Short Stories

Shorts

2005-12-31T06:43:00.000-08:00

Shorts

I just want to give a brief outline as to why and what I see this subject heading being about. Short stories. That’s it really. Not much of an article it is? Ok here comes the slightly longer version of why and what.

What the subject heading “Short Stories” is about for me is easier to explain. The idea is to write stories that I have floating around in my head and try to “capture them” not as some major pieces of prose but as a story a saga. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than half an hour to read, somewhere between 3000 – 5000 words. Remember the TV show “The tales of the unexpected” by Roland Dahl. It was a half an hour show with a story that always had a twist to them. The books were better but I first saw the TV show and then got into reading his text.

Well that kind of length, that’s what I would like to find, about twenty minutes to half any hour. I’d like a twist, but not the “Roland Dahl twists”, not like that at all. More like a roll than a twist, something that makes you laugh a bit and think bit, nothing clever like I didn’t see that coming twist. That is like a card trick, you just don’t know how it is done. No I want the stories to be simple but compelling in some way.

I want to use saga as a way of talking, story as communication, not just entertainment. This fits into the Nordic Mythology idea we have talked about, making up stories to explain things and using the form of “saga” to express that. The stories will be set in the now, these are new stories about “here-now”, things people can or could do. They are all made up in my head. I will use things I know about, things I have personal been involved in as a base jump for a story. So the story is fiction not biographical even if I write in first person singular, (I did this or I did that). That is important not to mix up fiction with what people believe to be reality. So one last time, these are works of fiction that have “backgrounds of reality” to make them more seem more contemporary.

Why write them now and why in the context of the website? Two good questions, I’ll start with the second part first. This website or blogg, or whatever it is called, it about lots of things. “How 2 die”, how two people share the journey together. It is also about “How to die”, how the process of transition from living to being dead works, from start to end. All sorts of things you can do, on all levels, from the most practical till the most spiritual, emotionally creativity and physically. It is also about How to live. Because as long as you are not actually dead of your terminal illness you are still legally alive.

The way I see it, is this is a perfect time in my life for me to start with something new. Partly because I have to, I can no longer paint because it is physical to hard for me, I have written a book so I know what entails and I need to be able to work on short-term projects, as we must take one day at a time. Which is not the easiest thing to learn, it takes practice to get it right. And as it happened while joking with Elsa about something on one of our walks we got the idea that it could be funny. Since then several people have given me brilliant ideas for short stories so I save them in file with maybe only a name. But I have a few building up that I can just pick up and work with when ever. So I’d like to thank my friends for some of the ideas you have been giving me, hope you see them in the stories and laugh when you remember what you wrote or said, I pick up all the bits and pieces you throw my way.

In the long run if you have something you want to do, you want to learn something new you express the basic desire to live, which is more likely to, affects you energy toward a positive perspective on the situation than start to focus on the negative. When I say “negative energy” I mean things like depression and panic, not sadness or sorrow. Sadness and Sorrow are a big part of the process and should be a big part of all the activities you work on as much as Joy and Happiness. It is not about kidding yourself or anyone else that this journey is going anywhere else than where it is going.

So I hope you enjoy the stories for what they are.

Rob

The Sushi War

2005-12-30T06:45:00.000-08:00

The Sushi Wars in Aspudden started some time around August in 2005, when Café, across from the road from Aspuddens Sushi started with an open act of aggression, The hand-written sign, Daily Sushi 60 kr (crowns) had been tied onto the lamppost by the mini roundabout that spins round the inside of the zone. The zone contains Aspuddens Sushi, the Junk shop, Café and the DVD Games boutique.

So what do you get daily for your 60 crowns?
I’ll tell what the sign says you get.

Daily Sushi, 8 pieces 60 kr
3 Salmon, 1 Prawn, 1 Tofu, 3 Rolls
Todays Lunch 55 kr
Choice of Japanese warm dish
Monday to Friday, 11.00 – 15.00
Miso soup Tea Coffee included.

But the insult goes so much deeper than the offer itself. The fact that such a café, such a sad little brown place, that has survived unchanged since 1972, in all its’ fullest ugliness, should even contemplate sushi is more than a man can stand. The miserable brown décor seeps boredom from every inch of its uninterestingness. You can hear the groans of color as they get sucked into the vortex of a spectra-collapse. The glass-fronted fridge display cabinet, exposes the extremely limited range of uninspired sandwiches, that inevitable include a ring of red bell pepper and a slice of sweating cheese. The bread if that is possible to call it “bread”, what with the European regulations concerning foodstuff, is a white pulpy mass enclosed in what looks like wet brown paper. I believe this brownness is meant to be the outer crust of the bread. It might just as well be spray painted onto the pulpy mass, in the factory, where they produces ten of thousand of these rolls, that make up many an indigestible moment, for the lesser discerning customers, of such establishments, as this sad little Café.

The “taxi yellow” light-sign with the word “SUSHI” leaves no doubt as to the underlying vision of the place in question, it doesn’t bother with names. There is no need to describe anything beyond the basic one-word of what it is. You can buy a coffee and a roll. In todays’ somewhat hysterical marketing age everything is made more exciting by calling them by names that are endless in length and combination, (with several different language bases). So you could be forgiven for imagining that a certain “pureness of thought” might be gleamed from Cafés minimalism, a brief relief from all the creative attempts to help you believe that a long-named cup of coffee is worth twice the price. But the crushing monotoneism of Cafés essence merely reduces things to objects that are unable to hold on to more than a singular description. Coffee and roll, 25 crowns.

There are people who find solace in this particular type of service atmosphere. Many people brought up environments where all “flash and flared” was considered a conceit, would find a real home-from-home feel in Café. People who found any form of attention uncomfortable. People that preferred “non-space” to be in during the in take of food/fuel, before returning to some manual task in the local area. Older people who find the early 1970’s the classic “uninspired period” a blast from the past. Like taking a peek back in time, to when they were in their forties and still looking forward to another twenty odd years of work and they would still be useful. There are many people you could imagine popping into Café who actively seek such an environment that it has to offer. What on the other hand, is beyond all my own possible belief is that any of these type of “punters” would ever require sushi to eat.

Aspuddens Sushi, on the opposite side of the war zone, had once been Aspuddens Grill. It is by no means the most Asian inspired of restaurants when it comes to interior design. The tables and chairs are still the same as they were when it was the Grill, white metal chairs with meshed seats and a cushion. The tables are round with a single leg in the middle that splays out into pipes at the bottom, these pipes functioning as the feet of the table. The sign outside Aspuddens Sushi is the classic restaurant sign form the late 1970’s with a large Danish looking “fisherman come worker” holding onto a gigantic blackboard. It is on this blackboard that all the alternative offers are hand written, you used to be obliged to write in chalk, but they now have white pens, that gives a chalk like impression, but this text you have to wipe off with a wet rag. Which is better otherwise kids would jut wipe their sleeves over it for the fun it. The marquise hanging from the roof still has he words “Aspuddens Grill” written on the front flap if I’m not mistaken.

Aspuddens Sushi has nothing what so ever to do with the ambience of the place, it is the fact that Aspuddens Sushi exists entirely for the preparation, production and selling of Sushi. Laz and Lulle are the two men that brought Sushi to Aspudden. It is there mission and purpose in life, They grew up in Asia, Indonesia or the Philippians, or somewhere like that, and after getting a decent schooling in the “Art of Sushi”, they set off into the hinterlands of the frozen North, to find the spot from which they would start to spread the glorious simplistically divine concept of Sushi. The spot they found ended up being Aspuddens Sushi, just next to the Junk shop.

For those of you that unfamiliar with Aspudden I will paint a quick sketch of the place. Aspudden is in its’ own way very individual, it is a pleasant and rather pretty place. Many of the buildings on the high street are from the early part of the 1900’s. They have their own individuality built into them. They each have their own different topping and roofing design, giving an individual irregularity, which manages to blend easily together into an overall style. The Underground station “Aspudden” is two stops from the beginning of Central Stockholm, if you go by the old “customs gates” of Stockholm (seven stops into Central Station). Aspudden is joined to the main Southern Island of Stockholm by the drawbridge at Liljeholmen. There are three main areas that are considered to be part of the same general theme, Gröndal, Aspudden and Midsommarkransen. Fairly large green areas of both park and heath join these three areas; we even have a large pond, Trekanten, and the lake Mälaren is not more ten minutes walking distance.

During the 60’s these areas got quite run down and many people with serious social problems got moved into the apartments, making the area a nightmare to live in. A general overhaul in the Eighties changed that, they renovated the buildings and moved the junkies further south, deeper in gettoland. Finally the selling off of almost all the “council houses” to tenants, during the last five years has totally redefined these three areas into highly attractive and expensive (but still not “too” expensive areas). Now we have a lot of “thirty-somethings” with newborn children are moving into expensive flats, that they have taken large out mortgages on. There are still the people that moved here during the 80’s with older teenage kids, waiting for their kids to move out so they can sell their flats, make a bundle of money and move to the house they dreamed of, or of into country, or just stay put in Aspudden, sitting on a nice nest egg for the future.

What does not work well in Aspudden are new shops. We are too close to town so the general needs of the local population are really nothing more than the video/sweets/tobacco and DVD shop, a food shop for the basics, a few estate agents, a few hairdressers, a pizza place, a hamburger place, a curry place, a flower shop, a toy shop for small kids, a place you can get a decent cup of coffee and a Sushi bar, (there is a specialist shop for special video camera equipment). Everything else in the way of shops and services, that have tried to establish themselves in Aspudden, just fails after about six months, because nobody buys anything.

Aspudden used to a bit famous for the Tattoo artists “Doc Forest” and his (I think now ex-companion) Mia. But Doc Forest was one of the few tattoo artist in Stockholm in the 70’s, and probably the best known for years, before it became so mega trendy and now you have people and their pulsating pins on every street corner more or less.

Now three years ago when we first saw that the “dingy-diner” Aspuddens Grill was being converted into something new we held out little hope. Aspuddens Grill was one of the low points in the whole place. The only time you went there was on Sunday, around one o’clock, when the hangover was just letting go, and your body screamed for grease to oil all the dehydrated parts of you head. The fat used in the “production” of the meals was the only possible food to calm some the physical effects of last night enjoyments. But when it became clear that we were now to have our own Sushi house right here in Aspudden, we were delighted. What freedom of choice. We no longer had to go over the bridge (two stops or ten minutes in the car) to our favorite Sushi house in Hornstull, Genki. We could now take that stroll down the road pick up the Sushi and return to comfort of our home to enjoy the full delights of Sushi in our kitchen all together.

We went out and bought special square sea green plates with matching soya bowls to be able to serve the sushi, in the only way such delicacies should be treated, gracefully and with a sense of harmony. As it turned out we were far from the only ones delighted by the new developments in the culinary choice of Sushi. It was possible for the first week or two, to go in and order but after three weeks it was impetrative that all orders were phoned in, well in advance if you were to get your sushi. This is normally not a problem beyond a relatively simple planning. Due the cost, which is not extravagant, but more than an average everyday meal at home, Sushi was going to be eaten on a Friday or a Saturday evening. We would simple agree which evening and then agree who ordered for what time and who picked up. I normally arrived home first, ordered and then my wife would make a slight detour, to pick it up the order, on her way home from the Underground.

This was when we began to find out that in some cases you have to be very clear and concise. The two men from Aspuddens Sushi have two very separate jobs; neither does the others ones work. Laz is the Sushi man. He always leans forward, slightly bent over his cool disk, endlessly in slow motion, making piece after piece after piece of sushi. He seldom looks up form his work. He wears an Asian style cooks jacket and a frown. Lulle is the people man; he deals with the crowd, takes the orders, answers the telephone, receives the payment and does the chat. Lulle is the outgoing type with a bowl haircut and very round eyes. He gets the Miso soup into the plastic cups and puts the plastic lock on just before he ties off the unmarked white plastic bag and hands you your parcel of luxury.

It’s Lulle you speak to on the phone when you ordered. They have a set menu of pieces, you say ten pieces and you got like; three rolls, five salmon, one prawn and a tuna, the normal sushi kind of deal. The idea was you said the names (Small, Medium, Large and Luxury) for different combinations and they knew number of pieces, what you wanted and what you got. They had some with other names but you got a menu to take home with you, with the telephone number, and all the relevant information you needed to communicate with them. The name of the set menu, already described in detail, so there was no need to talk about it.

“Aspuddens Sushi” (Lulle when he answers the phone), you then said, “I want to order two large ones please”, to Lulle, he said “two large ones” back at you. “What time?” And you said “7 o’clock”; Lulle hummed a bit and said, “Ok seven o’clock”. If you had said six thirty he would have said seven o’clock, (unless you had phoned at five) you then put the phone down, Lulle wrote this down on his pad, mumbled something to Laz and the ball was rolling.

When it comes to sushi you can have different approaches. You can look at it as a selection of exotic seafood’s that are nice to mix in many ways. You can be as exciting as you like, you can go for the squid or any of the colorful creations that they can create. Some people feel that the set menu system is some carefully created Zen like mixture of quality and properties, so to change such ancient knowledge would be presumptuous. Some care only about the amount of food they get, it’s the numbers that are of interest, 15 bits sounds good. Our own particular approach to sushi, may be considered bland and dull by some, but is based on the simple fact that we both find two of the pieces of sushi to be the finest. Our selection is always Rolls and Salmon.

So when ordering sushi we were in the position of having to change the basic conversation with Lulle, which isn’t easily done. I have no idea how much Swedish Lulle has ever been exposed to in the way of language education. I would presume very little, if any what so ever. The few words that Lulle can put together into sentences, to enable him to survive living in this country are limited to the bare essentials.

Describing to him that we want only the Lax (Salmon) and the Rulla (Rolls), and nothing else, was not an easy task. We had to repeat ten pieces, just Lax and Rulla, two of them, ok. Just Lax and Rulla? Yes just Lax and Rulla. How many you want? Ten pieces, in each, just Lax and Rulla, Lax and Rulla? Yes. After making the same order every weekend for few months Lulle got to know who we were, so he would get it straight away. After that there was never any problem.

I think it was the first time we tried to order this simple menu that Lulle gave us the in depth detailed description of the rising price of tuna fish on the world market, and why we couldn’t get compensation for removing this particular piece of sushi from the set menu. We never wanted any compensation for the tuna replacement. I remember that being one of the only the conversions I have had, when none of the participants had more than a 3% idea of what was being said by the others at any one time.

And now this black cloud. Cafés act of open aggression. The taxi-yellow light sign with the word “SUSHI”. Ok I have seen many a disappointed sushi hunter turn up around seven o’clock on a Friday evening, believing that they could walk into Aspuddens Sushi and out again, with their order of sushi in the next ten minutes. You have to real about stuff like this. Lulle is as clear a crystal. “Have you ordered?” “No”. “It will take, hum over an hour, nine o’clock, you must order first”. “Oh”. They may spend the final seconds staring at the menu before their brains register the information, but they all leave quickly enough. The rest of us that have ordered, are waiting patiently for that “special nod and point” from Lulle when your order is up and ready to go.

How can anyone be so naïve to think you can stroll in here at seven without ordering, are you mad or newly moved in from Mars. Lulle does his point and nod, his arm is like arched into a bow shape movement that ends up with his finger pointing at you. You step up the counter and the deal is done. You pay and walk out with you order of Sushi to go.

Is it these people, these people who don’t order that are now to be catered for in Café. Are they to slip over the round-a-bout, cross the zone (or rather over the two zebra crossings to be on the safe side) and calmly be able to purchase some pre packed selection in a box that says one word on it?

The End

Drunken Monkey and Sun

2005-12-29T09:58:00.000-08:00

He would watch the Yellow Sun in awe of the beauty of form and function. He would feel dizzy inside and yet perfectly clear. The full awareness of the Yellow Suns shape and structure, once again, filled him to spilling over. He could feel all of her functions, her moveable parts, hidden wheels under hinged bonnets, like the inside of his own body. He saw in his minds eye her smallest of forms each fitting into the next. He knew the Yellow Sun was broken; he felt the Yellow Sun to be perfectly beyond form.

If you were to pronounce his entire name using the correct phonetics, then it is pronounced;

"drung-kn-mung-ke" but his name; had slipped into Drunken Monkey, it was taken for granted that was what he was called, instead of his name Drunkn Munky.

The Stable Temple was much smaller than the great Eastern Ridge Temples that were built higher up on the eastern range of the mountain range. In fact the building itself was first built as Stables for the pack animals that had pulled and carried the monks and their tools high into the eastern ridge of the Holy Range. Once the newer Temple buildings began to take shape most of the tools and equipment were moved to higher ground, leaving the old stables more or less empty and waiting to fall apart in the winds of storms of winter.

A few of the novices that had wanted to join monasteries would sleep there when the cold got so bitter that they could no longer endure to wait patiently. The custom of the Eastern Ridge Temples is a novice comes to a certain point along the path that leads to the Eastern Ridge Temples and then and there waits; there is to be “no time” before he continues, for it is not until the novice can make this “no time” that they are ready to begin the next part of their journey, the journey into the Eastern Ridge High Temples and then and there start their training in all things concerning, Mind, Body and Soul.

It had worked like this for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Once a novice left the “making of no time” to find shelter and minimal warmth lower down in the old stables, it wasn’t long before they returned back to their villages and started a live the life of a small farmer, living on meager crops. If they were lucky they could support one or two of the five or six children that got birthed, half of the children would die before they reached two to three years old. Enough did live to produce a population that was more or less in equilibrium with the amount of food that could be produced at this altitude. The Eastern Ridge Temples were able to produce much more food, due to the fact they had much more manpower and could use their knowledge and the extra labor to build irrigation systems that caught the mountain water high up on the range and then lead that water it into a system of fields around the temple. Water is not easy to keep at high altitude as is always strives downwards leaving the soil dry and infertile.

There is a legend that one bitterly cold night a novice was making little progress with “no time” was sat in his spot by the path, along with a few more souls scattered around in different yoga positions, most wrapped and huddled in the only blanket they had ever owned. This novice saw in his minds eye a golden vision coming from the ruined stables below him on the ridge. He stood up and began to walk and stumble into the harsh winds and snow blusters. His body was weak with fatigue and the lack of food during his waiting. He stumbled over his blanket as he took each uneasy step after the other toward to stables. Several times he fell over, but each time managed to pick himself up and continue to stumble onwards to the stables, this is the way the legend started that one had to be drunk to leave the Path to go to stables. Drunk on desire.

The legend said that “the novice” who had the vision, saw that one day this stable would be a Temple. The only small problem was he was alone in the stables without a Monk or Master to guide him. This was impossible The Temple made no acknowledgment of this act. A Novice needs a Monk, as a Monk needs a Master, a Master has no needs, but has chosen to teach the Monk as the Monk chooses to help the Novice learn, just like sugar beat needs water as much as it needs sun shine. Such is the way of training; there is no other structure that can convey that depth of knowledge and wisdom. In the legend that novice was told to stop to wait but to start to study until such time would come to the stables and begin the instruction. Until then he was going to have to go it on his own. The novices name was Nine Dots.

Nine Dots began to make the old stables into a building that had some basic form and structure. When the first monks had arrived on the Eastern Ridge and started to build the Temples they had constructed one of their irrigation tables, a small one, just next to the stables. So there was a field that could be worked, planted and harvested with crops for animals and the workers. During the first time, the stables had been full of activity; many animals with materials and workmen came up from the Valley to build. They stayed there many months at a time so it was important to have food close at hand.

Over the years the fields had grown quite wild but every year a sugar beat crop grew, beans and peas amongst weeds and other herbs that had found refuge in this artificial paradise on the lower slopes of the Eastern Ridge. These “crops” had been eaten mostly but by the birds and rats, and few hungry homebound novices. Few edible things were to be found in the stables, but he did find a largish old clay jar of rice, tucked carefully away, from tiny teeth, it must have been left years before. There had been some dead bugs in it, but the rice would keep him alive until the first spring harvest. The Eastern Ridge irrigation fields gave three main harvests a year, spring summer and the late harvest. This was because of the delayed planting patterns developed by the monks to keep as much fresh food as possible growing at all times in high altitude. Temple novices, Monks and Masters never ate meat; so the crops were beans, peas, sugar beat, rice and herbs and special medicinal weeds that grew up here.

