Miss America is Not the Problem

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I am sitting at the Budvar Bar, basking in the glow of writing what might be a really good story. It might not be — a review and edit a few days from now will determine that — but right now I feel good about it. I’m not supposed to be working on short stories right now, but there are going to be days like this.

On the television is the Czech version of Miss America. The Czechs, still being old school, have no problem with the fact that being sexy is an important qualification. They know that people are tuning in to see hot women in small clothes. With that in mind, I considered the Miss America pageant. Its television ratings, apparently, are plummeting, and the event is caught in a hard place where they used to sell it with sex but they’re not allowed to do that anymore. Judging women by their physical appearance is now only done shamefully, in secret. By everyone.

It occurred to me that while the Miss America contest is getting less and less sexy, the US Congress is getting better looking every election. So while we cringe at giving some woman an ultimately meaningless title on the basis of her looks, we will not give a man or woman the power to declare war on another nation unless they look like a professional athlete or a model. It’s not that I care much about the idea of Miss America, I just wish we’d apply that same queasy skepticism where it really mattered.

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The Perfect Dodge

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I was invited to a party tonight. It promises to be a good one; it’s the 30th birthday of a friend who has been around for a while, and who as a result has plenty of people to invite to a shindig like this one. It’s at a shiny, popular bar somewhere in the center of the city.

I’m not going to go. It’s just not the right day for alcohol, noise, and forced gaiety. As the appointed hour approaches, I find myself sliding in the opposite direction, toward quiet introspection and the gentle melancholy that sometimes heralds better writing. Already I have a short warm-up mood piece I quite like.

Me blowing off a party is hardly noteworthy, but I’m pretty proud of the way I weaseled out of this one. I sent the hostess a message saying, “Would you forgive me for not coming to your party if I bought you lunch next week?” I explained that I was in a write-sad-things sort of groove.

“Perfectly understandable,” she wrote back.

So now I’m off the hook for tonight and I’m meeting a pretty woman for lunch on Monday. That worked out pretty well, I think.

Thanks!

O2 SUCKS!

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O2 is my internet service provider. It used to be České Telecom, and back when I was dealing with a Czech company, things were working fine. (Note that this is contrary to all logic as we know it.) Now that ČT has been sucked into a giant pan-European company, my service has gone steadily downhill. Most of the time I’m still connected, but there is no DNS. If I happened to know the IP addresses of all the sites I wanted to visit, I’d be fine. (DNS is like a giant automatic phone book that takes text like jerssoftwarehut.com/ and looks up the string of numbers that identifies the correct machine on the Internet.)

In my setup I can enter an alternate IP address for DNS. I’d like to try that to see if it helps, but I’m not sure what to put there. Any of you techno-geek people know the IP of a reliable DNS?

Now if I could only post this…

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Free Electricity!

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to share with you the first whacked-out muddled invention of 2007.

My little apartment is heated with radiators; there is a unit hanging on the wall in the bathroom that heats water using natural gas, which it then circulates using an electric pump. The pump is starting to make a lot of noise; it’s only a matter of time before it gives out. While pondering the pump it occurred to me that it was too bad there was no way to use the pressure in the water main to circulate the hot water through the radiators.

In fact, it would be easy to do that, but you would wind up pouring a lot of water down the drain. I had just reinvented the water wheel.

But wait a minute, I thought as I stood in the shower, I already send a lot of water down the drain. Why can’t I make it do a little work for me first?

The easiest thing would be to put a little turbine and generator in the water main, so that it would turn every time I ran water. The downside is that the water pressure for the whole place would be reduced. But we don’t always need the water to be at full pressure — that’s why faucets have variable valves. So what if your faucet had a variable-resistance generator instead of a valve? You would adjust the rate of flow from the faucet by changing the resistance of the generator. You’d get the same control over water flow you do now, but you would be getting a little bit of electrical bonus every time you use water. Woo hoo!

My electro-faucet isn’t quite ready to market yet — I’m still working on the catchy name.

Thanks!

Gettin’ the Google On

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As I pay more attention to where visitors are coming from (Have the Campbell Award judges come by? Have the Campbell Award judges come by?) I am once again bemused by the wide variety of odd searches that people type into Google and Yahoo, only to end up here. Go figure.

