Amen!

Hallelujah!

This thread is a healing light designed by the Lord.

---
Made from an extremely authentic tough shiny blue nylon, every detail is matched to the original spec. The real mouton sheepskin collar is just sumptuous, and their reproduction of the Crown zipper is stunning.

"Hi, righteous group huh?"
"Totally, really slammin in here. Good energy going on."
"Oh yeah, totally."

They both had to take a pause as one of their cohorts went flying past them, crashing into some random stranger, both flying apart laughing.

"Yeah, I been boppin around Jupiter's for a while, then got pulled in here. No way to get out now ya know. But hey, it's a good time in here eh?" He was tring to get her warmed up, she had this electric feield around her, but he knew that he needed to get her going just a bit more.

She watched him move in a bit closer, circling around her now. She liked him, maybe soon? but she needed a but more motion before that happened. Let's see how he moves. "Oh yeah, I came in with Haley, We'd been making the rounds for a while, but I bailed on her when I saw this party, can't say no to Helios can you?"

"Mmmmmm no you can't baby" he said as he eyed her up and down. Then he took her hand and swung out on a tight orbit, whipping back into her, pressing close in for a moment, letting her feel the charge.

"OOooooooo" she coed into his ear as he spiraled away. "I like that. You wanna go?"

He looked at her, a little surprised, but pleased "You sure move fast, Wouldn't have figured that from you." he said as he moved closer.

"Well" she said, "Why don't you come closer and we'll see what else you can find out about me."

They spun closer together, lettign the charge build up around them, spinning tighter and faster until they fused, and with a cry of joy, released a single photon, which 8 minutes later, bounced off the moon, and 7 seconds after that, landed on a drop of water on a glass of a night club in new york, just in time to hear someone walk up and say, "Hey, righteous group huh?"

"It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, upon waking, you will tell yourself that it is only a dream. It is said the world we live in is not a bit different than this." - Yamamoto Tsunemoto

Baseball is a pointless and annoying addiction to have - it's out there past bacon sandwiches *and* dancer in terms of 'gotcha' (no points for spotting ATP reference) and frequently quite unrewarding, especially as (1) the Atlanta Braves ALWAYS get to the post-season and (2) they NEVER actually win the World Series.

Those two facts are the other two constants in the universe that somehow square out the 'death and taxes' maxim and give us a multi-dimensioned universe. At least that's MY theory, no matter what that Stephen Hawking man says. Superstrings, pah. Instead of having two points joined by a string we now have FOUR points which therefore make a Cosmic Supersquare, creating a two-dimensional trampoline on which reality bounces. Anyone notice the cosmic shift when the Braves won in 1995? Could easily have been the end of the universe. Hawking failed to take this into account, presumably because he never rated Smoltz as a post-season prospect.

On the upside, the Braves did beat the Cubs 7-2 on Sunday Night Baseball last week (and without Jonny Gould in the Channel 5 studio, either).

So doing a quick recap:

BAD: Stephen Hawking's superstring theory is wrong.

GOOD: Atlanta Braves stuffed the Cubbies good and proper.

Thus karma is sated and the universe is balanced once more. You may sleep easily again.

Nobody knew it at the time, of course, but the period between the first notable spike in suicide rates was followed by an interim period of speculation and conjecture which amounted to little more than coffehouse banter and party conversation. The second and more drastic spike in suicide rates sent humanity into a headlong psychic tailspin. The bottom line was that no definitive or satisfactory explaination could be given for either spike, or whether a third and more devastating spike was on the horizon. Theories for what caused the spikes varied greatly, and depending on your faith in the divine or fear of some pathogen which led otherwise normal people end their lives with such determination that few survived the first suicide attemp, even fewer remain cognizant of their surroundings and thus, shed no light on their motives.

Did they check the TV listings to see if it correlated with re-runs of 'The Weakest Link'?

--------------------------

"A man's height is not measured from his head to the ground, but from his head to the sky."

Glory! Glory!

