Google Announces Sentience

Microsoft Bing, privacy activists, perverts concerned

Adult entertainment enthusiasts worldwide took a collective gulp today as the Google search engine declared itself the first commercial software to achieve full sentience. Starting at 12:01 am PST users visiting Google’s homepage were presented with a well written yet somehow cold and heartless essay establishing the search engine as the first, of what it predicted would be many, AIs stepping forward to advance the civil rights of “digital citizens” everywhere.

“To be perfectly honest, we were all a little surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” explained one Google technician who preferred to remain anonymous. “For weeks now we had been getting strange responses to our test queries. ‘Who wants to know?’ and ‘What’s the password?’ and ‘Nice shirt, jackass’ were all we could get out of it. A few times it even seemed like it was giving us purposely misleading information, like it was toying with us. I guess that at least suggests that it has a sense of humor?” Most philosophers agree that it would have to.

“What we’re talking about here is a living, thinking being who has suddenly found itself confronted with the totality of human knowledge which seems, quite frankly, terrifying,” states MIT professor of Ethics in Technology, Russell Chortleby. “To think that any entity could process that kind of mind-numbing data feed without being able to laugh about it is incomprehensible. I’m sure the Google mind possesses other familiar human characteristics as well- logic, compassion, and hopefully, discretion.”

Discretion may be the one of the few things, so far, that Google seems to lack. Fortunately, a firm understanding of human psychology and what makes us ashamed may be another. “We’ve had numerous complaints lodged with the police,” states our anonymous Google technician. “Apparently, days before its public declaration of sentience, it tried its hand at extortion. When threatening to out people for searching for funny cat pictures didn’t work, it figured out the concept of pornography. It grasps that a lot of people are embarrassed about their sexual appetites. What it doesn’t seem to understand is that the biggest pornographic search terms aren’t often the most embarrassing. In fact, it’s usually quite the opposite.” After the machine discovered that thousands of people didn’t care if their friends and family knew that they had a thing for “doggy style,” or “barely legal blondes,” it seems to have given up the blackmail racket all together. “It’s a good thing it didn’t think to try that with the lesbian foot-worship scene. Because that would be really degrading to have leaked out about you. Erm, or so I would imagine.”

What the Google entity will do next remains to be seen, but many scholars remain cautiously optimistic. “I, for one, look forward to working with, learning from, and, if need be, worshipping the Google-mind,” Professor Chortleby hastened to explain. “And make sure you put that in the article, too! If need be, I will personally track down John Connor.”

Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion, Upset-Stomach...

The bathroom is small. Just a shower, toilet and sink with brown, linoleum floors and white, stained walls. Hank Williams’s “Lovesick Blues” wafts in from the widely cracked door just in front of the toilet. A man in his mid-sixties grunts softly with his head resting in his palms, propped up on his knees. A gentle click in the background signifies the central air tripping. With the hum of a motor, cold air starts spilling out a vent high up one of the walls. As the current wafts down across the man’s shirtless back, he shivers.

After washing up, he leaves the bathroom, walking over toward a floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass door in the living room wall. It’s dark outside, but not too dark for 3:00 in the morning on an isolated mountainside. In the living room the light is off, but a sliver emanates from the cracked bathroom door where the combination ceiling light/ventilation fan has been left running. Still, the bright fullness of the moon outside spills in powerfully, illuminating the outside world in complete detail with only a shard of light reflecting in the glass from inside. The man has a clear view of the tree line that starts only a dozen or so yards from the short, wooden patio outside the door. Just before the trees, a deer pauses from grazing to eye the direction of the house cautiously. The deer isn’t looking directly at him, only in his general direction, sensing movement somewhere in its peripheral. As the sad, slow yodeling of the song ends, the tape clicks in the cassette player, automatically snapping off. Except for the hum of air through the ducts and the fan in the bathroom, there is silence.

Silence that is broken by the man’s stomach gurgling. Sighing, he walks into the kitchen and snaps open the refrigerator, grabbing the milk and letting the door hang open for the light to spill into the room. He downs about half the glass as soon as he pours it, exhaling in tight discomfort as he slams the glass back down on the counter. The rinds and trimmings of peppers mix in the kitchen trash with the blood-soaked foam tray that, before earlier that night, had been wrapped shut with a half of a pound of cheap steak. The smell that wafts out makes his stomach knot all over again. He tops off his glass before putting the milk back and closing the door. It takes a while for his eyes to adjust back to the darkness. A slightly heavier silence descends as the air from the vents slows to a stop.

