Days of Nano Past: Tangler (2005)

In honor of Nano this year, I'd like to offer up a few tidbits...a random sampling of the random dribblings that trickle out of that word-generating subsection of the grey matter in the back of my head. This piece is from the beginning of my very first shot at a Nano challenge.

-=ad=-

There was blood on his knuckles, but not on his face.

The school bully was on the ground in front of him, eye already swollen shut, blood running from his nose and lip and tears streaming from his eyes.

Beyond the bully, Joey's little brother Mick was getting to his feet, brushing the dirt from his clothes and face. He looked up adoringly to his brother. And beyond him--

...beyond him was the green-eyed girl, and the look she gave when their eyes met was electric.

The bully got to hands and knees, and looked up at Joey with raw, undisguised hatred. His face was long and narrow, with thin lips below ice-grey eyes and greasy curly black hair. He got to one foot, and Joey put his hands on his hips, ready to square off for round two.

The bully opened his mouth to hurl some insults--the normal retreat of a defeated bully--but what came out of his mouth wasn't a voice. It was a shrill, high-pitched buzz, getting steadily louder and more annoying...

Joey smacked the alarm clock in disgust. It took three whacks to finally hit the snooze button, and he angrily rolled away from it in the dark, burrowing into the covers.

Why did he have to wake up anyway?

He tried to return to the dream...tried to find his way back to the ugly bully...and the green-eyed girl...and failed miserably. That was the problem with dreams...they only seemed to come when they wanted, not when he wanted.

The alarm went off again--was it actually louder and more obnoxious this time, or was that his imagination?--and he hit the snooze button...a bit less forcefully and a bit more resigned to the inevitable.

He lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, as the pre-dawn light slowly lit up the room. He was mostly covered by the ugly checked bedspread knitted for him by his aunt.

Above, more than a dozen airplane and starship models hung from lines attached to the ceiling. Some were even shooting at each other, with red and yellow yarn playing the part of tracer rounds and laser beam fire. Many of the models showed extensive battle damage...or, rather, many of them had been used as toys, and broken, before Joey's father came up with the idea of hanging them out of reach. He had gotten tired of gluing small parts back onto them when they broke. So, as they went up, Joey and Mick had painted red and black combat scars on the worst breaks, and even had two going "down in flames" with a wing hanging from a second thread. It had seemed really cool to look at three months ago, but now, he just missed their mock dogfights, chasing each other and screaming sound effects, even if it did leave sharp plastic booby-traps in the living room carpet for his parents to find.

Now it was bright enough to see the poster on the far wall, past his feet, just to the left of the window. It was a cute, cuddly kitten, dangling from a branch by its paws, with the old familiar "Hang in There!" caption at the bottom. That was his mother's contribution to the room's decor. He had much preferred his older poster--the cutaway view of a starship, showing the decks and levels and stations and their scale--but his mother, following the advice of some book supposedly written by some child psychiatrist, had found the humor and cuteness to be more "inspirational" somehow.

He thought a starship, and the idea of unlimited travel that a starship implied, was a lot more inspirational than some kitten that was too stupid to let go and drop the three feet to the ground. He stuck his tongue out at the poster, as he had done every morning for the last month.

The sun peeked over the horizon, spilling golden light across the sky and into his room...and his eyes. He flinched away from the brightness, squinting his eyes shut until they adjusted to the light. He had to blink a dozen painful times until it was bearable.

He stuck his tongue out at the sun, too, just on general principles.

The alarm went off again, and this time, he fumbled around and shut it off. He hopped out of bed, slipped on his glasses from the nightstand, found his slippers under the edge of the bed, pulled the blankets up into a semblance of a "made" bed, and headed off for the bathroom.

The glare from the lights over the sink was even worse than the rising sun, and he frowned painfully at them. Then he looked down into the sink, to avoid looking in the mirror. He brushed his teeth that way, and tried to run a comb through his hair without looking, too, but he couldn't do it. He finally gave in to the inevitable, and looked in the mirror.

The shiner was a glaring ugly purple, with the eye not quite swollen shut. The lip wasn't fat anymore, but there was a major scab where it had been cut.

At least the nosebleed hadn't lasted too long.

He hadn't yet decided which was worse; the fact that Eddie, the school bully, had decided to beat him up, or that Mick had come to the rescue. Mick--big for his age, almost as big as Joey. Mick, the athlete and brain and over-achiever...where Joey was the skinny dreamer, more interested in a book than a ball.

He finished combing his hair, and went back to his room to get dressed.

Nicky Weird: Harvest Moon

This is an entry into this week's Friday Challenge, which can be found here. I've written about Nicky Weird before. The challenge for this week? Write the Climactic Battle scene.

Xarathon's rage grew as he stalked the halls of the abandoned high school, eight lesser vampires surrounding him.

