“But Margaret Thatcher isn’t dead,” says Statler.
“I know,” says Waldorf, “I said the late Margaret Thatcher.”
Statler blinks. “That’s… what that means.”
“No it doesn’t! It’s like… somebody you speak of with respect. You know, somebody who’s been around for a while, so they’ve earned it, later in life.” He smiles. “The late Jim Henson. The late Coretta Scott King.”
“Both dead,” says Statler gently.
Waldorf grabs the laptop and googles fiercely. “Here!” he says. “The late James Brown!”
“Last December, right before Gerald Ford–”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” hisses Waldorf. “I will make you late as hell.”
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Devon has a small deciduous forest on his scalp and shoulders.
“It’s called dendropecia,” he says honestly to anyone with the courage to ask. “It’s a rare condition, but it has its perks. After all, when I go bald I know it’ll all be back in the spring!” And they laugh together, because he’s given that permission.
Until, one day, his interlocutor doesn’t laugh with him. “But don’t you spend the day in heated rooms?” she asks.
“Well,” he says, “yes.”
“Then why make that joke?”
“I don’t know,” he says, trying not to stare at the raincloud above her head.
Monday, February 26, 2007
One November day, at the age of eleven, Proserpina got a hammer from the servants’ quarters and broke the tabs for most of the keys on her mother’s new Baldwin upright piano. Her mother, quite unprepared for the discipline required–she had not punished Proserpina in years–broke her right wrist. Forbidden to write with her left hand, Proserpina was withdrawn from school for the remainder of the term. She spent it in the solarium, pensive, wrapped in a blanket with hot bricks at her feet.
The hammer hadn’t touched the keys. Not once. She sucked the scabs on her knuckles.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Once the moon was an ocean; and the whale was there, and her name was Liwash. With her first breath she took in all its atmosphere, and the sea boiled away beneath her, and so she swam through the void tto the deepest places of Earth.
But she was not the first to arrive: there was Hufgafa, the beast whose arms fill the cracks at the center of the world. They battled, and when Liwash could tear one of Hufgafa’s arms away, magma escaped and formed these islands.
Why, yes, the same magma you see in the volcanoes.
They battle still.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
“A gallon of milk!” demands the king.
“In your name, Sire!” shouts Kennedy, Knight Errand, and she’s mounted and pelting within a hare’s breath.
She liberates the milk from the back of the cooler at the corner store. “You have to pay for that!” scolds the owner (but he’s a Saracen, and Kennedy runs him through).
“Yea,” says the king, “verily, this milk is God’s own favor! A boon for Sir Kennedy! What would you?”
“Perhaps,” she asks, “a sharp new pencil?”
The king nods. “Who among ye will fetch the good knight her prize?”
“In your name, Sire!” shouts Kennedy.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
“It’s not that I don’t feel some attraction to you,” says Ostrom, a bit embarrassed.
The supermodels stalk in circles around him, their movements stylized and fluid.
“There’s just something… desperate about your biology,” he says. “A stunted evolutionary branch? You adapted into a shrinking niche, and as standards of beauty–like all media standards–started to decentralize, you just didn’t have the chance to hit reverse.”
They slit their eyes.
“And that’s the attraction,” sighs Ostrom. “The poetry, the tragedy of your obsolescence.”
The supermodels give a keening cry and leap, rending him with their enlarged, sickle-shaped second toes.
Monday, February 19, 2007
(Grande)
99% Cotton
The other 1% is spun from the sinew of Aur-Korlir, Terror of the West
You’d think whoever did that would have taken his head and been done with it
But no
They dragged the corpse to town and sold it for three silvers
And now of course everybody wants a damn Aur-Korlir Hide Tunic
Apparently it goes with the Stormhound Boots and the Codpiece of Bhrkz
The problem being of course that he’s really not that big
Have you ever applied a straight razor to a cross-section of dragon?
I hate my job
Machine Wash Cold
Torch Dry
Friday, February 16, 2007
Proserpina was not, as they gossip, a tomboy raised by kangaroos; hers was a family of declining means from Northborough and she never gadded about in overalls. She was a model young lady, and earned her days at the nickelodeon by tying her preferred hand behind her back.
Once, sitting with her father in that cramped theater, she watched a reel about “Yellow Tom, the Chinaman practitioner of Chow Lin Kung Foo.” He was short, with strange eyes. He put his fist through six boards; and while the whole audience gasped, only Proserpina saw that he struck with his left hand.
Thursday, February 15, 2007