I turned to sprint to the back room housing the stasis chamber and slipped on the pool of coffee nearly falling to all fours. I clambered to the security door and fell against it looking for my security card. I found it and slid it wildly through the card reader until finally the door opened and the smell of stale sweat and incense poured out of the room.
It was dimly lit with candles whose light barely overcame the neon blue glow of the stasis fluid inside of the chamber. There was no scientific reason for it's color, the fluid itself was clear; Miranda said she just thought it looked awesome. Miranda looked awesome now, bathed in that neon blue light, suspended as if levitating, and completely naked. She was inside the chamber which was a clear glass tube about three feet in diameter and eight feet in height.
I was stunned, standing there contemplating what is must be like to be in stasis. Every physiological process in Miranda's body was virtually halted, with the exception of higher brain function. She wasn't breathing and her heart wasn't beating except for what could rightly be described as random signals "escaping" from the brain stem. Before the first human trials, for all we knew the chimpanzees were completely unconscious up until the point we drained the stasis fluid and administered the injection to wake them.
These thoughts continued to race through my mind while I slowly scanned the room and saw the source of the smell. Around the base of the stasis chamber, intermixed with the ring skinny white candles, were incense burners silently smoking. Around the ring of candles and incense there was a ring of nude students prostrate and whispering - their lips almost touching the floor. I recognized the four males as students from around campus, but the three females were strangers.
The hum from the equipment in the room suddenly turned into a din of beeping and buzzing, but above all I could hear the naked students on the floor wailing. I think that must be what it sounded like when Pharaohs died. Suddenly Miranda twitched briefly in the fluid as it began to drain into the floor of the tube. The volume of the wailing increased, and I could finally make out words, "It's time! Miranda's here! Get the syringe!"
By this time I was backed up against the wall as if the floor were crumbling from the center and was about to give way underneath my feet. I watched the females of the group scatter about the room. The thin brunette ran to the controls and ran the program to raise the glass tube into the ceiling. She continued typing rapidly to confirm that Miranda's vital signs were becoming stronger as expected.
The heavy brunette strode to the glass cabinet on the wall and began preparing the syringe to wake Miranda, and the blonde took a large wad of sheets and towels from a closet and quickly formed a bed extending from the stasis chamber out into the middle of the floor.
The males collected Miranda from the metal grating at the floor of the stasis chamber, who was now crumpled up like a rag doll. They laid her out neatly on her back in the makeshift bedding. The heavy brunette administered the shot, and the group reformed their circle around Miranda. They rocked back and forth on their knees praying. Miranda started shivering violently and suddenly stasis fluid began to flow from her nose and mouth. Now she was coughing and expelling the fluid in short geysers. The crowd started wailing again.
The strength slowly drained from my legs and I slid slowly to the floor. I leaned against the wall unable to do anything but watch in awe.
Miranda was now catching her breath and her hands weakly went from one student to the next, touching their heads as they wailed. When she had touched every one, they were suddenly quiet. Miranda's mouthed opened and then stayed motionless for a moment before quietly saying, "My children."
The heavy brunette clasped her hands together and put them over Miranda's navel, and without raising her head she asked "Where did you go? What did you see?"
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tube Cult 1
I was thrilled at the prospect of finally getting off the road and away from the scrutiny of HD cameras and studio lights. I was exhausted from answering the same inane questions at every stop. Univision questioned the impact of our invention on immigration. Fox News accused us of being godless scientists out to prove some crackpot theory, consequences be damned. CNN dropped our recorded segment and instead ran a trending cat video.
How fucking humiliating.
Finally, after nearly a year of touring, Miranda emailed me saying that she needed me back at the lab at MIT urgently. That kind of message was typical of Miranda, so I wasn't worried. To the contrary, I rushed back home as fast as possible to get back to our now famous research developing what we refer to internally as "stasis chambers." It was Miranda's enthusiasm which inspired us, honestly. She believed that if we had stasis technology ready now, then that could enable space travel to distant galaxies today.
Sadly, all stasis chamber prototypes thus far have only enabled up to several weeks of stasis. Even state of the art technology of year of our lord 2012 could only get one stranded in 6 weeks, not to another galaxy. Six weeks plus 60 years of your life wouldn't even get you to the nearest star. Nevertheless, we believed our research would be vital one day, and it looked like the American public agreed.
Before I was volunteered for the position of Chief PR Liason, we were designing our first human trials to be conducted on student volunteers. Miranda had already compiled a roster and contacted the test subjects as I flew off to my first stop in New York. No information on those trials had been released yet, even to me.
The Monday after arriving home, I showed up to the office with my laptop bag and my coffee excited to hear the scoop from Miranda. I couldn't find her. The lights in her office were off. Her desk looked like he hadn't used it in weeks.
I swiped my card to enter the lab and turned on the lights inside. Everything was quiet. Papers were stacked neatly on the matte black counter tops. The 3x3 bank of computer monitors that display sensor readings for our latest stasis chamber prototype were black.
"Slackers." I flipped the switch to turn on the monitors and grabbed the latest status report from the top of the stack and began reading, proud to be the first one doing anything useful that day.
I sipped my coffee over the report. "Subject 14 reported the same continuous dream scenario. In stasis for 6 hours but has recollection of one continuous dream that seemed to last for months in which Subject 14 was involved in drug trafficking for a troupe of mimes from Bolivia."
One dream that seemed to last for months? Wild stuff.
The report continued, "Assuming that human subjects can endure the entire 6 week safe period of stasis, the subject could live through years of dream experiences. Tomorrow is the big day."
Unprofessional shit, leaving personal memos in your status report. I glanced up at the monitors and back at the report. My brain was still slowly processing what was on the screens as my grip loosened on the coffee and the scalding black liquid ran down my legs.