It's the Harvest Moon, he thought savagely, one of the most magically potent nights of the year. I should be sacrificing virgins, not hunting children. Indeed, it was forty years to the day since the Harvest Moon where he had cursed the entire Earth, covering up the appearance of vampires and magic once and for all. He should be ripping the still-beating heart from the chest of the leader of these savages, that Nicky woman, not wasting his time looking in closets and stalking empty corridors.

Up ahead, movement, a fleeting blur as a teenager dashed across the lobby and into the gymnasium. With snarls of impatience, his troops dashed ahead, pursuing the youngster through the open doors and onto the hardwood floor.

When they reached the mid-court line, hundred of water balloons fell from the ceiling. He had hung back, suspicious of a trap; four of his troops were hit and soaked. One other was fast enough to avoid all but a few splashes.

There were no children in the gymnasium, though, and the far doors were locked. The vampires stumbled sheepishly back out into the lobby.

"These children have never gone to such lengths before," Xarathon growled. "What are they up to?"

Vincent shrugged, absent-mindedly scratching at his face. His talon came away dripping blood, and the vampire stared at his hand, mystified. Small sparks began shooting off from his skin, and he screamed in terror.

Silver.

In moments, Vincent's body was engulfed in flames, and Xarathon backed away from the inferno. Hector ran screaming down the hallway, erupting into a fireball outside the principal's office and collapsing into ash. The other two who had been soaked by the balloons caught fire and collapsed as well.

One trap had cut his forces in half.

These children had figured out how to dissolve silver in water!

"Get them!"

Nicky outlined the chalk circle and sprinkled it with salt and other powders. Just outside of the circle was the stool upon which the statue stood. The hole in the ceiling would bring the moonlight onto the statue shortly, and she needed to have read from the scroll by then.

She hoped the rest of the team was all right. Mitch would have said "it's for the greater good, and they know what they're sacrificing themselves for," but that didn't make things any easier. The counter-curse had to be cast here, where the original spell had been cast, and the vampires had to be kept busy while she did it.

Nicky didn't have much time, she knew. The vampires could get bored of the game and come home before she was done. She could mis-read a magical word, and totally hose the spell.

...or she could fall victim to it.

She was 17, a year past the point when most other Guardians had lost the ability to see vampires and magic. Nicky knew she was living on borrowed time, and often caught herself daydreaming of things that just were not in character for her.

All of the preparations were complete. She lit the tall black candles, and began to read the words of a long-dead necromancer.

She didn't--couldn't--sense the other presence in the room, an intangible sentry-spirit whose mission it was to prevent just what she was doing. It wasn't corporeal, could not harm her or even communicate with her. The master must be informed, it thought, and left it's post for the first time in forty years.

This has got to be a diversion, Xarathon thought.

Another of his troops had fallen to the children's traps, though three of the children hadn't run fast enough and were now nothing more than bloody smears on the floors and walls of the cafeteria. Ahead, a horrible racket was coming from the band room, but the vampires were wary of stepping through the doors.

"Get in there!" he growled, shoving them through the doors, and then stepping through himself.

The children had piled chairs and instruments all around the room, forming a maze. The low ceiling kept the vampires from leaping over the walls of brass and wood.

A boy, no older than 14, stepped out from behind the mess and hurled a water balloon. It splashed harmlessly off the door, and Bruce took off after the kid--who disappeared into the maze before the balloon even hit.

There was a scream. Bruce staggered back, holding his head in his hands; he actually made it three steps before collapsing into dust. Xarathon walked forward a few steps, and found the piano wire stretched across the maze. In the dimly lit room, there could be hundreds of these little tricks.

Only two minions left, and they headed for the exit as a rain of water balloons flew over the maze. He went out with them.

Master, came the tickling at his ear, She is here.

It was a diversion. The children were supposed to keep him occupied while the girl did something.

She has the figure, the voice continued, and he screamed in rage. He grabbed Mendoza, the smarter of the two surviving vampires, and shoved him against the wall.

"I don't care if you need to burn this hell-hole to the ground," he said, teeth clenched. "Get the rest of the pack here, now. No one gets out of here alive."

Then he was gone.

Mitch turned to Steve, sitting in a closet near the principal's office. He was listening to a headset plugged into the school intercom system. "Someone get on the phone to Nicky, and tell her she's got company coming. And there are more vamps on their way, so everyone get ready."

Nicky stood in her circle, waiting. The spell had been read. Hopefully she hadn't screwed it up.

She needed to wait until the light from the moon shone full on the statue, and then she could finish the spell. She stood, silently, impatiently, absently swinging a stake.

Shouldn't you be doing something else, came a whisper in her ear. As a matter of fact, there was something else, wasn't there...? She looked at the stake in her hand, but it wasn't a stake, it was a tennis racket.

That's what she had forgotten, today was her tennis lesson.

She gave the racket a few practice swings, and spun it around her finger. Yeah, that's what she needed, go whack a couple of balls over the net, burn off this frustration over...over...what had she been frustrated and impatient with, just moments ago...? Her brain was fuzzy, she was supposed to be doing something, not thinking about tennis...

She looked closely at the racket, and noticed the logo--a golden hand holding a tennis racket.

