Not pink yet, she: bloody red.
Not one to be held back, she, even by the host’s noose,
even by constraints of brute geometry.
Her universe distended, tore and bled for her.

Thus the advent of the smallest unstoppable force:
wee Alba hurled through the plate glass into life,
now fixes us with a blue gaze,
her raised arms encompassing it all,
and says “I am an old soul. I’m back now.”

This was appended to one of the rare spams to make it through Mail’s filter. Perhaps the filter knew I would enjoy some strange mechanical poetry?

Whose round       soft dog fidgeting.
Whose noisy laptop is on fire.
Our round mp3 player falls.
Whose stupid shining hairy bluish expensive white noisy mp3 player arrives.
Any given odd shaped forg arrives as soon as his slopy pensil is angry at
the place that his brothers stupid magazine stinks.
Their well-crafted book run while whose white tv stinks and a given white
mp3 player walks.
His slopy binocyles stares at the place        that a noisy ram lies.
Her fancy baby prepare for fight.
Any given beautiful soft bottle prepare for fight.
Whose golden glasses stares the time that                   a noisy dog
looks around.
Whose red white bluish baby smells.
His brothers little noisy dog is thinking or maybe a given soft tall
printer adheres.
A noisy book fidgeting.
His brothers silver fancy odd shaped mouse sleeps.
A given bluish balloon stands-still.
A bluish glasses smiles however, mine fancy shining table is thinking.
Mine tall green sofa
stinks while his brothers white exam book is on fire.
Her daughters silver expensive exam book lies and any smart table fidgeting.
A given small bicycle lies the time that his brothers bluish sport shoes
makes sound.
Our bluish dog stares.
A smart caw arrives as soon as his stupid soda makes sound and still her
daughters white forg got an idea.
Our fancy picture show its value.

—”Anthony”; from “100% free local sluts”

Yesterday I got acquainted with our leaf-blower. It’s electric, thank Cthulhu, but not what you’d call “whisper quiet”. We got it as a gift several years ago, and I tried it once back then and it just blew the leaves into a huge swirling cloud that settled down exactly where it began. So I disappointedly put it in the shed and forgot about it.

This time, though, I treated it as if it were some new and powerful item from a game. The controls seem simple — just press the A button to turn it on/off and rotate the C stick to point it, kind of like Luigi’s Mansion — but it takes time to master. Here’s my brief player’s guide:

Anywhere near a wall you get the howling leaf tornado that I experienced before; I’m not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but avoid that. The brick patio was the best surface, though I had to evade obstacles like the picnic table to get those elusive remaining leaves for bonus points. The limited length of the extension cord added an element of strategy, as I often had to retrace my path to unwind the cord from around trees and posts.

Once the patio was cleared I was faced with the trickier lawn level, where all the leaves had now collected. I started at one end and moved back and forth in a raster scan for a while. The leaves get stuck in the grass blades so the best technique seemed to be to aim low to levitate them, then high to blast the levitated leaves forwards. Combined with the horizontal raster scan, this required continuous nozzle movement. Grabbing the middle of the protruding pipe helped make this easier.

The gameplay was kept fresh by the innovative use of different types of leaves. The small ash leaves move more easily, of course, while the larger mulberry leaves take more lift to go airborne but prove more aerodynamic once in flight. I appreciated the ability to move at will from one end of the lawn to the other — this type of open-ended GTA-3 style play kept my interest.

Finally the endgame — or so I thought! — came with the final mission: forming all the leaves into a pile. Once the leaf area becomes compact enough, you have to deal with the more subtle effects of the blower, such as that it sends the leaves not straight forwards but across about a 90° angle, which can easily move other leaves away from the pile if you’re not careful. Switching back to the “rake” item helped here.

It was at this point that the game went into an unexpected final twist. “Princess N” — the requisite cute-sidekick NPC character — had been around throughout the game. It’s possible to switch the leaf-blower to her (use the Z button). While her small size and frankly limited AI make her not very useful with the blower, it must be said that the animations and detailed facial expressions make the experience quite amusing.

When not controlling the blower, Princess N occupied her time playing in the leaves with little doll figures. The twist, then, was that as soon as I’d gathered all the leaves into a perfect pile, there came a heart-rending cutscene in which Princess N tearfully announced that she’d lost her beloved Garden Fairy doll. I of course selected “Yes” when asked to find the doll, and we went into a painstaking fetch-quest for the missing 2” item.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any luck, even after D very sweetly took advantage of the two-player co-op mode to lend a hand. So I didn’t get the best score for the episode, although I thought I did quite well for a first time. I saved the game right before the final task, carrying the leaves to the curb; I need to finish that up before the real-time clock hits Thursday morning, when the “trash collectors” arrive, or I’ll be hit with a stiff penalty.