In the past I have obfuscated key words in these entries, in order to avoid misdirecting the search engines to here, rather than to the original page. This time, though, I’m just too lazy.

  • stacking haircuts – I’d much rather be stacking rocks.
  • “large breasts” embarrassing incidents – linked to an episode where I discuss the darker side.
  • cult in scotts valley – linked of course to the shocking expose that only this blog dared expose.
  • minimum sample size – I doubt the searcher was looking for thoughts on Czech TV, but that’s what he got.
  • girl with extra-arms – the Stories category page was buried way deep at match 190, but that was enough for this searcher to arrive here
  • soup boy – linked to an episode in which I describe learning of my first pro sale.
  • Budvar Bar – the place is near home, and it’s cheap, to boot.
  • write without fear – it’s an important ingredient for success. Sometimes I almost come close.
  • half baked sex – and understandable misunderstanding to be misdirected here.
  • stacked rocks – maybe I’m just paying attention more now, but interest in rock stacking seems to be on the rise. On Menorca , they’ve been doing it all along.
  • laura k hamilton blog – misspelling the famous writer’s name got me a high ranking in this misspelled search. Linked to an episode that talked about the words that ended up here.
  • boobs lake mead – nestled among the predictable crap was the sleep-deprived story of my day as I traveled from Las Vegas to Mesquite, or more accurately, Through the Valley of Fire to the Bosom of Bobbi.
  • Bearded actors – Everybody’s searching for them!
  • bud light banner – I assume if the searcher wanted a banner advertising the product, he didn’t share my opinion about that vile substance.
  • i like to clean my duck of air and heat myself – I think I feel sorry for the duck. Linked, strangely enough, to the Eels category page.
  • How to write a writing questionaire – attracted by a mutual misspelling to my writing category page, where no help at all was to be found.
  • how tall is kareem abdul jabaar? – mentioned tangentially in a Pirates! episode that took me from a garden party in Prague to a hotel bar in England.
  • Buffalo Butts – imagine the dismay when the searcher found an image of the back ends of bison.
  • “pork sparrow” – there’s only one reason to search for that phrase, and that’s to answer the question “what the hell did I just eat?“
  • can a blind man dream in color – I ask the same question myself in a pile of random stuff, but no answers are even offered.
  • sestina origin – that my explanation is the top match in Google is likely a disservice to the poetry world, but what can you do? Plus, I like my version.
  • wizard of id ; shinola – linked to an episode in which I ramble about (among other things) how profanity is encoded in the mainstream media.
  • menorca pigeons – the episode mentions pigeons in passing, but it really about life, death, larceny, and all that stuff.
  • two beers in japanese – linked to an old, old episode in which I enumerate ways to say “two beers“. Your favorite not on the list? Leave a comment!
  • lonely in adelanto – whatever the searcher wanted, I doubt he found it in this episode with a sexy title.
  • summer seems shorter – linked to an episode with a story that with a little work would be all right. The comments are the best part of the episode.
  • hankering for bud light – notable only because my episode called Bud LIte is Horrible was the second match out of 36,000.
  • stacking things on drunk people – Good sport! Linked here.
  • my first enema – the constipation mentioned here is metaphorical.
  • Ax Chop Elf – linked to The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy , which has axes, chopping, and lovely young elves, but is almost certainly a far cry from anything the searcher wanted to find.
  • Mount Mazma – once it was very tall. Now it’s not, but it’s very pretty.
  • big ass diverson – Yahoo! corrected the spelling and brought the searcher along with me to San Angelo, Texas, for some big-ass beers.
  • dont get mad get glad – I don’t get every role I audition for. One time it didn’t work out.

Notable also is that in the last two weeks there has been a surge of searches for suicidal squirrels. The searchers are in Western Europe, mostly Germany but also France and Italy. The trend seems to be spreading to Eastern Europe as well. The crack team of Squirrel Watchers at Muddled University will continue to monitor this trend very carefully.

Thanks!

A Good Night’s Sleep

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I went to bed early last night. I just hit a point where I didn’t want to start anything, and the book I picked up was boring. So I punted on the whole idea of being conscious, put on some gentle tunes, and drifted off to the Land of Nod.

