Gather close children
And listen to the tale
Of a Chinese hiker
Named Ped Xing
Who visited America
And was touched
That everywhere he walked
They had put up signs
To welcome him
February 22, 2014
From “The Expected Pedestrian” by Koji Umebayashi
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: bad humor, fiction, humor, Koji Umebayashi, poetry, story |Leave a Comment
February 16, 2014
From “PICO Car Assurance” by Cera Crup Isaacson
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: American advertising industry, Car Assurance, car insurance, fiction, humor, insurance, story, traditional car insurance |Leave a Comment
You hear a lot about car insurance these days. 14 minutes saving you 14% or more on car insurance, customers switching and saving an average of $500 dollars per second, and of course enough commercials to keep the American advertising industry in the black for years to come.
But what if I told you that you could save 90% or more in 90 seconds or less?
That’s where PICO Car Assurance comes in.
Unlike traditional car insurance, PICO Car Assurance requires no agents, no actuaries, no investigators, and no overheard. We pass the cost savings directly on to you, the consumer, allowing you to claim savings of up to 90% off even the cheapest car insurance plan.
By tapping into the innate human need to save money, and by providing a warm comforting blanket of emotional support, PICO allows its customers to feel assured that nothing bad will happen to them or their automobile. By providing friendly, homely, fully automated voice support at all times, PICO customers are never more than a dialtone away from reassurance.
Naturally, anyone attempting to actually process a claim will run into a nightmare of red tape and obfuscation, albeit reassuring obfuscation. Like an abusive partner or a politician, warm but empty promises will be made and broken like so many twigs in a landslide. No one will ever receive so much as a dime from PICO, because we are selling assurance, not insurance.
But honestly, aren’t we just doing what all the other insurers are doing but being more open and honest about it? And, at the end of the day, isn’t it all about saving money and bragging to others rather than actually getting meaningful protection for your automobile or your loved ones?
PICO Car Assurance: the smart choice. Because empty words and empty promises are all we have in a cold and impersonal world.
February 10, 2014
From “Rules of the Library, 2X51 edition” by Anonymous
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, Library circulation, neural interface, story |Leave a Comment
01. No noise in the library.
This includes talking, incidental noise, and the false noise of tinnitus. Special sound dampeners, imported from the Grand Mosque in the Hyperkingdom of Saudi Arabia, create a dead zone from which no sound may be heard (though due to the design of the device, imams may escape its effects).
02. Library circulation, questions, and study must be done telepathically.
The library has a contract with Pathetel™ to allow use of thought-jacking for users with a level 6 wet neural interface or higher. Please make sure that your thoughtname and thoughtword are up to date. Please make sure to think at a low level, lest nearby patrons mistakenly receive errant thoughts. Patrons with level 5 or earlier wet neural interfaces, or dry neural interfaces, will not be able to use library resources without the help of an interpretive telepath.
03. Library items may not be copied in violation of copyright.
The library respects and abides by all intellectual property laws. As such, the contents of all items will be wiped from your memory upon returning the item, leaving only a vague sense of what you have experienced.
04. Do not use library neural interfaces for ultraporn.
Library neural interfaces are for patrons to use in browsing library services or surfing the ultranet. They are not to be used for ultraporn, hyperyaoi, megalolichan, or any other high-bitrate neural adult content. Any patrons caught doing so will have their interface re-tuned to Sesame Street: The Next Generation.
05. Items must be returned no later than the last date shown.
February 3, 2014
From “Energy of the Infected Slayer” by Celinda Seyfert
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, Infected, post apocalyptic, power source, storage batteries, story |Leave a Comment
“Let me in! I need to use your power source!” The stranger thumped on the door of Hill 71, one of the few remaining bastions of humanity amid swarms of the Infected.
Tall, grim, and heavily built, with the long beards common among seasoned Infected fighters of the Wastelands, the stranger’s request–command, really–was honored. That the gatekeepers had seen him slaughter his way to their gates through a horde of Infected certainly didn’t hurt.
“I need access to your power source at once,” the stranger repeated once the gates had been opened.
“What for?” asked the gatekeepers, wary of outside interference with the solar storage batteries that kept their electrified anti-Infected barriers up.
“It’s important,” said the stranger, glaring at the Hill 71 denizens from above his wanderer’s beard and behind cracked polarized spectacles.