A tear rolled slowly down her cheek. Arik, she thought. How could I forget Arik?

She spun the tennis racket a few more times, and then reversed it in her hand.

Then she jammed it backwards, under her left arm, outside the circle--below the spot from whence the whisper had come. The shriek of pain and terror told her she had hit her target.

Xarathon staggered back two steps, screaming. The stake had been perfectly on target; he was dying. He could feel his insides filling with sand and dust. But thirteen hundred years of evil wouldn't die in an instant. He could still keep her from breaking the spell. He reached through the circle at her, felt his arm catch fire for breaking the protective barrier, caught her shirt in his decaying talons, dragged her away from the statue.

"You won't break the curse!" he spat, as the moonlight fell on the horrific little statue. She fought, struggled, tried to get away--and then froze. He had her! It was time and she was too far away!

She reached under her shirt, pulled off a pendant, and held it up--a feather, five inches long, solid gold. "This is for you, Arik," she whispered. She threw it, knife-style, at the figurine, while he screamed in impotent anger.

The heavy feather caught the statue high, knocking it off balance. It wobbled, rocked, finally toppled off the stool.

His last sight, as he crumbled into dust, was the statue shattering into a million pieces too.

Nicky stepped carefully out of the crypt, and made her way through the quiet streets back to the school. She was amazed at what she saw when she arrived.

The school principal, two teachers, and seven parents were taking on a vampire on the front lawn.

Mitch was standing on the statue in the front of the school, shouting orders, and amazingly enough, the adults were actually listening to him. Clumps of adults were taking down vampires all around the school grounds. Steve was helpfully and cheerfully handing out stakes, spears, and crossbows from the tailgate of his family's station wagon.

Mitch jumped down to stand next to her. "Not bad, for a girl," he said.

They watched the chaos in silence for a few minutes. "So, what now?"

"I don't know about you," she said, "but I know what I'm doing."

She turned her back on the adults and vampires, and walked home. There was no one there; odds are her parents and brother were out stomping vampires now too. She ignored the empty house, went straight up the steps, and slammed the door behind her.

Several minutes later, the door opened again, for just a moment. When it closed, there was a sign hanging on it, freshly painted in fingernail polish the color of blood, some of the letters dripping slightly.

It said Getting caught up on sleep for the next week. If you wake me up for anything less than the end of the world, you're risking instant painful death. Consider yourself warned.

Luis Came Back

This is an entry into this week's Friday Challenge. This week? Come up with a thousand words to tell the story behind the picture.

It was someone's sick idea of a joke, calling Luis "Lucky." I think maybe it was Raul.

The man was already missing an eye and a hand when he signed on with us. He didn't say much about his family for the longest time; it was only after Raul got him good and drunk that we found out they had died in a fire--the same fire that had scarred his back, and taken his eye and his hand.

You would think that a man with only one hand wouldn't make a very good soldier, but Luis did okay. Our assignment was to wipe out the bandit packs near the American border, and it was hard to turn anyone away if they could fight. Luis could fight. Instead of taking the time to reload during a battle, he actually carried two extra pistols. He was vicious, and fearless, always the first one over the wall.

Then we went up against the the bandits in Nogales, and "Lucky" Luis took a bullet in his good arm. Now he was totally useless.

Back at camp, he started drinking. Hard. He let slip that it was bandits that burned his farm and his family. He kept shouting about vengeance, and how he was going to get it no matter what it took. He had heard of this doctor in the mountains, Doctor Brouha, who could almost bring a dead man back to life, and he was going to go and see him.

Everyone had heard of Doctor Brouha, of course, but no one went to see him. Well...no one sane, anyway. They said half the men who went to see him died, and the other half never came back.

Lucky Luis came back.

Three weeks after he set out on foot, with one useless arm and a hook for a hand, he came back into the camp.

He had a new eye and new arms. The eye was a brass tube that stuck out of his skull and moved around like a snail's eyestalk. And his arms...they weren't human arms. They were black metal, with a ball where the elbow would be.

Luis could fire a big rifle like a derringer, haul crates like a horse, and shoot a fly off a horse's tail at fifty paces. "The eye," he told me. "It lets me see up close. Doctor Brouha did good."

The rest of us weren't quite so sure.

A month later, Luis got "lucky" again. The cannonball missed him by inches, but threw him twenty feet.

The bloody mangled thing on the stretcher was barely human. I could see teeth through cheeks and shattered ribs sticking out of his chest, but the black metal arms were still shiny, and that one good eye found mine. "D...D...Doc..." he wheezed.

"Doctor Brouha," I said. The eye closed. I picked two walking wounded to carry the stretcher; they wouldn't be any good for fighting for a couple of weeks, anyway.

The two soldiers came back two weeks later. They said the last they saw, Doctor Brouha was standing over Luis with a saw in his hand. He would lean down to whisper "do you want it bad enough?" in his ear, again and again, until Luis screamed "YES!" through his shattered face. Then the doctor stood up with a smile and went to cut off a leg. That's when they left.