Naturally, since I went to bed early, I also woke up early. I thought about all the things I could do; a few last changes to the upcoming release of Jer’s Novel Writer, a way to iron out a part in Dark War, odds and ends like that. I also realized I was thirsty. I got up, drank a bunch of water, then made my way back through the darkness to my still-warm bed. I went back to sleep. Take that, to-do list!

So it was that I didn’t get up until some thirteen hours after I went to sleep, with only a brief interruption.

I feel good.

During my supplemental slumber I had a dream. It seems like an allegory, but it was only a dream. In this dream I was in a little workshop where an old man and a middle-aged woman were weaving a rug. They were at opposite ends of the loom; the old man was in charge of working the yarn, while the woman was singing a song. In the song were the instructions for making the rug, the pattern was determined by the music. “Ah, yes,” I remembered, “Native American cultures used songs to memorize the complex patterns of their rugs.”

She finished her song, but the rug was incomplete. There was a big section right in the middle still unwoven. Neither the woman nor the old man seemed terribly bothered by this; the old man seemed unaware that there was a problem, while the woman just looked things over and nodded. “I know what I can do,” she said, but I never learned what that was.

Thanks!

He Didn’t Trust Love Songs

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He didn’t trust love songs.

They seemed nothing more than packaging — shiny boxes, painted with pretty girls and handsome boys clinging to their microphones and their machines of music, their faces contorted with emotion that threatened to crush their souls, to erase their very beings, performance after performance.

Empty boxes, empty of love, empty of life.

What could fit in such a small place? Certainly not love. Certainly nothing of depth, nothing with the size and overwhelming complexity of love.

Unless…

In dark times he would go to the places love songs could be found. They seemed harmless, these puffs of air, these confections of smoke and light, following each other in aimless circles. He listened, waiting for the mask to slip, waiting to glimpse the darker truth that lay behind the emptiness. Each love song is like the one before, but with each he feels closer to something.

Together, all the love songs, all the nothings, add up to a larger zero. The sum of all the boxes with their happy ribbons and and shiny walls is large enough to hold love, but there is something else there instead, the dread secret, the beast waiting to devour his soul. Some nights he could almost hear the demon whipering in the amplifier hiss, he could feel it watching him from flashing video screens.

There is no love; it is gone, lost, as if it never was.

He didn’t trust love songs.

Thanks!

The John W. Campbell Award

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It also turns out that it doesn’t take much to be eligible, and unless the judges really, really like Memory of a Thing That Never Was (good reviews notwithstanding), my eligibility doesn’t mean much. Still, as the editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction pointed out when he suggested I throw my hat in the ring, it never hurts to get your name out there.

The Campbell award is to recognize the best new writer in the Science Fiction market. I’m eligible to win for two years, which means it really kind of sucks I haven’t worked harder to get more work in higher-profile places since my initial success. Still, I have my own little space at Writeropia.com with a link to thise who are in the running for the big prize this year. I’m working on the bio over there (derivitave of my piker bio), and I’m adding links to some of the stories published at Piker Press that a judge might particularly like. Any suggestions of stories you liked are welcome; you can see the whole Piker list here.

So, it’s exciting, I guess, in a not very sort of way, that I’m in contention for this big prize. More important is what I do with this next year, as after that I won’t be ‘new’ any more.

Thanks!

The Bookseller of Kabul

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The Bookseller of Kabul
 is a work of nonfiction written by Asne Seierstad, written in a literary style. The author lived with the family of a fairly successful merchant in the months immediately following the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. For four months in the spring of 2002 the author was squeezed into the small, decaying, soviet-area apartment along with eleven family members. There was almost no furniture – if I understand correctly the Prophet Muhammad had no furnishings.

That spring was a time of optimism in Afghanistan, although as yet there was nothing concrete to justify hopes that the country would once again be a peaceful and prosperous nation. The merchant, Sultan, no longer has to fear for his beloved books being burned (those with pictures were most at risk; the soldiers who came to remove contraband material from his shop were themselves illiterate), and he no longer needs fear being labeled ‘capitalist’ as he was during Soviet times. There is still the threat of violence, however, and the city has been ground into poverty by war and drought.

