A Night at the Farmhouse

Oh to skip and sing and smile in the frost frozen rural Miami landscape at 3+AM and not a car in sight. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Stumbling and singing to the sun porch and there’s the barn cat purring his lovies into your lap, his soft paws kneading as you sit to take a breather. Brother passed out on the sofa, ok… it’s time for bed, I said.

Happy Hunting in the Fresh Season, and may You find yourself in that perfect spot where time coalesces like a soft pudding and all the happy things rain down on you though the weather (and the weathering) may be, at times, tads inclement.

–The Jabberlope / 2011

The Robots of Extreme Depth and Faculty

48hrmag.com is a magazine with a simple premise: to go from theme to finished product in 48 hours. I picked up the thread on Friday night and had a bit of time to kick around; this whole oil spill in the gulf has also been on my mind, and particularly the headline: “Robots working tirelessly”, which to me seems like stating the obvious, because I’ve never known a lazy robot. It’s just in their nature, I was thinking. But oneday? When robots develop thoughts of their own, and the fine bridge between man and machine winnows down to something as broad as a strand of mono-filament fishing line, maybe then we’ll begin deal with robots who are intelligent enough to get bored.

This story does not actually explore any of these things, in all but the most passing instance. I really felt like scrapping it all and starting over. In the meantime, though, I just figured I might share the results of this little thought experiment with you.

***

The Robots of Extreme Depth and Faculty
by B. Tyler Burton

“The robots are working tirelessly,” – CNN

“World waits, while robots work tirelessly,” – MSNBC

“It was late, or his operator was tired, or he just wasn’t paying attention to the four thousandth weld of the season. It’s tough to say what happens in between the joystick and five thousand feet below sea level, but it damn sure wasn’t the robot’s fault,” – Anonymous commenter

The robots sunk slowly, with the weight of the waves, they did not waste their energy in moving down. Rather, they let gravity take its course. Only the lead robot was even booted to full capacity. The rest were in a state of hibernation, to conserve battery power, for there would be limited opportunity to recharge at depth. The head robot was fitted with an extra battery pack and several other sensor probes, and this made him a bit more cumbersome and unwieldy, a bit less maneuverable.

The processing intelligence of the CRD-1542 was close to that of a large dog. But it was the software that was important. Only in this latest iteration could the software on the CRD perform anywhere quite on par with Bingo. Still, it was a specialty job. Rather, it was better to say its senses were acute to the point of being superhuman, but until only recently it didn’t have a clue what to do with them beyond the basic physics of standing on its own six legs and carefully circling the team of worker robots once they had descended.

But now it knew them, like a man knows his fingers and toes. The head robot was chained to the worker robots as subordinate processes are chained to the master level implementation. There was, in fact, no distinction from this. They were slaves, it was master. It could tell if any one of the sixteen hundred and seventy four seals were taking in any water; and it could administer a blast of quick sealing cement that would have looked almost like cake batter in the low red zone of the head robot’s infrared.

They were all falling mostly in sync, through the waves of darkening blue water, following the heavy steel guide wire down, which had been dropped about thirty feet to the right of the mammoth, snaking drill shaft. The last bits of sunlight dwindled above as an inquisitive ring fish flitted close to the top of the head robot, poking a few times at the heavy metal body with its mouth before it darted away.

The men who paid for CRD-1542 were far away now, but they were still watching its progress as close as any stock ticker. As the deepest and most dangerous of their exploratory wells, the Company welcomed any idea–no matter how bold, they said–that would decrease its human casualty rate. So when the Engineer told them he could build them a robot that could do it without any human intervention, they took him at his word; at least for a time. There was a period of backlash and stalling, but this gas fire had cleared the way as well as Gabriel’s trumpet.