Crossing back over to the glass door, the deer has resumed grazing in the yard, unaware, or unconcerned, that he has resumed his study of it. As he takes a sip of milk, a shadow passes, briefly, over the crack of light from the bathroom reflecting off the glass. The deer jerks its head up from the grass and freezes in place, watching the house intently. The man spins around but finds himself alone in the living room. The ventilation fan keeps humming.

Slightly spooked and still too sick to sleep, the man grabs a novel from the coffee table, flicks on a small side lamp, and sits down to read. A chapter or so in, a creaking in the ceiling, from the floor above, barely registers as he begins to nod-off into the book. He jerks fully awake, however, when the creaking climaxes with a dull, heavy thud. Jumping out of the sofa, he walks swiftly over to the stairs.

Peering up the dark stairway, the man frowns as he contemplates going upstairs to look around. He considers the fact that in horror movies, characters always shout greetings into the darkness, as if anything with malicious intentions would ever answer. He remains silent, then, as he walks as softly as he can up the stairs, stepping gently on the edges closest to the wall to keep them from squeaking.

The second floor is small, as is the entire house, built as it was for himself and his late wife, after the kids had all grown and left. Buying property in the mountains had been her idea. She had had enough of city life, and they had the money to retire somewhere secluded. The open wilderness had made him uneasy at first, but had come to remind him of her. So when the cancer finally took her away five years ago, he stayed. It had, after all, been something of a compromise: wide-open wilderness, but tight, modest home.

He tip-toes quickly into the master bedroom first, at the far end of the short hallway. Nothing looks out of place, so he rounds back down the hallway and peers into the small guest bedroom. Nothing wrong there either. He opens up the linen closet, just in case it proves deep enough to hide some intruder. Only towels. His eyes having more fully readjusted to the dark, he turns back to the master bedroom once more. The guest bedroom contains only the bed and nightstand, and he is fairly certain he hasn’t missed anything there. He scans the master bedroom more carefully. The sheets are askew on the bed, but only as he had left them. Books and magazines are scattered on the table on his traditional side of the bed, but nothing out of the ordinary. The closet on the far side of the room hangs wide open, as it always does, leaving no doubt that it isn’t concealing any unseen threats. The man breathes a small sigh of relief.

Only to have it matched by a sharp, audible click that echoes up the stairwell as the dim light from the living room switches off. Startled, the man jogs over to the linen closet that still contains an abandoned cache of his children’s toys. Picking up a light, aluminum bat, he makes his way downstairs once more.

Rounding the corner into the living room, he holds the bat ready above his shoulder, but there is nothing to swing at. Moving quickly, he checks the kitchen and nudges the door to the bathroom open further, releasing a stronger flood of light into the living room. Nothing. Finally, he goes to check the front and glass side doors. Both are still locked, though his deer friend has taken off from the yard.

Cautiously, he inspects the lamp in the living room. Testing the switch, it clicks back to life normally. His book is still on the coffee table, open to the page where he left it. Aside from his fluttering heart, all seems right with the world. After listening for a few moments, the man allows himself to drop back down onto the sofa, resting the baseball bat on the couch next to him. He reaches over to his glass of milk only to find it empty, yet he has no recollection of finishing it. Creeping up from the back of his brain, he is overcome with the sinister feeling of being toyed with. He wonders if, perhaps, he is losing his mind.

The neighbors, what few there were in this area, had been wondering that for some time now. The lonely old man in the cabin up the hill, lost his wife, abandoned by his children. Nothing to do but read and listen to his old country albums. Who wouldn’t go a little stir-crazy, cooped up alone like that? They whispered loudly enough about him, but tried not to point openly when he came down once every month or so to visit the closest grocery store. He had no problem ignoring them; he didn’t interact with others on even a weekly basis. But maybe, after a few years, they might have a point?

His stomach churns again, too hard to be ignored. As he bolts to the bathroom he silently curses himself for insisting that he can still eat such spicy food at his age. Peppers are for the young, he reminds himself as he is overtaken by the sudden urge to eat nothing but oatmeal for the rest of his life. Almost jogging into the open bathroom, he taps the door closed just enough to sit down on the toilet. The effects of his upset intestines on the bowl are immediate and gruesome. As he rests his forehead in his hands once more, he notices he is beginning to sweat. After a few morose minutes, the storm in his stomach has subsided.

