business discussion with a record store troll

JW went up to it, the desk.

"How many web sites can we sell you today?" JW asked playfully, with venom in his stride, as he whisked past the proprietor, who was in his habitual mode of staring at a computer screen. JW advanced rapidly, as he headed for the far end of the record shop, pretending to forage.

"None," the scraggly owner retaliated. "You must really want something," he continued, in reference to the driving rain that was forcing other customers to stay at home and wait it out.

"No. My boss isn't coming in for another hour, and it's 11:30 already, and I'm bored. So I thought I'd come in and harrass you. If I'm really stupid, I may buy something. But I better not."

JW stared intensely at the used CDs. Nothing there to tempt him, not today anyway.

"So your band is playing at Blues Fest, eh?" JW interjected abruptly as he moved toward the check out area. "End of August? What time?"

"9:00"

"PM?"

"Yeah."

"How long?"

"Hour and a half."

"Good," JW replied with a hint of a smile. "You want me to set up a channel for live streaming video so your fans can watch you live, right? That's what you said you were interested in last time we talked."

"What? No. Not a live stream," he said gruffly, like it was some horrible thing. "I just want someone to take a video camcorder and film us playing, then give it to us in a file format that we can attach to a newsletter, or upload to YouTube and MySpace."

"What?" JW asked.

"But I don't want to spend any money on it. Anything beyond...breakfast...I'm not interested," the record store owner growled solemnly.

He continued in a violent display of vocal aggression and desperation: "I'm not spending anymore money on a band! Never again!"

JW could see through the grim demeanor and thought he saw a plain vanilla loser, a wounded animal who's angry at the entire world and all it representatives. The message was clear: if you want to do any work for me, it has to be free. Maybe I'll buy you a cheap breakfast at Hardees, for doing the video work.

"There are all kinds of free music marketing tools out there, in what they call Web 2.0. If you have the talent, the tools exist!" JW exclaimed as he exited the dilapidated rotting mess of a broken building that housed the record shop.

It was painfully obvious. He dumped a lot of money into his band, but nobody wants the kind of music his band plays, it's just a bar band doing cover tunes, and nobody cares.

Now he's bitter and spiteful, ending his days doing eBay deals, losing money again, but not knowing what else to do. Any talk of promotions, marketing, web sites, or video streaming is just more salt in the wounds.

सोमोने एल्स'एस सॉफ्ट दीप mud

Alenby just sat there. The more he sat, the more angry I became, though I'm not a big fan of being angry. It's just that Alenby was so smug in his sloughing and I hate sinking in someone else's soft deep mud.

"What's up Alenby?" the boss said, as I turned my gaze toward yet another board in the floor. I was searching for a precious office supply, in this case a paper clip, that I thought I heard myself drop. Perhaps it was nothing. Maybe that ill defined sound was the last gasp of a dying star somewhere, triumphant in its fry, yelping its swan song across the cosmic effluvium.

"Chillin'", said Alenby with a carefully prepared grimace, locally applied.

"Don't you have any work to do?" boss says in retaliation.

Alenby says nothing, jams a cigarette in his sneer, and storms out to sit in his car for a while, it's his security blanket and place of meditative refuge, the womb of all regrets. "If only I hadn't screwed my life up so bad ever since I was born", he prays to himself in solemn strange smokey silence.

night of the space people

night of the space people (9:59)
A sci fi mini-film, well done, good plot and acting.

Hope Is Emo 6

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theremin playing demo by Ether and Aether

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The Bolus

Orb, sphere, small round mass of mystery, the bolus.

The bolus is. It moves when I'm not looking.

Right now, its there. It sits there, still and silent. Unrevealing. Mute. Not telling any tales about its origin or purpose or next step.

Yesterday evening we spotted it on our property.

It appeared in the bushes under the livingroom window looking out toward the street in front of the house. It looked as though a child had poked at it with a sharp stick, or an animal had bit a hole in it, because there were some crumbs beside it, a chunk missing, which gave us visual access to an interior, which is soap-like and white.

It's covered with grassy twiggy exterior shell, which makes me see it as a possible waste material from some huge mammal. That scares me quite substantially. I can't sleep at night. I stay up typing speeches and lectures addressed to the bolus.

Then it moved, or was moved, to the driveway early next morning.

This was intolerably odd.

Our bolus had neither wings nor feet nor any indication that it was alive and in command of any senses. It looked neither composed nor decomposed, and did n't bear any marks of servitude or direction. It seemed pointless, absurd, imprecise because unknown.

I still don't know what it is. It's round, it's almost the size of a billiard ball, a bit smaller. Heavy. A lard or soap-like hardness, not like a fluff mushroom or puffball toadstool. Our bolus is now sheltered in the abandoned haunted doghouse out back by the squash garden.

It's like being insane, this not knowing what something is, but it exists. Without explanation, without destination, without history, without value, but it's there. Staring at you. Daring you to define and exploit it.

I tried to kill it a few hours ago, but...did you hear that? I did. Shhh. There it is again. Look. It's right there, on the floor now, by the door to the attic. How did it get in? No, I'm wrong. It...it's over by the lampstand now. It knows how to roll from spot to spot and can change direction and speed when it wants to.

It seems to like me. It had been on voyages to remote parts of consciousness and now I cannot be me, for I am now the bolus, only the bolus, I ... uh ... huh? ... I feel woozy and my arms are shaking ... I am ... the bolus. As the bolus I come to ... uh ... ummm ... the ... the ... bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus.


It keeps rubbing against my ankles like a little kitten might do. It tickles a bit. I don't find the sensation unpleasant in the slightest. To the contrary, it makes me dream of days gone by, when I was a small child without weapons or language, when I was easy to defeat and invade telepathically. When I was at the mercy of the bolus and it's every command.

bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus. bolus.



I love the bolus. I obey the bolus. I am the bolus. The bolklsulaa'ld ldk ji'aussssss++++=d=d=wet b=5

bolus. bolus.