Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Crash
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
During the quiet times I end up in a trance state for a few years or decades at a time. Streaking through space, my thousand eyes open in all directions and drinking in the starlight, I sometimes forget what I am, or that I am at all, that I have a purpose, however long that purpose might take me to fulfill: more millennia, maybe longer. Maybe never … but then, never is a very long time. A lot of things can happen in an eternity.
Sometimes I find myself coasting into a group of other Motes, and our voices shiver through the ether as we talk about the endless stirring and changing of the planets’ surfaces, the taste of a comet’s tail, or especially the near-meetings, when one of the Bright Ones drifts by us in the opposite direction, a mere thousand or two thousand miles away. “If she had just been a little closer …” we say, but there is no way to finish the sentences.
We break these conversations up quickly, after two or three years at most, bending ourselves away from each other with the gravity of passing asteroids or moons. If we were to see one of the Bright Ones together, there is no telling what we would do to each other. The bonds of friendship grow a little weak when the goal of our lives is involved.
There is a light in front of me. I’m being pulled down toward it in my long orbit around the sun, and it’s being pulled up toward me.
At these speeds, there is hardly a moment to think, to reflect, to reconsider. Now I see the light is one of the Bright Ones, and it is clear that she’ll crash into me in moments. I only have time for the thrill of anticipation to rise in me and not for doubts or wondering to fully materialize before all of my thousand eyes are blinded with the light of her around me on every side, and I feel myself dissolving as she begins to dissolve. As we transform, I remember achingly the piercing light of every star I’ve ever seen.
From the Book of Monsters
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Page 2169
The Indonesian Orange Smoke Tang
(also known as Bali Hai Flying Clove Fish)
The Indonesian Smoke Tang is not a fish at all, though in its adult form it manifests in a smoky fish like shape akin to the ones found on the packaging of Bali Hai clove cigarettes a fine Turkish tobacco made by Djarum an Indonesian company. http://www.djarum.com/
Smoke Tangs, particularly the orange variety, have been regularly and reliably sighted in Southeast Asia since the mid 1800’s. Reported sightings did not begin in the United States until the 1950’s with the popularity of clove cigarettes among the beatnik culture who called the Orange Smoke Tangs, Flying Clove Fish, because of the way the creatures glided through the air like a flying fish before disappearing back into the aether.
With the recent popularity of the Bali Hai brand, particularly in Cancun, a new generation has come to call these creatures the Bali Hai Flying Clove Fish. Whether this has anything to do with the brightly colored fish on the package is a matter of speculation.
#
Update 2009
In late 2009, President of the United States Barak Obama signed a tobacco bill into law that effectively banned clove cigarettes in the United States.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/06/22/obama-signstobacco-bill
While the rationale for the bill was public health and safety, mainly curbing the marketing of cigarettes, such as popular clove cigarette brands like Bali Hai to teens, the real reason likely has more to do with the new found dangers of the Indonesian Smoke Tang. While its adult form is a benign, pleasant ethereal creature that glides through the air in a graceful lifespan shorter than any butterfly, its larval form has been found to be very dangerous.
The mite size larva live in the cloved tobacco and enter the human body through the mouth of the smoker. Filters are not a deterrent to the creatures. Once in the body the larva cause the smoker to crave and often ingest large amounts of alcohol. In several reported instances the alcohol was various blends of sake and sweet tea alcohol. Whether this is statistically significant is yet unclear. Also the smokers crave more clove cigarettes and inject more larva, thus creating a vicious circle. How the Smoke Fish reproduce is yet unclear, as is the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s smoke ban.