The Anonymous And The Automotive

I keep seeing those cars with the Hannibal Lecter face masks over their grill, you know the ones, they've got a leather cover that just looks like it should have a gimp zip at the front.
I guess they're for keeping bug guts off the nose of your pristine new car, I've never bothered to definitively find out. For all I know behind each and every leather facade is a mounted rocket launcher and one day the Glorious V8 Collective is going to rise up, overthrow parliament (with rockets!) and declare every weekend Grand Prix weekend until we run out of petrol and/or grid girls.

And you know what? I think I'd be OK with that as long as one of the vows made in our glorious new republic is to hunt down and severely punish the self-appointed parking critiquing militia. Those people who have spawned across the developed world en masse. The ones who keep pre-cut stack of photocopied notes in their glovebox to stick under the windscreen wipers of anyone whose parking prowess does not meet their exacting anonymous standards.

There is nothing more refreshing after fighting your way out of a packed supermarket out to the packed parking lot where the positions of the cars in the spaces on either side of you had forced you to park on a slight angle than finding a badly drawn cartoon of Mickey Mouse flipping you the bird and telling you to go f*#k yourself because the original cars have left and one of the drivers who took their place has decided to share with you their opinion on the matter.
These are the kind of people who probably also pop anonymous notes into peoples' letterboxes about how the world would be such a better place for everyone if you could do something about the leaves your tree is dropping onto the footpath and nature strip. Because once you've started writing anonymous notes it is apparently very hard to stop. They probably perfected their craft whilst living in a sharehouse where they would leave notes for you on the fridge, in the fridge, stuck to your bedroom door, pushed under your bedroom door, in the bathroom, in the laundry... well basically everywhere, rather than actually speak to you because well then they might not get to feel that rapturous self-righteous glow and you might ruin the whole thing by disagreeing, pointing out that they're being a wanker and completely breaking the flow of their diatribe.

This is the kind of thing that really would be best addressed by a rocket launcher. Programmed to go off on anybody who touches your windscreen wipers without having entered the deactivation code.
This may take out a few parking inspectors or rave advertisers as well but... well... the Glorious V8 Collective was probably going to get around to them next in any case.

Do Seraphim Have Serotonin?

This one is unfinished but I just got some of the ideas down and figured that posting it was the best way of getting myself to actually round it out at a later date.

~~~~~~~~~~

Brier rustled his wings restlessly under his coat and sighed.

Things just hadn't been the same since humans had invented radar.
The skies were now reserved for birds and their mechanical brethren.
'He' had been so pleased at the time. Of course 'He' seemed pleased when the funny little things had invented the tube sock.
Brier knew it was disloyal but sometimes he thought to himself that if 'He' had been born it probably would have been with the cord around 'His' neck. 'He' was what 'His' earthly children would probably call 'special'.

A girl and a guy murmured to each other in a doorway, out of the flow of foot traffic, and Brier felt their auras glance past his. The girl had seen more life than the boy but her face didn't show it. Lust, desire, guilt, penance, confusion, need, a tangle engulfed the two and made Brier’s teeth ache until he was far enough away that their flavour started to fade from his mind.
Technically Brier should be bustling about trying to save people from themselves right now, nudging them towards the holy texts and tenets of 'His' favourite toy, the church, but there didn't seem to be as much point these days. If you tried too hard you might find the authorities trying to urge you on your way or put you into a jacket that wrapped all the way around which would probably lead to some fairly unpleasant medical probing when they removed his jacket. There was all that and then there was the thing with the numbers.
Brier lit a cigarette and watched the match burning down as he drew in his first lungful of smoke. The heavenly equivalent of auditors had been reporting an unsettling trend with the soul traffic figures over the last century or so.

"So, what? Numbers are down? Everyone ending up Downstairs are they?"
"Well, no, actually,"
"Oh come on, you've seen the way they've been messing about these days. A whole swag of them have to be Down There by now,"
"That's the thing, there's been a few more turning up Downstairs but far more of them... aren't..."
"So, Purgatory?"
"Hardly any at all,"
"So where the hell are the rest of them!?"
"We're... not sure. Possibly… reincarnation…”
“Are you shitting me? I didn’t think ‘He’ believed in recycling,”
“Who knows what he’s thinking these days. Do you want to be the one who asks him?”