Somebody was in the stasis chamber at that very moment, and their life signs were faint.
How fucking humiliating.
Finally, after nearly a year of touring, Miranda emailed me saying that she needed me back at the lab at MIT urgently. That kind of message was typical of Miranda, so I wasn't worried. To the contrary, I rushed back home as fast as possible to get back to our now famous research developing what we refer to internally as "stasis chambers." It was Miranda's enthusiasm which inspired us, honestly. She believed that if we had stasis technology ready now, then that could enable space travel to distant galaxies today.
Sadly, all stasis chamber prototypes thus far have only enabled up to several weeks of stasis. Even state of the art technology of year of our lord 2012 could only get one stranded in 6 weeks, not to another galaxy. Six weeks plus 60 years of your life wouldn't even get you to the nearest star. Nevertheless, we believed our research would be vital one day, and it looked like the American public agreed.
Before I was volunteered for the position of Chief PR Liason, we were designing our first human trials to be conducted on student volunteers. Miranda had already compiled a roster and contacted the test subjects as I flew off to my first stop in New York. No information on those trials had been released yet, even to me.
The Monday after arriving home, I showed up to the office with my laptop bag and my coffee excited to hear the scoop from Miranda. I couldn't find her. The lights in her office were off. Her desk looked like he hadn't used it in weeks.
I swiped my card to enter the lab and turned on the lights inside. Everything was quiet. Papers were stacked neatly on the matte black counter tops. The 3x3 bank of computer monitors that display sensor readings for our latest stasis chamber prototype were black.
"Slackers." I flipped the switch to turn on the monitors and grabbed the latest status report from the top of the stack and began reading, proud to be the first one doing anything useful that day.
I sipped my coffee over the report. "Subject 14 reported the same continuous dream scenario. In stasis for 6 hours but has recollection of one continuous dream that seemed to last for months in which Subject 14 was involved in drug trafficking for a troupe of mimes from Bolivia."
One dream that seemed to last for months? Wild stuff.
The report continued, "Assuming that human subjects can endure the entire 6 week safe period of stasis, the subject could live through years of dream experiences. Tomorrow is the big day."
Unprofessional shit, leaving personal memos in your status report. I glanced up at the monitors and back at the report. My brain was still slowly processing what was on the screens as my grip loosened on the coffee and the scalding black liquid ran down my legs.
Somebody was in the stasis chamber at that very moment, and their life signs were faint.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Today was about 13.75 billion years in the making. Any one of those years, months, days, hours, or moments since the beginning of time could have happened differently and contributed to a wildly different present.
Likewise, my actions at this very moment could be influencing billions of years of history before it's even made.
This is why I strive to return the toilet seat to the down position.
It's at this point where chaos theory and cosmology meet to create quite a dissonant worldview. My actions, beliefs, or even my entire life - even the lives of every living thing on the planet, are relatively minuscule in "the scheme of things." But "the scheme of things" must be understood as a system of actors which are interconnected in mostly undiscovered relationships, where minute changes in any part of the system can have a surprisingly substantial impact elsewhere in the system, or even on the system itself.
Even in a still bucket of water, the addition or subtraction of a single molecule impacts the position, orientation, and behavior of an incalculable number of molecules sharing the bucket.
For some people, these beliefs could paralyze day to day decision making, but for me, it comforts me to know that perhaps my negative thoughts toward that Pontiac that just cut me off will perhaps cascade into a lifetime of misery and dissatisfaction for the driver.
Likewise, my actions at this very moment could be influencing billions of years of history before it's even made.
This is why I strive to return the toilet seat to the down position.
It's at this point where chaos theory and cosmology meet to create quite a dissonant worldview. My actions, beliefs, or even my entire life - even the lives of every living thing on the planet, are relatively minuscule in "the scheme of things." But "the scheme of things" must be understood as a system of actors which are interconnected in mostly undiscovered relationships, where minute changes in any part of the system can have a surprisingly substantial impact elsewhere in the system, or even on the system itself.
Even in a still bucket of water, the addition or subtraction of a single molecule impacts the position, orientation, and behavior of an incalculable number of molecules sharing the bucket.
For some people, these beliefs could paralyze day to day decision making, but for me, it comforts me to know that perhaps my negative thoughts toward that Pontiac that just cut me off will perhaps cascade into a lifetime of misery and dissatisfaction for the driver.
Monday, April 23, 2012
I packed up my brief case and hurried to the car, hoping to beat the traffic home. I went over the bridge and merged onto the main strip and turned onto the long web of roads that would eventually lead to my home where my wife and son would be waiting.
I thought about the joke my boss told that morning and laughed again. He always came equipped with jokes that were only funny because of their desperate attempt at being wholesome and inoffensive. The best one he told was about a talking fish. Or actually, it may have been a donkey. No - it was pitch black outside and the man mistook the donkey for his wife -- something of that nature. Everybody got a kick out of it, anyway.
I pulled into the drive way and put the car in park and reached over to pick up my briefcase.
"Shit!" I shrieked. There was a porcelain white girl with auburn hair grinning from ear to ear with her face pressed against the passenger window. "What in the hell are you doing here, girl?" I popped open the door and jumped up and tried to look stern.
The girl came running around the front of the car with her arms held out yelling, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" She jumped as high as she could but only managed to hug my thigh.
"Laura! Get out here and get this child off of me!" I couldn't pry myself free from her, so I hobbled to the front door hoping my wife would come to help me, but a stranger stood in the doorway wearing an apron and drying her hands on a dish towel.
She looked deeply concerned. "Honey, what's the matter?"
"Who are you!? What the fuck is going on here?!"
