Category: Fiction

The Glibening, Part Nine: A Stranger in a Strange Land

Previously…

Ramesh came to a Tee in the corridor. He stopped, looked and listened. Identical corridor in each direction. From the right he heard a muffled chorus of screeching, from the left he heard peppy Latin music.

The choice was obvious.

Today’s Story…

Ramesh turned left and once he was around the corner shrunk up against the wall. He pulled out his phone and found it had powered itself off. He hit the power button and nothing happened. He could have sworn he had decent charge. He tried again. Nothing.

Here he was locked in an underground dungeon with a kinky gay Troll who could punch a dent in a metal door. His NYPD escort didn’t know where he was. His phone was dead. He was being used as a drug mule. At least he could skate on the last part if he ever got out of here.

Ramesh prayed silently – first to his Hindu grandparents’ multi-limbed gods, then to his mother’s crucified god, and for good measure recited the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

He began to feel better. On the positive side there was a good chance he could pass as a respected member of the community, although that carried its own risks. Today seemed to be some kind of special costume-wearing day which provided further cover. And then there was the weed which could be used to explain strange behavior, and win friends.

Ramesh heard a commotion from behind. He turned around and saw three men and a handcart approaching him. The commotion resolved into an annoying electronic beeping “preet, preet, preet,” followed by a voice announcement “Gangway, Gangway. Please move aside so that your WartCo technicians can bring you the finest service anywhen.”

The cart contained a large spool of thick cable. The foremost crewman was an older athletic man who stood on the front of the cart turning the spool and yelling back at the other crewmen, two chubby younger guys. The crew were all wearing white coveralls and hardhats, each bearing a logo consisting of a stylized “W” inside a circle. The second crewman was pushing the cart from the rear. The last crewman was taping the cable to the floor with a rolling device on a stick.

Manually laying floor tape is one of the most tedious, time-consuming and painful jobs many of us have to deal with. But with the high cost of a trip or fall, safety has to be a priority. Finally, there is a better way: introducing the GaffGun™. No longer do you have to be on your knees or use excessive tape to make your cables secure.

“Dammit Corey, put some muscle into it,” yelled the chief to the crewman working the taping machine. “And keep that cable as close to the wall as she’ll go. Steady Brian,” he said ducking down to avoid a light fixture, “and a warning would be nice.”

Brian smirked, and pantomimed jerking the cart sideways which the chief ignored.

Ramesh decided to ask for directions. “Hey, how do I…”

The crew chief shook his head. “Sorry Sir, we’re just techs. Your site POC should have all your destination info. Someone named Fist of Etiquette”

Corey giggled.

“Remember lads, we’re here to lay cable not to judge our clients.”

“Yeah, we all know whose cable you’d like to lube up and conduitize,” observed Brian, aping the posture and gait of a Troll.

“Shut your piehole and push the cart. His Growlr pic is totally hot, but it’s a decade and a hundred pounds out of date.” The WartCo crew receded down the corridor.

Something really big was about to happen at Thought! Magazine, at least with the commenters. Ramesh wondered how many of the handles he had seen while lurking were, well, whatever these people were. Was this somehow related to the music video? Thought! had the most notoriously rabid, snarky and informed comment section in the political arena. And it was well-known that there was no love lost between the commenters and staff. The boss had asked Ramesh to look for a weak point that could be exploited to further alienate the two sides from one another, but it appeared that was happening on its own.

“Hello,” said a close by voice.

Ramesh shrieked and started. Standing next to him was a man wearing a red and black checked flappy hat, matching flannel shirt, and loose-fitting jeans semi tucked into unlaced work boots.

“Hey, sorry about that. I didn’t hear you come up.”

“Good one, Doc.”

So apparently he did look like Doctor Bombay.

“Hey, I’m glad you’re back, eh. I’m headed over to Mario’s. He’s taking this really hard. Can you spare a second to help cheer him up?”

“Sure, I need to drop off something from Godwin, anyway,” said Ramesh as he started walking again.

“Thank God, he’s frantic. I wonder how long he can make that last? He’s going to Holland, but decades before the green cafes – if they even exist in that timeline. Where are you going?”

“To be a junior federal prosecutor working for Preet.”

“Beauty. Wreak havoc. The Squirrels really have a hardon for him, eh?”

“Sounds like.”

“And speaking of whom.” The Canadian paused and opened a door which somehow Ramesh had failed to notice. On the door was a sign reading “Data Processing.”

The room contained a complicated, multi-level structure of of small ramps, chutes, hamster wheels, spinning levers with balls attached, all now silent and still – a Sciuriac, an antique Indian squirrel-powered computer which used acorns to encode and store data. The Indian Museum of Digital Computing had an exhibit with part of a unit and a brief film loop of countless squirrels running to and fro along the ramps and wheels, taking acorns from the various output cups then dropping them into the various input chutes.

“Let’s not leave Mario hanging,” said Ramesh.

“Right. Good point.”

As they walked down the corridor the peppy Latin music started up again, and grew louder as they walked. They passed a door labelled “Men” and from around the next corner Ramesh saw a man in a black dress and low-crowned, broad brimmed hat approaching, as he got closer Ramesh saw the simple wooden cross on the twine around his neck, and the notched collar on whatever the dress-type garment was called – some sort of clerical outfit.

“Hello, Your Holiness,” giggled the Canadian.

“Hello Rufus, Heathen. I’ll pray for you both. Better get to your boy, he’s crying like the sissy bitch he is.”

June 12, 2019
The Glibening, Part Eight: Curiouser and Curiouser…

Tu musica

Previously…

The door opened and Ramesh found himself face to face with a Troll, a Troll like in The Hobbit. The Troll was doing a dope deal with a chunky young Korean dude.

“Oh shit, the cops,” shrieked the dude.

And at that moment Ramesh remembered that he was wearing a badge.

Today’s Story…

The Troll stood about six foot eight even with his slouchy posture, with a bald head and gray goatee, and several obvious piercings. He was fat, like three neckrolls fat, and dressed in Doc Martens boots, calf-length baggy black jorts, and a black t-shirt with the Thought! Magazine nameplate over his left breast. And large and surprisingly shapely breasts they were, which was a bit unnerving for Ramesh. The Troll looked at Ramesh and grinned widely. His teeth weren’t as fangy as Ramesh expected, and were clean and some had silver fillings.

“Look who’s back. Hi Doc,” said the Troll to Ramesh before turning back to the dude.

“Stuff it, Cho. Doc Bombay ain’t no more a cop than me.”

“Nice suit, Doc,” said the Troll, turning back to Ramesh. “Big change from your usual outfit.”

“Hi. Thanks.” said Ramesh, very curious but deciding his best action was to play along. He recognized the handle “Doctor Bombay, You Know from Mumbai” from lurking on the Thought! website at his boss’ behest. Perhaps all South Asians looked alike to Trolls, and obviously the dude didn’t know Doctor Bombay.

“Hey, can you drop something off with Mario,” the Troll asked Ramesh.

“Sure.”

“Great, I’ll make it worth your while. Here’s his zee,” said the Troll producing a sealed plastic bag of weed.

“Alea iacta est,” thought Ramesh and stepped through the door.

“Here’s a bud for you. Pineapple Express.” The Troll unpalmed a smallish colita and handed it to Ramesh along with the bag.

