Eaters Feeding

It was always nice to be pretty, yes, but a man might be like, "Yes, okay, you are fine, love-- but I am getting what I really need right here from this business,' pointing at your anatomy. 'Now do you mind? I'm kind of busy here.' Like that. Then I'd just be... [look up in air while thrusting pelvis]. Never would take my boots off though.

map 1.9  2008/06/03 22:54:33 38.836N 122.809W  2.4    4 km ( 3 mi) N   of The Geysers, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 22:49:48 33.038N 115.558W 14.2    6 km ( 4 mi) E   of Westmorland, CA
map 0.9  2008/06/03 22:43:01 38.815N 122.808W  3.5    2 km ( 1 mi) N   of The Geysers, CA
map 1.5  2008/06/03 21:46:23 37.738N 117.811W  0.0   31 km (19 mi) SW  of Weepah, NV
map 2.2  2008/06/03 21:30:19 33.015N 115.558W 11.7    5 km ( 3 mi) NNW of Brawley, CA
map 2.2  2008/06/03 20:46:37 36.273N 120.252W  3.6   16 km (10 mi) WNW of Huron, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 20:37:27 32.677N 115.957W  8.1    8 km ( 5 mi) SSE of Ocotillo, CA
map 2.0  2008/06/03 20:22:54 36.244N 120.360W 10.8   11 km ( 7 mi) N   of Coalinga, CA
map 1.3  2008/06/03 20:22:04 38.791N 122.771W  4.3    3 km ( 2 mi) ESE of The Geysers, CA
map 1.3  2008/06/03 20:00:43 39.550N 119.939W  4.0    4 km ( 3 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.6  2008/06/03 19:52:34 32.679N 115.974W  4.9    7 km ( 4 mi) SSE of Ocotillo, CA
MAP 3.9  2008/06/03 19:29:04 38.243N 122.181W 10.8    2 km ( 1 mi) SW  of Green Valley, CA
map 0.9  2008/06/03 19:25:21 38.819N 122.798W  4.3    2 km ( 2 mi) NNE of The Geysers, CA
map 1.4  2008/06/03 19:05:18 39.550N 119.939W  4.0    4 km ( 3 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.6  2008/06/03 18:58:35 41.244N 114.831W  8.0   19 km (12 mi) NE  of Wells, NV
map 1.6  2008/06/03 18:51:11 39.550N 119.939W  4.0    4 km ( 3 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.1  2008/06/03 18:45:35 39.550N 119.939W  4.0    4 km ( 3 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.4  2008/06/03 18:26:21 32.763N 115.563W 12.9    3 km ( 2 mi) S   of El Centro, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 18:12:07 33.640N 117.919W  7.5    3 km ( 2 mi) SSW of Costa Mesa, CA
map 1.3  2008/06/03 17:58:16 33.889N 116.065W  8.7   24 km (15 mi) NE  of Indio, CA
map 1.4  2008/06/03 17:45:07 34.220N 117.130W  0.1    2 km ( 2 mi) NW  of Running Springs, CA
map 2.4  2008/06/03 17:40:20 35.842N 120.385W  4.4    8 km ( 5 mi) SSE of Parkfield, CA
map 1.1  2008/06/03 17:28:41 33.708N 116.727W 21.6    4 km ( 3 mi) SSW of Idyllwild, CA
map 1.2  2008/06/03 17:18:08 38.777N 122.718W  1.8    2 km ( 1 mi) W   of Anderson Springs, CA
map 1.4  2008/06/03 17:06:03 33.046N 115.560W 18.4    6 km ( 4 mi) E   of Westmorland, CA
map 1.8  2008/06/03 16:53:09 33.022N 115.546W 12.6    5 km ( 3 mi) N   of Brawley, CA
map 1.4  2008/06/03 16:41:16 39.550N 119.939W  4.0    4 km ( 3 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.6  2008/06/03 16:25:24 33.374N 117.588W  0.1    8 km ( 5 mi) SSE of San Clemente, CA
map 1.2  2008/06/03 16:13:01 33.691N 116.724W 19.9    6 km ( 4 mi) S   of Idyllwild, CA
map 1.0  2008/06/03 16:09:33 33.598N 116.668W 19.5    5 km ( 3 mi) N   of Anza, CA
map 1.8  2008/06/03 16:08:41 33.109N 117.836W  6.6   42 km (26 mi) SSW of San Clemente, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 16:08:00 34.333N 116.773W  5.8   10 km ( 6 mi) NE  of Big Bear City, CA
MAP 3.1  2008/06/03 16:06:32 33.668N 116.724W 14.7    9 km ( 5 mi) S   of Idyllwild, CA
map 1.1  2008/06/03 16:00:49 33.683N 116.719W 15.1    7 km ( 4 mi) S   of Idyllwild, CA
map 2.4  2008/06/03 15:59:48 35.702N 121.048W  6.7   14 km ( 9 mi) ENE of San Simeon, CA
map 0.8  2008/06/03 15:55:04 39.550N 119.939W  0.0    4 km ( 3 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.5  2008/06/03 15:54:43 33.025N 115.547W 20.8    5 km ( 3 mi) N   of Brawley, CA
map 1.4  2008/06/03 13:53:18 33.043N 115.562W 15.9    6 km ( 3 mi) E   of Westmorland, CA
map 1.4  2008/06/03 13:50:06 39.569N 119.965W  2.0    6 km ( 4 mi) N   of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.1  2008/06/03 13:49:00 38.826N 122.810W  2.1    3 km ( 2 mi) N   of The Geysers, CA
map 1.9  2008/06/03 13:39:30 33.795N 117.836W 13.7    1 km ( 1 mi) SSW of Orange, CA
map 0.6  2008/06/03 13:34:32 38.746N 122.900W  4.0   10 km ( 6 mi) SW  of The Geysers, CA
map 1.4  2008/06/03 13:12:46 33.021N 116.259W  8.7   18 km (11 mi) SW  of Ocotillo Wells, CA
map 2.5  2008/06/03 12:55:49 37.413N 121.763W  6.7    7 km ( 5 mi) NE  of Alum Rock, CA
map 2.6  2008/06/03 12:45:38 33.029N 117.368W 15.0    9 km ( 6 mi) W   of Encinitas, CA
map 0.7  2008/06/03 12:38:38 38.768N 122.770W 16.4    5 km ( 3 mi) SE  of The Geysers, CA
map 2.1  2008/06/03 12:11:20 38.825N 122.802W  2.9    3 km ( 2 mi) N   of The Geysers, CA
map 2.6  2008/06/03 12:01:21 37.353N 119.781W 19.7   12 km ( 7 mi) WNW of Oakhurst, CA
map 0.8  2008/06/03 11:13:20 38.820N 122.814W  3.1    2 km ( 2 mi) NNW of The Geysers, CA
map 1.9  2008/06/03 10:59:03 32.452N 116.417W  9.0   24 km (15 mi) ESE of Tecate, Baja California, Mexico
map 1.5  2008/06/03 10:56:16 33.375N 116.432W 27.2   15 km (10 mi) NNW of Borrego Springs, CA
map 1.3  2008/06/03 10:22:34 37.538N 118.864W  6.8   15 km ( 9 mi) SE  of Mammoth Lakes, CA
map 1.8  2008/06/03 10:10:35 32.977N 115.630W 14.0    7 km ( 4 mi) S   of Westmorland, CA
map 0.6  2008/06/03 10:09:29 38.839N 122.832W  2.3    5 km ( 3 mi) NNW of The Geysers, CA
map 1.0  2008/06/03 09:07:41 33.718N 116.672W 13.5    5 km ( 3 mi) SE  of Idyllwild, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 09:01:31 33.020N 115.568W 12.7    5 km ( 3 mi) ESE of Westmorland, CA
map 2.3  2008/06/03 08:56:27 32.752N 115.576W 13.0    4 km ( 3 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 1.0  2008/06/03 08:56:04 38.914N 122.888W  0.1    8 km ( 5 mi) SW  of Kelseyville, CA
map 2.2  2008/06/03 08:47:47 33.030N 115.555W 13.0    6 km ( 4 mi) NNW of Brawley, CA
map 2.8  2008/06/03 08:41:32 32.763N 115.572W 11.5    3 km ( 2 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 1.9  2008/06/03 08:40:19 38.752N 122.731W  1.5    4 km ( 3 mi) SW  of Anderson Springs, CA
map 2.8  2008/06/03 08:33:46 32.763N 115.574W  2.9    3 km ( 2 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 2.8  2008/06/03 08:16:40 33.043N 115.569W 14.5    5 km ( 3 mi) E   of Westmorland, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 08:12:57 34.308N 116.969W  6.1    9 km ( 6 mi) NW  of town of Big Bear Lake, CA
map 2.0  2008/06/03 07:59:54 34.855N 116.389W 10.1   26 km (16 mi) NW  of Ludlow, CA
map 1.1  2008/06/03 07:18:11 33.657N 116.716W 17.0   10 km ( 6 mi) S   of Idyllwild, CA
map 1.1  2008/06/03 06:54:21 39.530N 119.912W  0.0    4 km ( 3 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 0.9  2008/06/03 06:47:04 38.825N 122.791W  7.9    3 km ( 2 mi) NNE of The Geysers, CA
map 1.0  2008/06/03 06:40:44 34.060N 117.873W 10.4    4 km ( 2 mi) S   of Covina, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 06:38:36 32.763N 115.575W 15.0    3 km ( 2 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 1.6  2008/06/03 06:24:43 32.758N 115.568W 14.8    3 km ( 2 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 0.3  2008/06/03 06:22:19 33.028N 115.549W  5.8    6 km ( 4 mi) NNW of Brawley, CA
map 1.5  2008/06/03 06:21:54 32.761N 115.578W 15.0    4 km ( 2 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 1.3  2008/06/03 06:21:48 32.786N 115.577W 11.2    2 km ( 1 mi) W   of El Centro, CA
map 2.1  2008/06/03 06:14:30 32.789N 115.579W 12.0    2 km ( 1 mi) W   of El Centro, CA
map 2.2  2008/06/03 06:13:23 32.778N 115.580W 14.9    2 km ( 1 mi) WSW of El Centro, CA
MAP 3.0  2008/06/03 05:51:45 32.750N 115.570W 15.4    4 km ( 3 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 2.6  2008/06/03 05:50:04 32.763N 115.570W 11.5    3 km ( 2 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 05:45:49 32.789N 115.575W 12.5    2 km ( 1 mi) W   of El Centro, CA
map 2.3  2008/06/03 05:42:15 32.767N 115.578W 12.4    3 km ( 2 mi) SW  of El Centro, CA
map 2.5  2008/06/03 05:40:29 32.750N 115.575W 14.8    5 km ( 3 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 2.6  2008/06/03 05:39:19 32.756N 115.573W 13.5    4 km ( 2 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 0.9  2008/06/03 05:32:05 38.832N 122.804W  2.2    4 km ( 2 mi) N   of The Geysers, CA
map 2.1  2008/06/03 05:30:52 37.300N 121.674W  6.2   15 km ( 9 mi) E   of Seven Trees, CA
map 1.5  2008/06/03 05:26:39 33.146N 116.615W 15.0    9 km ( 5 mi) NNW of Julian, CA
map 1.7  2008/06/03 05:23:29 37.423N 118.615W 10.1    2 km ( 1 mi) WNW of Round Valley, CA
map 1.3  2008/06/03 05:23:27 33.995N 117.197W 15.2    7 km ( 4 mi) SSW of Redlands, CA
map 1.1  2008/06/03 05:16:11 33.501N 116.570W 10.6   11 km ( 7 mi) ESE of Anza, CA
map 2.2  2008/06/03 05:08:34 39.523N 119.922W  1.6    3 km ( 2 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.8  2008/06/03 05:04:23 32.765N 115.575W 16.4    3 km ( 2 mi) SSW of El Centro, CA
map 1.0  2008/06/03 05:01:19 33.498N 116.474W 16.1   19 km (12 mi) ESE of Anza, CA
map 1.3  2008/06/03 04:56:05 37.314N 121.602W  8.3   21 km (13 mi) ESE of Alum Rock, CA