“Shit no!”

‘He’ had never actually been 100% in love with everything in the Bible and as ‘His’ attention had wandered over the millennia it was possible that the holy writs had stopped equalling actual consequences. For all Brier knew people were ending up where they believed they were going to end up which could be anywhere really. Maybe he should get some of the desk jockeys upstairs to start scouting around to see if they could find any spare realms or levels. Or he could just let them continue along in their little self-fellating filing system and back patting club in peace. Heaven forbid they get themselves in a flap and have to do some real work.

Brier crossed the street to avoid a 24-hour jiggle joint and lit up another cigarette. Catholics thought they had it rough with guilt but try being a bloody angel. One time Brier had stepped into one of those places, just wanting anything really, if not a new purpose at least a distraction, and had been struck down by a wave of remorse and self-loathing so intense that they had called some paramedics to carry him outside. He’d gotten himself moving in time to bugger off before they got him into the back of the ambulance. It wasn’t even as though it had been Brier’s own guilt that had hit him, it was like a stupid built in reaction. One of ‘His’ little jokes. Angels couldn’t interact with humans, not like that. They could touch each other but that was only helpful if you were partial to sausage. Another part of ‘His’ great joke was that he hadn’t bothered to make female angels. Had thought that they might distract some of the people ‘He’ was sending them to save or some shit like that.

Sometimes Brier became obsessed with the idea that the world would be a better place if the Bible had never been written, or at least had been written differently, without all the 'additions' and misinterpretations - both deliberate and accidental - that the half-crazed scribes of 'His' word had introduced into the text. At these times Brier had to stop himself rushing into 'His' presence and asking if maybe it was time for the Bible Version 2.0. Because who knew if 'He' would suddenly get excited and decide instead to start everything from scratch - people, the Earth, the universe...
So he kept his mouth shut. And maybe it was because Brier couldn't bear to think of all the creatures of this planet and those of the next and everything in the velvet depths of space being wiped out in a whim... and maybe it was because he thought he might get binned along with them... Either way he wasn't going to be the idiot who started the avalanche, no sir.

The cigarette packet tried to worry Brier about the state of his lungs, he snorted. If angels could get cancer then he'd at least eventually get to see what things were like on the other side of the big gates.
Without looking he knows that a group of just-teenagers behind him are looking at him funny as they all wait for the pedestrian crossing signal to flash.
"Don't do drugs kids," Brier said as the little green man gave the all clear.
"Fuck off Grandpa," the one kid trying to sound tough had his moment ruined by the other kids giggling in shock.

As the crowd surrounded him and all of their thoughts and fears and sins and joy began to flow through Brier's defenceless mind he sighed and opened himself the rest of the way up.
'My good deed for the day', he thought as just a hint of the Divine Grace that 'He' somehow still retained washed through all those around him, moving through touching minds to affect even some who were outside of Brier's personal range.
The boisterously swearing kids behind him fell quiet as they were overcome with an unexplained feeling of well-being and started wondering how they could become better people. Arguments stilled and there was a strange peace.
"Enjoy it while it lasts," Brier muttered under his breath, watching the people stare in wonder at the world as if they'd never seen it before, never known it as a gift or appreciated its beauty. Some of them wept.
Brier kept walking, feeling the echoes of the influence continue to move on ahead of him and was suddenly depressed. "Screw this. I need some more cigarettes,"

The Children Are The Future... Poor Little Bastards...

Is it just me or has there not really been any planning towards what we're going to do when we run out of fossil fuels?

Everyone keeps saying we're frittering away the resources we have access to and we're heading towards the bottom of the 'tank' but I don't really remember seeing much in the way of big ideas.

Of course this could be because I'm not paying vast quantities of attention - I'm enjoying the denial as much as the next person and am easily distracted by shiny things and bright colours - or because any time anyone seriously talks about wind farming or solar power a part of a lot of us puts up the 'hippie talk' sign and walks away for a beer or wonders exactly how we're supposed to implement any of those sorts of system world-wide. Or even nation wide.

I guess the answer could end up being 'we won't have any choice'.

I figure for starters the price of power and fuel will climb in a steady and severely society screwing manner in the lead up until 'uh ohs' day until only the mega-rich can afford to drive cars, power their houses, travel internationally at any kind of speed and... well, eat.