“Pineapple Express combines the potent and flavorful forces of parent strains Trainwreck and Hawaiian… This hard-hitting sativa-dominant hybrid provides a long-lasting energetic buzz perfect for productive afternoons and creative escapes.” -Leafly

Ramesh had smoked quite a bit of pot before becoming a federal prosecutor. His gift bud appeared to be from the same batch as the weed in the bag. He gave the megabud a good sniff. It was indeed the Express, and of a most fragrant character. “Thanks,” he nodded appreciatively to the Troll and dropped the pot into his suit coat pocket.

“What are you going to be, Doc? Detective? Which timeline?”

“Junior federal prosecutor, working for Preet,” said Ramesh, remembering that the truth was the best lie of all.

“Hurr-Durr,” laughed Godwin. “No way…”

Wow, so Trolls really did laugh like that, thought Ramesh.

Godwin’s laugh degenerated into a long, nasty series of lung noises which culminated in the production of a sizeable loogie which the Troll expertly spat into a short, widemouthed brass vase sitting on the floor. The loogie hit with enough force to cause the vase to tip slightly, whereupon it started rotating making a wuka-wuka noise before finally coming to rest. The oyster, which had been sitting on the lip of the vase covering the opening, slowly burbled up then burst with a wet “plorp” and oozed slowly into the vase.

“Hey Godwin, my bags look kind of light,” whined Cho holding up two anemic snack baggies containing shake, stems, and seeds – the worst sort of schoolyard schwag.

“Take it or leave it, Cho. And tell Mr. Rico Suave he’ll get a nicer bag if he came down himself instead of sending his fanboi interns, and buy more than a dime bag at a time. You’d think he could afford that, right? Your bag is light because of the risk I’m taking,” said Godwin hooking his huge thumb at the sign on the door. “I’m doing good in commenter training and don’t want to fuck it up. Why are you still here?”

Cho stuffed the bags in the pocket of his skinny jeans, and hustled out the door and up the steps, shaking his fulsome rump in its stretchy denim cradle to Godwin’s obvious enjoyment. “Doctor Gilhooly is right, you people are all just one step away from Nazis,” called Cho petulantly over his shoulder.

Ramesh expected Godwin to pursue and catch Cho, and subsequently dismember and/or eat him. Instead, Godwin just slammed the great door shut and began beating on it with his huge fists. “That little shit,” bellowed Godwin. Ramesh now understood how the dimple had formed in the door.

“Hey, could you have the Paw do me one last time,” asked Godwin, still slightly tumescent from his scene with Cho and subsequent raging.

Ramesh didn’t know what Godwin meant by “do me,” but he was about to find out. He had nothing against gay, but working a zombie monkey paw to give a Troll a telekinetic handy was just a bit out there.

“Sure,” he said, playing for time.

To Ramesh’s surprise, Godwin turned his back and bent over slightly cupping his knees with his huge palms. There was ample buttcrack showing. The troll was wearing a black jockstrap with “NASTYPIG” woven into the waistband fabric in red, along with a pig snout logo. Ramesh suddenly felt queasy, like an hour after Chipotle queasy.

Ramesh slowly reached into the purse and extracted the Paw by the stump and held the hand upright, palm towards Godwin. He knew it was best to be very specific with tulpas, but he also didn’t want to risk giving the wrong instruction. And Godwin had said “one last time,” so presumably the paw knew what to do.

Monkey Paw, Monkey Paw,
Make Godwin happy.
Monkey Paw, Monkey Paw,
Just like before.

Sad monkey hoots. The Paw slowly formed its tiny hand into a claw and started flexing its fingers. Ramesh noticed a twitching lump underneath Godwin’s shirt in the vicinity of the shoulder blades. He waved the Paw around with a vigorous circular motion and as he did so the shirt lump tracked the movements of the Paw. Godwin began making a series of happy grunts. Ramesh started moving the Paw down then up, from as high as his arm would reach down to the point in space where the jockstrap waistband began to move. He didn’t want to risk taking the Paw below the equator. Dark spots appeared at several places on Godwin’s shirt, as the Paw popped pustules and expressed bullae.

“Right there,” grunted Godwin in a voice an octave below basso profondo.

Ramesh worked the paw extra special hard and wondered what he had done in a past life to deserve this. He finally finished everything that could reasonably be considered Godwin’s back, and paused.

Godwin straightened up, as much as one could with his physique. “Thanks, Doc. I haven’t had one that good since Lützi Steegenwould was here. She took the MTA out to Brooklyn to buy a garden rake with her little intern stipend just to scratch my back. Godwin became lachrymose, which eventually caused the production of another loogie and another ringing of the vase.

Ramesh had worked up a bit of a sweat. That was the difference between Western magic and Eastern magic – wizards just waved their wands and shit happened; shamans had to expend energy equal to the effect they achieved. The Paw waited for a few seconds after Ramesh stopped moving it, then started cleaning under its fingernails using its thumbnail, then vice versa. Finally the Paw balled its tiny fist then unballed it quickly three times in succession then shook its fingers out. Funny that something dead and rotting, and animated by the darkest necromancy, should be so fastidious. Ramesh dropped the Paw back into the purse.

“I guess I’ll head over to Mario’s now,” said Ramesh.

“Yeah, I know you all have to get ready. I’ll miss you guys,” snuffled Godwin.

“Hey, you’re going to make a fine commenter,” said Ramesh, extending his hand.

“That means a lot, you being a William and Mary graduate.” At that, Godwin pulled Ramesh in for a big hug, and Ramesh found himself smothered in Troll moobage.

“Thanks,” said Ramesh once Godwin relaxed his embrace.

Ramesh turned and walked down the corridor, trying to be nonchalant as if he did this every day. He wondered if Godwin was checking out his butt. But even more disturbing was how Godwin knew he was a William and Mary alum. Unless Doctor Bombay was also an alum, but that would be suspiciously coincidental.

He came to to a Tee in the corridor. He stopped, looked and listened. Identical corridor in each direction. From the right he heard a muffled chorus of screeching, from the left he heard peppy Latin music.

The choice was obvious.

June 5, 2019
What Are We Reading – May 2019

It’s the last Friday of the month which means it’s another What Are We Reading. And while the autographed and (concerningly) waterproof print copies of H&H Vol 1: It’s Probably Just a Fart… No, No, It Was Definitely A Trump Election count, keeping up on the latest H&H blog post does not–but it is VERY slimming.

OMWC

Of all the Founding Fathers, the least known was the most interesting. Gouverneur Morris had a withered arm from a childhood burn and a wooden leg from a carriage accident, yet still managed to penetrate every vagina that came within reach. He was a brilliant intellectual, a witty conversationalist in several languages, a deep thinker, and wildly undisciplined. Though James Madison generally gets the credit for the Constitution, the actual writing of it was mostly in Morris’s hands. “We The People of the United States…” is pure Morris. Gentleman Revolutionary is Richard Brookheiser’s somewhat brief but eminently readable biography. Morris’s death is somewhat truncated at the end, but I’ll do the spoiler and tell you about it anyway- he dies of an infection caused by his own attempts to remove a urinary blockage by means of reaming his peehole with a whalebone. With no anesthesia, of course. I hope you’re wincing as much as I am.

