Monthly Archives: September 2010
Headstart Elan
Pre-conception screening hadn’t turned up anything, so the Kieslowski-Millers spent their entire discretionary health stipend on a Headstart Elan package for Harriet-to-be. Most parents of healthy children did. Continue reading
A Stroll Down Memory Lane
This photo was taken at our summer house in the Hamptons. That’s me on the bottom! My uncle, above, was a notorious prankster. I remember spending days in his subterranean laboratory on our estate, helping him pipette various strains of his recombinant Ebola virus, or fixing his home-made calutron to separate out the isotopes of uranium.
Etcheverry, Cordel, Fomalhaut
“Your first task,” he said trying to mime the body shape of the creature. “Is to convince it to evert its gastrocysts. It will only do that if you can offer it something enticing. I found quite by accident that it is overly fond of anything tannic. Leather, for instance.” Continue reading
Choose Your Own Adventure
1. You awake in a white room. My God, you’re colorblind! No, wait, you’re not. Gradually you remember why you are here. The supervillain-psychiatrist Doctor Praetorian has imprisoned you in the monochrome room until you work through issues stemming from your experience, as a child watching through a keyhole, of witnessing your mother ritualistically whitewash … Continue reading
Double-cross with Crème de Menthe
“Afar off the towers of Florence. And she wandered as though in a dream o’er wavering seas of barley touched with crimson stains of poppies. All unobserved he came to her. There came from his lips no wordy protestations such as formal lovers use. No such eloquence was his, nor did he suffer from the … Continue reading
Le Garçon de l’Eau
. Héro instantané. Ajoutez juste l’eau. . Vive le différence! While France is justly celebrated for its long tradition of brilliant and challenging cinema, Hollywood specializes in taking that brilliance and grinding it into slick pablum. In 1998, while millions of illiterates thrilled to the spectacle of Adam Sandler playing an angry manchild in “The … Continue reading