Archive for October, 2008

Based on an Urban Legend…

***

I opened the package and laid it on my desk.

“Have you tried it?” she asked, bursting into laughter as she looked at my desk.

“Not yet.”

“This guy I’m dating left me an incredibly steamy voice mail message after we’d been together last week. He went on and on about what a goddess I was, how amazing I was, how he’d never be the same, blah, blah, blah. I was kind of puzzled, thinking: what did I do to this guy that was so different? Then I figured it out: I’d smoked a cigarette, and before he came over, I wanted to freshen up, so I ate some that my mother had given me and then we got busy. Apparently things went amazingly. I told Amy about it, who immediately tried it out on her fiance. Apparently this guy has never, ever been into oral sex, but liked the sensation so much that he asked her to stop and have some more mid-blow job. He is now a fellatio gourmand. The news has been flying all around the office. Having some on your desk is now like being part of the Secret Blowjob Goddess Society. It’s the equivalent of having the hottest car or coolest computer. The women all went out at lunch to buy some, and their partners across the city tonight are getting one hell of a corporate blow job. As far as company-wide morale boosting events, it doesn’t get much better. Some of the men found out, too — they went out after work to buy them for their wives. They strategized on how to get their wives to eat them.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The Altoids!”

“Oh”, I said, “I thought you were talking about the fruitcake.”

pmd – 1/5/02

cowl  target  ceramic  identification  famished  age wicker  clasp  wasabi  mention  framework  September  sort  premium

Rance pulled back the engine cowl to examine the damage. The shot had penetrated the outer fuselage and ripped through the hydraulics before lodging itself in one of the fan blades. All in all, he was lucky to have landed this bird alive. “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug,” Rance thought. “And sometimes, you’re a target.” Rance didn’t like being on the ground. He felt vulnerable. He didn’t like having a ceramic identification tag implanted in his arm, either. It made him feel even more like a target. With one of his engines shot to hell, there was nothing to do but grab what he could carry and put as much distance between him and this aircraft as possible. He took the first aid kit, a map, binoculars, some freeze-dried packets of food, knife, compass, signal beacon, and his hand gun and got moving. Thirty minutes later he was two klicks away, looking out over a wide valley from a high vantage point. He was secluded, but had a good view of the landscape around him. Time for some grub. He broke out a packet of something or other and started chewing. It tasted like shit, but he was famished, and he needed to keep his energy level up if he was going to get out of this. He was in good shape for his age, and had always taken survival training seriously. First priority taken care of: food. The weather was mild, so he didn’t need to worry about staying warm, but he would need water. From his vantage point he could see a small stream running through the valley to the East. It reminded him of Wicker Creek back in his boyhood Oregon.

Only this wasn’t the friendly Oregon countryside. He unfastened the clasp on his holster and checked his weapon. Time to move. Rance picked his way through the brush slowly, checking his bearings and stopping at intermittent intervals to look and listen. The brush suddenly opened up onto a field planted with what looked like Eutrema japonica: Wasabi. Real wasabi is one of the rarest and most difficult vegetables in the world to grow. Few geographical areas are suited for growing it. Sometimes a target, sometimes a plant-nerd horticulturalist. Somehow his academic advisors had failed to mention that identifying plants by sight would become a habit that would creep into the framework of his unconscious thoughts. But there it was. Smack dab in the middle of an otherwise uninhabited-looking patch of jungle. It was September, which meant that this field would soon be harvested. Which meant that people would likely be near by. Not the sort of realization that proves a welcoming thought in his current situation. Stealth and time were now at more of a premium than ever.

pmd – 12/15/05