Robert Park is a physicist who taught at University of Maryland for many years before becoming Director of Public Information for the American Physical Society. His weekly What’s New columns were “don’t miss” reading for me, and were entertaining, educational, and often infuriating to their targets. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud was the first (and better) of his two books summarizing case studies in pseudoscience and junk science for fun and profit. One useful distinction Park wrote about was the difference between pseudoscience and junk science, and of course, Langmuir’s genius essays on pathological science make frequent appearances. Park covers various “free energy” scammers, the idiocy and uselessness of manned spaceflight, TV and news media’s roles in the propagation of ignorance, the use of junk epidemiology by lawyers and NGOs, “quantum healing” health frauds, and even the UFO crazes. Delightful reading.

SugarFree

I read Patricia Highsmith‘s delightfully acidic Little Tales of Misogyny, a book of very short short stories about all the different ways women are awful. A lesbian misogynist is not as odd as it may seem. I’ve met a couple here and there. To hate something you desire… one will probably shoot up a Shapes in a few years.

And I’ve been drawn back into The Devil’s Dictionary for probably dozenth time since reading it in high school. If you are ever sick of feeling good about your fellow humans, Ambrose Bierce will set you straight.

HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and entrusted its duties to the sleeve. Shakspeare’s introducing it into the play of “Othello” is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt, as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coat-tails in our own day — an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.

THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become. To be absolutely wise and good — that is perfection; and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection. Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better than they were last year. The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.

DEMAGOGUE, n. A political opponent.

mexicansharpshooter

I read more than children’s books this month. Today’s entry is An Economist Walks Into A Brothel, by Allison Schrager, Ph.D. This is one of those books people read at the airport in front of their boss while traveling because it has a vague relation to work. The title aside, it is pretty interesting. The first chapter focuses on The Moonlight Bunny Ranch outside of Carson City, NV. She business model of the brothel is not necessarily selling services but in selling and delivering them in a manner with the least amount of risk. For example, as ENB pointed out numerous times, sex workers often experience violence due to their existence in a black market. As a result, the workers pay an insane fee to the brothel, but why?

The legal brothel removes nearly all of the risk. The risk to the worker, in the form of violence, being stiffed by their customer (or a dirty cop), and financially. The workers are tested weekly, reducing the likelihood of disease, which manages the risk for the customer. Schrager goes on to explain how risk is managed in other industries as well.

SP

I’ve had slightly more recreational reading time this month than I have since the relocation. So, I’ve been diving into two mystery series that are set in and around my new hometown.

Scottsdale is home to The Poisoned Pen bookstore, from which I used to order. It’s fun that it’s just a short hop away (depending on traffic). The store hosts many, many author events, and I’m hoping to get up there to see Brad Thor in late June.

First up, the Lena Jones mysteries by local author Betty Webb. I am really enjoying this well-written series. The protagonist is not a cookie cutter PI and the cases are interesting. Jones is based in Scottsdale, a place I have only rarely ventured (see above), but the cases take her beyond the borders of her city. I’m on book 6.

I’ve also started Jon Talton’s David Mapstone series. I’m on book 3, Dry Heat, written in 2004. My favorite passage so far: “All these SWAT cops in their paramilitary attire, what did this mean for the health of American civil society? Like surveillance cameras everywhere, pre-employment drug tests, and other subtle assaults on the Constitution.”

The Mapstone books are set in Phoenix proper, with the native Phoenician protagonist having just moved back to his family’s home in the Willo Historic District at the start of the first volume. Mapstone is a PhD historian, formerly a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputy, who is now working as a cold case investigator for MCSO. A nice glimpse of this fast-changing city from a different perspective.

The library system in Maricopa County is great, with some really terrific resources. I’ve been able to do my casual reading via ebooks from OverDrive. Sorry AMZ.

jesse.in.mb

Soooooo, I accidentally bought the second book in a series that I wasn’t reading because it was on sale because the plot summary was very similar to the other series by the same author. A.G. Riddle likes his grand genetic conspiracies about human origins. I put away the first two books in the Atlantis Trilogy this month because of some serious sunk-cost fallacy. The books aren’t as bad as some of Brett’s book-club choices, but they aren’t something I’d generally recommend unless you were going to spend time sitting on a very expensive beach and pretend to read while you really watch beautiful people who are having more fun than you walk around in next to nothing, or on an airplane. Currently audio-booking Hiddensee by Gregory Macguire (of Wicked fame), and reading The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters, which has been more charming than I anticipated. I’ll let you know next time (or not).

Brett L

Since last I posted here, which I can’t remember how long it has been, I read all of the novels (but not short fiction) in the Expanse series by James SA Corey. The first four or five were great. The sudden appearance of ~~Admiral Thrawn with a super-fleet of alien Star Destroyers~~ I mean, the Martian guy, same plot. Anyhow, good plot. Cool that it took about three books just to set up the main plot. I kind of wish they hadn’t unleashed partial/potential immortality on their universe (Corey is the pen name of a duo), but there is some great space opera along the way. I also read the first two installments of Mark Lawrence’s Impossible Times series. I really loved the Jorg/Red Queen universe. I’ve been so-so on his Nona Grey books. Impossible Times is set in 1986 England where a teenager who’s just finishing leukemia chemotherapy meets his future self, who tells him they invent time travel to save a girl young he just met from brain damage. This young man (Nick) happens to be the son of a math prodigy who strolled in front of a bus. His only resources are his D&D group that happens to include the popular scion of a Motorola VP and a different young athlete. The plot of the first book is entertaining, but the way time travel is set up, it is a foregone conclusion that everything had to happen that way. Also, there’s a random young psychopath who exists only to add constraint and difficulty to the mission. The second book is more of a mess. Both are eminently readable, but feel lots of shortcuts are taken.

JW

All I been readin’ is the Bible. But not that fake Bible all the rest of you have been fooled by. I only read my Grandpappy’s Bible. He went thru and cut out all the parts about forgiveness. Grandpappy’s God is a vengeful God and you will all pay in blood for your wickedness.

Riven

One of these days, I’m going to finish Crucial Conversations. As I said last month, it’s been pretty helpful for me, professionally. It’s a short book and it should not be taking me so long, but I guess I just haven’t had time. I do, at least, have my next book lined up: Great Minds Speak to You. This was a gift from my sister for my birthday last month. It’s not something I would have picked out for myself, but it takes all kinds, doesn’t it? The version she got me comes with an audio CD, as well… just in case you really want them to speak to you, I suppose. I’m not really sure what to think of it, but I’ll give it a shot when I have some time. I notice that “A Course in Miracles” is a purchase suggestion, based on my interest in Great Minds Speak to You. Maybe you’re not familiar with that book, but it was a favorite of my father’s in the last decade or so. Hm. Seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree at all, does it?

May 31, 2019
The Glibening, Part One Million Seven: That’s How You Troll

Previously

Music

“Sergeant Brown, since it’s going to be a while may I go inside and use the bathroom,” asked Ramesh.

“Sure,” said Brown. “Just stay on the First Floor.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” said Murphy.

They walked through the glass doors and into the building lobby. Behind the empty security desk a grimy Panasonic CRT monitor slowly cycled through different security camera feeds. They reached the elevators and Murphy paused.

“You going to be long,” asked Murphy.

“No,” said Ramesh feeling as if he was eight years old on a roadtrip with his parents.

Murphy stopped to read the Vandersnatch Building directory signboard. Ramesh hurried past Murphy, grateful that his surveillance didn’t extend to pee breaks.

Ramesh returned to the lobby with his badge better mounted so as to flash out from behind his jacket as he walked. He found Murphy smoking a cigarette in defiance of the “No Smoking” sign posted in the lobby just above a well-used ashtray.

