Monthly Archives: March 2006

Rat Trap – chapter 1

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he warehouse was dark and quiet, a relic from an era before cargo containers rendered dockside buildings obsolete. Little glass remained in the windows, and elaborate graffiti covered the walls. The few lights that remained only made the shadows deeper.

The woman approached without fear, moving from dark to light and into darkness again. She opened a door in the side of the building, shifted the cargo she carried over her shoulders, and sidestepped through.

“Natasha,” a voice said in the darkness. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“It’s nice to see you, too, James,” the woman said. “I brought you something.” She slid the unconscious girl off her shoulders and dumped her on the floor. “An early Christmas present.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

“She’s one of you.”

Jim hesitated. “Bullshit.”

Natasha lit a cigarette. The flare of the lighter reflected off several pairs of eyes in the darkness behind Jim. Some of them were pointing guns at her, she was sure.

Jim stepped forward and crouched by the girl. “Where did you find her?”

“Now, there’s the interesting thing. I was paying a visit over at Cooper’s—”

“Cooper’s!”

“Yes, well, Cooper wasn’t there at the time, so I took the opportunity to look around, and there she was.”

Jim stood and looked past her at the door. “You took… from Cooper? Fuck!”

“Yes, well, as much as I don’t like you, James, I thought she was better off here than with that rat.”

“How very altruistic of you.”

“I’m a giving woman.” She took a drag from her cigarette. “Well, see you guys around. I don’t want to be here when Cooper shows up.”

“He knows?”

“Well, he’s certainly going to suspect you before he thinks of me. After all, why would I do something like this?”

“Yes, Natasha, why?”

She smiled. “Cooper is a rat. You are now the rat trap. And this,” she prodded the girl with her toe, “is the cheese.”

“You fucking bitch.”

“Oh, come now. You can handle him here, on your own turf. And don’t tell me you think I should have left her with him. One of your own?”

“So we do your dirty work. The least you could do is be here when Cooper arrives.”

“No, the least I can do is vanish and leave Cooper to you. Which is what I’m going to do.” She stamped out her cigarette. “See you, James. Later, guys,” she said to the darkness behind him. She turned and walked out, never looking back. She was reasonably sure they wouldn’t shoot her. She was half a mile up the quay when she ducked into the shadows and watched the three long, black cars glide past, headlights off. Her brow creased. She had known Cooper would react, but she hadn’t thought he could put together that kind of army so quickly. She continued walking. One way or another, one of her problems would be removed.

As she walked, the sound of gunfire erupted in the night behind her. She did not look back.

~

Allie awoke slowly. Someone was holding her, and running. The arms were strong and warm, but she was being jostled. There was noise everywhere, shouting and gunshots, and the smell of cordite and blood filled the air. She had been stolen again, she knew, but there was something about these new people she felt, perhaps in their scent, perhaps in the way the man carrying her was shielding her, that made her like them better than the last man who had stolen her.

“Get her below!” a voice shouted nearby. Allie liked below. She had always liked the dark places under the ground; she felt safer there. There was a scream somewhere behind her, then the man carrying her grunted and stumbled. He pitched forward and narrowly avoided crushing her as he fell.

“Go,” he said. “Get to the trap door.” The man pulled out a pistol and rolled over in a pool of his own blood and began firing. “Go!” he shouted back at her.

Another person, a woman, grabbed Allie’s hand and pulled her along, firing over Allie’s head. Allie looked back and saw a man standing over the one who had been carrying her. He took aim at the head of the wounded man and fired. Allie forgot to move her feet and stumbled as the woman pulled her forward. She fell, and the man walked toward her, then twitched and fell, his face ruined.

“Come on,” the woman said, but Allie did not obey. She could see them all clearly now in the darkness, and she realized that the people who had stolen her this time could see as well. They were like her. The attackers were wearing things over their eyes, and they could see too, but it wasn’t the same.

The fog that had been clinging to her ever since the first time she had been stolen was fading, and she knew what to do. She saw a piece of metal lying on the floor. She reached for it, lifted it, and drove it with all the force she could muster into the goggles of an attacker as he came through the door. He fell to the ground, his head broken open.

