In desperate times, desperate people head for ...
Our newest editorial, "The Boy Who Cried Fox," retells an all-too-familiar political fable.
Harold Jaffe, in "Excerpts from Paris 60," follows Baudelaire around the still-apocalyptic streets and boulevards.
We inaugurate our newest category -- essays, articles and interviews by, for and about pop culture -- with an interview with writer Harold Jaffe.
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Armageddon Buffet is looking for speculative fiction and nonfiction writers who write about the theme: Armageddon. This does not mean we believe in the Biblical Armageddon -- we leave that to the True Believers -- but we have definitely noticed that the End Time has arrived. Learn more about our submission guidelines, or submit an article or story to Armageddon Buffet.
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Editorial / The Boy Who Cried Fox Once upon a long time ago, though it could have happened last week, a Boy whose job it was to guard the chickens got bored. He was too old to stay home hanging on his mother's apron but too young yet to work in the fields or to be apprenticed to one of the tradesmen in the village, so he ended up with one of the jobs reserved for old women and children.
He was tossing pebbles into the fenced pen, watching the fowl flutter and cluck and hop in response, when he heard a voice.
"Hey, kid!" it whispered to him hoarsely. "Wanna have some fun?"
Harold Jaffe / Excerpts from Paris 60
3.27 Furious Goya
unblocked me.
Jet-lagged in the City of Lights.
Unseasonably cold.
Having rented a flat in the premier quartier, not far from the Tuileries Gardens.
Travel-blitzed, can't write a line.
After five bleak nights the old deaf furious witness unblocked me.
On the walls at the Petit Palais in one of the chic quartiers: Goya's engravings: Disasters of War.
The exhibition is crowded as the métro at rush-hour.
Kultur still cuts it in Paris.
Why are those two Japanese female tourists giggling at the grotesquely tortured innocents in Disasters of War?
Maybe I know why.
Interview / Harold Jaffe Enforced accommodations are demeaning, but in some instances the accommodation compels the writer to open up previously inaccessible spaces in his or her consciousness, such that the necessity has unexpectedly become a discovery. Accommodation without sacrifice is my governing mantra.
John Darling / There Must Be Cowboys "Runners on the right, son!" warned Carl.
James glanced to his right even as his hand pulled the scattergun from its cross-bar mounted holster.
A shot from his dad at the feet of the middle Runner caused him to stutter step, which made the three of them momentarily separate from their columnar attack formation. In that instant, James fired. He heard a scream as one Runner fell. The others fled back towards the thicket of bushes that had come from; both limped badly. Before they could make it all the way, though, another shot caught the rear Runner between the shoulder blades, causing him to pitch forward into a heap.
Edwin Decker / Armageddon of Queer In our first-ever YouTube selection, we examine the really bad awful things that will happen if gay marriage is allowed.
John-Patrick Ayson / atrophy in the heart of defunct financial districts are mile length lines, comprised of men & women with grumbling stomachs, penniless pockets & zero confidence, making their way thru decagon shaped buildings, into storage rooms padded with five layers of styrofoam — where three foot tall stacks of manila envelopes, piled on top of third grade plastic tables, are attended to by persons wearing matching snake skin suits & berets, handing one envelope to each man & woman — who will find a document inside, which reads:
we are an all for profit organization whose objective is to protect our land from perpetrators & their intrinsic quests to disrupt our way of life.
these perpetrators are, but not limited to:
º ravens (& other creatures resembling them)
Stephen W. Potts / Zone of Silence Allison was in the middle of a message to Ryan when her phone stopped working. She had just thumbed in "b/c don't u just h8 it" when the tiny screen went completely black.
She tried to remember if she had heard the beeping that meant the battery was low on charge. Maybe she had been so engrossed in her texting that she had missed it. It was the reason she had missed her bus as she messaged Courtney from the girls' room about getting together that evening for homework and Beverly Hills 90210. You would think that Courtney, who had been on the bus in front of their high school, would have texted something about its leaving.
Harold Jaffe / Warr Games Night after night throughout the wrecked city contingents of US troops in cartoon new-age uniforms hunt for hidden roadside bombs.
On a recent night, a unit from Company B of the Fifth Engineering Battalion, out of Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., met in a darkened tent to prepare for their road-clearing mission in a 27-foot armored vehicle called the Cowpoke.
At the end of their meeting, Staff Sgt. Jessie McGah, 31, of Greenville Arkansas, led his team in prayer . . .
William Terry / Affection Interchange Program Just the strange blue gray color of the affection interchange building is enough to make you feel alone.... The outline of the building is so unfriendly that sometimes I'm amazed that I don't get cut into organic ribbons just walking through the doorway. It's like a blender with a doorknob. This is my third time to apply for the love stamps program. If by some miracle they accept me I will be able to receive a federally funded amount of government approved affection from a person matching my demographic profile. Fluorescent shadow boxes hug every corner of a linoleum hallway as I escape a near death entrance though the slice of the revolving door.
Chapter 9: A Patient Darkness Outside, the view of the Del Mar-Pasadena Stratum from thirty stories up: dirty skyscrapers, staggered in alternating shades of gray, a grid-work of concrete walls that pretended at calm order. The surfaces of the buildings crawling with ads. It felt, to Goldstein, not so much like a vantage point outward into the world at large, but rather like being claustrophobed in a small room with no floor or ceiling. Nothing out there but falling small.
