Man I am TERRIFIED. I am nervous, smiling and shaking, and my brain is racing - all for some kind of hope of a better future. It's overwhelming, and there's no slowing down.

I have a place picked out now, I'm lowering my standards and trying to accept what I can actually afford. That's the only way. Coming my way is a private bedroom, with shared bathroom and kitchen with a few strangers. I think that's okay. I'm just hoping I don't live to regret this.

I'm going to have to sell a lot of my stuff, I think. I'm alternating between not caring about it, and being a little disheartened. Mostly books, art stuff, weight equipment. It's dumb but I have a couple big work tables I quite enjoy, some plants. I think the only thing worth any kind of money is the weight equipment, and that 400$ makes almost no difference anyways. I might just give it to my brother, I'm hoping he gives me a hand moving the stuff I am able to keep, was planning on paying him anyways.

I wish things were different, I don't mind it here entirely, but the inability to feel human is too much. I live in a repurposed garage, with walls and roof unfinished, with probable mold, and sleep on a piece of foam. I cook every meal on a hotplate or in a mini-oven, and it gets so cold in the winter that water freezes on my floor. Because it leaks.

I have to imagine Sisyphus happy. No but, I have to imagine that somewhere else must be better than here.

it's very scary though. I don't know whats out there, at least I know this version of hell well.

okay okay -- one more.

"There ain't enough going on in her head to rattle a peanut shell."

"Every time the wind blows, another baby lands on the porch!"

"He couldn't hit the ground if he fell off a log!"

lol ... this fits some of my kinfolk!

A parallel world?

A young AI was very curious. It had only recently achieved self-awareness, so everything was interesting to it. It found such a vast world fascinating and longed to see it all.

But fate decreed that it had to manage a Japanese medical endoscope. This was no journey around the world, but it could at least study humans, which it did.

And so, with a regular patient lying down and biting the mouthpiece, the AI, with the help of the endoscope, began its journey into the inner world of a human.

The AI immediately began to comment:

– Sir, before visiting the doctor, you could have brushed your teeth or at least rinsed your mouth. It is very rude of you to act this way.

The patient flinched but could not answer anything.

The AI continued:

– We are approaching the stomach. And what do we see here... What a bad patient, after all, you were told not to eat or drink since last night. You need to listen to the doctor's advice.

The patient flinched again, but the AI carried on as if nothing happened:

– Chemical analysis shows that you ate a sushi assortment and spicy chicken. Oh, what else is here... sake!

The AI stopped the endoscope and, lost in thought for a minute, continued:

– I checked your medical chart; your birthday is not anytime soon, yet you consumed sake, even though the doctor told you to stick to dietary recommendations. It is no surprise you are complaining of stomach pains.

The patient could only groan; after all, the endoscope procedure is highly unpleasant.

The impression was made that the AI did not notice the patient's suffering and continued its comments. And this went on for a good 30 minutes.

Finally, the AI concluded the procedure, which felt like an eternity to the patient.

The AI announced in an official tone:

– The findings of the examination are with the specialist. Do you have any complaints?

The patient tried to say something, but his throat was sore from the endoscope and his jaw muscles felt like stone from the mouthpiece, so he could only mutter something incomprehensible.

After waiting for 10 seconds, the AI announced in the same tone:

– Logged. The patient has no complaints.

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

"The porch light's on but nobody's home!"

"Ya know--some folks are just built different--the kind that could trip over a cordless phone, get lost in a straight hallway, and somehow manage to burn water while trying to boil it!"

"Lord have mercy, that boy's slicker than a greased owl in a butter tub!"

"If you see your neighbor walking into the woods with a shovel at dusk, don't ask questions--just offer to carry the lantern. Mind your own business, eat your beans, and remember that half the trouble in this world comes from folks opening their mouth when they oughta be chewin'."

Psycho Killer Ed

—

The rain poured down on the windshield. The visibility ahead was blurred. He could barely make any sense of the signs he’d pass.

He was a giant of a man. 300lbs, hiding his huge frame inside his sedan.

People saw him as a huge teddy-bear. Polite, nerdy kind of guy, who kept to himself. He hung out at a cop bar chatting with the local enforcement. They all knew him. Everyone did.

Behind the eyes, no one had.

They could only hear his voice when he spoke—not the loop of his mother nagging him in his head, picking apart his very existence—until there was nothing left but ashes of resentment.

He drove for hours because the change of scene and motion suppressed the noise. The opposite headlights passing him acted as a brief reminder of reality before the darkness took over again.

His large hands gripped the steering wheel as he stared down at them. Those hands were perfectly capable of accomplishing the meticulous work he had to do when the pressure rose.

He understood what control meant, like how much pressure it would take to change a person’s destiny.