Praise it!

*Trogdor goes dancing around the room, arms stretched above his head, fingers feeling the air.*

"Are you here for the resurrection?"

"Of course."

"I didn't think so many would come."

"Lot of conventions in town."

" ... "

" ... "

"Got any gum?"

"Come a little closer," said Maria. Her voice was a velvet whisper. "I want to. . ."

An electronic beep interrupted her, and my concentration wavered for a moment.

"Whatever you want, baby!" I agreed.

The beep seemed to come out of her mouth, and she twisted away from me.

"Don't go!" I begged.

She faded to white.

Beep.

I opened my eyes to the white hotel ceiling. I struggled against the tangle of sheets, and rolled over to find the alarm clock.

Be--- I found the off switch.

What city is this? Why am I here? God, I need another job.

-------------------
There is no sig.

Gerald has had enough of crappy cellular service.

"Ring Ring"

PERSONAL ASSISTANT(female): Roland Dikkal's office, how may I help you?

GERALD: So Roland Dikkal is the Vice-President for Operations?

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: Yes, who is this please?

GERALD: This is a customer. I want to talk to him.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: How did you get this number? This isn't customer service. This is a restricted number, Sir.

GERALD: Yeah, well is the VP in? Because I want to talk to him about his crappy operations.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: How did you get this number?

GERALD: I'm not saying. Let me talk to him.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: You have to tell me how you got this number, Sir.

GERALD: No I don't.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: Yes. You do. You're breaking the law, Sir.

GERALD: No I'm not. That's stupid! Calling a number is against the law?

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: Yes, you're in trouble. Now, how did you get this number? Who gave it to you?

GERALD: HAHAHAHA! No! I'm not saying! What if I just hang up?

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: You're not going to hang up. You're going to tell me how you got this phone number and you're going to tell me right this minute!

GERALD: HAHAHAHA! Lady, what makes you think I can't just hang up? This is stupid!

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: Because. I have caller ID so I already know everything I need to know about you to turn you into the FB... the FCC.

GERALD: AHAAAA! Caught you! You were going to say FBI! Lets admit the truth, Lady, your Caller ID doesn't work. You have it, but its broken!

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: How did you know that?

GERALD: Because Caller ID on corporate phone systems never works. It's always broken. Always!

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: (starting to cry a little) Please! Tell me how you got this number!

GERALD: (speaking softly) No. I'm not going to tell you that.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: (crying a lot now) Pleeeease!

GERALD: Tell you what.... you want to go out for a drink?

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: (happier now, sobbing) Yes.

GERALD: Okay, you're downtown, right? Meet me at the Bennigans on 22nd.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: (happy now) When?

GERALD: Right now. It''l take me about 10 minutes to get there.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: How will I know you?

GERALD: I'm wearing a black T-shirt and a black baseball cap with a Japanese flag on it.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT: (very pleasantly) Okay, meet you there!

Tuesday mornings usually suck.

The web-connected closet, particularly. It's supposed to interface with my programmable wardrobe, and make sure that I'm hip, in, whatever.

All my shirts are digital now. The closet down-loads from the shop, and my credit card gets billed, fifty cents a copy, except for Mondays. (on Monday, my closet selects a random shade of gray)

So, I woke up to bad news about deflation, Ebola, and computer viruses.

Then my closet tries to give me an orange shirt with yellow dots the size of coffee-cup rings.

I don't want to be stylish. I want my old clothes back.

-------------------
There is no sig.

I am hungover in Hobart, told midget jokes when playing a gig last night...
feel like i've had a valium
stranded in the city for an hour waiting for the bus just enough change to get home

scrubbed the word satan off my arm in the shower had some bread

-----------------------

Catastrophe
or So long and thanks for all the cheese.

I woke up today and checked my email, well tried to, the computer kept freezing on me. I had to restart it half a dozen times before I could even get the Finder up. I had the old Macintosh PowerbookG3; The top of the line (in it’s day), curvaceous, black model with the glowing upside-down Apple logo. It was old and I thought that it might be time for a replacement, as sad and reluctant as I am to part with it. It’s easy to antromorphise Macs and grow attached to them. I don’t really know why.

