It has also come to my attention (thanks to E. and her undying sense of perverted humor) that I neglected to include the quark 'flavors' of "Top" and "Bottom" in my last stint of poetry.

I'd like to clear this up now: I'm not going to add them.

a) because I'm sick of my own poetry
b) because that's just damned awkward.

(the names 'top' and 'bottom' are really just asking to have some sort of sex joke attached (I can think of several) and I'm just not in the mood to deal with that right now)

***

I had this conversation with a friend once upon a time:
"Life really sucks right now."
"Well, why don't you go take it up with God?"
"Oh come now, you know I'm Agnostic."
"Sucks for you, then, doesn't it?"

Having remembered this somewhat randomly during my physics class today, I have come to a conclusion: Sometime you managed to kill the rabid, slavering bease before it can get to you. But, sometimes when the irony gods are feeling particularly malevolent, it comes back to life to bite you in the ass anyway the second your back is turned.

That, in turn, led to a completely different train of thought: My life can currently be allegoried to a particularly insane Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon due to... certain recent events.

It should be fairly obvious who is who.

One of us always has the upper hand, and at first it seems like it might be Elmer. He's really a lot more intelligent than Bugs, he should know what he's doing. Unfortunately, Bugs is entirely too cunning for his own good and, right when victory for Elmer seems like it might be at hand, the tables turn. It's Bugs who now holds all the cards and eventually comes out on top, purely because he has just managed to rub everyone else's faces in the dirt.

It's funny, really, how everything that happens to Elmer seems like it ought to kill him, but somehow he always manages to survive. And, no matter what sort of abuse he ends up being subjected to, Elmer always comes back for more. Always.

Can you say "Stockholm syndrome"?

Cha. Story of my life.

Down and underneath it all
only one reality exists.
What holds us together now
not once obeyed the laws of physics.


Chambers lead to other rooms
holding treasures yet unseen.
Another day has come and gone,
(rays of sunlight fading fast)
might you stay another hour?

Rosario, Rosario, Rosario Blue,
tell me whatever shall you do?
The birds have flown away with all that you knew,
is it time to start anew?

In the beginning there was only one people, and in the beginning they lived together in harmony in a single city.

They called this city Arrista’arryn, the city that touches the sky. They say that it was created by the long forgotten gods of old in the tallest branches of the tallest trees in the entire world; towers and citadels built from stones of frozen clouds and windows of frozen light, all strung together with bridges as fine and strong as a spider’s web. The gods lived there, until they died, and their other creations, the humans, took over. They extended the city, building as the gods never had, right up until towers threatened to tumble from the branches in which their bases were anchored. When they could go no further, when the white city truly did scrape the sky, they extended down instead, giving the city a solid footing, giving the people roots in the earth they had never before touched.

But being this close to the ground contaminated the people, made them nothing more than animals, and the beautiful white city began to turn grey. And so the people, the real people, where the stones remained white laid a glass ceiling between the two worlds. “They are animals,” The people above reasoned, “they will not see reason. So down there they shall stay, always looking up at the sun and the sky, always reaching but never touching.” There the animals have stayed.
___
Ask just about anyone, and they will tell you this is exactly how it happened, especially the historians who wrote it. They will tell you that that is why there is an enormous city in the middle of nothing but the rolling green plains of farmland. Too bad it is all a lie, but such a pleasant lie it is.

Very few remember much of anything that happened before the memory of The Tree failed hundreds of years ago, what is known comes only from the few actual books that have survived.

But I know, the genes of the human race remember every wrong that has ever been done to us. At first there were just humans, working together to ever increase the city’s size. But when the buildings reached the ground, something happened. A terrible disease sprang from only the gods know where, only part of the population was immune, most everyone who was not died. But our technology was advanced enough that it had become possible to effectively ‘save’ the human consciousness in a Tree, to be replaced in a cybernetic body later on. Those who were immune, against all reason, were believed to have something wrong with them and banished to the very bottom levels of the city where the disease had originated and sealed off with a three meter slab of glass that extended all across the city, a ceiling for them and a floor for those above. Those below are the farmers now, they supply the world above with a bare minimum of contact, everything being picked over with a fine toothed comb.