They let him into the House of the Sun to wander amid the storage batteries. He deigned to let them seize his weapons, but the Hill 71ers knew that such a seasoned killer of the Infected was dangerous even barehanded. The stranger moved with purpose through the batteries, some of the last electric power on earth, and knelt by an old-fashioned power outlet. He removed a dingy package from a knapsack, and plugged a frayed cord into the socket.
His Kindle powered up, displaying pg. 237 of The Da Vinci Code, and the stranger sat down to read.
February 2, 2014
From “Hour 8 of Pregame Coverage” by Jacelyn “Bali Mojo” Marina
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: American football, fiction, football, humor, parody, story, super-bowl |Leave a Comment
CARL: This is Carl Drake, play-by-play commentator for NBS Broadcasting, and we are live at the Mega Bowl pregame festivities.
TOM: That’s right, Carl. This is Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting, and we are seven hours into our pregame coverage, with only a further four to go.
CARL: The excitement is palpable, isn’t it? Just look at those streams of people finding their seats and purchasing concessions, and the gridlock outside as people try to find parking spots.
TOM: Right you are, Carl. Since NBS mandates this level of coverage despite there not being enough content to sustain it, our usual level of sports rhetoric, tissue-paper-thin as it is, has been stretched to the breaking point. I don’t know that there is anyone else we can ask for their uninformed opinions about the game, or any more sound bites we can unload about how this is a must-win game and that hustle, follow-through, and giving 110% will all be required.
CARL: Fair enough, Tom. I for one feel as if I am trapped in a nightmare from which I cannot wake. But, consider that this pregame coverage is just background noise for Mega Bowl parties as they warm up.
TOM: Right again as always, Carl. It doesn’t matter what we say, so long as the tenor and rhythm of our communication falls within acceptable inane sports patter levels. We can lay bare our darkest personal demons if we so wish, and the haze of conversation and alcohol that surrounds the watching of the Mega Bowl will serve to obfuscate the citizenry from the existential horror of our predicament.
CARL: Terrific idea and analysis, Tom. Speaking of which, have you seen the commercial NBS is airing about their Mega Bowl coverage?
TOM: How could I not, Carl? They have shown it every commercial break since the new year. The sight of that intercepted pass and that brutal sack, played over and over again, haunt my every waking hour.
CARL: Answer me this, then, Tom. How can they show previews from the game if it hasn’t happened yet?
TOM: I have always wondered that. My best guess is that it is our only glimpse into a shadow world of football cabals, where each game is played out in advance until the result is predetermined.
CARL: Why would you say someone would do that, Tom? Don’t the Illuminati have better things to do with their time?
TOM: Perhaps pulling the puppet strings of finance, industry, or government grows tiresome from time to time, and the Illuminated Ones relax by rigging football games, leaving those mysterious previews as breadcrumbs by which potential threats might be assessed and eliminated.
CARL: I’m quaking in my boots, Tom. Along the same lines, I’m told that the Mega Bowl will be reaching an audience of four hundred million people today, greater than the population of the United States.
TOM: That’s right, Carl. Somehow, the Mega Bowl has a 127% share of the viewing audience, a figure that would make my old statistics teacher hang himself from a bedsheet in his closet. I can only imagine the insane financial rewards that NBS must be reaping as well, and how many countries have a GDP lower than the amount of money that will be raked in today.
CARL: Tom, what do you make of the fact that America is more sports-crazy than ever, with those figures and their meteoric rises as proof, while at the same time we have never been more sedentary and obese as a nation?
TOM: Correct again, Carl. Our levels of sedentary lardassery are matched only by those of Saudi Arabia, and yet we elevate those few with athletic talent on our shoulders like the gladiators of old.
CARL: In fact, Tom, it seems that despite loving football more than ever, we have fewer people than ever capable of playing it outside of a next-gen game console. Wax poetic for us on where this trend will lead us to fill a few more seconds of otherwise dead airtime.
TOM: I predict that the nascent evolutionary divergence which has already begun will only intensify with the march of time. I foresee a separate race of sportsmen, bred from only the strongest generations of genetic stock of breeding farms where choice specimens are put out to stud with cheerleaders. Within a further few generations, the quivering lumps of manflesh which the average American will have become will be incapable of breeding with our new master race of athletes.
CARL: A chilling, Wellsian vision of things to come, Tom. Would you say at this point that it’s clear whether this master race will rebel against its sedentary masters, perhaps enslaving them?