“What the fuck?” asked the woman behind Allie.

“I don’t like those men,” Allie said. There weren’t very many left, but most of the people like her were also down. She wanted to get below, to follow her instinct to seek shelter in the shadows of the depths, down, down, always down when there is danger, but her friends were in trouble, and as her mind cleared she knew she had to help them. She reached out and began to pull the other men’s strange goggles off, one by one. Blind, they were helpless.

The woman behind her reloaded her pistol and opened fire on the invaders who were now groping for cover or dashing for the rectangle of light that was the door. Outside she could hear them regrouping, and a volley of cannisters flew in through the windows. All her new friends were running now, heading for the trapdoor, as smoke began to pour from the cannisters. The smoke reached one of the running men and he fell to the floor, twitching. She caught a faint whiff of something she had never smelled before, yet it still filled her with a nameless dread. She turned and ran in a blind panic, wanting nothing but to get below. Around her, she smelled the fear of her new friends.

~

Natasha watched from a hillside rooftop as the three black cars sped away from the warehouse. It would not be easy for them to escape; the police were descending on the scene in cars and helicopters, and they had the area cut off. She had reached her vantage point in time to watch Cooper’s men storm the warehouse, then suddenly retreat, and resort to filling the warehouse with something more than just tear gas. They had failed to reclaim the girl and had tried to kill her instead. That seemed extreme even for Cooper.

“Hello, Natasha.”

She didn’t turn around. “Hello, Cooper.”

“I thought I might find you around here somewhere.”

“I’m not one to miss a good show.”

“Seems like you knew it was going to happen.”

“I keep my ear to the ground.”

“You don’t seriously think I’ll believe that those jokers could have taken the girl. This has your handwriting all over it.”

Natasha shrugged and fished a cigarette out of her purse. There was a gun in there as well, but there was no chance of her getting it out without finding a bullet in the back of her head first. “Don’t sell those jokers short. They handled your guys down there.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“No?”

“That girl might seem like one of them on the surface, but she’s not. She’s dangerous.”

“What were you doing with her, then?”

“That’s not important.”

Natasha lit the cigarette. “Whatever.”

“Look Natasha, I know you don’t like me—”

She snorted.

“—but you’ve really opened up a can of worms this time. If you don’t help me put things back, all hell’s going to break loose.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I’m not being metaphorical.”

“Just because they prefer the basement to the penthouse doesn’t make them evil.”

“You’re talking as if you like those guys.”

She blew out a long stream of smoke. “No, I just hate you more.”

Thanks!

My most polite rejection letter to date

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Well, got the heave-ho from the next agent in the list, but I have to appreciate that while it was a form letter, at least it was a polite form letter, complete with a pep-talk. “Assume we’re wrong,” was the message, “keep trying.” I had read the text of the letter previously on their Web site, but even though I knew what was coming the encouraging words were welcome. The large body of constructive advice and resources on the agency’s site was one of the reasons I had selected them in the first place. They seemed like they would be good to work with.

So let it be known that the Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency was the second agency to reject me, but in my book they’re number one!

On a related note, I have come, over the last months, to understand the need authors have to be published. Sure, fame and fortune are nice, recognition by peers and critics has its place, but there is something deeper, more fundamental. Yesterday I put my finger on it. Once an author publishes a work and it appears in print, then and only then is it possible to stop working on it. Publication is a release from bondage.

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Fresh Snow

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It is snowing this morning, here in the Haunted City. The flakes are light and fluffy, falling gently in the still air, covering the ground with several centimeters of pure white. (Note for Americans: centimeters is Czech for inches.) The old men and their wiener dogs are having a tough time of it this morning – the fluff is up well past weiner dog belly level and traction is tricky. Still they are out, doing what must be done. True Czechs, they know that snow comes and goes, but they will endure.

It is late enough, this morning, that others are out as well. Here at U Kormidla the joint is jumping in the very low-key way this place has. I am upstairs, and I’m trying not to stare as I figure out if one of the girls at a table I can see downstairs is one of my favorite bartenders at Cheap Beer Place. My eyes, it seems, are not what they were.