Shortly thereafter the surviving humans above the glass realized that cybernetics could be used for more than just storing minds, they could be used to augment what was already there. There are very few now who are not at least partially machine in an attempt to get ahead by suppressing some genes and enhancing others, and even just replacing the unwanted material with something newer, something…better.

Certainly some humans still remain above the barrier. Certainly some refuse to give in to what they see as the greatest temptation to face what is left of mankind since that incident with the stupid fruit. But they are few and far between, almost all of them the sort of philanthropists that no one ever sees. The secluded rich, some of them seeking solace in the bottom of a glass, others just biding there time.
___
“How long has he been dead, Mike?” I crouched down and stared into the face of the body, much to the annoyance of the person behind me trying to take the pictures of it. I had to be careful to avoid the pool of drying blood, mildly surprised that there had actually been any blood left in this man before he’d died. Every once in a while a spark of static electricity would creep across the dead man’s skin, testament to just how much of him wasn’t actually organic.

The man with the camera, Mike, grumbled something inaudible under his breath, but answered my question. “We don’t know. Whoever killed him was smart about it. This must be one of three rooms in the entire place without surveillance, and the only one that’s sound proofed.” He shook his head and continued snapping pictures once I obliged him by standing up and getting out of the way. “It could have been any time last night, but no earlier, since that blood is still wet.”

I thanked Mike, who just muttered something else unintelligible at me, and went to find the officer in charge of securing the scene. Inspector Richard Oswald was, most simply put, a hard man and as unmovable as ten tons of granite who’d risen through the ranks of homicide only because those in charge recognized his talent, but didn’t trust him not to make still more corpses that would need dealing with. He almost never wore the police uniform, instead dressing in consistently impeccably ironed suits (I’d never seen trouser creases quite that sharp before I met him), and with never a hair out of place. This was a bit unnerving, if one really thought about it, since underneath the fake skin most of the left side of his body was fake. Apparently, like inspectors of old, it was something of a prerequisite for one of your eyes not to move when the other did.

Inspector Oswald also seemed to regard me as the lowest life form possible, probably because with the exception of appearance and major prosthetics, I’d might as well be him. “What do you want, Perun?” He asked, without even looking up. Inspector Oswald never called me by my first name, which is Saul, or my rank, which was Sergeant. I was always referred to by my surname, a habit which he exercised only upon Mike and myself.

“Who’s the stiff?” I made an attempt to get a look at the folder Oswald was holding. I took his lack of movement to get it out of my line of sight as a sign that he’d decided to give me that case.

“Dr. Eamon Douglas IV was his name.” Oswald grunted his derision for the title. “Some idiot scientist, apparently. His records don’t say what he was working on, but it was making him pretty popular up here, the University was already working on a commemorative statue that they’re going to have to turn into a memorial.”

“Do you think that could have served as motive? What have we got to go on?”

Oswald didn’t answer at first, but snapped the folder shut and handed it to me. “That’s your job to find out, and not much. There are only two pieces of evidence found so far, and forensics has dibs on the chunk of lead they expect to dig out of Dr. Douglas’ brain. What we’ve got is in that plastic bag in the back of the folder.”

“I’ll try the university first, then.” I sketched a salute, earning a curt nod from Oswald, who was already turning around to sign a piece of paperwork being shoved in his face by an orderly, and left.
___
Where do they get these idiots? Was my first coherent thought after two hours spent on the campus of the Vesa University. I’d been rerouted through the various departments of the university so many times I’d lost count until I realized that being polite was getting me nowhere (all secretaries are trained to keep you from reaching anyone of a higher rank than they are by any means possible) and finally spent a great deal of time giving a secretary an eyeful of my badge and explaining to her very sternly just what would happen if I didn’t see someone closely connected with the late Dr. Douglas within the next ten minutes. That same secretary was currently leading me down the hallways of the biochemical building until we reached a door, the plaque on which had recently been removed. She swiped her access card, opening the door, gave me a sour look and turned on her heel and left.

Inside a harried looking lab assistant greeted me upon entering the room. She was fidgeting alternately with a stack of papers and the cuff of her lab coat, but her voice was steady. “They told me someone would be coming, so I gathered up anything that I thought might be relevant.”