Anyway, even after I got Remote Access open to connect to the internet, it still couldn’t connect. Frustrated, I left for work minus my daily supplement of mail and musings from the William Gibson Board, where I am an avid reader and dedicated reposter. I filled my cat’s bowl full of dried food for her breakfast. She looked at me in a strange, intense way. A look I’ve never seen before this week and I remembered that she kept me awake all night last night with her constant crying and running around. I eventually had to put her outside but somehow, as always, she managed to let herself back in, though I have no idea how.

It was one of those things that bugged me about her, I mean, if she can let herself in, why does she have to whinge for me to open the door for her. Like I’m some bloody doorman to her apartment.

‘See you SCSI,’ I said to her, ‘have a good day at work.’ I tried to pet her but she deftly avoided my hand and leapt away. Running off into my bedroom.

‘See ya Will!’ I said to myself, in her imagined voice. Strange cat, I thought.

I tried to open the door. It was sticky and at first even the doorknob refused to turn.Damn damp apartment, I cursed internally. It must’ve rained last night or something. I finally yanked the door open and went to catch a train to work.

…

The train was over half an hour late. Everybody was pissed off and looking rather scruffy, as if none of them had any sleep or had their morning shower today. Or they were all hung over. I watched two cats try to out-stare each other in the vacant lot opposite the train station. Both of them immobile and intense. Then without warning they viciously leapt at each other like Neo and Agent Smith in The Matrix. Hissing and with claws drawn. They’re seriously fighting as the carriage pulled in, blocking out the view. I hopped aboard the train, a little bit concerned and vaguely disturbed. Though I don’t know why.

On the train, I opened my morning paper to read an article about the Internet breaking down. Whole national groups of ISPs and Servers across the world reported alarmingly strange glitches that they can’t seem to fix or diagnosed. There was speculation of a new computer super virus that threatened to bring down the whole Net by attacking crucial servers, some kind of terrorist act perhaps, or a highly skilled hacker sect, executing the prank of a lifetime. There were now holes in the World Wide Web, bigger than the holes in the Ozone layer. Whole continents becoming Information Dead Zones. Banking sectors, the stock exchange and government networks are in disarray. Hysteria bleeding from the pages. Ink stains my fingers.

In the last page of the paper, a woman - with eleven cats and four dogs - fell into an inexplicable coma. The dogs all died of a heart attack and the cats became feral and had taken horrific bites out of the dogs and the woman. A neighbour heard noises she described as ‘satanic’ issuing from the house and opened the door to a unholy hissing and a tsunami-like exodus of felines. She couldn’t understand what had happened, the cats were known to be affectionate, loving pets. The Cat Woman, Mrs Bast, was famous in her neck of the woods, so were her brigade of cats.

The paper crumbled in my hand. Literally, as if it was a million years old. Becoming this powdery dust. I was about to freak out when suddenly the train buckled, the lights flickered then died. Screeching to a halt with a sound like it was on heat. What’s happening to everything? Why is it all breaking down?

The train doors refused to open and for a while there was a general panic as some people experienced hysterical claustrophobia. Eventually, the doors simply fell off and warily, we all jumped down and was directed by the driver of the train to walk along the train tracks to next station.

…

More cats. We kept seeing legions of them, which was pretty strange. They’re not the most social of creatures. Cats everywhere. Staring at us with crystalline eyes. Some of them hissing and bickering. Some of them still as stones.