"Jim! Language!"
I staggered backwards, dropping my briefcase and almost falling. My eyes darted around frantically looking for anything familiar, but I was lost. I had driven down the wrong road to the wrong house and been greeted by the wrong family. Jesus - save me from this place. I stumbled to the car and fell into the driver's seat and got ready to leave as fast as I could, but then I froze. The girl was clinging to her mother's apron, crying. She looked like she had just seen her father fall out of a plane at cruise altitude. I turned the car off and calmly stepped out of the car. I cautiously walked to the front door where they stood. "I'm sorry," I said to them.
"Welcome home."
I thought about the joke my boss told that morning and laughed again. He always came equipped with jokes that were only funny because of their desperate attempt at being wholesome and inoffensive. The best one he told was about a talking fish. Or actually, it may have been a donkey. No - it was pitch black outside and the man mistook the donkey for his wife -- something of that nature. Everybody got a kick out of it, anyway.
I pulled into the drive way and put the car in park and reached over to pick up my briefcase.
"Shit!" I shrieked. There was a porcelain white girl with auburn hair grinning from ear to ear with her face pressed against the passenger window. "What in the hell are you doing here, girl?" I popped open the door and jumped up and tried to look stern.
The girl came running around the front of the car with her arms held out yelling, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" She jumped as high as she could but only managed to hug my thigh.
"Laura! Get out here and get this child off of me!" I couldn't pry myself free from her, so I hobbled to the front door hoping my wife would come to help me, but a stranger stood in the doorway wearing an apron and drying her hands on a dish towel.
She looked deeply concerned. "Honey, what's the matter?"
"Who are you!? What the fuck is going on here?!"
"Jim! Language!"
I staggered backwards, dropping my briefcase and almost falling. My eyes darted around frantically looking for anything familiar, but I was lost. I had driven down the wrong road to the wrong house and been greeted by the wrong family. Jesus - save me from this place. I stumbled to the car and fell into the driver's seat and got ready to leave as fast as I could, but then I froze. The girl was clinging to her mother's apron, crying. She looked like she had just seen her father fall out of a plane at cruise altitude. I turned the car off and calmly stepped out of the car. I cautiously walked to the front door where they stood. "I'm sorry," I said to them.
"Welcome home."
Monday, March 19, 2012
My mother taught me that anything small enough to fit into a pocketbook must be cheap, otherwise people would think of it as free. In love we torture ourselves waiting for the next petty favor, but we take the important things for granted. We prosecute marijuana dealers to the fullest extent of the law, but turn a blind eye to unlawful business that occurs on the scale of trillions of dollars.
The human mind fixates on the details which we believe we can more easily control, but perhaps too often and too soon we let the big picture go unnoticed to avoid feeling powerless.
The human mind fixates on the details which we believe we can more easily control, but perhaps too often and too soon we let the big picture go unnoticed to avoid feeling powerless.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Others fear that if no afterlife awaits us, humanity would be overcome with a type of intense and dangerous apathy. This is the same type of apathy that I would expect washes over those who believe that paradise awaits them no matter what they do after 'accepting' Jesus Christ as their own personal savior. The pinnacle of religious experience is reduced to ticking a box.
WILL YOU ACCEPT JESUS CHRIST, ESCAPE THE LICKING FLAMES OF HELL, AND LIVE ETERNALLY IN PARADISE?!
"Well, ya... I think I could come around to that."
Meanwhile in some parallel reality, I am the final prophet of god, and my corporeal father has told me that food additives are the source of all strife and misery. Suffer not the xanthan gum to desecrate your tasty snacks.Those who would profane their bodies by consuming the byproducts of a soulless and patriarchal industrial machine discredit god's greatest achievement. Those that adhere to strict dietary guidelines will grudgingly be allowed eternal life hereafter.
There is a backwards tribe calling themselves 'Christians' who brazenly defy my father's will. They happily contaminate their foods with sweeteners, thickeners, preservatives, and various other abominations. They must be educated in the ways of the lord, and made to eat the food that pleases him, in order to save their everlasting souls.
WILL YOU ACCEPT JESUS CHRIST, ESCAPE THE LICKING FLAMES OF HELL, AND LIVE ETERNALLY IN PARADISE?!
"Well, ya... I think I could come around to that."
Meanwhile in some parallel reality, I am the final prophet of god, and my corporeal father has told me that food additives are the source of all strife and misery. Suffer not the xanthan gum to desecrate your tasty snacks.Those who would profane their bodies by consuming the byproducts of a soulless and patriarchal industrial machine discredit god's greatest achievement. Those that adhere to strict dietary guidelines will grudgingly be allowed eternal life hereafter.
There is a backwards tribe calling themselves 'Christians' who brazenly defy my father's will. They happily contaminate their foods with sweeteners, thickeners, preservatives, and various other abominations. They must be educated in the ways of the lord, and made to eat the food that pleases him, in order to save their everlasting souls.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Immorality exists largely in the realm of fiction and puritanical fantasy, for few people reflect on their actions remarking, "I have behaved immorally," and then continue to behave in the same manner. No, the actions of others are immoral, whereas my action are justifiable.
The agents of Babylon are more accurately categorized as amoral - just following orders in a parlance. It is too bad then, that the order to love is never given. Of course, love is not a dignified use of federal dollars. We give patriotic orders - orders to drive through minefields to protect people who want us to leave from people who want us to die; orders to destabilize countries hunting for enemies that feed on instability. These are the orders, when followed unquestioningly, will instill pride in your sons whether you leave your body or mind in some desert or you make it home "safe" to slowly die suspended in a matrix of mundanity. Loving a friend can be more laborious than despising an enemy, so it is no surprise that the American commits the expedience of hatred.