Things were bad under the Taliban, but in 2002 they weren’t much better. Especially for women.

As a woman the author was able to learn of the life of the women in the apartment they shared. Had the author been male, he never would not even have been able to look at the unmarried women of the house, let alone talk to them. Sultan, for all his political modernity (he is very pleased that there are women in the government), maintains an iron rule over his family. It is he who negotiates a price for his daughters, marrying them to husbands they have never met. His youngest daughter is suffering from Vitamin D deficiency because the sunshine never touches her skin – in one of the sunniest places on Earth. His sons work long hours in his shops, so they do not have a chance to go to school or study.

Perhaps there are two sorts of women in Sultan’s world – those who work and wear western clothes, and those who follow tradition. The first group is somehow asexual, their behavior not an issue because they will never be part of a traditional Afghan family. While he respects those women, he is never going to allow that to happen to any of his family.

It is to be remembered that Sultan is a relatively prosperous man, part of the power he holds over his extended family is because of his success. However, on issues like the traditional role of a woman, I suspect if anything he is more liberal than many of his neighbors. It is that way, because it has always been that way. (Although the burka, the all-concealing robe and head gear, was not as common in earlier times.)

Makes me glad to be who and where I am.

The book was a good read, entertaining as well as enlightening. I started slowly, but the prose steadily pulled me in, until I read the last third or so in a single sitting. I am curious how things are going there now, after at least relative calm in the city for a while. Is the family prospering? Has reliable electricity and running water been restored? Are more women daring to show their faces in public? 

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

Back in the day, he was Fleeker

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It seems that most places I’ve worked there’s been the designated guy who the rest of the office likes to pick on. It’s a combination of traits that lead someone into this position — an almost contradictory combination of a tendency to take himself too seriously, making sweeping pronouncements that he expects people to instantly see the wisdom of, while at the same time having his own sense of humor and willingness to laugh at himself.

Fleeker was that guy at Binary Labs. He was smart and hard-working, and he wasn’t afraid to make a bet that might end with him wearing a dress to work. Every office needs a Fleeker.

Eventually Fleeker went back to school, got his MBA, and is working now at some big food company in Chicago. The office wasn’t the same without him, but somehow we managed. I fell out of touch with Fleeker, so it was a bit of a surprise a few months ago when another former coworker sent me a link to (I think) a Wall Street Journal article. The article was about using the Internet to find love, and it started off telling about a Chicago guy who had been rejected by a major online dating service — apparently no small feat. In response this man launched his own Web site. I clicked on the link, and sure enough, there was Fleeker, in a particularly unflattering photograph.

That is the first thing you see when you go to SettleForBrian.com. On the site he does his best to lay out both the good and the bad about him, so there will be no disappointment later.

On valentines day this year the online version of the San Diego paper featured Fleeker. Apparently the full-discolsure method has yet to work magic, although there has been some interest.

I think it’s time to pitch in and help the lad out.

A big part of the site is a long list of pros and cons, listing his good points and his less endearing qualities. Looking over the list, however, I see a few omissions. Not necessarily pro’s or con’s but important Fleeker facts. Also missing, and much more needed, are testimonials. Naturally, in the spirit of things, the testimonials should also not sugar-coat the truth. Toward that end I’ll be sending a testimonial to Fleeker, for him to use as he sees fit. I encourage those who know Fleeker (or the new Brian version) to send in your own testimonials. I have no idea if he’ll use them, but it should add depth to the character he presents on his site. If he posts the testimonial there, I’ll slap it up here as well. (I had the testimonial up here for a couple of minutes, but then I decided to take it down until Fleeker had a chance to see it.)

Thanks!

Café Mia

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I find myself in a very small place right now, a new (for me) little kavarna in fuego’s neighborhood. It is a nice place, warm, with four tables and three barstools. While it doesn’t have a fireplace, it does have a gas space heater that would probably be very pleasant to sit in front of in the event that winter were to make another attempt.

I am at the smallest table, with my laptop in my lap to leave room for beer on the table. (The tea was excellent, but I am starting to twitch.) In the wicker chair opposite mine, the bartender also has a notebook open in her lap. The only other customers are a pair of the bartender’s girlfriends; the very tall brunette is drinking espresso while the blonde sips her dark beer.