“That’s nice, Ms…ah…” I squinted at her name tag, but couldn’t quite make it out through the glare of the lighting.

“Phoebe Deniel.”

“That’s nice, Ms. Deniel, but why the warm welcome?”

“Force of habit, we’ve spent all day trying to keep the reporters out. I guess the category of ‘reporter’ has been extended to anyone asking after Dr. Douglas.” Phoebe seemed to realize for the first time that she was speaking rather mechanically and asked “Who are you, anyway?”

I flashed my badge. “Sergeant Saul Perun, homicide. Tell me, what was Dr. Douglas working on before he met his, ah, untimely end?”

“A sort of chemical cleaning agent.” Ms. Deniel walked around the table she’d been standing behind and handed me a packet of papers covered in complicated formulas and a bunch of chemical jargon. I couldn’t make head or tales of it, so I just stuffed into the folder I was still carrying. She continued. “It was, will, work as a disinfectant and solvent that will get rid of just about any organic material except for Trees. This was why he was getting a statue, it was his crowning achievement.”

“Everything except Trees? What could you possibly need something that heavy duty for?” Even my relatively average brain (they only cybernetic implants I’d ever gotten were in my legs for purposes of speed) knew that was not something to be taken lightly.

“They’re going to…” Ms. Deniel looked suddenly uncomfortable.

“They’re going to what?”

“Lower the Glass.”

“Oh.” Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and one that I was having some degree of difficulty coming to terms with. “Thank you very much for your assistance, Ms. Deniel. I’ll be leaving now.”
___
Once safely outside I sat down on the nearest bench and pulled out the plastic bag from the back of the folder. Inside was a sheet of plain white paper with a few lines of typed text. “Oh great,” I muttered to myself. “poetry."

I saw a restless shepherd traveling back and forth on his paths.
He garbs himself in that which goes in the same and in an opposite direction.
He goes hither and thither among creatures.
In light, all becomes clear.

The last line was somewhat obscured, adding only to my annoyance, until I realized what the smudge actually was. A phone call seemed to be in order.

A few minutes, some spare change, and ten rings later Inspector Oswald’s voice greeted me on the other end of the phone line. “What is it?”

“It’s Perun, sir. I think we’ve got a problem.”

“How’s that, exactly?”

“That piece of evidence you gave me, I think it’s a riddle leading to the murderer. He wants to be caught, sir.”

“So? Psychopaths do that sort of thing, Perun. They always want to claim responsibility for sake of publicity.”

“That’s not the problem. There’s a smudge covering up most of the last line. It’s dirt.”

Oswald swore loudly and told me to hold. I spent a long time listening to the dial tone before his voice crackled back into existence. “You have your gun, Perun?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. You have full authority to use it.” The line went dead.
___
I eventually ended up in a library, trying to figure out what that riddle meant, though not before copying into my own handwriting, to keep the masses from panicking. Finally a particularly enterprising young volunteer offered the answer of ‘sun’. Not the sun in the sky either, since no one could possibly get there and hope to be found, but the biggest one in the city: the light source underneath The Tree in the very center of the city. I reflected as I left that that kid was wasted sorting Seedlings according to their content, but that wasn’t my problem.

Underneath The Tree is a giant luminescent sun sunk into the Glass. It was placed there ages ago, right after The Tree was wiped, to keep it running now that the towers all around it blocked out most of the natural sunlight. Besides that it provided a very popular place to either meet up with people or hide from them, considering it’s proximity to the world below.

It was the dead of night now (or so my watch said, it was impossible to tell the time of day next to a sun that never set), so I was one of only two people present. The other was a small figure sitting in the very center, staring up at the slightly pulsating roots of the floating Tree, a book in hand.

He didn’t move when I walked up, not even when I tossed the original riddle at his feet. “You write this?”

“Maybe I did.”

“Why?”

The man looked at me, smiling broadly, but somewhat sadly. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “They tried to get rid of us once, when they thought that no one would remember, but sealing us off underneath a ceiling of glass. But we remember, it’s in the blood and bones of every human there has ever been, and there is only so far that human nature can be pushed before it fights back.” His smile widened. “You look pretty human to me, boy. Don’t you feel it? The wrongness that pervades through every corner of this bloody city?”