Does the motherland do anything out of selflessness? She defends Israel like its entitled child who got caught cheating at school. Even she knows Israel has done something wrong, but if she doesn't make a scene in the principal's office her son will doubt her love and loyalty and be stunted developmentally. Again, the motives are not entirely selfless, but they are driven by the need to be appreciated.
An educated idiot came forward to reassure our adopted son, "The United States Congress will always stand by Israel and the United States Congress will never allow Israel to stand alone." Therefore, either Israel cannot commit wrongdoing, or the US would aid Israel in committing wrongdoing.
Love, education, empathy, rationality - these are not causes worthy of federal expenditures.
The agents of Babylon are more accurately categorized as amoral - just following orders in a parlance. It is too bad then, that the order to love is never given. Of course, love is not a dignified use of federal dollars. We give patriotic orders - orders to drive through minefields to protect people who want us to leave from people who want us to die; orders to destabilize countries hunting for enemies that feed on instability. These are the orders, when followed unquestioningly, will instill pride in your sons whether you leave your body or mind in some desert or you make it home "safe" to slowly die suspended in a matrix of mundanity. Loving a friend can be more laborious than despising an enemy, so it is no surprise that the American commits the expedience of hatred.
Does the motherland do anything out of selflessness? She defends Israel like its entitled child who got caught cheating at school. Even she knows Israel has done something wrong, but if she doesn't make a scene in the principal's office her son will doubt her love and loyalty and be stunted developmentally. Again, the motives are not entirely selfless, but they are driven by the need to be appreciated.
An educated idiot came forward to reassure our adopted son, "The United States Congress will always stand by Israel and the United States Congress will never allow Israel to stand alone." Therefore, either Israel cannot commit wrongdoing, or the US would aid Israel in committing wrongdoing.
Love, education, empathy, rationality - these are not causes worthy of federal expenditures.
Monday, February 27, 2012
My mother joined the Mall Walkers because she wants to lose weight and meet new people. I like to go for walks downtown to find places to overeat and eyeball women that will never have an interest in me.
On one such walk, I walked past an attractive young woman wearing tights as pants, which is not at all appropriate; it gives them an unfair advantage. After she passed, I turned around to have a look from behind. "Nice," I thought.
I was beginning to turn back around and be on my way when I was started to see the shadow of a dog cast on the sidewalk. I swiveled my head around several times and saw no dog. I realized, I didn't see my own shadow either. I edged back away from the shadow and it followed my movements. My shadow was in the shape of a dog's. I clumsily clutched my throat as if it might make the breath begin moving again.
When I finally did start breathing, I walked along anxiously trying to ignore my situation. I wondered if other people might notice and want to put me in the circus or perform experiments.
I saw a cat and before I could stop myself I had chased it to an alley and was rooting through the garbage piles looking for it. The dog catcher captured me, and I was taken to the PETA shelter where I was eventually euthanized in the most ethical manner.
On one such walk, I walked past an attractive young woman wearing tights as pants, which is not at all appropriate; it gives them an unfair advantage. After she passed, I turned around to have a look from behind. "Nice," I thought.
I was beginning to turn back around and be on my way when I was started to see the shadow of a dog cast on the sidewalk. I swiveled my head around several times and saw no dog. I realized, I didn't see my own shadow either. I edged back away from the shadow and it followed my movements. My shadow was in the shape of a dog's. I clumsily clutched my throat as if it might make the breath begin moving again.
When I finally did start breathing, I walked along anxiously trying to ignore my situation. I wondered if other people might notice and want to put me in the circus or perform experiments.
I saw a cat and before I could stop myself I had chased it to an alley and was rooting through the garbage piles looking for it. The dog catcher captured me, and I was taken to the PETA shelter where I was eventually euthanized in the most ethical manner.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Looking backwards often casts determinism in too favorable a light. Never underestimate man's ability to find new avenues for reliving old mistakes. Knowledge of history's trivia is primarily a source of superficial comfort to those who want to look toward the future with hope, or at least indifference, but find themselves incapable of doing so.
Therefore, I admit that repeatedly cloistering myself with lonely, neurotic females has no foundation in rational thought.
Therefore, I admit that repeatedly cloistering myself with lonely, neurotic females has no foundation in rational thought.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Perhaps the aura manipulation technology is not yet ready for prime time. People ought to be more ambiguous, maybe. The further out on the tree limb one goes, the more likely it is it to snap.
Presently I detached the thread of spittle coming from my mouth from the floor and wiped it on my pants. I stood up and rushed to the window, searching for the source of some automotive commotion. Ted was driving the moving truck out front followed by his wife driving their Lexus. I beat my disappointment back with feigned satisfaction, "Good riddance." But really, I would miss borrowing Ted's tools and watching his wife sunbathe by their pool. She honked and waved to their house, but I pretended it was to me.
--
My girlfriend and I enjoy passing the time by perusing pedestrian retail establishments and separating that which is beneath us from that which we would suffer to enter our shopping basket. Smug satisfaction is the sweetest flavor, and nothing affords us as much of that as reaffirming our superiority over blankets with sleeves and useless culinary devices.
All of these products represent bold, albeit blind, stabs at catching the American dream, but life feeds on our ambitions and excretes our failures. Finding enjoyment in failure is as close to victory as I hope to achieve.
Presently I detached the thread of spittle coming from my mouth from the floor and wiped it on my pants. I stood up and rushed to the window, searching for the source of some automotive commotion. Ted was driving the moving truck out front followed by his wife driving their Lexus. I beat my disappointment back with feigned satisfaction, "Good riddance." But really, I would miss borrowing Ted's tools and watching his wife sunbathe by their pool. She honked and waved to their house, but I pretended it was to me.