Ah, time. If I could just be like the older Czechs seem to be—somehow reconciled with its steady depredations, stoically enduring the everyday aches and pains of life as a side effect of not having died yet. Instead I spent yesterday stopped by a headache, unable to write anything that wasn’t pure poop, and turning for shelter from thought to a place where mental activity is optional and likely to be painful as well, headache or no. I went back and played online poker for fake money.

I described it already, the other time I tried it, so I won’t go into detail here, except to say that the only thing worse than playing poker with people who bet completely irrationally, seemingly without looking at their cards, is playing against those people and losing, which is what happened yesterday morning. That afternoon I had a mission: win back more fake money than I had lost. It took a while, and then I found myself playing with other players more at my level, my own mental acuity was recovering from its migrainal body-blow, and the shimmering in my vision went away, and I had a really good time. I ended up with a nice big pile of fake money and the ridiculous fantasy that maybe I should play for real money—I mean heck, I just made fifteen hundred bucks! Right?

Income thus assured I now must turn towards making at least a token effort to be a part of the world around me. I am behind on correspondences of all sorts, emails from nice people who are patient enough not to have written me off yet, people I haven’t seen in a long time, even phone text messages.

Yet all I really want to do right now is sit, sip my tea, and watch the snow drift down in the courtyard outside my window.

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Cheap Bastards of the World, Unite!

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At fuego’s suggestion I signed up for Skype. Skype is a simple-to-use application that allows you to telephone any other Skype user for free, no matter where they are in the world. It also includes chat and file exchanging capabilities. You can call anyone’s normal phone as well, and the rates look pretty low, at least for calls to the US.

It’s not quite as versatile as a telephone, since both people have to be on the Internet to converse. If you spend a lot of time online, however, and your computer has a microphone and speakers, you might want to check it out. Drop me a line and I’ll tell you my Skype ID (check the first comment for my email address). There are other similar services and I can’t compare them, but it’s hard to imagine them being easier to use than Skype.

Gimme a call!

Thanks!

The Man Is Keepin’ Me Down

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This just in from the parental news service:

Some of you are probably already aware of my penchant for stacking rocks upon each other when the opportunity presents itself. In Prague, although the streets and sidewalks are often made of stones, pulling them up and stacking them is discouraged. But this! This is an outrage! I think the photo was taken in Hawaii somewhere.
Apparently in Hawaii they don’t appreciate art. Sure, sure, they use rock piles to mark the trails and people would wander off, get lost, and fall into a volcano, but that’s a small price to pay, don’t you think?

You see where this is heading, don’t you? First it’s public safety, just an isolated case, nothing to worry about. But then, once the anti-stackists have a foothold, they will work away, slowly eroding our God-given right to balance stones up one another, gradually stigmatizing the practice until rock-stacking will only be done in remote areas and well-protected compounds in the desert.

I am outraged!

Thanks!

The Museum, chapter one

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I

woke to the sound of the cat puking.

With a groan I rolled over, pulling a sofa cushion over my head, tipping an ash tray over my chest. I don’t smoke. Cursing through a throat that felt like the Mojave I rolled over and brushed ineffectually at myself, squeezing my eyes open just enough to watch my shaking fingers move over a sweater that didn’t look familiar. My eyes felt like they were filled with kitty litter, and in my head was a junior high marching band on the first day of practice.

I closed my eyes and willed my heart to stop. For a moment I thought I had won, but after a second or so it thumped again, the pressure almost popping my eyeballs out of their sockets.

I took off the sweater and threw it across the room, along with the blanket and anything else that had ashes on it. I laid back, closed my eyes, and reflected on what I had just seen.

The sweater had hit a painting I’d never seen on a wall I didn’t remember. I opened my eyes and looked up at the popcorn stucco ceiling (could be anywhere) punctuated by a moose antler ceiling fan, wobbling slightly as the antlers lazily spun. Now there’s something you don’t see every day. No wonder I felt like crap; I had been sleeping under the thing while it blew a steady stream of antler-dust over my helpless form. God only knew what sort of sick mojo had been visited upon me in that sinister chamber. As soon as I could get off the sofa, I was out of there.

