Snippet of a Fantasy Novel That I'll Probably Never Get Around to Writing

Escaping from prison was the easy part. Krontayeff Camp #473 is deep in the Jurgathon Desert. High thick walls and kraal-sharpened fences were not part of its design. The Jurgathon was the real barrier. Four hundred vrusts of sand, volcanic rock, scorpians and the heat of the two suns was thought to be more than enough to keep anyone from escaping. Few had tried. None had succeeded. Until me.

Maybe convicts are supposed to claim their innocence. If so, I never got the instructions to do so. And it’s not as if I murdered little old ladies like some of the other inmates had. I made a comment to a neighbor that was construed as anti-state and reported to State Security as such. At my very short trial, the comment was read into evidence, rather embellished from what I’d actually said, but even that was tame compared to what I really thought of the Leader.

I was of course subject to the usual thuggish beatings, whippings and “fun with electricity” that State Security is so famous for while I was being held in the sub-basement of the citizen governor’s summer headquarters, and I must admit that I was slightly comforted by the fact that the judge’s traditional spit in my face was probably mostly water given the huge number of sentences he handed down that day. No man can be asked to produce that much saliva without outside assistance.

After the obligatory “20 years or the people’s wisdom, whichever is longer,” I joined the five hundred or so other prisoners for the thousand-vrust journey east across the grasslands of Inner Vaangrod, the scrubland of Outer Vaangrod and finally deep into the Jurgathon. Through much of Vaangrod we were packed into box cars belonging to State Security but marked as owned by the People’s Revolutionary Abbotoir of Inner and Outer Vaangrod. After two hot days without food or water (12 bodies were pulled from my car) we were each given a ghrü (pressed dates and grain, formed into a brick about the size of a bar of soap) and a cup of brackish water. We spent the night in a kraal compound and left the next morning before the first sun rose, walking east into the Jurgathon while about 30 guards rode Ekvins and a dozen more rode the giant Paahks carrying everything needed to resupply Krontayeff Camp #473 until the next batch of prisoners was sent there.

As I was later to find out, those batches were sent on no fixed schedule. In the six years I spent at 473, the shortest interval between the arrival of new prisoners was six days. The longest was eight and a half months.

Say it early, say it often.

The Iraq disaster is ALL Bush's fault. NO shifting the blame. NO pointing of fingers at the Democrat who inherits the mess in 2009. All Bush. Every bit of it.

How to Make a Sandwich

1. This is a tough job. Are you up to doing it yourself? Probably not. Studies show that only 17% of Americans (19% internationally) have the broad range of skills required for effective sandwich construction. Take no chances, form a committee.

2. The Committee will need to have at least two sub-committees, The Committee of the Outside (or, informally, “the bread team”) and The Committee of the Inside (“the filler team”). If the initial meeting of the full committee results in the required two-thirds vote for a preliminary sandwich design rated 6.2 or higher on the Slawinski Sandwich Complexity Scale, committee members may wish to designate one or more additional sub-committees (The Committee of the Condiments, The Committee of Slicing Options, etc.). If the preliminary design rates 8.0 or higher on the Slawinski Sandwich Complexity Scale, the full committee should consider sub-contracting parts of the project to a consultant certified by the School of Sandwich Development at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study.

3. Prototypes may be constructed of nearly any material (in recent years, high-tensile strength specialty metals have become the favorite prototyping material for sandwich design committees, less than 8% of the respondents to last year’s Sandwich Design Survey reported that they were still using the formerly popular stone or thatch prototyping materials) but the full committee needs to clearly convey the design requirements to the prototyping team.

4. The Committee of the Outside will of course closely supervise the growing, harvesting and milling of the grain. When the flour reaches the bakery, it’s usually advisable to have at least one member of the Committee of the Inside present to sign-off on the final baking process. Interactions at the border of the bread and the filler are a critical yet often overlooked feature of sandwich design. The political in-fighting often a result of the conflicting agendas of The Committee of the Inside and The Committee of the Outside can usually be minimized by an effective liaison between the two groups.

5. The Committee of the Inside (ideally, with a liaison member of The Committee of the Outside present) will supervise the slaughter of animals used for meat production (if a vegetarian sandwich is being designed, this step is of course omitted) as well as the planting, harvesting and processing of all vegetables, fruits and nuts specified in the Sandwich Design Protocol. It will insure that all of the ingredients are delivered to the final assembly site in a timely manner.

6. It is absolutely critical that all members of The Committee be present at the time of final assembly. It is strongly recommended (this may be changed to a requirement at next year’s Plenary Session of The International Sandwich Standards Association) that the assembly be performed in a clean room with fewer than 1 part per trillion air-borne contaminants). Some Committees have in recent years been moving towards utilization of photonic bread cutters but the tried and true sharp knife is still used by over 87% of all sandwich committees. A steady hand is called for at this stage of the process; a recent study by Dr. Ludmilla Flumberhoff has suggested that as many as 14% of all sandwiches are ruined by inaccurate assembly at the final stage. Months of design work can be wasted in these few critical minutes.