--
My girlfriend and I enjoy passing the time by perusing pedestrian retail establishments and separating that which is beneath us from that which we would suffer to enter our shopping basket. Smug satisfaction is the sweetest flavor, and nothing affords us as much of that as reaffirming our superiority over blankets with sleeves and useless culinary devices.
All of these products represent bold, albeit blind, stabs at catching the American dream, but life feeds on our ambitions and excretes our failures. Finding enjoyment in failure is as close to victory as I hope to achieve.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
I stood in the mirror for 20 minutes of aura observation in preparation for product launch. While taking notes I noticed the concentric figures of my aura begin to lose their synchronization. The many shades of the veneer of melancholy were losing their cohesion before my eyes. First, the largest ring, a vibrant red lumbered off like the outline of a ginger bread man. I seemed more at ease. The green ring of my aura flickered, and then darted off playfully in its own direction. Suddenly the notes, the work, the money, even reality seemed so much less important. I looked on with disinterest as several other shades of emotion gained their freedom and scattered from the room. This was more alone than previously thought possible.
I was without love, anger, desire, any remorse at the loss of these, and completely without motivation to regain them. I stood in the mirror looking until my legs felt weak, and then sat on the floor, slowly slumping forward. My vision focused on the shiny stray fibers in the carpet and then narrowed to focus on some distance beyond that. My mind lost what remaining concentration it had and was completely filled with the fuzzy blue carpet color. The flat fuzzy blue began rolling and and separating into a black sky speckled with white stars and glistening blue sand dunes as far as my mind could perceive. A large bright white moon quickly rose in the sky and began rotating in place.
Stress and aging are inextricably linked. Through my experiments in aura manipulation I was able to relieve myself permanently of stress and related emotions and increase my lifespan many fold. I lived to see the first manned missions to earth like planets - many of which consisted of millions of miles of blue dunes. The first mission was to the planet called Ishtar IV, which had a moon almost identical to Earth's.
Initially the world's leading scientists were asked to pilot the shuttle on the century long trip to Ishtar IV in the pursuit of science, but these men refused to leave Earth without their wives. Their wives refused to leave Earth without their cats, and this left little capacity within the shuttle for scientific instruments. Instead, they sought out the one who claimed to have lived for 333 years and still looked not a day over 24. He had no family nor cats to speak of, and already knew how to operate the ship's instruments.
While sitting on the blue sands and filling the containers with rocks per my commander's instructions, I saw a pink shade meandering across the dunes towards me, I remembered its shape as the same that had left me years ago. I continued with my work for no particular reason other than it was in my instructions. When the pink emanation took its final steps toward me it seemed to greet me with pleasure. It melded with me and I was overcome with what could only be described as satisfaction. I took off my equipment and laid back in the sand smiling at the stars. I sank into the sand peacefully and never felt unsatisfied again.
I was without love, anger, desire, any remorse at the loss of these, and completely without motivation to regain them. I stood in the mirror looking until my legs felt weak, and then sat on the floor, slowly slumping forward. My vision focused on the shiny stray fibers in the carpet and then narrowed to focus on some distance beyond that. My mind lost what remaining concentration it had and was completely filled with the fuzzy blue carpet color. The flat fuzzy blue began rolling and and separating into a black sky speckled with white stars and glistening blue sand dunes as far as my mind could perceive. A large bright white moon quickly rose in the sky and began rotating in place.
Stress and aging are inextricably linked. Through my experiments in aura manipulation I was able to relieve myself permanently of stress and related emotions and increase my lifespan many fold. I lived to see the first manned missions to earth like planets - many of which consisted of millions of miles of blue dunes. The first mission was to the planet called Ishtar IV, which had a moon almost identical to Earth's.
Initially the world's leading scientists were asked to pilot the shuttle on the century long trip to Ishtar IV in the pursuit of science, but these men refused to leave Earth without their wives. Their wives refused to leave Earth without their cats, and this left little capacity within the shuttle for scientific instruments. Instead, they sought out the one who claimed to have lived for 333 years and still looked not a day over 24. He had no family nor cats to speak of, and already knew how to operate the ship's instruments.
While sitting on the blue sands and filling the containers with rocks per my commander's instructions, I saw a pink shade meandering across the dunes towards me, I remembered its shape as the same that had left me years ago. I continued with my work for no particular reason other than it was in my instructions. When the pink emanation took its final steps toward me it seemed to greet me with pleasure. It melded with me and I was overcome with what could only be described as satisfaction. I took off my equipment and laid back in the sand smiling at the stars. I sank into the sand peacefully and never felt unsatisfied again.
Monday, February 20, 2012
There is no better way to ensure loneliness than to adopt the sensibilities of the porcupine. When our spines are their sharpest and our cores are their hardest we are unable to feel the subtle emotional emanations around us. To the most sensitive, these fields resemble hundreds of vibrantly colored rings that repeat the outline of a person. These are the findings of my independent research conducted prior to 1987.
To be in tune with these fields is to understand which emotional response is correct at a given time, say after a girl tells you that her grandmother has died and she is living all alone in that old house. The emotional field emanating from said female would indicate quite clearly that the correct response is sympathy and perhaps subtle non-committal but overtly casual physical contact - say between your palm and her shoulder.
To those of us who are insensitive to these fields, of course, the most obvious response is to ask if she has a boyfriend and needs a roommate.
Work conducted more recent than mine by such geniuses as L. Ron Hubbard and Tom Arnold seems to indicate that these emanations are in fact transferable and malleable so that one person can ostensibly change emotional states while their internal emotional indicators remain constant. However, it is important to note that more research in this area would be required to make any definitive statement.