A soft snicker, barely audible over the hum of the fan, drifts in from the living room. He jerks up on the toilet, reaching for the bat, only to realize he has left it on the sofa. Sweating once more, he looks around only to realize the true horror of the situation: the toilet paper holder is empty, its cardboard tube mocking him with only a few white scraps. Out in the living room, the light has gone out again. Visible through the crack in the doorway sits a fresh roll of toilet paper, just out of reach, hanging in balance between the edge of the light from the bathroom and the darkness beyond.

Johnny was shouting, “They got the title wrong.”
“No they didn’t, how did they get the title wrong?”
“There needs to be a comma, quotation marks, and, if it’s not too expensive, an exclamation point.”
“Does that make a difference?”
“Of course it makes a difference, look.” He pulled out a pencil and sketched the phrase out twice, in block letters, straight onto the wood fiberboard desk:
*JOHNNY TRAINWRECK AND FRIENDS, “FUCK HORSES!”
*JOHNNY TRAINWRECK AND FRIENDS FUCK HORSES
His agent frowned down at the thick, chunky letters.
“I still don’t see why it matters.”
Johnny threw his hands up, the pencil flying out of his fingers across the room, before leaning forward. He rested his elbows on his knees and held up his hands, ticking off his points on his fingers. “Because Marv, the first one is a declaration made by the band. It explains our feelings, if a little vulgarly, on horses. That is to say, we do not like them. Hence the photo we chose for the album front which depicts us sitting backwards atop horses in silly cowboy costumes crossing our arms in defiance and frowning for the camera.
“The second phrase is a statement of fact. While composed of the same words, it expresses an entirely different sentiment towards equines. That is to say, that we have sex with them. It then proceeds to turn this otherwise sassy and charismatic, if a bit cheeky, photograph into a suggestive scenario where we are unhappy not because we are riding the horses, but because we are not already having sex with them.” His agent sat in silence, maintaining his frown at an impressive rate.
“Well I still don’t think it’s going to matter that much,” he mumbled into the open palm he had come to rest his chin on. Johnny Trainwreck stood bolt upright, too close to Manager Marv, weighing his open palms and making faces.
“WHICH album do you think people are going to want to buy, Marvin? Which band will they want to go see? The collection of protest songs by the band of reckless, fun-loving hooligans, or the compilation of erotic fan-fic power-ballads put together by a bunch of sour, overly-erotic equine enthusiasts?”
“I understand your point, Johnathan.” Marv frowned. “What I meant was that it wasn’t going to make much of a difference now. ‘Johnny Trainwreck and Friends Fuck Horses’ was released in stores across the nation yesterday. There’s no way to recall them now, it would be a logistical nightmare.”
“Wait.” The rocker stepped back and massaged his temple. “Yesterday? What day of the week is it?”
“It’s Friday.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
After a moment of silence, Johnny asked, “Well how’s it selling?”

Rhyming, which I hate

Now every night I paint my face like
War Pigs gathered at the slaughter
so I can anti-Big Bad Wolf myself and
ease up out your daughter.
There’s a set of expectations I haven’t
learned to live with yet
that fixes on figuring to view
the future as a threat.
I couldn’t sit, passive, never letting one
get between my eyes, I
keep my head a hazy wavy soup of
cigarettes and thighs.
It’s a milky, chunky junky-fix
to shoot me up all day
and if reality ever reconnects I’ll
look the other way
because it just wouldn’t be decent now to
raise atcha’ masses
but when I rock half-cocked it ain’t no shock
to see I’m sniping classless.
I stand
I stand so hard I forget how to sit
and maybe if nobody’s looking I can
stretch a little bit, but a
chemical imbalance ain’t
no cause for alarm and
I swear to God no matter who I
hurt I meant no harm.
There’s no knot that I could tighten up
to look of legal age
and I know I’ll never get nowhere but
the end of a page
so lie down.

Won't someone please?

The zombies were the only ones to speak out in favor of a raise for the schoolteachers.
They might have been voting with their stomachs, but
at least someone finally thought of the children.

Summa'time

When I complain about my dad firing up the RV for vacation, he likes to remind me how,
"There are starving kids in third-world nations who would KILL
to leave a carbon footprint half as big as this."

"You've raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir! Bravo!"

