|
Arken
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Malcolm
Country: United States
State: New York
Birthday: 10/20/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: My interests vary. They do. yes. Ah, I can tell by your look that you believe me not! Hmm. well, I can'st prove a thing. Take my word for it.
Expertise: The frugal gourmet.
Occupation: Research and development
Industry: Textiles
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
4/10/2003
|
|
| Where's that darn hand got to????? | | |
| The following is an excerpt from an article in the New York Times:
September 18, 2014 -
Within the past twelve hours reports have started flooding in from all over the country, confirming scientists' fears that the incidents were not localized as was hoped. With over six thousand affected persons in the United States, and at least that many in Europe and Asia, the World Health Organization has labeled it an epidemic. The fever, which first appeared late last Saturday has been dubbed "Dance Fever". Early symptoms include uncontrollable shaking of the arms and fingers along with spasmodic utterings of the phrase "Jazz hands!". As the illness progresses, the spasms and contortions spread throughout the body, and the vocal ejaculations increase in volume and frequency. In the very latest stages, it is not uncommon for victims to scream "I've got rhythm!" or any number of other famous lines from popular showtunes.
Be advised that infected persons will behave irrationally and will react violently to attempts to stop their maniacal dancing. Jacques Brevert, chairman of the WHO has issued an emergency bulletin, requesting that those afflicted be placed into quarantine, and not allowed under any circumstances to gain access to any major street or alley. For it is in these alleys that infected people are gathering in great numbers and performing extremely complex choreographed routines, many taken from West Side Story.
Though there have not been any deaths yet, at least seven major highway accidents have occured as a direct result of this disease. Scientists have not yet located the pathogen responsible, though they are fairly confident that it is airborne in nature. Gas masks are being made available at designated handout-zones in the city. Locate the nearest zone by visiting PreventDanceFever.gov | | |
| Yes, here I sit. And here sit I, With arms like jelly and a smile to match. I wrote a rather long and involved post last night, but my computer crashed moments before I could upload it and it was lost. By the time my computer had restarted, I was too tired to try again.
What news then, eh? What news have I worth recounting?
Let's see... I saw The Island, a somewhat predictable summer blockbuster (in which a surprising number of name brand products managed to make cameos) that was about as inspiring and thought provoking as a group of six or seven terriers chained to a parking meter.
I had corn fritters this morning. Very tasty. And I'm drying out a corncob from which I hope to fashion a pipe. I've tried several times to make a corncob pipe, never with much success. And I'm not sure what I'd do with it if I made one, seeing as I don't smoke. Well, perhaps I'd have to take up smoking.
I swore an oath in blood this morning that I would finish the script I'm working on. I swore it to myself, though, so I'm not sure how that works. Also, I'm not up on the current procedures for an official blood oath, so I might have done it wrong.
What other news have I? Oh yes, tomorrow I go on a little journey. My friend Scott (known affectionately as McElroy) recently suggested that we drive up along the Hudson river to a restaurant upstate somewhere. He has attended this establishment and has assured us that the cuisine is excellent and the view is unrivaled (it's right on the river). I (often called Dimmesdale) plan to drive myself and Dan (who prefers the appelation Barnabus) to Scott's (or McElroy's) domicile in Riverdale, and then to continue on up to this eating establishment where dinner hopefully awaits.
And so it goes for now. | | |
| The moon, a plaster carving painted green, hung sarcastically from the black felt ceiling, and plastic stars, shining sickly yellow with their 60-watt bulbs, crowded together in unnatural clumps around it. Blue and green, the thick carpet below hissed softly at the stuffy mockery of infinity offered above as paired dancers shuffled awkwardly across its synthetic surface.
Outside it was raining. It was always raining. Heavy clouds obscured the sky year round, broken only by the rockets that punched holes in them every quarter hour on their journeys to the void. The city was built for the rockets. And the clouds were built by the city. They were dark sulfur clouds, methane clouds, choking poison clouds. The mines, mechanized beasts that dug into the cold depths of the ground, worked round the clock, pushing their waste into the sky. Sometimes the rockets would light the clouds on fire. Sometimes there would be flames in the heavens for days on end. Only then did it ever stop raining. The heat was so great that there was steam instead of rain.
They danced all night long to the music. Sometimes it was soft, a synthetic dream sound. Sometimes it was pulsing and heavy. But the dancing never changed. The entire dance floor was filled with clumsy space men and their sorrowful girls, trying desperately to make time slow to a stop. And he was a space man, and she was his girl. His feet were larger than hers, and he was always stepping on the hem of her dress. His movements were clumsy, just like the other men, and he took each step as if the pull of gravity surprised him.
The Space Room was not the only recreational hall on the main street, but it was the most famous. It offered a shabby reminder to its depressed patrons that space, in all her beauty, really was still out there above the clouds. For the moment a space man’s feet touch the ground, his head turns back to the sky, whether it’s real or fake.
The dance was over, and they kissed. She cried, but he didn’t see. And then the kiss was over, and soon the night was over, and the morning, dark as the night, arrived. They were staying in the inn above the Space Room in a room that had stars and a moon painted on the ceiling, a facsimile of a facsimile. He put on his uniform, and he put on his coat. And she asked him why, why he wanted to go. What was out there worth seeing?
So he told her about the Ganymede ship dumps, where countless old wrecks floated slowly to the edge of the universe. He told her about the galaxy center, which shone with the brilliance of a thousand suns. He told her about the Horsehead Nebula, where the gases of the heavens wrapped themselves around the rocket like silky cobwebs. He told her about Titan’s craggy surface, and the ice fields of Europa, and the aurora displays in the deep space sectors. And as he spoke, his eyes shone with the light of foreign stars, and she knew his love of her was no match for his love of the wild vacuum.
His rocket was in the clouds. Then it was through the clouds. Then it was gone. She turned and went back into the Space Room. There the sky never burned red, and the stars, though dim, always shone next to a pale crescent moon. There, the immeasurable void was made measurable, and she could almost see his rocket, a pinprick of light, moving out into the darker parts of the ceiling.
| | |
| I am certain that I have expressed before that it is my firmest belief that there is no more exciting and interesting time than the dead of night. I take particular joy in the numerous odd mechanical beasts that roam the misty city streets in the wee hours. For instance, while walking home from a friend's house at around 11:30 (I walked down Central Park West, a most excellent street late at night, for the park becomes beautifully forboding and ominous, and there is always a light mist in the air, just enough to give all the street lamps little halos) I ran across a strange mechanical beast whose likes I have never seen before. It appeared to go by the name of PORTABLEWASHUNIT, and its sole purpose in life seemed to be sprouting many hundreds of rubber tentacles that snake down the staircases of subway stations and spray water in random directions, no doubt with the intent of causing some form of cleaning to take place. I paused to watch the beast as its many tentacles jerked and writhed along the wet cement.
A few blocks later I saw another one, how strange. Two PORTABLEWASHUNITs in one day. I wonder where they go to hide when the sun is up.
On an unrelated topic, I have decided to bare a little bit more of my inner soul today. In other words, I am going to make the list of people to whom I subscribe visible. Yes, at the moment there are only three, but that doesn't mean I'm antisocial, it just means I don't have any friends.
Hoorah. | | |
|