“Tis the Season to be Belittled”

Just in time for the Holidays, I’ve decided to post my old stand-by Christmas Story. This is what those of you missed at Madrone–even the ones who were there, because this group of happy birthday yodelers came in right when I had just wound up. By no means does it stand up to that great cinematic masterpiece of the same name with all its tongues stuck on flagpoles and wild dogs running through your house and eating your christmas dinner, but it is told in the same delicious nostalgia: of half longing and half thanking god those times are behind us. Hopefully, we are all older and stronger and wiser; and if not, at least we’ve got XBOX’es now, and better doping agents, if we want ‘em…

For all my dear friends and family, a toast to you in all your wondrousness…

by B. Tyler Burton

“All I Want for Christmas is Hope,” I told the lady at the Macy’s perfume counter. “That’s nice,” she said, before spritzing me in the eyes with perfume.

It took a few moments for my sight to come back. I joked about that, and she apologized contritely. I had let her believe thus far, for our brief time together, that I was buying this bottle for some sleek Russian bride in cat boots just like her. When she had gone to the back counter to find a particular scent she said smelled of rose petals, I noticed how fine she really was. Firm, child-bearing hips. She would lay awake and play with your hair afterwards.

We conducted our business as two committed individuals. That disgusting little line about girls in cat-boots always having boyfriends holds true, I realized. And that line about those who opt out of Christmas being lonely, depressed, liars shamed by their own lies?…

It was all there, etched into my skin. I was breaking my vow. Buying presents at Macy’s in spite of my personal moratorium on big-box corporate vultures. Sure it was only perfume, and no independant Marxist guerilla-backing parfumeries had presented themselves to me on the bus line I knew like the back of my hand; but to be honest I hadn’t so much as checked the phone book, or even looked out the big glass window.

With days to go before I headed back for Ohio, I had to buy something; if I didn’t, I’d be forced to use the effort expended to drive across the nation as reason enough to excuse my forgetting–which I would, in some cases. I’d use it for friends and less than umbilical connections; but not for my mother. I had to get something for mom. She was who this perfume was really for. The fact that she had always given good, if a little useless presents was not lost on me. Sure, for years since college she had been giving sweaters and socks, and the decline of her reign as interesting gift giver followed something like the decline of the San Francisco 49′ers or the Chicago Bears or the Dallas Cowboys in my own life. These constant transmissions in the holiday background of my attention as I had played on the floor with my cars. Here, I, not having much money–but still having some–wanted to return the favor.

Though sometimes not giving a gift at all might be better. To count your losses of inspiration, and make up for it next time. Certainly, I imagine we all have our stories. The most hellish Christmas gifts that give so much you want to throw them and the tree into the back yard, and then burn it all hot with napalm to make sure nothing ever comes back from the dead like in some sick puppet horror movie.

Take the infamous sweatshirts of ’89.

Oh, please do. Give a gift, give blood, but don’t ever put anything but a screen-print on a white sweatshirt. With a tee-shirt, an iron-on David Hassellhoff or Ben Vereen is fine. A unicorn on a disco grid pattern like the background from Tron, or even teddy bears playing in rainbows, that’s fair play, too. Something like a Kilmt frieze in puffy paint–of the Kiss–would have been nice and bourgeoisie. Right up my alley at that age. Something abstract would have been enough.

The Me Poet

In honor of the LitQuake Litcrawl this evening…a little discourse on ego…

The Me Poet
by B. Tyler Burton

The me poet is not impressed.
He complains to his audience that no one gets the joke.
The we poet goes on,
indulges
gets in a little bit of trouble
and it only makes you better friends.
Instead of stalking off the stage in a huff,
or trying to explain aloud how much funnier it is
on the page
when it’s J–
instead of Jill
going up that folly hill,
the we poet says, “Fuck am I drunk, I think I forgot to type out the rest of her name.”

The True Story of Pinky Frasier, The 256th Annual World’s Greatest Liar

The True Story of Pinky Frasier, The 256th Annual World’s Greatest Liar (pdf)
by B. Tyler Burton

I am the World’s Greatest Liar. No kidding. (That’s a little joke we in the business like to make from time to time.) All you have to do is ask one of my colleagues and he’ll probably give you the straight answer. After a good few hours of hard prying on your part it’s even possible to get the World’s Greatest Liar to tell a truth sometimes. I didn’t say we were politicians.