Luis came back a month later.

At least, it wore Luis' bandana, and it stood in his old spot in formation. But it didn't look like Luis. It was all metal, all shiny black. It now had two of the brass eyes on stalks, and it fought like a demon. It was faster than a horse, never ate, never slept.

And it never talked.

We wondered if there was even any of Lucky Luis left inside.

It wiped out the gringos in Sonora all by itself, before we even got close enough to see who was shooting.

The Captain worked out a way to take out the bandit fort at Huachuca. We had to sneak down the hill, to the back of the fort, while the rest of the men pretended to attack the front. Lucky Luis was with us, so we knew we would win; it would probably tear down the whole wall for us.

We slipped and skidded down the muddy hill, and lined up for the attack, the metal man leading the way.

A section of the wall fell towards us, revealing a squad of men, a burning torch, and a loaded cannon. The first shot scattered us, and we all tried to run back up the hill to get away from the second one.

The metal man wasn't running. It was looking at what used to be Raul, the prankster who had given him his nickname. It was looking at us running in terror, slipping and sliding through the muck and not getting out of the line of fire fast enough.

And then he started running, too. The wrong way.

Even as fast as he was, he couldn't get there before they loaded up the cannonball. But he ran right up to the barrel of the cannon as they brought the torch down. He plugged it with his own body--blocked it off with Doctor Brouha's shiny black metal. The explosion wiped out the cannon crew, knocked down the wall behind them, and wiped out enough of the troops on the other side of the wall that we took the fort with ease.

We gathered up the dead, and found most of the pieces of metal that had been Lucky Luis. When we looked inside the metal bucket that had once stood atop the black shoulders, there was nothing, not even a skull.

We buried him next to Raul.

Portrait of the Author as a Young Conspiracy Whacko

Two posts in a row that aren't fiction and photography...?

Okay, this is an entry into the Friday Challenge. Bruce's challenge for this week: What did 9/11 do to your world?

I started writing this out as a set of notes to go with my story...but the more I wrote, the less fiction I could find. I eventually gave up on the story, polished this out into an essay, and I'm posting it as is.

-=ad=-

Some questions can't be answered.

More importantly, some questions should be answered.

I've always been fascinated by unanswered questions, and I've never been shy about poking them with a stick to see if they squirm. Secrets have a way of coming out eventually; they deserve to have light shined on them.

Lincoln assassination? Check. Why does the body of the assassin not quite match the description of John Wilkes Booth?

Kennedy assassination? Why couldn't military sharpshooters repeat Oswald's feat of three shots in just a couple of seconds?.

Oklahoma City. Read the works of General Partin, military demolitions expert: How could a fertilizer-oil bomb, which aren't all that powerful or reliable, do so much damage to parts of the building so far away from the explosion? And how did the investigators track the suspect based on a number found on the blasted wreckage of the rear axle of the rented truck that held the bomb?

Look into what Roosevelt knew in advance about Pearl Harbor; follow that up with the needless firebombing of cities in Germany and Japan, and something called "Operation Keelhaul" in Europe.

Ask what was formerly standing in the spot where Central Park now sits.

Back up even further in history, and whether or not evil King Richard was as bad as the history books lead us to believe.

I question the Shroud of Turin, because every single test on it--except the carbon dating test--has pointed to it's validity. The bloodstains on the Shroud are blood type AB.

I question the Sphynx, because it shows clear and obvious water damage--and the only other structure in Egypt that shows the same damage is the temple a few miles away from the Sphynx, built with the blocks dug out of the ground when the Sphynx was carved out of bedrock. I even question the history of the Giza Pyramids--because there aren't any "practice pyramids" before then, where the locals figured out how to build one, and all of the pyramids built after the Giza ones are crumbling piles of scrap rubble now--almost like the Egyptians mastered the art of pyramid building overnight and promptly forgot how they did it. And...if you can figure out how the Pyramid was built, building this huge pile of ten ton rocks...maybe, just maybe, you can figure out how the Sphynx was built--by moving HUNDRED ton bricks out of a big hole in the ground.

"The winners write the history books." Well, what if you want to know what the losers would have written? Hell, what if you want to know the truth, not the opinion of the winners OR the losers?

But I'm not a conspiracy nut. I'm a conspiracy researcher.

Yes, there's a difference, though odds are, not many see it that way. A conspiracy researcher asks questions, and the conspiracy nut answers them. I don't have the mindset to think I have the resources and the intelligence to answer my own questions...I just ask them.

That brings us around to 9/11, which leads to more questions than I can count.

9/11 started off bad for me. I had worked out an occasional carpooling deal with a friend, but we had crossed wires that day. I showed up at the truck stop just south of I-10 through Phoenix, where we always met--but he wasn't there. I had to call around, find a new ride in to work, and saw smoke coming out of the towers on a TV there at the truck stop. Finally made it in to work, over an hour late; suffered through the obligatory chewing-out session in silence, and went on to my desk...and spent the rest of the day poring over news and clips and posts and "what the hell is going on...?"

