Archive for the ‘Ken Brady’ Category
Crossing the Streams: A Universal Traveler’s Guide to Public Urinal Etiquette
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Attention Human:
1. Idle chatter is discouraged. If you must talk while whizzing, stick with safe topics such as the exchange rates of galactic currencies. Avoid referencing the weather with terms like “pissing down.” Never talk about sports. Trust us.
2. No matter how appetizing it may be, the toilet cookie (urinal cake/deodorizor block in some sectors) is not a dessert item. Note that this will not stop certain species from eating it.
3. Some reptilian races may compliment and/or challenge you by releasing their urine in your direction. Remember that while pissing off an alien is generally a bad idea, pissing on an alien is, sometimes, necessary to your survival.
4. Do not put foreign objects in the urinal. Galactic restroom sanitation services have the technology to tag your items and send them back to you via rapid teleportation. You do not want this.
5. Don’t use your communicator to update your status or whereabouts, even if using less than 140 characters. It makes you look like a douchebag.
6. We realize the urge to look at your neighbors’ equipment is strong. Resist this urge, especially on rimworlds. Nothing is a faster weenie shrinker than close inspection by three dozen purple eyeballs.
7. Pointing and laughing will usually result in death.
8. Whistling and humming can often be taken as sexual come-ons. Unless you are into that sort of thing, keep your mouth closed and save that rendition of “It’s a Small World After All” for when you’re alone.
9. Do not smoke. Some species expel gases which are much more silent and deadly than you can imagine. And just because you haven’t smelt it doesn’t mean someone hasn’t dealt it.
10. Wash your hands. Push the button clearly marked “soap” as all other cleansers will melt your flesh. When drying, we suggest the lowest possible setting unless your insurance covers emergency limb replacement.
Keep these tips in mind and you’ll make it out of the bathroom alive.
This has been a service of the non-profit organization Not All Humans Are Dumbasses.
Let’s work together to make humanity look good – but not so good that they eat us!
Until Death
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
“Listen,” she says. “The way the nighttime air sings through the trees. Nature is brilliant. I love this world, I love this life, and I love you.”
Top down on the stolen Corvette you’re driving at a nick over a hundred fifty, all you can hear is the roar of the exhaust and the rush of wind. Her hair whips around and around and the smile on her face is angelic and mischievous at the same time.
You can believe that she really does love you, even with the trail of destruction left behind her, the smell of boiled blood and seared ozone, the laser pistol pressed to your side.
She digs the weapon into your ribs and says, “Go faster.”
“How far are we going?” you ask.
“As far as we can,” she says. “We’ll know when we’re there.”
Cities on fire, her eyes ablaze with the power of life and death, and you alone between her and man’s total obliteration. She never expected to meet someone like you, she says. She was supposed to kill everyone. Men fall short of her expectations. Always. Maybe, she says, you will be different.
“Our love will guide us,” she says. You believe her. It’s not that she cannot lie, rather that she doesn’t need to. The gun in your side, the weapons in orbit, her smile. To you they are one and the same, all devastatingly precise. Her power over you is absolute.
You decide you have to try, even if it kills you.
“Yes,” you say. “Yes, I love you. I will go with you.”
Her eyes soften, for just a moment. She’s thinking, processing, judging.
“I believe you,” she says.
Many things blur together. Time and space expand, contract, swirl. She takes your hands off the wheel. She climbs on your lap. She kisses you. She takes control. She pushes the accelerator to the floor. She pulls the trigger.
The nighttime air sings through the trees. It sings of love and death. It sings loudly.
Who knows what happens after that?