July 10, 2013
“Wow, so generous of Mr. Hanna to donate all these books for the PTA book sale! What’s that one there called?”
“It’s, um…Sex: An Owner’s Manual.”
“Yeah, let’s put that in the reject pile. Next one?”
“Let’s see…Smut: The Misunderstood Art.”
“Next box. What have you got?”
“It’s Pornographers: The Fourth Estate.”
“…how many boxes did you say Hanna gave us?”
“Fifty-three. Give or take.”
July 9, 2013
A little later than usual, maybe, but the thick, wet blanket of summer has finally been rolled over the landscape by summer’s heavy hand. Stained by the sweat and juice of a day in the field followed by a hearty repast like a well-worn old tablecloth, it clings to you even when you retreat inside, into the meatlocker sanctuary of recirculated and cooled air.
The heat gets rubbed into you deep, like the spices of a Memphis barbecue, all spice and fog, all raw and dripping. It takes time, especially if you’re not used to its all-consuming humid embrace. People from up north stand it a little better each year until their blood thins out, just like swapping winter oil for summer in an old Ford.
You see them, the people who were born into the heat or grown used to it. They move with a weary and sparkling deliberateness, each step, each motion held against the cost in sweat and toil paid up front or in the laundromat. People have said that this is laziness, but it’s more introspection than anything. Thoughts don’t cost so much as a sweat-bead in a heat where waving hello might as well be dipping a hand in an ocean.
Empires have been forged and lost on those hot days, on porches, beneath shaded boughs, fanned by hand or machine. Empires of the world, sometimes, though not nearly so much as in the old days. Empires of the mind, of the soul, with all the grandeur and suffering that come loaded like bullets in that word.
July 8, 2013
In time, the few who knew how to operate the ancient machines of old became pariahs. Their skills, once so useful to the builders of empires, now shunned by those who lived in their weed-choked ruins.
Some tried to use their machines, their great engines of war, to carve new empires for themselves. But they could never extend their authority beyond the reach of their vehicles’ steel arms, and there was no more fuel to replace that which they burned, and no stores of missiles and bullets to reload their emptying racks and magazines. Such petty hedge-empires fell as quickly as they arose; even working in concert, the pilots who had been behind the ruin of their world needed just what they had destroyed too much.
Then there was Hobb.
Hobb’s machine was still functional, if battle-scarred. Its legs had been shot off at the Tombs, and it had lost its right arm holding back the 83rd from the gates of Helion. All but two of its external missiles had been fired, and its countermeasure flares were limited to a single fresh magazine of six–all the techs at Ouroboros had been able to load before the city fell. The pilot’s station was unarmored and exposed, its composite and multiplex stripped off to keep other units running during the Long Retreat.
Still, Hobb might have carved himself out a minor fiefdom with his machine and a little skill, and brought him something greater than his rude shack on the outskirts of what had once been Helion. If only for a bit.
Not Hobb.
He used his machine’s repulsordrive sparingly, to carry him on clear nights to heights undreamt-of by the people below. There, he’d watch the moon rise and the city slumber.
July 7, 2013
“Who is Kaye Runn?” Mitzy demanded.
“What? Who?” Dirk cried into his handset.
“Don’t lie,” Mitzy yelped, anguished. “I overheard you talking about ‘that fine Kay Runn’ you’re going to be ‘doing’ tomorrow!”
“5K Run…I said I was doing a 5k Run! You know, running 5 kilometers? Those communist miles that they use in Canada?”
A pause on Mitzy’s end of the line. “Oh, okay. I’m sorry. How embarrassing.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dirk said smoothly. “I’ll see you tomorrow night for dinner like we planned, okay?”
“Who was that, lover?” Kay’s voice floated in from the bedroom.
“Oh, nobody…nobody,” Dirk said. “Now, let’s see about setting a new record, Ms. Runn…!”
July 6, 2013
We are the castoffs
The forgotten
The passé
Useful still
But no longer new
Scars of hard days
Long days of use
Worn heavy on us
Your former partners
Left to molder
Drawers our pockets
We see the new
And wait for it
To be beside us
Looking out
With envy
On a world passed by
July 5, 2013
“We’re not here about the misuse of commas or the outright abuse of possessive apostraphe-s in your ad copy. They have been cataloged and coded. We are also well aware of your use of the term ‘literally’ to mean ‘practically’ and ‘could care less’ to mean ‘couldn’t care less’ in both copy and casual conversation. No, Mr. Repard, we have convened this tribunal to discuss the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“Please, you don’t understand! It was just an ad!”
“Ads are still discourse, Mr. Repard, and they inform all discourse to come. For the tribunal: did you or did you not create an advertisement for, and I quote, ‘fuel-efficient tires?'”
“It was just an ad to sell tires!”
“May I remind you, Mr. Repard, that tires consume no fuel and therefore cannot be fuel efficient?”
“Please, I just meant that the tires increase the overall fuel efficiency of the vehicle! I had limited ad space!”
“If that’s what you meant, that’s what you should have said. The Semiotics Tribunal will now render its verdict.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty.”
“Guilty. Hereby sentenced to 18 months in the semicolon mines of San Serriffe. Dismissed!”
July 4, 2013
July 2, 2013
Here lieth
KING WEXFORD VI THE EPHEMERAL
Born 987 OCE
Died 1027 OCE
King of Gharial and Grand Duke of Caiman
Reigned from 12 Hexember 1027 11:31 AM to 12 Hexember 1027 11:45 AM
SHORTEST REIGN IN HISTORY
“Now that I’m king, let’s talk about raising those taxes. 200% seems like a good round number.”
July 1, 2013
The Tuscola Nation believed that the great thunderstorms which swept into the north Mississippi hill country were the manifestation of departed souls. As the dead rose to the sky, to join the great celestial hunt as stars, the Tuscola believed, they would gather color and shape about them.
Gentle souls, especially those of young children, would arise as the fine white clouds on a summer day. There were not enough deaths among the Tuscola to account for all the clouds in the sky, naturally; they attributed the rest to the souls of their neighbors the Oscoda or the animals of the forest. The departure of whole forests of life accounted for the dour cloudiness of winter, in their view.
Violent or wicked souls, on the other hand, would result in storms. The most potent of the departed would accumulate a storm so intense as to generate tornadoes, which the Tuscola interpreted as the deceased attempting to return to walk the earth.
Particularly feared among the Tuscola were sorcerers which they held could eject the soul at the center of a maelstrom and take control of it for themselves.
June 30, 2013
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Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 