Swarm of Eaters

Chamatilly, a topless and comely African-American woman, 35, bowed from the waist and allowed the tip of her tongue to dab at the inscribed shivplate wafer sewn into the bottom hem of her skirt. When she stood up, all of her thoughts were gone.

She began to chant:

?u-bri' nitu' uhznao'? u-bri' nitu' uhznao'? u-bri' nitu' uhznao'?

She was practicing for Swarm of Eaters. Nearly her entire left side was covered with a dense forest of SOE scars. She had stepped up to the box, paid her tithe, and submitted to the ravenous creatures in the tiny, decoratively-shaped openings three hundred and eighty-eight times now, voluntarily.

I Want to Feel Giddy and Free

I want to feel giddy and
free, though I am the
Mother of all Races.
What can behold of me
ventriloquistically and
with every emotion
a pantheon of faces?

Over to Kypes'

Kype's mom had just a sec before she had to leave for work, so she grabbed a glossy magazine and an ashtray and sat down on the couch hunched over the coffee table in her Pink Skirt, hose out of shoes and a quilted bra.

[photo]
"I'm jist ginna... git out there an give it... one damn try more..."

Illyn Jones, emerging on crutches from Mthyuh of All Miracles hospital this afternoon. Jones swore he was already on his way back up to deepend the same mosh pit which everyone could have sworn had been his Final Eater now these four days ago.

Miss History Moment
Sponsored by PharmSupply

Peggy had taken on the cause of pimping out models to the American public via the pharmaceutical industry. Top powderpromies could pull down many shiny coins per week. For example they could play a beautiful Drip-Dry Maiden who'd made the Lifestyle Mistake of spreading herpes everywhere, some poor kid who wants to make it all right again by licking for-profit shivplate every day for the rest of her life, which had just recently become endless, at a cost, thanks to PHARM-SUPPLY.

Then a friend hears about her plight. To make her feel better, the friend says, "Heck, I should really be licking this too. That way I'll never have to live YOUR sad life. Why doesn't everyone start to lick Pending? Then no one will ever git H."

"If you don't leck it, you're no bitter than a Sexual Lipper," agrees the friend.

Pending. A man has a girl to watch after him; a girl has to watch out for her man and for herself. Take Pending every day. Because a woman has to watch out for herself. Bottom line baby.

"So you see, Hoolie: if it is discovered ignorantly, it is discovered truly. If it is an imitation of life, you sermonize. Imitation of Christ, you politicize. If it is discovered falsely, you are not making music. You are playing the guitar."

Hoolie dreamed he was over at Kype's mom's who was always on her way to work, putting on makeup.

She had Pale German skin and her hairs all wisped up. All thems at Kype's smoked. A lot. All pale with Pall Malls and pink lips, pink tablecloths; everything there seemed organic, Pink, and Fleshy. And it seemed to be necessary for everyone to drain the soft white tobacco tubes to keep it going.

Hoolie got drunk over there for the first time and made a joke of standing up his lit cigarette in the Middle of a Pizza they'd been eating like a birthday candle. Everyone just laughed and looked at Hoolie lovingly, even though it was so stupid he did that. Also, they could have been mad that they'd paid the pizza, and a large family at that with so many mouths sucking.

Then they went out and jammed in the garage. Their eyes seemed to roll back in their heads, Kype's brothers when they stroked. Chords filled the room everywhere, free of drums. All three boys in that family had classic GTO's with fresh paint and clean original leather.

Hoolie dreamed he was sitting at Kype's alone at the kitchen table and a Pink Worm started growing out his adam's apple like a fleshy condom swelling. When Hoolie woke up, he was under a fuzzy thermal blanket in a bed over to Kype's. He was finding it a little hard to breathe, however, because there was a fat pink worm feeding at his throat.

Public Oracle Dispenser

Ted's elbows and knuckles ached, as if he had been walking on them all day. It might be more comfortable than his current evolutionary and work-related debt to holding up the lower back as a pain-prevention measure. At times Ted felt as though the regrets of an entire species rested on his own four shoulders. Here he was on his ass on a stone because all of the things he now loved now had access to now defaulted through comfort, distraction, obsession, path of least resistance to being seated on this stone before a pod (public oracle dispenser). Night and day. No difference.

Ted wanted to be out on the trail with the pups hunting bear or tagging rocks and chank faces with Isohere. They could camp out and wake to a dizzying cliffside spectacle of Pink Morning Sky, but Vertical. Strong, soaring, wide-winged blue-green and purple, long-beaked, scary birds looked like they were armored in Metallic Feathers. Had become common now. See them gliding by, upside-down on their own private airstream jetty.

Destruction of Wealth

Once every hundred years there was a festival called Destruction of Wealth where all the rich would have to come and stand outside their caves and all the surrounding peasants and pissants would get to walk right past their stuck-up cousins, loot their houses, and spit at them on their way out.

The spitting became more and more polite over the centuries as the rich cousins devised more and better ways to reap vengeance on the poor cousins during all the other 99 years if they looted too much or spat too bitterly.

Eventually, Destruction of Wealth became a national Centennial of Charity. The rich cousins would lock up their garages and daughters and best animals and put out big bowls of punch and large plates of graham crackers for the poor cousins, who wore their very best clothes to the event, clothes they had to borrow money from the rich cousins in one town to purchase at the stores of other rich cousins in another town.

The poor cousins entered the homes of the rich cousins, most of whom had made a point to be abroad, leaving mildly attentive servants and security personnel in their places. The poor cousins ate as much as they could and went home quietly, wondering how their families would survive, void of all charity, across decade after promiseless decade ahead.

Then it was suggested that reparations be paid. There would be a fund set up to honor the sacrifices of the rich cousins during all previous Destructions of Wealth. Prayer and self-floggings were to be general across the land. Some poor cousins went hungry for generations as a result of the compulsory tithing.

Finally, the poor cousins snapped. They rushed the guards at all the grand caverns of their wealthy but distant relatives. They looted their cement and pharmaceuticals, forcefully kissed their daughters. When they had eaten all the delicacies and drunk all the finest beverages their stomachs could hold and filled their arms and their pockets and their asses with all the valuables they could carry, they left, spitting upon the rich cousins, who could only stoop cowering at their own doorsteps.

As the poor cousins made their way back home to their blighted villages, laden no longer with care but rather with new found wealth and happiness, they felt forgiving, a little contrite, and could only imagine a brighter tomorrow for all the family.

Swamp Rascal

Mike crept through the high grasses and foam of dry salt cedar sheddings. Even the brutalest foul prongs of Nature seemed fair, while with man one wanted Payback. He kicked at beer cans and charred camp drudge. No surfers here. They hung out in the sand and looked out at the sand these kids. Surfing the tailgates on their pickups. Corncob bonfire shindigs after dark. This all would be flooded soon. Just big dragonflies and crocs. Bubbling mudtowers.

Wonderful Moment

What a wonderful moment to lay hatred bare,
Pried squealing from her dank hulking steerage,
Slithering red-tongued spirit.
These devils only wail for goodness.
They are babes unweaned is their furor.

Duhbabera Chank

http://www.dtman.com/covert/images/bh2/needles_sm.jpg

Dhubbabera

We sat at the crux of the
Chank called Dhubbabera.
It was two birds flipping upward
At the same chile time.

