Watch Without a Watchman

Religion is for the living.

Joel M.

Well, this is it. I'm in Medicine Hat, home of the weird, for work for the next year. I'm doing some business with my parents, restoring a nice little old apartment building and turning it into condominiums. It's interesting work, even if it's taking me away from my sweetie for a while, and I'm thinking of doing a blog about it. Watch this space.

Joel M.

Here's a little something that I wrote just now. I was lying in bed, thinking about how people are motivated and how they tend to see other people as having things better than they do, and I decided to zip out a little bit that illustrates this principle over the course of a normal interation.

Waist

*****Ding a ling a ling*****

Rita glanced up at the door from where she sat behind the cash register. Mrs. Winthrop. The old woman had been coming into Max's Diner at the same time, fifteen minutes, give or take, after the end of the breakfast rush, for almost twelve years now.

Rita waited patiently while Mrs. Winthrop negotiated the chairs and tables, on her way to the window seat from which she kept watch over the daily activities of Kenzie Street. Finally, once the frail old bat had come to roost, Rita shifted her awkward bulk into action.

"Morning, Vera. Coffee."

"Thank you Rita. How are you today?"

"Fine. Knee's still bugging me."

"Did you try using ice? My son, the doctor, had been telling me to use ice on my knees, and it works wonders."

"I tried, Vera, but I'm not sure if it's helping. Breakfast?"

"Yes."

"It'll be right out."

Rita walked back to the register where her paper waited. When she arrived, she spotted that Sam had his head down on his prep table so that he could see out into the diner through the short, wide rectangle through which his kitchen breathed dirty dishes and greasy food.

"Vera."

"I saw. Pass me a coffee?"

"Sure."

Rita leaned against the counter to get a look at the story on page two while she waited for Vera's char-bacon and toast, not cut, extra butter, to slide out. It was about two inches about how some virulant jungle disease was set to waste several million people away crammed between
three screaming colour ads for competing used-car lots. The next page was "Ms. Page Three." Rita, who didn't have a driver's license, lingered over the spread, eyes flickering back to the little story again and again.

"Rita! S'up!"

"Yeah, yeah."

Rita snagged the warm plate before it terminated its skid across the well-greased countertop, dropped it in front of Mrs. Winthrop where it would spend the rest of the day gradually turning into uneaten crusts, and heated up her cup before returning to the register.

*****Ding a ling a ling*****

"Oh, hey. Back again?"

"Yep," said the pretty white brunette who had just stepped into the diner.

"Barb, right?"

"Yep. Er..."

"Rita."

"Thanks," replied the momentarily pink-eared Barb as she sat down at the counter.

"You sure you don't want a booth? It's no trouble."

"No thanks. I just need to talk to a person. I'm not bugging you, am I?"

"Nope. All I'm doing is reading the paper, and it's depressing. Coffee?"

"Please, and a water and dry toast."

Rita dished up a cup of coffee and barked at Sam to wake up and do his job before turning back to Barb. "So have you found a job yet?"

"Not yet. I joined a gym last night, though."

"Which one?"

"Just up the block. 'Ages,' it's called."

"Already? But you just moved here a few days ago. You must still be beat."

"I'm a little sore, but I need to keep at it. I've already sent in some head-shots to a couple of agencies and I need to drop a few pounds before they call back."

"You must be kidding, girl. You look like a stick!"

"No way. I'm at least five pounds over-weight."

"You're talking to the wrong girl here. I've been working in this grease pit so long that I must make two of you."

"Whatever. If I wasn't a model I'd make you look like a twig. I hate worrying about what I eat so much."

"Rita! S'up!"

"Yeah, yeah.' Rita collected the cloudy glass of water and toast and watched Sam's legs saunter toward the back door for his smoke before she passed them across the counter.

"Thanks. Seriously, though, I shouldn't even be eating this. Girls who only eat celery for breakfast are going to kick my ass for the jobs."

"No way. You actually look healthy, not like those sticks. Besides, if I looked like you, I would be the happiest waitress in town."