Chapter 8: Backflash The mall was a still, almost meditative place for him; other than the small sounds of people walking in large spaces and the occasional shout, it was quiet. Quieter than outside. Quieter than his apartment.
Chapter 7: Scars & Angel Wings A British expedition found it in 1923, atop a steep and jagged temple, encapsulated in jungle, in the Yucatan. At that time, it was a black stone disk, two meters in diameter. A calendar.
Chapter 6: PR1Σ$+ The dumbot opened a window inside his own window, showing the puzzle box. The puzzle box opened, revealing yet another window. Windows within windows within windows. The call was blue. Voice only, no vid.
Chapter 5: Fierce Orbits Shakti lay prone on the pitching deck, her mother-form pleasantly soft, her ankles crossed. Before her she had opened a portal through the bottom of the data barge; she trailed the fingers of one hand in the static of The Middle. The touch brought whole worlds flashing through her. She saw everything. Worship, engineering, flesh and fists.
Chapter 4: Dead Playboys Chazz was on his knees, giving the gretch what it wanted, taking what he needed. He held its hips and rode it, stuffing its noisy face into the pillow with each thrust. The view was unambiguously supreme.
Chapter 3: Tabula Rasa On the TV, nothing but flesh and flesh and rhythm. Wet sounds and curves and open mouths. It was not nearly as narcotic as cartoons, but it would do. Porn filled his empty head, keeping his few memories neatly compressed.
Chapter 2: Blood Sneeze The last truck landed, disgorged four anxious godcops. Goodkind called them over via laser. They huddled, snapping their visors up for face time, smoldering cigs pinched delicately in little servo arms.
Chapter 1: Screams Like Meat Shakti was riding her favorite body. Around her, the glassware and voices of the patio bar compressed into a confusing mush of single-channel, low-kilohertz noise. She always rode with full tactile and kinesthetic feeds; with the spine turned all the way up, sound and vision suffered. Pleasure was a pig for bandwidth.
Prologue: God's Dogs I will kill everything that eats children.
Editorial / You Say You Want a Revolution At the end of March, my adult son and I took a road trip to the Grand Canyon for a few days of camping and hiking. On the drive from Nevada to Arizona we crossed Hoover Dam, where we stopped to take some photos. Although not a fan of dams myself, I remained impressed by the Art Deco-style public architecture surrounding it. It is all so 1930s: the elegantly geometric towers behind the dam like something out of Star Wars (because science fiction architecture was birthed in the Art Deco era), the stylized statues seated on the Nevada side with sleek, massive wings pointing skyward, symbols of human transcendence, the public-spirited mottos over the entrances of the public buildings -- all reminding visitors of the power of collective effort. It's almost enough to make one forget that the powerline towers angling over the gorge are carrying electricity away to the wasteful sprawl of Las Vegas, whence also goeth the water.
On that drive we saw other evidence of the public sector at work: a highway bypass currently being constructed in the sky above the dam, more highway construction on the Arizona side, funded by the stimulus money passed in Congress last year over the objection of the NOP, and of course Grand Canyon National Park itself, attracting visitors from around the world not only as a testament to the sublime grandeur of nature but to the foresight of progressive presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.
That week there were Mad Tea Party rallies in both Nevada and Arizona -- both calling for an end to American government, both featuring Red Queen Sarah "Teabagger" Palin.
Editorial / Slouching Toward Bedlam In short, what has come to be called "conservatism" has de-coupled itself almost completely from the reality-based world. The magical thinking that dictates you can make something true just by believing it and repeating it -- e.g., "We not only know Hussein has weapons of mass destruction; we know where they are," or "We can slash taxes and balance the budget," or "There is no global warming," or "Obama is a Kenyan communist" -- has saturated the mind of the Right like syphilis.
Editorial / The Guns of August This August we watched angry gangs invade town hall meetings with torches and pitchforks -- actually, worse, surround them with assault weapons and pictures of Obama as Hitler. Democratic congressmen were hanged in effigy. The President was accused of planning to impose a Nazi-Communist-Satanist death program aimed at killing off seniors, veterans, unborn children, Republicans, and Trig Palin. He was accused of being foreign-born and thus not actually president, suggesting his plot against America was an alien plot.
Editorial / The New Minority We are now six months into the Obama presidency, and the honeymoon is over. Fortunately, we are still a long ways from marriage counseling. Many of the President's supporters are less than happy that more change hasn't happened faster, or that this administration refuses to investigate the crimes of the last one, or that it has accepted compromises. If Democratic voters and their ideological allies haven't gotten everything they want so far, the Republicans and their fellows on the Right have gotten much that they don't want.
Editorial / The Last Christmas Carol It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring except W. The single frosty window in the relatively modest room showed only darkness, though outside Camp David was covered in snow. Inside, settled on the sofa before the television and fireplace, W. felt cozy in his presidential pajamas and robe. He cradled a bowl of pretzels in his lap, desultorily munching one even though the taste of the turkey dinner he had eaten hours ago lingered on in the occasional belch.
Editorial / Obamarama Ever since the Supreme Court elected George W. Bush as 43rd president in the last year of the last millenium, a host of true believers have proclaimed the Coming of the End Times. Bush the Burning would bring on the Final Battle and the Final Judgment, and the faithful were gaga with the certainty that they would experience Rapture and Christ's return in their lifetimes. The Bush League did not discourage such speculations, and indeed Karl Rove figured the faith of the "nuts," as he called them, into his electioneering strategies.
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