Chalk Chank [the Mp3]

Chalk Chank

Chalk Chank

It was at Chalk Chank
Where I felt the first dank
Shock of the vagina.

There was a mattress there
In a spot called We Don't Care
Sipping at some wine like snobs.

It was the bravest step made
Since the night we pierced our eggs
Back in history.

It was our only creative act
Including starting a fresh batch
Years later on our shag carpet stairway.

Seven Over

Sylvia felt almost the same whether she was in her car or on foot. It was just a difference between pedal pushing and weight shifting, really using one foot or two. Shells of cloth, leather, metal. Her spring lifts gave her the same buoyancy as the shock absorbers in her hooptie. She dreamed of bouncing all the way to San Diego along the Hard Trampoline Highway. She soared upward, seven yards over the limit. There was Ted hitting climax at about the same time, the Valley stretching out beneath them like a Dirty White Vinyl Bible. They shared weightlessness for just a sec. They continued as such until splashdown in the Pacific. They bobbed alongside steamers and pleasure craft, were dwarfed by the wreck of the USS Ronald Reagan, sipped Seven and Sevens from straws in tall, frosty stones.

Ten Fingers, One Price

iiiivvvx. Bunch of Tangy Ravishes

You still know your name. You sit and stare at the gaping craw of the TV: a giant fingernail with a scene of men chopping something in a meadow painstakingly manicured onto it pokes at and tickles a magnified "heart-dingle" earring like a uvula. Bunches only. Add a stuffed toy.

At What Cost?

IIXVI. ValveBox

Pain of resistance to muscular hackrights installations. Gets you amped up with glee by degrees. How do you want it? You are an emotion's palette. They paint you and you are developed. Developed by scientists at Pharm-Supply's seasonal headquarters in Pippi for use especially in conjunction with industrial gaming interfacial systems and state-sponsored Muscle Logic Dispensers (MLD's). Allows up to three glee degrees of resistance to muscular hackrights installation before dejective surrender and death. Not recommended for pain control during Remote Tissue Decisioning (RTD) sessions or debugging.

New Economy

Hoolie and Kype worked at the plant, plus a lot of overtime. They were more hours of the day than not covered with a fine grey powder of cemen-T, a byproduct of any pharmaceutical mining, processing, or packaging in those times. Kype gave Hoolie a lot of good advice. One time he told him to go and brush his teeth in the drinking fountain. Another time Kype told Hoolie to stop wearing underwear and also stop shaking his dick after he went to the kibo-flimp. Finally, he suggested that Hoolie take LSD, wear tight bellbottoms and shake his ass really hard main floor throughout a Foghat concert.

At break time they'd stop over at the White Hen Pantry for some food chunks or tobacco. They'd break nuts on the big stone for customers behind the ATM or walk back reminiscing about young life crawling through the chanks. Never knew what the next village was doing, especially during clusters. Chang K. Chang Chank was the "fordamall" chank (40 miles long).

They got the idea for the show from a Discover Channel doc-uality about the reanimation of flesh that was already or still animate. It turned out to be easier than to animate dead flesh.

So before long they were entertainment industry execs, and with their laptops they would force contestants to swing each other by the hair and throw one and the other against walls, etc. These folks were volunteers, and they were hard up, but it was painful for them, and it showed on their faces. Emotionally. We couldn't give them ValveBox because the muscles were not responsive beyond 5 steps of glee. So what most people watched as the show evolved was the tortured expressions in the players' countenances. One episode had both participants dressed as Joan Crawford. They seemed to be utterly humiliated and were almost killed. They wept as they were carried out, mascara smearing. They were also called contractees, associates, partners, members, guests, collaborators, stars, models, frontliners, foot soldiers, salt and pepper, caca, ganado, joiners.

Kype had a beak head and deep-blue feathers. He could lay his spectacles flat across his eyes, which had to look down to see straight ahead. He let a beat strike, and then turned his toucan-like nose toward his friend and mentee.

Hoolie. What's happening to us.

Stay Naked and Live (There are Plenty of Sunscreens and Prophylactic Medications)

So you see, Hoolie, do you remember when those classmates of yours went and shot up those cops in Texarcana? That one who'd set his denim bellbottoms on fire in the woods outside the high school? Everything was about Back to Nature then. Now it's try this weird thing: nature. Nature is the new Chia Pet. All-night party in an unfinished basement, filth everywhere. You thought you were throwing up blood, but it was some cop-killer's daddy's Martini and Rossi "Red." Say yeahs. You had to stumble home through the woods and 16 inches of heavy wet snow with a hard cap at first, first light in the Great Lakes Region, a light without a color. He had lit himself on fire down there, too. The arm of his sleevey jacket. The Black folks were even more uppity in Chicago then, running riot all over the CTA, all the white folks with their heads hanging not daring to meet the eye of a Black man. Point is, you can't wear a camouflage barrette in your hair these days much less a stainless steel Afro pick.

Stay naked. All summer. Order groceries on the Internet and get out the Daffy Duck and Tweetie Bird beach towels for the furniture. This is what your mother would have wanted.

Night you could sleep or be conscious in

This is a night that would bear
Hard slumber or consciousness,
This hang of six-hour heat
Lifting off in fine rosettes.

This chill unexact wakens,
This ending attenuate,
Hours misappropriate from
Colleagues and co-worshipers.

Mark me now, and not at the
Iced tip of an evening gone.
There are those who for pure or
Coarse occasion stand vigil.

Others may honor this stretch
Giving over to her tides
In prayer and chaste hypnosis,
Riddle not her clement fluids.

Cavern in the Back

"Hoolie's problem always was that he was misunderstood by classmates at the junior high. They'd be like, 'Who's that kid?' and Hoolie'd be the kid who is dancing over in a corner all by himself, or maybe even in the middle of the dance floor, all by himself, but really spazzing out. Like totally oblivious. He comes to a dance, he doesn't realize that it is a social event as much as anything. Sure, you come to move, to interpret in a way, to appreciate the music; but that is generally considered to be only a template, platform, subterfuge even, for grafting rites. Hoolie wasn't about that. He really got into whatever he was doing.

Also I heard a girl tell him once, 'I don't dance with white boys.' So."

Shrugs eccentric cafeteria manager Soupy Witness at St. Chang K. Chang Chank Elementary, former kindergarten of a sullen and embattled go-go nightclub dancer Hoolie Johnson, arraigned this morning at High Shiv for manslaughter in the death of Connie Rehenes, debutante and drifter. Johnson often claims to have been a son of the High Priestess Pegyuh through some sort of goofy-talk "wrinkle-in-time" coincidence. A Wrinkle in Time is the book that will be written in the 1960's especially for children and adolescents by Madeleine L'Engle, renowned mostly for that title. Upon learning that it would be hundreds of years before the technology could be developed that would at once vindicate him on a murder rap and prove his lineage to a priestess, he began diagnosing hidden illnesses, some of which they didn't know they had, in the members of a Canadian camera crew on the scene. We are standing by to determine the outcome of the epsom salt baths and prayer he prescribed for each of them in varying doses before slipping into a shit-faced trance.
Coolie Sinbad, Chankside.

Photodelic Re-Engenderation

He Reaches Out by Reaching In

When the arm of the phonograph reached its trigger point, it lifted itself and re-cradled. The speakers went dead.

Donna and Mike each took a moment to gather their breath and have a few thoughts. Mike's receiver, in fact, was under the dining room table while he rinsed his face with cold water at the kitchen sink.

When he got back to the phone, Dr. Thong had already begun to cautiously pursue a preliminary and furtive line of questioning.

"...if this was the first time you have had an experience such as the one that we, that you... um."

"Doctor I'm sorry I'm back. I was..."

"It's Mike, isn't it?"

"Dr. Thong, I don't know how to tell you, but I hope that maybe now you may already know."

"I like music, and it did actually... carry me away."

"Of course since we're on the phone you can't really see for yourself what's been happening on my end." Mike glanced down at his shimmering abdomen. "I don't know yet, but I feel I could really swim."

"Mike," Dr. Thong began, recovering her courage with a new-found, no-nonsense attitude, "are you referring to photodelic re-engenderation?"

Peggy [the Mp3]

"You had two kids when you took to the winds."

Peggy

Lair of Dr. Thong

Dr. Thong was just polishing up the abstract of an article she'd just finished, "Discoethnology 1984: Dance Floor to Gymnasium in the Grim Aerobics Dawn," for an important medical doctor's world think tank quarterly journal magazine when the telephone rang. It was that guy who'd come by earlier that month for a kill shot.

"Doctor."

"Yes, this is Dr. Donna Thong." Dr. Thong always smiled on the phone because she had an awareness that facial expressions could resound audibly along the vocal cords through facio-cranial acoustics.

"Dr. Thong, I..."

By now, Mike considered Donna to be someone who had become one of his regular interlocutors.

"I was just wondering if..."

"Oh. Mike, isn't it?"

"Yes. That's my name."

"Well Mike, you silly. Why don't you tell me how you're feeling."

"But Doctor, don't you see-- it's just that..."

"Yes, Mike?"

"I'm feeling so HOT (hot)."

"Oh, pardon me? Sweetie are you there? Did you say hot two times?"

"Oh, doctor... doctor..."

They could both hear the music. It was overcoming them. They were helpless in its spinning thumping groove.

Born with a Vision

She was born with a vision
and it was copacetic
but where can you go but down.

Table dancing just to eat
Children home watching TV
While mommy does the late show.

She held it in her big hips
The secret that they wanted
After a couple of beers.

But no one there was ready
For Peggy's revelation
And Peggy is no longer around.