In fact, to be a liar of the first class you must disavow any interest in politics. (For the record, at least. We have to make our money somehow.) That is to say: no kissing babies, no reapportioning the middle-classes’ taxes to retrofit a cabana in Bali with palm trees that bear sausages instead of coconuts, and absolutely no promising them they’ll get their money back in the end (though this is certainly one of the greatest lies of all). It’s just too easy. And that’s why, in 1932, under the venerable leadership of Sir Thomas Snively, the Chapter voted to permanently exclude all politicians from our ranks (but not our rolodexes). This was probably done out of spite, for Sir Thomas was a self-made man and not a rich boy’s patsy, who came from a family with a long history of Prevaricators in their line; and after years of failing at everything from novel writing to selling electric vacuums that wouldn’t exist for some years afterwards, he must have gotten sick of coming each year to these hallowed halls, forced to raise his glass to the fat cats at the head of the table who had taken the easy route and gone into the business of governing.

As was characteristic of the time, Sir Thomas staged a liar’s revolt, and in a few weeks, with the purported pantaloons of the former chairman hanging from the flagpole, he established this most important edict. “A lie must strike from the bottom up.”

The politicians, furious at first to be excluded from their own club, were rumored to have gathered together in some New York penthouse to grumble over what they’d lost, and were in the process of planning a full-scale counter-revolution of the highest order when the former chairman himself, who had spoken not a word since his guests had arrived, began to double over with laughter. He had retired to the balcony, and none dared follow; but when they heard his howls they had come to see what was the matter. “Gentleman,” he famously declared, “What in the sam hell’re we so worried about?”

New York lay sparkling beneath them like a jewel to be cut, polished, and sold back to those who should have owned it from day one. Later that evening it’s told the chairmen, his few closest advisors, and the chief of police made a good racket by going from speakeasy to speakeasy, drinking the place out of liquor, then sending in the vice once they’d made their departure to the next hole in the wall.

That’s the story, if you believe it. I can’t imagine them retiring from a fight so easily; but history, she has a way of making everything into a lie without any of our help.

As for me and my accomplishments? As for what it was exactly that led me to raise my glass to the great seal above my head? Well, my resume is anything but glamourous. We all learn to lie because of our parents. And the more religious your parents are the better a liar you become. My father’s love was more of what you’d call the Old Testament variety, with many a slinging of belts and fists and bottles in my direction. When I wasn’t close enough, he’d call me over to his side, very kindly at first, then he’d wop me atop the head with the sole of the shoe he was shining for instance, and when a prop did not manifest itself old dad was never shy to bruise his own knuckles. God bless him. If it weren’t for him, I’d never have got so good at lying.

The Black Tie Event

She was invited to a party on the hill, the invitation said “black tie,” she wore white. Guests mingled about her as she drifted deeper into the halls of this mansion that seemed to go on forever; she was guided by her nose. The scent of dinner dripped off the curtains, and she realized with some dismay that she hadn’t eaten anything since two, so hurried had she been to make sure her make-up was in place. Around a corner she made her way, and down a hall lined with statues of Roman origin, men in togas, profound men, men with things on their minds, dead men; but not a woman in sight. They were busy washing the togas, she thought. Her nose was immaculate, in size, shape, form and function. It led her right to the dining hall, though no one else seemed to be dining. A man at the end of a long table bid her, “Sit down.” She noticed when he raised his arm that blood stained the cuff. He plucked a tuft of feather from his lip, she thought, then wiped it daintily upon the side of his plate. A butler issued forth from beneath the table. He stood up, straightened his collar, his coat-tails, and took the covered silver-platter from the table where he’d set it as he made about with his straightening. This he set in front of her; and when he removed the lid, she was eye to eye with a pigeon, fried, its feathers arranged just so around the body. All eyes, those of the statues in the hall, of the guests who had suddenly taken notice, of her host who had the blood dripping cuffs, and his servant, were on her. The fork in her hand quivered. She felt humiliated. “But this is just the beginning,” said her host, and with that a bolt of electricity shot from a small generator to a series of wires running round the circumference of the room. A great avian scream filled the room and hundreds of bodies, little bird bodies, were falling heavily to the floor. At the clap of his hands, the guests set about them noisily, not bothering with plates or silverware or to remark the stains on their fingers and cuffs and dresses. They ate them, bones and all; only the girl’s remained where it was, on the plate. She resigned herself to her fate. Crack went the bones between her teeth…