“You’re an animal.” I told him, but I knew my words lacked conviction. It was safe to assume that this man, whoever he was, knew it.

“But even animal deserve to live. Apparently we don’t even have that right any more. They were going to lower the ceiling, you know.”

“I know. But Douglas’ death isn’t going to stop them.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The man’s smile faded as he opened his book to the first page and stared at it for a moment. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Saul.” I answered, before I really knew what was happening.

“Well then, Saul, hold on to your humanity, and see what happens. They have to know, they have to remember what this,” He made a sweeping motion indicating The Tree. “won’t tell them. That’s why I killed him, you know. I didn’t think I could stop them, but I could get someone to stop and think.”

“Then you will have died in vain.” I drew my gun, and once again the man didn’t even flinch.

“No. Not completely. I, at least, have died with my humanity intact.”

In the end, he didn’t look much different that Douglas had in death. Underneath his body, the book was still visible. I wrenched it out and read the first line, the only one that wasn’t soaked in blood.

In the beginning there was only one people…

Since the beginning of time
man has looked up to the sky
and cried.

For he knew in his heart
that the birds, they could fly
“But not I, not I!”

Then man taught machines to fly,
so they might allow him to soar
staying aloft until their wings tore
to shreds.

For with that one, single idea,
man had opened a locked door
to the venerable and ancient lore
of the blind.

When Icarus was just a boy
his father gave him waxen wings
knowing full well there would be no joy.

When Icarus crashed into the ocean,
a flurry of screams and burning down
going down
so came the nature of this strange notion
of man in flight, a terrible plight.

Man’s only wish is to know
the truth of why he cannot fly
and why he can’t ever touch the sky.

But if he can…
is it time to say
… good-bye?
Humans can always
Create
Humans

it's part of what makes us
Human

but now
Machines can
Create
Humans too

so does that make
Them
Human?

Strange how time never seems to flow,
(the pendulum swings not to and fro)
right when you need to stand down and let go.
Another girl I wish I’d never met,
now I can do nothing but sit and fret.
Gentle tidings and never a lie,
right up until I knew she needed to die.
Enter my parlor, quoth spider to fly.


It has also come to my attention (thanks to E. and her undying sense of perverted humor) that I neglected to include the quark 'flavors' of "Top" and "Bottom" in my last stint of poetry.

I'd like to clear this up now: I'm not going to add them.

a) because I'm sick of my own poetry
b) because that's just damned awkward.

(the names 'top' and 'bottom' are really just asking to have some sort of sex joke attached (I can think of several) and I'm just not in the mood to deal with that right now)

***

I had this conversation with a friend once upon a time:
"Life really sucks right now."
"Well, why don't you go take it up with God?"
"Oh come now, you know I'm Agnostic."
"Sucks for you, then, doesn't it?"

Having remembered this somewhat randomly during my physics class today, I have come to a conclusion: Sometime you managed to kill the rabid, slavering bease before it can get to you. But, sometimes when the irony gods are feeling particularly malevolent, it comes back to life to bite you in the ass anyway the second your back is turned.

That, in turn, led to a completely different train of thought: My life can currently be allegoried to a particularly insane Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon due to... certain recent events.

It should be fairly obvious who is who.

One of us always has the upper hand, and at first it seems like it might be Elmer. He's really a lot more intelligent than Bugs, he should know what he's doing. Unfortunately, Bugs is entirely too cunning for his own good and, right when victory for Elmer seems like it might be at hand, the tables turn. It's Bugs who now holds all the cards and eventually comes out on top, purely because he has just managed to rub everyone else's faces in the dirt.

It's funny, really, how everything that happens to Elmer seems like it ought to kill him, but somehow he always manages to survive. And, no matter what sort of abuse he ends up being subjected to, Elmer always comes back for more. Always.

Can you say "Stockholm syndrome"?

Cha. Story of my life.

Down and underneath it all
only one reality exists.
What holds us together now
not once obeyed the laws of physics.