No power = no mass production of food, no way to move it about easily.
No communication = not knowing where to find the food in the stages when it's still abundant.
We're kind of low on horses and high on people compared to the old days so we probably won't easily rig up horse-drawn carts.
Sure, we could breed the population up again but we probably won't get that far.
We'll probably get hungry and eat them.
And other domesticated animals.
And each other...

Whether or not we do go a bit carnivore happy, we'll have to remember which plants are edible. All of us, not just the people who used to put them all in the shops on our behalf.
This may be a bit difficult when we've burnt all the books for heat during the winter months, at least in the northern hemisphere countries. The southern hemisphere will probably be the only place where libraries survive, not that we'll be able to share the knowledge with our northern brethren without the interwub or telephones. We might still have access to morse code or something but who knows. I'm not a technologically aware person, I don't even know if the wires necessary still exist and they probably don't stretch all the way to Europe or the northern hemisphere. If we still have any electricity at all we can't guarantee it'll be used for such things. I mean who would ensure that it was?
Who is going to be in charge?

Without easy communication and all the lovely confusion and the whole being small number of meals away from anarchy how will the kind of people who would actually implement useful solutions get into a position of power?
How far would the influence of the lucky few stretch?
The scientists and other clever clogs who could offer us solutions that would work with the resources and materials we have left might not be able to get their ideas out into the world.
They might not even try.
The people with the scientific, medical, organisational know-how who do so well and so much good work in the society of today may not have the inclination or the courage to try to do the same in the violent and dangerous 'renovator's dream' society that will follow.
Can you imagine what would happen to a doctor who let his previous profession be known in a society with poor nutrition, more than likely woeful sanitary arrangements and no way of producing more medications or surgical implements?
They would be mobbed for starters and could end up chained in a makeshift clinic to ensure they didn't try to get away.
You'd just claim to be an accountant, wouldn't you.

Let's not even think too hard about what might happen with the various military forces across the world.
Countries who prided themselves on bringing down dictators may end up producing some of the most merciless despots the world has ever known, either through finally having the opportunity or because they claim it's 'for the best' or 'just until the country/continent/world gets back on it's feet'.
The hardest thing some people will have to face is that in a situation like that it may be the most stable option.

Ironically some of the poorest people in the world may end up fairing better than their richer cousins as they still have some knowledge of how to produce or find their own food - out of a necessity that has never left them.

If you do manage to set yourself up with a garden, clean water and easy or occasional access to meat you'd better be prepared to protect yourself from roving packs of less fortunate or less resourceful people.

OK, OK I'm not painting a very rosy picture. You're probably getting a bit depressed.
Look, here...


There we go.
Better?
Now you're either completely overcome with a case of the 'awwwwwwwwwwwwww!'s or ranting about people who put clothing items on animals.
Either way the cat has achieved its mission.

Maybe when everything goes to hell in a hand-basket we'll discover a new strength and there will be a resurgence of the human spirit*.
Maybe as our old ways are lost to us the planet will begin to heal and we'll be able to deeply appreciate that as we come to depend quite directly on what we can cultivate ourselves**.
Maybe when we all have to work every day for our survival and comfort and go back to the bare minimum way of living things will improve in some strange ways***.
Maybe.

Of course a lot of us will die in the interim and it'll be especially interesting to see what happens when the containment units around nuclear power facilities switch themselves off but what're you going to do?

Wouldn't hurt to make your weekend reading a little more purposeful is all I'm saying...

Still feeling a bit down?

Look! It's a pug in a onesie!


[Makes a break for it]


*whatever that is
**and remember that things like scurvy are bad and where we can find vitamins when they aren't in pill form
***there certainly won't be the same opportunities to be bored


Animals in people gear courtesy of Cute Overload.

My PC And Me

So some time this week it looks like I am to be reintroduced to the joy of PC games. Yippee!

Many a year a go - OK a couple of years ago - I used to play the occasional PC game but given the amazing quality of some of them I either won/completed a mission/whatever and spent the rest of the day feeling quietly invincible or I completely cocked up/lost patience/couldn't work out what the flip I was meant to be doing.
So I slowly drifted away from using my computer to play anything more challenging than minesweeper and solitaire and it wasn't until I found myself in a workplace crammed full of other people who quote embarrassing amounts of Red Dwarf, watch teh anime and read the occasional comic book... I mean graphic novel, Mum, they're very in right now, kinda Art Nouveau... that I started to think I might be missing out on something.
