Archive for the ‘Kat Beyer’ Category
Instruction Manual
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007
Operating instructions
1. There are none.
2. Please remember not to try to steer it. Thank you.
Basic care
1. Leave it alone as much as possible.
2. Enjoy it.
3. Try not to use too much of it at once.
4. We strongly recommend that you do not produce radioactive or toxic waste, as this voids the warranty on protein codes.
5. Do not touch the wings of the butterflies, as it damages their scales. Thank you.
Emergency care
1. Study it very carefully.
2. Figure out which parts you did not leave alone.
3. You can panic, but please remember that that is a function of your glands. We advise an initial stage of panic followed by considered, careful action.
Tech support
You can call us at 1-800-277-1324. But it won’t do any good. If you’ve messed things up, we certainly won’t be able to figure them out.
Ted asks that you call us if you like the flamingos.
Parts list
Too numerous, particularly the moving parts, which are also changing all the time, therefore we feel it is not worth producing and revising a set list. But before you start using it, check to be sure these principal parts are intact:
1. Warm core.
2. Hard crust.
3. Watery surface.
4. Shell of air.
5. Local star (ensure correct distance, between 147m-153m km).
We hope you have found this manual useful. If not, we recommend that you re-examine your product more carefully, because it’s damn complicated, and we still haven’t figured out what it’s for, even though we like it a lot.
The End of the Mission
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
I was sitting on the front porch of my guesthouse, waiting for the mothership to come, enjoying the hot evening, when out of the grass they rose, one by one, little whirring beings with lanterns in their bottoms: blinking on; blinking off; blinking on. A local alien had told me the day before that this blinking was the way these little lantern-beings spoke of love.
I was still pondering this when the great beam blinked on and pulled me up into my mothership, among all my friends and cousins, “home sweet home” as the aliens say, and a surprise party for the end of the mission besides. Somebody had even hand-programmed a holograph saying “Happy End of Mission!” The cycling on it was wrong so it blinked on, blinked off, blinked on.