That’s it. Me, three pretty girls, and beer. This is a very good place to be.

Thanks!

My lucky day!

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These things I know:

I will be in Dallas on March 7th. I intend to go straight from there to San Jose. There’s a Polkacide concert on the 10th in Oakland that I don’t want to miss. Jet lag and punk polka! Yowza! I need to be back in Dallas on April… um… 8th, I think. Road Trip Day will indeed be celebrated on the road.

I will be in Catania, Sicily, on June 19th.
I leave from Catania, Sicily on June 26th.

I missed out on the 50-cent round trip fare from Prague to Sicily and had to settle for the $5 rate. Of course, after all the airport taxes and other crap were piled on, the tickets ended up costing quite a bit more than that, but still it was just too cheap to pass up. I’m crossing my fingers that Mt. Etna erupts while I’m in the neighborhood (current status is orange, whatever that means). Syracuse is not far, and I’d love to hear other suggestions for places to visit as well.

When booking the flight to Dallas, I looked at the price, decided I could handle it, and went on to make the reservation. On the next page a notification came up. “This is your lucky day! We found a lower fare for that flight!” The amount saved: almost exactly what the tickets to Sicily ended up costing with all the fees and stuff. My lucky day, indeed.

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You gotta believe!

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Believe In Me, a film built around the themes of values, commitment, and personal growth, will be coming out in a limited release soon. fuego worked on the film, and he tells me that when shooting wrapped the movie had a decent chance of being good. It’s a sports movie, based on the true story of a girl’s basketball coach in Oklahoma in the 1960’s. It was a small-budget production, shot mostly on the plains of Eastern New Mexico.

The initial release is scheduled for March 9th and will be in markets where the distributors think that basketball, values, and Bruce Dern will play the best. If it does well in these locations, then a larger release will be scheduled.

The planned release cities are (copied from fuego’s blog):

A R K A N S A S
+ Bentonville/Rogers

I N D I A N A
+ Indianapolis

I O W A
+ Des Moines

K A N S A S
+ Kansas City

K E N T U C K Y
+ Lexington

N E W M E X I C O (in April)
+ Albuquerque
+ Clovis/Portales
+ Other cities TBD

N O R T H C A R O L I N A
+ Raleigh
+ Durham
+ Chapel Hill

O K L A H O M A
+ Oklahoma City
+ Tulsa

T E N N E S S E E
+ Knoxville

T E X A S
+ Austin
+ Lubbock

If you live near one of these towns and occasionally find yourself lamenting, “whatever happened to good family entertainment?” now is your chance to vote with your pocketbook and give the little guys a boost at the same time. I don’t know how much marketing will accompany the movie, so watch for it and fill those theaters! If you see it, and like it, don’t hesitate to tell the world.

In the interest of disclosure it should be noted that some of my brother’s associates will benefit from the success of the movie, and therefore my brother might realize some intangible benefit, as well. That, in turn, could somehow remotely help me some day. I just wanted to be up front about that.

Thanks!

AiA: Prologue

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Before we get started: This story is imagined as a sort of Galaxy Quest conceit — someone travels to a distant land and quite unexpectedly finds herself in a world where conventions of anime are real. You should still be able to enjoy the story even if you don’t know anime; you will be no more confused than Allison is herself.

Don’t worry about learning all the names in the first episode; you will have a chance to meet the characters later. At first I didn’t even bother to give many of the characters names as they are just voices in a crowd. We will all learn to remember the names together.

Allison Crenshaw walked up the nearly deserted street toward her new school. She felt awkward in her uniform; the skirt seemed shorter on her than it did on the other girls. She walked alone, clutching her books to her chest, practicing her Japanese under her breath.

“Hey, watch out!” Allison turned just in time to see the kid on the skateboard before he crashed into her. She fell, books flying, conscious of her short skirt.

“Watch where you’re going, stupid!” the kid said. The boy was perhaps twelve years old, and he wore the uniform for her school. He had added a backwards baseball cap to the standard issue.

“I’m sorry!” Allison said from where she sat on the concrete.

The kid brushed himself off and recovered his skateboard. “Jeeze, the dummy doesn’t even know which side of the sidewalk to walk on,” he said to himself. He smiled at her, his grin large and toothy. “Well, see you.” He hopped back on his skateboard and continued down the street towards the school.

