From the CNN front page:
I read this block of leads and felt like I was suddenly back in the mid-90s.
Will I be able to play Super Mario with my friends, on my virtual boy, over this new fangled inter-network?
At least now we can all get headaches simultaneously, instead of having to take turns.
Rail guns are one of those science fiction tropes – like hover cars and jet-packs – that have been around for years, and no one really expects to have happen tomorrow.
The thing is, we’re wrong.
From the EMRG Fact Sheet, as provided by the ONR
For those not in-the-know, rail guns are weapons that fire their munitions using electromagnets instead of gunpowder.
That doesn’t explain why there’s a bunch of flame and smoke in this video, but that doesn’t make the idea of catching one of these with your teeth any less terrifying.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_OjZyQ6LGE]
Here’s Steeleye Span’s version of The Fause Knight Upon the Road, the Child Ballad that played an integral role in last night’s episode.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHqFyRT1AhU]
Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Twenty-Eight.
Tonight’s tale: Missing, A Mother Gran Story, Part 1 of 3
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp028.mp3](Click play to listen or subscribe via libsyn RSS or iTunes)
This episode is brought to you by Opopanaxfeathers.wordpress.com
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Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – 400 to 600 words brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
This evening we introduce a new recurring character, Mother Gran, who, in this opening chapter, we find mid-stride.
Flash Pulp 028 – Missing, A Mother Gran Story, Part 1 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
Puddle Lane was more than a wagon path, but less than a road. At it’s southern end, it came to a loose three-way corner: Puddle Lane, Soggy Bend and Gallagher. At its northern tip, the lane merged into Strawberry Road, a moniker Mother Gran had always appreciated for the attempt to maintain some of its neighbour’s whimsy.
“Old Man Gallagher never did have much of a sense of humour,” she thought, her knobby knees pumping.
She took the corner at full speed, tilting from Puddle onto Soggy.
She’d had a good head start, but the bundle in her arms was getting heavy, and she could hear the gallop of Turner’s wolf hounds as they closed the distance.
It was another half-mile to the blossoming white flowers of the crab apple tree, but, even in her dusk, her legs were well muscled from a lifetime of papoose toting and field work.
Still, she knew it would be a race.
The slapping paws of the dogs rounded the corner – she could hear the dampness in their hot breath.
A quarter mile, and she could feel the tightness in her lungs.
She began to sing:
“O where are ye gaun?
Says the false knight upon the road.”
A laugh caught in her throat, cutting the song short. She hadn’t run this hard in many a year.
She adjusted her grip on the gray rag.
“O where are ye gaun?
Says the false knight upon the road.
I am gaun to the schule,
Says the wee boy, and still he stood”
Reaching the tree, she broke from the roadway, grinning. The deer path was narrow and grass covered, but she’d known the route since childhood, and her feet were sure.
“What’s augh the sheep on yonder hill?
Says the false knight upon the road.”
She could see the mound now, its northern face piled high with John MacMillan’s transplanted field stones.
“They are my pap’s and mine.
Says the wee boy, and still he stood””
Her heart’s pounding, and the approach of the dogs, merged into thunder in her ears.
“How many of them’s mine?
Says the false knight upon the road.”
Finally, she could hear expectant chittering, and the familiar sound gave her legs new wind.
“A’ them that has blue tails.
Says the wee boy, and still he stood”
It had been the same song since winter’s first thaw – although she usually came with bucket in hand, not such a frail load.
The entire brood had gathered to meet her approach, and at their sight, she knew she would make it.
“I wish you were in yonder well.
Says the false knight upon the road.”
The lead hound recognized its error in the final moment, but its companion wasn’t prepared for the sudden loss of speed.
The old woman had breezed passed the malodorous family without slowing. Her passage, however, had set the matriarch skunk, plump from Gran’s table scraps, on edge.
The collision was cause enough to outrage the nervous mother.
“And you were down in hell
Says the wee boy, and still he stood.”
The dogs reversed course, beginning the long run home to carry the stink to their master.
Gran slowed to a stop, resting against the white trunk of a downed spruce.
As she adjusted her skirt, her palm came away sticky with froth from the hounds’ jaws.
She wiped her hand clean, and with spider-fingers, plucked the wrappings away, revealing the contents of her parcel.
She smiled to see the toothless grin of the babe within.
The lyrical portions of tonight’s story were derived from Child ballad #3, as collected by Francis James Child.
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
This weekend I had reason to google shrinking machines. After some clicking about, a note near the bottom of this wikipedia article caught my attention:
Size-changing has recently been seen as a sexual fetish with the advent of the internet. Macrophilia/Microphilia, and to some extent vorarephilia are rooted in size-changing fiction. Social networking sites such as Writing.com, DeviantArt, and YouTube have thousands of user-submitted stories, groups, blogs, video, and artwork related to microphilia.