It's eight years later, and I still don't have answers to all of my questions. I still don't trust the official story, any more than I trust any OTHER official story.

How did burning aircraft fuel bring down the towers, when burning aircraft fuel isn't hot enough to melt steel?

What brought down building number 7?

How was it possible to find the passport of one of the dead terrorists on the streets of New York City, when so much was destroyed?

Why was there no real warning from the intelligence community?

Who tried to profit from 9/11 by betting on the stocks of the affected airline companies to fall on that day?

Is it possible that 9/11 is a response to meddling in Iran since the 50s...and instigating the Iran/Iraq war, then taking sides with Iraq...and blockading medical supplies into Iraq for so many years...and all of the other ways the US government interferes in the Middle East...?

But the two biggest questions of all are these:

Why was the military not scrambled? And, why was Bush allowed to keep reading to schoolchildren?

Three different military flights were rerouted to check on Payne Stewart's Leerjet flight. The plane apparently lost cabin pressure, and flew on autopilot for two or three hours before running out of fuel. National Guard F-16s even monitored the plane until it actually hit the ground. On 9/11, not only were the planes over much more populated areas (Stewart's plane crashed in South Dakota), there were so many MORE planes out of contact. I've been to Dover AFB, practically down the street from the Pentagon. There are military bases all up and down the coast. Surely some of those bases had planes in the air or available for a quick launch? Why were the rules changed that day? And what are the rules NOW?

Most important in my mind, though, was the President sitting in a classroom in Bradenton, Florida, while the country was being attacked. If these terrorists were organized and funded well enough to hijack not one, but FOUR airplanes from major airports...who could say that they weren't also hijacking a Leer or Cessna from "Bradenton Municipal," filling it full of the flammable material of choice, and crashing it into the roof of the school? (No, I don't know if there really is a Bradenton airport, but that's beside the point). Secret Service protocol should have involved hustling Bush out of that school in the first thirty seconds after the news hit the air.

I'm not suggesting anything at all, remember. I'm a conspiracy hobbyist, not a professional. I just ask questions, and I leave it to the more...serious and dedicated... conspiracy whackos to come up with the answers. But, in the "new and improved" post-9/11 world, just asking the questions is enough to get you into trouble. Bush's "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude means that anyone who dares to question the mainstream version of things is obviously a revisionist, a terrorist sympathizer, looking to get rich by flinging conspiracy garbage around to all of those "poor, misguided, uneducated rubes" out there who actually listen to talk radio.

It ALMOST feels like the people who want their questions answered are being marginalized and ignored. It seems like anyone who isn't being a good little drone, believing the official "winner's version" of the history books, just doesn't deserve to be recognized by polite company. It's almost like anyone who asks conspiratorial, traitorous questions like "how much is this going to cost?," "who's going to be covered?," "how much longer are we going to stay over there?" and "how did you visit Pakistan when Americans weren't allowed into the country?" are treated like full-on treasonous terrorists.

I wonder if anyone would consider it a badge of honor to be placed on the government's anti-terrorist no-fly list...?

If I were a full-blown conspiracy whacko, instead of just a conspiracy hobbyist, it would almost seem to me that 9/11 changed the way we look at our country and each other--that the slow but steady drift towards a police state that had been going on for years suddenly became a flash flood of lost freedoms. I've always felt that the country was on a leisurely drive from freedom to tyranny, and every president finds some excuse to push a little harder on the gas pedal. Just like the economic meltdown is Obama's excuse to floor it now, 9/11 was Bush's excuse them. Thirty years ago, would anyone have thought that the US would have the largest prison population of any country? Fifty years ago, would there have been any debate over what constitutes "torture" at the hands of Americans? I can just imagine the Congressional debates from 1800 over the constitutionality of giving tax money to people for their medical care, or to buy a horse and cart...

But what do I know? I'm just a guy who asks a lot of questions.

Vaccine Russian Roulette

Very often, I seem to be catching flack from people who disagree with my opinions on vaccinating my kids. 

 

The school seems to think I'm exposing my kids to dangerous germs.  Other parents believe that by not vaccinating my kids I'm somehow endangering theirs--an argument that makes absolutely no sense, because if the vaccine works, and their kids are vaccinated, then vaccinating my kids would be completely irrelevant to the health of theirs.

 

Granted, there are quite a few disagreements over certain vaccines and their effects on people:

 

1.  Thimerasol (mercury):  Depending on who you ask, this is either a deadly toxin or "such a small dose as to be absolutely harmless."  Many parents blame this additive for autism.  I'm not taking sides in this debate, but I have a problem with injecting any amount of mercury into a child's body for any reason whatsoever.

 

2.  Side effects (Swine Flu, 1976):  How do you ensure that the vaccine you're providing doesn't kill more people than the disease it's supposed to be effective against? 

 

3.  Contaminants (Monkey virus in the Polio vaccine):  What do you do when you discover--years after the vaccination--that it contained a virus or other contamination, and that you've exposed fifty million Americans to a substance that causes cancer?