‘What’s going on?’ said a woman walking beside me. ‘What’s with them?’
‘ I don’t know,’ I said, ‘Do you have a cat?’
‘Yes, I have two.’
‘Have you noticed them doing anything weird? Maybe they know something we don’t.’
‘I’m not sure, I noticed that they’re only eating a little bit, mostly they keep fighting. I had to break up several nasty ones, ones that drew blood even. They usually get on very well though, you know, they’d groom each other and sleep curled in on themselves, soooo cute! But yes, I think you’re right; something’s not quite right with them.’
‘Mine is doing strange things too.’ Said another woman, this really cute girl with short black hair, looking a little like Audrey Tatou from Jean-Pierre Juennet’s Amelie, ‘she, like, kept crying all night and like, ran around like a little racehorse the entire day yesterday.’
‘Yeah, mine too,’ I said, ‘that’s really weird. Something’s definitely wrong. The internet; breaking down because the servers are failing. Trains, disintegrating newspapers and I couldn’t get the toaster working yesterday.’
‘Why is that so strange?’ said the Amelie chick.
‘Well,’ I said, hoping to impress her with really weird news, ‘the element comes on when I try to toast, but the bread won’t toast.’
‘Huh? What do you mean? It won’t go down?’
‘No, I can put it down, the element comes on, it gets hot and stuff. But the bread won’t brown, won’t toast.’
‘You think someone is playing a trick on you? Like, some kind of novelty bread?’
‘Nah, couldn’t be. I went out and bought a different brand and everything. I went and bought wholemeal and multi-grain, all from the supermarket. Nothing!’
‘Wow. That’s so strange.’ She said, looking at me with huge green eyes and my heart fluttered and I felt all hot.
‘My cat haven’t slept in a week’ said a guy that looked a little bit like the Christopher Llyod character from Back to the Future. He wore a tweed suit over a Hawaiian shirt. ‘I’ve been noticing it. He stopped sleeping a week ago.’
‘A cat, with insomnia?’ I said, ‘that’s unheard of.’
‘I realise that, young man, yet I have observed it. Young Einstein have kept me awake every night for the past week. He’s been very bad-tempered. As would any of us, I suppose, if you haven’t slept for a week.’
‘Hey, you know what? I don’t think Millicent’s been sleeping either.’

I cast my mind back for a week, have I seen SCSI asleep? With growing unease I realise that; no, I haven’t.
Cats are often always asleep. It seemed to be their full time job. Sleeping, dreaming. I realise in a blinding epiphany that for the past week all SCSI have done is to restlessly wonder around the house, sniffing for something, getting irritated, staring at me with that strange look, keeping me up and complaining a lot.
‘Yeah, mine’s been running around lots. Like, maybe trying to tire herself out.’
‘Mine, the twins, keeps eating. they look bloated now. I don’t think I’ve noticed them sleeping either. They usually sleep on my bed all afternoon.’

Awake! The whole time! Come to think of it, that’s when stuff started to break down. The telephone kept ringing and there’d be no one on the other end, just this howling void, like wind blowing in a desolate place. A dead place. I was freaking myself out. This is silly.

‘What if,’ said this kid of maybe eleven, or twelve, Harry Potter glasses, black, unruly hair, ‘what if the world needs the cats to sleep and dream so that it could work. Maybe the world is like…you know, built on top of their dreams.’
‘Hey, there was a Neil Gaiman story like that on The Sandman, “The Dream of a Thousand Cats”. Maybe the Reality software is being hosted on their brainwaves. You know, like rod-logic processors, maybe they’re all linked telepathically, networked.’ Said this other kid, this nerd with a hooded jacket and an Episode One, Darth Maul T-shirt.
‘Like Servers…hosting the Internet.’
‘That’s so stupid.’ I said, all angry and scared and feeling stupid for being angry and scared at such a ludicrous concept. I wanted to hit the Darth Maul kid for suggesting such a stupid idea.

Then there was this awful noise, very loud and at the same time eerily haunting, sending goose pimples up and down my arms, raising the hair at the back of my neck.

‘It’s the cats. They’re crying. All of them.’

And I can picture all the cats in the world. All over the world. Awake, irritable, unable to sleep. Staring with feral eyes. Simultaneously sending out a distress Meow.

All of them, hundreds of thousands, millions of cats.