“Damn, this place has gone downhill. Cryptid Quarterly, Tinfoil Times, ReptilianWatch, Orgone Research Foundation – whatever the fuck that is. I remember when Thought! was the most crackpot thing here. Back when your fashion and lifestyle magazines were still here, before the wacko crowd started moving in.”

Ramesh’s curiosity was piqued. What the fuck was an Orgone? He pulled out his phone to look it up on the internet.

“Hey kid, I’m gonna go drop a deuce. You going to stay here or go back outside?”

“I’ll go back outside,” mumbled Ramesh without looking up from his phone.

“Okay.”

While Ramesh was lost in his research he became vaguely aware of someone else in the lobby. His eyes flicked up and he saw a man pushing a housekeeping cart towards the back of the lobby. Ramesh returned to his phone. Reich was a badass. Kicked out of the Communist party, books banned and burned by the Nazis, kicked out of the psychiatric association, then the whole Orgone thing. The FDA enforcement action against Reich sounded like the type of crusading work his boss did, but they’d never get a ruling that sweeping today.

“Yep, they sure put him through the spice grinder,” said a voice in Gujarati.

Ramesh started then looked around. The man pushing the maintenance cart was now facing him as he towed the cart through a door at the rear of the lobby; it was the shaman from the bad production number which had started this whole thing, now dressed in khaki slacks and mustard uniform polo embroidered with a sun logo. The shaman disappeared through the doorway, followed by the cart, and the door swung quickly shut and clanked.

Ramesh sprinted to the door. He worked the bar and charged the door only to have it open a few inches then stop, jammed by something. Ramesh looked through the opening and saw the landing of a stairway. The cleaning cart had been placed so as to impede his progress. He stuck his hand through the door and rotated the cart so it would allow the door open wider. He pushed the door open as far as it would go and slid sideways through the doorway to find himself at the top of a stairwell with cinderblock walls, concrete floors and stairs, and metal railings and trim. The stairwell was lit with dim yellow lights in metal cages. Ramesh headed down.

He reached a landing where the walls changed from cinderblock to dark gray stone blocks, black stone stair treads with noticeable wear at the centers replaced steel-edged concrete, and the railings became more ornamental and antique looking. On the landing floor was a camel scrotum leather pouch with a flap closure – a purse. His instincts, honed by countless hours of dungeon crawling games, kicked in and he scooped up the purse.

A powder flask made from a camel scrotum.

He trotted down the next flight of steps to a landing with a door. Ramesh grabbed the handle and gave it a turn – it was locked. Maybe the key was in the purse. He opened the flap and looked inside, he didn’t see anything. He shook, then palpated the scrotum but felt nothing inside. Finally he turned the purse upside down and tapped it out. A small cascade of sand, dust and fluff tumbled to the floor, but no key.

The only thing he could do was continue downwards. He descended to the next landing and turned the corner to see a tall, thin table made of carved rosewood atop which lay a silvery plastic tray containing a small lavender colored packet – a Twinings Darjeeling teabag. He opened the purse and dropped the packet inside.

After the next flight down he reached a large metal door without a handle or keyhole. The center of the door was dimpled outward. The area where one would expect the handle to be had been reinforced with plates to deny access to the slit between the door and its frame and to cover the area where the lock mechanism presumably was. There was a yellowed sign on the door – “Absolutely NO Thought! Magazine Interns Past This Point. -R Kestrel, ed.” The sign had been adorned with a penis graffito.

The purse and the teabag had obviously been left for him to find, and were somehow related to his getting through the door. The logical thing was to put the packet inside the purse, which he had already done. He opened the flap and peered inside. Nothing discernible had happened. He had no water and no heat source, hence no means of making tea. He removed the packet and tore it open and found that it contained the expected teabag. He dropped the teabag back into the purse and closed it and squeezed it. Again, nothing.

And then it dawned on him that he was being trolled to no lesser a degree than his boss had been. The teabag was a clue, not an artifact. He rubbed the purse on his forehead, first shyly, then more enthusiastically. He had, after all, gone to Woodberry Forest, and wasn’t one of the athletic or popular boys; he was no stranger to the feel of a scrotum on his forehead.

Suddenly he heard the vocalizations of a langur monkey and felt something stiff and bony moving around inside the purse. Ramesh shrieked and reflexively dropped the purse and stepped back. The purse hit the floor, lay still for a moment and began pulsating. The flap opened slowly, and a small furry hand emerged crawling on its fingers and pulling the stump of its lower arm behind. The monkey paw was mostly mummified, yet some fleshy parts remained and those were in a liminal state between putridity and mummification; two small jagged bones poked out of the stump. The paw picked up steam and swarmed up Ramesh’s leg and onto his shoulder finally hopping up onto his head where it started grooming his scalp with its nails.

Unbidden, a childhood memory rose up from the depths of his mind, and he blurted out a nursery rhyme he had been taught by Bhagavaandaas, the old man who lived in a lean-to built against the outside wall of his family’s compound in Gujarat. The old man had no discernable job, yet was respected by all. He sat outside his house all day and received visitors with whom he had long, quiet conversations and served tea. Once young Ramesh had learned that it was only okay to approach the old man between visitors he found that Bhagavaandaas was an endless source of tales.

Monkey Paw, Monkey Paw,

Be now my servant.

Monkey Paw Monkey Paw,

And me defend.

At that, the Paw did a little dance across Ramesh’s shoulder, then ran down his leg and over to the door. The Paw then turned around and ran back to lie down beside Ramesh’s foot. Its small hand formed into a fist and the Paw twitched then went limp.

The Paw was telling him he needed to knock on the door. Kind of obvious, but whatever. He picked up the Paw and the purse from the floor and dropped the Paw into into the purse. He heard the sound of a monkey shriek and the teabag and its wrapping came flying out of the purse and fluttered down to the floor. Apparently the Paw was particular about its lodgings. He looked down at the teabag and wrapper and tried to decide what, if anything, to do with them. The decision was made for him as they became first translucent, then transparent, then disappeared altogether. He approached the door and heard muffled voices coming from inside. Ramesh raised his hand and rapped twice with his knuckles. He waited, but nothing happened. He balled his hand into a fist and beat on the door four times, producing a loud booming which echoed through the stairwell. Still nothing.

Ah, he needed to use the Paw to knock on the door. Ramesh retrieved the Paw from the scrotum, and held it so as to knock on the door. The Paw was not cooperating – the wrist was limp and the hand was no longer formed into a fist. He waved the Paw at the door causing the nails to scritch on the door to the accompaniment of an angry series of monkey barks.

The Paw was totally being a bitch, but that was the nature of tulpas; they were not mere automatons like golems, but had agency. Ramesh had first heard the word “tulpa” during a Cultural Anthropology course at William and Mary, long after Bhagavaandaas was dead. The old man had given him a thorough education about tulpas and Ramesh had thought it was merely a bunch of rhymes and stories. He decided to wheedle the Paw.

Monkey Paw, Monkey Paw,

Open the Door,

Monkey Paw, Monkey Paw,

Give me good luck.

The Paw formed into a fist and thrashed five times, miming a fist knocking on a door, then paused, then thrashed twice more. Each thrash of the wee fist was followed by the sound of a hearty rap on the door. “Tap, tappa, tap-tap… tap-tap.”