Chambers lead to other rooms
holding treasures yet unseen.
Another day has come and gone,
(rays of sunlight fading fast)
might you stay another hour?

Rosario, Rosario, Rosario Blue,
tell me whatever shall you do?
The birds have flown away with all that you knew,
is it time to start anew?

In the beginning there was only one people, and in the beginning they lived together in harmony in a single city.

They called this city Arrista’arryn, the city that touches the sky. They say that it was created by the long forgotten gods of old in the tallest branches of the tallest trees in the entire world; towers and citadels built from stones of frozen clouds and windows of frozen light, all strung together with bridges as fine and strong as a spider’s web. The gods lived there, until they died, and their other creations, the humans, took over. They extended the city, building as the gods never had, right up until towers threatened to tumble from the branches in which their bases were anchored. When they could go no further, when the white city truly did scrape the sky, they extended down instead, giving the city a solid footing, giving the people roots in the earth they had never before touched.

But being this close to the ground contaminated the people, made them nothing more than animals, and the beautiful white city began to turn grey. And so the people, the real people, where the stones remained white laid a glass ceiling between the two worlds. “They are animals,” The people above reasoned, “they will not see reason. So down there they shall stay, always looking up at the sun and the sky, always reaching but never touching.” There the animals have stayed.
___
Ask just about anyone, and they will tell you this is exactly how it happened, especially the historians who wrote it. They will tell you that that is why there is an enormous city in the middle of nothing but the rolling green plains of farmland. Too bad it is all a lie, but such a pleasant lie it is.

Very few remember much of anything that happened before the memory of The Tree failed hundreds of years ago, what is known comes only from the few actual books that have survived.

But I know, the genes of the human race remember every wrong that has ever been done to us. At first there were just humans, working together to ever increase the city’s size. But when the buildings reached the ground, something happened. A terrible disease sprang from only the gods know where, only part of the population was immune, most everyone who was not died. But our technology was advanced enough that it had become possible to effectively ‘save’ the human consciousness in a Tree, to be replaced in a cybernetic body later on. Those who were immune, against all reason, were believed to have something wrong with them and banished to the very bottom levels of the city where the disease had originated and sealed off with a three meter slab of glass that extended all across the city, a ceiling for them and a floor for those above. Those below are the farmers now, they supply the world above with a bare minimum of contact, everything being picked over with a fine toothed comb.

Shortly thereafter the surviving humans above the glass realized that cybernetics could be used for more than just storing minds, they could be used to augment what was already there. There are very few now who are not at least partially machine in an attempt to get ahead by suppressing some genes and enhancing others, and even just replacing the unwanted material with something newer, something…better.

Certainly some humans still remain above the barrier. Certainly some refuse to give in to what they see as the greatest temptation to face what is left of mankind since that incident with the stupid fruit. But they are few and far between, almost all of them the sort of philanthropists that no one ever sees. The secluded rich, some of them seeking solace in the bottom of a glass, others just biding there time.
___
“How long has he been dead, Mike?” I crouched down and stared into the face of the body, much to the annoyance of the person behind me trying to take the pictures of it. I had to be careful to avoid the pool of drying blood, mildly surprised that there had actually been any blood left in this man before he’d died. Every once in a while a spark of static electricity would creep across the dead man’s skin, testament to just how much of him wasn’t actually organic.

The man with the camera, Mike, grumbled something inaudible under his breath, but answered my question. “We don’t know. Whoever killed him was smart about it. This must be one of three rooms in the entire place without surveillance, and the only one that’s sound proofed.” He shook his head and continued snapping pictures once I obliged him by standing up and getting out of the way. “It could have been any time last night, but no earlier, since that blood is still wet.”

I thanked Mike, who just muttered something else unintelligible at me, and went to find the officer in charge of securing the scene. Inspector Richard Oswald was, most simply put, a hard man and as unmovable as ten tons of granite who’d risen through the ranks of homicide only because those in charge recognized his talent, but didn’t trust him not to make still more corpses that would need dealing with. He almost never wore the police uniform, instead dressing in consistently impeccably ironed suits (I’d never seen trouser creases quite that sharp before I met him), and with never a hair out of place. This was a bit unnerving, if one really thought about it, since underneath the fake skin most of the left side of his body was fake. Apparently, like inspectors of old, it was something of a prerequisite for one of your eyes not to move when the other did.