I didn’t chance another glance at the painting; if memory of my first brief glance served it might have induced vomiting no matter what condition I was in. Some genres should not be mixed, and impressionist/western nudes riding bulls was the new top of my list of Very Bad Ideas. Vargas, Renoir and Remington in a horrible collision that left no survivors.

At least, some perverse voice in my head said, it’s not on bleck velvet.

The cat began heaving again, a mighty sound for such a small creature, breaking the otherwise perfect silence of the place.

“You all right, bud?” I asked the cat. My voice sounded like I was the ogre under the bridge, but the cat took no notice of me, and kept right on heaving. “I feel for you, man,” I said. “I’ve been there.”

The cat. I rolled over and, careful not to look towards The Picture, or any wall, or the ceiling, I opened one eye and watched the tiger-striped cat cough up another load onto a Navajo rug. When it was done it turned to stare back at me. I had seen the cat before, I realized, recalling a dislocated image of the yellow eyes staring at me over a potted plant. “I told you not to eat those flowers,” I said. “Now you’ve yacked on the only thing in the entire room that’s not ugly as hell.”

The cat turned and left the room, tail high.

I summoned all my strength and sat up, putting both bare feet onto the cold saltillo floor. I put my elbows on my knees and hung my head, staring at the dark grout between the earth-color tiles. I ran my fingers through my hair and over my grizzled face. Somewhere in this house was a careless smoker with unspeakably bad taste. More important, somewhere in this house was bacon, eggs, and potatoes. And a toilet, I added as I stood. Most important of all.

My peripheral vision warned me of the monstrosities that surrounded me, so I was able to avoid looking directly at any of them. Some more resilient part of my wounded and cowering brain cataloged them, a mad collection from plastic to solid gold (and, yes, John Wayne staring out from black velvet), all somehow western, unified by the lack of any aesthetic whatsoever. It was almost brilliant in its awfulness. Blinders on, I plunged forward, through the portal the cat had used.

And stopped short, mouth hanging agape, my mind struggling to turn the messages my eyes were sending it into some sort of image. Gone was the western theme; I found myself in Van Gogh’s worst absinthe nightmare, art deco gone mad. I was not in a house, I was in a museum. An art museum with a blind curator.

The cat was watching me from across the room. “Where’s the litter box?” I asked. Tiger-stripe just watched me, unblinking. Something about the annoyed kink in her tail told me she was female. I continued my search, squinting my eyes now not because of the dry grit that still clogged them, but because after deco came primitive, and then the bathroom itself was almost as bad as the western. (If you guessed nautical, no points for you. Sports.) I stood before the shrine, trying not to be distracted by the baseball bat flusher, and NOT LOOKING UP at Kareem Abdul Jabaar staring down at me, a mild sneer on his face, his crotch at eye level.

Screw bacon. I wanted my shoes and a ride home. The shoes were optional.

I washed, splashed my face, and stepped from the Chamber of Manhood Diminishment. The cat was sitting tall, waiting for me, her tail wrapped around her front feet. I crouched down and she allowed me to rub her ears. “Listen, Tiger,” I said, “It’s not your fault, I know, but this is the most bug-ass crazy place I’ve ever seen.” She looked at me for a moment, then rubbed her head on my hand. “Whachya say, Tiger? Let’s bust outta here.”

Thanks!

A Night of Dark and Light

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Let’s go backwards tonight. We’ll start with now, and see if I can move backward faster than time moves forward. If it’s a tie, you will be stuck reading about the same moment until my fingers fail.

Now: Listening to a cover of “I’m in Love with a German Film Star” by Linoleum at volumes that may not be healthy. This is good. Got the nice headphones on, so the neighbors are safe. I went looking for the original, a spacy, ethereal bit from around 1980, but this cover does justice.