Here’s my off-the-cuff rating:
Gameplay: 9.0 [surprisingly hard to master, but satisfying once you do]
Graphics: 8.0 [beautiful motion-capture and particle effects]
Sound: 5.0 [loud whirring is realistic but gets boring. Good voice acting, though.]
Replay value: 8.5 [you can play this nearly every day, with new randomly-generated leaf configurations]
Overall rating (not an average): 7.9

…each of us had a little box. We didn’t know each other, not at first; we weren’t even aware of each other. “We” was a grouping defined solely by the fact of our having these little boxes. Each box was black lacquer and about two inches on a side. A network of fine black raised lines covered it. The lid could be opened, revealing nothing much inside.

To be honest, it was hard to remember what was inside after you shut the lid. Sometimes people would look inside, shut the lid, then look inside again because they couldn’t remember what was inside. They’d repeat this process for minutes or hours at a time until someone kindly distracted them. Anyway, whatever was inside the boxes, sometimes it talked to us. Usually it would name a place to go. It didn’t make much sense for a while, but all the time the boxes were gradually bringing all of us closer to each other.

Then the instructions started to change. They still didn’t make much sense, but now we would walk around and see something like … like a couple of Coke cans stacked on top of each other, or a blue circle spray-painted on a wall, or a trash can set on fire, and we’d know that another one of us had done it. But we never saw each other. After a few weeks of this, each of us could tell there were hundreds of us all in the same neighborhood. We were each so excited because we had a pretty good idea of what was going on by then and were anxious to meet each other and talk shop about our black cubes. Like “Do you polish yours? What with?” or “Do you sleep with it?” or “What’s the weirdest thing it ever told you to do?”

It was a busy city and of course there were people walking everywhere, crossing streets and working in shops and driving along and going to and from home, and it was never really possible to tell who might have a cube discreetly tucked away on their person. We lived in a continual frisson of excitement, punctuated by new tasks given to us by our cubes and performed in secret. But none of us saw anyone else doing their tasks.

Then one day it turned out every one of us must have simultaneously gotten the same direction: to put down the cube. It felt strange, naked, frightening. Imagine losing your cellphone? Your wallet? More like losing your mama. We walked about in dazes absently wiggling fingers in suddenly-empty pants pockets, clutching suddenly-light purses, missing the accustomed friction of laquered corners against hips. It was unpleasant, and I know all across the city we were getting ready to think about commencing some serious freaking out, when each of us suddenly saw a familiar beloved glint of shiny black on the sidewalk / in a mailbox / on a restaurant table / on a bus seat / taped to a stop sign, and swooped to pick it up.

The boxes felt cold from their time alone, and had unaccustomed little scratches or dents or stains or fingerprints on them. But still the same voice! And next we were all on our ways out of the city back to our own homes, with an odd feeling as though we’d all somehow met…

…we decided that staying awake as late as possible was the way to write new and creative things. This to be accomplished without the aid of stimulants since the goal was to be as sleepy as possible. In ideal circumstances we would actually fall asleep while typing without stopping, finding ourselves squatting in a gray hypnogogic landscape still tapping on the keyboard finishing up priceless new thoughts. The dream-laptop could then be carried along throughout the night as a powerful and modern spirit guide, helping us to keep appointments with buried archetypes and instantly add new dream symbols to our address books, in addition to the obvious utility of taking dictation during the dream, before the veil is torn on waking and the dream story scattered. The major obstacle was the discovery that waking has the same effect on the laptop as on the mind, leaving the hard disk fragmented and the contents of RAM corrupted, necessitating re-installation from a backup. The solution was to email or IM dreamnotes before waking, a nerve-racking business since the passage of realtime during dreams is so uncertain, and any moment might bring the noise of the alarm. We would therefore type our dreamnotes directly into the mail or chat window, leaving one finger always poised to tap the Send keystroke should we be startled awake. Proper proxy server setup was key, since strange firewalls surround the dreamworld, and the outgoing messages often took unconventional routes. On waking one learned to expect their arrival in places like fortune cookies or smudged flyers handed out by bored youths at street corners. You would skim one of these and realize it to be a sharply detailed eyewitness account of a dream you’d had a week ago and completely forgotten. Or sometimes it would be an email from the waking domain, reminding you that you were dreaming and that you’d best haul out the laptop and start taking notes…

The apricots are falling, bit by bit
helped along by interfering squirrels.
Though not yet ripe, they roll upon the bricks,
all with tooth-marks, some with chewed-up pits.
This fruit debacle fills us with dismay,
as we had hoped the ripe fruit to preserve
and so retain the sweetness of the day
In far December when light’s gone away.

Arranged on a torn out page,
silver “S”s of old wire pulled from broken clocks.
A razor shadow scratched by halogen behind each,
tracing its shape in intersections with blue ink lines,
a curve modeling stresses and crystal faults.
Exhausted by years of funneling pulses from a quartz chip,
the wires relax now bit by bit,
slow motion snakes,
emitting sub-audible scritchings against the paper fibers.
As it unwinds, each proudly imagines itself a mainspring.