What he did find of use in the old stables ruins, was a quite a few old tools, they were rather worn down, well used, but still tools are not easy to make but are essential if you want to make anything. Nine Dots spent his days and months fixing things. The roof of the stables had collapsed in entirely on one side, which was the most important thing to get mended to keep some warmth inside and snow outside. He had to burn a mixture of dried animal dung and straw as fuel; there were no trees to be found growing here on the mountain, so you there was no wood to burn, no animals were ever killed up here, so the fat from them couldn’t be used as candles. The dung came from the pack animals that were the only transport system between this “upper” world of the Temple and the Valley world below.

With the influx of tourists wanting to see the Great Eastern Ridge Temples, local guides would bring up the some tourists with as many as “thirty beasts” during one day. Nine Dots offered to give the pack animals shelter in the stables and looked after them, for a small price, while the guides then lead the tourists into the Garden part of the Temple Garden complex that they were allowed to visit. This gave Nine Dots a small amount to cash to buy things, he could keep fixing up the stables but most importantly, he collected the dung and dried it to burn so he had fire and warmth. The Temple didn’t use dung, as it made the Temple smell of shit; they used special oils that they pressed from one of their crops. The oil the Monks made and used gave them fire, light, warmth and sense of bliss due its divine fragrance, a bit like lavender, rosemary, thyme and a “greenness” that was hard describe as a smell but rather like a color. Green like life.

Over time other novices that had left the path of waiting without finding “no time”, but they could not find it within their hearts to return straight away home to their own village. They would come to Nine Dots and asked if they may stay a while with him in the stables. The other novices, Monks and Masters saw a new drunkard staggering down the hill into the endless wheel of Karma. only a drunkard would choose such a path to ruination.

Nine Dots needed the all help he could get and never said no to anyone as long as they did some work, here was “time”, time to do something. Mostly the novices would only stay a few days to collect themselves after the exhausting waiting on the Path, so they did little but stare at things and mumble, but if they could hold on to the other end of a bit of wood as Nine Dots banged in the joints. He could now buy wood from the valley below with the money he made from the stables; the guides would bring the supplies and wood with them along with the tourists.

To try to find “no time” is hard without the training, so the novices were often forced to push themselves to their very own limitations. Which was the point of the entire exercise in the first place. If you really wanted to develop and live the life of Monk and then maybe if you have it in you a Master, there can be no other desire. That must be the only thing for which you live and die. It is only then that you can devote yourself to Mind, Body and Soul. Some of the novices stayed with Nine Dots in the stables and slowly they began to form a small group of seven young men all somewhere around the ages of 230 moons to 280 moons, (they didn’t count Sun years they counted in Moons, and then had they would use “Venus rotation cycle” as part of the calculations which made for some rather complex mathematics’). It was hard to get any idea how old these people were, but “young men” will suffice as description enough.

The central theme in the training of a Monk is the structure and form of all things. For once you understand them you can transcend that which you know by heart. You can never go beyond your own limitations until there are no longer limited. The best way to achieve this goal of transcending the structure is to repeat the structure and form over and over again so carefully and so perfectly until you transcend all form and structure leaving it as an empty shell. The training is based on the three principalities of life, Mind, Body and Soul. It is in these three areas that all focus and training are to be directed. Each separate and each joined in pairs and all joined in a triad. A perfect equal red triangle in a white cycle is the symbol of the Eastern Ridge Masters.

The Monks and Masters of the Eastern Ridge Temple trained in special techniques of kung fu, an ancient and sacred form of the Art of Kung fu, which emphasizes form and structure. Each movement a perfect continuation of the previous and then the next, with the speed and instinct of the animal that gave the techniques its name, ex. “The Fire Eagle”. Over the years the developments of this Art has been so astounding as to not only become a perfect (unarmed) weapon of defense or attack, but movements that open the Mind, Body and Soul to wondrous glory of the Universal. These techniques are never seen outside the most restricted areas of the temple. The displays of kung fu that Monks and novices would put on in the Temple Gardens, for the tourists to watch, are the price one pays to live in a world where certain commodities are only paid for with cash. The local communist political regime had a taste for more than “a pray being said over their immortal souls”. They could make problems if not properly greased.

Nine Dots had no such training in any sacred Art. He did not dare even to go to the Temple Gardens and pay to watch the displays of excellence (that were but party tricks for the Monks). He felt a great shame that he had no training, no Art. He had a small group of lost souls that feed donkeys and mules took care of the field by the stables, and made sure the tourists “rubbish” was removed from every part of the mountain. It was like some semi-official agreement that they “the Drunkards” could be in the stables if the kept things clean after the tourists. Off course no one from the Temple ever spoke to Nine Dots or the other Drunkards. In those days it was only very dedicated tourists that made the trip to the Temples, it took five hours to rise up from the valley to Temple Gardens on the back of donkey. Most of the tourists were often experts in some field of scientific or religious study, there was the odd searcher after truth with strange clothes and very long hair like yogis, but still western and childlike. They would always talk to Nine Dots, these childlike yogis, but he didn’t know any thing of their words so it sounded like a duck talking to him, that was why he would smile the pink gum grin, long haired talking ducks.

Time moves slowly on the Eastern Ridge Mountain Temples but in the Valley below the time flows like anywhere else and started picking up all the debris of change. The first time some of this modern debris washed up on the mountainside stables was in the summer of 1968. The Drunkards had heard a rumor, from the tourist guides with the pack animals, who had seen workers making new constructions along the bottom of the mountain path. They seemed to be making the path wider and flatter. The path was perfect to use for the animals but there was something new that needed wider flatter paths.

Drunkn Munky had joined Nine Dots some thirty moons backs. He had come from one of the poorest of regions along the edge of the salt desert. There was nothing for Drunkn Munky anywhere, there was no place and no time, just the empty salt deserts that laid waste to the land. He had heard of the temples on the Eastern Ridge Mountains where you could live a life. A hard and disciplined life but still you had a life. He knew it was here he would find his life. At his 197th moon, Drunkn Munky, took his blanket, that his mother had made and given him and the wooden bowl with the small knife that had been his brothers, who had died the month before. He wrapped the bowl and the knife carefully into the blanket, that he then tied around him so he could walk and be shaded from the boiling sun. He then walked to the Eastern Ridge Temples and finally stopped at the bottom of the path leading up into the Temple complex some 16 moons later. There he sat, he made no announcement or declaration of his presence, and he found an empty spot and sat down. The Monks would put small pieced of food and water in their bowls of the waiting novices, so they could sustain life but had little energy to move about. He would not have to wait long, because he felt he was in “no time” and in “no place” like usual. After 65 moons he stood up and stumbled down the hill like a drunken man and fell into the Stables and collapsed. He stayed in fever for an entire moon; he was in “no time” yet there was no peace just pure pain and terror. The Drunkards tried to use some herbs that they knew about, but their knowledge was so limited, they were the simplest of men. Nine Dots had picked up a few things, but still the true knowledge of medication was to be found inside the Temple with the Masters. The moon died and rose again after three days, Drunkn Munky woke form his dark dream. He became a simple brother of the Stables, cleaning mountains, collecting and drying dung from the pack animals while giving them food from the garden plateau to eat and mixing it with the dung to make good burning bricks. He became the main dung brick makers and he was good it, they burnt perfectly. He was content he had a life on the side of the mountain. He was a Drunkard, but he knew his name was Drunkn Munky and not Drunken Monkey.

In his 306th moon Drunkn Munky saw the Yellow Sun for the first time. The Path to the stables had been worked on by workingmen during the many moons; he hadn’t counted them, but knew Venus had turned twice so more than 16 moons. The workingmen had made the path wide and flat with purpose. They meant it to be like this, wide and flat, all the way up, like a snake that ran through the mountainside and into the sea of snakes they had made in the valleys. Nine Dots had spoken with the guides and then with the workingmen. They spoke much and had words to fill sacks of dried dung for a whole winter’s length. But when all was done Nine Dots told the brothers that now new pack animals would come but their dung was burnt in a different way. It seemed not smell of dung in the same way; there was smell involved, not like the Temple oil, but not dung. Drunkn Munky asked if he should leave the Stables now there was no dung, but nine Dots said he would learn to make this new dung burn as well as he made the dung bricks burn. Drunkn Munky’s heart was light again he believed Nine dots to be wise.

The first of these new pack animals he saw was Yellow Sun, he knew love like no other love, he knew like no other thing, like no other time, this was the now. He began to flip, twitch, move with no control. No instinct, no form or structure, like a true drunkard but with purpose and then instantly into the opposite motion. It was unbearable to witness, yet impossible not to be pulled into these terrible yet irregular motions that Drunkn Munky did the first time he saw Yellow Sun. Along the flat snake path rolled, or rather floated, on black rubber wheels the “Yellow Beetle Volkswagen Car” a Sun Bug. It had just driven along the worst possible road every built but man or beast, and as it turned into the Stable driveway the front axel of the front right hand wheel just snapped in two pieces, it just broke then and there. The Yellow Sun tilted forward, stopped dead, and lay making the loud brumming noise that seemed fill all the air around it. It then became quite and silent, a man open part of it and stepped out. He walked round and looked at the wheel that lay on the path and then at the Yellow Sun. He made workingmen lift the up the front and then pull the Yellow Sun into the Stables. There he made them put wooden blocks under where the wheel should be so the Yellow Sun would stand straight. Drunkn Munky woke up in daze he was in the stable lying next to Yellow Sun. It was night and stable brothers slept. Only the night beasts were awake and they are mainly silent. Drunkn Munky stretched out his hand and touched Yellow Sun. His hand had never felt sheet metal with high gloss paint he had no idea what to expect. As he touched he began to move again in the strangest of fashions, it was so misleading, so deceptive, and so disorientating that it was so beautiful and so horrible at the same time. There was no form no structure, there was just indescribable force of motion.

The tourists began to change when the larger machines, buses, began to drive up the flat snake path. It now took an hour and half, which was no time at all, to drive from the Valley below to the Stables, so suddenly it was all types of people who just came to look at something. Drunkn Munky stayed in the Stables with the Yellow Sun. They got the special burners from the workmen to burn the dark liquid dung of the Cars and Busses; these animals lived on the dung liquid. It required little skill to make it burn and the other brothers fixed the burning machines to make warmth in the entire Stables with no problems. And the smell of burnt dung had almost gone, the new liquid dung burning smell was blown by pipes outside the Stables.

The Yellow Sun was left were it stood in the stables, nobody every came to take it back down the road. Drunkn Munky would twist and turn around the Yellow Sun, regularity of machine with the irregularity of the Drunkard. Drunkn Munky and Nine Dots washed and kept the Yellow Sun clean; it had come to them broken, many moons ago.

Some say the “drunkn” kung-fu style is not a true system, for the techniques are not unique to it, but rather the manner in which it is applied, there are no forms.

The End.

Trapped in the Cab

2005-12-27T00:17:00.000-08:00

Trapped in the Cab

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

“Another ten minutes and it could have been us in the back of that Färdtjänst Bus.”

The morphine was pure enough, medical grade, Come Watson come! The game is afoot. I’ll take three bags of them. He placed the three bags deftly inside his coat and deposited them in the safest of his own pocket designs. He felt a warmth comfort flow out from his intellect. With his other hand he paid the man and walked silently away into his own fog.

“Another ten minutes could have been you in that bloody bus”.

The White Bus, like a van with windows, and with the red and blue “curved triple mirrored” stripping that shows it really is a Färdtjänst Bus. “Färdtjänst” is pronounced “Fair-d-Cher-unst” but pronounced a bit quicker, so it sounds like one word, and then “bus”.

Whatever you do “don’t open” the box. It’s because of the box that they are valuable. Once you open the box they are toys. A Broken or not a Broken toy is still a toy. That is the difference. I once had “one” with a Snake and a Rat but my daughter opened the box, she saw “toy” written all over the thing. Looks Real. Feels Real. Choking Hazard for the under threes. Classic box package, the whole-box deal with lots of information on the back. Worthless, cause the plastic is “cut”. Not busted or broken, but cut. That’s the worst. A cut shows it wasn’t a mistake. Cut shows intention, intention shows motive, and the motive is ‘cause it’s a toy. Logic my friend is a powerful tool, even in the hands of an innocent.

The morphine had started to work, he’d dropped two tablets straight away, he saw immediately that they were the real deal, medical grade. You can’t get them to look like that when you glue them back together with super glue or some other solvent you have lying around your “pad”. The deal is always sweeter when the goods come professionally packaged by trained experts in the Art of Weights and Measures, with the relevant University Educated in Advanced Chemistry needed to deal anything of Value. These people I feel safe with. People employed by large Pharmaceutical Companies for large amounts of wages, they are the ones I am putting my money on. Some guy in a flat in Lupton Park is not cracking open my wallet open for some brownish white powder in a squeezey bag. That could be any vile compound from the depths of some twisted specimen of the species so called mind. In my blood stream, that mixture, I think not.

“It just don’t let you out, just drives around and around”.
“Seriously Gustav there in no White Bus that drives people around and around”.
“That’s what you says but other’s say there be a White Färdtjänst Bus that do.”
“Gustav do not get upset please, relax now, lay back and take a dose of morphine from the pump you have.”

It had been the woman from the Public Health authority that had approached him a on a matter of some delicacy. She said immediately that she didn’t want to be in this somewhat difficult predicament, because it really was not her departments’ responsibility. That was almost the truth; apart from the fact it was hers and her departments only responsibility. She was personally in charge and fully responsible for the relationship between the entire Stockholm Medical Authorities Central administration and the Suppliers of Transport and Taxis for the patients that were covered by Central Insurance Transport, the so called “Färdtjänst”.

Färdtjänst (“Fair-d-Cher-unst”) was split into two major groups. The first being what you or I would call a normal black taxicab service. The two good taxi services that are run as legitimate businesses of driving taxis, the two big names in taxi services. Now they have a round decal in their windows, clearly visible, a large white ring and a large “F” bang smack in the middle. I think then the writing is in blue, it repeats the word Färdtjänst in a ring around the big red “F”.

Then there are the White minibus van, Färdtjänst Service, that are designed to be able to move patients in Wheelchairs, permochairs, electric driven chairs of all sorts of specialized equipment, that some people need to move around in. The White buses are only used by “Färdtjänst” and are marked accordingly, only with “Färdtjänst”. They use a taxicab like system to process travel and payment information. These white vans are always ordered in advance over the phone to central travel orders. You can’t stop one of these on the street. There is then the difference if you are allowed to travel alone or must make a party of people before you can be driven about.

The rain splashed against the window it sounded softer today, he pulled on his robe, adjusting the belt to hold the fold of the robe in a straight line, the tubes from his morphine pump had been sown into a series of simple but ingenious channels by his beloved wife. This meant when dressed he could move about with almost no hindrance. This case would call for upon all his skill of disguise and even the pipes and tubes would serve him well when dealing with such people as Medical Central authority and the notorious Färdtjänst transport system gangsters.

“So Madam you are in fact directly responsible for this situation, are you not?”

“There have been rapports of disappearances and time lapses, complaints made, accusations heard. I do not know whom to turn too. I can’t go the Police; it would cause the most terrible scandal. The media would eat us alive. You are the most highly recommended operative of them all. Dear Sir I turn to you as our last and only hope to solve this mystery as quickly and as quietly as humanly possible”.

“Madam my fees for this case may seem irregular to you. You may even feel a sense of unease and regret, but if I am to take this case then I have a particular requirement in terms of my fee for solving this case. I require a regular supply of medical grade morphine in tablet form to be delivered to my residence by safe hands. The amounts of tablets will be directly connected to what particular variation of tablets and strengths we will be dealing with. I dictate the amounts; it will always be my call. This Madame this is the fee I ask, my expenses are billed separately, as costs incurred during action are to be paid for me by your organization and their counter part in other forms of government work. These bills are to be paid by your economic department without discussion, I am a reasonable man and do not push my cash need beyond any reasonableness. I shall also need certain false identity cards, documentation and papers that work for all forms of Färdtjänst”.

“I accept your terms kind Sir and the first delivery shall be this afternoon to show our good faith. The deal will be pure medical grade morphine, starts from grade 1 to goes up to number 6, that’s the top dog. We could have it Piped in if you want Sir”.

“Hmumm, a most flexible and generous deal Madame, I would shake on it, but I have low immunity thresholds and never touch other people.”

Because the Färdtjänst had several different variations of the level of service. Some of the older people who had the “the right” to use this service, but they were not dying or seriously ill patients, were driven around in busloads (they filled the white bus up with other people before taking you where you wanted to go). The white buses had about five permanent chairs and three places for wheel chairs and such like to be strapped into the bus. So it was not uncommon for a group of six people to be in one of the white Färdtjänst bus at the same time. It was during these times that rumors and whispered words took place. It was said that there was one White bus, a particular White bus that when it picked you up, if you were “alone” you didn’t get out again alive.

Or if you were still alive you had been driven around and around for many miles, not daring to ask why, in case as the bus driver turned around from his front seat and smiled his wide toothy smile, that left little for the imagination, he would the answer “Hades my friend”.

Action figures are so much more than toys; they are portals into that other realm of fantasy. The packaging is such an intricate part of the pieces as to be the true outer body. This is why children should never have the chance to see them, because the packaging is merely something to be removed so “play” can begin with toy inside the plastic box. Both points of view are valid within there own context, but unfortunately directly opposed to each other in practice. This is why so much good stuff goes to waste for the poor collector. Thankfully the general awareness has increased since the 1950’s and onwards; so collectable items will increase overtime. This and the wonderful developments that have occurred over the last 20 odd years in the action figure collectables; The Star Wars merchandising did blaze the way for some time. And we have moved on to some truly stunning modern results. As long as rule number one is always stuck to, no matter, no way, never open the box.

His first plan of action was of course to use this Färdtjänst White bus service. He needed to be fully informed and acquainted with all the usages and possibilities. Within three days he held all the identity cards and papers in his hands and had been given all the relevant information on how to use them. He had received his first delivery the same day of the meeting with the woman, so all was being followed according to plan. Smoothness was such a satisfaction for a mind so egotistical, vain and condescending as his. He had both the option to travel alone or in a group. He wanted to blend into a group first, be less visible. He would use the older man disguise that he had used on the “Signet Water Lilly” case.

“That’s what they do they just drives your around to drive you mad.”
“ No Gustav darling they have to get the other people off the bus at some other place than where your are going”
“ Where’s that then?”
“ I don’t know Gustav, I wasn’t on the bus with you today it was Jose’sh”.
“Who that then?”
“ She is here on the weekends Gustav, Jose’sh, you like Jose’sh, she is small”.
“ Oh small”
“ Yes Gustav small, now get some rest your tired after the running about in the bus”.
“Them White buses drives you round and round, some says they never let you off lest you dead”.
“No Gustav darling, not until you’re all dead dear, there now get some sleep, you need it”.

He’d been on the bus for while now, he had booked an early trip to be the first on the bus so as to be able observe clearly. There was very little structure in the driving plan so far. The driver Agdbash Nuramity had started a rather interesting swoop in the southern western suburbs of Stockholm’s inner town. There had been pick-ups of all sorts of people and one roller-chair all over the area. When he was finally done with all the pick-ups they had six passengers (five patients and one assistant) in the van, and the driver himself Mr. Agdbash Nuramity. The general level of fidgeting stopped as Mr. Agdbash Nuramity announced his first destination. Mrs. Olsson to Södersjukhuset (the hospital on the South Island). Good this will show him a thing or two about Mr. Nuramity’s mind set, the time is now 10,43, traffic in Central Stockholm would have thinned by know, so what does he chose highway or byway?

Mrs. Aldertun to Kings Island, Fridhemsplan, (Follow Chair Two floors Lift)
Mrs. Nilsson to Central Station (12,45 Train to catch)
Mr. R. Lilly to Aspudden
Mr. Anderson to St Paul’s Street on the Southern Island (after 14,30)

He couldn’t see the driving information displayed on the monitor because the roller chair with Mrs. Aldertun in it had completely blocked view that he had planned to have of the machine once the driver had flipped it into “drive to” mode. He was now unable to assess any information, most importantly of all; the frame of the information against Mr. Nurmitys driving performance was to be gauged. So it was small talk and whispers that he would have to put some faith into. The first drop was at the hospital, good always took longer at hospital, and it is hard leaving people at some reception or just at some counter with no personal. As Mrs. Olsson was being lifted out into a hospital wheelchair, he made his move. He had time to strike up a conversation, before Mrs. Olsson had been processed.