Just as it was starting, Soup Boy withdrew his head and closed the door to my room. He had just come back from a quest to a bar/archery range. Yes, you read that right. Alcohol and deadly weapons. Of course it is not their policy to put the bows and arrows into the hands of dangerously drunk people. (I wasn’t there, mind you, but someone I knew once went there, and while they were going through the formalities he sat down and missed the chair, and after reassurances from his comrades the manager put a lethal weapon in his hands. Tonight, however, Soup Boy reported that the archery range was closed (hours are notoriously erratic there), so they were shooting pool instead.

I got a response back from fuego – he was home. We fired up Skype and discovered our favorite three words. He sent me a really cool tune called “Belladonna”. We unraveled bits of life and poked the decaying corpse of civilization with a stick. Or maybe I just complained that someone had consumed 2/3 of my hard-earned beers.

Soup Boy’s phone chimed on the sofa where it lay, to indicate it had received a text message. I unpacked my computer, plugged it in, and checked up on the ol’ media empire.

When I got home tonight, the place was empty. I wondered where everyone had gone, so I sent a message to Soup Boy and fuego.

I got off the metro just a little after midnight, and knowing that my beer supply at home was severely compromised, I turned to a haven I have not sought in a long time – Hanka’s Herna Snack Bar. The door was locked. It seems the place closes at midnight on Sundays. There were still people inside, and I might be mistaken, but the bartender may even have seen me and headed for the door as I turned my feet up the street. It’s hard to see into the place. I tromped toward home; the only other bar I knew was open between me and the domocile was a glitzy sports bar that is not the kind of place you sit alone with only your pivo for company and mutter to yourself in a vaguely insane manner. I decided to head home.

After Belladonna got off the metro at JzP and the doors to the train slid shut, I wondered if I should have offered to walk her home. Prague is a pretty safe town, but she had definitely wanted me to ride with her on the metro.

The three of us retired to a nearby café/club to discuss the movie and to just hang out. It was a pleasant time; the caffeine from the tea I drank combining well with the beer to make me jolly and chatty. Belladonna continued to try to hide the hole in her sweater, but I never did get the chance to suggest duct tape. Neither was in a position to stay out late, which was OK by me, although the conversation was pleasant. We spent a lot of time comparing cultures, and I would smile and nod as they discussed various med school classes. I was disappointed to learn that Firenze intended to return to El Salvador – Europe’s just not for her. I tried to talk her into running away to Shanghai with me. I don’t think she thought I was serious. I got a message from fuego saying he was at my place and had drunk some of my beer.

We got out of the movie and spent a moment looking at each other, wondering, what the hell was that?. I think the reasons we disliked the movie were not all the same, but the overall we agreed. Hostel blows. The movie starts with breasts and moves on to dismemberment; it is a movie that you would expect a group of fourteen-year-olds to write as they sit around a table at the pizzeria whacked out on Mountain Dew, each one trying to outdo the others: “You know what would be really, really sick…” All would laugh at the fingers-on-the-floor gag and then move on to the next shock-for-shock’s sake schlock. The writing was bad, the acting was poor, the editing was shit. There were points where the dancing and the music were so disconnected that the audience laughed. Continuity was a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t disaster.

One bit player put in a very good performance.

We settled into our seats while the ever-longer sequence of advertisements played. I am not exaggerating to say that movies here start twenty minutes after the projectors roll. Belladonna smelled good. I thought about the garlic soup and wondered if maybe I didn’t. She was fiddling with her sweater to conceal a hole in a not-too-embarassing area on her upper chest. I began to compose a duct-tape joke about it.

Firenze showed up and we bid farewell to Sophie. I gave Sophie a hard time because each time I’ve met her she’s left almost immediately.

I put away Kundera’s essays on the art of the novel when Belladonna and Sophie arrived. They sat down and I finished my Pilsner as we waited for Firenze. We talked about this and that, nothing earth-shattering. I reflected on my good fortune to be there, then, in a movie theatre lobby, sipping a beer, sharing conversation with two pretty and intelligent girls.

I think that is where I will begin the story for tonight.

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There’s a big milestone approaching…

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I didn’t notice when episode 600 went on the air a few days back, and really, there’s no reason to get so excited about that. There is another milestone on the horizon, one that is, in my opinion, monumental.