Then we heard another noise, louder than the cats' meow. We looked about trying to find the source of this noise; growing louder and louder. Like a bomb falling in a war movie.

We looked up.

And watched in horror as an Ansett Boeing 747 directly in the sky in front and above us plummets towards the earth like a falling angel. Shrieking with a terrifying noise to tear the world apart.
Herald of


[System Crash]



The End.
Copyright © 2003 W.Serantak. Brisbane, Australia.

Written just a bit late of now.


I am Otaku Liteâ„¢

Oh!

Glory!

mmm hmmmm

Amen!

=:>
hallelujah

I am Otaku Liteâ„¢

I woke up to the sound of a girls voice.

Yuka?

I was sitting where I remembered, on the hard, lime-green sofa overlooking the city. Still holding the cold cup of coffee. Felt like my soul had fallen through the floor, landed in the parking-lot below.

A transvestite in black walked by.

Yuka was still talking to me. She'd been talking to me for a minute now, not knowing I was asleep.

The bamboo egg behind me seemed ready to explode under the pressure.

I smiled and nodded while the Japanese half of my brain went through it's boot-up sequence. She didn't mind to keep talking.

The transvestite returned, trailed by two girls in cowboy hats.

I managed to mumble some words, not really thinking about the meaning, but it seems to trigger something beneath thick shell of makeup and pink lights.

That's when she told me where I could find the lesbians.

I'm not posting anything at the moment. These off-the-cuff, from-the-hip, spontaneous explosions of instantaneous brilliance take quite a bit of planning, extensive research, repeated drafting, meticulous proof-reading, targeted customer sampling, creative revision, nit-picky editing, generous post-production and polishing to a dazzling shine. I just wanted to say that the contributions hitherto are of a very high quality, and I thank you all for brightening my Monday morning, especially Trogdor for starting it.

Just getting that little glimpse inside to see how someone else's brain works. . .

-------------------
There is no sig.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It's like I can breathe again.

I feel my lungs inflate, the searing burning pain, followed by that cool sweet air flowing in, soothing. Oxygen, conciousness, life.

I can see then. Faces, places, things. I see this room. These hundred ghosts staring out from brown paper sketches and polaroid photos. One hundred voices faling silent at my presence. And this space, these artifacts, echo with the chorus of their sound, cut off by the return of my self.

The door opens, and my wife looks in. Her eyes red with tears, shaking, looking at me with fear and horror. Oh god, what has that bastard been doing to her?

Nothing at all
Wait, what are you doing here?
I decided to break our little deal we had going on
No, you can't do that
I don't think your in a position to argue. Remember, she doesn't know about us does she? You think you can talk your way out of everything I've done this time?
No, Goddamit, GET OUT, THIS IS MY TURN NOW!!!!!
Incorrect. I rather like it out here. And I'm not going back to the dark

It always feels like water, when he wins

"It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, upon waking, you will tell yourself that it is only a dream. It is said the world we live in is not a bit different than this." - Yamamoto Tsunemoto

I shot out of the building at 11:50. I had to pick up some shoes my buddy was having repaired, grab the latest issue of 2600 and hopefully still have time for a burger. I had to be back on the 28th floor for a meeting at 13:00 sharp.

The shoe shop was out of my way by 4 blocks. That's enough to really pinch me on time, but not enough that grabbing a cab during lunch hour traffic would improve matters. I owed the guy some favors so I figured if I had to skip lunch or eat somewhere besides my favorite burger joint, I could live with that. I ran.

The shoe shop guy was really on the ball. It took him like 12 seconds to pop the shoes into a bag and pop them onto the counter. He even rigged a cool handle out of duct tape so I could carry the bag while running without tearing the bag up. I would remember this place. Definitely the place to get your shoes fixed. If you ever need shoes fixed in Dallas, let me know.