“Mr. Anderson was it, my name is Lilly, Reginald Lilly. Hello how do you do”.

It took little to set these “lonely wound up little mice with crashing symbols” banging away at some thing, but to interrogate them was another matter indeed.

“These white buses, these Färdtjänst white buses, ever had any problem with them? Ever found yourself thinking if they know where they are going, or just driving around in circles?”

It was only when he played the violin that he ever felt really at peace. Not a calm peace but a sorrowful dark peace, some would say repressed passion. His mind had become an encyclopedia of knowledge over the years trained in a cool logicians ease of deduction. He knew inside that whatever madness Mr. Gustav Anderson had bound to that “White Bus” taxi service he would only continue to confirm his fear and thereby serve his purpose. That was Mr. Gustav Anderson’s intention to spend as much time as possible, being driven around in the white Färdtjänst bus with other people to talk to. Mystery is simple my dear Man, it is the common that fools us.

The End

The Hobby of Kings

2005-12-26T08:08:00.000-08:00

The Hobby of Kings

Of all the unlikely things that Man has ever hunted or gathered over the years, the humble Postage Stamp has always been the most respectable evidence of a disreputable pastime. Despite the common belief that they are friendless lunatics or just some consumption junkies on a burn, a true Collector is an Artist. Carefully they put together each piece of their little puzzle in the hope that one-day it might just all fit perfectly together into one complete picture. Perfection can be a cruel and unforgiving Mistress, so easily misunderstood. A collection really only makes sense when you see it as the story of the Collector, and a collection is only every really valuable when it’s a good story and enjoyable to listen to, not just something worth holding in your hand.

The idea that some long lost relative of yours has tucked away a stamp collection in some well-hidden box marked “Stamps” has been the driving force behind many a big attic clear-out and the obligatory Post Garage Sale. I can honestly say the chances that any homemade stamp collections, based on the stamps that happened to come your way (or your grandfathers way, or his mates way), is of any value whatsoever, is as likely as you producing gold-wrapped chocolate bars from your nose. Slight to Zero.

Stamp collections found in boxes marked “Stamps” are never worth more than the paper they are printed on. Even if you have had a half-hearted attempt at sticking them in some obviously irrelevant order (like country or color) to semi-stiff sheets of paper, with that special glue you bought in the local bookshop that comes off the back of stamps like sun-warmed dung off a ice-cooled shovel.

It doesn’t matter what you do with the “Stamps” because of the simple fact, “this is Not Your Collection”, so you will be ripped off, like a well-stuck band-aid from a sensitive (and hairy) body-part, by the first half-decent Philatelist, that has the fortune to wonder past your little Garage Sale. The problem is not only your pitiful non-existent knowledge of Stamps, but also the fact that everyone will be telling you all number of lies like, ”this crap (i.e. your Stamp Collection) is worthless”. That is the hardest one of the lies to crack open because it is the truth; a valuable collection is worth nothing in the hands of a fool. As every good Philatelist knows the best way to lie is to always stick to the truth.

Have you ever bothered to look at a stamp?
Have you ever held it under a magnifying glass in the hope to see more?

Most of you haven’t and I have no doubt that the humble stamp will soon pass into the realms of forgotten history, nothing more than a colored bit of paper stuck to an empty envelope. There are times when a stamp can say more than the thousand words once written and stuck into those now empty old envelops, there are even times when a stamp can point an accusing finger from the grave at the murdering hand that once held the pen or knife.

Philately is a small world, but it conceals an even smaller world. A secretive little world that allows few to pass through its electrically powered gates and even fewer to join its exclusive rank and file, The Grand Order of Stamp Makers. Here you will find a old fashioned world, a world of history and tradition, a subterranean World with rat holes running criss-cross though the dimly lit tunnels that are guarded by the likes of Dragon 2.1 (computer-coded doors), night and day, day and night. A dwarf World where fortunes can be made with just a slip of the hand, a world where Truth and Fantasy can, and often do, get mixed up with each other into a stew of paper and paint (more often light-hardened plastic pigmentation nowadays). Stamp Design & Production departments of National Postal Services around the World are highly endangered “Hobby & Collectable”-suppliers to the Monarchies and Monaco’s in this day and age, where even “Royal pastimes” can and do, just disappear into thin air.

There are many reasons why things are best-left hidden, tucked away in dusty draws, but if you do accidentally happen to stumble over some secret marked “Private”, then you are well advised to leave it right alone. People like their secrets kept safe-hands. Even the secrets that they hide in broad daylight, right in front of your face, because the secrets that stay kept are the ones we don’t dare to care about.

The Hotel E-10 must surely be is one of the least attractive buildings situated inside the Artic circle, it lacks charm and grace, the low budget facilities leaves one feeling cheated out of any reasonable expectancy. But on the other hand it is by far the closest place to stay if you want to be in walking distance of the Kiruna offices of the Swedish Postal Stamps department. Swedish postage stamps are designed and printed in Stockholm and then they are transported to the Artic circle, to the mining town of Kiruna, for “collector” preparation and distribution. During the summer months the sun never sets in Kiruna, making day light robbery a 24-hour option. How many times had he sat waiting in the nondescript rooms for sleep to relieve the boredom of the view? There was the two view options that the E-10 had to offer, the parking area at the front of the building that looked out over the petrol station or the empty area at the back that looked out over a warehouse that seemed to serve no particular purpose. The front view did offer the added bonus of on clear days you could see part of the mining mountain behind the petrol station that produced the fabulous iron ore. As of yet, counting this visit, it was his fourth stay at the Drive in Bar Hotel E-10.

Postage Stamps and Paper money are essentially printed by using the same rather antiquated technique, recess printing or intaglio, a technique that requires hand-made original engravings. The original “unique engravings” are priceless and well guarded objects. The recess printing process makes duplication virtually impossible, unless you happen to have the required extremely expensive, printing equipment, years of qualified experience and an original engraved “die” which is truly impossible to duplicate and therefore forever unique in the mass production of Stamps. The major difference between stamps and cash money is that each bill is individually numbered where as Postage stamps are numbered in arks or Cylinder identification digits.

Czeslaw Slania (pronounced Chess-wav Swan-ya) was born in Czeladz, Poland in 1921. At the age of six, he and his family moved to Lublin. Even as a small boy, he had demonstrated a great talent for drawing and even the production of miniature engravings. The German occupation of Poland during the Second World War, gave Slania the opportunity to develop his skills and become a professional counterfeiter; He could reproduce any official document with just a fine-brush and the right colored ink or water paint. He even forged postcards with hand painted stamps that fooled the postal services and got “date-stamped” like any other real stamp. At the end of the war Czeslaw enrolled into the Krakow School of Fine Arts, to go straight as it were. He was employed by the Polish Government Printing Works and engraved his first stamp for Poland in 1951. The aftermath of WWII had left Poland under Soviet Communist control, which was not the most pleasant of environments even for the most faithful of government workers. He left for Sweden in 1956, maybe the Poles didn’t mind losing their most talented engraver, or maybe the documents allowing him foreign travel weren’t as real as the authorities would have liked, who knows? After a few years of not being able to get honest employment in the Socialist paradise of Sweden, Slania finally got a job as a full time engraver in 1960 for Swedish Postal Service. Slania had actually engraved his first stamp for Sweden in 1959 while not “fully” employed, as a kind of test thing they did in the fifties, but he liked it in the Swedish Postal service and even ended up engraving his 1000th stamp in Sweden in the Millennium year 2000 AD. He was appointed as the Royal Court Engraver of Sweden and of Denmark and also to his good friends the Royal family of Monaco; Movie star princesses make lovely stamps. His seemingly endless talent and fabled speed earned him numerous awards and acclamations over the years. Czeslaw Slania finally became the world's most prized “legitimate” engraver.

Auguste Mayer, the Painter, had left France with his wife Catherine and their daughter Saga in the early spring of 1836, along with the rest of the “La Recherché” expedition that had been planned and commissioned by Paul Gaimard, “La Commission scientifique de Islande et de Groënland”. After sailing from Brest in Normandy, Meyer’s hometown, the expedition sailed north, around the west coast of Ireland, and finally landed at Reykjavík. Gaimard and his six associates, with 48 horses and numerous Icelandic attendants, set out from Reykjavík on 20 June 1836 and circled the country counterclockwise, arriving back in Reykjavík at the end of August.

I think the simple fact of the matter is that Postage stamps are much like people is what really makes them interesting. Stamps are dull and brilliant, obvious and concealed, useful and pointless, unique and mass-produced. Postage stamps are made to be inoffensive and yet around the world hundreds maybe even thousands of souls spend hour upon hour hoping to find something wrong with them.

The Artic circle can be surprising warm during the endless days of summer, on the 13th June 2005, at eleven o’clock in the evening in Kiruna airport, the sun was shinning and the temperature was 23 celsius. He hadn’t slept on the flight up like he had planned; his traveling companion had talked incessantly, mostly about their fellow employees. He felt tired and warm, not the best of combinations in the night-less North. Visiting staff from the Stockholm office often frequented Room 103.

In 1986, Slania produced engravings for six United Nations stamps on the theme “Philately — The International Hobby”. Two of these stamps reproduce engravings that show “Mr. Slania at work”, hunched over a polished steel die. When enlarged certain evidence comes to light. The official rapport was that Czeslaw Slania died at the age of 83 on the 17th of March 2005.

The first global scientific collaboration was made in the year 1761, around the world scientist of the day, aimed to calculate the distance of the Sun from Earth. Captain Cook on his journey to New Zealand even stopped of in Tahiti to make his own observations of the astronomical phenomena that was to help us know more about the neighborhood we live in. A total of 151 observations were finally recorded and the full transcripts were published by the then newly formed American Philosophical Society; this was to be the start of the modern scientific world that would soon lay claim to the domination of our waking Mind. The event that they carefully measured and recorded was the crossing of the planet Venus in front of the Sun, the Venus Passage. The event itself can occur singularly or be part of a pair that is separated by eight years. The reason for this is the angle of transection across the face of the Sun as seen from the planet Earth. This particular passage was a part of a pair that happened in 1761/69; the phenomenon occurs again every 113 or 130 years, the following Passages being in 1874/82 and after that 2004/2012.

In 1755 the Swedish Riks (it means National, like in the German “Reich”) Bank started what was called the Tumba Works. The purpose of this factory was the production of high quality paper on which the Swedish “Riksdalar” (the forerunner of the Swedish Crown) could be printed. The paper that had been used had been formerly imported from Holland. The production of high-class paper for printing had been something of a Dutch specialty. The printing press itself was said to have been invented by L.J.Koster of Haarlem, a Dutchman. Gutenberg’s “Vulvae Gate Bible” gets the credit for being the first ever-printed book, round 1455, the Dutch were big names in printing back then. But the really big development in printing came in 1865 when William Bullock of Philadelphia invented the first printing press to print from a continuous roll of paper. This called for an endless river of paper, which in turn made the endless Swedish forests an overflowing Cash Cow for the old Empire. Paper made from the forests of Sweden revolved itself on giant rolls into cash.

The report of the Gaimard expedition was published in Paris, between the years of 1838 and 1852, in eight separate volumes of text and one of geological illustrations, all in octavo format, plus three large and sumptuously produced folio volumes of lithographs. The first two of these works contain prints of the pictures made by August Mayer of the expedition itself that included not only the places it had visited but as well drawings of antiquities and portraits of Gaimard and a number of Icelanders. The book “Voyage en Islande et au Groënland” is the most elaborate single work ever published about Iceland. The pictures painted by Mayer, that remain today, are the single most important source of visual information about life in Iceland during the early 18 hundreds.

The Venus passage in 2004/2012 is the event that the Mayans up to. The Mayans considered 2012 AD, to be the End or Beginning of calculable time, as it turned out for the Mayans, the end of their particular life-style came somewhat more abruptly. The greatest of all known Mayan temple sites, Chichen Itza, fell to the “Mexican” invaders around 1000AD. The Mayan civilization would have collapsed under its own weight sooner or later; their wondrous temples that they built required immense amount of skilled labor. They always built in the middle of rain forests, which are known for being infested with wild beasts and hungry insects. The Mayans never developed metal tools such as ploughs, they never managed to invent the wheel and they actually never built cities, they just built temples. In fact their only other great achievement beyond the temples they built, was their mathematics and their unbelievable ability to calculate the passing of time with such decimal accuracy.

Upon graduation from the Marcin Wadowita high school in Wadowice, Karol Josef Wojtyla enrolled into Krakow’s Jagiellonian University in 1938 and he also joined a drama group and became one of the clandestine pioneers of the "Rhapsodic Theatre," The Nazi occupation of Poland closed the University in 1939 and Karol Wojtyla had to work in a stone quarry (1940-1944) and later in the Solvay chemical factory to earn his living and to avoid being deported to Germany. After WWII he continued his studies in the major seminary of Krakow, once it had re-opened, until his priestly ordination in Krakow on November 1, 1946. An old boyhood friend of Karol’s came to study in Krakow after the war. They had played football together as boys, but had lost touch when the Slania family had moved to Lublin and the Germans had turned Poland into a Human Oven. They were able to rekindle their friendship during those university years, after the Germans had gone back to what was left of their own back yard. The Actor and the Counterfeiter were just starting out on their own roads to be Kings.

Together in 2005, the Swedish Postage Stamp Department 1855 and Tumba Bruk 1755, two fine upstanding institutions, have produced a commemorative stamp and a commemorative 100-crown bill to celebrate the collective 400 years of paper wealth that has been produced from the high grade iron ore and paper from the endless forests of the European Nation of Sweden.

Documents, that are traceable in the lower strata of Historical Information, only achieve great value after a great period of time or an equal amount of misfortune. If an Official document, by chance alone, survives long enough; it has the chance of becoming exceedingly valuable. Take for example the cuneiform clay tablets from Lower Mesopotamia. They are receipts, made by local government Officials, recording the amount of grain delivered to temple store houses, by the local farming community. Boring. But given a few thousand years they become priceless. If that same boring document happens to be wrong then it will become valuable in much less time. The greater the mistake the less time is needed for it to become valuable. If the mistake was consciously wiped clean, leaving only the tiniest fraction of proof left, then the value of this mistake, this evidence of human weakness, will increase much faster. Limited Access & widespread media coverage increases the value of anything. We bury our treasure and our mistakes, the rest we burn.

Czeslaw Slania often told the story about the first stamp he made in a series of three for the Icelandic Post Services from 1986-88, Scott # 643, Crossing the ford at River Hvita; One day while he was working on the steel plate, his daughter, who was with him in his studio, watched him working. When he stopped to take a break, she took up his burin (his engraving stick) and imitated the grandmaster by making cuts across the steel plate, which ruined it of course. Slania had to start the entire job for the second time. The first original steel plate was laid aside as worthless and eventually lost. Czeslaw said that in the end he was happy to start over again as it gave him the chance to capture the mood of frustration that the expedition no doubt felt from time to time. One can only wonder if the little girl looking out from the stamp is Saga, the daughter of Auguste Mayer, or in fact Czeslaw Salina’s own little girl that had foiled his first attempt and given him a second chance, but unfortunately made the almost finished engraving plate worthless.

Operation Cornflake was meant to be a key part of a high level clandestine plan to undermine the morale of the average citizen. The standard 6-pfenning and 12-pfenning stamps were forged in sheets of 50 instead of the sheets of 100 as the originals were printed in. The main differences were firstly the quality of the paper, chalky coated paper for the originals but a duller paper for the forgeries and secondly the perforations were 14x14 1/2 for the originals but 11 1/2 to 13x12 1/2 for the forgeries. Also, an additional forgery of the 12-pfenning was made, but the inscription was altered to read "Futsches Reich" meaning "Ruined Empire". General “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) the America Spy Services during World War II, later they changed name to become the CIA. The OSS had ordered the forged stamps to be printed by their operations in Switzerland, apparently damn good forgers the Swiss, makes you wonder really. The Allies felt that if many German people started receiving Anti-Nazi propaganda mixed up in their morning mail, delivered punctually at breakfast time, they would feel that their "Great German Empire" was falling apart from within. The actual effect that Operation Cornflake had on the moral of the German people is hard to tell, probably at lot less than dropping 15 billion tons of high explosive on them, but it certainly annoyed some people. Operation Cornflake wasn’t the first time that the forging of stamps had been used as a weapon of mass confusion.

The Mining operations under the town of Kiruna have not only made a vast amount of money for the Swedish state but have also made an enormous hole in the ground beneath Kiruna. The rock that contains the iron ore is of course the rock upon which the town of Kiruna is built. The initial mine removed iron ore at ground level, and then they had to follow the mother-load deep into the bedrock and eventually they have had to burrow and dig right under the town. The ground has already started to crack under the pressure. There is a plan describing the areas of land that will have to be cleared from 2010 –2030. By 2030 AD at least half of the town will have to be moved from where it is situated today and moved at least 20 kilometers from the mine area. The church in Kiruna, the most holy of places, will have to be moved sometime between 2010 and 2020.

When Czeslaw Slania died at the age of 83 on the 17th of March 2005 it took about three months before his workroom at Posten Frimärken (Swedish Stamp Department), Kista, got cleaned out. It had been his room, the Masters’ room. So you didn’t want to let anyone just going in and pocking about in there. There were about three people who got the good stuff out, that was worth something, and then the boys from the warehouse, (the goods-in goods-out) guys, they get to deal with other peoples crap and moved out the rest of the furniture, where stuff gets lost and found, out the room into the dumpster.

The End.

Fathers Family Found

2005-12-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

Fathers Family Found

If you have never felt like you had lost something in the first place then it is all the more surprising to find out you had one all along. A family tree is all the more surprising to find out you have one when you were sure that certain members, of what is called your family, never seemed to have any idea of who or where they came from. I never heard my Grandparents ever talk about growing up in someplace with other people. I presumed there was no record of my last name beyond my fathers’ own father, who I knew to have held that surname.

Not having a family tree or family line is nothing particular in our day and age. It is different for my wife for example, she is, well she could have been a Baroness. This would have meant that would have had to married at the very least a Baron and anything upwards from there, Counts, Dukes, Archdukes, Princes and such like. But she married me, which affectively removed any chance of her ever holding the title Baroness. Although her father is a Baron and her mother a Baroness, even her brother and his wife are entitled to hold the title, as do both their sons. It is not something one talks about in Sweden. But one does get a family tree to show just how each particular branch comes tumbling down from the original Baron title bestowed on the family. In Sweden this was usually given to wealthy men for services rendered to the King sometime in the 16 hundreds. I can’t remember why my wife’s family became Barons just for the moment, but what I’ll do is have a look in their family book. My wife’s father was one of the co-authors of the Family book; he spent time revising the older family book that had several generations missing. The new family book was printed some three years ago now so it is almost up to date.

My own lost and now apparently found family has no blue blood in it whatsoever. All the early information is mainly taken from church records dating back to 1717. Andrew and Mary had a son on the 1 st April 1717, All Fools Day, in the Parish of St Alphege, in Greenwich, London. From this point our family story begins. Because from this point certain times and events have been registered in the local Church parish book; births, deaths and marriages. These three vital pieces of information help you trace the path of your DNA backwards in time. Due to the patriarchal system we have been subjected to during the last two and half thousand years, we can only really follow the male line, because the female is forced to take her husbands name, in practice deleting their own information and renaming it, so as the female family parts of the family break away by getting new surnames.

Our first man out onto the field of play in “Our Family Name” is Christopher, Andrew and Mary’s only child. He was born in Greenwich, London in 1717; at that time Greenwich was a very busy sea cargo port. The really big ships would sail into Greenwich and then unload their goods and cargo on to smaller and better vessels for the rest of the trip up the River Thames to the docks and warehouses in town. It would have been a rough place with many men working in the docks for 16 hours a day. No easy life. The housing for the dockworkers would have been of sub standard quality yet their houses served as all the houses they ever needed, where you got born, you lived, you procreated and you died.

They would have used the water from the river for and all their needs, there would not have been running water in houses. Stone coal would have been burnt in the fireplaces and chimneys causing black smog to settle gently on all outside surfaces, turning them gray. Christopher married Ann Holloway when he was 22 years old; they had their first and only child Thomas when he was 33 years old. Ann must have died about seven years after their son was born, because at the age of 40 Christopher remarried a girl called Sarah in 1757, nothing more is known about her other than her first name. Christopher then died himself three years later 1760 at the age of 43, leaving Thomas in the care of Sarah. However old Sarah might have been at the time of Christopher’s death, (I would approximate 21 years old) she was now to be Thomas, 10-years-old, mother.