7. After the sandwich has been consumed, a careful review and final documentation of the project can save future Committees months of reconstructive work.

© 1999, 2007 Erik Kosberg

Two Dependable Crops

It was just supposed to be a short getaway from the city, five days to recover from the rigors of keeping the American economy thriving. We weren't expecting anything more exciting than a one-way conversation with an inbred small-town convenience store clerk. Wrong again.

I'd never believed in ghosts before but I do now. The bed and breakfast we stayed in the first night turned out to be haunted. Thankfully, this wasn't a mean ghost, just one who liked to tease. The door to the porch kept swinging open even though it was latched shut. It never opened when we were looking, but if my wife and I let our gaze slip it would open again. We soon got used to it and stopped being amazed. Then it would close and latch itself when we weren't looking.

The books in the room had not been in the possession of the original owners, they'd been bought used as evidenced by penciled fifty-cent and dollar prices in the front. One was a real estate prospectus from 1919 for the sale of sixty thousand acres in southern Alabama. Only eighty years had passed but the booklet seemed as if it were from another eon or maybe another planet. One picture showed a field of cotton which had apparently been cleared by the slash-and-burn technique that we now chastise developing countries for employing. Charred remains of trees poked out from the rows of white.

There was a photo of a field of corn next to one of a sharecropper family with eight kids. The caption read "Two Dependable Crops: Corn and Negroes." Eighty years ago some copywriter probably thought it was a catchy phrase; what passed for normal behavior in one generation is seen as an abomination by another. What are we doing that our children or grandchildren will recoil from in horror?

When I turned the page, I almost dropped the book.

"Pam....there's a picture of you in here."

She laughed at me and then turned pale as I handed it to her.

"No there isn't Nathan, but there is one of you."

When we both looked at the page, there were two people dressed in their Sunday best who didn't look anything like us at all.

We didn't sleep very well that night even though the ghost refrained from any high jinks. Maybe it got bored and went to play with guests down the hall.

As we drove out of town the next day, we talked about what had happened but couldn't decide whether we'd had a brush with the supernatural or had hallucinated, but either way, the odometer was running backwards until we reached the interstate.

© Copyright Erik Kosberg 1997, 2007

Cultural Capital of the World

It had been nearly ten years since I'd been to New York and this twelve hour trip to Manhattan might have to last another ten. I'd taken the bus into the Port Authority and walked down 42nd Street to the Public Library where Censorship Through the Ages was on exhibit. My parents hadn't taken me to 42nd when I was a kid, but I assume that it was as gaudy then as it is now--signs flashing GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS and BOYS, BOYS, BOYS and a street preacher with an antique megaphone shouting "Jesus sees you today and HE IS NOT PLEASED."

After the library, I'd planned to go to the Van Gogh show but had forgotten that museums are closed on mondays. Museums and barbershops.

Wandering aimlessly just south of the Empire State Building, I saw a woman in her late fifties (or was she really in her early forties and exhausted?) carring a shopping bag in each hand, sweating under the July sun. She stopped, put her bags at her feet, and stuck out her right palm. Most of the crowd milled past as if she didn't exist on this planet, let alone right in front of them, yet at least one other person saw her. He stuck a Visa Card in her outstretched hand and walked on. She stared at it with a faraway what the hell am I going to do with this? look and then slipped it into one of her bags, picked them both up, and continued on her way.

© Copyright Erik Kosberg 1997, 2007

Report on Citizen 257-63-22085

There wasn't anything that he wouldn't try at least once * except things that he was sure would kill him * it says here that he'd broken nearly every bone in his body at one time or another * and that he once started walking across the street without looking both ways like mom always said * and was almost flattened by a Rolls Royce sporting a My Other Car is a Yugo bumpersticker * he said that unique events gave him better ideas * that he was a writer * although I'll be damned if I can find any reference to anyone ever actually publishing his rantings * somehow this brush with death gave him the idea for a science fiction novel * artificial intelligence is widespread in machines of all types and in humans (as surgical implants and drugs) and that kind of crap * either a specific machine, or better yet, a program would be sentenced to death * the death threat to come from another machine/program, with the humans only vaguely aware of what was going on, if at all * sounds to me like a bad ripoff of the Rushdie affair * just like him to try to write a story about shit he didn't know the first thing about * but luckily before he could write it he was killed by a Yugo while trying to cut through traffic

© Copyright Erik Kosberg 1992, 2007

World's Most Incompetent Blogger?

I turned comments off while playing with the settings. Fine, they went off. I turned them back on while playing with the settings. Nothing happenened. Doh!