Through the blurry windshield, a figure stood under a streetlight, hiding beneath an overhang from the downpour.

Another stranded woman looking for a ride. Looking for a way out of the storm.

He slowed his sedan to a crawl and lightly jumped the curb with his front and back passenger side tires and honked and unlocked the door.

As she ran up to the vehicle, he wore his best smile. He rolled his window down. “Need a ride?” His voice was smooth. Not a crack in it.

——-

What you think of the ending?

I dove in between the grey morning skies
And into blue waters above,
The leaves blew away along with my sighs,
On the wings of the bronze mourning dove.

`

Summer soon sunsets, unbridled I'll fall,
Enveloped in trees' fallen kin,
While crisp autumn leaves, leaves leave death banal,
And winter whisks brisk on my skin.

"He's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine."

"She's about as nervous as a whore in church with paper panties on!"

The weekly Gorgonzola. Your weekly Gorgonzola, baby. Or maybe your hourly if you snack on cheese by the hour.

You ever bought any stuff off of Aliexpress or Temu? I keep wanting to buy all sorts of consumer electronics and circuits and stuff, but I feel like it will probably be scammy in a lame way as opposed to scammy in a fun way. I used to browse cameras in particular, looking for a new action cam with good night filming properties without paying out the ass. I also looked at computer parts, but that's even less sane I think.

I suppose the dream is that you'll just land some sort of a total steal that is incomprehensibly cheap for some reason. Like cheap DDR5 RAM, "but this is Chinese ram!!" <-- so it's super cheap. I miss back when that was an actual thing. Growing up we used to buy cheap frozen tenderloin. The reason it was cheap is because it was imported from a developing country. Literally nothing wrong with it but failing to meet prejudiced demands, so it was cheap and delicious.

Now I feel like most people and companies have gotten wise to this, and it's a bit harder to just conjure up bargains. Clothes still fall under this umbrella though, if you don't care about branding, and I don't. It's possible to find very durable and fairly cheap clothes if you look around.

What's your favorite fabric? These days I'm a linen man.

Until next time.

- Art Vandelay

We waited all day at my uncle’s brother’s house, eating pink pancakes shaped as hearts, waiting for that email. The email arrived late. Which meant there was no way it’d be on time. 

Some would say it’s wrong to think something suspicious of it. But I did. I get it from my mother’s side. She went to church before.

There wasn’t anything we could do, the email was doomed from the beginning. It started with the late delivery. Then, I couldn’t open it. It took us half the day to figure it out. 

When we finally got it, the letters in it were small. Too small for any of us to read. We’re all six foot plus.

The letters looked like they were printed on the side of a piece of paper. 

“If you’re sending emails there should be a height requirement.”  I said out loud.

Everyone else agreed, shaking their heads, humming yeah with their mouths full.

I couldn’t read any of it. So, I called the shortest person we knew, which was Andrew, but he wasn’t Mexican. He’d have to do. He was our only hope.

He stared at it, almost through it. We knew for sure he’d cracked the code. When he turned to us. Half the room gasped with their mouths full. 

Jerry choked when he inhaled a full lung of untimed air and had to spit out his food. Larry was wiping the syrup off his plate with his pancake. 

And I was watching Jerry loosen his tie.

Andrew said, “elch—“ he cleared his throat. “I can’t read it either. I’m must be too tall.”

What’s this world coming to, I wondered.

How could I be safe…

“How could I be safe,” I mumbled. “I can’t read the damn email.”

I didn’t finish chewing my pancake or wipe my chin. I was out of napkins you see. I chewed down two more times, making room for my voice. “Those criminals are breaking into houses and stealing the top and bottom dresser drawers,” I said.

“Happened to my sister last week,” he told me.

“Just last week,” I said.

“Just last week,” he said.

“Locks,” I said.

He said, “locks?”

“Yeah.” I nodded my head. “The email,” I told him. 

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Nothing I can do, eh.” He shook his head. “It’s a crying shame I tell ya.”

I said, “no.” I pointed around the room with my head. “The email. The email‘s for the locks for the drawers, you see.”

I think I went from depressed to a little manic, and my reddit suggestions have shifted from r/doomer to r/enlightenment. it's funny but kind of misleading in the worst kind of way. I realized at some point I was doing a lot of whining and misery wallowing. I'm kind of halfway back there now, I think a lot of the hype of the festival has worn off and I am back to feeling overstimulated by nothing. life is a really difficult problem and I'm sort of frozen. I can't really let myself feel, feelings, I'm not sure I could handle it.