Oh Peggy Peggy
Born with a vi-zhone
You had two kids when
You took to the winds.

You had two kids when
You took to the winds.

Care-Laden Bells NBN [the Mp3]

Care-Laden Bells NBN

"Noisy but Nice"

Stays Lifted [the Mp3]

Stays Lifted

Care-Laden Bells [the Mp3]

Care-Laden Bells

Stays Lifted

There are those that will their steps on your dreams;
a single drop swells the chalice, and you wake moaning.
Call into the fray with care-laden bells clinking,
buoy rocking, buoy clanging; sun is winking.

COLUMN OF LIFE

Column of new pauses, thinking you are sumptuous.
Column of days, tight petals unfolding and turning under
Column of lines, connected only for the reason paper clips fuse in drawers.

Column, murderer, holding hostage villagers in your shadow.
Column is a forced march, dragging them by the upper arms.
Column splashing and spilling over, terrorizing with its cracks.

Column of workers, column of ants, column of monarchs.
Column raising the ante one dimension and all that was flat must fold.
Column free in the air despising reason.

Column against phallocentricism, column so old.
Column to hang around and lean on, carve, tap, be chained to.
Column to, thrashing and writhing, "pull down," as if stone.

Column of bees and nettles, a solid ring, stack of coin.
Column a tornado of fire, fever rising, spiraling tide.
Column as plinth, down under, with the relics.

Column of earth where I stand. Is a marvel of stagnation
Column of patience that non-life has. Abomination. Only
Column of Life has stations of deceasing and appearing again.

http://www.firefold.com/search.aspx?keyword=strippers

7. Same Price... What da Dif?

http://wairarapa.co.nz/times-age/weekly/soldier.html

XXX. Roleroll ["Carter's Pills"]

pussy. In good faith, you would take part in a discussion seeking to make a serious comparison between Martin Luther King and Ronald Reagan with someone who should know better. Your least useful value is the value that allows, admits, confesses to anything if it appears to serve the common good. Will crops be higher because of your sacrifices? Step back and stop making a difference when you're not. You need to roll your role. ® Be ebullient. Pop up somewhere else.

Mkidza Mlahf

Mike had his back jammed up against a Cheap n' Simple hardytile wall. His GPS marked him as on grid and viable. He got on his walkie. "Theodore twenty," he murmured. "Theodore twenty, Ted over."

"Come in co-man," Ted drove stoically, understatedly, heartily home yet with such relief in his voice. "What's it like."

"I can tell you it's different. Funny. I feel a will, a desire. My nerves are racing. While I am aware of all that is bitter and cloying, I am circumsized from any direct impact."

"And the sexualsides?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Ok so then."

"I am not a native of this place. I can only co-exist through the most basic of commonalities: Shivweek, Chart a Planet, pet-door procreation."

"I wish you well. But you know... Your getting out. All of us will suffer less as a result-- not only you."

"If you reckon."

"I reckon your mommy was a stripper."

"Yeah. Her kids were her lahf. That's wah ah wuz bornd nekket."

Truth not Therapeutic

In another protest against "changing times," a group of High Shivites claiming to be descendant from the first priests to hang the first WD back in 01 threw themselves into Kareer-Kesh, one of Mthyuh's most active mosh pits, and of course as well to their own deaths. For them, the scientific truths unearthed by recent double-blind scholarship into the causes of Mthyuh, her tremors, and the nature of our Earth's troubled core in general had been too much to take, especially when presented as some kind of advancement. "This is like raping a virgin as a way to prove her inimaculacy," postulated Priest-Forward Esogh Ilyn, whose red afro caused many onlookers to comment that he resembled a flaming white cannonball as he hurdled into the mouth of the holy death gorge this morning.

Speak Out? Are You Crazy?

http://archive.dailypicture.net/giant_baby_found_in_india.htm

6. If they were all the same price, what did it matter?

CCCMLXVI. PaxPox FL

Exomembranal profusion. You respond to your environment like a raw shell-less blob which has no conscious filter for reaction. Things happen; you have a symphony of reflexes; none are blank. Something must result: in you, from you. You are elected antenna of the world. And it's time to step down. Be dead to stimuli-- for the kids' sake. Cradle and all, baby. It's PaxPox. "For Life." One example of side effects would be scarring lesions.

Your Mommy was a Stripper

We elected Mkidza Mlaf cuz her mommy wuz a stripper. She had a hard shack growin up and lots o' mouths suckin everywhere. She had to show it off for fun, food, and release.

She partially digested the martini onions and spit them back up into her babies' craws each dawn.

5: Stop to Consider

http://wavegypsy.com/EZ%20TT%20BABY%20DEVIL%20TRUNK.html

MXXI. MD20/20.
Poztusnifta (NXS). Why are you reading this? Must you always stop to consider? Be honest. Could you really stop stopping to do it if you tried? Stop stopping and go. Be clean that way. Others eat your wind. You can break these 20's in half or go for broke. You know what you're about.

Mthyuh Pariah

My very existence is pornographic to you. It's me you want to stamp out.

When I started to become sticky eight years ago, no one minded when my clothing clung because they thought it would bring tourist revenue. Now that we are in quarantine, you want to cast me out in the only way possible: by mouth.

Por la boca, I shall not be intimidated by your dirty-minded desire to put me on stage as your bottom bitch for blood sacrifice. We all know that shivweek may never come again. But for the masses, torture is more satisfying than death. So you keep me alive until I'm spent and no longer pretty. Well, I've taken care of that. I have sticky progeny all over this county. Both the sticky daddy as well as my self have had lots to do with births in many households, and in all walks of life. And you will not be able to use viable DNA sampling methods for many hundreds of years. You will only discover our work by the sticky messes popping up right and left. And by the way. I am a lesbian.

Peggy

Undergrounded

Tom dreamt that he stooped over and did a somersault in the air and kept tumbling upward until he was flying flat out over the clouds looking down at what one of us might see looking out the window of a modern airliner even though neither he nor anyone else had yet been in that spot and lived. He looked at the bumps and smears and veins and trails and hanging mists and cracks and wrinkles suspended in the complicated vapor scape and decided that, as a part of nature, as he, as well as his language were a part of nature that it, as much as anything else that he could speak or otherwise create, must have meaning.

If he strained his neck, much as if one of us, a taller one of us, would have to do to see out the window of a modern airliner all the way to the horizon, he could see the line between the cloud cover and the sky and this too spoke to him; it meant that there was indeed a line, a limit. He had been drinking a little bit that night and feeling still emotional, like someone slammed back into the world after they thought they were already dead, so a high sound came out from the back of his throat as he slept, like a teakettle, and burning water squirted from Pink Squishy pads in the corners of his eyes.

The concept was since he was a natural animal and the clouds that hung in the sky below him or the air that he breathed were also natural, just as natural was the language which grew out of him, that he spit and spewed, as Real as Phlegm, and it would be arrogant to think there was no meaning in any of it.

When Tom woke up, it turned out he actually was on a plane. He sighed and saw his breath on the glass of the little oval window. He realized that some of his previous breaths might even be contained in the broken-up Chunks of Orange and brown clouds he was flying over now. There were veins of snow on the Brown Dirt that covered the planet west of the Chanks. The White Veins seemed to follow the water runoff. He could probably see millions of trees from that vantage point. When snow became general, water running was marked with the absence of snow. He had not yet seen an animal, but as far as he could see there was only terrain with trees and rocks and snow, and then no rocks, which seemed like a place where animals would want to go.

4: Inside Dog/ Outside Dog

LXVIII. Rover
rongplinth. Your life partner could be inside dog and you could be outside dog and get 40 extra years. The way they used to. Don't divy up chores; go to your station, and they will self-evidence. Take the 40mg for Outside Dog and HS [homeoshivic] for Inside Dog. Split it up, not up. Meaning separative team training [STT] is where it's at. Boil all communicative measures and media down into one: the kitchen window (also the name of our weekly clubzine, Kitchen Window).

Pegyuh

So you see, Hoolie, bile helps you digest your surroundings, but you can't digest outside your own body or else you don't get the nutritional value for it, and you lose all those vital acids. We are not insects that can just stroll on over and lick up our spoils.

How come she never wanted to claim me as her kid?

You know she always had the apron on--? It was all a gun moll needed to survive.

Protection?

Yes. She loved you most. She was a pariah.

triki derelicti

i stoop and weep [the Mp3]

this desmadre has been deactivated by the Mthyuh Preservation Society

Warm Green Monolith

Tom was walking down a wide empty Dhubbabera windy boulevard, his pants flapping. It was disorienting not to have to go anywhere in particular except what one had planned out for oneself, and that type was the most breakable of oaths.

So his thoughts took over. Only when he forced himself to admire the towering desert chank, blurred with a haze of spring olive verdance, did he feel that he existed as himself in that place, and in any case, that was not a pleasant thing. His mind operated as a spring this way, snapping back almost audibly after an intensive moment of pessimistic concentration before the sharply pending withdrawal. A whip. You wouldn't always want to be the object of that studied, cringing fronting off with reality.

So when a young German widow, furtive, herself disoriented, chilled by the wind in the shadow of the warm green mountain, blurted out, "Are you familiar here?" he saw the look of fright on her face and didn't want to be the cause of something like that, so he deliberately brightened up his mood, from within, allowing her innocence and vulnerability to spur on a sympathetic view of life, a view of life's delicateness, which ended up showing in his face and reassuring her.

It's back that way, he pointed. See the golden building? She'd asked him for the casino.