This was mostly because of the big old excitement and swears filled conversations they would all have about what was happening to them in Game A, what happened to the other people when they played Game A, and what they plan to do if they ever met the [expletive or fangirl/boy exclamation of devotion deleted] who designed Game A.

All this talk reminded me of my poorly suppressed tendency to pretend to be someone else - I've got my mutant name and powers picked out, have you? - and accomplish exciting things, even if by proxy in a make-believe world outside of reality...
We had a big serious talk where they gave me the gaming equivalent of a psychological profiling and they are going to bring in a selection on Monday to wave in front of me like a bunch of Rorschach ink blots to determine which game would suit me best.

I'm not sure how I'm going to go with all these new fangled games seeing as some of the games I enjoyed the most are somewhat ye olde.
Especially the nostalgically awesome Future Wars which apart from being heavily pixellated, and comprising a jamming soundtrack played entirely with the same synthesizer as the Tetris theme-song, is so venerable that the game was installed on our computer courtesy of some floppy disks. For the younger members of the audience they looked like this...

So as you can see from the labelling on the image, not everyone you ever overheard talking about a 3 and 1/2 inch floppy was a pervert... though some of them were...

The game could only be completed by picking up pretty much anything that wasn't nailed down and using the items in the most random combination of weird and sometimes worrying ways.
Like the bit where the plastic bag you nicked from the office you broke into whilst working as a window washer came in handy after you'd been transported to medieval times when you needed to short-circuit an electronic wolf that was guarding a monastery full of time travelling aliens...
No really. I swear.
You just had to walk really fast because the baggie had a little hole in it and the water from the lake leaked out real quick...
Anyway, moving on...
Despite how long it took to get past some points or work out what the hell was going on and shuffle through your enormous bag of tricks to find the appropriate McGyver selection with which to construct your victory, this game was enormous fun.
It took effort to complete, even after you'd played it a couple of times due to the whole quick time events thing or dexterity requirements, but it wasn't impossible and you were left feeling slightly smug and all entertained by the game itself and imagining what kind of weirdos actually designed this masterpiece.
Of course if I went into a game shop and explained this special experience and the specs of the game and asked them for 'something like that' I'm sure they'd get a painful feeling in their souls as they wondered exactly how they were going to keep me from ever ever coming back.
Luckily I have friends who have to put up with the whining that will follow should I completely and utterly suck at the games they lend me.

Of the things that we came up with as we went through what might appeal, one of the key agreements we reached was that the game should be 'NOT like The Sims'.
The Sims kept me merrily entertained for maybe two days before I realised that it was just going to keep going. I was going to have to keep feeding and teaching and caring for this apparently grown human person who - without my help - was capable of collapsing exhausted in a pool of their own urine. All the shuffling around trying to keep them fed, rested, entertained and finding time for all their little friends...
If I wanted to be a mother I would just get myself knocked up and be done with it. If I raise a kid and manage to get them to adulthood they should at least feel obligated to put me in a good nursing home where they bathe you with water instead of kerosene and feed you real food - pureed if need be - instead of 'casserole' which turns out to be dog food with a tin of corn kernels and bits of carrot mixed into it. If I keep my Sim alive for 20 years... well apart from being a weirdo I expect that I'll just have gotten them all the way to their dream job of mad scientist and they will still occasionally sleep in their own wee if I don't pay close enough attention.
I don't like games that don't end! That implies a kind of pointless long term commitment that should be reserved for things like marriage, the spawn of your loins and trying to work out where the universe came from and whether you'll be able to slip away peacefully before it gets where it's going and does anything unexpected.

So with all these fun facts and musing running about inside my head I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed and we'll see how I go!
Wish me luck!

Tiny Invisible Doom!

According to a blood test I had the other month and my very serious-voiced doctor, I am apparently highly allergic to dust and grass/pollen. That was the phrase he used, "highly allergic".
The way he described it made it sound as if I should be safely bundled into a hermetically sealed bubble and fed through a tube.
I don't feel highly allergic. I get hayfever (a couple of sneezes a day not that taxing) but apart from that there are no highly inconvenient health problems that have now been explained fully by my newfound nemesis that I can gleefully banish with the power of more intensive housework.