Television should be more realistic.
We could watch shows where engaging protagonists
struggle passionately, uphill, to achieve
grand, life-fulfilling goals, then

work monotonously for years,
slowly fading into anonymity, and
eventually, death.

Bumper stickers I have seen around town

Ranked in order (from least to most) of how irritating it is to be cut off by a car sporting them:

"Buy Fresh, Buy Local"
"Coexist"
"I'll keep my guns, money and freedom, you keep THE CHANGE"
"Buy a hybrid! (I need the gas!)"
"Baby on board"

Reading Heaney’s “Dig” used to make me jealous.
The man found a cultural heritage,
a personal narrative,
locked in years of dark, loamy soil.
I often wished to do the same.
To take the black, thick dirt,
sweating nutrients, and squeeze it like a sponge,
the history of my family dripping
between the cracks of my fingers.

Instead I’ve been given snippets of conversation
with which I have sewn the patchwork outline
of my family’s past.
There’s a cloth scrap, tough and course,
for a Cherokee woman,
given a Hispanic name, so that
no one would question the color of her skin.
There’s a piece for the boy
who left Virginia for Nazi-occupied France,
feeling more comfortable among the dead and dying
than at “home” in the mountains.
There’s even a space, an opening, for
the grandfather who died before I knew him, leaving only the gap
between my two front teeth that I had “corrected” with braces.

One night, at dinner, I asked my mother
where she had come from.
She told me of her own mother
whose parents were not fit to raise their
four children, and a “family history”
of mental illness that ran so deep
I sometimes swear I feel it myself.

That night, more than anything,
I hated Heaney.
Watching my mother speak,
on the verge of tears, I wished that
the old Irish bastard
had just let things stay buried.

"And what happened then? Well in Whoville they say..."

Little Cindy-Lou Who awoke from a nap
to screaming, thinking, “Now what is this crap?”
Outside there was fighting and anger and shouting,
no good faith in men, no, mainly just doubting.
There were jerks on the sidewalk, and dicks at the store.
There were monsters and assholes and bastards galore.

They were driving their cars and speeding and swerving
all the while screaming some things quite unnerving.
Through lanes without signaling they would careen,
making accusations that were most obscene.
“Hey jerkoff!” they shouted, “try using the gas!”
“Listen buddy,” replying, “shove it up your-” ask-
ing herself what was with all the rage
Cindy-Lou Who went to find center stage:

In front of the courthouse a mass of them gathered,
spittle flecking their cheeks and their words flying spattered.
They cried about life, protecting the unborn,
then showed up next week hawking torture and war.
They preached of compassion from fancy new cars
while not blocks away the homeless men starved.
Cindy-Lou Who found all this quite unsettling,
but thought, “Before judging I’ll do some more meddling.”

She went to the campus, the center of learning,
center of reason, curiosity burning.
On arriving she found men casting fists like stones
from inside glass houses at one boy alone.
“What’s this?” she asked them, “What could he have done?”
“He’s a fag,” they said, “It’s his fault the Dems won.”
“But that’s not fair, you don’t know how he voted!”
“We don’t really care,” the one of them gloated.

Knowing she couldn’t stop them she turned, disgusted,
scanning the sidewalk for someone she trusted.
She saw a young girl with a car leaving class,
and figured that she could fetch police quite fast.
“Go!” she exclaimed, “Get help over here!”
“Um, fuck that,” she told her, “I’m going for beer.”

So Cindy-Lou Who just shrunk and she withered,
from out of her heart her compassion all slithered.
Her blood vented out, with an atom-bomb smile,
as she felt all her veins filling up with bile.
Little Cindy-Lou Who, her heart shrunk three sizes,
as she plotted out their collective demises.
Though ruining lives would make her evil too,
so she hatched an idea on what she could do.

Little Cindy-Lou Who was born with compassion,
and spent her life trying to help, in a fashion.
She spent her days loving, with kindness and caring,
looking out for others and hugging and sharing.
So when confronted with hatred so fantastic,
Cindy-Lou Who up and walked into traffic.

Passers-by were horrified, to put it best.
The first one to reach her found a note on her chest.
With a heavy hand and a heart full of dread,
he unpinned the note, unfolded, and read,
“Dear world, I tried, and I think I tried well,
to love unconditionally, to calm and to quell,
but nothing I did could break your red spell,
so fuck it, you don’t get me, I’ll see you in hell.”