Thomas was born in 1750 and married Elizabeth Barlow, four years his younger, when he was 22 years old and she was 18. Elizabeth died at the age of 46 in September 1800, leaving two male children; one of them was called William. These two sons continued with the Cabinet making and furniture business that Thomas had started about 1780.

Thomas remarried in 1802, two years after the death of his first wife Elizabeth, to his second wife Elizabeth, Elizabeth Light (she was 28 years old and he was 52 years old when they got married). Elizabeth Light gave birth to George while she was at the age of 31 and her husband was 55 years old. When George was 14-years-old Thomas his father died.

Elizabeth was 45 at the time of her husband’s death. She lived another on another 18 years to be 63 years old, before her death passed into the family tree under the heading;

“dd. 27 Sep 1837, 5 Cavendish St, Hoxton New Town”.

What do you do with all this information? How do you get it to make sense in the world? You look at all these dates and names, all these lives mixed into a single pot of history that you decide to turn around like ice cream over warm pie.

What you get is this;
“dd. XX XXX 200X, 2 Sigfridsvägen, Stockholm, Sweden”.

This is where you pass the eye of the needle. This is where you get to work out how old you were when you got married, had kids and died. You can make a little matrix that works out the ages automatically. You just change the dates around and you get your own little story.

It is funny how things just pop up. I knew nothing of this story until one day a man named Barry asked me over the Internet, on my work mail address, weather I would give him the names of my parents and place of birth. Obviously I was a bit skeptical but the man did have my surname. I decided to answer briefly but refused to comment on any other information concerning my family. My mothers and father first names and St. John’s Wood, N.W.8 London is far from being a national secret. From this came small piece of information I received a flood of information about my fathers family name history. It was so odd to be in this situation.

I felt somehow obliged and compelled to be part of this cascade of information and I must admit I was rather overwhelmed by it at first. In a strange way I felt I was now part of something English for the first time in my life. Which was so new to me, because I’m now more or less Swedish and I have never been given any indication that I belong to any nation. The Englishness was like a bright new buttered scone that for the first time hit me with the full power of the Englishness inside. The cheddars, the creams, the pies, the jams, the teas and all the goodness that is inherent in the nostalgic English tradition. Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys.

To be given back something that you only realize was taken away when you get it back makes for a confusing state of emotional experiences all at the same time. I was both happy to have been given my Englishness back. But because I never thought I had ever missed it, I never longed for it until I had it back, the delightful Englishness of myself. It wasn’t experienced in a large way, but in small way that was just intense enough to be charming and not in least overpowering. So I had a minor moment of euphoria that was well balanced and British. I have been given a gift that I can dip into and pick out toffee apples and fudge. A certain Samuel that was playing in “our fathers family name” was tried at Wiltshire, Assizes in 1787 for highway robbery. I have been given a bag of full of the new and the old choices.

The End

Julia’s Journey

2005-12-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

Julia’s Journey

The Steam Ship, “Mary Magdalene” left the Polish port of Gdansk on the 15 of November 1946. The situation in Poland after the end of the war was still one of total chaos, there had been an initial feeling of joy and hope but quite soon it became clear that the Red army had no intention of leaving Poland to its own devices. The freedom of the Polish people was no longer seen as something important by the great nations of the World War winning alliance of 1945, USA, GB and USSR.

The few remaining Polish Jews that hadn’t been successfully dissolved by “Aktion Reinhard” were considered by the Poles to be closely allied with the Russian Communists and consequently despised and persecuted. During the first part of World War II the Swedish authorities had prohibited immigration of Jews to Sweden. In fact it was due to the request of the Swedes that a large red letter “J” was stamped clearly into the passport of Jews. When the full truth of the Nazis crimes became clear for the entire world to see, the Swedish authorities welcomed the survivors of the Holocaust with open arms and white buses. There had been some opening for Jews after 1943, but before that, the authorities of both nations were not really on opposite sides of tables.

The Steam Ship, “Mary Magdalene” was on its way to the modern Swedish socialist utopia, built a little bit on the ruins of other people’s history, but mostly built on the hard working backs of the Swedish people. On the passenger list of “The Mary Magdalene”, leaving the wastelands of Poland was a mother and her ten-month-old daughter well wrapped in the Red Cross blankets, Julia Vargen and Saga Vargen. One of the ironies of their travel documents was not only that they were forged and fabricated in Krakow, but also that the documents claimed that both mother and daughter to be Jewish, which was in fact not the case for either.

Otto Rahn (1904-1938), described as a gifted young author and historian, was one of this century's truly fascinating figures. Prior to his mysterious death, at age 35, he wrote two books about the Cathars of southern France: Kreuzzug gegen den Gral ("Crusade Against the Grail") and Luzifers Hofgesinf ("Lucifer's Court"). Legends continue to surround both his life and tragic death.

Because Sweden had remained so undeniably and clearly neutral during the war the Swedish society and infrastructure had remained in good shape and intact. In fact the railway from Kiruna (in neutral Sweden) to Narvik (in occupied Norway) had been considered by the Germans as one of the most strategically import transport routes throughout the entire empire of the Third Reich.

The Cathars, who guarded the Holy Grail in their castle at Montsegur, Otto Rahn believed, could be traced back to Druids who converted to Manichaeism. The Druids in Britain were forerunners of the Celtic Christian Church. He saw in the culture of the medieval Cathar stronghold of Languedoc strong resemblances to the Druids. Their apparent yearning and longing songs only seldom dedicated to a special woman, their feminine symbolism referred to the Cathar community, the Sophia, the Wisdom of the Gnostics.

Julia Vargen had been born in the city called Worms in Germany. Her father Richard Paul Vargen had been the history teacher at a catholic school and had married Maria Lucia Julia Garcia, the Spanish and German teacher at the same school. Julia had grown up in Krakow after her parents had moved there to teach at the Academy in 1909, that was four years after her birth in 1905. Julia had left Krakow to go to Berlin in 1926. She left for Berlin to study History of Language and Archeology at the Berlin University. During her studies in Berlin she had done some work on a small research program for Otto Rahn. At that time Otto Rahn was not a leading name in archeology.

After Julia had completed her studies she was briefly employed by Otto Rahn as a translator and expert on proto Indo-European cultures of Northern Europe. At the age of 31she accompanied Otto Rahn on his expedition to Iceland in 1936. The expedition was backed by the Ahnenerbe Forschungs und Lehrgemeinschaft, (Ancestral Heritage Research and Training Foundation) one of, if not the, most influential of all the Academic Nazi groups outside the Military Academic groups. Julia was extremely bright and considered a truly gifted linguist; she came highly recommended academically, despite her age or gender.

The Ahnenerbe (as it was known) had been financed by some of the National Socialist Party’ richest industrial backers, and the Ahnenerbe’s work was closely followed and strongly supported by SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler himself. The aim of the Ahnenerbe was to create a new Germanic myth that was to grow into a world religion of Germanic domination. Otto Rahn joined the Ahnenerbe in 1935. The Germanic Aryan super-race was to be proven to be the original driving force behind all culture, the Neolithic people from Germany were to become the mythical Atlantians that gave the world culture. The rest of the barbaric races that filled the world would be civilized according to this mythology of the Germanic supermen or be burnt to ashes and scattered on the winds. Himmler felt himself to be personally responsible for the spiritual well being of the German “Volk” (people). During the 1930’s Himmler packed off many German archeological expeditions to the ancient centers of civilization to find the objects of power that when returned to their rightful owners the Germans would once again bring glory to the world. In his fortress-temple and spiritual center at Wewelsburg Castle, Himmler planned to create a center for Germanic culture that would be bigger than Mecca or Jerusalem in the timeless Thousand Year Reich.

Julia’s journey to Iceland had left her with an overwhelming feeling of doubt as to the real interests of her employers. On returning to Germany she resigned from Otto Rahn’s team of archeologists and returned home to disappear back into Poland and away from the “all seeing eye” of the Nazi party in Germany. After the expedition to Iceland Rahn wrote the book Luzifers Hofgesind (Lucifer’s courtiers), he then became a full member of the SS and served as SS-Unterscarführer at the concentration camp in Dachau. He died somewhat abruptly in March 1939 in circumstances that raised more than a few eyebrows. Rumors in the Ahnenerbe circle was that Rahn had found something in Iceland. But other events of the day got more attention than Otto Rahn’s somewhat questionable death. The rumors about the find in Iceland had begun with Himmler’s obsessive search of for what had been called the Holy Grail.

There had been about 68,482 Jews living in and around Krakow in November of 1939, it had once been one of the largest Jewish communities in Poland. Most of the Krakow Jews lived in the Jewish district of Kazimierz, but many Jewish families had lived and had their own businesses throughout the entire city. From November 1939, all Jews aged 12 years or older were ordered to wear armbands, 53,828 armbands bearing the Golden (Yellow) Star of David were sold to the Jews of Krakow. The appointed members of the “Judenrat”, the Jewish ghetto police, were told to fulfill their Nazi lords orders with absolute obedience and accuracy or else die. One of the first SS orders was to remove all valuable and historical artifacts from Krakow's synagogues. Apart from the obvious desire for gold and silver, it is hard to imagine what the SS would want with documents written in Hebrew or other artifacts of a religion and faith they felt so deeply disgusted by.

When the Germans had invaded Poland they began organizing things there according to their own general plan of the world to come. Once Julia was found again at the university by her former employers the Nazi Party, they immediately employed her; She was employed as a civilian translator by the Ahnenerbe, a job offer you couldn’t refuse. By 1942 she was working on classified texts found in Krakow’s synagogues. Documents that turned out to be written in a odd mixture of Biblical Hebrew and Spanish, but a very archaic form of Spanish, that few people seemed to be able to translate. Julia’s rather specialized field of expertise made her the perfect choice for the job.

In 1943, Julia had found the document that was written in Spanish, on the back of a classified Hebrew document. The Hebrew document was translated by Dr. David Rosenstein, he did the Hebrew text into German, she did the other euro and indo-euro languages into German. Dr. David Rosenstein had worked as Head of Department at the same University as Julia had worked as Professor of Linguistics, before the German invasion. He was the Poland’s top language expert in the German and rather inclined toward the poetic aspects of the German language. He was not a practicing Jew in any way but could read and write biblical Hebrew, his natural interest and talent for languages made leaning languages for him a rather quick and easy process. His manner and clothing had always been modern German with a touch of true style. The rough Yellow star now sown onto his jacket did take some of the elegance away it.

Document Abh: ref SS 103783792/H-Krakow 1943.
The text is written in an archaic form of Spanish.

Key turns Lock
Lock touches Gate
Gate mirrors Garden.
All flows into endless eights.
Bound to be broken “tattooed” on my Mind.

“Tattooed”, in the original the word doesn’t really translate as “tattooed” but means to cut into, to scrape, to mark or to scrape. The verb would often be used as a description of cutting of symbols into rock, wood or skin.

This particular text was considered to be of vital importance to the staff of the Ahnenerbe and that went apparently all the way up to the very top. This was taken as some sign that somehow, they connected with Otto Rahn’s expedition to Iceland, which she, Julia Vargen, had been part of. She assured them that she had never seen this text before it had been removed from the synagogue in Krakow some time before they were burnt down, so early 1942 in Krakow’s case. It was written on original parchment and the Hebrew text, was proven without a doubt to have been produced in the early half of the 1500. That the Spanish text that was written on the scroll seemed “older” may have been due to some “user of an older version” of Spanish at that time during the early 15 hundreds. But the parchment and scroll was 15 hundreds no question, Dr. David Rosenstein knew this with total certainty.

Pagan warriors in the ancient Celtic and Germanic traditions would collect the heads of their enemy. They would mutilate the defeated warriors body that they had just killed in good honest battle by cutting off the head. The decapitated head (or heads) would then be kept as a trophy and due to the warriors minimalistic requirement for sanitation, the less than fresh head (or heads) would often be left to rot on some pole in close vicinity to the warriors home, for all the neighbors to see. The Celtic and Germanic warriors had this thing for fighting naked; it showed their true skin power. During the years of conflict with the Roman legions most of the Celts and Germans saw that running hot, naked and screaming at the enemy was indeed impressive but had little long-term effectiveness against the Roman legions. The well dressed and well trained Romans proved to have a major impact on the warrior fashion of northern Europe.

In autumn 1940, the next wave of “resettlement” occurred, more than 5,000 Krakow Jews were moved to the Lublin district in northern Poland. In Krakow on the 13 of March 1943, "Ghetto A" was exterminated; SS-Untersturmführer Amon Göth, the new commandant of Plaszow concentration camp, personally led the action. Prior to this, Amon Göth had worked in the headquarters of “Aktion Reinhard” as personal assistant in Globocnik's office (head of “Aktion Reinhard” in Lublin), until early 1943. Because of a personal conflict with Hermann Höfle and the accusations of corruption against Amon Göth, Globocnik transferred him to Krakow. How does one get accused of corruption by the offices of “Aktion Reinhard” how indeed? On the 14 of March 1943, the SS liquidated "Ghetto B". Many people were killed in courtyards or just in the streets. The last remaining Jews were deported in to the nearby death-camp just outside Wadowice, known as Auschwitz-Birkenau.

One of the lesser-known things about the removal of head-skin and its collection was that a warrior would mark his skin with exquisite symbols of power. This would ensure that the warriors’ skin would be carefully preserved and be kept in mint condition, and by this piece of magic the warrior would live forever as a warrior, waiting to return for the final battle of Ragnarök. The collections of skinned heads that were assembled at the Great of Halls of Viking world were considered to be the true wealth of the warrior society, a society that came to dominate the rest of Europe for a while, a thousand years ago. What was known was many of the great halls had sent their skinned heads to Iceland, during the wars with the Teutonic Knights.

Julia had worked with Dr. David Rosenstein at the Krakow University Linguistic department since 1937, when she had returned to her home in Krakow after the years she spent in Berlin and out in the field on various expeditions, including the two with Otto Rahn to France and Iceland. They had fallen in love with each other after some time; both were fairly reserved and used to being in the company of other single academics, where one doesn’t ruin ones reputation for stepping out with members of staff, especially superior members. They enjoyed each other’s company and would often be found in debate with each other about some point of translation contra poetic intention. It was more often a good excuse to talk to each other for as long as possible. The other staff thought they were both a bit stiff. It could have been nice to take a beer with them on a Friday, in the beer hall at the University, but Julia never went to the beer hall, as she found it intimidating. She had picked up German habits of Berlins academics within a certain circle of behavior and patterns.

The markings on, or rather in, the skin were made by a kind of “tattoo technique” that involved cutting patterns into the flesh and then rubbing in red ochre into the wound, when finally the cuts had healed the technique would leave a unique engraving on the skin of the warrior. Red ochre was considered very potent medicinally; it was even used as a cure for death, that’s why they painted it on dead bodies and bones. After his initiation into the warrior class, the successful warrior would gain the means to get a lot of body art done, which gave him both status and protection. The warrior became an object of great value in the northern hinterlands; he was worth fighting for and worth dying for. The skin artists of the day were kept busy by the Warrior class’s desire for more.

Otto Rahn fell into disgrace with the Nazi hierarchy in 1937 and for disciplinary reasons was assigned a tour of duty at the SS run Dachau concentration camp. In the winter of 1938/39 he wrote to the SS Reichsfuhrer requesting immediate dismissal from the SS. Rumors abound concerning Otto Rahn's departure from the Nazi SS. Some claim that he was a homosexual or of Jewish descent, but evidence is lacking. A few months later he was dead.

Just before Dr. David Rosenstein was shot by Hermann Höfle, in one of the last of Höfle’s own last personal actions to clear any trail of “Aktion Reinhard” or any other activity back to him. Rosenstein had been told by his “secret lover” Julia Vargen that she was pregnant with his child. He knew that the only chance for either of them to live was if they left Poland and went to the West. He knew a man that was said to be able to paint a postage stamp onto an envelope so well, with a brush and paint, that the German postal services couldn’t see the difference. Through his contacts he knew where this man could be found and true to his word was able to create the correct document for travel. Luckily enough David had given Julia the information as to where to contact this secretive man. By the time Julia could leave the only safe ticket out of Poland was being in fact being Jewish, the Swedish white buses were the only transport that could be trusted. This meant she needed to change her new documents after David had been murdered. She found the man and he quickly changed all her papers to show she was a Jew and her child was a Jew. Once in Sweden they were free.

By the time Captain Fernando Iñiguez and his pilot Anton de Alaminos turned up with the Córdoba expedition in 1517, the Aztecs had, more or less, taken over the rule of the entire region. Ironically the mighty and savage Aztec nation that had overrun Central America were waiting for the return of their great god, Quetzalcoatl. Aztec legend had it that Quetzalcoatl, would return with the New Sun from the East, not in his normal “Feather-winged Serpent” look, but this time white-skinned and bearded. Conquistador Hernanado Cortez (1485–1547) and his Christian task force (five hundred and fifty Spaniards, nearly three hundred Indians, a few Negroes, thirteen horses and ten brass cannon, in ten ships), landed on the shore of Tabasco, on the 4th of March 1519, in order to conquer the heart and soul of this New World. These European immigrants looked very much like the “White God with a beard ” and were happy to play the part of mythical returning god. Initially they were seen as Gods but the Spanish decided to spread their own “good news” as well as the pox and some other rather unpleasant STD’s (sexually transmitted diseases). A few of the European “travelers” returned from the New World. The came back to Spain and Portugal but some of them left the civilized world of Western Europe to disappear forever in dark Eastern Europe. Jews that had converted to Christianity t get jobs and survive were never trusted by the Spanish or Portuguese, sometimes it was better to disappear. Maybe it was one of these invisible men that had written that Spanish text on the back of a scroll, maybe it was of some importance. Documents of the Ahnenerbe: ref SS 103783792/H-Krakow 1943, filed way in an archive.

Julia finally retired from her position as professor of linguistics at the Swedish Academy in 1976 to write a little book about some journey she had made in 1936 to Iceland and some strange story about tattooed heads and Central American culture.

The End

The Greedy Widow and Hero

2005-12-24T08:54:00.000-08:00

The Greedy Widow and Hero

Is greedy the right word to describe the infamous Widow West? The starting point of all greed is hunger; the question you end up having to ask yourself is “how hungry are you?” At what point do your scales tip over the bleeding edge and go from need to want? Once you desire more because “more” is better than what you need, then you are entering into the endless wastelands, the true realms of greed.

How do stories of infamous greed get thrown about? Does one open ones mouth a little too wide and sticks ones foot all the way down it? That’s how the Greedy Widow got started. Lindberg could not keep it to himself. He was so “popping” at the seams in his “casual suit” that he couldn’t just ask for the telephone number and leave it at that. No he couldn’t but that is the basic problem with the “hero complex” type of person. The type of person that let their general “lack of self control” affect their professionalism. You might expect a brief, but diffuse explanation, as to why you wanted a mobile cell-phone number, but any detail in the case would be out of the question, unless like Lindberg you can’t help yourself. People with a “hero complex” are so cognitively programmed that they express their own “personal world image” just like some obsessive compulsives wash their hands twenty times and hour.

They aren’t evil or wicked people, Hero complex types, most of the time they even think they mean well. Yet they fall, time and time again, face first into the same jar of sticky honey that ends up being a filthy mess where their mouth used to be. Had it not been for Lindberg maybe the Widow West would have been left in peace. Rather than followed and hassled by the cheaper end of the “news / entertainment” industry. In the end, even the law became involved, due to the pressure from the media and the good people of Myview, Arizona.

Mr. Maier West, or Major West as his friends called him, made money like a teenager with badly cleansed skin makes spots. Money was just part nature for the Major. He was a businessman that had a sixth sense for wheels and deals. Why he got called Major was a mystery, unless his first name Maier just sounded like Major to the locals in Myview, Arizona. But Major West was a true captain of business and many of the towns leading figures looked to him for advice and financial support. The Major was always pleased to be of help because quite often he could get in at the bottom floor of every deal that was going up and up on this side of the River.