The door opened and Ramesh found himself face to face with a Troll, a Troll like in The Hobbit. The Troll was doing a dope deal with a chunky young Korean dude.

“Oh shit, the cops,” shrieked the dude.

And at that moment Ramesh remembered that he was wearing a badge.

To be continued…

May 22, 2019
What Are We Reading – April, 2019

Another last Friday of the month and another scramble to present ourselves as citizens of the world: growing intellectually and emotionally by exposing ourselves to the ideas and experiences of others to better understand that which exists outside of ourselves and empathize with those who think, feel and live differently than we do…and also a lot of genre fiction, mostly because of Brett.

SP

So I picked up Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe by Lisa Randall. With a title and subtitle like that, one might think this is going to contain groundbreaking research. This is, after all, written by someone who, “studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University.”

Well, here is what the author says just two pages in: “This book explores a speculative scenario in which my collaborators and I suggest that dark matter might ultimately (and indirectly) have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaur.”

You know WHO ELSE had collaborators!

OMWC

Unpacking our books, I ran across one I hadn’t read in decades, Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark. In theory, this is a book about critical thinking, examining people’s beliefs regarding alien abductions, faith healing, ESP, spirit mediums, “recovered memory” as part of the Satanic Panic of that time, and many more. Sagan’s continuing theme is that we do not educate our kids well enough for them to develop an effective bullshit filter, and that they don’t learn science properly, it being taught as a collection of facts rather than as a process of arriving at truth (or at least a better approximation of truth). There’s a lot of good stuff packed in there, but it’s difficult to resist yelling and throwing the book across the room since it assumes that teaching must be done by government schools staffed by highly paid government indoctrinators. If only he had examined THAT assumption critically… Lot of gratuitous swiping at religion, much of it deserved, much of it just for effect and moral preening. And somehow, he skims over the evil Janet Reno’s role in sending innocent parents and teachers to jail for secret child sex rituals. Bleh. Read James Randi’s Flim Flam instead.

Twenty years ago, when Food Network was actually about cooking and teaching, there was a wonderful show called Taste, hosted by David Rosengarten. Each week, Rosengarten would take a single ingredient, teach about it, and demonstrate several dishes to feature it. It was stark, simple, no bullshit, and a delight to watch if you were serious about upping your cooking game. I bought his Dean & Deluca Cookbook, and it rapidly became of one of my go-to books when tackling something new. Something bad must have happened because Taste vanished without a trace. Rosengarten hasn’t, though, and I have been reading It’s All American Food for pleasure and to get ideas on things to cook and how to cook them. Like me, it’s divided into two main sections, the first being American takes on ethnic cuisines (where we twist, bend, and blend dishes into something unrecognizable to its native land, but somehow even more delicious because of the mixing of influences- appropriation, if you will), and the second being regional American cuisines, a concept foreign to non-Americans, who generally don’t understand the rich variety of our geographically diverse foods and cooking methods. Well fuck those Euro-weenie snobs, America is a food paradise, and this book is a celebration of that.

jesse.in.mb

Morieux and Tollman – Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexiy without Getting Complicated: Part of my friend’s “Ha, you’re in charge of people…well, let’s fix you” series. Six Simple Rules is short but dense and occasionally feels obtuse, but the ideas that landed have provided immediate paths forward for problems I’d thought were intractable. I see myself referencing the concluding chapter and the rule summaries repeatedly while I struggle through the implications of some of the denser sections.

Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler – Crucial Conversations I have mixed feelings about this one. It starts off overly self-helpy and frequently praises its own efficacy as part of the way it describes thinking about how you enter into necessarily intense conversations with others. I probably would not have read it if my friend (who has trained with this group professionally) had not pushed it as hard as she did (still trying to fix me), but I’m also glad that I did. It’s helped me avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of saying nothing to avoid conflict and being pushy when I think I’m right in both my personal and professional life and I’ve passed it on to a few friends and coworkers where appropriate. (I was almost done with this one last month but not quite there).

Recipes for the Cuisinart: Food Processor by James Beard: So I was trying to track down a brioche loaf recipe that I used to make when I first started baking. Everything goes in the food processor, rise, punch down, shape into a loaf and let it rise again. Apparently this recipe was ultimately James Beard’s fault from a midcentury cookbooks put out by Cuisinart. I had to have it. While I was messing around on this front I also picked up America’s Test Kitchen – Food Processor Perfection. I’d recommend the latter over the former although the recipes look solid in the Beard one, they’re also largely midcentury. The best bit was Beard takes a bunch of standard recipes and shows how the device can be more effectively used to speed it up rather than following the recipe as linearly. The ATK one seemed a bit obvious until I started hitting how to effectively slice and grind meat. The BF and I have done bulgogi from thinly shaved tritip, meatballs from short ribs and flap meat and a chuck roast lasagna that have each been spectacular. The food processor managed to steal precious counter space from the Kitchenaid this month.

Kevin Panetta (author) and Savanna Ganucheau (Illustrator) – Bloom: Cute gay bildungsroman centered on a family bakery in a small east coast town.

JW

Genji Monogatari by Murasaki Shikibu. Riven promised tentacles and busty women in school uniforms, but this is just an erudite exploration of the psychology of characters who are both alien in their setting, but contemporary and fresh in the way that the author addresses them as fully realized players in their world. While I’d conten-Oh! Beach volleyball. Later gators.

SugarFree

I read a lot of things here and there this month, but the highlight was definitely Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands, a novel that contains all the fluids a body can produce, and in excessive amounts. Either a brilliant dissection of the constraints patriarchy places of women’s bodies or a disgusto-porn novel put out by a respectable publisher, it is a pretty wild ride; Walt Whitman taken to the logical extreme:

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with
doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

Riven

Well, I didn’t manage to get to the books I said I’d hoped to read this month in our last “What Are We Reading.” Wah wah. But it was tax season! And my birthday! And other excuses! Also, I had some personality conflicts at work, which I complained about at length to jesse.in.mb. He said he had been reading this one book, and it had been really helpful for him. So, I also have been reading Crucial Conversations. I have not yet finished it but I’ve tried to using some of the things I have read about at work, and it has been massively helpful. I agree with jesse.in.mb’s thinking above: pretty self-helpy and self-congratulatory so far. I am hoping to actually finish it in May, but even if I don’t, I’m pleased with what I have taken away from it up to this point.

Can you believe JW believed me? I’m always promising tentacles and busty women in school uniforms–you’d think he would have learned by now.

mexican sharpshooter

This month the best book I read was about a cat named Pete, or Pete the Cat if you will. Today he made a big lunch. Most people think Pete is a child–he’s not. He’s a total stoner and if you need proof, here is a photo of the stoned kitty.

Now Pete was hungry for lunch, and he discovered the sandwich he made was far too large for even Pete with the munchies. He just kept adding things between two slices of bread until he realized he just had a giant stack of food between two pieces of bread.

So he invited a couple buddies over, and they each got a piece of the sandwich.

April 26, 2019
A Chronicle of the Insurgency, Part Four: Quid Pro Quo

“This is Lisa Fletcher reporting from Capitol Hill where there have been reports of sewer explosions and of giant sewer rats emerging from toilets. DC Water and Sewer Authority is on the scene, and here we see a DC Fire and EMS ambulance leaving leaving the Dirksen Senate Office Building. We don’t know who or to where because of patient privacy laws, but we have reason to believe it isn’t life threatening.”