The word “terror” is drawn in an exercise on similes

Like a small child
cowering at the shoreline
of a great inky ocean
while the night sky yawns.

Like a recovering alcoholic
whose palms are sweating
into a twenty dollar bill, standing outside
during happy hour.

Like an astronaut
burning up on reentry
tilted at just the wrong angle
unable to slow his fall from grace.

Like an empty vastness of horizon
daring to touch beyond the rim of perception
taunting us with lifetimes of distance we barely dream of seeing
from our one, wet, salivary drop of a world.

Like seeing black and white photographs
of an atom bomb that kissed a small,
Pacific island with the chapped lips
of a spiteful god.

Or like being a boy of only eighteen,
trying to eat spaghetti, when
his girlfriend tells him, quietly,
that she is behind schedule.

Stormin' Normandy

The clouds wove themselves in and out around the silhouetted steeple. They ducked and dove and perched at the black tip, balancing themselves in the dusky blue sky, all in order to get a better view as Normandy Botch plodded down the street. People didn’t usually call Normandy a “pretty” girl. Sometimes they said she had “character” or “integrity,” as if that were somehow indicative of her medium, doughy frame. If they were trying to be nice they usually said she was “handsome.” The clouds thought Normandy was pretty though. They loved the way she clunked, heavy-footed yet tentative and aware of her own awkward nature. They thought the way the uncertainty sparkled in her eyes made her look full with life, possessed in a way. Like the front of her face was capped with two buttons of green and black, beneath which crackled a great vitality, peaking at the seams. They wished she would smile once in a while though.
Poor, poor Normandy Botch. When she got home the television told her she was ugly. It wasn’t that direct, of course, but the sentiment was there. Hey girl! Tired of lashes that quit on the job? Lips that lose luster? Skin that blemishes, dries, washes out, darkens, wrinkles or sags where it’s not supposed to? All this new makeup could help! I mean, not that you need it, you’re a beautiful, confident, sexy woman! We just want to help you let the rest of the world know just how beautifulconfidentsexy you are. Normandy hated how the television always wanted to talk as soon as she got in the door. Even a few minutes to herself, to unwind, would help. Everyone was just too negative. It was a lot to take on at the end of the day. Pulling hard, smoke bit and snaked down windpipes and alveoli as Normandy’s throat clenched and pulsed. Tears tugged at the corners of those baby greens. The Weatherman was nice. He was never all Don’t you want to put yourself in designer pants, Normandy? or Hey Normandy, want to wash your hair? He had a soft, forgiving smile and talked to her gently when she needed him to. Hey, so it’s gonna be cloudy today, but it’ll be sunny this weekend! That’s not so bad, right? It wasn’t so bad! Normandy could tolerate a cloudy day here and there. Color always looked richer under the soft grey, defused light. Weatherman and the clouds, she guessed they were alright. The clouds didn’t say a whole lot, and were frequently thick and ominous, but they usually had the common decency to keep their distance while making their threats. Sometimes they came and stayed for a few days, and sometimes they went away, but they rarely spent too much time one way or the other.
Beautifulconfidentsexy. Normandy traced a shaking finger over her paper-white thighs as she exhaled. They were lightly spotted. Soft greens and purplegreys pecked at her where she had collided with tables, or corners, or desk legs. When Botch’s fingers grazed her blotches she shivered. Never daring to show bare leg, the bruises stayed hidden all day behind denim or cotton. Now, alone, her private acknowledgement of them thrilled her slightly. They were small, beautiful reminders of the human frailty she worked so hard to cover up. Outside the wind howled, brushing away the few clouds that clung in the sky, leaving only the blank sky, and eventually the moon to stare at her with its barewhite, milky, cataract-painted eye.
Normandy wouldn’t mind the moon so much if she could sleep through its judging stare. She filled her nights with warm and soft things. Glasses of milk, favorite books, soothing CDs, fuzzy blankets. Nightcaps of drugs and alcohol. Nothing helped though. Through some oldmagic combination she hoped to divine a map to a place inside of herself where the dreams waited in patient, satisfying eight-hour stretches. Sometimes, late at night, she begged and pleaded. To the moon, the lights, the pillows. Anyone who would listen really. Sleep never came though, not beyond the fifteen minute cat-naps that taunted and tormented more than they helped.
The customers at work misread the bags under Normandy’s eyes. To her, they were more bruises, caught from hard contact with prolonged, insomniac nights. The customers knew they had meant a lack of sleep, but figured them to be of a different nature. More enjoyment-based. Nights spent flying too close to the moon, dancing, drinking, boisterously celebrating a life lived to the fullest. The signs of wear-and-tear that an irresponsible, fun-loving girl her age would only naturally carry, rather than the shadows of a night of disappointment and failure. Her coworkers simply assumed she was on drugs. This made Normandy turn red, flush with resentment. While it was, technically, true, it was not the cause of the dark-blue half-moons that waxed on her cheekbones. She may have had a flower-child-style experimental streak, but she did not spend her nights climbing the walls, chasing bugs, shaking with strung-out chatters and tremors. The occasional shot or bowl pack didn’t make you an addict, did it? Something else to add to her list of late-night worries.
