It isn’t all fluffy bunnies and puppy dogs in the animal control biz. Well, there are a lot of fluffy bunnies and bathtubs full of puppy dogs, but there’s a darker side, too, and not dark like some nice shade to get out of the sun before you catch a raging case of melanoma, but dark like you rolled snake eyes in the parents lottery and ended up chained in a closet until your fortieth birthday and only then are freed when a singing telegram goes horribly, horribly awry. But I digress. People tell me I digress a lot. It’s my worst trait, aside from bad teeth and a lop-sided case of male pattern baldness. Really lopsided. My right side, completely hairless, not even eyebrows. The left side…but I digress again. Read more
Mr. Bokchito
In the cool morning air, Mr. Bokchito boarded the computer-run monorail and settled into a seat. He unfolded a newspaper and read it while the train accelerated with whisper-quiet efficiency. Through he was completely familiar with the landscapes of his daily commute, he glanced out the window from time to time, and it was after one of these glances that he turned to the stranger sitting next to him and said, “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“There was a man out there on the wing. It was a furry ape-man. He opened up the engine cowling. I think he’s trying to sabotage the plane.” Read more
Categories: Fiction, Writing
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Cry for Me, Stara Zagora
Exercise Oct 11 2011
I know you won’t feel sorry for me. Stara Zagora is the most fabled city of the twenty-three real worldlines, and has sparkling echoes in nearly every of the one hundred and forty-four thousand shadow worlds. Perched on a marble hill overlooking a crystalline blue bay, the weather is near perfect year round. Even the rains, which come as three-hour bursts once a fortnight regular as clockwork, are as near to perfection in their refreshing nature. Because the city is famed for its artwork and its dazzling cuisine, the bulk of the admittedly steep taxes fund salons and galleries and movable food carts where you can watch a chef with a gold hat work miracles with eggs, truffles, anchovies, and an oiled pan. Chief among the edible delights of the city are its uncountable varieties of beer, as every corner, by decree, has its own brewery. The beers are probably not truly uncountable, the way the real numbers between zero and one are, but every mathematician who had attempted to count the beers never succeeded, because (a) they passed out, drunk, and (b) by the time they had gotten half way up the marble mount one or two or ten of the breweries at the base had closed and been reinstated with new owners and a new beer recipe. Beer is so plentiful that we flush our toilets with pilsner, brush our teeth with ale, wash our cars with stout.
And here is the irony, friend. I am part jellyfish, and as you may know, alcohol simply dissolves jellyfish. I am not sure how it happened. Geneticists tell me it ought to be impossible, a billion-to-one chance. My mother isn’t sure either, as she had been celebrating her graduation from the Ecole de Marmalade, and afterwards had gone down to the bay for a swim to wash away the beer-induced fuzziness. She must have met my father there, he taken by her beauty, and she thinks it must have been magical, making love beneath a full moon. But afterwards, and this is the only part she fully remembers, she tried to give him a kiss, and with a puff of her alcohol-infused breath he shivered and broke apart on the waves, leaving only a shimmering rainbow-colored slick in the moonlight.
Most people only dream of visiting Stara Zagora, and read cheap antinovels about the city. Some save for a decade to spend a crammed week here. But for me it is agony. Merchants laugh at me when I beg to buy a bottle of water. I huddle in my cramped, smelly rooms on holy days, when priests march up and down the slick steep marble streets flicking holy beer and blessed vodka on all passersby; and fully a third of all days are religious festivals, as Stara Zagora is a very devout city.
I cannot leave the city; my attempts to apply for a passport have been rebuffed, since as my father’s name and indeed species is unknown, my birth certificate is the shortest form possible.
My only hobby is reading graphic novels, of a time and place, while absurd and contradictory, sounds like heaven to me: set in a mythic land known as Usa, under a regime called Prohibition.
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DFW RIP
Even now, it’s hard to believe he’s really dead. Not because his suicide is a priori implausible, but because the Liberal Lamestream Media™ can’t be trusted. When a shooting star falls, we mourn its loss, even though we know it’s in a better place—namely, incinerated during its passage through the atmosphere.
Where was I when I heard the news? I’ll never forget; the memory is burned into my consciousness, like I was shot—shot with a diamond bullet straight into my brain. I’m pretty sure I was either watching a historical reenactment of a jousting tournament while eating a steak and baked potato at the Medieval Times restaurant-theater in New Jersey, or I was assembling pipe bombs in the basement of the Institut für Unternehmenskybernetik (Institute for Entrepreneurial Cybernetics), a gay dance club in Bangkok. Read more
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Read My Story
I got paid the big, big bucks for this, so you better read it.
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Shopping List
1) Several hand towels.
2) Several rolls duct tape.
3) One liter bottle of halothane fast-acting soporific. Read more
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Epileptic Trees
Some masterpieces can only be appreciated by digging deep beneath the surface by superintelligent persons such as myself. If you’ve seen these movies, you probably thought they were straightforward, because you are not as smart as I. You just have to watch really, really carefully. It’s all there! Read more
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Topical Humor
New Coke, have you heard of this? I used to have some old coke in the trunk of my car but the judge said I couldn’t keep it. Who would win in a fight, New Coke or Crystal Pepsi? I say Pepsi, cuz nobody can see it. It’s invisible, this stuff. I thought I was drinking Crystal Pepsi the other day but it turned out I was just high on crack.
I have a theory the sharks are attacking because they really just yo quiero Taco Bell. That Chihuahua visited me in my dreams for a time, until the dancing baby killed and ate it. Read more
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100 to Watch Under 100
A look at the people who will shape the future of our world.
Today’s phenoms are tomorrow’s achievers. The 100 individuals on this list may not be household names, but these up-and-comers are certain to make their mark. So watch out, all you centenarians, because these hot, fast-rising stars are on the brink of blowing you away with their fresh ideas and bold, turbocharged, take-no-prisoners approach. Read more
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Excerpt from the Secret Amalgamated Handbook
……….If the conspiracy theorists are right, Amalgamated Corporation has long kept a secret handbook that, in many iterations, has recorded its history and philosophy. Never before seen by the outside world, the book, which has been compared to Mein Kampf and the Malleus Maleficarum, may have surfaced in 2009 disguised as a script for an Adam Sandler vehicle. If authentic, it represents the first look inside this opaque organization, which Noam Chomsky has called “the fount of all fondue and evil in this world.”
WARNING: Reading may cost you your life. . . or your sanity!
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