Then his walk continued and he did not snap immediately back into internal patter. He was crossing the shadow line on the sidewalk. Wind seemed to buffet him from all directions. There was brightness and bright color, magenta blue pink green yellow blossoms and their fragrance. As water sprang into his eyes stingingly, he imagined all of the dead who loved him standing in chorus and encouragement. But also in envy.

He felt responsible to use all of his senses, just for their sake, for a few moments longer.

Peggy, You are our Daughter

Peggy,

You are our daughter. We've been wanting to tell you for so long. We are your birth parents and we love you. We want to help you with the girls and be their grandparents.

Down the entire contents of this box NOW!

Ted
syl

P.S. We are in the parking lot.

2: In Search of a Paradigm

If they were all the same price, what did it matter?

IX. Truckon ROL.
i-proli havia. You read the Have You Experienced? pages in the paper daily. Most symptoms of most paradigms sound familiar, and you are on three or more rest-o-life doses daily. This is not a disorder. You may continue on with your life as normal, and your prognosis is positive. Why be a loser? You may expand over the years, through self-discovery, your daily regimen of wonders.

MMXLCCIX. Speed.
hunger. Remember when chicks worried about their weight just went ahead and got scripts for Black Beauties and Preludant? Fuck yeah they rocked. They like a talkie all night, makeup, stocked up on supplies. Speed freak chicks just want to hang and rag, maybe sixteen hours at a time.

CCCVII. Solids Plus.
superficiality. It's a way into deepness. The whole metrosexual thing. But not like South Park did it. More of an antidepressant. Real, physical things and how they are is real and present. You can grasp on to solids, and after all, you are one. Your premier lifewonder for today's premium rewards of your prime. Live a little. It's decadent, which means highly satisfactory.

VI. Nest.
cohesia. You believe there to be links of causality and intention between disparate entities. There is a pattern forming: of events, behavior which seem to share a purpose, though any number of motivations and consequences could be, with some effort, applied to each individual occurrence. Hanging in space, however, they would still create a shape. You are not a star. Keep it real. Nest is your ticket to everyday living.

21: Time is a Liar

Now wait a minute, Sylvia. I'm wearing lipstick, and you ask me if there's some special name I'd like to be called? I don't ask you that when you put on lipstick. Though I might think of you as some special name or another. With peach you are more a "Janice," with brick you are more an "Audry," and with the bluer tones, "Wendy."

They were at Ted's working on their letter-writing campaign. They felt that the Audubon Society, among many others, should know about the creature they'd been glimpsing hopping from gate to gate or just standing dumbly alongside the canals. It shared many of the characteristics of the Reddish Egret, except that those areas which would have been covered with feathers, and in the same colors, seemed to be tiled or even armored in a very hearty as well as irridescent, metallic plating. The Mthyah Preservation Society website had been down for weeks, and they weren't sure how, if at all, their reports and samples had been processed during previous migratory guest anomalies.

Envelope stuffing had allowed their conversation to drift.

Gee, you know I ran into Lourdi Spires the other day in Career Center, and it's like sometimes there's a limit before you just have to let these holier-than-thou types know that they could really go ahead and act more Christian!

Well there's remember Hoolie? Maintenance? Went around acting just like Christ and wasn't afraid to tell you so. What a dirty freak. Heretic. Stank.

God you know he could have been a shooter. Good thing that cancer he had got him off our campus at least.

Tom and Sylvia make contact.

Then they did the torture where they spin you around very fast in an office chair-like contraption, then stop you suddenly and spin you even faster the other way. How can I be so important? she murmured, bloody spittle strung across her cheeks and hair. Then she realized: she wasn't that important at all. The torture was completely automated. This was sort of like a car wash whereas before it would have taken an entire team of ensemble actors. Soon it would spit her out on a lawn behind a post office or a school. Not soon enough... she was going to faint... not soon...

What? What was that? A tiny package, a vial... by her foot. She thought she had hallucinated it, but no. It had come rolling across the floor and under--into--mother's shoe. No-Shiv. The red box.

Tom and Sylvia stood holding one another in the parking lot.

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY / WILL VAWTER

Just to be good—
This is enough—enough!
O we who find sin's billows wild and rough,
Do we not feel how more than any gold
Would be the blameless life we led of old
While yet our lips knew but a mother's kiss?
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!

It is enough—
Enough—just to be good!
To lift our hearts where they are understood;
To let the thirst for worldly power and place
Go unappeased; to smile back in God's face
With the glad lips our mothers used to kiss.
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!

See What Happens?

Tough Peggy

Mum's pleated wool skirt was soft and absorbent. Her thighs were not so bony as to be scary or uncomfortable against the cheek, and not so big as to be mottled or odorous. Her knees were a wholesome cushion of responsive and supporting tension, a blood-water-fat balance that seemed custom made for Peggy's face. She cried and cried.

If you could step back from that scene, you would see the projector above the door behind Peggy and that her mother's image was a hologram.

Dear Peggy

Peggy Smith?

Fuck you. Get out of my face.

That's your attitude. But we have taken control of your will chemically. You will answer our questions with the utmost sincerity.

Suck my ass.

Peggy Smith, why do your parents anger you so?

My parents anger me so, asshole, because they disrespected my intelligence enough to give me nothing to get by in life with except some shitty fairy tale about a volcano goddess. So fuck off.

We know that you'd like nothing more than to put your head in your mother's lap and weep.

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!! SUCK MY DICK!!

So we've asked your mother to come in.

I don't know who you are. I don't know if you are a person and that's your real voice or if you are a recording of a real voice or if you are a machine with a synthetic voice, but I swear to Mthyuh I will find you and destroy you or die gratefully trying.

Your mother is waiting in the next cavern. You may proceed through the hanging beads to your left.

You don't know me at all.

In Search of a Paradigm

If they were all the same price, what did it matter?

Tom and Sylvia sat in the waiting room at Pharm-Supply browsing through old catalogues. Way beyond lipsticks, the most curious pages were the symptom and scripting breakdowns for the shivtropics. Their real reason was to see about breaking Peggy out or smuggling a box of No-Shiv in to her.

CLXXIV. Blyway
Neurodigm. You have many interests which you focus on intensely. You are never happy because you are never satisfied with what you are focused on or else why would you be so focused on it. And why focus on anything anyway. In the big picture, you are a rat sniffing from flower to flower for no reason. Are you a victim of neurodigm?

XXVIII. Same-E
Hopinaskipina. Everything seems fine until all the sudden you have to break your healthy rthyum and engage in uncharacteristic behavior. Consequences include loss of productivity and increased stress factor for coworshippers. Signs of disease-specific denial: "had to let my hair down," "just needed to get away," "fuck you; get out of my face." Ask your shiv priest about your doctor. Then, stop your hopinaskipina.

CC. Rock o' Mthyuh
Blight. Something in the air. You're not the only one who's being affected. But not everyone has the nut to do something about it. You stay right in the head because you owe it to your family, for the safety of whom you are like a lioness. You take your Pro-Labique Pharmashiv whenever and wherever you need it: for protection, for peace of mind. You are not a sick one trying to get well; you are a potentially deadly protector of children. Keep taking Pro-Labique. Don't let them down ever again. If you do, do you really deserve to live?

"Mexican Bean Beetle"

The most likely explanation seems that by jumping, the bean will move itself into a safe place where the larva can relax, pupate and undergo the miracle of metamorphosis ready to continue the life cycle.

Please remember to kill and/or capture and report any new, mutated, or previously extinct species to the Mthyuh Guardian Society, especially if aggressive.

http://www.insectlore.com/xlorepedia_stuff/jumpingbeanmoth.html

Peggy's Incarceration at Pharm-Supply, Day 4

http://www.jbsawid.com/art.htm

Drunk Man Rides Horse into Bank

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=46457&in_page_id=2

Lucky 7's

i, an ex-pro ball player,
slump in my plush armchair.

alls i did was got it rol-
ling and now i get purple

velvet flock on the mouldings
and blue wallpaper. i'm feel-

ing under-plussed now i got
no trade power nor value

it's all overtime now on
a pitiless avenue

and a sorry ride home, too
and except to me, I may

as well be an ohio-
an from hawa-ii-ki-ki.

Duck Gun Rockers, Longhairs and Pinstripe Freaks

It was quite a sight seeing their sons in tight bellbottom jeans, red patent leather platform boots and dago-t's, all their hair long as Peggy Lipton's, holding and aiming those duck guns. Their hair curled down to the tits, wadded up behind the ears where they'd pushed it back to get the earplugs in. At night they'd wander out to the garage with a beer and slug the bag or jam on their Fenders. That night Jay burst in after church and stated that he'd never be seeing Charlotte again and he felt like driving the "goat" off a cliff, and there would be others. Jay: in the exhaust, in somebody else's headlights, walking across a street, always busy setting up a scam or a bust. When the quake swarms would start, he'd seem super with it like how we's gonna go about it now is-- huh?-- we gonna save the world. You gave Jay a tallboy and a mic and you get skinny flesh and bones, flailing in the blacklight and moving and singing till he is soaking wet. He was of legal age.

Torino, however, being his father, didn't like to turn him out. He imagined the blinding golden hair coming off like butter. Rolling a young gentleman's future out before him like a colorful rubber: that anticipation made his ankles feel weak. And now it was the time.

na, junge frau ;>)

Sylvia's next breakthrough: powdered sugar really gave citrus a run for its money without the total blanket of sweetening effect you got with corn syrup.

TROG

Peggy finally had to be hospitalized when she began seeing everyone as a weird creature. The slick, spongy facial covering with the gaping red-rimmed cavern and watery bluish or brown slits, the protruding blow holes. The crown of bristly tendrils, bone-filled appendages like ineffective wings. She questioned every being, object, behavior or event around her and could only see their strangeness. She herself was the most shocking: the brazen, raw persistence of her life form was inexplicable. The materials that had coalesced to form her flesh, and their variations, amazed and disgusted her.

