Oscar Night — we are encamped just outside the Black Gate to Celebrity Village. The ten-storey doors rumble open just enough to release a floating disembodied mouth.
ENTHUSIASTIC KID: Hey! Let’s eat some of this dirt from Mars!
Tolerance ranges vary from deployment to deployment, based on extant arousal levels on the four major indices (fear, anxiety, desire, other).
The barker— a pallid, ectomorphic Jesus in a candy-striped vaudeville suit— stands atop a raised entry platform, swinging his cane and making tricks with his straw hat. He lets a little kid pull a chunk out of his beard; its patchiness suggests he’s been letting children do that for some time.
My most beloved word-babies.
A: Our profession does not lend itself to the conversational arts.
B: At least of the vocal or linguistic variety.
A: Our methods of communication tend to be… non-verbal.
B: Direct. Sometimes brutally so.
A serial entertainment.
One man’s quest to find a mystical land, and the injuries he incurs while he searches.
‘So we will have to be careful, like spies,’ said my brother. I nodded vigorously – for what young boy does not entertain dreams of being a skilled intelligencer, pursuing secretive duties for crown and country, reliant on wits and nerve alone while plunged deep within enemy terrain?
Chosen solely by math.
On the way to work today, I saw a guy in his car, at a stoplight, playing the trumpet. I could tell even in the short time it took me to pass him that he was merely “warming up,” checking the action on the keys, clearing the spit valve, sounding out a few test notes. […]