Allison pulled herself together. Her knee was scuffed, oozing blood slowly. “Oh, man,” she moaned, “my first day.”

“Are you all right?” The male voice was smooth and resonant. “Let me help you.” Allison looked up into the large, almost violet eyes of the young man as he knelt down next to her. With great care he began gathering her books and stacking them neatly. “Don’t mind Daisuke. It’s always someone else’s fault when he crashes.”

He stood with her books and offered his hand. She took it and rose to stand next to him. His skin was smooth and cool, and even when she stood he was quite a bit taller than she was. He looked at her with his odd-colored eyes, eyes that seemed as deep as the ocean.

“Thank you,” she said. She could feel herself blushing under his gaze.

“You are going to the academy?” he asked.

“Uh, yes, I am. It’s my first day.”

“Ah, of course. That explains it.” He handed her books back.

“Explains what?”

“Why you’re late.”

“Oh, my gosh! I’m sorry, I have to go!”

“I understand.”

Allison took three quick steps and turned back to him. “It was nice to meet you.”

“I’m sure we’ll run into each other again. Goodbye.”

“Bye!” Allison ran up the street. “Oh!” she said and turned back once more, “My name is… Allison?”

There was no one there.

As Allison ran down the empty hallway she practiced her Japanese. “Please excuse me. I am sorry I am late.”

She reached the door of the class and composed herself as well as she could before cracking open the door, still out of breath.

“Ah, here she is now,” the teacher said.

Timidly Allison stepped into the room, feeling awkward in her school uniform. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said.

The teacher glared at her fiercely. “I will overlook your tardiness this once,” he said, “but you are not in America anymore. We expect our students to be on time.”

Allison glanced around nervously. The rest of the class stared back at her with a strange intensity.

The teacher turned to address the students. “Class, please allow me to introduce our new transfer student…” He scowled at the paper he was holding as he tried to pronounce her name. “Arrisawrn…”

It didn’t matter what he said. Upon his utterance of the phrase ‘transfer student’, the class broke into pandemonium.

“Transfer student!” called one student as he dove under his desk.

“We’re doomed!” shouted a panicky girl, cowering in the corner. “So young… I’ve barely lived at all.”

“She’s so cute…,” said a boy holding a handkerchief to his nose.

“Everybody stay calm!” bellowed another girl over the noise.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” huffed a pretty blonde.

“Don’t turn me into a monkey! Please don’t turn me into a monkey,” sobbed another boy.

The teacher seemed unaware of the bedlam. “Allison has come all the way from America. She may not be familiar with all our customs, so be sure to do your best to help her feel welcome.”

The girl who had shouted for calm addressed the teacher. “Sir? She can sit next to me. There’s no one at this desk.” Allison watched as the girl dumped the previous occupant of the indicated desk onto the floor.

“There’s no one here, either!” said the blonde girl as she kicked the boy who was cowering underneath the desk next to hers. “She can sit next to me!”

“I’m class president! She will sit next to me!”

“She should sit by me. I’m the most popular, and I can explain to her who everyone is. Someone has to tell her.”

The boy under the desk just sobbed. “She’s going to turn me into a monkey. I just know it.”

“So young…”

Another girl, near the back, spoke quietly. “It would be most harmonious if she sat there.” She gestured toward a desk, its previous occupant impossible to determine in the mayhem.

“Good suggestion, Hitomi,” the teacher said. “That desk has been empty ever since…” The class fell silent. “Is that all right with you, Ruchia?”

The girl at the adjacent desk nodded. She was pretty, her long black hair glinting almost bluish in the light. “Yes, I would like to have someone there. Miss Allison, would you honor me by sitting in the seat next to mine?”

Allison stood at the front of the room, paralyzed with confusion and fear.

“Monkey, monkey,” the boy sobbed.

“Oh, cruel fate! So young, so much life ahead of me,” wailed the girl in the corner.

“Transfer student,” mumbled a girl who wore thick glasses, recording the event in her journal. “Commence observation.”

“Miss Clrensharwl?” asked the teacher.

Allison snapped out of her state. The class seemed to be settling down. Numbly she went to her desk and sat down.