I figured all it would just mean was that I should vac and dust about the place more often.
He told me that, yes that would be a good idea but ideally I should find someone else to do it for me. God knows I wouldn't be able to wait for them outside though, whilst they battled the armies of dust for me, because then the grass and pollen and such would get me.
He also advised me against drying my sheets outside when I wash them because they may become infused with pollen which would then join forces with the dust that is bound to be lurking in my flat to persecute me unmercifully.
The end result is effectively that I can't go out but can't stay in either.

Due to my lovely hayfever I wasn't entirely surprised by the grass/pollen verdict but if I'm allergic to dust... well, I must have built up a super hero level immunity because our house is very much a friend to the dust bunny and its brethren and I feel fine.
Possibly I'm only living a sad half-life and once I've covered every piece of furniture I own in those lovely don't-pee-on-me-plastic-upholstery-barriers, hired an anal-retentive cleaning service and started using mattress and pillow protectors I will magically be infused with a level of energy erstwhile unbeknowst to me, never ever have bad hair days and will realise that up until now I have been completely unaware of the colour purple.

Given all the things that we're all allergic to in our modern wonderland and the things that are guaranteed to give us cancer (ie eating food, breathing air and drinking anything) I figure we might as well give up now.
Given some careful planning and a bit of dedication, in a couple of generations we will all be locked in underground bunkers surviving on mushrooms and lichens - providing we can genetically engineer them not to involve spores - and warning our pallid and sickly looking offspring about the evils of the above-world and how the tiny enemies that surrounded us constantly almost wiped us out.
We might as well, it would at least pass the time and allow us to feel all important and post-apocalypticy and if the seas rise and cover the exits to the above-world I can guarantee that something exciting would happen that would require one of our more burly and witty pale-o-nauts to have to somehow get out, get to the surface and in the process learn something about the human spirit and that we actually can survive the Daystar and the world that basks in its glow... And when he returns with this heart-warming news I'm sure people will also be interested to hear that they can stop eating Soylent Green, but only if they want to.
Waste not, want not.

Sleep - The Final Frontier...

Dear God in Heaven, when did buying a new mattress become so complicated!?
I have spent a good part of this weekend trolling around the bed/mattress shops in my area, rolling and bouncing around and feeling like a complete deviant as the salesperson stands over me, watching, and says "And how does this one feel?"
There are so many bloody options and brands and settings and... things! And forgive me for sounding like an old lady but when did beds become so expensive?
Instead of just somewhere to deck out at night they seem to have become an investment for the future, health supplement and masseuse alternative all in one!

My current mattress is what I would generously refer to as an 'antique' but what most people would call 'old'.
I inherited it from my grandmother's house where it had done roughly 10 years long service as the guest bed after about a 10 year stint as my grandmother's bed before she got one of those fancy bed-goes-up-bed-goes-down beds.
Captivated by the fact that it would be my first double bed and hypnotised by the fah-bulous Queen Anne (or Queen Somebody) style wooden bed-head and bed-end with the scrolly bits, I was completely oblivious to the um... generous amount of give in the mattress.
Now that I have had it for a while the novelty of sliding into the depression in the centre of the mattress, spending the night in the foetal position and then having to mountaineer my way out in the mornings has worn off.
So I figured I'd go for a shop around.
And what a wonderland of information and helpful 'tell you those things that other folk won't tell you' salespeople I found!

There were beds with sprung bases, beds with solid bases, beds with frames instead of bases and that was just the bottom half!
Your mattress could be full of springs, made of latex, full of springs with a latex 'pillowtop' or be made of a special kind of foam of a type that doesn't suck and will not eventually turn into a fine powder.
Some of the salespeople insisted that a sprung base would increase the life of your mattress by a third, other salespeople insisted this was a lie made up to sell more bases because bases bring in a sweet profit margin. I was inclined to believe the salespeople in the second camp - because who doesn't trust people who try to save them money? - until I became a little suspicious that I might have been tricked into looking at some of the more expensive mattresses to celebrate all the money I saved by buying a frame instead of a base...

I got to lay on the bed equivalent of those pressure pads they use at shoe shops to figure out how you distribute your weight and ended up with a pretty print-out of how far my bum sinks into the mattress. I desperately wanted them to offer me a cross-trainer bed with air-support at this stage but they didn't, though the shop did have a full-height inflatable double-bed complete with tiny automatic pump that all fits into a backpack.