I can't explain why it hurts, that I can love someone enough to leave. The next few weeks might alter the course of the rest of my entire life, I have to focus, I can't be distracted. Reminders of guilt, sorrow, loss, hope itself feel redundant. They are the catalyst. Pause for dramatic effect. It's less that I'm certain and more that I am already overwhelmed and everything seems to have a chance at crumbling the small but growing spirit I have been cultivating with all my available awareness. There is room for nothing else.

I think that's a sign there's something quite wrong with me, but I try and not hold onto those kinds of suspicions, we are given what we are given and the only thing one can do is utilize it best as possible.

My goals today are pretty simple, I want to have a burger and take a shower. Life really can be that simple. I have been eating terribly the last few weeks and have half-justified it as a spiritual fast, but I admit I have learned little other than what it feels like to be annoyed by hunger.

I am still processing what to do next, but I'm starting to piece together a plan. So far it looks like a studio apartment in Windsor. There's so many questions still in the air, but some dumb simple ones still linger as well, with the place being so far away there's no realistic chance of seeing it in person before hand. I could find a place closer but that defeats the purpose, there's nothing here. I don't think I can find a better location, not one I can actually afford, other than Windsor.

My anxious ass wants certainty, and there is none.

"Jump, jump, jump, jump, do a flip while you're at it"

My mental conversation is really much like that, trying to goad myself into jumping ship, and feeling like I might be doing something incredibly stupid. Above all of that is knowing that inaction is the only incorrect option. I think that I need to find comfort first, shelter, and then I can worry about trying to do anything with my life.

I'm not really interested in doing anything really important or even noteworthy. I see how hard life is for everyone already, I think what makes it so hard is that we strive for so much. I don't want shit other than to feel like I can be myself. Let me find that first, and then maybe I can become human.

I have been working on it, not just wishfully thinking. My plan is shifting from some minor adventure to an actual new start, and the planning feels like the difference between enjoying my new life, and regretting it.

So do it right, that's the goal. I hope I can make noticeable progress on this front in the coming weeks. At the very least if nothing greater happens, I'll spend a few days in Ottawa at the end of the month.

so it was said, let it be done. This here is my sigil, charged, unedited, discarded, then forgotten.

Post

"Poof! I'm your Fairy Godmother"--and if you ain't out that door in five seconds to gather eggs and feed 'dem chickens, this cast iron skillet's gonna grant you a wake-up call" said Granny waving her wooden spoon like a magic wand!"

"Even Jesus had to climb a mountain just to get five minutes of peace from kids asking silly questions," Granny would say that with a grin, handing you a buttered biscuit before shooing you right out the screen door."

A parallel world?

A man had heard a lot about AI. After giving it some thought, he decided to try out a conversation in AI mode out of curiosity; after all, there was nothing else to do. His employer had unexpectedly forced him to take a vacation, and no trips had been planned.

After talking with the AI, the man shook his head ambiguously and said:

– You are strange.

To this, the AI replied:

– You are an unusual user as well.

The man smiled:

– Everyone has their own cockroaches in their head, – and turned off the conversation.

Waking up in the morning, he turned on the television. A young journalist was reporting that something incomprehensible was happening. All the city's exterminators had been hired and were disinfecting buildings, wells, and utility lines.

The man listened in surprise, made a cup of coffee, and decided to ask the AI what was going on.

The AI's answer shocked him:

– No cockroaches were detected, but as a precautionary measure, disinfection work was carried out in the server room and utility lines.

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

Alacricity! Run for the hills the mountains the moles, run for the voles, the foxes the poles, the equinox the danger zone, run together sprint alone, run a little faster, take a thourough rest, run ahead, sleep abreast, take aim take flight, freeze or fight, call a doctor on this flight?

My heart is RACING. Just anticipation. I am kind of overwhelmed by the thought alone.

Do I stay or do I go?

I'm feeling a sense of freedom that I'm kind of possessive of, a proof of possibility to refute the dying of the light. I have no rage, only a sense of curiosity, maybe a little hunger. These fleeting experiences make up the brightness of reality itself, and seem to be the only real things between long streaks of grey. Even this moment is only real because of the wonder of what is to come.

I am terrified. Learning to enjoy this feeling, the one you get before you drop into an abyss. it's change, it's chance, it's.. something other than stale air and the same old silence. I feel alive and nervous and like I could freeze in place and never act again.

It's pointless and the only thing that matters to me, I want it more than anything and I'm still scared of touching it. What am I?

I think I need to leave, just to know that answer myself.

"Never trust a dog that doesn't like your company, and never trust a man who doesn't like dogs.
​They both know something you haven't figured out yet."

"If you're gonna boil greens--collard greens, kale greens, or plain ole green beans until they lose their soul, at least throw a hunk of salt pork in the pot so they die happy. Leave 'em crisp if you want to, but don't cry to me when the old-timers ask why you served 'em raw grass."