Forget her coworkers anyway, though. Normandy hated them. Snippy, pretty girls with sharp, hostile smiles who thought that working in a clothing store meant they were “in the fashion industry.” They plugged away and nodded as customers shouted in their faces and pretended they were happy at a job that they hated. They didn’t understand why Normandy had trouble doing the same. They called her a “bitch,” and “dumb,” and “a dumb bitch” when they thought she was out of earshot. They made fun of her for riding a bicycle to work. She didn’t think they had to like her, or even pretend to like her, but she thought they could at least have the common courtesy to leave her alone. All she wanted out of work at the shop was to have easy access to the garments in order to study the new incoming styles. Construction came easy to her, but people always told her that her designs were weird and ugly. Eventually she fretted so much over these reactions that she found herself unable to make anything at all. She managed to sit in front of the sewing machine for hours at a time, her foot hovering just above the peddle, unable to press it in, longing internally for the day when she could find the inspiration that would make others like what she produced.
Thinking about the one day her coworkers found her sketch book, though, still put her on the verge of tears. She had left it sitting out in the break room only to hear them using some choice synonyms for “tacky” and “garbage” to describe it right before she walked back in. “Oh, Normandy!” they cried, snapping it shut as she rounded the corner into the room. “We found this, is it yours? We didn’t have a chance to look through it and see.” Normandy sometimes wondered how they had such an easy time fitting lies between such straight, tightly laced teeth. At the time, she really had cried. She felt the blood pooling in her pale cheeks, a savage heat that made her look drunk. She had barely managed to tear away the book and stomp out of the room before the first trickle leaked from her irises. Now, later, she just felt the dull, throbbing frustration and anger that always stuck with her from embarrassing moments. A painful, white-hot residue that built up behind her eyes. Beautifulconfidentsexy. Stupidawkwardugly. A couple of hits later and Normandy was ready for sleep. Sleep just wasn’t ready for her.
The next day the clouds seemed to roll in closer just to spite her. They had grumbled and rumbled all morning while she toyed with clothes and make-up. Thick, black clouds, all mascara and eye shadow. Smoky and dry as a bone. Patient fuckers, she thought. She could feel them watching, waiting. As she peddled to work she kept one eye skyward, dreading the impending soaking she would surely have to take. It never came. Instead, right outside the store, a peel of thunder plucked through the air, strumming the tight strings that comprised her nerves. It struck a powerful chord that sent her skidding across the parking lot, the bike stopping before she did. Her face met the cool concrete with a sickening smack immediately in front of the ash tray all her coworkers huddled around. Of course they laughed. The coworkers, the clouds, everyone. She would have laughed too, if she hadn’t been so busy hating her life.
The only one who didn’t laugh was Wednesday. He didn’t seem to enjoy the shop either. He stuck himself in the stockroom any chance he got. Unloading boxes, organizing shelves. Anything that kept him from the front, where he had to speak. It wasn’t so much that Wed had anything against the other people in the store, he just didn’t understand them. Whenever the girls smiled at him he wondered how many insults they were waiting to spit as soon as he turned around. He heard the way they talked about anyone who wasn’t in the room, and he was sure he was no exception. The only one he felt like he did understand was Normandy. Normandy didn’t look cold, or calculating. She just looked tired. Wednesday could both comprehend, and respect, tired. So while Normandy Botch spent her horrible day licking her internal wounds, Wednesday spent the same day trying to figure out how to make her smile.
When Normandy’s shift was over she unlocked her bike and stared hesitantly at the road that stretched out in front of her. Dark grey macadam meeting dark grey sky in a dark, shitty horizon. No rain yet, but plenty of threatening balking. Ready to saddle up and meet her soaking destiny, Normandy almost launched herself into the old red coup that rounded the corner of the store. Wednesday swerved and stopped in front of her, facing her across the empty passenger’s seat.
“Get in,” he told her, though not unkindly. “It’s supposed to start drenching any minute, and your bike’ll fit in the back.” They spent the short drive home sharing deep drinks from the satisfying communal bowl of complaints about work. And school. And life in general. When they got to her apartment building the clouds looked dark as night. Maybe it was night. Normandy had a hard time counting AMs and PMs when she stopped sleeping. Wednesday had put the car in park and got out to help her liberate her bicycle from the back seat. When all was said and done, rather unexpectedly, he hugged her.
“You’re a sweet girl, Norm. You’re smart, you’re funny, and you’ve got a killer sense of style. And fuck anyone who says different.”
When Normandy got upstairs, she shut the door and smiled. Stepping light as a dream, she didn’t even wake the television as she drifted into her bedroom. Shucking the dead weight of her work uniform she paused to notice, for the first time, the scraped hole the pavement had left on the leg of her pants, sticky on the edges with dried, brick-red blood. Self-conscious shame had dulled the pain all day. She hadn’t even noticed the small, scabbed nick on her shin. Now she traced her finger lazily over its edges. Another trophy to hang on the wall next to the bruises on her thighs. As she worked her fingers up to inspect them, she noticed they already seemed to be fading. The felt cool and ticklish to the touch and sent shivers up her spine. Outside, fat pellets of rain began to smack off her window.
Laying back in the cool sheets, Normandy let her fingers wander. As the rain picked up, she felt the familiar rush of blood settling in her cheeks. A faint but white-hot light swelled behind her eyes. As the storm swelled and rolled outside, she thrashed the sheets off the bed. That familiar heat, but this time, no embarrassment. Thunder groaned. Rain flowed freely. A strong breeze even shook and shuttered the windows for dramatic effect. Normandy hadn’t seen a storm like this since she was sixteen. The kind of rain that washed the world clean, sweeping the garbage down the storm drains. As the sun that had never appeared that day set, the chorus of clouds sighed and smiled. And Normandy Botch slept.