It came as shock for everyone, but the Major sat looking for a while at the rollo-card disk on the doctor’s table. He never thought those things would work, to much fuss, but too many cards were being thrown around today to keep them in a wallet. Cancer Mr. West is not always curable, even today with the advances in medication and treatment that have been made. “Oh,” said the Major, “so this Cancer I’ve got then is one of those is it? Can’t do anything about type of Cancer?”

“Yes Mr. West, this is one of those types “that we can’t do anything about.”

Arrangements were made with the finest hospital in the area; a team of private nurses was hand picked through selection process of specialist Caregivers to the extremely rich. Within three days the lower half of his town house had been converted in to a private hospital. The difference was it was still his house with all the easy convenience of a home. The financial requirements are enormous but with the insurance Mr. Major West had there were no economical limits on the amount spent on medical care. His life was to be run according to plan. The office was to be down sized and rescaled, and only a small number of the most important executives would have access to him. The rest of the business would be immediately looked over to see what can be sold before any rumors of problems hit the Wall, Bull or Dow Jones.

Before the week was done Mr. Maier West had managed to down size the corporation by 50%, recreating it into liquid capital that was moved into the offshore accounts. Whole companies had changed hands and only the central core to the corporation was left, all the holding companies remained. Real estate across the world was being put on markets, each done with such silence as not to disturb the other. By the following Monday morning (more or less a week after he had got the Cancer news) Major West had achieved the first of his goals, to turn 50% of the corporation into liquid cash, “make it 50% fluid” were his words a week ago. This lowered his overall income, but increased all his choices to a matter of moments. Moving cash from one offshore bank account to another is a deal done on the phone; selling huge block of shares is not. But the trust Major West held within the economic community was so strong that he was able to restructure the corporation before the hardened facts started to seep through the walls of his town house out into the world of commerce.

Nurse Dianna Hypoconidias had been a fully registered nurse for six years, She had worked in the best hospital in town and with perfect references began four years ago to work for a private agency that specializes in home palliative care. Her ability to communicate was exceptional and both patient and their families universally liked her. She was open, caring, empathic and always professional. The other six nurse’s and helpers that were employed full time soon began to follow Nurse Dianna’s shining example in most things. Her ability to communicate gave her the ability to lead. She always wore a white perfectly clean and pressed uniform that gave the impression of being a modern effective angel, wings would not have seemed out of place. Her hair was cut into a 50’s style bob with a little nurse’s hat to keep her brown hair in place. Her father had immigrated to Arizona from Greece, so her last name “Hypoconidias” was of Greek origin, (Hypo means horse in Greek; Conidias was something to do “walking with god”). Dianna was born and brought up in Myview, Arizona, as was her mother, who had been the 1968 Home Coming Queen. Nurse Dianna Hypoconidias was born 1974, making her 31 years old, although few people would guess her age correctly with her well-kept appearance. The uniform gave her a strict cut that was crisp but somehow soft.

When did it start to change? I don’t think it began until a few weeks into the first treatments. Mr. Major West had reacted very negatively to the chemotherapy, “cell poisoning” treatment. He had been relatively stable for a few days before the first set of chemotherapies, but afterward he was sick as a dog for days. He just threw up for four days more or less all the time; his conditioned became more and more unstable. Many new drugs were used to stabilize the feeling of sickness yet they had little or none affect whatsoever.

He knew that time was not on his side here. If he was going to be able to steer his Corporation, his life’s work into safe port of harbor, he saw he would need more time. This chemotherapy could have bought him that time, but feeling that sick would make anything impossible to run. A deal had to be struck, somewhere with someone, there always is a deal, you negotiated costs not services.

“So is it helping or not Dianna?”
“I’m sorry Mr. West it is impossible for me to say”
“Please Dianna call me Major you know me well enough. Can I buy the time?
“There’s maybe a way but it is not legal in this United State”

What they were talking about was a drug called the “Bleeding Edge” that had only been tested in certain sub cultures that used the substance for non-medicinal purposes. But given Mr. Major West’s particular medical situation, the “BE’s” could be, theoretically, mixed into the morphine pump without anyone knowing or becoming any the wiser. What would be required is someone who could enter the underground world of the Begoths and get close enough to fear of the macabre factory of doll creators. The factory will have much more for you in the future. Bleeding Edge gives you more wickedly lovely relief from convention and with the morphine relief from the anguish and pain, you are ready to go places. It is said that the bleeding Edge also has another property, that being one of giving a little more time. But with all the money in the world, in every tax free island paradise there is, all with their head offices in New York, London, Dubai and all the other holy places of cash worship, Mr. Maier West or even plain old Major couldn’t get into the Begoth subculture not for love nor for money. She could though, Dianna moved in that underground world in the night.

So what is the cost my dear, what is it you want from me, what have I to give to you? Buried below her calm cool exterior was a finely balanced scale weighing up the costs and risks. “50% of everything upfront “corporation wise” and that includes all offshore accounts, my accountants will have total access without any obstacles, they will see all. And then 100% of all life insurance, I would be soul beneficiary to every cent from them. That’s the cost Major. Do we have a deal?”

“Well my dear you have done yourself proud. A deal must be bold, as so must the chances we take on the deal. You have yourself a deal. You found the right price and right time to push for it. You will do well with all that money. We must marry to make it all legal this must be done immediately. Now to the BE, when can I take delivery of that Dianna? When do you make this service availably to me?

“Would now be a good time for you Major?”
“Now would be a fine time Dianna, a fine time in deed”.

How things change? Quite easily one slips in and out of personalities. This is what the Bleeding Edge does. It was development first in an attempt to ease pain of Cancer but gave few positive results during the testing. Certain patients experienced an unusual sensation of wanting to do things that they seemed ashamed of. When pressed further in testing many found these feeling to be overwhelming and rather unpleasant. They felt compelled to be free from social constraints, which they would normally willingly conform to. What was found out was that the mixture would work differently when mixed with pure morphine. This mixture had qualities that went way beyond the average party drug or designer drug. It became known as the Bleeding Edge, the drug of the true Gothic subculture. The perfect balance of choice and chance. The trip itself is just worth it. The problem is the morphine sold on the streets is far from being pure which makes the BE a rather dangerous mind alternating drug, you can fry you brain like chicken in fat if not careful. But once mixed with a pure and clean supply of morphine the BE becomes untraceable as it is chemically identical to drugs produced naturally in the brain, just lots more at the same time.

Mr. Major West had no doubts that this substance would buy him time enough to collect his wealth into easily managed units that could transform into any form or commodity. To pay the price he had paid may seem excessive but it is a question of good economics. People think in terms of costs contra what other things cost. They compare and try and make some sense out of relative comparison. My car cost this much money; I like it this much, so for the same amount of money that I spent on my car should bring me the same amount of happiness when I spend that kind of money on something else, like a swimming pool. This is non-sense. Major West knew that each deal is always a new deal. He had a very specific need and due to the time scale involved must be prepared to act accordingly. Which he did? He always knew when to get in on a new deal, and that is on the bottom floor, that is just before the deal goes all the way up to the top. He had gotten into the closed world of the Begoth subculture through the delightful Dianna and her shadow side. Mr. Maier “Major” West and Miss Dianna Hypoconidias became man and wife within the week, Mr. and Mrs. M West. He felt safe and secure.

And that just leaves us with Lindberg lagging behind. Arrh, the good Mr. Lindberg. Insurance man or insurance “expert” if one was having a particularly good day. Our own little town hero waiting to come charging to the rescue, through the ranks and files, giving voice to his own version of everything. All the legal document’s had been drawn up and made watertight through the skill and efficiency of the highest paid lawyers in the country, Mr. Major West lawyers. Mr. West was not a man who left a lot of things to chance, not when there were choices to be made. You can chose the law firm you wish to argue for you as long as you have the money to do it with. You are able to walk away from murder and child molestation despite being of Afro-American decent if you have enough cash. Now that’s freedom and democracy working properly, not some half arsed liberal version of law and order, but the real thing, the United State version.

Lindberg on the other hand had his own view like the rest of the good people of Myview, Arizona. He felt that leaving 100% of all Major West’s considerable life insurance to his newly wedded “Nurse come Wife” was somewhat excessive. Lindberg had no insight into any details beyond that fact that his colleague a fellow expert in the field of insurance had met with Mrs. Dianna Hypoconidias West the previous day.

After having gone through all the legal documents and notes of attorney needed to change the entire structure of the life insurance plan to simplest of plans, Mrs. Dianna Hypoconidias West, was content with the first part of the deal. The second part of the deal was dependent on the day dear Mr. Maier “Major” West died. Because on that day the corporation would pass into the hands of two sets of lawyers, one from the Western Corp and the other from Mrs. Dianna Hypoconidias West’s Foundation for development of Subculture. Each team would access the final figures and then divide it into two equal parts. One half going directly to the previous heirs and kin of Mr. Maier “Major” West and the other half to Mrs. Dianna Hypoconidias West herself, into offshore accounts.

It is not fair. It is not right. How am I to talk to Major West and verify this most unusual arrangement? Lindberg couldn’t keep his mouth shut so our blurted the now famous line that set the whole ball rolling off the bleeding edge, “she is a Greedy Widow that asks for everything” he then continued with his grand finale, “when there are others with rights and needs”. What Lindberg didn’t know or just couldn’t understand didn’t matter to him. Because it is only his own worldview, from his own personal perspective, that is possible in a world of order; otherwise the world would be chaos.

It was this aspect of other people’s chaos being part of his world that scared Lindberg the most. That it was possible for right things to go wrong, how does one creep and crawl from under that stone cap Mr. Lindberg. Apologies. Go ahead Mr. Lindberg and do your best to apologize for questioning things that you have no idea or comprehension of. You have “100% no idea” for sure of what you are talking about. It will be fun to hear you telling me that you are in the right in someway. Please Mr. Lindberg the stage is yours.

Now here’s an apology I got on my mobile phone
This one is for anyone’s collection of all time top apologies;

Sorry, I was wrong, it is Cancer.

So let the world know you’re a Goth simply on the Bleeding Edge

The End.

The Empty Shop

2005-12-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

The Empty Shop

Two white curtains had been put up in the front window of number 2 Weapon Street and two curtains along the side windows along Manheim’s Street. A single wooden chair stood up to the wall. The walls were covered in white glazed tile cut in smallish squares (10cm x 10cm), the floor was made from a gray stone, also cut into square tiles, only slightly larger than the ones on the wall, they all fitted perfectly into their square patterns. This new setting gave a rather different impression than the one yesterday. The three balloons, left in the front window, from what looked liked it had been a kid’s party. Now this empty wooden chair stood up against the back wall.

It just so happened that they had taken Weapon Street, round the back of the high street twice in a row, while on their daily walk, and noticed the difference. There was always a sense of optimism when shops are empty round here, one can never help the feeling that someone might actually have a good idea and start a shop with things in it that you would want to buy. But this was seldom the case in these parts of “closer to town” than suburbia.

We actually have a hair styllist that specializes in African Afro hair, with a “special offer” for kinked hair braids for Afro hair. Which is all well and good, apart form the fact that almost no Africans, North or South Afro-American, West Indian or any other people that have the slightest of Afro like hair live here. If I were to say at maximum 20 to 30 people with something that might be considered Afro hair, in a large surrounding area I think I would be exaggerating. But there is a shop for them here.

We even have a tailor made kitchen shop. They tailor make a kitchen for you, from the finest and most boring looking pieces of kitchen furniture and cupboards known to man. They have generally anything you would ever want in a kitchen. We have a shop for those people who would like to spend a lot of money on a nasty kitchen. We have a shop specialized in special video equipment, a very strange dusty opticians, a coffee and teashop with a small selection, two famous tattoo artists and a foam plastic shop that makes seats and all sorts of other useful things in foam plastic.

So empty shops are always the cause of much amusement as to what foolishness can next come to “closer to town” than the suburbs. What foolishness in deed was in store for the good people of our nearer to town than “suburbers”, the foolishness in the originally twisted mind of Dr Finklestein could not have been reckoned on.

But then again there were a lot of things that you couldn’t count on. You can’t count on water; you can count on it falling but you can’t count on it ending up down the hole along the center back wall of the shop, the empty shop. I suppose you can always count on one victim, there are normally more, well they seem to be more of them. But one is the normal rate, one at a time.

Dr. Finklestein did voodoo. This was his thing. It freaked a lot of people out, it worried communities of the faithful but that didn’t change the simple fact that the Doc, as his clients called him, knew him to be the supplier of Voodoo services and rites according to the ancient Fon traditions. I know it creeps people out to think that the Doc does his thing right here in our little sleepy “nearer to town that suburbia” but this is where people bother you the least in shops. People do not go into shops here unless it happens to be ICA (or now Willy’s), or the video tobacco sweet store. So the Doc can happily have his empty little shop in peace. No worries from all those young budding business people on the look out for a prime piece of commercial real estate to start a new million-bucks a day idea. Even Sally and Igor were more or less invisible as they strolled through the empty daytime streets; everyone who lives here works in town. So the Doc could perform all his creations, his experiments and develop his very special talent into the “Art form” he always knew possible.

The all-new mothers “brigade” with their expensive prams and newly hatched eggs walked in disciplined rows to and from the children’s park, where they have fresh live rabbits, goats and sheep. Or they march of to a have a coffee together at one of the three “newish” coffee places that have opened up around here; the flower shop one, the music one down the road, and the new one, next to the empty foot care place. So all activity is on the low burner during the day. A few speedo pensioners out for a quick dash with their walking stick or on their wheeled walkers. Postmen on bikes do get spotted round midday. But Sally and Igor slip silently through the streets right up to number 2 Weapon Street, and into the shop without causing even the leaves to stir.

“Are you to leave me like this Sally”?

Invisible force or Spirit, that’s what “vodun”, the root of the word voodoo means in the Fon language. Out of mother Africa came thousands of people, many from the Gulf of Benin region, with their ancestral tradition ripped from their bosom. The Mothers and Fathers of the people became just broken terracotta jars. These people were thrown into the dungeons at Whydah (known as Juda in travel text of the time, 1727) by the Dahomey. The Dahomey, the local African gangster kingdom had smashed and turned the kingdom Whydah into a huge slave emporium, they sold 10,000 slaves a year from there. From Whydah harbor ships sailed across the Atlantic and after what must have been a living nightmare (four to six weeks on the Ocean for the first time in a dungeon ship). If they lived, they were then sold as slaves to white people to work for them and obey them. If they didn’t obey them they were punished with unbelievable cruelty and more than likely publicly tortured and killed to help set better examples. From this Fon language and culture base came a word and practice of rituals that sends shivers down the spine of most hardened of the faithful, Voodoo. There is always one Victim involved.

“You need to decide whom you wish to punish. One question remains in my head Sally: to what degree should one punish this person who is decidedly deserving of punishment? Do you here me Sally, do you hear me thinking these thoughts aloud, for you Sally, thinking aloud Sally. Aloud”. Sally looked at Igor with that “I’m tired and sick of this look” and then gave him a brave little smile, he smiled back with his wide fat cheeks, he truly loved Sally.

“Voodoo charms work best when your doll is directly connected to an organic part of your intended victim. The fresher the goods, the stronger the spell. Your method of attachment is terribly important, make sure that the object is securely fastened to your doll. Securely fastened Sally!”

There is always one victim to be accounted for when it comes to incurable cancer. You happen to have this particular version; it is by its nature an aggressive and fast growing tumor. It cannot be cured, maybe poisoned to such a degree that it slows down, but we wouldn’t know that before three months of treatment. The first new scan is done after three months. The outcome of any treatment is hard to predict, in your case, it can only be a question of time, as there is no cure. But then again time maybe something you feel is important to lengthen if at all possible.

The reaction to the treatment is so different from patient to patient so we have no way of saying what might happen. Some react more than others, but there are good and affective medications on the market that seriously help reduce the symptoms of the poisoning. As a victim of Cancer you will find yourself subject to the conditions of the unknown and the unknowable. It is your DNA that is mutating not ours. We have seen this before but each victim is new in their own way. Without medication the tumor will grow at it’s own rate giving us no possibility to comment on a timeframe. Your medical care unit are experts in this field and they will be able to help give you information along the way. You will of course be made physical aware of the changes that occur in your body as the Cancer develops.

“Conaissance my dear Hunsis, that is what you lack, how shall you be a good spouse to the Hu if you have no knowledge. And you my Hungenikon, my sweet reine-chanterelle, how can you leave me here alone when there is work to be done in the Humfo? We have company tonight, are all things prepared? Are the Hunto drums blessed and sacrificed to? I don’t ask much from you. I merely ask a little consideration that I am less than able to perform all theses tasks myself from my wheelchair. Come Igor show me what thing you found in the park today for the Loa”.

The street outside was still covered with the yellow, red, brown, orange leaves from the maple tress. They blew around and piled up by the road side making the road look like it was the yellow-bricked road and the wizard was at the other end of it, in number 2 Weapon Street. Just across the road there was a tiny little park with a statue of a naked young boy sliding off a smooth rock into the fountain. The scene was not powerful or even highly emotive, but endless and serene in its simplicity. The naked boy, with quite unclearly cut features and a chipped nose, had managed to get himself to the point where he was just about to slip down into the cooler fountain waters. The stone the boy was sitting and hugging onto was a reddish brown stone; the boy himself gave the impression of being a lighter gray color. The fountain was made in redder stone, squarish, with cut corners at the top. The outer wall of the fountain was gray granite, which is filled with water during the summer months. Gravel surrounded the fountain and then a rectangular area of grass with a few smaller trees around the “ tiny park” was used to park their cars around by the locals.

“Is the chair in place?”

“The victim Doctor Dearest, oh master Hungon dear, where is the victim?” She smiled as she lent slightly forward to peer into the dark glassed eyes of the Dr Finklestein. “Where do we have our victim?” She stood up and walked to Igor, softly touching his jacket lapels to make them straight, and brushing the small white flecks that ran down off his scalp onto his shoulders. “Do you have our victim Igor, tucked away in your big old belly?” she playfully wobbled his large protruding stomach. He looked down at the floor with even a larger grin on his round face, he truly loved Sally.

“Don’t play her games Igor, you know what happens when you play Sally’s games”, the grin left Igor’s face instantly. “Now as you were so rightly saying sweet Sally, our victim has not turned up, as of yet, to our appointment, but that is not to say that they won’t turn up, does it my dear. It is an indication they have not seen the inevitability of our meeting, but Sally darling you know what wonders a little pressure can do here and there? Don’t you? Just like our darling little Igor knows what the pins can do, don’t we Igor”, Igor stood with his head hanging down enough to show there would be no more fun and games.

“I have a little something for you Sally something special, a present, I have been saving it for the right occasion, come wheel me into the backroom. Igor you stay and keep an eye on the street for the Victim”. Sally smiled at Igor but he kept his eyes counting squares on the floor. “Sally”. She took the back of the wheelchair and turned it toward the back room. The old metal wheels of the wheelchair resounded on the stone floor, causing an unpleasantly loud noise to fill the entire shop as they moved into the back of the shop. From the window on Manheim’s Street you could see the long industrial type sink that ran all the way across the back wall. It was very dark in the backroom so the only detail to be seen from the window was the long stainless steel sink with a red plastic bucket under the sink, or part of the sinks construction.

Igor stood now leaning against the sidewall just by the door. He had a good view out from both of the large windows. He could see down the all the streets and had a good clear view of the back of the fountain and the boy sliding into the fountain. There went that many cars parked around during the day.

Igor stood and wondered if the victim would show up today. It was seldom the case that they didn’t show up at all. Sometimes Victims waited until they could hardly move, and then it was much more difficult for them to sit on the chair. It was when they were sitting in the chair that Dr. Finklestein had his treatments. He performed his specialty, his Art as he called it. Bringing dead things back to life. The Victim always wanted a last shot, a final hope and the good Doctor was the last shot you got, unless that is, you didn’t want to be a Victim. Well that didn’t happen so often, they almost always came crawling to the chair in the end or quite near the end. For a brief moment it seemed to Igor that the boy statue had slipped away into his fountain. Igor stared at the empty streets of nearer to town than the suburbs and waited for the victim to show up.

The End

The Great Rob Clerk

2005-12-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

The Great Rob Clerk

What am I doing here? Why am I sitting in some sort of dodgy office, with a bunch of low-level gangsters hung out with each at what I presumed to be their version of a party? Why? Why is the easy part to explain, I had got involved because I seriously needed the cash and that’s the reason I was now stuck on this chair. Being pleasant and social with a bunch of misfits. I was a link in a chain of events that ended making up some very unlikely occurrences happen. Did I start this chain reaction? Well that depends on your point of view, Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly, had a few opinions about that and other nonsense.