 

4.  Profit margin (Gardasil):  I have a philosophical/moral/libertarian problem with government passing a law that requires citizens to buy a product from a company.  Whether the vaccine works or not, ordering people to boost the vaccine maker's profit margin seems like a basic misuse of the law.

 

5.  Risks versus Benefits:  There have been 1500 cases of polio, annually, worldwide, and the WHO calls the entire Western Hemisphere "Polio Free."  Every case of polio in the United States over the last twenty years is directly related to the polio vaccine itself.  90% of the people infected with polio brush it off like a case of the flu, and nearly 98% of the people infected with polio have a full and complete recovery.  Do the dangers of the vaccine--five different doses for kids before they turn 12--outweigh the risks of even being exposed to the disease, let alone being harmed by it?  The mortality rates for flu, measles, whooping cough, and chicken pox are negligible; are the side effects from the vaccinations worth it?

 

6.  Expiration dates on vaccination immunity:  The vast majority of the vaccinations children receive provide only temporary immunity.  Only Tetanus antibodies survive in the body for thirty or forty years.  The Hepatitis B shot?  Gone in 7 to 12 years, at most. 

 

7.  Can we compare against non-vaccinated kids?  For example, the Amish don't vaccinate, and strangely enough, there are no recorded cases of autism in Amish communities.  And Dr. Eisenstein, a Chicago pediatrician, doesn't believe in vaccinations--and the 35,000 kids who have moved through his practice have remarkably low statistics when it comes to autism, asthma, diabetes, and other problems.

 

I'm sure other people can easily add to this quick list if they wished.  But these are all side issues that don't touch on my real opposition to the concept of vaccination in and of itself.

 

Basic biology says that the heart pumps blood into the arteries; they carry it to the capillaries, which then feed the cells they touch with the oxygen in the red blood cells before sending the empties back up the veins.  Capillaries in general are barely big enough to allow red blood cells to march through in single file.  Call it a blood-cell bucket brigade to the cells.

 

A vaccination is meant to kick the body's immune system into overdrive--crank up white blood cell production, and "program" the body to recognize this particular virus and attack it with massive force, should it ever be encountered again.  The needle contains millions or even billions of virus particles for the body to identify and destroy.

 

Here is a question, then.  What would happen if the body ordered five hundred white blood cells to pursue a microbe into a capillary?

 

After the first dozen or so arrive, stuffing themselves like marshmallows into a garden hose, nothing else gets through.  And after a very short while, whatever was supposed to be fed by that capillary...dies.

 

Now, granted, this might only be a handful of cells fed by this one capillary, and there are billions of capillaries.  But at the same time, there are billions of virus particles in one injection; how many of those actually make it down to the capillaries?  Two?  Two hundred?  More?

 

Perhaps the cells that die are the brain cells that would allow this person to learn to play Mozart.  Or perhaps they are the ones that allow a kid to sit still and pay attention in class.  What if those cells are involved in the processing of Vitamin D or insulin?

 

I will fully accept the risk that my child might spend a week in bed with measles--in return for their ability to learn to play Mozart.  I would much rather risk exposing my child to chicken pox than chance destroying some critical cell in their body and ruining their future.

 

Every virus particle is a microscopic bullet, with the potential to kill something small but critically important in the body into which it's injected.

 

There are billions of these bullets in every needle.

 

And the average child gets, what, fifty needles before they turn 12...?

 

 

For more information, read the work of Drs. Andrew Moulden, Mayer Eisenstein, and Shari Tenpenny

Nicky Weird's Summer Vacation

Note: This is an entry into this week's Friday Challenge. The assignment: "What I Did on my Summer Vacation only make up something cool."

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Thirty years ago, an evil sorcerer cast a spell on the Earth. Under it's influence, humans can no longer recognize magic; vampire slayings become "teen runaways," magical storms and disasters are "freak unseasonal storms." Even history isn't immune; show a human a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, with the wizard robes and auto-writing quills moving, and they'll see a bunch of stuffy white men in the style of the 1700s standing around, powdered wigs and all.

Magic just doesn't register on human senses, and even if it does, it's instantly rationalized away.

But there was a glitch in the spell, a mis-spoken word in a long forgotten language...a loophole, if you will, in a spell that was supposed to be eternal law.

The spell only works on adults.

And so, the future of the world lies in the hands of children, like Nicky Ward, who try to fight the demons and vampires as best they can, hoping that some day, the spell will break...


Dear Mom and Dad,

...yeah, I know, when you read this, you'll see "I'm having a lot of fun on my summer vacation!" instead of what I'm really writing...

I'm really glad you agreed to let me come down to Florida with my Guardian group--um, I mean, my "church youth group." The bus ride down was nice and quiet; we had a close pass from a Kansas storm demon. The bus driver called it a small tornado, and we parked under an overpass until it went by. Good thing storm demons are stupid.