TOM: A good question, Carl. Bitter historical experience has shown that, like Spartacus and his rebels, these latter-day gladiators will lack the central leadership for coherent rebellion and that their attempts to overthrow us for forcing them into servitude will be ruthlessly crushed. Blood will run in the streets, the moans of crucified quarterbacks along the interstate will echo for miles, and only the inevitable collapse of our stagnant and decadent society at the hands of a nimble new ideology will bring an end to the bloodshed.
CARL: For those of you just joining us, this is Carl Drake and Tom Hicks, bringing you coverage of the pregame festivities at the Mega Bowl, the one unifying factor that remains in an increasingly divided America. We’ll be back with more inane chatter after the break.
January 31, 2014
From “Fall of the Great Ash” by Daryl Sigg
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, mythology, story |Leave a Comment
“Look, lady,” said Randall, nervously tugging at his overalls. “We had a work order from the city. This moldy old ash was tearing up the sidewalk and interfering with power lines.”
“Yeah,” said Malcolm, fingering the ripcord of his now-silent chainsaw. “And after you screamed at us, and waved that carving knife, and then screamed at us while waving that carving knife, we had to get the police in on it. It’s a lawful work order.”
“They’re right, you know,” said Officer Hartman. His pistol was holstered, his pepper spray can in a limp hand at his side. “It was a legal cutdown order, legally served, on an ash that we had every reason to believe was endangering the common good.”
All three men were surrounded by the detritus of limb-shearing and trunk-felling that accompanied cutting down a tree in a residential area, even if the residence in question was a filthy double-wide trailer occupying the site of a long-ago demolished house. All three of them were looking skyward.
“Well, be that as it may,” said Freja, the dirty and disheveled occupant of the double-wide who had first quarreled with and then bodily threatened the city treecutting crew and their escort. “That doesn’t change the fact that you just cut down Yggdrasil, the great ash that has held up the sky since time immemorial.”
She, too, was looking up…looking up at the great cracks which were crisscrossing the robin-egg-blue sky, and the first small fragments that were beginning to fall.
January 25, 2014
From “Prouse’s Product” by Locicero Gutoski
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, story |Leave a Comment
Cindy was patted down for weapons and wires by the seller’s associates before having a canvas bag thrust over her head. It was difficult to tell where the minivan took her, as they’d also taken the precaution of spinning her to dizziness. After she was hustled into a location identifiable as indoor by the soft hum of air conditioning, Cindy heard an unfamiliar voice speak.
“I hear that you wish to purchase my product.” It was the seller, the dealer, the supplier that Cindy had been trying to contact since the withdrawal pangs had started.
“Yes…yes,” Cindy said. “I have money, and I can connect you with other interested buyers. Lots of us are jonesing bad since they started cracking down.”
“How do we know you’re not a cop, or wearing a wire?” snapped the supplier. “We have a network of people for distributing our product. They don’t come to us directly at our place of business.”
“Your dealers are scared, and they won’t sell,” Cindy replied. “If you can’t get the product out there, what good is all that?”
A thoughtful pause. “Fair enough. But if you’re not on the level, what then?”
“Something tells me that you’re smart enough not to get caught,” Cindy replied. “And if you’re too timid to sell to me, I’m sure someone else in your organization will come along who is.”
“Take off the sack.”
It took Cindy’s eyes a moment to adjust to the brightness of Mikayla Prouse’s immaculate house, with its polished hardwood floors. The eight-year-old herself sat on an overstuffed couch in her full Girl Scout uniform, flanked by her mom and three other girls.
“How many boxes of Thin Mints can we put you down for?” Mikayla asked with a confident saleswoman’s smile.
“Seven hundred and twenty one,” said Cindy. “Half in cash now, the other half on delivery to World Market on Adams, which will be our front to resell.”
It had been harder and harder to get Girl Scout cookies since the town of Hopewell had banned the sale and import of all products containing trans-fats, but Cindy, like many, had too big a monkey on her back to give them up.
January 20, 2014
From “Kuk-Kuk Quaa” by P. Elizabeth Smalley
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: abstract, Aquerna, avatar, fantasy, fiction, fox squirrels, god, grey squirrels, humor, soul, squirrel, story |Leave a Comment
Gaines Park had no shortage of trees and no shortage of squirrels to inhabit them, rodents grown fat and entitled by living off the refuse of students from the community college or specifically put out for them by Students for a Happy Earth. In fact, the park supported two warring populations of the critters: the larger but lazier fox squirrels, and the smaller but severely ADD grey squirrels. They could often be heard chittering at each other, with the insulting nature of the exchange generally clear from context.