I really had nothing to offer them. I had no access to codes or vaults. No keys to locked rooms, no knowledge of where things were kept safely. All I had was a rubber stamp. One of the simplest of things in the world. A piece of molded rubber, stuck onto a short plastic handle, that was a mirror image, of the required information, to be stamped onto something. It may seem ludicrous but that was how it worked back then; right place, right time, right stamp, it worked.

Simplicity is always the best plan, like the truth is always the best lie. All energy flows along the path of least resistance, (day 1 physics, first lesson). So all good plans should be about the flow of energy. A flow that is as natural as the tide of the River or the falling of leaves in autumn. The sense of flow maybe was my fault. That initial insight into how simple it would be to do, how few people or hands ever touch the relevant documents and goods at the same time and at the same place. The simple fact that if planned well enough the number of people could be brought down to one. One person is a good number in all plans, it is seldom the number that is used, but planning wisely, you couldn’t ask for more.

Finding a partner in crime is both harder and easier than you would expect. More and more people are willing to do “dubious things” but few of them have the mindset to do them under pressure. The truly brilliant criminal mind is one that must be well balanced and broken. A sociopath has the perfect criminal mind. They have their own structure and system for judging right or wrong, based entirely on their own Ego-King complex. They make up their own rules as they go along, but as they do, the new made up rules become “truths”, for as long as they need to be truths, be it ten seconds or be it ten years. A sociopath never lies, they just tell the truth, their own truth, which is to them the truth; therefore they are often believed and considered trustworthy, ironic really. Once you have your dream partner in crime, the sociopath, you are all set in your little office just waiting for the right moment to take action.

Now finding three such minds in the shape of Lucile, Catherine and Ingrid was not thought to be possible. But L.C.I. (as they called themselves) had started when three girls from a North-West London Grammar School for girls let in the new first year for the year 1974. The eleven-year-old girls were all neat and prime in their green and gray uniforms. A gray pleated skirt, gray socks or gray tights, a white shirt, gray green tie, and green blazer, with a green jumper or pullover. The badge on the blazer was an image of a beehive; the symbol showing that working together in a community is a good thing. The image of the beehive also shows us that when you get the work done you get the honey. The cap was no long part of the uniform but could be bought with the rest for a knock down price.

L.C.I. became fully active after the first term or quarter. Most of the other girls tried to find a friend and build pair groups that then would join into larger groups keeping the “best” friends in the pairs but allowing for a certain amount of interaction across the social board. L.C.I. joined up together as three right from the start. Like a magnet that nothing could stop. During the first three years they were all considered very bright girls, and their somewhat different socializing was even seen as a healthy thing by the younger members of the staff. L.C.I were even encouraged to sit together and use their resources to help each other, rather than be made to sit at other ends of the classroom so as not to talk or giggle. By the year 1977 things on the outside world had begun to change quite dramatically, and it wasn’t long before the sub-cultures of the late 70’s in London town began to have an important influence on L.C.I. By 1978 the girls were on an exploration of music and fashion to be found on the London Streets, Punk, Ska, and new wave. Groups started up every other day and the sound got revolutionized overnight. The soul, disco, smooth mooch had little to offer against the savage raw power of the Clash, The Pistols, the Jam, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Specials AKA, Blondie, even The Sparks. Music was the world and now fashion and music became so intertwined that the establishment couldn’t look the other way. “What on earth, are you wearing, my dear girls?”

School uniforms soon began to be redefined and it was not long before the attributes of street life began being noticed on the girls. It was their last year in Grammar school, unless they wanted to do A levels in the school. They agreed to continue their education but not in some school regime, but in a Colleges of Further Education. They had remained focused on study and all had over nine o levels a piece graded between B’s and A’s so it was just making the choice of “A” levels. Psychology number 1, you have to know who you are, History, where you came from, Philosophy, how to use your mind, Sociology and Politics, what world are you living in today. They each took the same five “A” levels Psychology, History, Philosophy, Sociology and Politics. Then there was their physical training program, which consisted of a series on martial arts including kung fu. They were extremely well conditioned, through long distance running and swimming, they also used ballet but mainly the balance and stretch parts.

Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly is ready for any and all the terrorist sonsabitches! That’s what it said on his bumper sticker of his official federal van. He had Joe from the advertisement agency downtown, make it up for him special, that was the time when Joe had run over a dear in his van at night and not reported it, but Marshal (that was his first name not his rank) had seen the dents on the car and confronted him with it. “How could you Joe? How could you drive away?” Joe felt like crap and asked Marshal if he could do anything to make up for his foolishness. That’s when Marshal had the brilliant idea of the bumper sticker. No one else had that sticker cause they weren’t made for sale, just for particular persons. Joe had that kind of printing equipment you needed to do bumper stickers. So it saved Joe getting a fine for hit and runs on wildlife and Marshal got his kick arse bumper sticker, sweet deal all round.

The set up sounds complex but really it isn’t that hard to grasp. If the invoice and travel papers were stamped, before the shipment came, then any number of cargo containers could be written on the form. When the containers arrive the travel documents get passed straight into the “inner” office. The “outer” office counts the containers off loaded from the truck. Once the ”outer” office confirms the number, the “inner” office stamps the form and writes down the number of containers to be transported. A double check.

After all the containers are counted and stamped for invoicing, they are considered to be the same format with different delivery addresses. So they are not in any way, shape or form registered again against the initial form stating the amount of containers you had left. You leave 20 containers and you write down on the invoice you left two containers, then, if you get it stamped, you left 18 containers for no cost whatsoever, free of charge. This all depends on the “outer” office and the “inner” office communication.

If you can create a situation where the “inner office” and the “outer office” one and the same person, for a period of 45 minutes, you could theoretical, unload and reload 26 containers. With any number a containers you liked written down and stamped. You could pay for one and get twenty-five, reduced considerable. Lets say one tenth of the price, one tenth is a good deal for everyone.

So Catherine and Ingrid got to go to Helsinki to nail the deal. As it turns out the really meeting was never in Finland but in the back streets of Stockholm’s suburbs, Aspudden. Smoke screens and mirrors, Lucile did the deal while leaning over the sheep and goat pen. Nice goats. Screw the goats, do we have a deal? Oh yes we have deal Mr. Clerk. We need a test run to see things don’t go wrong, when can that happen Mr. Clerk? A full 26 container run with untraceable goods? That’s the deal. Two weeks from today, Thursday 22 nd, 12,30 to 13,15, that’s the frame. Good, we will meet here again on the Wednesday before to confirm the run. Lets say we meet same time here by the rabbits, they smell less, “good day”.

Federal Wildlife agent, Marshal Willenholly hung back in the horse’s pen; he had found the perfect watchtower, while he still was invisible, a perfect line of sight of Lucile and the guy in the brown leather jacket. He was able to see the whole thing go down. If he only had some equipment like a camera or a bugging device he could have heard what they were saying, but no, Marshal Willenholly was not funded and his budget came out of his own pocket, most of it had been spent on travel and hotel bills. The federal Wildlife authorities had began to wonder why Marshal was flying to Stockholm Sweden when he was meant to be part of the brown bear count up Ridge Creek, or had Marshal lost the plot while on the Canadian Goose count? He had taken to talking through a megaphone at people, which was slightly disturbing but hardly “whacked out” as some would have it.

It was on the 24 November 1994, at 12,30 the first real shipment arrived. The entire lunch rotation had been turned once back and once forward, for a period of 45 minutes, which meant the person responsible for the mistake now manned the outer and inner offices, and as the boss Rob Clerk was ultimately responsible. Rob Clerk opened the gate as the truck rolled down the ramp. Within 15 minutes of arriving the truck left empty through the front gate. At 12,50 the extra transport arrived and together with the driver Rob loaded the 26 containers in ten minutes, the concession and travel documents were signed and stamped, the driver gave a last nod and handed back to Rob the conformation of delivery. At 13.00 hours the bay door to the outside street was closed, and Rob Clerk sat on a plastic chair just at the side of the loading bay. He took out a cigarette and lit it up. The smoke twirled slowly upward catching the extra electric light of the bay area. The travel document stayed carefully folded four times in his thigh pocket. At a quarter past one Roger and Backis strolled in from lunch, they sat down on the bench a light up cigs, “anything?” Nope. Nothing ever does midday.

He sat in his office looking out over the wind blown streets of Folkungagatan. The day grew more tiresome, especially the early afternoon from about twelve to three, then you go home. He had nothing much to do. He had made long term planning very efficient, so normally what most people took hours to do, he would have done in a few minutes. This gave him large portions of time to dream up plans and schemes and how to make a fortune by selling some secret information or coming up with the perfect crime, a crime that just disappeared into thin air and that could never be proved or disproved to have happened or to have succeeded. A victimless crime.

The End

Made up Diagnosis

2005-12-21T11:29:00.000-08:00

Made up Diagnosis

The chances that you happen to be in the right place at the right time are not mathematically probable. But one of the joys with “pure” mathematical thought is that chance is always larger than probability, there by creating pockets of impossibilities that are essential to the very fabric of the time/space continuum.

“I’m sorry I was wrong, it is Cancer”. He happened to be sitting with his back turned away from the sofa where this particular conversation was taking place.

He first got the idea when he heard the conversation on the other side of the sofa. He looked up and saw the patient being lead away towards the toilet; he looked like he was about to be sick. The doctor held onto him tighter as his legs started to give way underneath him, the patients’ not the doctors. The entire medical journal was just left on the table lying next to him. He didn’t know why he did it at first, but he put the medical journal in his bag. It was like a powerful shining light that hit him square in the head, as his arm just scoped up the entire journal in one easy movement and stuck it silently in to his bag. And without blinking an eye, closed the bag, shut and locked the flap into the click-closed mode.

But how could he get away with it? You couldn’t, unless, you knew everyone that would surf the website would go through the same server. Then the “website” and all the text you put on the “website”, you could put straight onto that server. You then make it look like a World Wide Web shots on the browser, for that particular www address, but really it is just a local page only on that server. So everyone one would be reading “a local page” on one server but would think that the website was on the open web. If you worked in server programming it was easy to do. You load through a gate so you can down load from home. Its invisible, it is just mirror of a gate. And you pass in and out this gate, down load the “diary website” and everyone who reads it from work thinks its true. And because deep down nobody really gives a shit who you are or how you feel, it works.

He was waiting for his plastic identity card that they had just gone to get, because they had forgotten to give it back after the check up he had done on his stomach due to indigestion, stress related or Pepsi-X max related. The nurse came with the card and gave him a nice smile and said they had found it. She was cute, he felt he wanted to leave quickly, but smiled back at her. As he left the building he started to walk a bit faster. He made it in time to the next train, which pulled in like twenty seconds after he got on the platform. He threw himself into the corner of the back seat the train. Commuter trains were mainly empty around midday out in Flemingsberg.

The bag felt heavy till he got it all out at home. Everything. All the files and the letters all clear as crystal, the guy was in even the same age, same year same month, what are the chances of that. Poor sod, he is the one whose dying but I can go on for years. A few changes here and there nobody will question this; this is one hundred percent foolproof. This is the real deal.

Getting the changes made to the document was not the hardest part at all. The fact that his best friend was a professional graphical designer with his own business didn’t hurt the process rather the opposite. They sat down and scanned in the documents into the best computer imaging programs on the market and simply recreated them perfectly with his name and social number on them, not the other poor sods. Then they sent them to all the relevant authorities and got all the conformation with other authentic documents, and finally they sent all these to his work place, in the form of a medical diagnosis from all authorities saying. Terminal cancer. Death Date unknown, Aggressive. 0 % work ability, 100% disability.

So he then quite simply got the company’s insurance policy to put him under the sick and dying and leave him there to rot quietly in peace. But he would have to create the illusion of him dying; otherwise after a while people would start wondering what was going on. He knew that most work places like the giant company he worked for had the best formulated policies for helping sick people. When anyone was sick they seemed to have armies of personal people (Human Resource People) and consultants ready to march off into the sunset to find ways in which they can help you get back to work or “quite”. The company was not keen on the paying of wages to sick people who didn’t work, so they used some bloodhound like people to track you down. The truth of the matter was quite simple if you ever got “sick enough” then they left you alone like you had the plague. Cancer was sick enough to get everyone running for the hills.

But it’s not easy to say you have Cancer, well it is, but it’s not easy to prove you have Cancer; that takes certain documents that seldom leave the hospital wards or the doctors’ offices. All “Restricted” areas with low access.

He hated his job at the company it was dull and boring. He worked with the computer installation as well as the servers. He spent his days watching for “blips” or “glitches” in updates of servers and other hubs, router’s and millions of wires that went into black boxes, which kept the company running along. He sat and pressed buttons, did the diagnosis tests, which was required to check the status of “information transferal”, doors, firewalls, locks and gates. He had all the keys, in form of code, to open and shut electronic pathways, by working with the simplest of binary codes.

0100101101010010010101001001011110101001000010001011101.

This is the truth according to Information Technology or IT.

He had opened up his own personal gateway that nobody knew about. So he could basically do his job from home or wherever he was at the time, it saved him from going to the company office at work when he couldn’t be bothered. But you could only do that once a week before the fat lady sang. He couldn’t stand the boredom of the job but he needed the money and steady income of cash to live on with some sense of security.

He hated the meaninglessness of doing something so dull as to watch the diagnostics of the company’s entire IT platform. Three gigantic servers that all had to constantly “relay” information in sequence, to and from, each other creating a “one-base” computer system, that links every program you have into one program and into the same operative base code. That type of system is of course entirely compatible with “itself” for a cost of next to nothing, once you have bought the system and translated it from German and then translated all “your other programs” into the base code. But unfortunately it is “highly expensive to run” with other programs, that you already use and haven’t had converted into the same “three dimensional” base structure system developed by the Germans in their car manufacturing plants during the late 90’s.

His job in the company was to watch and monitor (repair if needed) the diagnostic tests of the relays. What this meant in real terms was that each of the three servers, large fridge-like black box things, was constantly monitored by another program counting the “interchange of information” in terms of diagnostic study. A program that counted and then crossed checked information on a regular base, and also on an irregular random interval base. The diagnostic testing then crosschecked the eventual difference in thousands of related bits of information from the same three machines at the same time.

This was graphically displayed in “mind numbing graphs” that reset themselves every 30-second interval, so as to be unnoticeably changed beyond the update time frame. The reason the “diagnostic tests” were monitored by a human at all, was if the relays went down during business time, “the face” could manually be patched (reconnected) and the “diagnostic tests” would then be directly monitored from the patch. But that was just because “they” didn’t understand that the patch was really only a code, not a cable, because all the other wires would serve to carry the code.

If “they” could rewire relays then they would understand. But programmers aren’t trained on the hardware aspect of anything, so even a simple chipboard meant nothing to them. Those that do have knowledge know “the Relay” is the Key to working computers. What you do is adjust the program enough so it looks like you have work enough to do but in fact you just changed the program. So all manual patching that you do, is in fact not technically ever done, it just looks like it is done in the program. The need for “human support” of this machine is fictional, but because everyone believes it to be true, it becomes true. All due of lack of insight into very basic of physics in terms of electro-magnetism, a lie has become the truth, and the need for manually backed “diagnostic test studies” has become written by the hand of god into stone.

So he could quite easily make up his own “diagnostic test” study around his death that would basically function the same way the program did at work. The main advantage for him would be not have anything whatsoever to do with these people anymore. They would get someone else to do his job, so he didn’t have to it anymore, and the company would pay him for being off from work as sick from their insurance, which by law, they are obliged to pay, not only for all his medical treatment but all his up keep.

So the company would have to pay him his entire wage and on top of that all his living costs. All he had to do was just invented a “website” describing his slow but inevitable death and everyone would just find the whole thing so unbearable that they would just end up ignoring him. Finally he would disappear but still be employed claming full wages and benefits from the company until such time as he died, which could take like 30 years or more.

In the beginning he wrote like every day a small diary “blogg-thing” on how ill he was, and how he puked up forever after chemotherapy, which he got twice a month. Well, people just found it terrible, so after a while they stopped looking at the website. As he could see the number of times people tried to log onto the website he could rearrange the site automatically according to the number of searches (people going to that website address from their work computers). He didn’t have to write anything in the diary website, the program wrote the diary for him automatically, after doing the “diagnostic test” on the searches. It had preprogrammed phrases and sentence construction so it could use many different combinations to say the same thing. Write itself.

If a larger numbers of people would look at the website at the same time, it would be programmed to make it look like he would get much worse (much sicker with lots more detail of puking and nasty stuff). Then when the number of searches decreased and he got a lot better. So as soon as anyone of the “HR people” or “consultants” or any of the other arseholes employed to aggravate you, looked into what was happening with him on the website he got sicker causing them to leave the website well alone and forget he existed. He had programmed “their profiles” (the HR peoples) individually, so he knew what made them stop looking on the website on a personal level. So the program adjusted the text in the diary according to numbers and according to the particular people looking at the site, this is “diagnostic test” study working at its best.

He programmed the site with his friend the designer to make it look good. The better the things look the better people thought they were. It is like thinking, but going blaaah blaaah, at the same time. Why do people presume that “the truth” is always the best packaged? Well, it doesn’t matter a ratsarse as long as it looks believable and not some homemade hand-job with black background and dark blue text

The website just looked like this kind of thing should look, not a load of “flash” and other spin monkeys. Plain text, day after day, you made on the “blogg machine tool”, set it up; made some choices to get it looking safe and sound. Being able to change a few fonts to make it that more believable was his mates idea, the graphical designer, so that was no problem. He then down loaded it onto the server through the gateway he had made to run the machine from home. Totally untraceable because the gateway wasn’t there. They would presume it had to be cabled which was not the case, it was wired and relayed.

For the first few weeks people all over the company was searching his website. He could see how the address spread from department to department. He wrote it himself in the beginning, how he had found out he was sick and dying and how bad it was. He then wrote like a daily diary about being in hospital and then moving home to get treatment in his own home. It didn’t take that long for people to lose interest in him. The number of searches on the website from sales and marketing, went up one day and more or less disappeared by the end of the day, deal done, move on. A few people form the IT department seemed obliged to look everyday or every other day for the first few weeks, but that trailed off by about a month.

With the sublime insight of the all seeing “diagnostic testing tool” he was able to automatically use phases in the blogg that reduced interest from specific groups or individuals. This would enable the “website” to actively reduce interest in him from all departments of the company without him every having to bother with looking at it. All he needed to do was to run a “diagnostic test” on the relays to the website. That meant he was now paid his full wage and on top of that all his living expenses and any medical treatment he might every actually need without every having to do another days work in his life. He miraculously survived on the edge of death but never died. Freedom never tasted so sweet, autoload: Enter code, XXXXXXXXXXX, relay open, and download information diagnostic 20051022. The 22 th of October today, I am feeling a bit better than yesterday.

The vomit just gushed out of his mouth as he saw the sink rise up in front of him from the handicap toilet that he was being lead into.

The End

Mr. Ant

2005-12-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

Mr. Ant

How do you find a man that that just isn’t there? I suppose the only place you can start to try to find him is when he was there. So when was Mr. Ant there?

He moved quickly past the small group of people that had stopped to chat by the copying machine. He couldn’t do the “buddy group” thing with others so he always managed to look in a bit of hurry, like he had to do something that had to be done now. But that’s much later on, that’s when he stopped liking the story. Your right.

The corridor was slowly filling up with people who had no idea where they should be so they just started to generally mill about in corridors. About nine o’clock some older more grown up looking people turned up and started to inform everyone as to where the assemble points where for the options that they had taken, which they had with them on the letter they had received and so on. He dug around in his coat pocket and managed to find the folded, bent and creased letter informing him that he should go to the Main assemble room for new “A” level students. He followed the steady stream of 16 to 20 year olds that all seemed to be general going in one direction, he figured this was the way he probable should be heading.

The main assemble room turned out to be a big classroom with tables and chairs set out in rows, slightly curved rows that curved around a big table on a slight podium. The large central table was not really in the middle of the room, but a bit more to the right of the room than center, giving a general sense of imbalance to the entire classroom. There was a large open space toward the opposite end of the room, but there weren’t any tables and chairs there, so everyone and you ended up more on the side of the room where people kept walking in through the doors. Just behind where you had sat down.

