Published on
April 23, 2010 in
stories.
For the first eleven days in Mesa I didn’t get a damn thing except heartburn. On the twelfth day I was hanging out under the Super 8 sign with the other losers—most of them drinking Night Train, me doing shots of Milanta—when a posse of Mad Max-looking blind guys with welding masks, canes and target pistols all piled into a rust-colored ’66 Dodge A100 van driven by a kid who was maybe—maybe—fourteen. My Pinto had died on me on day four and I had traded it for an ’81 Littlejohn BMX bike (the other dude got the ass-end of that deal), so there I was, clown-bikin’ after the A100 with my knees around my ears. Luckily the kid couldn’t drive stick worth a damn, so I was able to catch up pretty good every time he had to shift.
Continue reading ‘Mesa’
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Published on
April 23, 2010 in
stories.
I had myself uploaded to 350 E. Cermak in Chicago, which has three newly-acquired marine nuclear reactors anchored off Navy Pier.
But here’s the thing:
I gave up my eyes. I can see every street corner in China but it all looks like CCTV.
I gave up my ears. Fuckin’ lossy compression.
I gave up my sense of smell. I can detect homeopathic PPM’s of toxic gases, but I can’t tell one woman from another with my eyes shut.
I gave up my lips and tongue. Might as well be intubated.
I gave up my skin. I can zoom in on my oldest surviving friend and assume a POV by her side but we’ll never even brush shoulders.
I gave up my balls. I’m an immortal neuter. I’ll never get laid again.
I’ve asked 350EC to kill me, but since I’m on RAIDs, backups, offsite storage, the Internet Archive, the damn Library of Congress, NSA servers and all the copies of all the data ever stolen from any of those places, they’ve told me not to get my hopes up.
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Published on
April 15, 2010 in
stories.
A crow, half-dead with thirst, came upon a mountain of smoking timbers in a blackened block foundation. The crow (though his beak was ill-suited for this) hewed at the timbers and splinter by splinter removed the mountain. Under the mountain, at the bottom of the foundation, was a SentrySafe 0500 Fire Security Box. Now this was something for which his beak was well-suited! Among the splinters he found a short length of baling wire, and he bent it into hook using a stone as a fulcrum. Then he picked the lock and oh! did the metal grinding grate through his weary bones. In the box he found a Pouch of diamonds and a Flask which had once been full of whiskey; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Flask he found that only very little whiskey was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a diamond and dropped it into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped it into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped that into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped that into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped that into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped that into the Flask. At last, at last, he saw the whiskey mount up near him, and after casting in a few more diamonds he was able to quench his thirst and save his life.
Little by little does the trick.
Image CC-BY-NC-SA by monkeyc.net
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Published on
April 15, 2010 in
stories.
This is what counts as a vacation for me: Sitting by Lemon Creek in a camp chair with a bunch of Unitarians and a cooler full of pop, waiting for the Hooligan run to start. I’ve got my cap pulled down over my eyebrows and I smell like turpentine because I’m covered in a thick layer of Deep Woods Off.
Continue reading ‘Juneau’
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Published on
April 14, 2010 in
stories.
The most cracks I’ve ever gotten out of my knuckles is twenty-seven. The woman at the next table (who was doing something with technical pens and graph paper, and I probably would have made her explain it to me eventually) was cringing with each pop (which probably reduced my chances of hearing about her work) when a ten- or eleven-year-old boy sat down across from me. “Let’s go,” he said.
I pushed my chair back and half-stood, cracked my neck and stood the rest of the way. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Loot,” he said. “We’re going to see my aunt.”
Continue reading ‘Mobile’
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Published on
March 11, 2010 in
stories.
Marcus emptied food scraps into the composter and raised his eyes. “Master,” he asked, “why do we make the soil?”
The old man nodded patiently. “The soil outside is not natural. It is made of the dust and smoke of humanity. Lead, mercury, arsenic: these are the spoor of humanity. To us this is unclean. Making soil is a ritual of devotion in the service of nature.”
Continue reading ‘T-Minus’
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Published on
February 7, 2010 in
stories.
Let’s talk about this. I was born in New York City on December 7, 1924. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on my seventeenth birthday. I joined the Army when I turned eighteen. I lost the bottom half of my left leg when I was nineteen, in the Battle of Anzio. I was back in Rome two years later, after the liberation. I wore my pants leg pinned up. I would no more wear a false foot than I would a false mustache or a false nose. People can take me as I am.
Continue reading ‘Untold Tales: The Singular Affair of the Aluminum Crutch’
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Published on
November 20, 2009 in
stories.
Every year, just after midnight on December 6th, Saint Nicholas visits every home on earth.1 Every child receives three small chocolate candies.2 Every adult receives punishment for the sins he or she has committed during the year. That is why we call Saint Nicholas Day “The Day of Atonement.”
In January, Mike Anderson bought a chicken-processing plant and continued to pay his mostly-Mexican workforce minimum wage. He thought this was more than fair. On December 6th Nicholas turned the factory into a worker-owned cooperative and hired Mike as janitor. He sold Mike’s home and used the proceeds to buy one-speed bicycles for the workers’ children.
In April, Jenny Evans’ neighbor bought an enormous new truck. In June Jenny bought one to match. On December 6th Nicholas sold both trucks and used the proceeds to buy 79,997 packets of kohlrabi seeds and two Matchbox cars. He gave the seeds to Jenny and her neighbor and the Matchbox cars to some kids on the next block.
In July, Chris Green ate beef every day all month. On December 6th Nicholas placed him and his family in a one-year indenture to a strict but kind farmer outside Belur in Karnataka. The children don’t seem to mind the work, or the lentils.
In October, Mandy Johnson got drunk and slept with her best friend’s husband. On December 6th Nicholas sat that one out. He figured it was basically self-punishing.
On December 6th, Nicholas impaled Dave Williams on a spit, and placed the spit over a charcoal fire. We will not speak of the reason why. Neither the spit nor the fire has proved fatal. We imagine Dave will hang onto life until next Saint Nicholas Day. Perhaps he will behave differently next year.
1Nicholas is one of the largest landowners in Zurich. It is speculated that he may store his vast currency reserves under a mountain there.
2These candies are manufactured using chocolate raised on Nicholas’ plantations in Côte D’ivoire by freed child-slaves and processed in factories fueled by the burning souls of the slavemasters.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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Published on
November 3, 2009 in
stories.
Our whole family moved from St. Paul to Dundas in 2007 in an effort to get out into the country. It ended up (and we should have known this) that we were moving to the “recent country” rather than “current country,” since our house was new construction, part of a development built on what fifteen minutes earlier had been a not-bad soybean field producing beans that were shipped two hundred miles to be turned into hormone- and drug-amended kibble that was shipped the same two hundred miles back to some bioengineered hog-alikes that live within smelling distance of our new two-and-a-half story. Mmm, bionic bacon.
Continue reading ‘Untold Tales: The Dundas Separation Case’
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Published on
October 8, 2009 in
stories.
Right before the dot-com crash I cashed out all my stock and joined the Peace Corps. I didn’t see it coming; I was just seriously fed up with cubicles and Starbucks. They sent me to Calabar, in Nigeria, with a mandate to make sure pregnant women were getting plenty of folate. This wound up being a cruel joke: Women with any amount of money ate unbelievable (by American standards) quantities of greens. Women with no money basically ate starch and not enough of it. If I had been a bigger man I would have worked my ass off trying to get money together so poor women could afford to eat their greens, but instead I jacked around watching gangster videos and having Guinness Book amounts of sex.
Continue reading ‘Untold Tales: The Paradol Chamber’
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