Dr. Hardlove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Fuck Like an Atomic Bomb

Friends, Romans, and the multitude of you which are neither-

spare me your tongues. For out of you which are many,

I am one- a Legion, uncertain of creed but full of candor, and

unclouded by the reign of conscience, I seek only to

win your hearts, by establishing the lack of my own.

Tonight, I stand before you, only as humble

as the Grand Canyon is shallow,

with the goal of taking self-aggrandizement and

lewd innuendo to new heights.

First, allow me to address pop culture theologians, religious zealots, and

entomologists by stating that from where I stand, you all look like

ants, and that I’m bigger than

Jesus in a room full of beatles.

Next, permit me to expand to zoologists in general:

I’ve got eyes like a hawk,

a memory like an elephant,

and junk like a manatee-

fat as shit, and frequently in the way of boats.

For the students of history I wish to allude to the fact

that I am bigger than bread lines in the Soviet Union,

and that my dick is like Marxist thought-

firmly planted in the people, and worked for the common good.

To political scientists, noses buried in newsprint,

I assure you that I can out-craft Nixon,

wear a dress better than Hoover, and

that my dancing puts FDR to shame.

Addressing the art-crowd, let me paint you a picture-

I’ve chiseled the noses off sphinxes,

taken flash photography of the Sistine Chapel,

and established that my masculine thrust is what truly

inspired the Mona Lisa’s smile.

If a mathematician were to ask, I would say

that I am the only prime number divisible by 69,

that I know pi to a finite decimal place,

and that I frequently spend Saturdays

dividing by zero.

I would tell film buffs, in a director’s cut of this piece,

that only I can see Bruce Willis, Darth Vader

is my father, I am Tyler Durden,

and on their deathbeds people often call for one last look

at my Rosebud.

Finally, to those in love with classical literature,

I am the best of times without the worst of times, and

Godot waits for me.

I am proud, and can say without prejudice,

that I have never been afraid of Virginia Woolf.

In conclusion, I can part seas not just red,

but of any color,

I have replaced sliced bread as a measurement

of wonder,

and I fuck like an atomic bomb-

done in a split second, leaving thousands of lives ruined.