He was always early. He hated being late and he hated people who were late. He thought that it was rude to be late, but that was only because he took things personally in a way that other people never understood about him. So he had been waiting to know where he should go and what he should be doing for ages. As he got through the doors into main assemble point, he headed straight for nearest chair to sit down on, he had been waiting forever. He had smoked a few cigarettes and felt a bit more relaxed but still his pulse was high.

Hello and welcome to the new “A” level students of further education, blah blah, and the whole thing just kicks off, “bang”, straight into the “adult bullshit mode”. That particular adult mind mode that always causes teenagers’ heads to short-circuit. All functions just shut down as the fuse inside your head goes pop. That is why boring adults think that all teenagers are all mad or plain rude, they just forgot what it was like to get “zapped with the crap”. You mind just blanks out. Zap. And then you hear nothing of what the adult in question is saying to you at all.

He would have stayed in the blank “zap” of his short circuit, if hadn’t been for the punk girl who literarily fell into the room. Her entire being came crashing through the doors of the main assemble point for new “A” level students with such force that the entire room just all woke up out of their dazes and turned to see what “thing” could make such as noise, as was being made. She half screamed half laughed and generally started to have an open dialog with the world around her. The dialog had no direction as such, more a series of sounds that might just be questions, or apologies, or just exclamations of surprise, which got expressed at everyone. After some time making these exotic noises she found herself a chair and started putting bags, and other accessories, loudly all over the table in front of her, trying to cover as large an area of space as her belongings allowed. Paper and pens were produced to show keenness to push on into the new “A” level student world. The world just stopped and waited to see how much she could produce from the bags that she was digging into with great intensity. There seemed to be room for a lot of objects, each of which was spoken to or commented on out loud, produced like rabbit out of some magical top hat.

He couldn’t help himself; he always took being late as a personal affront. However hard he tried to stop it, lateness always made him go into replay mode of his obsessive patterns. He was 18 now and more able to control some of the worst feelings of fear and loathing, but that was only on a quite a superficial level, more like not showing it than actually not doing it. The smoking had helped a lot. The abuse of Nicotine was a dear and welcomed part of the armor that had begun to grow round the Mr. Ants body. He sat sulking as more and more people wondered in and out of the room and the woman trying to explain the whole deal with the “A” level subject name lists and rooms got more and more flustered and agitated.

She started over and over again to explain the same thing. The general idea was you looked at subject lists, with names of students and the timetable of these classes stuck on the wall, at the back of the room to the left. Where there were no tables and chairs dear, over there, yes on the wall over there are the lists where is says what timetable your class has and what room it is in. She pointed to an empty area to the end of the room. You see your timetable and class teacher for the subject you have chosen. This is the blah blah blah. The noise of the room was getting louder as the people who got the idea started to move over to the lists and just stopped listening to the woman. The people who kept walking in during the middle of her explanation didn’t know what going on. So they started to ask her questions that inevitable set her off again, one notch higher on Judith’s nervous break down scale.

Because he had sat down as far as possible in the right hand corner of the room, so as not to have to sit next to bunch of people he didn’t know, he was now in the worst possible position to get up and get to the timetables. The area over the other end of the classroom that was now rapidly filling up with people. Everyone was trying to get to the same lists. So he folded his arms and sunk a bit deeper into plastic chair that he was sat on. He would wait until he could walk up to the lists and not have to jostle with all those kids. He got up and made his way out to the dinner room where you could still smoke indoors, this was way back then. He fished out his 20 Red Marlborough hard pack from his flannel shirt pocket and got out a cigarette, he only had a couple left in the pack, shit. He used a lighter because matches are for the kids, people who don’t really smoke, but just think they smoke.

So he never liked the story. No he did, he did like the story once things started to happen. Once things started to be about him or rather have him involved, he liked those bits. In the beginning. You see what he didn’t like was being just nobody. He had felt like nobody for years. Like he just wasn’t anyone. At secondary school things didn’t really work out, well not at the end. The other kids were different, they tried to be someone, they all tried to get personalities of some sort, mainly copies of other people like football players. He just didn’t have an idea of who to be, so he just faded into the wall and in the end faded out the back door. He was a bright kid, brighter than most, but personality wise he was like angry and everything just got inverted. He would get wound up and angry for no real reason as such, it always got personal. Like being late. Like it was because he wasn’t worth turning up on time for, that’s why people were late and that’s what made him feel angry. Which is really odd because time has so many different factors involved in being late, so to focus on just one, is downright pointless. But that was the big difference with him; mentally he was 100% rational, to the point of being over intelligent, but emotionally he couldn’t jump over a box of matches.

Well, the story started to get quite funny; a group of cooler people began to form. It is the way of the world; large groups splinter quickly down into units of definition. People who think they belong together hang out with each other, especially if they knew each other from before. Other people end up sticking together in groups of external definition, which in turn ends up sticking to them, for example, “the ones doing “A” level sociology with Silvia”. And a few people seem to be drawn into a ring of flame, that burns brighter in some strange way. More colorful than the rest, a bit more attractive and before anyone really knows why it is this group, it has already become a force that attracts attention. Mr. Ant managed to get sucked into this group when he ran out of cigarettes one day and now he was in, he liked it there. He could shine there. He was bright kid, brighter than most, better to hang out with people who shine, than just sit in corner on your own, smoking endless cigarettes.

Colorful people do colorful things, it didn’t take long for this group to start doing the most colorful thing they could think of which was go down to the pub for lunch and have a drink. When you’re 16 and dressed in normal clothes you can get into a pub without too much aggravation. As long as you don’t make a fuss or cause havoc you can sit quietly in the corner and drink a pint or two. This was going to make education much more fun to start with. Most of the group of people were actually over 18 so it was legal and all above board, a couple of them were 16.

He stood waiting at the bus stop under the rounded plastic shelter. He knew the buses out here never went after the timetables that they printed on the sign poles. But he always looked at the time when the next bus was due and written down on the timetable. Who made these arbitrary lists of times? Did they bother to calculate the amount of time it took to drive between two points of space or did they just write a series of times because they had to? He knew the buses never came on time out here but still he looked at the timetable and then he looked at his watch. He lit a Red Marlborough cigarette with the Zippo lighter he had bought for £5.99. They probably divided the time it took to drive from where the bus started to where it ended with the amount of stops that were specified on the route. Like that was a timetable. They might as well just write down ten minutes between every stop and make it that much simpler for themselves. 11: 45. The time was already five minutes past twelve; he had just looked at his watch. They might have just as well written, Timetable; buses come past this place at some time. They will stop if you happen to be standing there at such times as the pass by where you are standing. The drizzle was turning more to rain. The smoke calmed him as he stood staring at the empty road that ran along the southern English coastline.

By the time the first act had ended, Mr. Ant should have all the pre-orders prepared, poured and ready for the patrons of the Arts to spill into the bar and restaurant area. The tables that had been reserved were taken care of by the lobby staff and the cloakroom staff. They made sure that the sandwiches and anything else on the order was checked and double-checked again. Things didn’t go wrong between Acts because if they did go wrong, people could get caught up in things that have nothing to do the play. The Play being the center for the evening until diner or a club started and then the Social event took over center. Cultural events are never to be disturbed by mistakes in Orders, be they just the simplest of drink orders, all the way up to the Half Grilled lobster, Cesar’s salad and bottle of the Don menu. He worked the bar. He had mainly the “sparkling white wine for four, Hamilton-Jones”, type of orders that were to be poured and grouped onto round black trays with nametags and placed on the Pre-ordered left hand section of the bar. Once all the pre-orders had been picked up or distributed, Mr. Ant would help the “drop in” orders; those people who suddenly realized that alcohol could be bought at theaters. He wore a white double-breasted jacket that was a mix between bellboy, military and kitchen worker. An old fashion costume of an important slave, not because the slave was important, it was the people the slave would serve that were important, important enough to clothe the slave in something semi respectable. For some reason the design of these kinds of outfits had a strange imagery of some semi-military parade outfit. He felt like an arsehole in the jacket, he got to wear normal black slacks but with proper black leather shoes. The show went on; sometimes there was a second act break, but not that often anymore. He stayed until the last orders in the bar was taken. Some thirsty patron of the Arts always fancied a swift double before starting the creative processes of absorbing the holistic view of the entire opus.

The basic package includes all your requirements for the network you need to move into the next dimension of information technology. Networks are the series of links and cross-links that gives you and your company the chance to access not only information but to keep all lines of communication open at all times. Today’s electronic expansion demands faster and much more efficient ants to keep up with the competition. Because that is the edge that great Networks are giving the “other fellow”. Goods and products might stay the same, but a great Network can cut your order to delivery time by 50 % and reduce the administration costs of OTD (order to delivery) with the same amount, then you will see who is the top dog in this show.

The Internet is going to be the biggest thing that has happened since the wheel first spun itself around. Nothing! and I mean nothing! will make sense in this brave new world unless you are part of the INTERNET world and YOU are on the way to the top with this electronic elevator. The speeds with which both hardware and software giants are developing techniques for the Internet are indescribable. Mind-blowing. There will not be a work place in the country that won’t have a computer sitting smack bang right in the middle of the desk. And all those computers you are going to buy for lots of money will do you “no good” what so ever. Unless you have the network to link them together so they function at their full capacity. I know to some of you here today these new words sound like some mumbo jumbo from some science project. But let me tell you here and now my friends. Cable and Network are in on the bottom floor. Once the demand starts, and you can believe you me it already has, the volume and prices of access to optical cable will skyrocket. Our offer includes not only the technical requirements and 24 / 7 support, but also the physical guarantee of cable light-optics, the cable of the 22-nd century. You can’t move faster than light gentlemen, Mr. Einstein said that.

Gentlemen when your competitors, are running their internet network information along copper wire, the same copper wire that runs Aunt Mary’s telephone call to her sister in Florida. You can be 100% sure that we run your companies calls and transactions through pure light, your company is moving in a different lane of reality, different lanes different gains. That’s the big fat black bottom-line in this deal.

He sat in the chair by the window so he could stare down at the road outside. The noise of the discussion / argument going off in the other room was just doing his head in, the same endless rounds of whys and wherefores. It made him tired. It wasn’t his kid but he had spent a few years living together, maybe not as a family as such but as a group of people who shared the same space. She had got the house from her previous relationship, with the guy who was the biological father to the 12-year-old kid. The kid that was at this particular moment in time was getting grief from his mother for just not being part of his mothers’ gameplan. What ever that plan was, he didn’t know what the plan was, how should a 12 year old have a clue. What he did know was that after those “warm up arguments” with Nigel the 12 year-old, he could well end up being the “main attraction of this evenings emotional wrestling” if he wasn’t careful. He really couldn’t be bothered to be in the ring right now. He thought about going out for a walk but where would he go. Going to the local pubs was about as exciting as sticking a sharp stick into your own leg. You either knew everyone in the pub or felt like you just strolled in from Mars, into their private pub, and they weren’t impressed by your little green man look. Or on the other side it was a pub for small groups and couples, out to be together and not looking to be bumped into for surprisingly nice chat with someone down the pub. Bar staff are no longer required to have any social skill beyond the pressing of buttons, buttons on pints of beer, fizzy drinks and pre-programmed tills, £7.56 please. Cheers.

He didn’t want to be part of that plan; in fact he wanted out of that plane now and big time. He didn’t want to get sucked deeper and deeper until he just drowned in the boredom of regularity. He needed more funds; he needed someone to believe in him, someone who believed he could do it. It wasn’t like it was millions of English pounds; a hundred thousand would do it. One hundred thousand pounds. It may just as well be millions; no banks or new business deal would give him that backing. He hadn’t a clue how to get private backing beyond trying to get family and friends involved. The people he know didn’t have that investment cash and if they did they had other plan, they had their own plans, he stared out on to the street, some old lady with her dog was making her way from tree to tree in oral ecstasy of urine from other dogs.

The door closed quietly behind him just clicking loud enough to say shut but not to draw any attention. And Mr. Ant had left the story behind him forever, never to return.

The group around the coffee machine began to talk about some banal load of rubbish that seemed to be more pleasurable than do any thing like work. The supervisor sat staring at the monthly report he was about to send in. He always felt a certain sense of pride in the report because he had suggested the entire new format of the rapport. It had been in a bit of a pickle before he got his hands on it. In fact it was just a bunch of meaningless words and numbers that people wrote without having a clue why they wrote it in the first place; every month and every three months and you got to write “a year’s report” at the end of the year. Those rapports must have been gems to read. The head manager of the division ended writing the whole thing herself. Making the numbers somehow not look as bad as they were and making the right sounds of change and efficiency that would happen in the near future, but telephones and new techniques aren’t always easy to control, blah blah blah. I suppose it sounded good enough so the crap everyone else produced just got washed away with the bath water.

He had changed the whole image of the monthly rapport into a shape like a hexagram. That’s six-pointed star. And made it into a beehive image, like in honeycomb, which is an image of everyone working together but working in separate self-sufficient cells. Quality, Result, People & Analyses (if you had spelt these words in Swedish, you would get the word “Kupa” that means “Beehive”. (Kvalitet, Utfall, Personal, Analys, KUPA). So the “KUPA” rapport (as it got called) was split into four parts; the first three were “number rapports” showing the progression “toward” or “away” from the goals set over next three month period (with rolling numbers from month to month, so you always saw long term tendency). The fourth part, the final part and most important part, was the analyses of these numbers in terms of what are you as the supervisor or manager “are going to do” about those numbers. Activity equals change, which can lead to things becoming better. A new thought is born.

So you can’t just say it didn’t work last month without saying how you plan to change it that / this month. You might not get it right the first time but if you don’t, do something different, the result will always be the same. So you should always report numbers separately from analyses, otherwise people don’t do jack shit to ever make a difference. That’s why the report was beautiful to him because it severed both his ideal form and function. But did anyone care about it, no, and that was what obvious.

The End.

SPLAT, We scrap you up

2005-12-19T04:44:00.000-08:00

SPLAT, we scrape you up

In August of 2001 AD, the Welsh affiliation to SPLAT was the last of the Unions to officially join the Al Quadra organization, but the Welsh affiliation had all the potential to grow into a major force within the organization. SPLAT was no longer some fringe radical group out on the cutting edge of legal rights. SPLAT’s mission statement was to organize labor and to help enforce all “health and safety standards at work”, plus enforce the EU regulations, at all places of work, all over the United Europe. SPLAT had become an affiliated Union, with members and Chapels coming from all over the face of the planet. After the first few years of ridicule, which were now firmly behind them, something that all the members and affiliations did not wish to remember, they had become an important link between the man on the work floor and the upper colons of power.

So there was a concern that a Welsh affiliation might cause a certain amount of satire from the press and other stand up comics. A few Internet clowns made up some exploding sheep jokes, but few caught the imagination long enough for them to stick. So after three months the first training program was set up in an old miners union hall. There were plenty of chairs and quite a few people came along to listen to what was being done about the getting a Union going that had not already sold it’s soul to the management for a few more baked beans and a couple of streaky bacon. Bastards.

SPLAT had a clear and open policy of conflict at and in the workplace. It would not put up with dangerous conditions at the work place. It would require new negations for all members and a total redefinition of job description and improved employment conditions for members and not just their families. There would be flying inspections and proper procedure would be followed while handling explosives at all times.

No explosives were to detonate “on” or “even near” any member of SPLAT. In fact no explosions were to occur unless regulated by the united European convention of 2001, which clearly states explosions causing any bodily harm with explosives is completely out of the question.

If all of these demands are not met by management then there will be a general strike, pulling all members from operative duty immediately, until such time as management deems it fit to talk with the voice of respect to its employees.

This was the message of no compromise that roused the crowd; they stood up and banged chairs against floors, hands against tables and boots against the back of table legs. “ Are you with us brothers, are you there on the picket lines, are you ready for the years of fighting, are you there to fight to the last man”

“Aye” came the cry back from the crowd of tormented union souls, “Aye we’ll be there freezing in the winter and fainting in the baking summer sun, Aye we’ll be by you side till the last man falls”. This time we win. This time we’ll show those management Bastards.

“You all remember her don’t you”, a deathly silence fell over the hall. Her. “She brethren, the beast. The crowd turned and looked upon the black suited man in dark glasses and a mince-pie hat. He had the look of the road on him; his eyes had seen way too much night time driving.

“Let me introduce myself to you here tonight, Izzie Elijah Wood, most people called me Jah Wood, I was part of the team that negotiated with Coal Industries management from 1975 to 1982. In fact I was not just part of the team, I was in charge of ideology. I saw HER and management ravage us like helpless sheep before a hungry flock of wolves. I saw her ripe the guts out of the union, and spit it back into our faces; without even flinching, not one perfect curl on her sweet suckled Maidenly head moved out of place. I saw into the eyes of the beast, into the jaws that could swallow the sun whole if she pleased. She has passed in the House of Lords and Ladies but still “She” is there waiting to be turned lose one last time brothers, She is there. Waiting.

“Let me tell you why it is I am here today; I offer you my humble services to serve on your committees to help serve the cause and the tea. I shall do my up most to make Chapter 66 of the Welsh SPLAT Union affiliations the most militant and unforgiving nightmares for Blair, Bush, and Bin Laden that they will have wished they never held the word “crude oil”. The War on terror my friends, my brothers in arms, has just begun. We are the face of this war; we are the people who will put dignity back into the arms of the workingman.

Let us not turn away in shame when we see our reflection in those expensive wide screen televisions, but let us walk proudly past those shops, for the people that work in London, but use our houses for weekend retreats. Brothers and sisters, I see you ladies out there tonight, not just as ladies, ex-virgins, but I see you there, standing side by side with your men, once again ready to fight to the last of the best.

“I would be so proud to be part of the Chapter 66 movement, as Jah Wood’s powerful call to arms, goes down as a small piece of rhetorical history; Thank you Brother Jah. I too would put my name forward to be part of the central committee. Most of you know me and know I was head of this Chapel for 17 years during the struggles. I never gave an inch, I never gave those bastards a stinking inch and still they took the whole mine from under us. Since then I have been a broken man, I beg you to let me have a final crack at those management bastards. With the support and direct actions of Chapter 66, we can put an end to the blatant exploitations of our members. We have been training fully qualified professionals according to the health and safety laws in the United Europe. Let us show you what we have to offer in Wales.

“Let me now introduce Joe Bartley, Father of SPLAT Chapel in Newcastle.” Ladies and gentlemen Suicide bombing is no longer the cowboy operation is has been. Over 89% of all suicide bombers have joined one of the hundreds of affiliated unions. This means that no union members are doing the bombings. And this shows in the complete failure to explode a single device in a four-device raid. Our members will not explode dangerous explosives on or near their bodies, nor will they leave the dangerous explosives in such a way as to cause damage to people of property. We will under strictly controlled conditions explode small buildings (such as sheds or green houses) in remote areas as long as all life forms have been carefully removed to safe distance from the explosion. But what ever happens SPLAT scrapes you up.

This has been one of our biggest marketing pushes and has had the greatest impact on SPLAT membership. The scraping up part had been one of the biggest problems the suicide bomber around the world had had. But SPLAT said in an open letter of communication that “We, SPLAT, would scrape you up”, member or no member. This act of open heartedness is something important in the eastern world; they are very sensitive to acts of unselfish kindness; says that in the manual “Dealing with Arabs”, and this statement made a great impact on them.

And we have kept that promise since 1987. Yes, SPLAT has been there with bucket and shovel in hand, waiting for the police to give us permission to remove the remains from the road, sidewalk, café, hospital, train, bus, plain or just the morgue. We get what ever we can scraped up and given the right kind of dumping into the right kind of bucket or bag. And we plan to keep our word in the future too. Thanks to you, thanks to all of you my brothers and my sisters for coming here tonight; it means a lot to those on the front line.

We will now have a short break for some beer or tea at the bar, Harry has opened the bar this evening and we are being sponsored by John Stone at the Old Stag so the beer is on at £1,50 tonight, thanks John, much appreciated.

I luv these things, it’s just like it was back then when we had the fight in us. We could blow up small buildings, we could, and we have the experience to deal with high explosives. I even heard there could be bumping into people, which is bad. This is not a gender question. No body said it was until you said what about the gender question, 90% of all SB’s are men. I’m just saying that women should not be seen as just virgins. I am so sick of that stereotyping. Lets move on from the 13th century please.