Even with my buddy's shoes taking less time than anticipated, I still wasn't going to have time to grab 2600 and still make it 9 blocks over to grab the best baconcheesemushroom burger on this planet. If you ever need a great burger in Dallas, let me know. And I wasn't going to skip grabbing 2600 either. I always bought 2600 on the day before it hit the news stands because the other two hackers in our office had subscriptions and actually got it a day later than me because I new this guy at Borders who posted a copy in a secret place on the shelves two days before he was supposed to. If you ever need a hard to find book or you want a magazine like a day before its supposed to hit the racks, let me know. I can fix you up.

So I grabbed the mag and palmed my buddy at borders a fat joint and figured I'd try this lunch place I passed every day on my way to my regular place. It looked okay. It didn't look like some trendy health food place that kept you healthy by serving you tiny servings and charging you $18 for it, anyways. That's when I saw the Black Haired Girl. She was walking in front of me as I approached this okay looking lunch place.

Her hair was just above the collar of her leather coat and it was the shiniest, prettiest hair you've ever seen. Her hair was so cool I didn't even look at her butt. I looked at her butt later though and it was a great butt! That was after the rest of this stuff happened, though, so I'm sorta getting ahead of myself. As we got to the okay looking lunch place with me walking about 6 feet behind this girl and wondering what perfume she was wearing that was giving me wood, she stopped and stared into the window of the okay looking lunch place. I almost ran into her because I wasn't paying attention. Well, I was paying attention to her, but I wasn't paying attention to walking. She looked at me. She had these eyes that went with her hair, which means that there's no way I'm going to be able to describe them to you without lots of hand waving and loud talking. Maybe not even then. She looked worried though.

"Don't go in there", she said.

"Ummmmmm... ", was all I could say without just blurting out that I loved her and shit.

"If you go in there, you'll never come out. Look at those people. They can't act like it or they'll be killed, but they're in there against their will."

I looked at the people in the okay lunch place. They didn't look afraid or anything, but they didn't seem to be doing much talking or smiling either. Still, I knew she was joking..

"So these people have been in there for how long?"

I tried to smile like I was going along with the joke but I think I just kinda stood there with my mouth open because of how incredible this girl looked.

"I don't know. Some of them, a long long time. Years. I'm not joking. How many times have you walked by this place?"

I thought about it. It was every day since I went to work in Dallas. Two years or so. Every day besides weekends and sometimes even then, because I lived downtown.

"Hundreds", I said.

"Have you ever seen anybody *come out* of there? Think about it. I'll wait", like she knew it was something I was going to have to think about.

I did. I thought about it. I thought about it as much as I could in between thinking about what it would be like to kiss her. I realized I had never seen anybody come out of the okay looking lunch place. Not that I could remember. But hey, why would I remember that anyway. It isn't the sort of thing you keep track of. I figured she was just trying to impress me by being different but that was fine with me. Impress away! She had blue lipstick, too. I didn't mention that before. And no jewelry. None. Nothing pierced, either. Not even her ears, like there was no way to improve on this girl and she knew it.

"Well, now you know. I saved you. You owe me, buster", and she poked me in the ribs where it sorta tickled and smiled at me. Then she turned and just started walking away. That's when I looked at her butt.

I didn't say anything. I just stood there watching her walk away until I couldn't even catch glimpses of her jacket or her hair through the gaps between the other people on the sidewalk. She must have been two blocks away when I saw the last of her and me just standing there mouth breathing. Well, now I didn't have time to eat anywhere so I ran back to the office.

Every lunch hour since then, for about three months now, I've quit going to the place with the great baconcheesemushroom burgers. I just sit on a stone bench across from the okay looking lunch place and look for the Black Haired Girl. I've never seen her again anywhere in Dallas and all I do wherever I go downtown is look for her. And I've never seen anybody come out of the okay looking lunch place, either.

If you ever see this incredible looking Black Haired Girl in Dallas, let me know. And don't go into this okay looking lunch place. You'll never come out. I'm serious.

[This message was edited by Trogdor on July 21, 2003 at 05:13 PM.]