Once we got here, we hooked up with the local Guardian club, and started sharing notes. That's really big with the Guardians, you know. When you're twelve and decide to hunt vampires for a living, you've got a life expectancy of maybe six months. If we didn't get to be neurotic about writing down everything we know and sharing copies with everyone we know, then no one would remember how to go about killing vampires and demons, you know?

So, once all the braindraining was out of the way, we helped the local group clear out a vampire nest in the swamp. Bright sunshine, couple of kids go inside and make sure the coffins are full while the rest of the team pours gasoline on the outside...if you're really lucky, the coffins are bonfires before the bloodsuckers are done wiping the sleep out of their eyes...

...we weren't lucky. We lost two, both local kids, and they said we burned up at least six or seven vampires when the plantation went up. Some people might be happy with those numbers, but they can crank out new vampires by just biting someone, and we have to teach even more kids everything we know about staying alive...doesn't seem like a fair trade to me.

After that, we celebrated with carbonated cider, if you can call it a celebration and not a wake.

We spent the next two weeks researching some pretty gruesome murders. Finally, Jim hit on it; it was some kind of possessed-alligator-half-human-half-swamp monster...thing. Dunno, we never really had a name for it. It had an appetite for small pets, but when the supply of Yorkiesnacks ran out, it moved on to the main course--people.

We cornered it in an old warehouse downtown, and Jim hit it with a de-possession spell he found a couple of months ago. It worked; the thing turned into a two-foot long normal alligator, except that it was purple, and one of the local kids was going to keep it as a pet. At least we didn't lose anyone this time, though Bobby will be bringing home a big ugly scar on his leg.

Unfortunately, Jim messed up the spell, and his hair turned white. You get that when you try to do magic without years and years of training. He told me about a friend of his last year who tried to use a spell to burn up a trio of bloodsuckers--but stumbled over one of the magic words and melted into a puddle of goo, instead.

Jim said the worst part was hearing the voice from the bucket when they took the goo back to HQ, but I don't know if he was kidding or not. Jim's like that.
Anyway...

Tomorrow, we're going to try to chase down a possible were-something or other near Miami Beach. The adults think we're doing a community service project, and we're actually going to do some painting on an old house as a cover while Mitch sets up his wolfsbane trap.

Tonight, though, we're going to try to have a barbecue on the beach, if the storm demons will leave us alone. Seems like the hurricanes move in every time we light the bonfire.

We'll be hopping on the bus to head home in time for school next weekend, and I'll see you then.

Yeah, yeah, I know, that last sentence is probably the only one that will get through to your brain...that's okay, though.

Your daughter...

Nicky



Okay, a quick overview/introduction on this one.

I'm fascinated by this character because she defines herself.

I came up with this ridiculous, bizarre, black-humor story, "The Night of the Inflateables," where a kid's Halloween/birthday wish turns balloon animals in a mall into vicious monsters. The lead character, Nicky Ward, sets out to protect the people and kill the balloons; the fight spills out into the mall parking lot, where the inflated Sumo wrestler in front of the auto dealer next to the mall is wreaking havoc in the parking lot...

I hadn't even finished my notes for the story when the character of Nicky started letting me know who she was. And the one biggest character trait...was *jaded*. She's thirteen years old, but talks and acts like she's been doing this for a really long time. That one factoid led into the definition of the world she lives in--and sparked the ideas for more than a dozen (so far) short stories, chronicling her life from about age 10 to 18. Three stories are half done, some of the rest are nothing more than one-sentence ideas; I've also got notes on at least a half-dozen supporting characters...

So, when Bruce asked for "what did you do on your summer vacation," my brain threw a "...Nicky Weird?" on the end of the sentence, and this is what came out.

-=ad=-

The Ten Thousand Nickel Challenge

It's all Jerri's fault.

Jerri read something I wrote , and declared "I'm impressed. You can write funny; I can't do that."

Now, Jerri is a "real" writer, with over a dozen tech books under her belt; I'm strictly amateur, with a handful of unpublished and mostly unread short stories and poems. To have impressed someone I admire as much as Jerri had an impact on me.

Thus was NickelAtATime born.

The concept is simple (and right there in the EULA, and everyone reads those, right...?). If you laugh at a joke, you pull up your Paypal account and send in a nickel. You can send more if you like, but the MSRP of these jokes is exactly five cents. It started out as a mailing list, but the job I was working at the time went away shortly after I sent out the first issue, and it...kinda died. Once life stabilized again, I turned it into a blog, and lately, I've been trying to bring it completely to life--and pack it full of fun and humor.

Why am I writing about another blog here on my fiction and photography blog? Easy. I'm trying to replace my broken camera. The one I want is still a ways away, and I'm asking for your help in getting there. Besides the Redbubble pictures that are up for sale, I'm also posting jokes and pictures to NickelAtATime, and many of those will be going up on CafePress as well. And with the economy the way it is, I figure not everyone will want to spend "the big bucks" on a photo print or poster...but I figure everyone can spare a few nickels here and there.

