2/6/2024

I have photos that sometimes I have a life. That's Yael with me.

typical blog shit

Monday morning Leah phoned me at work because Handsome Pete was having leg spasms and difficulty walking. She asked me to come after work because she had a doctor's appointment and wanted someone to keep an eye on Pete. He seems to be getting better and I advised that he rest and see how he progresses, but his outside days may be few and far between unless he makes a full recovery. Gonna play hooky on Tuesday to get myself up-to-speed with school. I freaked myself out trying to figure out my classes, collapsed like a neutron star with stress, and gave up since that's the path of least resistance.

In other news, I distracted myself with ideas for Call of Cthulhu RPG scenarios and decided I'm going to do another stream at BoneQuest FM for the final week of March. It'll be made up of really long songs and it'll be "Todd's Toilet Tracks" since radio DJs would play long songs to cover up when they had to take a shit. Inna Gadda Da Vida is a notorious toilet track. Thing is the fella behind BoneQuest FM wants me to brand my streams, even if they are all one-offs.

haiku

Rather than write microfiction, I decided to bang out a haiku.

Across cosmic voids;
Memories of dying stars;
Epitaphs of #light.

#trees

This vignette features a woman I know only from Bumble and Snapchat. On Sunday I photographed a valentine and sent it to her, which included an invitation to coffee or tea. She hasn't accepted the invitation.

Silver-clad greys lounged in an oak's pool of shade like a Manet painting.
Carolyn felt brave, yet clutched her dog Helen close. "Hi." The aliens waved, one patting a nearby patch of grass.
She sat and the shortest leaned in to whisper in weirdly accented English, "You know why we haven't demolished your planet?"
Her blood ran cold and she shook her head.
"#Trees." The aliens erupted with laughter. A moment later they calmed down, "Also we're not dicks."

#court

An opportunity to do some really bad dad jokes.

Two disembodied voices spontaneously manifest in a white, featureless room.
"What do you call a show about crimes in tennis?"
"I 'unno."
"Tennis #court!"
"Where do lawyers go to meet their romantic partners?"
Sigh. "Where?"
"Courting court."
"These jokes are terrible."
"Better than not posting anything to the #wss366 hashtag."
"Now that's what I call meta."

#sloth

I included my friend Steven Brewer in this one. Quite pleased with my brief description of post-human Earth from orbit.

Parked in orbit around Earth after three years of travel a whisker under c, Commander Brewer opened all channels to announce the ship's return just in case anyone was still home. "This is Commander Brewer of the NAU Prosperity announcing our return from a mission to the Large Magellanic Cloud. Does anyone copy?" Earth had more ice, the man in the moon now had a third eye, and the concrete scabs of human civilization had been picked away by nature.

Days passed and the silence was deafening until the comm beeped. What appeared to be a #sloth appeared on-screen. "Hi." they said in a semblance of English. The sophont slowly picked up a large book and began thumbing through it. At first Commander Brewer thought the image froze, but then there'd be movement again. Over the course of a week the sloth read the book, went to bed, returned to read the book several times before speaking again, "Call me..” an hour passed, “George."

#notes

Just a wistful fancy of mine.

Daria heard Chris from his office catching his breath after crying. She came up behind him, "You okay?"
The desk was a rat's nest of scratch paper, spiral notebooks, and bar napkins with smeared black ink. Half of that was covered by a plump, white and black cat. Pulsar on the laptop was open to a blank page.
With resignation, "I can't write. Like Mozart, I have too many #notes!"
She kissed the top of his head, whispering "Don't try" before leaving him to his work.