Inspector Oswald also seemed to regard me as the lowest life form possible, probably because with the exception of appearance and major prosthetics, I’d might as well be him. “What do you want, Perun?” He asked, without even looking up. Inspector Oswald never called me by my first name, which is Saul, or my rank, which was Sergeant. I was always referred to by my surname, a habit which he exercised only upon Mike and myself.

“Who’s the stiff?” I made an attempt to get a look at the folder Oswald was holding. I took his lack of movement to get it out of my line of sight as a sign that he’d decided to give me that case.

“Dr. Eamon Douglas IV was his name.” Oswald grunted his derision for the title. “Some idiot scientist, apparently. His records don’t say what he was working on, but it was making him pretty popular up here, the University was already working on a commemorative statue that they’re going to have to turn into a memorial.”

“Do you think that could have served as motive? What have we got to go on?”

Oswald didn’t answer at first, but snapped the folder shut and handed it to me. “That’s your job to find out, and not much. There are only two pieces of evidence found so far, and forensics has dibs on the chunk of lead they expect to dig out of Dr. Douglas’ brain. What we’ve got is in that plastic bag in the back of the folder.”

“I’ll try the university first, then.” I sketched a salute, earning a curt nod from Oswald, who was already turning around to sign a piece of paperwork being shoved in his face by an orderly, and left.
___
Where do they get these idiots? Was my first coherent thought after two hours spent on the campus of the Vesa University. I’d been rerouted through the various departments of the university so many times I’d lost count until I realized that being polite was getting me nowhere (all secretaries are trained to keep you from reaching anyone of a higher rank than they are by any means possible) and finally spent a great deal of time giving a secretary an eyeful of my badge and explaining to her very sternly just what would happen if I didn’t see someone closely connected with the late Dr. Douglas within the next ten minutes. That same secretary was currently leading me down the hallways of the biochemical building until we reached a door, the plaque on which had recently been removed. She swiped her access card, opening the door, gave me a sour look and turned on her heel and left.

Inside a harried looking lab assistant greeted me upon entering the room. She was fidgeting alternately with a stack of papers and the cuff of her lab coat, but her voice was steady. “They told me someone would be coming, so I gathered up anything that I thought might be relevant.”

“That’s nice, Ms…ah…” I squinted at her name tag, but couldn’t quite make it out through the glare of the lighting.

“Phoebe Deniel.”

“That’s nice, Ms. Deniel, but why the warm welcome?”

“Force of habit, we’ve spent all day trying to keep the reporters out. I guess the category of ‘reporter’ has been extended to anyone asking after Dr. Douglas.” Phoebe seemed to realize for the first time that she was speaking rather mechanically and asked “Who are you, anyway?”

I flashed my badge. “Sergeant Saul Perun, homicide. Tell me, what was Dr. Douglas working on before he met his, ah, untimely end?”

“A sort of chemical cleaning agent.” Ms. Deniel walked around the table she’d been standing behind and handed me a packet of papers covered in complicated formulas and a bunch of chemical jargon. I couldn’t make head or tales of it, so I just stuffed into the folder I was still carrying. She continued. “It was, will, work as a disinfectant and solvent that will get rid of just about any organic material except for Trees. This was why he was getting a statue, it was his crowning achievement.”

“Everything except Trees? What could you possibly need something that heavy duty for?” Even my relatively average brain (they only cybernetic implants I’d ever gotten were in my legs for purposes of speed) knew that was not something to be taken lightly.

“They’re going to…” Ms. Deniel looked suddenly uncomfortable.

“They’re going to what?”

“Lower the Glass.”

“Oh.” Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and one that I was having some degree of difficulty coming to terms with. “Thank you very much for your assistance, Ms. Deniel. I’ll be leaving now.”
___
Once safely outside I sat down on the nearest bench and pulled out the plastic bag from the back of the folder. Inside was a sheet of plain white paper with a few lines of typed text. “Oh great,” I muttered to myself. “poetry."