How many nickels do I need to get the camera I want...?

Um...well...

Ten thousand.

(Why am I having Star Wars flashbacks here...? "All in advance.")

Yes, between the money I've got stashed away, and the Redbubble sales I've had so far, and the nickels I've pulled in, I'm about ten thousand nickels away from my new camera. So, I would like to invite everyone I know, to invite everyone they know, and stop by NickelAtATime, pull up a rock, and (hopefully) have a good laugh.

And if you DO have a good laugh...kick in your nickel. Comments and criticisms are, of course, always welcome.

Thank you for your time.

See you in the funny papers!

-=ad=-

Southern Knights Rocks!

Note: This is an entry in The Friday Challenge, which can be found here. This week's challenge? Explain how Hollywood would screw up a perfectly good comic book--the independent Southern Knights.

-=ad=-

Nickolas Geekzinski, NYT Movie Critic

Southern Knights Rocks.

Honestly, I can't say it any clearer than that. From the opening scene with the giant robots, to the final fight featuring magical lighting against superhero lightning, this movie keeps you on the edge of your seat. I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but there are so many cool things to say about this cool movie that some things are just going to leak out.

Whenever you take a book or comic book to the screen, there's a lot of baggage that comes with. Superhero movies have to acknowledge the things that came before. One of the funniest quotes in movies comes from Scott Summers/Cyclops in the first X-Men movie: "Would you prefer yellow spandex?" For a new Superman or Batman movie, there are years upon years of baggage to take into account, and a thousand nitpicking little details that the rabid fans of those franchises want to see. That's why the first words Superman speaks to Lois in "Superman Returns" are the same as the first line he says to her in the original "Superman: The Movie."

However...if you build your movie from something that doesn't have all that baggage--say, a lesser-known comic book, with a much smaller legion of rabid fans--then you have the chance to create your own baggage, and define these characters anew. So, let's take a look at the characters.

David Shenk/Electrode: The leader of the team, played to brooding perfection by Chris Pine, fresh from Trek. The comical moment where he works out a battle plan, calls out instructions to his teammates--and then watches them totally ignore his plan and rush off to do their own thing--is absolutely priceless.

Connie Ronnin: Rumor has it Paris Hilton offered to finance the movie for a shot at this role, but fortunately, it fell to Summer Glau instead. The intensity she brings to the role is astounding. It must have taken weeks of fencing practice to make her look that good.

Dragon: The one piece missing from the film is some kind of backstory on a man who can change into a dragon. I mean, did Shia Lebouf just suddenly wake up one morning and realize he could change into a dragon? And what's with all the anachronistic speech--he sounds like he learned to talk by watching Masterpiece Theater, for crying out loud.

Kristin Austin: This is the role every comic book fan knows about--because of Jessica Simpson storming off the set halfway through production. Scrambling for a last-minute replacement, all of her scenes were re-shot with Hayden Panattiere in record time.

Brian Daniels: And the show-stealer of the year award goes to...Jeff Foxworthy, for his portrayal of the robot-suit wearing comedy sidekick of the team. Purists may complain about the amount of screen time granted to what was essentially a minor character in the comic book, but his sub-plot--featuring him losing everything to his ex-wife (played to shrewish perfection by Drew Barrymore), then the commiserating drinking party with Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy, and finally figuring out the answer to all his problems--all of these things made the movie. And the final fight, seeing his battle suit covered with more corporate sponsor stickers than the average Nascar vehicle, just brought everything together.

And finally, Morrigan, the villain. Other reviewers have already sung her praises, so I don't need to go into any more depth here. Suffice it to say it's terrific to see a true, villainous villainESS for a change.

The action was stupendous; not even Michael Bey could have done it better. The robot battle at the beginning which totally destroyed the freeway into Atlanta? For the first time, really, audiences get a glimpse into just how much collateral damage superhero combat entails.

And it's really rare to see a superhero movie with as much humor. Having Kristin join the rednecks at the bar was a stroke of genius, and the barroom brawl to follow--while predictable, "when there's a scene in a bar, there will be a fight"--was one of the coolest scenes in the movie, as Kristin spun at least a dozen drunken men through the nearest available window...or wall...without once spilling her drink. The sex scene that followed, when she rushed off drunk into Dragon's apartment, was more touching and warm than even the one in Watchmen.

There are nitpicks, of course; you can't film a superhero movie without them. Why Connie's psychic lightsaber could cut through some things and not others is one. And Morrigan's lightning bolts--why didn't they short out Brian's sticker-encrusted battlesuit at the end of the movie, the way it did at the beginning when the enemy robot dropped power cables on it? Did the stickers give it protection against magical lightning or something?

All I've got to say is this. The Southern Knights movie may not have been true to the word of the original comic, but with the massive injection of Southern humor, it was very true to the spirit of the original, and adds a whole new chapter to what will eventually become a dynasty of...

...hey, what are you doing in here? Aren't you the guy who invented the Southern Knights? What do you think you're doing with that butter knife...?