I'm all for genetic engineering. I LOVE the 150-watt firefly. For instance.

I like my new leather wings, even though they'll never be able to do more than let me glide down a flight of stairs. And they make me sit funny on the bus. They're no more stupid than a tattoo or wearing spike heels for twelve hours. They help keep me warm, they keep the rain off, and they get me laid.

But that was the thing I never expected from genetic engineering. Life is PRETTY. Life is SEXY. Life makes WARMTH and LIGHT, and there was never enough of that.

Life used to be red in tooth and claw. Sometimes it still is. But life is also BEAUTIFUL. It was all the encouragement we needed to clean up the environment a little.

Now all it takes for me to have a decent porch light is a tiny sliver of apple smeared above my doorframe.

Life is beautiful.

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

It's a molten ball of nickel-iron -- the poison that kills fusion-powered nightlights -- coughed into the vastness and adopted by a mother half her age, a bright mother who has yet to catch the killer hemochromatosis. Silica rock and carbonates on top of that, oceans of saline plasma, then a couple feet of microbial processed carbonates, sulfoxides, and nitrates whipped into a meringue and crusted with a light frosting of asphalt, concrete, and a confection of threadsteel and glass.

On top of that, in the atmospheric interface of soil and space, coterminous with sixty miles of damp air and the first twenty or so thousand miles of space, is the realm of a lighter foam of ephemerality -- flitting taxis, rented hotdogs and sugar-crusted nuts, rented and flitting illusions of wealth, still dense enough (so far) to have not been boiled into space, or maybe trapped by a transient and perverse inversion layer, wrapped in lacework Kennelly-Heaviside foil and thrown back into the cooling coals for an ultra-slow slow roasting.

The flavors are so delicate and fleeting -- a layer of melt-on-the-tongue rice paper, pork-flavored candyfloss, sweetened smoke silked with capsicum and cinnamon and chocolate aromatics and topped with electrified air and magnetized vacuum -- capable of being vanished with a sneeze or slapped away forever with the wind of a careless backhand.

We all scuffle for a sniff as if, as if. As if we ourselves weren't particles in the aroma, waiting to be slapped away in a whiff of diesel fumes, dollars, and sausage-inna-bun with mustard. Where is the shadow of the hand?

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

Richard didn't know he was dead, but he continued on his journey because he
couldn't stop himself. It wasn't a bus or a malignancy, bereavement or
bodkin that finished him, tant pis. It was to feed and make waste; to rise
again from recumbency; to take succour from adversity and umbrage at
atrocity; to love, without liberty, to mourn liberty, lorn of love; to bear
witness to the light and the dark in turn returning; to be suffered to suck
at the teat of his gaoler and to husband his ruination unto settlement of
debts owing to womb or ghost. It was the obligation to subsist that killed
Richard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvqDrvXDADI

Posted by Riddler

"Wtfs wrong with your kettle?"

"It doesn't work."

"I know. I've been staring at it for 15 minutes."

Posted by jc1000000

The old gods walk the earth all the time. We've learned to ignore them.

Here's one. Anubis. Out-of-work psychopomp, hanging around on street corners, too proud to beg. Larger than life. If he were our size, we'd bump into him and freak out. As it is, we walk between his legs, unheeding.

Collapsible scales in the back pocket. Somewhere on his dignified person, a feather. Sometimes he'll find a stone or half a brick that looks enough like a discarded heart and put it in a pan of the scales. Into the other pan goes the feather. When the stone demonstrates as heavier, he chucks it down a storm drain and moves on.

He pokes his pointy nose into alleys, ears twitching, looking for the newly dead from drink or exposure or quotidian violence. He cocks his head at each confused ba, curious to see if they know the rites. When they mill about, flitting in flocks like startled pigeons, he strides off to the next alley, neither satisfied nor disappointed.

One day he'll find the ossified heart of a saint, lighter than a feather, and toss it into the sky, where it will remain until claimed.