“Thanks, Lisa, and now to a live press conference at City Hall with Mayor Bowser and DC Water and Sewer Authority director Gadis.”

§

The staff at Le Diplomate were shocked when their normally-punctual senator didn’t show for her standing Friday evening reservation. The hostess then somehow managed to mention that to Mr. and Mrs. EJ Dionne of The Washington Post as she was seating them. On Monday a messenger brought her two orchestra-level Orange Section seats to the matinee performance of “Avenue Q” at The Kennedy Center.

§

Imelda Ramos checked the calendar for the days appointments. “Senator K” was written in big letters for the 9:30 slot. She always took care of the senator herself, as much for the prestige as to avoid the complaints from the girls. She made sure Maria the cleanup girl parked in the spot just outside the front door so she could move when the senator arrived. Hopefully the senator was having a good day. If it were anyone else, Imelda would have fired her as a customer, but in DC a senator was a rare prize and having her as a regular drove up business.

Nine twenty arrived and Imelda sent Maria out to wait in her car. The senator was usually punctual, and always had someone call if she were delayed or had to reschedule. Nine forty-five came and went. At eleven she waved Maria back inside. When Judy Woodruff came in, Imelda mentioned that the senator was no-show today and how unlike her that was.

“Your daughter is in college, right? Have her call my office about an internship.

§

Jayne Sandman’s Saturday evening soiree was as full of awkward groping as a teen party with no parents. Those who had heard the rumor were trying to make sure everyone else knew that they were in the know. Yet, nobody wanted to be the first to just blurt it out like a yokel from Manassas or Frederick. Many hints were dropped about a probable forthcoming announcement from a Senator from flyover country.

§

On Sunday morning the Tim Russert Memorial TV Studio at the National Press Building was abuzz with rumors that Amy Klobuchar was missing. Tasha the makeup artist whispered that to Kamala Harris while she was getting her ready for her appearance on “Meet the Press.” Fortunately she had time to text her campaign manager. “AmyK disappeared from DC. Suspect she’s holed up with declaration imminent. Be ready.”

“You know, I’ve always wanted to go on a campaign tour as like someone’s personal makeup and hair girl.”

Credit: Mythical Libertarian Woman

He hadn’t heard her come in. It had been two nights and he’d been baching it. He’d assumed that she’d been holed up in her ratty little apartment on Capitol Hill; her own fortress of solitude. He rustled the law student’s paper ostentatiously. Nothing. One of The Iron Rules was: No papers, bills or briefs (ha, ha) in bed. She must want something very badly, and there were few things for which she needed his participation or assent. He decided to troll harder.

“Jenkins in my Con Law class argues that the Second means an individual right to keep and bear arms.” That should get her going.

“Oh,” she responded, shrugging off her satin peignoir to reveal a sheer babydoll nightie with nothing on underneath. “I’ll bare more than that…”

She was going to run for president, he thought. Because it wasn’t his birthday where he got a “blowjob” which was really just her taking his cockhead into her mouth for five seconds of unconvincing moaning, then giving him a handy; their anniversary where they had perfunctory sex recreating their wedding night; or Valentine’s Day where they awkwardly and often painfully enacted the trendy eroticism of the moment, as defined by Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue.

She let the peignoir drop do the floor and simultaneously crouched down and hiked up the babydoll to place first her left knee on the bed, then her right. Her pendulous, teardrop shaped breasts swayed in rhythm with her movement as she crawled towards him on her hands and knees. She had a predatory look in her eyes which he had never seen before. Her eyes were fixed upon his crotch.

By now she had reached him and stopped. She was on all fours with her shoulders lowered and her head tilted up to look him in the eye. She licked her lips awkwardly yet greedily.

“Who are you,” he asked, reflexively drawing up his knees to protect his manhood.

“I am your wife.”

He woke up the next morning with her tightly snuggled in as the little spoon. Usually she was on her side of the bed like a sarcophagal statue of a Roman matron in repose.

Her eyes opened and blinked and her tongue darted out. “Good morning, Dear. Shall I make breakfast?” Without waiting for an answer she slithered off the bed and put on the peignoir and headed downstairs.

Breakfast was coffee, bagels and lox. She sipped at a single cup of black coffee, picked at a bagel, but devoured the fish. He decided to try his luck and groped her from behind when she was bent over the sink, something she hated. Surprisingly, nothing was thrown or stabbed.

“You really should go to the cabin, you know…”

“What? Are you displeased with me?”

“No, but I know you’re planning to announce and you need to be ‘found’ back in Minnesota so you can credibly claim to have been on retreat. Doris will see you and then call Ollie who will call the press and get his fifteen minutes as ‘Rural Sheriff Finds Missing Senator.’ I’ll wrap up here and fly out to meet you.”

“You are the best, hon.”

April 2, 2019
What Are We Reading – March 2019

Has it been a month already? Where does the time go? Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. It’s been a fun 30 days or so, right? … Right?

Heroic Mulatto

I am currently reading Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn. Compared to the first entry in his reboot of the Thrawn trilogy, Zahn does a better job with his characterization of Grand Admiral Thrawn. In the first novel, I felt that Zahn played up the ‘fish out of water’ angle too much and Thrawn’s rise read much more like the diary of an Imperial officer with Asperger’s Syndrome who took too much colloidal silver. With Thrawn: Alliances, we see a Thrawn capable of simple and routine social interaction without shitting his pants mid-conversation. That having been said, as a character, Thrawn now seems to suffer from competence porn syndrome. Zahn has yet to find the middle ground where Thrawn can demonstrate that he is the galaxy’s absolute master of military tactics and strategy while still having a realistic and suitable foible. In the end, it could be that despite having created the character in the medium of print, Zahn’s Thrawn cannot compete with the quiet menace of Thrawn as depicted in the Star Wars: Rebels animated series.

jesse.in.mb

Andrew Mayne – The Naturalist (books 1-3). Ran through these on Audbile pretty quickly. They are easy enough procedurals although the second and third books lost some of the charm that the first book had because the main character had blossomed from a nerd to a thrill-seeking serial killer hunter by the second book.

Arkady Strugatsky – Roadside Picnic. I’d been chipping away at this for a while but had mostly stalled out. I’m glad that I took the time to finish it. The enigmatic ending was perfect for the story (although there’s still something that throws me off about Russian genre storytelling). The afterward by one of the authors is a delightful sampling of what it took to get a bowdlerized Roadside Picnic through the publishing process in the USSR.

I power skimmed a few the books in Humble Bundle’s Eat Like a Geek bundle. Nothing super exciting there. Ice Cube Tray Recipes was a good reminder that I have everything I need to make jello-shots, but a lot of the recommendations were banal for someone who frequently portions and freezes things like homemade chicken stock or caramelized onions in ice cube trays as is. Chinese Street Food looked intriguing. I’m waiting to hear back on a few books with recipes featuring a recently legalized “herb.” I mostly picked it up for the Medieval feasts and Edwardian cooking books, which I’m putting off until I have the chance to dig into them. I really enjoy modern takes on historical cooking such as The New Art of Cookery, A Spanish Friar’s Kitchen Notebook.

JW

I’ve been super busy lately, but I am always ready to make time for my favorite author, Chuck Tingle. His latest works have really opened my eyes to the importance of continuous consent and learning to be comfortable with the occasional dry spell. Mr. Tingle is likely the most erudite commentators on contemporary sexual discourse and is ~~absolutely~~ probably not a pen name of SugarFree.