"Well, what do they say on TV? Aren't we just supposed to be happy with the way we are?"

"That's one to grow on," chuckled Rita. "Really, though, look at the old lady back there. You think she worries about this stuff?"

"I doubt it. She looks more worried about the guy letting his dog pee on the curb, though."

"Heh, heh. Yeah. And does she look happy?"

"Only if being upset makes her happy."

"I think it must. More coffee?"

"Thanks."

Joel M.

Wow. Two entries in one day! It must be all of that floor varnish at work.

Here's a quick rundown on some of the real problems in the world that a belligerent, freedom-loving U.S. should be thinking about: The Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Crisis of 2004

For 18 years, people in northern Uganda have endured a brutal conflict... Congolese cannot meet even their most basic needs. Local militias and government troops prey on civilians throughout the east... Various armed factions fight for control inside (Columbia's) shanty towns, making violence and intimidation a part of people’s daily lives... TB is making a comeback throughout the developing world: one-third of the world’s population is infected with the TB bacilli and eight million people annually develop active TB... Fourteen years of violence have dramatically affected Somalia’s population of nine million, with approximately two million people displaced or killed and even though a recently selected central government offers a glimmer of hope, violence still shatters people’s lives as predatory militias and warlords wield power for financial profit... About 90 percent of people in the Chechen camps and 80 percent in Ingushetia had had someone close to them die from war-related violence, while more than a third of people in Ingushetia and two-thirds in Chechnya felt unsafe... In regions of Burundi covered by the user-fee system, malaria deaths were twice as high as in areas adopting a low flat fee. One in five people interviewed said they didn’t visit health centers even when they are sick because they couldn’t afford it – not surprising in a country where nearly 99 percent of the people live on $1 a day and a staggering 85-90 percent survive on $1 a week... Even though huge amounts of international assistance pours into North Korea, there is no way of knowing if it reaches those most in need and many suspect that the bulk of aid is simply diverted by the military regime... More than 10 percent of children do not survive their first year of life in Ethiopia... During three days of riots in Monrovia in October 2004, nearly 400 people were wounded and 15 killed...

Er, so. How's that Iraq business coming? Anybody feeling up to dealing with an actual problem?

Joel M. (via www.boingboing.net)

A really excellent piece of short fiction about spontaneous assemblages of intelligent household devices called blebs. Check it:

I gave her a hug and kiss and was about to tell her to be careful on the subway when I caught movement at floor level out the corner of my eye.

The first bleb in our new joint household had spontaneously formed. It consisted of our two toothbrushes and the bathroom drinking glass. The toothbrushes had fastened themselves to the lower quarter of the tumbler, bristle-ends uppermost and facing out, so that they extended like little legs. Their blunt ends served as feet. Scissoring rapidly, the stiltlike toothbrush legs carried the tumbler toward the half-opened door through which Cody had been about to depart.


Joel M.

Buh?

I'm sort of uncomfortably aroused right now. Like oogling a faraway girl in the mall who turns out to be fourteen. Or staring at some chick's butt, only she turns around and has Downs' face. Brrr.

Joel M.

So, yeah. Something bad happened. Did you know? Here's a link. There's more here. Er. Talk among yourself.

Anyway, this is a little piece that I just pushed out now. It's a bunch of stuff that's been swimming around in my head for the last little while, but it's all exposition. I really need to work on getting dialogue and plot and stuff going on.

But, for the time being, here is a little piece of the world of tomorrow as it floats around behind my eyes.

Freedom from Desire

It's first thing in the morning. Frank's up. Right

NOW.

Full on frontal assault. Manic DJs storm his sandy pillbox. A crack-a-dawn jack-in-the-box, Frank bursts the burning membrane of another day.

Whisps of dreams trail around his ankles like a ribbon on a rock thrown into a caldera. A tang of fresh plastic, the seductive giggling of some long-ago whore, toy alien fingers with bloody stub tails trailing across his anus, crackling purple eyes and a sparking laugh.

Sleep in his eyes.

Dreams going, Frank digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. Dreams going, Frank eradicates sleep. Dreams gone, black and red cononae, after- after- after-images dance under his lids.