And, sometimes, they would chitter and chirp at nothing in particular.
“Look at that,” Isaac said. A grey squirrel was perched in the barren highest boughs of a half-dead maple, clearly exposed, and making such a rodenty cacophony that it was audible for dozens of yards in every direction. “What are you doing, squirrel? You’re just telling every predator in range that there’s a tasty rodent up that tree and that dinner is served!”
“Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk, quaa-quaaaa!” said the squirrel. “Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk, quaa-quaaaa!” It was staring straight at Isaac and flicking its tail like a tiny battle pennant.
“They can see you up there, you know,” Isaac continued. “No leaves. And if you run away you’ll just exhaust your nut fat and die of starvation!”
“Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk,” said the squirrel, unmoved. “Quaa-quaaaa!”
“I give up,” Isaac said, throwing up his hands. “I tried to help, but you’re being evolutionarily maladaptive.”
“She is warning the other nearby squirrels of a potential predator, and pinpointing that predator’s location by varying her alarm call and looking at it while flecking her tail.”
Isaac had no reason to doubt the speaker beside him, as she was the avatar of Aquerna, the Norse goddess of squirrels. “Oh. I guess she’s warning the other squirrels about me, huh,” he said sheepishly. “How do you say ‘I don’t want to eat you because you’d probably taste gross’ in squirrelese?”
January 19, 2014
From “Magic Card Sharks” by Hass “Kid” McCargar
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: cards, fiction, gambler, gambling, humor, Magic the Gathering, riverboat, story |Leave a Comment
Words and whispers rippled throughout the SS Mary, Queen of Steam at the speed only rifle bullets and gossip possess. Before long, curious onlookers appeared in the upper galleries of the Mary‘s luxuriant gambling parlor.
The two master card sharks who had been on the boat since the beginning of its river cruise had finally sat down to play a high-stakes game.
On one side sat E. Jubal Jackson, whippet-thin and resplendent in a starched white plantation suit and bow tie, lips pursed between carefully-groomed mustache and goatee, eyes shining behind pince-nez spectacles. On the other glowered Lee B. Bragg, his clothing roughspun but clean and in immaculate repair and his hair gathered into a great swept-back mane over his tanned and unshaven face. Both had brought their own decks rather than chancing the house decks provided by the Mary, and there were already cards on the table.
Jackson squinted over his hand, carefully considering his next move, before delicately withdrawing a card and placing it on the table. “I tap three black mana cards to play Onyx Minotaur,” he said in a Carolina drawl. ” Your Quicksilver Cavalier takes three hit points of damage and is destroyed.”
Soft gasps rippled through the viewing gallery. Bragg snorted and rummaged through is own deck. “I counter with Resurrection of the Ancient Scholar,” he snarled in a voice flecked with bayou Cajun. “My Quicksilver Cavalier returns to play and is immune to damage for one turn.”
This development perplexed Jackson for a moment, but after adjusting his tie he withdrew a card and laid it down with the utmost care. This time, the gasps and crowd noise were clearly audible: the blue-bordered card and its Dali-esque skeletal denizens were distinctive and instantly recognizable.
“It’s a Time Walk card!”
“One of the Power Nine!”
“The second-rarest Magic: The Gathering card in existence!”
“It’s banned in Legacy and Commander tournaments!”
But card games on the SS Mary, Queen of Steam were no-holds-barred Vintage games, and the card was fully legal. “I play Time Walk,” Jackson said with a lip-curling smirk. “I take an extra turn.”
Two turns in a row, especially with Jackson’s powerful Black mana deck, was enough to reduce most of Bragg’s landscapes, creatures, and enchantments to rubble. Surely, the famously cutthroat riverboat Magic gambler had met his match this time.
But Bragg was coolly confident. He added chips to the pot, and played a card of his own.
The crowd wend wild. “Timetwister! He played a Timetwister!”
Indeed, Bragg had laid down a Timetwister, which required both men to return their cards to their deck to re-shuffle and re-deal. In an instant, his extraordinarily rare card–rivaling Time Warp in rarity and price, and banned from most tournament play in the same way–had leveled the playing field. His next move, though, raised the crowd’s energy level to that of a frenzy.