The teacher said, “Now, if you will turn to page 143 in the text…”

“Hello,” said the girl next to her. “I’m Ruchia. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m Allison.”

“You’re from America?”

“Uh, yes, that’s right.”

“I have a brother in America. He went there to play baseball.” The girl’s bright face clouded for a moment. “I haven’t heard from him in a long time. Not since the time of the giant explosion in Kyoto.” She brightened again. “But I’m sure he’s just busy. I bet you have lots of questions.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but shouldn’t we be listening to the teacher?”

Ruchia laughed. “You’re pretty funny.”

“But…”

“This is Seiji,” Ruchia said, gesturing to the boy on Allison’s right.

“Hello,” said Allison. She held out her hand for Seiji to shake, then remembered where she was. She bowed awkwardly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Seiji narrowed his eyes and studied at her, his eyes partially concealed behind his long hair. “Skilled at Japanese, but unfamiliar with our customs,” Seiji said as if she wasn’t there. His voice carried a rough strength, and an unnatural intensity. “Are you here with your parents?”

“Seiji!” Ruchia said. “That’s no way to talk to someone you’ve only just met!”

“Please excuse me,” Seiji said, suddenly stiffly formal.

“Don’t mind him,” Ruchia said. “He doesn’t know how to act around anyone.”

Seiji returned his gaze to the desk in front of him. Allison half-expected it to catch on fire. He looked back up and caught her watching him. Allison blushed for the second time that day.

“Your knee,” he said.

“What?”

“Your knee is injured.”

“Oh! Yes, I fell on my way to school. That’s why I was late.”

He nodded slowly. “So, it has started already.”

“Wha…?”

She was interrupted by a poke on her left arm. “Hey, Ruchia, aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Allison turned back the other way, but she still felt Seiji’s gaze burning into the back of her neck. Standing next to Ruchia was a pretty girl, slender in an athletic way. She had spiky black hair and an open smile filled with teeth. She poked Allison in the arm once more. “Wow. So lifelike.” She turned to Ruchia. “You always said Mika would make a good transfer student one day.”

“My name is Allison.”

“Riiiight. From America? No parents around?”

“I, well…”

Ruchia came to her rescue. “Tasuki, I don’t think she knows who Mika is.”

“Ah, that’s how it is, then?”

“Allison, this is Tasuki. She doesn’t mean to be rude. She thought you might be… friends with Mika. We all live in an old monastery together. I kind of thought you might know Mika, too, but then I saw your knee.”

Tasuki winked. “You don’t think Mika could do that?”

“Oh, no,” Allison said, finally understanding something. “This was an accident. There was a boy on a skateboard—”

“Daisuke!” the other two girls said together. Behind her she heard Seiji mutter “Daisuke. Of course. He shall answer for this.”

“I don’t know what his name was.”

Ruchia said, “It was him. Anyone who mentions ‘injury’ and ‘skateboard’ in the same sentence is talking about Daisuke.”

“The guy’s a rolling disaster,” Tasuki agreed. “So you really don’t know Mika? Let’s hope she doesn’t try to dismantle you, then. Oh, look, it’s lunch time. My favorite time of the day. Come on!”

“How do you guys learn anything?” asked Allison.

“We study all night, of course,” said Ruchia.

Kouta leaned against the railing, looking down into the courtyard below, where Allison was enjoying her lunch. Tasuki had a huge bag of food, and was throwing it back with abandon, while Ruchia nibbled demurely. Allison’s eating habits seemed perfectly normal.

“Too normal,” Kouta said to himself. Out loud he said, “All right, let’s call this meeting to order.”

Kaneda snapped to attention. “Yes, sir! Meeting number one of the Emergency Committee is now called to order!”

Kouta surveyed the knot of his classmates who had gathered for the Emergency Committee. Most seemed excited, but Seiji, leaning against the railing off to the side, hands shoved in his pockets, was trying to hide his worry. He understood what was at stake, at least. “We have a transfer student.” Kouta began. “She seems normal, but we know that’s impossible. We need to learn her true nature and figure out what to do about her.”

“I think she’s a robot,” said Shinta.

Kaneda looked skeptical. “Maybe. Her knee was injured, though.”

