prison clothes and that of course, it was never that simple, even in the 30s, to break out of prison,"
"Exactly, what I remember most, is the feeling that I didn't want to be a prisoner, neither did I want to lose the freedom of being able to enter and exit the prison when I wanted, I truly wanted to get back in, as long as I could leave again,"
"What does your wife think of this?"
"I haven't told her,"
"My friend, you are one conflicted individual, lemme buy you a drink,"

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...