Pending that research, I would be able to make the processes and techniques by which one may be able to transfer or alter their sentimental auras available to you for the small nominal fee of 200 dollars.
So far I have had one taker on this offer, or rather, a potential taker - my neighbor Ted who has so far stubbornly refused to produce payment for my child care services already rendered. I spoke to him at length of the importance and potential of having the ability to control how others perceive his emotional condition while he was in his garage packing all of his family's belongings into boxes and stacking these inside of a moving truck. He seemed nervous, but I continued, "And so you see, even your very own wife could be made to believe that you were romantically interested in her!" At this his expression changed to one of disbelief. He gathered his wife and daughter who had been packing boxes in the garage with him and the three scurried inside the house and slammed the door. I stepped into the front garden. Peering through their window blinds and now yelling I continued, "Your daughter for instance, could be protected from the guilt of being an unplanned pregnancy!" The blinds slapped shut and everything was quiet except for a sprinkler in the distance, cht-cht-cht-cht-cht.
The Cleavers are not as widely admired as other messianic figures.
To be in tune with these fields is to understand which emotional response is correct at a given time, say after a girl tells you that her grandmother has died and she is living all alone in that old house. The emotional field emanating from said female would indicate quite clearly that the correct response is sympathy and perhaps subtle non-committal but overtly casual physical contact - say between your palm and her shoulder.
To those of us who are insensitive to these fields, of course, the most obvious response is to ask if she has a boyfriend and needs a roommate.
Work conducted more recent than mine by such geniuses as L. Ron Hubbard and Tom Arnold seems to indicate that these emanations are in fact transferable and malleable so that one person can ostensibly change emotional states while their internal emotional indicators remain constant. However, it is important to note that more research in this area would be required to make any definitive statement.
Pending that research, I would be able to make the processes and techniques by which one may be able to transfer or alter their sentimental auras available to you for the small nominal fee of 200 dollars.
So far I have had one taker on this offer, or rather, a potential taker - my neighbor Ted who has so far stubbornly refused to produce payment for my child care services already rendered. I spoke to him at length of the importance and potential of having the ability to control how others perceive his emotional condition while he was in his garage packing all of his family's belongings into boxes and stacking these inside of a moving truck. He seemed nervous, but I continued, "And so you see, even your very own wife could be made to believe that you were romantically interested in her!" At this his expression changed to one of disbelief. He gathered his wife and daughter who had been packing boxes in the garage with him and the three scurried inside the house and slammed the door. I stepped into the front garden. Peering through their window blinds and now yelling I continued, "Your daughter for instance, could be protected from the guilt of being an unplanned pregnancy!" The blinds slapped shut and everything was quiet except for a sprinkler in the distance, cht-cht-cht-cht-cht.
The Cleavers are not as widely admired as other messianic figures.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
When I was 5 years old and living in Tennessee, I fell in love with a brunette named Erica. She rejected me. Her family found out years later that she favored women and she and her girlfriend were leaving to live as hermits in the mountains, all at once. I foolishly felt responsible.
Anyway, they lived up there in the mountains in a shack on some old man's land who was too old and ignorant to kick them off. Erica and her girlfriend didn't have any money, but they managed to sustain themselves on a combination of alcohol, mushrooms, and mutual devotion. Soon after discovering the nutritive qualities of psilocybin, they began descending on the town late at night conducting what they called "raids." These amounted to little more than streaking through the empty streets while under the influence of mysterious shamanic substances.
The sheriff's deputy would see them necking on the sidewalk or licking window glass and collect them and their clothes in his squad car, blushing. He dropped them off at the tree line and said next time he would have to arrest them. He told that lie to them many times, but he never even mentioned the girls' excursions to another soul.
One night the town was celebrating some pagan holiday centered around evergreens and fat men in red pajamas, and so the sheriff's deputy had the night off. He wasn't there to collect the stray children and send them back to their shack, and so they stayed out later than usual.
The last thing Erica remembered was her girlfriend unbuttoning her blouse and reciting a poem about Ursa coming from the sky and all the girls of the village hiding their bodies and fleeing into the forest.
They woke up next to the river, which reflected their bruised faces back at them. They would never find out what happened, but nine months later their son was born. They named him Eric, and told him that his father was a bear and that Erica's girlfriend was his guardian spirit. They believed they had discovered this information with the help of several peyote buttons.
Eric still believed his father was a bear when he was eighteen years old, the same year he brought cut wood into the village to trade for alcohol and caffeine and met the love of his life. She had red hair and was called Sunflower by everybody except her father, who had named her Charles, after himself. As this situation may have indicated, Sunflower's father was insensitive, and so she was eager to run back into the mountains with Eric and hide from the universe.
They were enamored with each other, and they began their life in their own shack on the same wooded land on which Erica and her girlfriend still lived. They spent the cool summer evenings in a shaded hammock protecting one another from the chill of the wind. Early in their life together, Eric lured Sunflower into the tall grass by the shack. He believed he was seducing her, but she was still a child in many ways. Charles, the state of Tennessee, nor I would have approved.
When Eric was finished he stood above her as she quietly cried in the grass. He said, "My father was a bear," and his silhouette floated away against the dusk sky.
Eric woke up on the floor of the shack the next morning. Sunflower was pressing her squirrel rifle into his chest and crying. "My father is a huntsman."
She pulled the trigger and the bullet entered his chest and sucked the breath from his lungs and the pride from his heart. She pulled and pushed the bolt and pulled the trigger again as he reached up for her. His arm fell lifeless, and Sunflower dug the bullets from his body and buried them deep in the earth in the shadow of the shack. She collected the casings from the ground and turned them in her hands in the shadow of the shack until the appropriate time.