The smell of bad coffee wafts into Frank's tiny loft. He swings his feet over the edge of the bed. Plants them. Drops his head back into his hands for a return engagement. Feels the floor sway slightly.

A momentary hitch, swiftly smoothed. A tiny prick of the ears. A fraction of a twitched eyebrow. A reflex reflexively suppressed.

"Every time," Frank says to himself, just like he does every time.

Frank stands up, sets the floor swaying. Frank takes a step, and the floor gets closer to the drunken reel it promises.

Frank stops at the railing. Leans on it. And the floor's jig begins to ease as Frank acquaints himself, yet again, with the murky water. With the shattered edge of the floor. With the taught cables that suspend his bedroom between unwelcome water and his leaky roof, all fruit of the whirlwind.

Frank isn't drunk. Wasn't drunk. He wishes he was, in some ways. But he is free of that desire.

*****

The coffee was good. Or at least is tasted more strongly of delicious fats and sugars than of a filthy filter and water stolen from the sea by a bit of clear plastic and a metal bucket.

Cream is a luxury that Frank indulges in, for want of the knowledge that his filter wants washing. He trades for it, twice a week, from a little Chinese sampan lady with an impeccable French accent.

This, his home, this new Venice, born of a century's profligacy or nature's wrath, pick your poison, was a magnet for the strange. "Displaced people seek a place where they can keep an eye on displacement." A comment that Frank, drunk, thought profound and which he spent the rest of a night down at Dino's explaining in shrinking circles of flumoxed, sodden logic.

Back when Frank still desired drink.

*****

Now it is time to attend to his little herd of Goats(TM).

It used to be that the sound of their little cloven hooves would enrage Frank. The Goats(TM) stumbled back and forth, like little drunken lords, tap tap tapping across the corrugated metal of Frank's roof, their floor.

Finally, though, Frank made a breakthrough deal. A seller of hay, who peddled his wares from the upturned, lacquered roof of what looked to have once been the merriest red barn outside of Wisconsin, happened into the neighborhood with a load of his wares. Now Frank trades him chunks of the mysterious rusted scrap machinery that hunkers redly below the waterline in his former warehouse for fresh roof-loads of wispy mountain hay. Nobody has ever claimed the stuff, and by this point Frank has consigned the hazy mental outline of some lost owner to the watery grave shared by so many of those who lived too close to the coast.

Now, the Goats(TM) sport and defecate in the largest offshore barnyard on the West Coast, and Frank sleeps deeply enough not to spend sleep's hours reflecting that he is a sport, come to ground on water, come to feed of the dead.

And today, the Goats(TM) are off their feed.

*****

Now everyone knows that goats eat most anything at most anytime. But not Goats(TM).

But what is a Goat(TM)? Decades ago, some bright young fellows with labcoats and expensive brains realized that there were some interesting similarities between the glands that goats used to produce milk and that spiders used to produce silk. A little tinkering here and there, a little DNA from there goes here, and voila! It looks like goat's milk, it tastes like dog crap, and if you pour a bucket of it through a rusty noodle strainer, you get enough silk to make half of a lady's glove. A bullet-proof lady's glove. A lady's glove that could suspend a steel girder over a room full of toddlers.

Naturally, the Goat(TM) was patented. Naturally, the Goat(TM) was copy protected. Naturally, some messy cousin of the software pirate managed to suture all of the necessary tubes back together. And, quite naturally, Frank came to be the proud owner of a small herd of Goats(TM) that he had to lie quite strenuously about, or which he would have if anybody collected taxes on this dump.

And, of course, the Goats'(TM) swollen milk glands puked out useless shit and then they quit eating whenever they didn't get just the right B Complex vitamins, whenever they needed more fiber in their diets, or whenever Frank needed money.

*****

It took most of the morning to figure out that the Goats(TM) needed another shot of antibiotics. The broad-spectrum ones that cost two weeks of silk for a bottle.

By that point, Frank was a little upset. It wasn't bad enough that his Goats(TM) were off their feed. It wasn't bad enough that the little pizza joint he liked capsized last month.