SugarFree

I read the Ray Electromatic series by Adam Christopher, a science fiction spin on the oft-imitated Raymond Chandler genre. Set in an alternate 1960s where robots–the clanking metal variety–were introduced and then rejected by the public, the lead character is the last of his kind and the only one programmed to be a private detective. Working in a cliched LA full of secrets, lies and sin, Ray untangles mysteries–when he’s not working his sidejob as a hitman.

Riven

Well, I haven’t been able to do much reading outside of investment/work-related articles, but I can tell you about what’s on my bedside stand! …Get your minds out of the gutter; it’s just a big stack of books. OK, it’s a small stack of comic books and two proper books. The first one is Black Jack by our very own Moriah Jovan. Not my usual sci-fi or fantasy, but I am looking forward to branching out while still staying in some familiar territory. (Jack is an “uncouth bond trader,” so maybe there’ll be some interesting finance-related subplot(s)?) I bought this book–and the next one–last August. So. Super busy, or at least too busy to sit down and read a paperback. This month, though! Maybe! The other book is The Very Best of Charles de Lint, which was recommended to me by jesse.in.mb. He had me at “crow girls.” I’m sincerely hoping I can get to each of these in the next month, and give you guys a proper review at the end of April. Wish me luck. Or don’t. You’re adults.

mexican sharpshooter

I read an actual book during my vacation in Ireland. This time I picked 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann. Why would I do that? As it turns out most of the B&B’s I stayed in happened to have a TV, and quite frankly Irish TV is disturbingly British which means they must love their game shows…

At any rate, this book is thoroughly researched and suggests many of the lessons we were taught about life in Pre-Columbian America is, to be blunt, wrong. One of the myths that seems to perpetuate the most is that the Americas were an untouched, pristine wilderness when the first European settlers arrived. Not so. What is now postulated is the earliest Spanish explorers arrived in Florida and brought pigs with them. Why pigs? Because refrigerators weren’t invented yet and Spaniards like pork. Pigs often carry diseases and since they are mostly domesticated a plague could’ve jumped from humans to the pigs, or vice versa. Pigs escaped, became the invasive species they still are today, and came in contact with the Native Americans. The Native American’s, of course, had little immunity to these diseases and died in biblical proportions. The explorers left and decades later settlers arrived in time to find that nature had reclaimed most of the continent.

Its a thought-provoking point of view that if you are into history, I would certainly recommend.

March 29, 2019
The Art of Misdirection

A Chronicle of the Insurgency, Part 3:

The Art of Misdirection

by Tonio

“How long,” asked Bryan, her chief of staff.

Phillips, the Capitol Police inspector, checked his watch. “Their average response time for us is around four minutes. They always have units staged nearby.”

Tsimpris, the man from the Architect of the Capitol office, checked his phone. “Sunshine just turned onto Constitution. They have this really neat location track…”

There was an awkward pause and the three men looked again toward the corpse seated on the toilet as if they expected some change. Nobody wanted to look, but it somehow seemed disrespectful to not look.

The corpse that had until recently been US Senator Amy Klubuchar had settled backward with the spine against the seat lid. The head had rolled forward and the mouth was slightly agape with the lower jaw and lip sagging, the tongue poking out slightly. The eye sockets were empty and a yellowish pink fluid dripped from the nose. The personal bathroom, outfitted like that in a business hotel room, was dripping with the sewage that had erupted from many toilets in and around the US Capitol.

“What about evidence collection? We have to find out who did this! What if other senators are in danger? Or members of the House? Or the staff and public?”

Phillips checked his phone perfunctorily. “Everything is under control. We are doing a wellness check on every senator and member. The morgue people will collect everything they need from the body. We are taking measures, but quietly so as not to cause a panic.”

“What am I going to tell her husband?”

Phillips’ phone buzzed. “The ambulance is coming through the gate now.”

There was another long, awkward silence, followed by a tap on the door. Phillips cracked the door open and looked out, then nodded to someone outside. A man and a woman in DC FEMS uniforms rolled in a stretcher.

“Do you need to say goodbye,” asked Phillips.

Bryan turned to look at the corpse. “You were cruel, but I’m sorry to see you like this. Goodbye.”

At the word “goodbye” Phillips jammed an injector pen into the side of Bryan’s neck, then expertly broke his fall as he went slack. The DC FEMS crew sprung into action and quickly loaded the semi-conscious body onto the stretcher, strapping it down securely. Phillips patted Bryan’s cheek roughly. “Pleasant dreams, asshole. Enjoy your stay at Saint E’s.” He nodded at the ambulance crew who wheeled the body out.

“Christ, he was tiring,” said Tsimpris. “Your guys tipped off the press, right?”

“Yeah. Let’s hope Chris scores with the WJLA chick, she’s pretty hot.”

“Nobody sucks cock like the DC press.”

Then another knock and the Sunshine Cleaning crew wheeled in a commercial dehumidifier unit. The first team positioned their unit up in far corner, powered it up and left.

The second team didn’t even uncoil the power cable, but opened up their unit to reveal mostly empty space inside. As they unlimbered their equipment, Phillips struck up a conversation with them.

“So, which of you people was this?”

The round-faced crewman with the name patch “Burke” answered. “It wasn’t off-worlders, like us. They are from a different measurement than us all,” he gestured to include everyone in the room.

“Measurement?”

You mean dimension,” asked Tsimpris.

“Yes, that is the word. They are undercooked and dangerous.”

“You mean ‘rare,’” asked Phillips.

“Ah. Normally I’m not the talker. We’re busy today. Hare,” he gestured to the hatchet-faced crewman, “doesn’t speak English.” Hare’s mouth opened slightly and his tongue darted out.

The crew had got a C-shaped bar behind back of the corpse with the ends hooked under the armpits. They stepped out of the bathroom and Hare pulled a remote out of his coveralls. The bar hummed and lifted the corpse off the toilet so it was standing astride the bowl. Then a spherical object about the size of a softball levitated out of the fake dehumidifier and floated into the bathroom and hid behind the door. Burke reached in and pulled the door closed and checked that it was latched. Hare pushed a button and there was a prolonged whoosh from inside the bathroom.

“Fire in the hole,” said Phillips.

“It is a cold mist cleaner,” said Burke. “Plasma-based disinfection makes a body un-re-hatchable, like when you humans ruin good meat.”

“It’s an expression.”

The remote emitted a tone and Burke opened the door. The bathroom was as clean and fresh as a Summer’s eve. Hare worked his remote and the corpse floated out of the room dangling from the gravity-defying device which then lowered the corpse into the interior of the fake dehumidifier unit so it folded into a reclining position with the knees up. The softball floated out of the bathroom and returned to its little hidey hole inside the cabinet. Snakelike things writhed out from within the unit. Some bared sharp metal fangs, others had obscene, pulsing slickery ends. Phillips and Tsimpris were thankful that Burke closed the device before they could see any further indignities inflicted upon the corpse.

“So, when will she be ready,” asked Phillips.

“Monday, maybe Tuesday.”

“This is kind of a rush job.”

“You all say that.”

Burke and Hare rolled the unit out, Burke loudly complaining “fucking piece of shit unit, goddamn cheap company” and banging on the unit for good measure.

Phillips and Tsimpris waited for the door to close. “Beautiful,” said Tsimpris, enacting a silent golf clap.