For the first few days, her only comfort was knowing that she had lived inside her mother's body. She began an architectural project which would enclose residents with rib, spinal, and pelvic structures in forged metals across and deeply into a cliff's face.

Chang K. Chang

OK everyone. We're gonna have a drill on what happens if we for some reason lose access to the pollsticks. I know it's hard to imagine a scenario where we would both lose access to the pollsticks and be compelled to continue on with a class session because would there be power anyway and would people be too upset but here we are.

Instead of thumbing the red button, you are going to have to turn your head left, then right repeatedly until I've been able to visually record everyone's primitive answer.

Instead of knuckling the green button, just lift and then lower the head-- again, please don't stop until I have made what we'll call "eye contact" so that both you and I know that I have manually registered your primitive answer.

First question. Should they stop Shiv Sack Week just because we liked Chang K. Chang and she got sacrificed this WD. Instead of intensified gender expression, we can only think of Chang K. Chang and how she brightened our lives and how Mthyah already had many Hell Daughters to milk her. Yes or no. Respond now please.

Blind Skier Follows Voice To Slope's Bottom

Blind Skier Follows Voice To Slope's Bottom

County Coyote Encounters Explode for Shivweek

Unusually high number of attacks during and around Shivweek is giving locals in the Olde Mthyah and Cliff Estates homelands the "shivers."

* Man bitten by coyote while sleeping on lawn (2:45 PM)

* Man bitten by coyote while sleeping on lawn (4 PM)

* Man was stalked, then attacked by two coyotes, and bitten on ankle (Early evening, daylight)

* Coyote attacked and killed pet dog in man’s presence; coyote would not leave (Morning)

* 54-year-old woman fought, using an axe handle, with a large coyote that had attacked small poodle in back yard. Received bite on leg, and despite her efforts, the coyote killed the poodle and jumped over fence carrying the carcass (4:30 PM)

* Man walking encountered 4 coyotes, which crouched, circling him, attempting to attack. Fought off with walking stick, hitting one square across the face (Morning)

* Coyote on golf course ran up to woman, jumped on her back, and bit her on right forearm (Daytime)

* Woman walking 2 large dogs accosted by 3 coyotes; fell backward and fended coyotes off.

* Coyote came into residence to attack small pet dogs.

If you see a coyote stalking your pet, yell and throw rocks at the coyote. Take your pet indoors.

Remember to report any signs of rabid animal activity or steam rising from open ventricles in the desert floor to Mthyuh Guardian Society, especially after a temblor.

http://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev15c.htm

I Feel You Mthyuh

Ted has returned to the laboratory of Dr. Donna Thong, who has become his regular interlocutor.

"You know I stopped being afraid of wild dogs when I was in France. Aix en Provence. They would come after you circling, instinctively, not even looking at one another, only at you. Perhaps because it was not a conscious strategy, but rather an externalized brain operation of some deeply-tucked, pea-shaped descendant of the jellyfish that has forever been able to interface directly with the outer world without having to go through the conscience, the thus-organic and seamless nature of their movements had a lulling quality that seemed to hypnotize both hunter and prey, dragging them into an even wider and remoter scheme, neither with nor against their wills."

"...Ted, isn't it? Uh huh. Wasn't that a comma splice?"

"One night I was really scared when we took a walk on this country road? We were camping out on this guy's farmland? And these dogs started running toward us. They looked like big, black and white Dobermans."

"Oh," said Donna. "Did they start circling you? Did you throw a rock?"

"How did you know? That's what happened. That's all you have to do..."

"Is throw is rock, yes, I know-- that used to happen to me and my friends a lot when we'd cousin up all summer and hang out behind the bottling plant in Greensborough. It was green there."

"Yes, of course it was. And that is my point-- there were probably plenty of rocks. Yes. Well you see, when I was out near Olde Mthyuh this week after work just clearing my head? There were no rocks at all. Just very fine sand. These were coyotes; they're small, but there were more of their voices than I had ever imagined to hear from a canine species at one time, even in a recording. It was way more than if you go to a kennel, for example. It was a flurry of cries much closer to the squalling of the migratory bird nurseries in the very next section of the marsh."

"Mr. Azir, you are giving me goosebumps now! I think of my little nursry babies before they grew old."

"When I was back in the car I could still hardly dare to draw breath. Without rocks, I was completely without a plan or a defense should they attack. I was traumatized, and nothing even happened."

"It will, darlin." Dr. Thong's voice and smile created a curiously and chillingly reassuring tone of response.

Sunset is Black

coyotes: 100 or more?
In the designated ground,
Who is being hunted, just?

I said you must stand still
watching this rare desert view
man-made wetlands
with so many high reeds and
hundreds of shrill chicks bleating.

You can hear a dozen kinds
of birds and some amphibi-
ans, but mammal?
Apart from the hounds I've brought here,
Wait. Oh my God.

There are
hundreds may scores maybe
OMG coyotes, excited
numerous as birds
against me and my two

exactly
who is being hunted here
end of dusk
dogs stay closer because

only ten minutes from home
the sunset is black
and nature herself
has a hungry sound.

W.A.S.T.E.

Kug was busy trying to beat himself into a slumber chemically. He had full pharmashiv, so he was well stocked. What he really wanted was to just talk to someone, but he'd have to sign a Waiver and Acceptance of Social Toxicity Estimate to get the vouchers, and it just wasn't worth it. But when would they all be able to relax. There was always something coming at them. The funny stuff, then some spooked attention, and then the dereliction.

Three beautiful dogs lounged all around him. One was fluffy and soft, with a crazy look in her eyes and a very high pain threshold. Another was gingery, spotted, danced for chicken. Finally, Juniper was just naughty. Half of one eye was blue, the other a quicksand of sentiment. La La's toe had been taken by a gopher, yet she hadn't flinched. M'Lady's passion was birding, and they sometimes called her Dog Bird or Pickles.

He hid his watch in a drawer when he realized the ticking had been driving him mad. He stared at the glass of water serving its second night on his bedstone. Dust, including a hair, lolled on the surface tension. "My own story twists like a question mark on the skin of my tomorrow," murmured Ted. "I cannot rest while I want so badly to act, to pierce that membrane. I want to tell the story so that I do not end up in prison," he wrote in the themebook next to his water glass. There'd be plenty of time the next day, though, to tell the story. He'd have a cement mine to tell it to. All day long.

daily bag [the Mp3]

daily bag

studdening

JUNK-A-LISHUS!

Is the changing of hats legal as evasion?

Emotional cosmetics is
what you would call
keeping a good
variety of
feelings in your daily bag.

If the charging party
cannot prove
which one you were wearing
and when, vindicate you.

For an insuring corpus
would be absent,
and when corpus is absent,
no fault is found, stud.

It is clear how the walls
could come crumbling down
and nothing could be done
because there wasn't even
a name for what you had.

Everyone just took
off their hats and bowed,
waited for you to
float away
like Lady of the Lake.

It's a method actor's
face exercise
that starts from within.
The focus is on
emotion.

The faces it creates
are not the exag-
erated masks of mime,
but rather a knot in a
jaw or a drooping eye.

It creates the shadows,
imprints of emotion
projected through the
lens of the
mind.

20. Time is a Liar

leper king

Peggy thought about how people from other places often seemed deformed. But then at other times she herself seemed more deformed. At times like now, she decided, it was her immediate society, which included her, that seemed deformed.

It was not only the rashes and funny growths. Everyone's reaction to the invasion or whatever it was had become way more disfiguring than the sum of the symptoms. Moms used to tell kids that if you frowned or looked cross-eyed too much, you would become stuck that way. Turns out faces actually do get stuck in the twisted palsies of fear, disbelief, and self-recrimination.

Emotional cosmetics is what you would call keeping a good variety of feelings in your daily bag. It's a method actor's face exercise that starts from within. The focus is on emotion. The faces it creates are not the exagerated masks of mime, but rather a knot in a jaw or a drooping eye. It creates the shadows, imprints of emotion projected through the lens of the mind.

She'd been assisting Dr. Donna Thong in her lab of late. There was a walk in, a local high school teacher. He'd asked to be put down.

"But why...? Ted, isn't it?"
"Because you are my doctor and that's what will cure me."
"Oh Teddie. Where did you come from? Don't you have a home tonight?"
"I'm no good for anyone. It's no good my being here. I want to take responsibilty for this."
"I can give you something to help calm you down. What's your pharmashiv?"
"I got ProLabique ProLab. 5k deductible."
Dr. Thong was opening his shirt, and some disco music was rising. His face became more and more distraught as he watched her undo the buttons. He was in no physical pain, but for what it hurt his eyes to see.
"Oh. Oh Teddie. Is that real?"
The disco music pounded hard and Ted A. Azir wept and soaked his wide cheeks, his ears, and the hard, blue-green scales growing beautifully across his gym-bought abs. The anomaly pulsed irridescently, armor like with his sobbing contractions.

B-an/ Kor-ible #1 [New Queen Version]

There is neither
Jew nor Geek,
slave for fee,
male nor she,
for inside
Christ's warm
ass, we are
one with Him.

Gayrelations 3:28
NQV

Crystal Rimprint

Rare rainclouds made even rarer moves now above. A donut cloud, but with a center a hundred miles wide, crowned the valley. It was grey, the center was brightest blue sky, and the wind howled. Shiv Sack Day-- but that was everywhere.

Ted and Mike say what the fuck and hold hands all the way to the model homes district. They let the gale half sail them past the BurmaShave-style signs on the long, barren connector road to the construction sites. 100% Financing. Community Parks. Zoned No Sex Offender. Optional Items Now Included. Planned Activities.