Before too much longer, someone will post the 5,000th comment here at Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas.

The number speaks for itself, but that’s not going to stop me from rambling on for a bit about it anyway. Five thousand comments doesn’t happen on very many blogs, I bet. Here I am very proud that the comments have become an extra layer of interaction and communication. There is a whole discourse going on there, influenced but in no way bound by the topics of the episodes. It makes this place lively and rewarding even when I’m not.

There are regulars and others just passing through, those who lurk and those who post often. There are personalities who exist nowhere but in the comments here; we even have an avatar of the collective. People have exchanged travel plans here, announced life changes, and in general added to the feeling that this is not MY site, but OUR site; the place where Squirrely Joe can hang with Funkmaster G-Force, and Keith can suggest ways to find women from my past.

So, while I’m proud of this site, and a little surprised at what it has become, the credit is not mine alone. Not even close.

Take a moment, why don’t you, and vote on what the prize should be for comment 5000. I’m a little hesitant about offering a prize – I imagine Jerk McSweede posting two hundred messages reading “Did I win yet?” – but we’ll see what happens. Just… play nice.

Thanks!

I’m a trendsetter…

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There are six tables in the little café near home. I was sitting in here, all alone, when suddenly the hordes descended. I was on a roll, word-wise, however, so I held my ground.

There is a very pretty girl who spends a lot of time here, and her boyfriend often brings his laptop when he eventually arrives. So I am no longer the only guy with technology who spends time here. I was pretty absorbed in my work, so I wasn’t monitoring the ebb and flow of humanity through the joint, but when I got up for a brief urine break I noticed a third laptop in action. Six tables, three laptops. Not bad for a place without WiFi.

But while the third laptop was interesting, the operator was arresting. Seated at the glowing screen she has the librarian look — blonde hair pulled back, glasses, printed material laid out next to the keyboard, a look of intense concentration on her face. And lips. Then she got up to select what tea she wanted, and, well, dang.

Amazingly, it has happened. Not to my benefit, I think, but I have seen someone who makes the computer an accessory that is downright sexy. There are some accouterments that not everyone can wear. I once saw a pretty girl, late at night, outside an all-night auto parts store, poking under the hood of her Mustang, face lit by the glow from the flashlight propped on the fender. (Honestly, I don’t remember if it was a Mustang, but if it wasn’t, it should have been.) While she remains the sexiest woman I have ever seen, laptop girl tonight was up there.

Lets face it. You’ve got your supermodels, who make a career of simply looking good, and then there are the truly sexy women. Granted, the most successful models are capable of exuding some intangible force of personality, but like a chain restaurant, they are constrained by the need to appeal to the widest possible audience. You are not going to see the woman I saw tonight in any fashion magazine. She wasn’t selling that. Women who fix cars, or work on laptops in cafés, women in the act of resourcefulness and creativity, thinking not about how they look but about how they’re going to get the job done, those are my kind of folks. On the right face, concentration can be very sexy.

She’s gone now – the time you are moving through reading this is much different than my time. Gone forever, probably. I’m not sure she did me any favors tonight raising the geek chic bar the way she did. Before I was an exotic foreign writer. Not bad. Now I’m a scruffy writer. I’m OK with that – it’s certainly true, after all, and my laptop, beat and battered, fits the look well.

Thanks!

Happy Ground Squirrel Day

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Yes, It’s March 2th, the third twoth of the year, Ground Squirrel Day. We had a poll last year to determine how to celebrate this day, but I don’t even remember what the options were, let alone what won. I think there was something about using rockets to create home-made flying squirrels, but I may be wrong.

So, boys and girls, you will have to use your own imaginations to come up with an appropriate way to celebrate. Let us know what you come up with!

Thanks!

Things I’ve Learned About Japan

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I have in the past months exposed myself to quite a bit of Japanese pop culture, an odd hodge-podge of western and eastern thought as expressed through entertainment. The Japanese, it seems, are accomplished hogde-podgists; even Shinto, the dominant religion (though it doesn’t really fit the Western definition of a religion) seems little more than a framework to hang together anything that comes along that seems like a good idea. Gods and demons aren’t so different from each other, really; it’s more about which side they’re on than whether what they want to do is good for the regular folk.

