StoryTime(JJPsycho)

Editors note:

A very bizarre tale of love, magic and mayhem in the mountains. By one of our readers, who just couldn't hold back. Twisted but holds your attention

They walked down Muskrat Street, hand in hand, oblivious not only to the manic-depressive in their midst, but to the havoc that would soon precipitate. Chaos stood at the top of the hill awaiting his cue. Finally, at 3:54, Rex the Raven bombed the two innocents with birdseed excretions and the psychopath's fun began. Immediately, he sent a steamroller down the hill after the two lovebirds. Luckily for Jack, Jane was a sorceress and they leapt off the ground, powered by enormous coils of a Slinky. They were airborne just in time to avoid the steamroller which had already made pancakes of a dozen ``look-at-the-nice-psychopath!'' -tourists and the infamous Aardvark's truck.

Jane left Jack in a protective shell of souvenir Banff Springs Hotel pens and swooped down and grabbed the psychopath who had just popped a power Pez. Now he had the power of flight as well. After many swipes, dives, and nifty moves Jane learned while watching all-star Wrestling, she booted the psychopath in the Fruit of the Looms and sent him sailing across the sky. Jane was trying to kick the psychopath all the way to the sun, but misjudged her angle of impact and sent him into the side of Cascade Mountain. The psychopath made a valiant effort to free fall down to Banff Ave., but his chute got stuck and he ended up breaking his kneecap. There was minimal damage to the asphalt but it was reason enough to invoke another two months of street repair. Proud of the money the taxpayers would now have to pay because of his injury, the psychopath sauntered/hobbled over to Jane who stood beside the pen shell/Jack. Jack was whimpering. He said, ``Hello, you fool. I love you. Come join the joyride." Then luckily he blacked out.''

``You have overcome great odds and oddities today Jane, but tomorrow will be a whole different Corn Flake,'' the psychopath said. ``Let's set a date for round two.'' Jane thought that was just marvy and she borrowed a pen from Jack and scribbled an illegible note on the psychopath's forehead. Happily, the psychopath limped home to plan his revenge. Jane and Jack went on a picnic.

The Cigarette

The smoke drifted effortlessly upward through the warmish, stale air only to disappear, at eye level, into a pale haze. With slightly yellowed fingers, the gray butt is handled deftly with the care a shark would handle his cue. Patience begotten by impatience under scores the forces which lay motion to this right hand. Like the very lungs themselves the interaction begins. A soothing stable moment followed by the impatient, sourly driven journey from table to lips. The sting that the eyes never quite learn to accommodate for and the orange molten glow signaling the unseen journey of once cherished air through the eye of the reaper himself and into the flesh. When the vacuum is no more and the eyes widen as the inner peace sets in, the hand falls quietly to the tabletop once more.

Not a very common tabletop, a wood unknown to the layman, but common enough for this place of drink. The nicks and cracks speaking years of weathering and abuse. The particularly long, deep scratch indicative of a knife's bite or perhaps a cut from a ring while the rather common waitress with uncommon features laid gem to wood in an orgasmic, if not forced, reception of the salty juices of vulgarity. Fitting that the medium grown fingernail that now obtrusively picks at the scratch is worn and crammed with days, perhaps weeks of inattention and the not so orange cherry of the cigarette gently rows a new mark of distinction onto the table's face.

Actions of hands speak much louder than the breathe of air through the voice box as their use in the romantic languages betray. If betrayal of thought is their motive, what do these hands say?

The cherry brightens lightly and the fingers abruptly stop their work. Slower yet as if a step behind it's masters, the smoke in the room sways gently to and fro. With subtly disguised ease the cigarette is journeyed once more to the lips and the pungent fumes burn the eyes again, only more so. They are wide and darting with the pupil focused and poised like a mongoose in the heat. In the glistening reflection of their amply watered surface, a whitened figure can be seen to seat itself directly across the table. With slow, easy motion the seers hand is moved out of the visible light and assumed to rest on the table.

The stillness possessing the room is icy and only the infrequent blink of now wide opened eye betrays any notion that time has stopped. The smoke hangs motionless around the head of the new sitter and remains so as he moves his head forward into the light to cast a gloomily featured face on the glaring black pupil. The eyes are deep and the sockets hard as if chiseled in stone. They blink not, and fiercely stare in to the unwelcoming eyes of the seer. A blink and he is quickly out of sight and bang the picture has changed as his eyes have now settled themselves on the cigarette still burning in the right hand.

Chris Sharkey

LITTLE BROTHER

The world is becoming more and more dependent on computers for everything from Manufacturing goods to banking our money. The government, business and private citizens all have and use computers. People who are not `computer literate' are soon going to find it almost impossible to work in our society. Thinking machines are in almost everybody's work place, from a common calculator, to a dedicated food service computer, or your CD player. The computer has evaded all aspects of our lives. Computer literacy, has become a literal thing. Now available for almost any computer are books. You no longer need to have a huge library to shelve all that knowledge. Books of all descriptions are available to the public from the Bible, and other religious doctrines, to travel books, and novels. You no longer need that pen and paper, because you can type it all into the screen or soon write on a tablet and it will appear on the computer screen.

Many advantages have been gained through the access to computer technology, but as we approach a society run on plastic (credit/debit cards) and an end to the need for paper money. Instintaniusly money can be deposited from your work, withdrawn by a business for your purchase and you never even saw it. Already most businesses have credit checking computers, that read your card and check to see if you can use it. Bank machines can do everything for you from a simple deposit or withdrawal to paying bills and updating your bank book, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Big brother isn't here yet but he is getting older, as we rush forward into the future, if we neglect to learn this new language we will be left behind, man has this curious tendency to leave the old and weak behind. The language of technology should become common place. As a new generation advances forth, with there new bilingualism, many older people are left confused, due to their lack of knowledge about computer devices. You don't have to know everything, just the basics like what it is, how to do your work with it and that its a lot easier than it seems. Man has always been good with tools and the computer is another tool, we may be loosing sight of this fact as we allow them to take over more and more of our responsibilities. The more the computers do for us the less people are needed to do the same thing, control becomes a dictatorship over the machine, thus the people.