Sunflower carefully uncovered me and picked me up with one hand by my ankle. She raised me until our eyes met and said, "Your father was the first bullet. Go to school before your brother is born, or he will surely kill you."
I obeyed my mother and went to school. I sat beside Erica who was coloring at the art table and told her "Keep hold of your senses so that you will know when to hide yourself from Ursa."
Erica smiled and switched to the brown crayon. She continued to color the bear's fur and his picnic basket. She wasn't able to understand my warning, so I just said, "I love you, mother of my mother," and helped her finish coloring the bear. This is the only completely selfless act in the history of man.
---
Satisfied with what I had written in the box labeled "Family History" and, admittedly, in some of the white space around the page, I handed the form back to my psychiatrist. She looked impatient and said only, "That was your time. It comes to 200 dollars, please." I handed her my paycheck which coincidentally totaled 200 dollars. She ignored the check and me until I walked to the door to leave. "Come back when you have the money." I nodded.
I took my check to the bank to have it cashed. I was pulled into the center lane where I pressed the button to be served. The canister for my check didn't come. Impatient, I hammered the button repeatedly and used colorful language to indicate displeasure. I put my hand into the tube to see if I could feel the air fluctuating.
The canister shot down and broke every one of my fingers off so that I was left with only my palm and five bleeding nubs. I put my check inside the canister and it shot back up. I collected my fingers with the good hand so that they might be reattached. The canister returned violently with my 200 dollars and tore all of my remaining fingers from me.
I left the bank with the 200 dollars and my ten fingers in my lap and drove myself to the nearest doctor with my bleeding palms.
I stepped into the waiting room struggling to hold my fingers against my chest, and the doctor emerged immediately. He asked me with suspicion, "Are those your fingers?"
I was speechless.
The doctor continued "Of course they are! I am required to ask that by law." He took my fingers from me one by one and took them back into his office. I sat in the waiting room until the idea began to formulate in my mind that nothing much could be accomplished in this manner - my fingers and I in separate rooms. The doctor reentered the waiting room just as I stood up, but now he was wearing a chef's hat and balancing a platter on one hand high above my vision. He walked toward me and lowered the platter until I was face to face with a crystal dish whose rim was decorated with 8 of my very own fingers which were now curled up and blue. The dish was filled half way with thick red sauce.
"Your cocktail, sir," the doctor said. "Now... I know what you are thinking, but it is common knowledge among the gastro scientists that you never serve the thumbs."
This is not what I had been thinking. "Actually," I began, "I was wondering if perhaps you had forgotten the words of Hippocrates."
The doctor frowned as he spoke, "Alas, I am not trained in the ways of the Greeks. I live only to serve the Lord Mammon. That will be 200 dollars." He slammed the platter into the seat next to me and stormed off with my 200 dollars, closing the door behind him. Since my cocktail cost 200 dollars and I couldn't turn the door knobs to exit the room until I calmed down and my palms stopped sweating, I sat down to eat grudgingly.
Before I had finished the planning phase of eating a finger cocktail without the use of thumbs, the police stormed in and arrested every one in sight (namely me) repeating "This is the biggest unlicensed massage parlor bust in years!" in the waiting room, in the squad car, and both ways down the hallway to my jail cell they repeated, "The biggest unlicensed massage parlor bust in years!" The automatic door closed behind them and it was quiet and lonely.
I waited there for eons until my mother came to get me. She crawled onto my forearm and apologized, "I came as fast as eight legs could carry me." My mother spun a web in a high corner of my jail cell and I climbed into its center. She wrapped me in her web lovingly and drained my body of its fluids - lovingly. My gracious smile was mummified onto my face.
Her abdomen bloated with my spirit essence, my mother jumped from the window sill of the jail cell and sailed the winds into the forest on a single thread. In the safety of the wood she spun a likeness of me from long strands of web. Every day she added sticks for bones and stones for eyes and more and more web until finally I spoke, "Thank you, mother," and I walked into the forest to find dinosaurs.
---
Truthfully, that is the entirety of the story I told your daughter, and so I cannot understand why you would not pay me for babysitting her. It is just as well that you do not bring her back because she consumed the majority of my Captain Crunch and imbibed an unfair quantity of purple drink and left a terrific smell about the place. I will bill you for these damages in the amount of 200 dollars which I desperately need to reattach my fingers in any case.
Anyway, they lived up there in the mountains in a shack on some old man's land who was too old and ignorant to kick them off. Erica and her girlfriend didn't have any money, but they managed to sustain themselves on a combination of alcohol, mushrooms, and mutual devotion. Soon after discovering the nutritive qualities of psilocybin, they began descending on the town late at night conducting what they called "raids." These amounted to little more than streaking through the empty streets while under the influence of mysterious shamanic substances.
The sheriff's deputy would see them necking on the sidewalk or licking window glass and collect them and their clothes in his squad car, blushing. He dropped them off at the tree line and said next time he would have to arrest them. He told that lie to them many times, but he never even mentioned the girls' excursions to another soul.
One night the town was celebrating some pagan holiday centered around evergreens and fat men in red pajamas, and so the sheriff's deputy had the night off. He wasn't there to collect the stray children and send them back to their shack, and so they stayed out later than usual.
The last thing Erica remembered was her girlfriend unbuttoning her blouse and reciting a poem about Ursa coming from the sky and all the girls of the village hiding their bodies and fleeing into the forest.
They woke up next to the river, which reflected their bruised faces back at them. They would never find out what happened, but nine months later their son was born. They named him Eric, and told him that his father was a bear and that Erica's girlfriend was his guardian spirit. They believed they had discovered this information with the help of several peyote buttons.