Now that I got Twitter

Two bums sit under an over-pass, a torrent of rain flushes everything beyond the little concrete shelter. One of the bums sits furiously typing away on a small electronic device. “Hey, what you got there?” the other bum asks. The first says, “Shh, quiet,” until he is done pecking out a few more strokes, then he turns to his friend and says, “Now that I got this here Twitter the whole world comes to me. Watch this.” A few moments later a car rolls by and a white guy with nice glasses and no tie rolls down the window. In his hand is a bag of fruit. “Say,” the white guy says, “I thought you might need this.” The bum walks up to the car and takes the bag of oranges and tells the white guy thanks and he drives away. Later, the second bum speaks with a mouth full of oranges, “Say, that’s impressive,” and they both laugh.

The $42 Simply Good Fiction Contest

Happy New Year everyone! You survived the hangover. I guess, tomorrow, it’s back to business as usual. That’s one part of the holidays I always hate. I want them to last forever; or, at least, until the ground thaws.

Then again, do I really want to stumble out of bed at noon every day and get as far as putting on my robe before I snuggle into the couch to surf the websites whose writers aren’t too hungover to blog surprisingly? Well, maybe just a little; but not really.

Still, it is nice to have that 2 week bender we call ChristmasNewYears to depend on, isn’t it?

Cousin Eddie's Got the Right Idea

To help us recuperate, man has created deadlines. Because everyone needs a little kick in the ass every once in awhile.

In that same spirit of the New Year, I have made this one resolution: to create a Simply Good Fiction Contest, with a prize of $42. I will quick be forthcoming with the details; but first let me explain why I would want to give away $42 of my dollars to someone else’s fiction.

1. There is the obvious Hitchhiker’s Guide synchronicity.
2. 42 is also the second sphenic number to be bracketed by twin primes (according to Wikipedia).
3. Plus, 21 X 2 = 42 ; and that kind of sends a signal (though I don’t really know what it means): youth X 2…?
4. $1764 is out of my price range, whereas I can spare $42.
5. The world could always use more fiction, and another fiction contest; and it allows me to set the deadline for April 20th and claim reliably that it doesn’t have anything to do with marijuana.
6. The buddha told me to do it (no, not really).
7. For how long it takes to create a good story, $42 is nothing, but it’s a little better than $0.
8. Someone out there has a story they’re sitting on that they can’t get published, but would also love the benefit of $42 in addition to the thrill of publishing.
9. It is worth it just to write someone a $42 check for creating something.
10. It gives me an excuse to throw the Simply Good Fiction Contest Party on May 2, 2009 at the Ruby Room in Oakland, CA; where I will be buying the winner (should they choose to attend) exactly one shot of the well liquor of their choosing, and, should they not attend due to reasons of geography or conscience, I will be photographing myself consuming the aforemetioned shot, with a stand-in double of my choosing, and then I will be mailing you the prints.
11. 6 x 9 = 42
12. I love fiction enough to write the muse a check. I figure I owe her.

***

So there you have my reasons. Here, at long last, are the guidelines.

• There is no fee to enter
• It can be in any format, just so long as its good
• 5000 words max (though you can charm me with 500)
• The absolute deadline is 04/20 at midnight PST
• All stories should be submitted via email to me@jabberlope.com
• In return, I ask for one-time internet publishing rights

There’s the schema. Hear that, internets?!

Now, surprise me!