Shinta was not to be dissuaded. “That’s convenient. What better way to allay suspicion?”

“You could be right, but she didn’t seem, well, roboty.”

Bando spoke for the first time. “Yeah, you saw how confused she was. Totally clueless. She’s an escaped lab experiment for sure.”

“Maybe…”

Kouta looked over at his friend. “You’ve been awfully quiet, Seiji. What do you think?”

“I think we need to get a good look at her teeth.”

“You think she’s a demon?” The eyes of some of the younger students went round.

“It fits the facts.”

Naota paled. “Oh, God, you’re right. She’s going to turn me into a monkey for sure. Why’d she have to transfer to our school?”

“Relax. Not all pretty transfer students who appear out of nowhere and don’t understand the local customs and have no parents bring untold destruction.”

Naota was not reassured. “Name one who didn’t. You read about that one in Osaka, didn’t you? They’re still rebuilding.”

Seiji spoke up. “She’s not living at the old monastery, is she?”

“No, she’s staying with distant relatives of some sort,” Kouta said.

“Let’s at least be thankful for that. If she was at the monastery with all those other girls…”

“What?”

“It would change everything.”

Shinta’s eyes glazed over. “Hot springs… towels slipping…”

“The only thing worse would be if she was secretly sleeping in someone’s closet,” Seiji said.

“She could sleep in my closet any time,” Shinta said.

“Don’t even think that!” Seiji said. “You may as well kill your mother yourself!”

“I’m just saying she’s cute, that’s all.”

“Careful,” said Kouta, “or you’ll give yourself another nosebleed.”

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Thanks!

A few words of introduction

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Late one night I was watching anime (it could have been any of them), and the Mysterious Girl was introduced to the class as a transfer student. I found myself thinking, man, you’d think by now students in Japan would know that transfer students always mean trouble. The following story is based on that thought. In this Japan, just about everyone has a mysterious past, parents are rare or nonexistent, little girls can build killer robots, and transfer students mean trouble. A lot of trouble. She might be a killer angel, a robot with a cat brain, or a demon hunter who has lost her powers, but one way or another the transfer student’s arrival heralds untold destruction.

Of course, this would be disorienting to anyone visiting Anime Japan from a more rational part of the universe. Enter Allison, who has no idea that in this place demons are real (although difficult to tell from angels), someone on the faculty of every school has a secret lab stashed away in the basement, that the government regularly experiments on the most innocent of schoolgirls, and a house filled with girls wearing only towels isn’t complete without a clumsy geeky guy somehow living among them.

Allison expected to have some difficulty adapting to Japanese culture, but nothing could have prepared her for this. Perhaps through some cosmic mix-up she got on the wrong plane in Los Angeles; it would have meant nothing to her that everyone else in line had spiky, colored hair. Perhaps some greater force decided it was time to blur the line between that world and our own. Allison has never seen an anime in her life, and now she is living in one.

That would be difficult enough, but of course she’s a transfer student as well.

Before you start

There are a couple of things that might make reading a little more pleasant: First, Don’t worry about the names. I sure can’t remember them, so I don’t expect you to. (I’ve never put the database in Jer’s Novel Writer to heavier use.) The names are Japanese so you don’t have preworn grooves in your brain for them; I don’t even expect you to recognize gender by the name. I tried to pick names that weren’t too similar. Still, there are a lot of names that come at you right off the bat. Just relax and go with it, they are just voices in the crowd; when those people come back in any significant way I will be sure to remind you which archetype is being referred to. Don’t worry if you don’t understand the anime references, you’re no worse off than Allison.

Second, writing things like this is what I do when you would watch TV. It’s a brain-switched-off activity, when I need to relax and not take myself so seriously. While I’ve been making a little bit of effort (very little) to raise the quality bar for the fiction here at Muddled Ramblings, you’re not going to find any Pulitzer-quality prose below. This is just recreational writing that I have decided to share with you. (You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.)

As a final note, the icon that appears next to the titles of the episodes is Club-To-Death Angel Dokuro-Chan, a sweet little angel with cute wings, a halo (which turns out to be wicked sharp), and a deadly spiked bat that complements her short temper. She, is, of course, a transfer student.

Thanks!