Oh no.

The worst thing was that he had to have integrity. He had to live here. He couldn't slap his little herd into a U-Haul, drive across the mountains, buy a little patch of dirt, and then hook into some of the sweet subsidies that had all of his Goat(TM) farming peers holidaying in Tahiti just so the petro-synthetic factories could keep employing people making horrible yellow rope and frightening species of polyester shirts.

It was enough to drive a man to drink. If only he desired it.

*****

In his more reflective moments, Frank will admit to himself that his lack of desire is, perhaps, something of a conceit. His friends call him on it constantly, but Frank always falls back to define desire as the state of wanting something and expecting to get it.

And drinking? That's something that Frank wants. He'll just never have it.

It's all down to his wife. Ex-wife. The Bitch. The Crazy Bitch, if you want to get accurate about Frank's frame of reference.

She was always up to no good, once she went nuts. Restraining orders. Nuisance lawsuits. It got to the point where Frank just ignored mail and messages that had anything to do with the courts, police or penal systems.

His mistake was in believing that the police would never have his best interests at heart.

In his more light-hearted moments, Frank tells people that "the cops need a special envelope for good news."

He ignored the voice mail. He ignored the real mail. And now it's too late for Frank and his ability to desire that which made him truly happy.

It seems that the police suspected that the Crazy Bitch was doing business with a Russian company that exported Alcoverhaul.

Alcoverhaul is a species of yeast that was originally developed for the California penal system but which evolved into a popular additive in the traditional dishes of Eastern Europe. Introduced over repeated doses into the human gut, it is designed to form a persistant colony that resists antibiotics and subsists off of simple carboydrates. The thing that makes it attractive for those who are dealing with those who have proven themselves to be dangerous drunks is that, in the presence of alcohol, they reverse the role normally occupied by yeasts and, multiplying rapidly, transform the toxin into a selection of simple sugars. The result? A carrier of Alcoverhaul doesn't get drunk. Just jittery and hyper and, later, plain old fat.

And, while Frank was definitely a drunk, he was not the raging, alcohol-fueled typhoon of his wife's imagination.

Or at least he wasn't until the Alcoverhaul kicked in. Though it would be more accurate to say that his rage was fueled by the absence of alcohol.

Joel M.

Here's a story I wrote a little while ago. Just a little super-short one to get some juices flowing. It's super-compressed, but I kind of like it like that. Nothing superfluous.

Ants

There's a cool show on.

It's about ants in the jungle. Bad mothers, those army ants.

Anyway, these things can cross water.Not swimming, or on a bridge. Even I could cross water on a bridge.No, these guys cross it by kind of glomming onto each other.More and more, just keep latching together, until there's just a big old ball.

And then they float across!

Of course by the other side half of the ants have drowned. But that's not important. I understand. What's important is that the colony got across. They made it. By and large. Got where they were going. On the whole.

I wonder how much comfort a drowning ant takes in that?

*****

I was on the couch when it happened. Of course. I wasn't lazy, couldn't be with two to feed, but lately my back was killing me after work. I just had to lie down. And twleve hour shifts had me nodding off when I did.

She came in late. Every year later. Thesis. Papers. Tutorials. Research. Volunteering.

School's tough. I understood. And she was so serious. Do it right or don't. I understood.

Different this time, though. Usually she's tired. Hits the shower and then bed. Makes me sleep on the couch half the time.

I snore.

This time, she rode in on a black cloud. Like exams again, but that was over weeks ago. Why did she have to stay so late now anyway?

Back in high school, exams were the end of it. For her, school never seemed to end.

Bad day honey?

She stood there. Angel with a firy sword. Something was up.

*****

And it was up. The game. The jig. The kit-n-kaboodle.

Everything.

She called me lazy. Told me I was wasting my life. Said I lacked ambition.

Wouldn't listen to me when I told her that she was my only ambition. Called it pathetic. Said she needed an equal, not to be put on some pedestal.

*****

So I left. She knows what she needs. And me?

I need a swim.

Joel M.