“Black Lotus,” said Bragg. “La fleur noire. I add three White mana to my mana pool.”
That play, with the rarest and most valuable Magic card in existence, led to absolute pandemonium. In a fell swoop, Bragg had eliminated Jackson’s advantage and given it to himself.
Most players, staring down a Black Lotus, would have despaired. Jackson, though, was stony. “May I see that card?” he asked.
“Of course,” grinned Bragg. “You’ll find it’s authentic.”
Reaching across the table, Jackson appeared to move toward the card…and then fiercely seized Bragg’s wrist. A card tumbled out–another rare Power Nine, an Ancestral Recall.
“Cheater.” The word was hissed with malice and implied threat.
In a lightning movement, Bragg reversed the hold and shook out Jackson’s sleeve. An ultra-rare Power Nine Moxen, the Mox Sapphire, flitted to the table. “Look who’s talking, mon ami,” growled Bragg.
In seconds, the table had been upended, rare and common Magic cards flurrying about, as both men drew derringers from concealed inner pockets.
January 17, 2014
From “Sailer’s Law of Reductive Reboots” by Andrew A. Sailer
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: Batman, fiction, Harry Potter, humor, Hunger Games, movies, reboots, story, The Avengers |Leave a Comment
In 2006, the average amount of time between the last entry in a film series and its next remake or reboot was 9 years, as exemplified by the 9-year gap between “Batman and Robin” and “Batman Begins.” By 2012 that gap had shrunk to 5 years, as we can see from the refraction period between “Spider-Man 3” and “The Amazing Spider-Man.” With studios gearing up to reboot Batman for inclusion in the Man of Steel sequel (said Man being a reboot itself) in 2016, only 4 years after his last screen appearance in “The Dark Knight Rises,” we can now see a definite trend.
With this in mind, here is a mathematical predictive model of when the following movies will be rebooted, based on how long it took a movie to get regurgitated in the year of its release:
Avatar – 2017
20th Century Fox will be pleased to announce a gritty new take on the tale called The Avatar. Since audiences are too savvy for something as escapist and unrealistic as humans soldiers in alien bodies, this fresh and hip new imagining will feature burned-out inner city cops in gorilla bodies, with gorilla warfare to follow.
Toy Story – 2016
Disney/Pixar, proudly bereft of artistic integrity ever since making Cars 2 in exchange for $500 million in toy merchandising rights, is already in scripting stages for a gritty new direction for this beloved franchise. Filmed in live-action, since modern audiences see through the artifice of unbelievable computer graphics, the new film will be a post-apocalyptic tale of redemption from the point of view of charred, inanimate objects. Look for TOY in summer 2016!
Harry Potter – 2015
With The Incredible Harry Potter, coming next year from Warner Bros., filmmakers go back to the basics, to the dark, gritty feel of the original books. Moviegoers these days will see right through any attempt to convey “magic;” this fresh new take sees Harry enrolled in a school for assassins and martial artists who kill from the shadows to maintain the balance of world power. The studio has strong franchise hopes for the film, and has begun casting for the part of ruthless military dictator Lord Voldemort, who Harry will assassinate in the second film of a projected nine-picture deal.
The Avengers – 2014
Coming this year to theaters, Marvel’s Avengers reboot, titled Avengers (not the lack of the “the”), will be a gritty tale of a younger, hungrier band of superheroes before they rose to prominence less than two years ago. Making concessions to today’s theatergoers, who are too intelligent to buy into ridiculous concepts like armored attack suits or thunder gods, Avengers will focus instead on the relationship between tank pilot Stark, electrician Thor, mental patient and former WWE wrestler Hulk, alongside dark and realistic young versions of all your favorites. Sources confirm that such grit and realism don’t come cheap, and the pic is budgeted at $100,000,000,000.
The Hunger Games – 2013
In a bold decision, Lionsgate bowed to the inevitable and rebooted the critical and popular darling The Hunger Games before the series had even finished its projected four-film run. In stark contrast to the lighthearted and campy tone from the original series, something increasingly rejected by the savvy moviewatching public, last year’s reboot Hunger Begins was dark and gritty, a bleak vision of the future. A sequel to the reboot is currently scheduled for release in 2012; Lionsgate is apparently not concerned that this will somehow draw viewers away from the original Hunger Games, also released in 2012.
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 