The models are garage-first, neo-classic rectangles, breadboxes full of soaring heights. All interior doors have been removed to give more airiness. They are little movie sets, interrupted lives of hypothetical citizens, full of books bought quaintly second hand, but deliberately placed. Below the coat rack at the front door: Supreme Court Proceedings. You are living the lifestyle of lawyerness. On the overstuffed couch in the kitchen wing: The Carbohydrate Addict's Cookbook. Glass decanters of raw macaroni line the counter tops.

In model #2, Asian mother and daughter prospective buyers stand chatting in the 200-sq.-ft. kitchen. Mother appears to be slipping some of the props into her shoulder bag. Wooden spoons. Every model also has a counter top cookie oven to create a cookie smell which is said to have psychological power over buyers. One thinks one must be on camera.

They've sacrificed back yard space for the community security parks. They want everyone out where everyone can keep an eye on everyone. Bathroom fans are running.

The back sliding glass door of model #3 has been smashed into thousands of safety glass chunks and replaced, but not cleaned up. The broken pieces are on the outside. One of the his/ her walk-in closet doors in model #1 has been forcefully ripped from its tracks. The rubber rollers had begun to burn against the metal and left streaks before being replaced. There is an iron fence disallowing exit directly to the street.

Passers through in these model homes, especially for Shiv Bowl, feel as if they are left to their own fantasies, with no sales personnel present to face scan you. They do that efficiently enough before and after. Guy, a sales VP and owner, scans Ted carefully for honesty before refusing to show the place. He needs to be home for Bowl and the Shiv Sack. It's only once a year, and he likes to participate in Payment of Blood.

Strolling over to the other models, Ted and Mike can tell the donut cloud has gone nowhere, and the wind is just the same. The model home promotional flags are getting their ultimate test and looking like faded historical salvage already. This is some kind of land hurricane but where the center is fast and big, and the edge is thin with a bright lining, a crystal rim print right above them.

donut cloud

It had been especially difficult for Peggy to quit smoking because she thought of herself as an artist, and most artists have a smell of their media about them. Spandex and rubber, propane, clay, absinthe. Even laptop writers sometimes smelled dusty and grimy, from books. Computer graphic artists, to the contrary, just smelled like their own bodies, tasted like their own mouths. Or sometimes new carpet or airplane food or baby food. Peggy felt exposed without a cover, or at least a veil, and took to burning incense with her Pro-Labique Nico-Chews.

The question wasn't being a mother or not; it was how responsible would she be, really. She thought those girls were great. But taking a step back, would they be better without her?

This was either a sick train of thought or a healthy train of thought, but it was a familiar train of thought.

Their Military Recruitment Hymns Lie

Their military recruitment hymns lie;
but they have a voice that's so soothing.
It would be obscene to dance to one of them,
so what accounts for the desire to soar and
fly?

Dog Med [the Mp3]

This post has been erased by the Muthyuh Preservation Society.

Dog Med

Dodi get is cheezie sometime
fo bed, sometime with is supper.
Dodi lick is wrist knuckles
fo sleepie, joyin da crib ah
definid f'heeum.

Dodi gotta condition an it
ain't not gettin inny bedder
but neethuh izit gettin whurs
cuz ah hide sm dog mayud
in he cheezie.

Shirley v. Dodi al Fayed

Here's how Shirley get Dodi out his privilege rug and pillow for illin pets:
She come up with a bone, drop it right there nex his head,
start growling like he gonna take it;
he's lying there like what?
she get so scary he get up and leave.
she lie down on da pillow saying I'm da top bitch now.
Po Dodi sleep on da wood flo.
He got a condition and he her elder. It his dogbed.

19. Time is a Liar

"It's like you climb in bed one night, and you wake up, open your eyelids, and then you get up, and then another set of eyelids pop."
"Pop?"
"Just about everybody reports the same feelings, uses the same metaphors, including calling it a pop."
"That's a new one."
"What they report is that their universe starts to feel like a big, largely empty high school gymnasium."
"I know. With merry-go-rounds."
"And gravity and everything else like before except the..."
"Time seems stupid to you."
"That's right, Sylvia."

* * *

"Do you feel heartattacky right now?"
"Oh please."
"I'm serious. Last time you tried this... and you weren't even bloody. What happened to you?'
Tom was solemnly opening the package.
Sylvia's vocal intensity was diminishing. "It's just you know how I feel about... I don't understand why it hasn't happened to me, so I'm naturally..."
Then the two of them sat quite still at the round kitchen table in Sylvia's dining room.
They peaked over the edges of the wrapper as kids before a glowing cake.

17. Time is a Liar

"That's good-- only a couple of hours past p-a-t promised arrival time. What's the FedEx?" quizzed Sylvia.
"Hiya. It's Cheap n' Simple. They do mail now," was Tom's answer.
Sylvia stood back to see what Tom would do, where he would go, once across the threshold. He seemed to be wondering as well. He carried his package as some would an excremental urgency; it was what clearly mattered to him at that moment. Sylvia wondered if possibly a digit or other flesh fragment had been sheared off during an accident and he had it on dry ice or...
"Sylvia, come and sit down with me here at your table. Come. Please don't argue."
Sylvia felt odd walking toward him. Did he just order her? It was a physical weirdness. In her legs.
"Remember suit guy at our closing night Herpes for Christmas? Adam's apple. You said his eyes were dead, like Huckabee."
Sylvia thought about that man. She had felt a strong, silly urge to ask him to hold her. Just hold her. But why... "But why..." Sylvia began, sitting down on the high-back stone across from Tom.
"Listen. They sent me this pharmashiv. It's supposed to be someone in the community. I'm just a distributor."
"They..."
"I'm a rep now. First one. They know what I know. I don't want to say I told you so, but even they think it might be evolution, plain and simple."
"And that you are the latest model! Oh, Tom. You are so full of shit! These people will tell you anything, and now you think I'll buy the same fucking bullcrap."
"I told you all along there wasn't anybody. I kept clean and you abreast of all my love needs. All the way up until the day it happened to me."
Sylvia cocked her head in sarcastic interest.

16. Time is a Liar

"...yes, anyway, I'm of the school that says the female orgasm does indeed have a locus, yes, centrally... but.. but just listen. 'Tired of breaking ziplocks and the fancy-schmancy stretchy stuff? Just open, fill, and twist! Cheap n' Simples don't even need a wire tie.'"
Sylvia kept smiling up at the box, which she was holding to the light over the kitchen sink. Finally, as if responding to a dead silence, she added, "So, I just saved a bunch of money on these bags. And I'm delighted. Yes. I'm fine. OK then. Sure. No doubt I'll be here. Bye-bye."
Then she burst to life and was glancing at the dusted-over vcr clock on her way through a brightly lit livingroom. She wasn't sure how long she'd been standing there letting the meat fibers loosen when the doorgong rang. It was Tom.

15. Time is a Liar

I'm walking around in a fairy land, thought Sylvia.
She finished her promenade through the kitchen at counter's edge. She and some new yorks were marinating in Chateau St. Jean cabernet.
"It's a beautiful wine," she murmured, having memorized the back label.
"Not accepting pharmashiv is like just being your cranky self, except that everything is more surprising. And you feel that there is no choice but surrender to certain adversities. Certain thoughts simply must be blocked." She was speaking to an old friend on the phone now.
"Last night, I was suicidal. This evening, with dinner ready to go, I'm just floating, like flotsam. The disaster has occurred, and there's nothing left but calm, seagulls. But life has shortened. Just that much. And however much I added to my free radicals, you know, from the stress."
Her interlocutor, unknown, must have spoken for some time then, giving Sylvia a chance to sip some more and press the bottom of her glass like a stamp against the steaks in the Cheap n' Simples.
"How did you know? They're cheap... and they're simple!" Sylvia mouthed, reading the box of plastic bags.
"OK, okay..." she seemed to be getting hooked back into the conversation now. "Dephallocentralization, sure, but Cixous wanted to castrate men-- it's not just implied. Sure; escriture feminine is a penknife. But wait. Listen to this. Are you ready for me to blow your mind?" Sylvia leaned into one hip and pulled out a baggie.

Wasn't it...?

i can hardly
apply my lipstick
for emotions
running free

i see visions
of our union
and the sad
state of society

i feel guilty
when i think of
all the times i
pressed my personality

i get sick of
these ruminations
when i could be thinking of you
it's all about me.

I can hardly
put on my makeup
'cus the gal that's in the mirror
is not the guy i should be nearer
and no matter how i preen
i find he's nowhere to be seen
I can hardly
remember his name.

scratched on cave wall (translation)

when i lost my babies
my society started in
on watching me for signs
of depression and mania

apparently i got so down
that i sang in tongues
and laughed at my tragedy
pulling out my hair and an eye.

now they make me lick
pharmashiv from a low
stone and run ceremonial
volca shiv. i can't vote.

Fire Shore

Fire Shore (the Mp3)

Fire Shore

There is a shore
where fire laps
on the coals

chic as Lourdes
volunteers
wade in the flame

when they return
towel around them
they are maimed

but they live en-
chanted lives from
there on in.

everyone
wants to know them,
see their pains;

they are a source
of inspiration
for the lame.

you can trade
your trudge and bot-
her in a day

for scarring wa-
ters that God made
while insane.

Song of Chamatily

Tom went for tacos and beer. The normally surly prole waitress was charitable in tone toward his misery, but he felt neither surprised nor grateful. He took the stone near the window, daring her to make him move. Two or more only here. She merely brought him a napkin and a dirty fork. She was indifferent. Tom was indifferent. This pleased Tom somewhat, though he remained unconvinced of anything.