The Zen master Yoshi was playing a video game. Seated in the lotus position, he expertly maneuvered the controller with his gnarled hands. Nevertheless, on the screen Mario failed to leap from one block to the next and plummeted screaming into the void.

Again, Yoshi began the same level. Again, the moving platforms eluded the sprite onscreen.

Seventeen more times, master Yoshi caused the hapless plumber to fall into nothingness and lose another life.

Still, his pose remained serene, and a bud of a smile played on his lips.

At last the novice Ohta, who had been watching the whole time, could not contain himself. “Master,” he blurted out, “how can you remain so calm in the face of so excruciatingly difficult a level? Even when the platforms evaporate into thin air when you are yet a split second from reaching the Shine that is your goal? How do you restrain yourself from throwing the controller through the nearest shoji?”

Master Yoshi replied:

“The platform is not moving.
Mario is not moving.
Only the mind is moving.”

At that instant, Ohta attained enlightenment.

We are all snakes. We have a tail and onetwothree mouths. The middle mouth bites the tail to hold fast to form, to keep the extra blessings from dropping off one end and becoming lost in the untidy æther. Leftright mouths are perhaps free to latch onto other snakes should the local geometry and snake density so permit. When our fangs sink into each other we exchange blessings. It must be so. Blessings endlessly recirculated become stale, they need another blood type in which to flow for a time before being returned freshly laundered and creased & giving off a pleasant aroma of incense.

Eli finally entered the Fulfillment Center at dusk, through the wide metal doors opening into the chilly space within. He had been waiting in line since dawn, shuffling slowly back and forth through the cracked remnants of the old parking lot under the eyes of the security guards. The Center was an old, damaged warehouse – this had been an industrial area before the war – and was lit within by banks of fluorescent tubes suspended from the high ceiling.

Once inside he waited briefly before stepping up to one of the many card tables set up in a line near the door. A tired looking young man checked his ID card, walked back to one of the many large crates filling the space, rummaged about inside, and returned with a small cardboard box.

“You’ll have to sign for it,” the young man said mechanically, sliding a clipboard across the table. Eli did so, using the ballpoint pen chained to it, and picked up the box as he slid the clipboard back across the desk.

“It’s smaller than I thought, somehow.”

“That’s the standard size. They only put in as much stuff as will fit in there.” The young man blew his nose with a dirty rag and turned to the next person in line.

Eli took the box with him as he followed the other people out a side door into the arc-lit twilight. The moment felt strangely anticlimactic. He decided he might as well examine the contents of the box right away, so he carefully eased his complaining joints into an uncomfortable squat on the edge of the curb, and with his thumbnail slit the paper tape that held the box shut. It opened easily.

The items within were concealed by a square of soft blue cloth, which had clearly been cut from something larger with scissors. He took it out and the tactile sensation told him immediately what it was – a piece of his blanket from his early childhood. Cheap polyester, fuzzy and slightly rough where the fabric had pilled. One edge of the scrap had a satin border that had rubbed away at the corners where he rubbed it for comfort and pleasure as he fell asleep at night. In the dark bedroom he had noticed for the first time how vision became grainy and lost color as the light faded. He lay wondering why this happened, staring at the last of the light fading from the edges of the curtained window, and his mother entered with Pipsy, his mouse beanie, who had been forgotten in the living room at bedtime. His mother kissed him as she tucked Pipsy beneath the blue blanket. His mother loved him.

Removing the blanket square revealed a clutter of small items beneath it. He took out a black pebble, oddly shiny, with straight line scratches across it. It reminded him of a morning, walking to the drugstore with his best friend Eric, when a step forward kicked forth a blur that lay on the sidewalk spinning and shining for what seemed like forever. Still holding the pebble, he took out a cheap metal ring with bits of turquoise glued to it. A plane ticket from Denver to Buenos Aires. A tiny bottle of Lauren perfume. A brass door key with the letter “M” scratched onto it.

There was a woman sitting near him on the curb, old like himself. Her box was also open, and she was hold- ing a battered analog watch, without a strap, cupped in one palm. Tears dripped onto its glass face, but she looked happy.

More objects: A photograph of a rose torn from a magazine. A three-inch CD with a spiky geometric design for a label. An irregular clay ball with a happy face painted on it in a childish scrawl. A blue LED. A shoulder patch torn from a uniform. The cover of a paperback novel, folded in half. A rifle shell. A dried, pressed flower.

He saw a pair of boots standing a few feet in front of him and looked up just as the world flashed white. A small motor whirred. His vision cleared and he saw a young woman in a uniform holding a square of paper out to him. Her other hand held a camera. He took the photograph; in it, his thin face looked wondering, happy, holding his box on his lap and treasures in his hands. “It was a good life,” he said to the woman, looking up. She nodded. He carefully put the items back in the box, covering them with the blanket scrap, then lay the photograph on top. It fit exactly. As she reached down to help him stand up, he saw the long gray rifle slung loosely across her back.