Mingle

“Hi I’m Jah Woods I just like to thank you for coming out tonight and if you are a voting member I like to shake your hand for the support I feel here tonight for Chapter 66 and our chance to make the difference, give the hand up, the leg up, the push up give the love brother give the love.

I suppose some concession would have to be made we could some form of comprises on everyone’s part if the whole “War on Terror” things is the way to go away. And endless WAR with no real enemies but a few lunatics, who can’t keep that shit going for ever, but fucks it up this the second time they try and do it. Give and take Sir, that’s’ what keeps the old world spinning around.

70 virgins, what on earth is one sad lillte sack of shit of man going to do with 70 virgins? My advice, don’t go there. Skip the virgin all together and go for the real person. Someone you could share things with, like time and wisdom and love and peace and conflict and creativity and imagination. Ask for one of them and leave the bombs in the safe disposal container to the left of you seats. We’ll get ride of the shit properly and safely. Chapter 66 more than just a pain in the arses of the conservative religious lunatics, that want death and destruction, served just at the right temperature, cooking. Chapter 66 is a short story in a small collection of stories about death and fear. I wrote them together with my beloved wife two months or so before I died. I did this to be sure that we remember the story is what you make of it or what it makes of you. The chance is no the choice is yours. That what’s Chapter 66 Jah Woods is putting in this Revolution.

The War on Error can only be won by a powerful a weapon of the mass utopian dream, Love and Humor, isn’t that a lobster, that’s being dyslexic. Love and Fun, looks too short, not serious enough, but I promise you he most powerful tool against
Idiots and Lies, we always said we always have the choice to tell the truth. The telling of the truth is something that is not random.

But then you must know the truth to tell it. What is true is the truth as I perceived it to be now, I will give you Love from my heart as long as there is love in the well and my truth as long as I live by it, so I can know it, so I can see it and follow it. For only then shall I know my home, my function, my rest, my motherhood, and my walk into the valley of my garden from the mountains of my mind.

The End.

Pearly Whites

2005-12-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

Pearly Whites

We are all like the raindrops falling from the sky, eventually landing on this sandy star and drying up from the heat of the sun. Even if protected by a huge umbrella.

He liked that story, what he didn’t like, was when the teeth didn’t turn up on time. My teeth always turn up on time; he said that because he meant that. He was just that kind of simple no fuss guy, short, fat, wide and unattractive. His teeth got to him when he wanted them there, not when they came. This is why there are three of you working here, three of you, not one of you, but three. To make sure my teeth are on time.

Surleson & Engkvist Dental Applications was what the sign window lettering said on the large window facing the small park, Botvidsgatan, the children’s park with the boat and the train in it. It wasn’t really boat, it was the childrens’ climbing version, but it was more “boaty” than most attempts at boats in parks. The three of them sat staring into space as the short, fat, wide and unattractive man stood in the middle of their white service area dressed in a black suit and a very old fashioned top hat in black pressed velvet. He stood in the middle of the service area and in a most aggressive tone explained that delay was for him not an option. Michael Surleson felt obliged to offer some more information.

Apparently the support agent from the “PGS” had made off with the entire case, which is why no delivery had been made to them, Surleson & Engkvist Dental Applications. Putting them in the awkward position of having to inform Mr. Smith that they were unable to have cleaned the teeth and hadn’t been able to have them packed separately as usual. It was outside their realm of control, the PGS was not contacted by Surleson & Engkvist Dental Applications, so it was impossible for them to do anything but wait for the Vash deliveries, that as of yet had been Swiss in terms of timing precision.

Up until now that is, when according to a man, that called them on the office telephone, some 30 minutes before, and said, “the PGS agent got the whole case out, Vash is dead, and there was nothing they could do as of yet, tell Mr. Smith.” Which was the entire message of which I have now informed you. They said they were calling from the Bernadelli Insurance Group and you would understand.

Thank you Michael, I am calmed by your news, the news that you expect me to believe. That the PGS killed a Bernadelli Insurance Group in the middle of a delivery, and then proceed to steel my teeth, are you joking with me Michael? The PGS do not screw up; it is their “trademark” thing. Now. Now Michael let us start from a place where we both feel we can be honest and work our way upward. The PGS are the trade name in value transport support. No one takes them down unless they choose to be taken down. Now who knows what is done inside these four walls, inside this dental applications practice, right here Michael, who knows?

I’ll tell you Michael, you me, Gunilla and Brigitte, that makes four people that is how many people know what is done here. And all four of us are in the room right now. The Bernadelli Insurance Group currier knows nothing but the high value of the transport, not the nature of the goods; Vash knew the destination and time of arrival of goods, which was the sum total of his knowledge, so Michael, I ask you once again, may I have my teeth now?

Meryl Stryfe walked to the passport desk and with a slight bow pushed her dark Nile blue passport toward the customers’ officer at Arlanda airport in Stockholm. After a moment the passport was returned and the door to the left of the booth unlocked with a slight clicking sound. She walked into the hall and down toward the luggage reclaims belt that indicated it came from Amsterdam, Holland. She sat on one of the white plastic stools at the side of the belt, she had the one bag on wheels model, so she had no fuss with the trolleys that couldn’t be pushed in a straight line. The customs was unmanned as she walked through the green zone, as she did not hold a EU passport, unless it was a fake. At this moment she traveled “as herself” a most surprising thing even for her. All the documents were in fact the legal documents that she had been given to her on account of her citizenship rather than having been bought from professionals. It still made her knees wobble a bit, she had never felt quite so uncomfortable as giving her “real” passport to an official customs agent. Weird. On the outside she looked like a thin girl of Asian descent.

The Planet Gun Smoke, or the PGS as they were known in the trade gave their employees that added sense of comfort. They would do nothing if the delivery was safe, it was only when something potential could go wrong that they made their moves. In this particular case their mission was to observe Vash 24 hours a day, and confirm, report and fully evaluate. They were only to interrupt activities to prevent damage to the delivery, preferable before it could occur. Agents had fallen on this mission due to its dangerous nature; Vash had a high sense of precaution and would see any type of monitoring of his movements as a threat to his delivery. Vash the Stampede worked for the Bernadelli Insurance Group. This insurance company specialized in small highly valuable deliverers. Shin Eiy had accepted the mission with a clear determination of justice. It was the double lock that ensured high-level focus on security that Mr. Smith found comforting while moving such levels of real cash worth around. The risk that Vash the Stampede killed a PGS agent now and again was one that had to be included into the bottom line. He was a highly skilled currier, whose untimely death would cause a stir within the “small sized highly valuable” transport community (SeHVs), where the two major players lived in a strange symbiosis with each other, the Bernadelli Insurance Group and the PGS.

Mr. Smith stood his square patch of ground, “So Michael, what would a PGS agent do if the delivery was seen to be in danger, I’ll tell you what they do, the PGS agent in question would try and complete the delivery with all his or her life force, and not make a dash for the hills. Running for the hills with the delivery means only one thing; a certain painfully and very slow death. This is the nature of the PGS. The teeth Michael, I am becoming tired now; I have enjoyed our little game to the fullest. Give me my teeth now Michael.

Had Meryl Stryfe been working normally she would have killed Vash and made sure the delivery was on time as soon as she suspected any deviation from plan. There is no other protocol for such an operation. But Meryl Stryfe had changed from a PGS agent to a woman who dares to travel the outer (Outlaw) regions. Why?

“We never know what tomorrow may bring. Someday we will be blown by the wind and absorbed into the sandy earth”. Nicholas D Wolfwood.

This thought had revolutionized her entire mind. The possibility that each action is irrelevant compared with this being blown by the wind into the earth. That had turned her mind. After killing Vash in Palermo historical urinal she removed the package from him and left for Sweden as Meryl Stryfe. Her first plan was to make the delivery in person to Mr. Smith and kill him. When the scene called for it, her cloak flips open and she uses her derringers guns with an almost divine technique in order to handle a demanding situation. The derringers gun is the type of gun that is easier for her small hands to handle. But could there be a better and more efficient way?

She realized that killing Mr. Smith was futile, it would merely leave a vacuum to be filled by some other scum-sucking heap of dung like Smith. But still she felt personally obliged to deliver an unpleasant and painful death to the man that had caused so much misery and death in the mines of the southern sectors. He knew what he bought was cheap because the life he bought it with was cheap. The poorest of black minors who dared to try to smuggle diamonds out of the government run mines were the cheapest of the all, the most desperate of men. Their bodies often hung up on the wire by the companies as examples to others inclined to talk to Smiths agents or any other agents. But still there were enough minors willing to take the chance of making three months pay for small diamonds. Three months pay could keep you and your family alive if you had the fever and couldn’t work. After each shift the minors were inspected by security, doctors and dentists to ensure no object was in their body. X-rays were used regularly to see if anything had been swallowed, after a while working the minors were exposed to high level radiation due to all the X-rays.

Mr. Smith had a team of surgeons made a small flesh pouch just under the armpit of the minor, the pouch was invisible to the human eye and even pressing against it would cause no suspicion as the flesh behind it was soft. So even when a diamond was tucked into the pocket of flesh it was unnoticeable. The companies knew of losses but hadn’t worked out how it was done. The diamonds where then molded into dentures that were sent to Surleson & Engkvist Dental Applications to be cleaned and removed from the dentures. Mr. Smith received his diamond wrapped and packed individually the way he liked best in a box that looked like the upper and lower dentures of a human face.

She was dressed in a large green long coat, it looked like something from the 18 hundreds with a matching green top hat; He had a black half long woolen coat with a white beard and a black beret. The child had an overall on. All three where in he boat, the man who was in fact the lady, climbed uneasily around to where the child was standing still. The man spoke in German about buying vanilla éclairs from the bakery to chuff the child with. The woman in the green costume seemed to be of the same idea that the child needed chuffing with cream buns, in spite of it’s almost Zen like stillness on the climbing frame.

Despite her concerns Meryl Stryfe traveled from town to town through this cold deserted land, Botvidsgatan. And when she got there she would know what to do. He would show here the way and together they would achieve their aim along with the rest of the group.

The End. Part 1

Blessing and a Prayer

2005-12-17T08:17:00.000-08:00

Blessing and a Prayer

My heart goes out to you, and in the “Heligaste” of names of Loki “the giver” and Oden “the seer”, I call upon you to protect them and hold you safely within the realms of the living, until their time has come to pass before Queen Hel when she shall judge with her own eyes and hear the truth of you song with her own ears. Now that’s what I call a blessing.

The car swerved and slipped slightly, as the powerful motor pulled them round the smooth cobbled stoned streets of northwestern Sicily, Palermo. Do any cars in Italy have breaks? Or are breaks considered the cowards way out of corners with over a hundred meters fall to the next level of cliff face, a certain death.

Eric Craven just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time in the long run. It was no accident that Meryl Stryfe stood in the way of Vash the Stampede that late wet autumn evening in the municipal baths of Palermo. Before his carbon electric magnetic whip had curved its first full whiplash, she had fired two shots into the center of Vash’s head, two exploding bullets into his heart and one bullet down the optic nerve of his right eye, causing extreme disorientation and a blinding light of pain to stop the man dead in his tracks.

Vash held a heavier gun, a macho thing, which only fired exploding bullets, which is why he only managed to get three shots fired while she managed to get of five shots. The three bullets that had left Vash’s gun where all heading toward Eric Craven. The unlucky part for Erik was that Vash miscalculated the path of the bullets fired at him from Meryl. The ancient acoustics of the room had distorted the center of fire, causing it to seem not to be coming from Meryl to the right of Vash, but coming from the middle of Erik. Erik who happened to be standing face on to Vash. This is why all the three bullets Vash had fired found themselves making holes of some impressive dimension through the head and upper torso of Erik Craven, an unarmed rock musician, on his second date with an Asian girl called Shin Eiy. She seemed like a nice quite girl from Japan until for some unknown reason she started to fire several guns into this guy walking into the public toilets at, St Madre de Sequlcia Square, commonly known as the Municipal baths in Palermo.

She had not planned to kill Vash on the open street, and especially not in a urinal nor had she planned to kill him at this particular moment in time. She moved quickly through his outer body Armour to get to the package and remove it before anything else went wrong. Eric Craven lay in his own blood, twitching to the last of his own personal electric current. She vanished away into the back allies and down some steep inclines towards where the taxis stood to get the tourists up and down the cliff face to the popular tourist resort that was at the bottom of the cliff face.

She was not traveling under her real name; she never did, as she was an operative PGS Agent. Seeing Vash in Palermo meant only one thing, the delivery had gone wrong, Vash should not be here, he shouldn’t be anywhere near any other currier. She was following Midvalley Hornfreak; as soon as two curriers appeared at the same place at the same time things were code red, they hadn’t spoke to each other or given an sign that they knew of each others situation. This was of no consequence, they happened to be at the same “wrong” time and the same “wrong” place. She had taken the only possible cause of action, which she would now complete as quickly as possible, her mission to get the package to its destination as fast as possible. As Vash lay dead in his own blood, she had made the first call to Bernadelli Insurance Group and left the following message. Vash deal now PGS, delivery of package ASAP, no further Information till De-B.

Charter airports are not the easiest to get out of in a hurry especially if there has been an execution style of murder on the streets. “We never know what tomorrow may bring. Someday we will be blown by the wind and absorbed into the sandy earth”. That sentence haunted her mind; Nick had said it to her, Nicholas D Wolfwood. It blew chills down her icy nerves, but why? Her mind raced in a way so unusual that she felt faint; the driving of the so-called taxi driver didn’t help her overpowering sense of nausea.

Erik’s unfortunate death was a shame, he had no idea of what he had stumbled across when he walked down the stairs to the urinal, so now he will have walk about in limbo for a while looking for peace of mind and a way out of impossible chaos of mistimed death. The crow Hugin had been sat for a while staring at the lifeless body of Erik Craven on the blood stained floor of Palermo municipal urinal. Cravens’ time had not yet come; Hugin flew of to make his rapport of limbo dancer in Palermo. Vash had been greatly disorientated by the acoustics from the room; they were rather extreme to say the least, but with several exploding rounds going off simultaneously, they made a surround sound effect that was impossible to judge position on instincts. And instinct was all you had at this speed in a gunfight.

The room in which Vash and Erik died was a giant underground urinal; fully coverer in green square glassed tiling with a shorter wall at the back being the urinal itself, a steel metal plate that ended in a gully. A long the left hand side of the wall there was one hand basin to wash your hands. The room itself gave the impression of being a very large dark green open space. There lay the body of Vash the Stampede from the Bernadelli Insurance Group and Erik Craven a young rock guitarist brutally killed by a ruthless gang of criminals. The urinal in Palermo municipal baths is an exact copy of the urinal at Brighton Station. The ruthless gang of criminals that had gun downed, rock star and Insurance agent were Meryl Stryfe and Vash himself.

Midvalley Hornfreak slipped into his personal invisible mode as soon as he heard the explosive rounds coming from the lower end of the stairs. A white streak flew round the bend up the stairs as Midvalley managed to press his thin body through two pillars to the side of the stairwell. Meryl felt Hornfreaks presence, but needed to move as fast as possible from the scene of the slaying before the place was crawling with armed response units. Hornfreak had been playing alto sax with Erik Craven on the album he was cutting in Palermo. That was why Meryl was in Palermo. She had to meet with Erik and Midvalley Hornfreak under her assumed name of Shin Eiy, her cover was, she a mover and shaker at CBS Asia. Midvalley Hornfreak had no reason to think of Erik’s new Asian girlfriend as a PGS agent, and therefore relaxed around them. But when he saw the speed at which she moved at he knew she was PGS, and soon all elite artists of the organization would be sent to clean up the mess. Vash the arsehole. And now the PGS are running around at the speed of sound trying to kill you.

For Nicholas D Wolfwood, there is no such thing as mercy in this desert land? Lawless and distant from the motherland, makes for all the more people in this sector to reach out to him and need his words of encouragement. They need to hear that there are the Hands and Deeds that support them. A priest like figure walks on a desolate plain, wandering without a destination. He carries a load on his back, as if it is the very symbol of the Snake Institution. Unwounded by the reality that he cannot escape he persists to be merry, his eyes stay calm. His other name is “Chapel”. His destination is not yet in sight.

The call he got was simple too. PGS agent run, code 1567# 769-800-780. Eliminate. Package to Central, delivery Stockholm. His soft eyes read the code and slowly pushed the sequence into his Phi, and all her encoded information with following code resolutions, bank information appeared, anything and everything that led to her. The PGS knew everything; everything except that she was “Meryl Stryfe”, because she didn’t exist in their world. Meryl Stryfe had never been part of PGS because up until this point she had never been anything, but a clerk teller at the head offices of the bank of Hong Kong, holding a Chinese passport. Her job was traveling around to local branches and giving small talks about progress and other pleasant subjects. Her prime style gave her that touch of class to carry this of.

The PGS had a very particular way of being close, close to each other and close to any task they took upon themselves to complete. The PGS based most of the training on the way of the Ninja. The Ninja was a fighting unit, trained to fight in single combat or and as well in small attack teams. The code of the fighting Ninja was one of total trust and loyalty to the master and the group. There could never be any deviation from the way of the group. To become strong you must first learn the strength discipline, then the strength of obedience and finally the strength of the grass straw in the wind, only then will you begin to understand the path to strength. To achieve it is something else. As a small group they knew each other well enough to have killed each other, yet they were tied well enough together to stop the slaughter they could have ravaged on one and other.

Nicholas D Wolfwood was the first of the PGS respond unit to arrive at the scene, as the place was crawling with anti-terrorists police and the local boys in white shirts, he played it low key. Over the last century, hundreds of immigrating individuals, has passed into the zone already, since the meteors had fallen on the planet, scorching the surface, dimming the sun and turning endless green plateaus to become of sand raging in the wind, people barely survived on the surface of the planet, dependent on the technology.

In an environment exposed to severe thirst and hunger, what rule this harsh world are the most fundamental concepts of survival. In the smell of blood and gun smoke, violence takes the shape of lead bullets and rules over the land. Entrusting their lives today to the ugly violence but beautiful steel weapons. Wolfwood had started his Chapel in these first camps. He had seen the misery that these men and women must put up with to be able to survive. He had grown into the man he was today in the Zone, that’s why he became PGS to win the War. Nicholas D Wolfwood had the true nature of a revolutionary leader; able to give others hope and help them act outside the frame of the their training. Wolfwood had managed to infiltrate the PGS for the first time, giving him access to what he needed to build his Chapel in the wilderness. A wilderness even the PGS wouldn’t follow him into.

Michael Surleson didn’t really exist he was a constructs of Nicholas D Wolfwood mind, Midvalley Hornfreak and Legato Bluesummers where dead. Mr. Smith had slowly but surly been set up to make large payments for illegal diamonds smuggled out of South Africa. In fact what he had been buying was a synthetic diamond new on the market but of much less cash worth. These chemical pressure-cooked diamonds are perfect for industrial use but are seen as a poor replacement for the jewelry business. Once the seemingly perfect deal was struck Nicholas and Meryl then took over the rolls of Michael Surleson, Legato Bluesummers and Midvalley Hornfreak. Midvalley Hornfreak was killed and Nicholas took over his assignments. Legato Bluesummers was killed when he turned up in a deal that involved Midvalley, they had no choice but to kill her and let Meryl take over her deliveries, which caused some serious problems, the Bernadelli Insurance Group where beginning to get confused as to what their curriers were doing, all that were left alive were Zazi the Beast and Raidei the Blade. The PGS were about to see the true aim of their quest for each and every cell contained the seed of the Chapel of Truth of Tale, this seed was designed to take down any operation they were involved in and move the cash to the Chapel.

Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.
Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. So in wars the way is to avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. All warfare is based on deception.

She was dressed in a large green long coat, it looked like something from the 18 hundreds with a matching green top hat Raidei the Blade had a very unfeminine physic; Zazi the Beast had a black half long woolen coat with a white beard and a black beret. The child had an overall on. All three where in he boat, the man who was in fact the lady, climbed uneasily around to where the child was standing still. The man spoke in German about buying vanilla éclairs from the bakery to chuff the child with. The woman in the green costume seemed to be of the same idea that the child needed chuffing with cream buns, in spite of it’s almost Zen like stillness of the child on the climbing frame. They never really had a prayer.

The End. Part 2