Eric still believed his father was a bear when he was eighteen years old, the same year he brought cut wood into the village to trade for alcohol and caffeine and met the love of his life. She had red hair and was called Sunflower by everybody except her father, who had named her Charles, after himself. As this situation may have indicated, Sunflower's father was insensitive, and so she was eager to run back into the mountains with Eric and hide from the universe.
They were enamored with each other, and they began their life in their own shack on the same wooded land on which Erica and her girlfriend still lived. They spent the cool summer evenings in a shaded hammock protecting one another from the chill of the wind. Early in their life together, Eric lured Sunflower into the tall grass by the shack. He believed he was seducing her, but she was still a child in many ways. Charles, the state of Tennessee, nor I would have approved.
When Eric was finished he stood above her as she quietly cried in the grass. He said, "My father was a bear," and his silhouette floated away against the dusk sky.
Eric woke up on the floor of the shack the next morning. Sunflower was pressing her squirrel rifle into his chest and crying. "My father is a huntsman."
She pulled the trigger and the bullet entered his chest and sucked the breath from his lungs and the pride from his heart. She pulled and pushed the bolt and pulled the trigger again as he reached up for her. His arm fell lifeless, and Sunflower dug the bullets from his body and buried them deep in the earth in the shadow of the shack. She collected the casings from the ground and turned them in her hands in the shadow of the shack until the appropriate time.
Sunflower carefully uncovered me and picked me up with one hand by my ankle. She raised me until our eyes met and said, "Your father was the first bullet. Go to school before your brother is born, or he will surely kill you."
I obeyed my mother and went to school. I sat beside Erica who was coloring at the art table and told her "Keep hold of your senses so that you will know when to hide yourself from Ursa."
Erica smiled and switched to the brown crayon. She continued to color the bear's fur and his picnic basket. She wasn't able to understand my warning, so I just said, "I love you, mother of my mother," and helped her finish coloring the bear. This is the only completely selfless act in the history of man.
---
Satisfied with what I had written in the box labeled "Family History" and, admittedly, in some of the white space around the page, I handed the form back to my psychiatrist. She looked impatient and said only, "That was your time. It comes to 200 dollars, please." I handed her my paycheck which coincidentally totaled 200 dollars. She ignored the check and me until I walked to the door to leave. "Come back when you have the money." I nodded.
I took my check to the bank to have it cashed. I was pulled into the center lane where I pressed the button to be served. The canister for my check didn't come. Impatient, I hammered the button repeatedly and used colorful language to indicate displeasure. I put my hand into the tube to see if I could feel the air fluctuating.
The canister shot down and broke every one of my fingers off so that I was left with only my palm and five bleeding nubs. I put my check inside the canister and it shot back up. I collected my fingers with the good hand so that they might be reattached. The canister returned violently with my 200 dollars and tore all of my remaining fingers from me.
I left the bank with the 200 dollars and my ten fingers in my lap and drove myself to the nearest doctor with my bleeding palms.
I stepped into the waiting room struggling to hold my fingers against my chest, and the doctor emerged immediately. He asked me with suspicion, "Are those your fingers?"
I was speechless.
The doctor continued "Of course they are! I am required to ask that by law." He took my fingers from me one by one and took them back into his office. I sat in the waiting room until the idea began to formulate in my mind that nothing much could be accomplished in this manner - my fingers and I in separate rooms. The doctor reentered the waiting room just as I stood up, but now he was wearing a chef's hat and balancing a platter on one hand high above my vision. He walked toward me and lowered the platter until I was face to face with a crystal dish whose rim was decorated with 8 of my very own fingers which were now curled up and blue. The dish was filled half way with thick red sauce.
"Your cocktail, sir," the doctor said. "Now... I know what you are thinking, but it is common knowledge among the gastro scientists that you never serve the thumbs."
This is not what I had been thinking. "Actually," I began, "I was wondering if perhaps you had forgotten the words of Hippocrates."
The doctor frowned as he spoke, "Alas, I am not trained in the ways of the Greeks. I live only to serve the Lord Mammon. That will be 200 dollars." He slammed the platter into the seat next to me and stormed off with my 200 dollars, closing the door behind him. Since my cocktail cost 200 dollars and I couldn't turn the door knobs to exit the room until I calmed down and my palms stopped sweating, I sat down to eat grudgingly.
Before I had finished the planning phase of eating a finger cocktail without the use of thumbs, the police stormed in and arrested every one in sight (namely me) repeating "This is the biggest unlicensed massage parlor bust in years!" in the waiting room, in the squad car, and both ways down the hallway to my jail cell they repeated, "The biggest unlicensed massage parlor bust in years!" The automatic door closed behind them and it was quiet and lonely.
I waited there for eons until my mother came to get me. She crawled onto my forearm and apologized, "I came as fast as eight legs could carry me." My mother spun a web in a high corner of my jail cell and I climbed into its center. She wrapped me in her web lovingly and drained my body of its fluids - lovingly. My gracious smile was mummified onto my face.
Her abdomen bloated with my spirit essence, my mother jumped from the window sill of the jail cell and sailed the winds into the forest on a single thread. In the safety of the wood she spun a likeness of me from long strands of web. Every day she added sticks for bones and stones for eyes and more and more web until finally I spoke, "Thank you, mother," and I walked into the forest to find dinosaurs.
---
Truthfully, that is the entirety of the story I told your daughter, and so I cannot understand why you would not pay me for babysitting her. It is just as well that you do not bring her back because she consumed the majority of my Captain Crunch and imbibed an unfair quantity of purple drink and left a terrific smell about the place. I will bill you for these damages in the amount of 200 dollars which I desperately need to reattach my fingers in any case.
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