Published on
May 18, 2010 in
stories.
My brother Andrew emits an unusual Kirlian field. One of his most recent Android phones worked perfectly except for the GPS, which assigned him arbitrary coordinates each day. On the day that his phone decided he was in Zanzibar, he walked several miles due south in Minneapolis to see how far out into the Indian Ocean he could get. (In a similar but fictional case, Rydell, one of the protagonists in Beefeater Gibson‘s All Tomorrow’s Parties, had a pair of augmented-reality glasses that placed Rydell in Rio when he was in San Francisco.) (And in a no-tek version of the same phenomenon, one of the standard Situationist games was to start from an arbitrary location in Paris and then follow a map of Shanghai from People’s Square to the Bund.)
Anyway, I lent Andrew Rachel’s new Canon Retrospect SD149 for the day, and it came back shooting only pictures of the Van Wijks’ (who haven’t lived here for thirty years) otterhounds (who have been dead for almost as long). I would kind of like it if the photos looked like early 80′s Polaroids, but they look just like any other gigapixel snapshots except of those damn dead otterhounds. This morning Geezer (the younger one) captured Macy Van Wijk’s underpants and Flex (the older one) was chasing her all over the house.
I stuck the Canon on a tripod with an automatic shutter release and a Wi-Fi card. So here, for your enjoyment, is longdeadotterhoundcam.com.
Image CC-BY by me’nthedogs
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Published on
May 14, 2010 in
stories.
I found it in the crawl-space.
It was a mouse-chewed cardboard box about five inches on a side, wrapped with yellowed cellophane tape, covered with curling Lenin and Tsiolkovsky postage stamps and bearing delivery and return addresses in Cyrillic smudged well beyond recovery. There was nothing in it, but I wouldn’t call it empty.
Continue reading ‘Korobka’
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Published on
May 12, 2010 in
rants.
The majority of comments I have received on my stories include the terms “drugs” or “drug-fueled.”
I would like to propose alternative explanations, in descending order of anachronism:
- Nearfield neural-frequency interference
- Brain implants
- Drugs
- Satellites
- Radio
- Mesmerism
- Telegraphy
- Witchcraft
- Possession
- Imagination
Image CC-BY-SA by Kandinsky
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Published on
May 12, 2010 in
music.
I mis-dialed my iPod the other day and saw my Top 25 Most Played list for the first time:
- Someday Soon Sweet Samba — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Damara Blue — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Cape Town To Congo Square 1: African Street Parade — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Cape Town To Congo Square 2: District Six Carnival — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Cape Town To Congo Square 3: Too-Kah — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Song For Sathima — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Loudspeakers Low Frequency Response (10Hz-200Hz) — audiocheck.net
- Little Blue — The Beautiful South
- Tintinyana — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Tuang Guru — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Tired of Being Alone — Al Green
- Call Me (Come Back Home) — Al Green
- Eleventh Hour — Abdullah Ibrahim
- Here I Am (Come and Take Me) — Al Green
- Don’t Marry Her — The Beautiful South
- Mirror — The Beautiful South
- Water From An Ancient Well — Abdullah Ibrahim
- I’m Still in Love With You — Al Green
- /=/ — Andrew Bird
- Love and Happiness — Al Green
- The Sound Of North America — The Beautiful South
- Cannibal Resource — Dirty Projectors
- The Mountain Of The Night — Abdullah Ibrahim
- The Light (Part II) — Mason Jennings
- Empire Builder — Mason Jennings
Huh. I would have guessed Guy Clark, Desmond Dekker and Squeeze. Ah well, you can’t lie to your iPod. I feel strangely hungry for some Abdullah Ibrahim!
Image CC-BY-NC by Brett Patterson
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Published on
May 10, 2010 in
stories.
Bernie Pietenpol, the great democratizer of aviation, lived in Cherry Grove, MN, fifty miles from my hometown. He designed the Sky Scout, which was powered by an engine from a Model T.
My uncle Mike, a life-long Pietenpol fanboy, moved to Cherry Grove in 2004, set up a machine shop in a pole barn and began designing time machines powered by salvaged Camry engines. Continue reading ‘Cherry Grove’
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Published on
April 23, 2010 in
stories.
For the first eleven days in Mesa I didn’t get a damn thing except heartburn. On the twelfth day I was hanging out under the Super 8 sign with the other losers—most of them drinking Night Train, me doing shots of Milanta—when a posse of Mad Max-looking blind guys with welding masks, canes and target pistols all piled into a rust-colored ’66 Dodge A100 van driven by a kid who was maybe—maybe—fourteen. My Pinto had died on me on day four and I had traded it for an ’81 Littlejohn BMX bike (the other dude got the ass-end of that deal), so there I was, clown-bikin’ after the A100 with my knees around my ears. Luckily the kid couldn’t drive stick worth a damn, so I was able to catch up pretty good every time he had to shift.
Continue reading ‘Mesa’
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Published on
April 23, 2010 in
stories.
I had myself uploaded to 350 E. Cermak in Chicago, which has three newly-acquired marine nuclear reactors anchored off Navy Pier.
But here’s the thing:
I gave up my eyes. I can see every street corner in China but it all looks like CCTV.
I gave up my ears. Fuckin’ lossy compression.
I gave up my sense of smell. I can detect homeopathic PPM’s of toxic gases, but I can’t tell one woman from another with my eyes shut.
I gave up my lips and tongue. Might as well be intubated.
I gave up my skin. I can zoom in on my oldest surviving friend and assume a POV by her side but we’ll never even brush shoulders.
I gave up my balls. I’m an immortal neuter. I’ll never get laid again.
I’ve asked 350EC to kill me, but since I’m on RAIDs, backups, offsite storage, the Internet Archive, the damn Library of Congress, NSA servers and all the copies of all the data ever stolen from any of those places, they’ve told me not to get my hopes up.
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Published on
April 15, 2010 in
stories.
A crow, half-dead with thirst, came upon a mountain of smoking timbers in a blackened block foundation. The crow (though his beak was ill-suited for this) hewed at the timbers and splinter by splinter removed the mountain. Under the mountain, at the bottom of the foundation, was a SentrySafe 0500 Fire Security Box. Now this was something for which his beak was well-suited! Among the splinters he found a short length of baling wire, and he bent it into hook using a stone as a fulcrum. Then he picked the lock and oh! did the metal grinding grate through his weary bones. In the box he found a Pouch of diamonds and a Flask which had once been full of whiskey; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Flask he found that only very little whiskey was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a diamond and dropped it into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped it into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped that into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped that into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped that into the Flask. Then he took another diamond and dropped that into the Flask. At last, at last, he saw the whiskey mount up near him, and after casting in a few more diamonds he was able to quench his thirst and save his life.
Little by little does the trick.
Image CC-BY-NC-SA by monkeyc.net
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Published on
April 15, 2010 in
stories.
This is what counts as a vacation for me: Sitting by Lemon Creek in a camp chair with a bunch of Unitarians and a cooler full of pop, waiting for the Hooligan run to start. I’ve got my cap pulled down over my eyebrows and I smell like turpentine because I’m covered in a thick layer of Deep Woods Off.
Continue reading ‘Juneau’
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