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

I look down at my mobile phone for the time of day, I see the clock, the
date, I don't read them, I don't take in the information. Looking up from
the phone my whereabouts slides like a poster off the wall before my eyes; a
high ceiling, I'm in a room full of dry bamboo shoots, right in the hollow 'o',
in the clunk and thudding wood sounds. There's a girl pushing towards me
through the hardened curtains and she's laughing with that same mischievous 'o'!
She grabs, grabs and it?s wood clacks and owl coos and adrenaline. 'You
got me!' The timber curtains turn into people, hundreds of them,
shuddering with the train, the harsh strip light, engine hum and mp3 tin
frequency; us hugged together tightly. Good
morning rush hour. The sleepys wear
their bodies like overcoats so it's like we're hiding in a wardrobe, me with my
black cowl, she with a velvet material across her eyes, her mouth says 'Who
wears the hoody in this relationship?' Shrieeeeeek! We bash against the zombies like a tickling
outrage, a crash against their dream hangovers, we make their heads bob along
the sea of their shoulders. I look down
at my mobile phone for the time of day, I see the clock, the date, I don't read
them, I don't take in the information. I
look up from the LCD display into night time, her and me on the shores of
Barceloneta, I'm naked. "Go, go go!" The spirit amphetamine surges when she kisses
me away towards the water, the tepid air gone hot in my lungs I scream it out
above the white noise ocean and the thud of my feet in the sand as I'm running. I jump and turn back first, the wall explodes
in spray, shattered concrete, ice grains like electricity charge my shoulders;
I blackout. "How long have we been
here?" Incense smoke detaches in
thick strands and curls up to meet the cornice of our bedroom. "Two days." she says, enveloping my
head in the duvet and following me in, behind her the yellow lantern lights
blur out of focus; now they look like candles.
The tea lights make 50 tiny hemispheres dotted on and around a fallen
tree trunk in the park, they shape an arrow pointing up the verge, a signpost
to the London sky. She catches me remembering and four arms and
two bodies interlock like always, a way of sharing the memories. I look down at my mobile phone for the time
of day, I see the clock, the date, I don't read them, I don't take in the
information. I look up, my eyes hit slap-bang into a train window pane,
the buildings outside leave a trail with the speed we're at. She doesn't know why I'm staring out so intently,
likewise fixing me in place with her quizzical expression, keeping me there
until I satisfy it; "OK, Look now."
The night like punk lashes brush glass, cheeks flat out for curiosity
and I see those eyes go wide, so wide the other shoreline's for a vanishing
point. A series of letters in big, black
print run left to right on the passing office block window; it's a message for
her. We shuttle past and get imprinted
with what's written; does Time really move us away anywhere? In wonder and at
the barrel end of a Starfleet Phaser, frozen for the female officer in tight 60s
cut blue who's set to kill, "Don't shoot..." I say "...I got you a pineapple!" The red-orange rays tingle as she says it; "We're
beaming up." There's a shimmering
sound, some left over sparkles and the Berlin squat is every colour paint, all
angles and none of them; a camera flash burns our picture to the room, more
graffiti scrawl, a fine art tag of the sudden photograph. We let our partied-out feet drain down the
staircase, ourselves river afterwards like a metal spring, our knitted fingers,
nimble as invincible and unaware of modelling for the walls of spray paint. I look down at my mobile phone for the time
of day, I see the clock, the date, I don?t read them, I don?t take in the
information. The phone's screen light
clicks off leaving bruised purple squares across the darkness of the cloak
room, my eyes adjust as each square fades into the pixelating low light, out of
the fuzzing an A4 David Hasselhoff comes grinning celotaped to the fire escape
door, a speech bubble: "Meet Louis here." That's the silhouette, framed in the opened
door she rushes me, tumbling through the fire escape together we race nobody up
the stairs full pelt. The rooftop is
just another floor but with the ceiling missing, the Capital's landscape for
hour long lips, wine red as the last staining rays of Sun. In the sunset of flooded marsh land we watch
this sheet white animal drinking at a pond.
She whispers, "His mother was a unicorn." Walking home through the fields, we know like
we always have, together we are a universe.
I look down at my mobile phone for the time of day, I see the clock, the
date, I don't read them, I don't take in the information.

Posted by louis

We weren't lucky enough to get practical cats, the mentalists and athletes of the feline kingdom. We just got that other kind.

They're not layabouts -- don't get me wrong -- but though they work hard and study hard, it's just not likely they'll ever amount to much. I mean, take Hawthorne for instance. Graduated high school by the skin of his teeth and took two tries to get through community college. Now he has an associate degree in Theater Technology, a brief resume that includes getting fired from delivering pizza, and last week he started yowling every night at sundown so we had him neutered.

Heather-Lynn just showed up one night on the living room window ledge, peeking between the blinds to watch American Idol with the wife and daughter (Madeleine and Gerty). She's intent on being a music producer, looking for the more promising cast-offs from the show to "rescue" and sign to her label. I took that as a warning sign and had her spayed immediately and dewormed to boot. Unsurprisingly she's completely tone deaf, but does in fact have a wonderful memory for lyrics. But she does not, in fact, have a label. Or a studio. Or any kind of musical taste.

Also, one of her farts can clear a large room in ten seconds. I don't know if it's what she eats out on the prowl for crazier-than-usual buskers or the steady diet of American Idol or what. But if you hang in there and tough it out, she herself will make an excuse and leave the room, looking for a lost oven mitt or checking to see if we have enough toothpaste or some silly shit like that.

And that one's McGillicutty -- if you'd seen him jump up onto that railing there you'd know he's no athlete NOR mental giant. The only reason he's not still sliding is that the paint is flaking and he's apparently grabbed onto it with his asshole. You'll get no hint of that while we're watching, but be sure he'll be walking funny for hours after we're gone.

He reads comic books and plays video games, so at least he's normal there, but he's WAY into shoujo anime, and you can't tell me that's right. He also tells me he's learning to write like Haruki Murakami. I've seen some of it. Let me tell you. Sometimes at night, when it's quiet, there's a ballpoint pen that lies weeping in a drawer. That's all I'm saying.

T. S. Eliot's been dead for forty years, and I guess it's not really his fault for raising the expectation of the typical cat warden (because, like children, you never really own them)... but if next time you see Andrew Lloyd Webber around, please kick him in the pants for me. He'll know why.

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

They called it a B&B;, but really it was a hostel for the homeless. By
the time he got there, he no longer cared. The woman in the woolly
cardigan showed him around.
"Why is there no toilet seat?" he asked as they passed the bathroom.
"We keep re-ordering them, but people steal them or break them."
"Why would anyone do that?" he thought.
His room was green, like nausea. Someone had covered the wall in
bogeys they'd picked from their nose. Every night he was kept awake
by sirens and strange guttural cries from down the hall. One night
there was a fight and the police were called.

Three weeks later his money came through and he was able to leave. On
his way out, he saw that the new toilet seat had arrived. He looked up
and down the corridor and then kicked it to pieces and left.

Posted by DoghouseReilly

Posted by jc1000000