Archive for the ‘David Kopaska-Merkel’ Category
If Ancient Texts are Anything to Go By
Friday, October 16th, 2009
The Black Goat of the Woods, Shub-Niggurath, pranced obscenely through the red-litten clearing, its worshippers copulating frenziedly beneath its myriad udders. Soon, they would seize their obsidian knives and begin to slash at one another in an ecstacy of sanguinary lust. Shub-Niggurath would feast, but would take the best bits home for its Thousand Young. Especially its favorite, Shubbie the 422nd.
The Vermilion Gopher of the Plains, Aug’-Durlett, popped menacingly from one of its myriad holes. A nitid effluent of its malevolence poured forth, blotting out the sun. Traffic on I-70 came to a halt, and there was much rending of metal and spilling of entrails. Aug’-Durlett’s 230 Wives and 1973 Young would eat well tonight in yellow-litten Yah-Squireel.
Hamstur the Unspeakable, Tawny Gerbil of Doom, raced disturbingly upon the shrieking Wheel of Abomination. The slumber of sensitive souls was disrupted across the globe by a myriad ear-piercing squeaks, and even the mighty wizard Fak-bel Knaplung vainly pressed its withered hands to its shockingly hairy organs of audition.
The Ebon Cricket of the Sinister Bamboo Palace, Shrikk the Inaudible, played upon its shockingly malformed limbs a paean of charnel desecration and soul-destroying horror. Dogs throughout east Asia howled in anguish, annoying the just and unjust alike. Yabu Dabi-Tzhoo, Lord of Kay-Na’ein, lept through a foul depiction in stained glass of the Vivisection of the Myriad, and vanished from mortal ken, leaving behind an appalling stench.
Myriads flooded the streets as the Sigil of Unpleasantness, alluded to in the Pleistocene Upchuktic Manuscript, fulminated and was not consumed in the sky above Lichtenstein. Interminable was the wailing and many were the unattractive facial expressions manifested on the green-litten visages of the unhappy Lichtensteiners, for they could feel the fat profits from the tourist trade sublimating from their wallets, retail establishments, and entertainment facilities in the abhorrent effulgence discharged by the Lime-Green Sign.
Much was the inadvertent discharge of bodily fluids and other organic substances as the myriad Calamari of Chaos floated to the surface of the Pacific Ocean, broadcasting their unhallowed and vile thoughts to all within line-of-sight and, after nightfall, those reachable by reflection from the Heaviside layer.
As the human race, insignificant pustule on the acne-scarred backside of Planet Dirt, wailed, moaned, and perished, the Great Old Ones, including Retrievotep, He Who Inexorably Returns, and Nemah-Toad, She Who Burrows Within, began to feed.
And short-lived but heartfelt was the lamentation engendered therefrom.
End
Take it on the Lime
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
I had yet to sell our giant fruit anywhere. Of course the distributors were all in bed with Big Agra or frightened by anti-GM loons. In desperation, I’d taken this road trip. I’d naively expected a warmer reception from these prosaic midwesterners. The old man shook his head, scowling. He took his hand from the pocket of his frayed and patched overalls to point a thick finger at my sample stock.
“It ain’t natural,” he said, “for fruit t’be that big. No telling what kinda poison GM bugs are runnin’ around inside ’em. Besides, how could I USE a lime that big?” I didn’t try to argue.
Kumquats the size of grapefruit, limes the size of melons, etc., and tasty as could be. But I couldn’t sell them. I took myself back to the truck. I was about out of options. Prolonging this road trip seemed pointless, but I headed east towards North Snyder. The type face on the map suggested no great population center, but since selling my fruit was like trying to sell gold-plated dog poop, what did it matter?
To keep my mind off my troubles I watched for old stone fence posts, my truck trailing a plume of dust like an activist’s middle finger. After about 30 minutes I emerged from a small stream valley. About to shift gears, I noticed a party in full swing in front of a large farmhouse up ahead on the right. ZZ Top’s “Cheap sunglasses” was being covered reasonably well by a live band, and as I drew closer I could see plenty of beverages being put to good use. What did I have to lose? I swung sharp right and pulled into the driveway. A heavyset man with a huge mustache and white cowboy hat strolled over to the truck, holding a bottle of Corona.
“You lost, stranger?” There must have been close to a hundred people partying in his front yard. A couple of cows watched from the other side of the fence.
“No sir,” I said “I don’t think I am.” I nodded at his beer. “Could you use some limes? Free samples.” By this time, a small weatherbeaten woman had joined us, smiling broadly.
“What’s up, Al?” she asked. The farmer looked at me, then at my truckload of melon-sized limes. He nodded.
“Seems this nice young man thought our get-together was potluck.”
This low-tech viral marketing might work yet even more if they use a digital marketing agency to get more success, I thought, muscling a lime out of the truck. It was party time.
The end