As a boy, Malzberg watched Leviathan’s approach on CNN for effectively 24 hours a day; when his mom dragged him to bed he’d DVR everything overnight and skim it during the next day’s commercials and political scandal. As the impossible whale drifted past Mars orbit and fetched up in the Lagrangian point, though, earthly matters faded away.
He’d break away from the TV just long enough to peer desperately into his backyard telescope, thinking maybe, maybe he caught a gleam of its spacepocked body.
“Get some sleep, Malzberg,” his mother would sigh. Even then nobody called him by his first name.
The problem with subterranean medical care is, at heart, a cotton shortage.
“Ragachak think it infected,” says Ragachak mournfully, picking at scabs. “Ragachak not know why!”
“Probably because all five of you used the same bandage,” sighs Doctor von Bloöd. “I keep telling you goblins that sharing is not always caring. Nurse, sterilize these?”
The nurse breathes fire on the instrument tray.
“I’ll lance it, but you’ll need to keep it clean,” says von Bloöd. “Can’t you waylay some do-gooders carrying clean water for once?”
“Ragachak try!” chirps Ragachak. “But it hard to tell before we drop the big rock.”
Shit yeah!
You only get one club in street golf, usually a big one. Some people tape an aluminum bat to the side of their clubs, which is called, in street golf jargon, “bat-taping.” It’s technically illegal. It’s also sort of inadvisable to call anyone on it, because they have a bat.
Anyway you basically just hit the ball as fast as you can until you get to the manhole with the little pointy flag in it. Whoever doesn’t get arrested wins.
Street golf!
You’re allowed to use parkour but only if you admit that you look like a douchebag.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
“Give it!” says Boko, and, grabbing the TransfoJet 5000, he shoves little Lucia down the stairs. She tumbles into a heap at the bottom and wails.
Now Boko has Maser Man and the TransfoJet 5000. He glances slyly toward Jamon, playing with the Glop Fortress.
He stomps and yanks hair. He bites and shoves. He becomes a terror, and the other children flee before him.
At last Boko finds himself alone in the playhouse. He has all the newest, shiniest toys, but nobody else to play with them.
It’s completely awesome and he lives for a hundred years and dies happy.
Philemon is in his Riddling Hall; and therefore he is riddling.
“Consider this: may any touch Our Imperial Majesty without permission?” he asks.
The assembled philosophers rumble, no.
“Yet does a man’s shadow not cling to his feet?”
“Not when he skips,” chirps a little girl, as the crowd gapes around her.
“You again!” sniffs Philemon. “Well, consider this: in my Riddling Hall I am lit with a thousand lanterns, my shadow trapped under my feet! Can I not be said to have conquered darkness?”
“Well, if you trap your shadow in a box,” asks Corbin, “what does that make you?”
Monday, September 1, 2008
Gheorghe’s been trying to flag a ride for hours and the sun is trembling on the swamp horizon: the dark chases his feet down the dirt of the road. He’s friendless, and the woman he loved is lost to him. His panflute pipes a lonely cockeye’s song.
A cold wind tosses the kerchief bindle over his shoulder, and the few coins in his possession spill onto the ground. He drops to his knees to scrape them up.
Six silver dollars stare at him, all on edge.
Midnight. Gheorghe Zamfir stands at the crossroads, shivering, knowing the devil will be there soon.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
It is at night, during those weeks when the moon starves or gorges, that Howard finds himself drawn to read it. The URL is unpronounceable, full of strange and squamous diacritics; but it crawls from his fingers even when his browser refuses to autocomplete.
The story is grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer. His attention is captured by a vast description: a page in a book which, the story says, cannot convey in mere words its own unutterable hideousness.
Howard imagines going mad, reading it.
“The window!” he gasps, scrambling to click its corner X. “The window!”
Friday, September 5, 2008
You don’t need tongs when you’ve got chitin.
Cadmilus can thrust his hand hot in the forge-heart for minutes, waiting for the steel to flare white, and all his skin will do is redden. The hard part is remembering not to scratch his nose afterward. That’s what got his father, in the end: or so old Heph said, when they buried him.
He keeps promising (on his shuffling rants around the caldera, always avoiding the real work) to introduce Cadmilus to some women like him, too. Cadmilus doesn’t really want that. Who wants to be caressed by a fiddler’s claw?
Monday, September 8, 2008
“Well, we did it!” chuckles Jupe. “We solved the Case of the Pickled Papers!”
“With a little help from Nugget,” grins Frank. “Isn’t that right, boy?”
“Woof!” says Nugget, and licks his hand.
“But one thing still puzzles me,” says Jupe. “Why did Chet Norris leave his car keys on the other end table?”
“Why, you’re right–he’s ambidextrous!”
“Sounds like we might have the Case of the Clockwise Keyring on our hands!”
“Can I change out of the suit first?” Nugget pants. “The tail is really wedg–”
“You can damn well stay in character!” says Frank, with a friendly kick.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008