Japan, it seems, would be a terrible place to be a schoolgirl, unless you are the one girl at each school who is a master of everything (particularly fencing), is the semi-erotic idol of all the other schoolgirls, and can transform into a superhero by calling out the right phrase. The rest of the schoolgirls have it much worse. They are groped, raped, and generally sexually harassed by fellow students, teachers, and the occasional demon; they are cruel and abusive to one another; and they almost never have parents to speak of.

Technology and progressive ideals are just making things worse for little girls. There is a lot of weapons research going on in Japan, and unfortunately for the schoolgirls it seems entirely devoted to transforming humans into weapons, and schoolgirls seem to be ideal for that purpose. I’m not sure who’s funding all this research – it seems to me that if you can deveolop a gun that can shoot down an entire squadron of aircraft, you could find a way to deploy that weapon that didn’t require kidnapping a schoolgirl who just got her first boyfriend and surgically altering her so giant cannon erupt from her arms in times of stress, and then turning her loose again to see what happens. Now, I don’t want to start any cultural wars, but I think in America we would have found a more convenient way to deploy the weapon. And we would have made more than two (the prototype that didn’t work out quite right who becomes a Big Problem, and the second attempt who only might become a Big Problem, but whose humanity remains intact).

Still, one cruel project at a time, damn near every high school in Japan has one of these super-weapons meekly roaming its halls, although most don’t realize it until the school is reduced to rubble. There is a lot of rubble in Japan. Cities are destoryed and rebuilt, only to be destroyed again. The citizens take it in stride – another city destroyed, millions die, but after a couple of days they all agree that it’s time to move on. Often the destruction is visited upon the city by little girls who have been cruelly transformed or engineered up from scratch. Note to Little Girl Super-Weapon (LGSW) Engineers: be nice to the little girls. It’ll go better for you in the long run. Way better.

I’m not sure, actually, why Japan is developing all these LGSW’s; in general the greatest threats to the island nation are Runaway Research (LGSW’s turning on their creators), Evil Criminal Organizations (often abusing LGSW technology), Killer Robots From Space (against which LGSW’s are of limited use, instead Japan has developed its own fleet of Killer Robots), and Demonic Invasion (against which LGSW’s are simply cannon fodder – it takes a male to stop a demon, nine times out of ten. The only exception is the wicked hot female demons, who can be bested by super-popular sword-swinging high school girls.)

While we’re on the subject of wicked hot female demons, it is undeniably true that the amount of sex a Japanese male has is inversely proportional to the number of girls he knows. It is quite common in Japan for a teen-aged boy to find himself living with a whole bevy of hot young women, all of whom are fond of him, without an adult in sight. Not only will this unfortunate lad never get anything more than a fleeting kiss and the occasional accidental boob-grab, all the women will also fall under his anti-sex spell. Japanese cities are filled with abandoned Buddhist temples, unused hotels, and various guest houses occupied only by partially-clad teenage nymphs and the one guy in town who will never, ever, get any. (Japanese regulations require that there be at least one sexy but severe teenage Uber-Samuraiette, one devil-may-care buxom party girl, one ten-year-old who builds killer robots as a hobby, and one super-smart, super-sexy shy martial arts expert who can’t get in touch with her own feelings.) Not even demons, goddesses, or nymphomaniacs from other planets can penetrate the poor guy’s anti-sex aura, try as they might.

There is always something falling through the air in Japan: usually either rain, snow, or plum blossom petals, but occasionally there will be bombs, laser blasts, or killer robots. Most of the time it will be one of the first three, but I advise wearing a hard helmet when you visit, just in case, and if you have an LGSW who’s been brainwashed to adore you, you might want to take her along as well. Just make sure she thinks it’s a special trip just for her, and surprise her with a stuffed animal, while you’re at it. LGSW’s love stuffed animals.

Thanks!