Well, all right, not the most disturbing fetish I’ve ever encountered on the internet – weird, but then, all sex is weird.
My eye stuck on that one interior mention however, Vorarephilia? Wha?
Oh, Wikipedia:
Vorarephilia (often shortened to vore) is a sexual fetish and paraphilia where arousal occurs from the idea of being eaten or by the process of eating. The fantasy may involve the person being swallowed alive, and may or may not include digestion.
The word vorarephilia is derived from the Latin vorare (to ‘swallow’ or ‘devour’) and Ancient Greek φιλία (philia, ‘love’).
I find that middle sentence especially interesting – is there already splintering amongst the vorarephiliacs? A virulently pro-digestion sect? Maybe a holier-than-thou group who find the ‘swallowed alive’ people to be perverted degenerates?
According to this picture, either George W. Bush was a giant, or Tina Turner and group were being awarded for their transformations into pixies.
(Someone call Gandalf, Sauron’s grabbed a hobbit!)
Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Twenty-Seven.
Tonight’s story: Mulligan Smith and The Pregnant Pause, Part 1 of 1
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Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – 400 to 600 words brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
This evening we bring you another glimpse into the case files of Mulligan Smith, as he relates a late evening incident at a local greasy spoon.
Flash Pulp 027 – Mulligan Smith and The Pregnant Pause, Part 1 of 1
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
Mulligan and the old man were sharing a park bench and a bag of sunflower seeds.
“There’s a short hallway at the top of O’Doyle’s stairs, and the walls are filled with framed newspaper clippings – all starring the same starchy old lady, Mrs. O’Doyle. In the majority of them she’s holding the diner’s pride, a burger larger than your head.”
Pausing, the PI spat seed husks into the bench’s adjoining trash barrel.
“Really, the frames are all bolted to the walls, and the clippings are just there to act as landing lights for the drunks trying to find the washroom. As one of the few 24-hour eateries in a college-town’s sea of bars, it’s a popular place around closing time.
“It was supposed to have been just another stop, but I’d had to use the facilities. I’d been in and out of meat market dance clubs all night looking for a guy last seen in the company of a client’s missing party-boy son, and I’d had my share of virgin Bloody Marys. I knew two things about the jabberwocky I was chasing: he seemed to have quite a few friends hanging out downtown, and he had a head like a rubber ball, round and bald.
“I’d found out about his spherical noggin from the missing’s last confirmed contact, his hysterical girlfriend. Given her level of conversation, I was glad to get that much out of her.
“On the other hand, his plentiful friends were actually more of a suspicion – I was fairly sure I’d spotted more than one of the people I’d been talking to snapping cellphone pictures as I was walking away.
“Not a great situation: not only was I not getting any info, but he probably knew what I looked like.
“Anyhow, the problem with the hallway is that it has a blind turn onto the staircase at the end of its run, and we’re talking a hall that’s already barely wide enough to steer down once you’ve had a couple of wobbly pops.
“I hadn’t been drinking, but I can only assume collisions like mine are pretty common, at least at that hour.”
Mulligan cleared his throat.
“So I knocked a pregnant lady down a staircase. What was she doing out that late anyhow?”
He scooped another handful of seeds.
“In the end we were both lucky.
“Before she’d finished her backbone-slide down the stairs, I’d noticed something funny: a man with a hat and a very round face was watching me instead of the expectant tumbler. I mean, the conversation and cutlery rattling had ceased entirely, and from the top of the banister I could see everyone taking in the lady wobbling and going over, their heads slowly turning like it was a lopsided tennis serve.
“That is, everyone except that single face, seated beneath a drink cola sign, staring at me.
“Well, Mom-to-be hadn’t even touched down at the bottom, and I knew. Not only that, he knew I knew.
“After apparently watching me toss a pregnant woman down a flight of stairs to get at him, I guess he was pretty scared – when I finally tackled him half a block later, he started babbling everything I could ever ask of him.
“Oh, the lady was fine, actually pretty happy to have the story to tell once I’d talked her husband out of a round of fisticuffs and a lawsuit.”
Smith shook his hand, emptying his palm of husks.
“Found the party-boy in a dumpster though. Too bad about that.”
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
Update II: It’s the future of tomorrow, today!
Update: It’s still not the future.
Our podcast host is in the middle of rocketing our service into the future, and, until such time, publishing new content has been disabled.
Mulligan Smith and The Pregnant Pause will be up as soon as the future is now.