Now that's how to crash at a friend's in style!
"Sleep on your shitty couch with the acupuncture springs? No thanks, mate, I've got an inflatable bed in my backpack!" *foom*

The long and the short of it is that I spent almost all day laying down, rolling onto my side, onto my stomach and trying to work out exactly what a bed that hasn't turned into a sinkhole should feel like... and now I've got a sore back.
I mean how?
I suspect about 5 years of sleeping in a somewhat shitty bed has something to do with it. I'm probably a little out of whack but all these brand spanking new beds with their nano-pillow technology, kryptonite springs and anti-grav dust-mite resistant weave shouldn't give you upper back pain should they? And if so how? Exactly how broken have I already become?

In the end I've found a mattress/frame ensemble I think I'd be happy with, to be honest I think I'd like to marry the mattress and have soft cushion-y children with it but I've decided to be all grown up and restrained about it and just double-check that my dream mattress is not in fact the one that is sending me into unexpected first-time ever unwelcome back twinges.
I just don't think our love could survive that kind of betrayal.
That and the fact the whole kitten kaboodle is going to wind up costing about AU$2,000 !
That would be the most money I have ever spent on anything that wasn't an airline ticket!*
The fact that the bed is supposed to last in this amazing never-deteriorating condition for at least 20 years is only a slight consolation as I guess it can then be divided down to costing AU$100 a year but you can understand my desire to rethink before I get bamboozled by exciting jargon and seductive talk about German engineered spring systems and the like.

Also I really had to get out of there before I was sent into an epileptic fit by all the brightly coloured cover sets for your doona/eiderdown/counterpane/whatever you call the big floofy warm down-filled blanket thingy on top of your bed. Some people have obviously found their drug habits a touch too costly these days and have swapped to trying to replicate the sensation with psychedelic themed bedrooms. Yeesh!

PS. Yes, I am totally going to buy the accompanying flamingo statue in the picture. What bedroom would be complete without it?


*I don't own a car. I'm... um... an environmentalist *coff coff* Or possibly I'm very bad at making choices on big expensive things that might get broken down or rear-ended by retards.

The Indefinitely Delayed Resurrection Of The Sun Dial King

Harry's shadow strides down the street, a colossus towering over all it passes. Or would do if it were vertical. He lifts his arms and the shadow lifts its arms, longer, more slender, its fingers tapering to graceful points spread against the grass on his left, the asphalt on his right. He flexes his hands as his shadow-fingers strum the shadow of the overhead power-lines. The shadow lines don't play a tune, the shadow fingers don't show his calluses but the sharp point of his thumbnail becomes a claw.

His shadow-legs moved strangely ahead of him, melting into each other and shifting shape as he walks. His knees run up and down his shadow-legs, dragging his shins up with them and then squashing them down again, like weights and two test-your-strength fair games.
The colourful lump of Harry's sneaker is in the way. He can't see the shadow of his foot. He kicks angrily, trying to tuck it back out of his line of sight, his eyes fixed on the shadow.

A car rushes past and for a moment his shadow is gone, obliterated, covered, obscured by the hurtling shadow-car. Harry catches his breath, stopped in mid-stride and doesn't begin again - walking or breathing - until his shadow reemerges. He lets his breath flow out of him, half expecting the shadow to waste away as his lungs empty. It doesn't, but it is taller than it was moments ago. Leaner, stretched and twanging against the ground.

His hair has lengthened to a mane that flows out behind him, flapping gently in the breeze. His shadow-head is indistinguishable from his shadow hair, its size fluctuates, its outline changes, his neck disappears only to reemerge again.
The shadow is streaming away, leaning towards the road, Harry picks up his pace, trying to keep up.

Behind him he hears the approaching murmur of an engine, another car, another shadow. Shadow Harry is too thin, won't survive another eclipse.
As the murmur becomes a growl, Harry begins to run, ushering Shadow Harry before him.

When the police officer arrives to take a statement, the distraught man sitting in the back of the ambulance, one hand over his bloodied temple, swears he'd had no warning. No reason to believe that the boy running down the side of the road would suddenly veer in front of him. Chasing his shadow into the ground and under the wheels.