“Haven’t seen acting that good since I took the Missus to Arena Stage for our anniversary. This calls for a toast.” Phillips approached the desk and stroked his chin. “Ima say she’s a back behind the files gal.” He opened the lower right drawer of the desk all the way and fished around the innermost part. “Bingo.”

“Crown Royal. Classy.”

“The deep state finally has a US Senator again,” said Phillips taking a taking a good pull from the bottle and passing it on to Tsimpris.

“Senator Byrd brought a new meaning to the term ‘Grand Dragon.’ Shame we couldn’t keep up the masquerade longer.”

A Note to My Loyal Readers: Do not despair my little zilthrakii, “The Glibening” will resume when least needed and most expected.

February 28, 2019
What Are We Reading – February 2019

This has been a month of transitions for the secret cabal of Glibertarians who run the site. Location changes, states of being changes (J.W. has finally had her top surgery and would like to be known as Jedwina going forward), so most of us haven’t done much more reading than rental, tax, medical consent or estate paperwork lately. So if you’ve read something, please fill the howling void left behind and let’s give Jedwina some great suggestions to pick for next month.

jesse.in.mb

Not a whole hell of a lot to be honest. I keep chipping away at “Roadside Picnic,” which makes video games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro 2033 make more sense, but I always have a hard time with the cadence of Russian genre fiction (translated to English) that I can’t quite put my finger on. I burned through a bunch of the Nightwatch series by Sergei Vasilievich Lukyanenko a few years back, and while I enjoyed them immensely as fluff sci-fi/fantasy, something about the storytelling tripped me up while reading them. I’ve also been picking away at Aristotle’s Rhetoric which is equal parts interesting and dry. Some of the allusions to classical figures allude me for I am not well educated, but it’s been very neat to read up on the art and science of making good arguments.

Brett L

I re-read most of Nathan Lowell’s Trader’s Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper they’re not super complex books, but kind of easy to get into. Its basically Merchant Marines in Space. Some might find them incredibly boring, but I really like them. I also read Smoke and Summons, kind of a weird, steampunk meets magic book about a woman who is somehow bound to and can be forced to channel a demon. She escapes from her evil magician owner and falls in with a thief who just happens to be the son of the head of the church. It was an interesting read, but obviously part of a much larger work. Written by the woman who wrote the Paper Magician, which, come to think of it is how I would describe that book. Oh, and I re-read Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. I wish he’d spent a third less time describing TEOTWAKI and a third more time describing the post-human future. Oh, and a metric fuckton of Microsoft Azure documentation.

Old Man With Candy

As you can imagine, my normally limited reading-for-pleasure time has been more limited than normal. But being sent back to the frigid prairies last week, I had books with me on the airplane, chosen less because of an urge to read them, but what’s tolerable among the few that have been unpacked. It had been decades since I had read the Foundation trilogy and my memories were not as fond as the books’ reputation. I spied Second Foundation among the small pile of available books and grabbed it. It’s readable but… that’s about it. It suffered from every fault I remembered: too stuffed with stilted and unlikely dialog, cardboard characters, predictable plot twists. Meh.

No excuses needed for Frederik Pohl’s The Siege of Eternity, a sequel to The Other End of Time. I think Pohl was incapable of writing a bad book. This isn’t great Pohl, but it is in every way a better book than Second Foundation. And as a libertarian, I enjoy imagining a future where rebellion against government has broken out everywhere, in this case at the instigation of theologically-driven aliens as part of their attempt at conquest.

SugarFree

Backed up to read Charles Stross’ The Delirium Brief before finally reading the newest Laundry Files novel, The Labyrinth Index. Still an enjoyable read, but I think Stross is getting bored with writing the series. Another installment without Bob, this time focusing on his psychobitch ex-girlfriend Mahri and her attempt to deal with the United States version of The Laundry, variously referred to as The Black Chamber or the Nazgûl. Anything more would be spoilers.

It read a wide smattering of short stories about cannibalism and then Shane Stadler’s nasty little foray into torture porn, Exoskeleton. If you’ve been longing for a mash-up of Martyrs, Carrie, and The Boys from Brazil, this is the answer to your prayers…

Mad Scientist

Jason Fagone’s Ingenious is a story about several of the colorful characters competing in the automotive X-prize: 100 MPG (or equivalent, for battery power) in a car that could be mass produced. The author knows almost nothing about cars or engineering, so this is mostly a tale of the teams building the things, and which of their teammates they don’t get along with, who they love, and blah blah blah. The book isn’t long on environmental doom and gloom, but it’s definitely in there. Some of the teams surprise you with a decent finish in the competition despite their duct tape and bubble gum build. Others, attempting to use a Harley-Davidson engine to spin a generator, drop out early with completely unsurprising problems: too loud, too much vibration, and too unreliable. But made in America, so, you know, fuck yeah. Overall the book is an engaging read, but you won’t learn anything about vehicle engineering.

February 22, 2019
Eyeball

As you can see, I’m an eyeball, someone took me out of a perfectly good head and stuck me here, in this black ooze, so here I am.

I don’t look like much, but then again, neither do you.

I see a lot of things, in fact that’s all I do, see things, forget all the Santa Claus sees you when your waking stuff, I see all the Time. I’m found in out of the way places, always looking, at You.

Only one problem, without a brain for storage, I got nothin’ I tells ya,no memories at all, I come home, and can’t remember what I saw half the time.

What kind of life is this for a normal, common eyeball?

Black ooze? Who thought of that? And a Tail? Who was the idiot that decided Eye need a tail? It comes with the ooze so Eye’m stuck with it, What about Contacts? I am getting older Dammit! there’s no Social Security! Eye Carumba!

Ever try getting a Savings account at a bank? “Sorry Mr. ,Eyeball, we don’t serve your kind” A job? I’m a greeter at Walmart for Cornea’s sake! and the customers keep complaining about the Black ooze, what’s an Eyeball to do?

“But, you must have Super powers, right?”

Sure, I can stare at you til you die of boredom, but that’s about it, Eye’ll tell you what, rip your eye out, stick it in some 40 weight motor oil then we’ll talk.

It’s tough out there for a common Eyeball, always looking for the best view, watching your back, and constantly getting pecked at by Birds, not to mention the lighting at night is terrible. A pimp is usually the best way to go, we call them “agents” but they keep us from getting poked, as it were, and they get 20%, and of course they get a personal view IYKWIM

People ask “where do you see yourself in 20 years, when your old and needing glasses, after all you can’t keep your looks forever”
I have some good safe investments, so when I retire I’ll get a place with nice view, and that’s good enough for an old eyeball like me…..

I met another like me once, a real eyeful, and we went for drinks, Bourbon for him and Vodka with Visine for me, and I was regaled in stories of him Eyeing chicks, getting an eyeful and all that went with that kind of thing, I wasn’t impressed. I mean what, stare them into an orgasm? I soon left him in a pitiful state, having crushed his dreams of what? sweet lookable Pussy? Ladies, be on the lookout for this Eye, he only looks good.

Sometimes when I look at the stars, and I wish I had a Telescope.

I wish I knew what this Black ooze was all about, it’s hard to get out of the upholstery.

My Wife asked how it was I could speak to you, I could only reply “Damn your eyes Woman!” but that got me thinking, how am I talking? how am I thinking? how did I get here? Why do I feel like Hedley LaMar right now?

Maybe the Ghost of Napolitanos past?

Here’s looking at You,

February 18, 2019