A large, interracial prole family, probably her relations, was sitting across from him, so it was difficult to stare straight ahead without the children stepping into his line of vision as they scooted in and out of a booth they had taken over for themselves. They went behind the counter to help themselves to more chips and did balletic turns and leaps in between.

A black man who must have been the children's father sat and stared at Tom. He might have been searching for a sign in Tom's face that he disapproved of the bond between himself and his brown wife or of his innocent offspring. He might have felt jealous of Tom's solitariness and apparent freedom to go out for tacos and beer alone. He was clearly troubled by Tom. Tom shifted his eyes to the left, and then to the right without moving his head. This did not shake the gaze of the black prole man.

One of the girls found that she could slide easily on a smear of guacamole on the painted cement floor. She decided to do the splits while slurping the straw of her iced horchata, skidding the spill under her shoe. When Tom looked up, it was a woman staring at him from the same table. He guessed it was the black man's sister-in-law or a friend of his wife's. The woman's expression was also disturbed, but it was more likely, Tom felt, that her concern was child abduction and rape. Tom's food came then.

He could not remember any previous meal that day. Morning itself seemed many weeks in the past. He ate the tacos like an animal and sent the rice and beans back because they were cold.

I Blow Life Out My Ass

http://www.history.rochester.edu

"Why do you come to me now Tom."
"I don't know, but it may be just your improbability. Sometimes I go where life is least likely to be, and tonight I saw your fire. I also snapped the axle on my hooptie driving over some unexploded ordinance. Someone else might feel lucky to be alive."
"Why do you turn from life Tom."
"It's trying to rub me out. It doesn't want me except as a host, and I do not accept that."
"Life is all you have."
"Life is cheap. It can't afford me. Life is a Bolshevic revolution. It wants to break me up into small, poorly-appointed apartments."
"Do you believe in the Shiv."
"I do not."
"Do you have health insurance?"
"Only if I take the shiv. And only for pharmashiv."
"Auto Club?"
"Yes."
"What does your shiv priest say."
"You are my shiv priest."
"I only do Volca and sing. I am strictly ceremonial."
"I want to stay and hear your song."
"I am in a bad mood Tom. Volca did not go well. I cannot sing now."
"Maybe you can refer me to a shiv priest who gives a shit."
"Tom. You are a leper. I care for no one else."
"One song, Chamatily."
"Then will you call AAA and accept life's plan?"
"I will accept your song Chamatily. Life covers me in boils. I blow life out my ass."
"Very well. I sing. You bleed and ooze. We die together. Then we see about a truck."

http://www.hooptie.de/

Fortunately, though she was muddy and on the ground, it was only the driver's skirt he wanted. He had already made holiday mincemeat of her shoes and her kairn terrier.

PEP (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis)

http://www.nwcphp.org/

Bangalore Street Dog Menace

http://r2blore.blogspot.com/2007/01/street-dog-menace.html

He Jacked a Hooptie

Kug speaks to us directly from a windy, 10-acre golden poppy meadow near Cliff Suites.

"I have dogs and my dogs are free. I didn't come up here and make a sacrifice on this land, move my life, so my animals would have to be in a cage. They run when I run, eat when I eat, walk when I walk, and sleep with me. I've got a big four-poster with a California queen stone, and that's where we wake up every morning."

Four fluffy one-hundred pound dogs romp in circles around him when he walks, and walk beside him in the colorful high grass when he runs. Kug's long blond hair all blows over one ear as he sends a smile back to one of them. Gray clouds are beginning to blot the sunshine and cast hand-like shadows. There is a faint mechanical sound, possibly woodcutters.

The dogs are suddenly gone. There is a screeching of tires.

"Pippi! La-la! M'Lady! Come!"

It was Juniper. He'd run down to the one-lane road and in front of a car to stop it so that he could attack the driver. He was successful in this.

Someone's husband was screaming like a child. There was grunting from behind the car, an Edsel, and Juniper's persistent growling insistent throaty message.

14. Time is a Liar

At night, Reptily prayed to her old god without daring to move her lips.

sprinkler on a wicca twilight

it's cold and wet, yet welcome
to some life forms, even in January.
Even in the Northern Hemisphere.

some idiot paid to have fairy sprinkles
punched into the lawn, but it's
green now. He's got leprechauns on the inside.

dapsone was good enough for a while
then they started getting pissed off and organizing
marchers of the truth brigade were brought by magic.

they had to start putting cameras on their body parts
to follow their trajectories. They called this
time. Heads on shelves tell the story.

13. Time is a Liar

"...and even pain was just a confirmation of my selfish assumptions. Vol. Rabbits. I took the palace mascots' unconditional love and seeming empathy as some kind of validation even when no human would cosign my bullshit. vol-vol. Take me now vol."

Reptily was in her second day of Volca. Volca starts when you put the burl in the fire. The days cannot start until you have seen the sign in the burl. Volca has three days, unless you do not come to the end.

"I allowed my mistresses to become familiar and then chided them for trying on my ribbons vol. Vol. I wore the ceremonial slippers which hurt my feet because they showed more heel vol. Then I used your name in vain I said 'Ay, Mhthyuh my feet.' vol. vol. Eat my bones first vol beg vol."

Reptily shifted on her shoes. She was in a wedding gown and heels as a symbol of her marriage to Mthyuh, the geo-god. She was expected to perform these ceremonies, and everything she said was recorded meticulously by seven nude albino scribes. One of these had a red afro.

"Ilyn, what day is it. Illyn. I didn't say 'vol' chyle tell me the day."

Ilyn responded, "Your Volca has begun, Chamatily. You know the answer."

"Ilyn you gotta help me. Call me Rep. I'm sweat'n. I can't take this. Throw me a clue. Vol Ilyn."

Reptily was panting and her forearms were starting to slip down toward the spikes. She twisted her wrists around so that the binding would hold her up.

"Chamatily we bathed and robbed noblors together but I always respected you. Now we have a job to do. I'm not corrupt."

"Vol. Take Ilyn last O Mthyuh. Take him last vol. How I will prep his shivgrub without shivwash so to send him to you sooner vol I'm the one. Take me unwashed vol nothing harms you. Vol. Take Ilyn last vol."

12. Time is a Liar

The phone rang. Reptily, a comely and immaculate topless black woman of 35, let the unsheathed metal-tone red satin comfortor from Montgomery Ward fall below her shoulder blades to answer.

"Mom. I have a big shiv tonight. What do I always say. You come and fall down. Please. Oh and you like your 6 mats behind the rope net. Far above drainage. Yes and I love you." Reptily's view gave her mountains and pink clouds that morning. She knew she would be able to get her mother to come to the Shiv and pretend to faint.

She was eating Blood Hope wafers right out of her communion kit. In bed.

"Mama this is the only way. You, free. We in two tall house. I help so many people and little children. And I got my papers. Everyone respect us. You repeat now few times, go to bed. Little children yes. Papers. Respect us."

Things had not yet begun to go wrong.

11. Time is a Liar

Still, the flame could not break through.

"Hooo. Cooo. Hooo. Pit spot. Pit spot. Cheese or Hawaiian. Cyclamen."

The flame sank down, peeked back, and disappeared into its lair between the branding-hot grate and the underside of the burning logs.

"I choose my gift to be..."

Reptily gasped.

The burl was spewing a rapid fire of sparks against several points on the rock, above and below the pot line. The burl's face popped and fell away hideously. The symbol was clear burning red and gave no sign of waning for lack of fuel. It was the 6 ridges and prostrate child. Prolabique Pharm-Supply.

"If it burns till sunrise, we are in shit."

Reptily slumped, rested her chin in her hand, and spat at the hairless dog curled by her feet.

10. Time is a Liar

Reptily sat on a footstool before a fire she'd made. Her specialty was burls, but she could also read the heat spots and Burnt Issue of cones, ashes and legumes. This oak burl had burned through the eve of and into the first morning of the new W.D. It was disturbingly reminiscent of a six-hour vision of hell she had experienced using wood from the same river bed the winter before. It's sandy, but it's cured. Miss Sprint just must not have been hosing them down. But fire's eye knows all. It can still carve its message.

She poked at the chunk of glowing wood and lifted it trepidatiously, as if she expected ugliness. "Yes, it's all written there." Reptily let the sandy, helmet-like shell of bark fall back on its tortoise legs of cinder. "Now it must burn up from the bottom. There will be a mark in the sand."

"All year, I do nothing good. I am a samurai against all best choices. I want this WD to break, and in her last flame, for the Mhuthya to roil up and bring home her bad daughter. Bad hunger to good. Vol-vol. God is pleased."

"All year in my pain I treat others bad. The world is my suffer. I am your food Mhthyuh, is me to take to your bowel. Vol-vol.

"All the days I eat I say I have something bad. Vol-vol. Vol-vol.

"I am only so sweet to get birds in the trap, and they rot. Because I have too am too much Mhuthya. Vol-vol.

"My children are lost. I have no children. Take my children. You are their path. But eat them last. Vol. Vol.

"Even temple mascots chew their own bones for me to complain vol. Even my babies have crawled away.

"I put my hair in fire to feed you, vol, I am gorged with lush diseases of lust and mimesis, horror and disgust, fear, misrepresentation, betray, go over, don't listen, TV all time, wastebag, simpleton, hypocrit, make death.

"I am fresh and livid and salt regret, vol. This day. Last day. You ate them all. Vol. Vol."

Reptily's spiny forehead rested on her knees now. There were more items, but why.

"The sloth, the fool, the reaper. I can only see myself, but I cannot see..."

It would be soon now. If she got the 2-spear sign, she could fight and run ahead. Trapped at home was a murder to her.