I saw a restless shepherd traveling back and forth on his paths.
He garbs himself in that which goes in the same and in an opposite direction.
He goes hither and thither among creatures.
In light, all becomes clear.

The last line was somewhat obscured, adding only to my annoyance, until I realized what the smudge actually was. A phone call seemed to be in order.

A few minutes, some spare change, and ten rings later Inspector Oswald’s voice greeted me on the other end of the phone line. “What is it?”

“It’s Perun, sir. I think we’ve got a problem.”

“How’s that, exactly?”

“That piece of evidence you gave me, I think it’s a riddle leading to the murderer. He wants to be caught, sir.”

“So? Psychopaths do that sort of thing, Perun. They always want to claim responsibility for sake of publicity.”

“That’s not the problem. There’s a smudge covering up most of the last line. It’s dirt.”

Oswald swore loudly and told me to hold. I spent a long time listening to the dial tone before his voice crackled back into existence. “You have your gun, Perun?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. You have full authority to use it.” The line went dead.
___
I eventually ended up in a library, trying to figure out what that riddle meant, though not before copying into my own handwriting, to keep the masses from panicking. Finally a particularly enterprising young volunteer offered the answer of ‘sun’. Not the sun in the sky either, since no one could possibly get there and hope to be found, but the biggest one in the city: the light source underneath The Tree in the very center of the city. I reflected as I left that that kid was wasted sorting Seedlings according to their content, but that wasn’t my problem.

Underneath The Tree is a giant luminescent sun sunk into the Glass. It was placed there ages ago, right after The Tree was wiped, to keep it running now that the towers all around it blocked out most of the natural sunlight. Besides that it provided a very popular place to either meet up with people or hide from them, considering it’s proximity to the world below.

It was the dead of night now (or so my watch said, it was impossible to tell the time of day next to a sun that never set), so I was one of only two people present. The other was a small figure sitting in the very center, staring up at the slightly pulsating roots of the floating Tree, a book in hand.

He didn’t move when I walked up, not even when I tossed the original riddle at his feet. “You write this?”

“Maybe I did.”

“Why?”

The man looked at me, smiling broadly, but somewhat sadly. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “They tried to get rid of us once, when they thought that no one would remember, but sealing us off underneath a ceiling of glass. But we remember, it’s in the blood and bones of every human there has ever been, and there is only so far that human nature can be pushed before it fights back.” His smile widened. “You look pretty human to me, boy. Don’t you feel it? The wrongness that pervades through every corner of this bloody city?”

“You’re an animal.” I told him, but I knew my words lacked conviction. It was safe to assume that this man, whoever he was, knew it.

“But even animal deserve to live. Apparently we don’t even have that right any more. They were going to lower the ceiling, you know.”

“I know. But Douglas’ death isn’t going to stop them.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The man’s smile faded as he opened his book to the first page and stared at it for a moment. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Saul.” I answered, before I really knew what was happening.

“Well then, Saul, hold on to your humanity, and see what happens. They have to know, they have to remember what this,” He made a sweeping motion indicating The Tree. “won’t tell them. That’s why I killed him, you know. I didn’t think I could stop them, but I could get someone to stop and think.”

“Then you will have died in vain.” I drew my gun, and once again the man didn’t even flinch.

“No. Not completely. I, at least, have died with my humanity intact.”

In the end, he didn’t look much different that Douglas had in death. Underneath his body, the book was still visible. I wrenched it out and read the first line, the only one that wasn’t soaked in blood.

In the beginning there was only one people…

Since the beginning of time
man has looked up to the sky
and cried.

For he knew in his heart
that the birds, they could fly
“But not I, not I!”

Then man taught machines to fly,
so they might allow him to soar
staying aloft until their wings tore
to shreds.

For with that one, single idea,
man had opened a locked door
to the venerable and ancient lore
of the blind.

When Icarus was just a boy
his father gave him waxen wings
knowing full well there would be no joy.

When Icarus crashed into the ocean,
a flurry of screams and burning down
going down
so came the nature of this strange notion
of man in flight, a terrible plight.

Man’s only wish is to know
the truth of why he cannot fly
and why he can’t ever touch the sky.

But if he can…
is it time to say
… good-bye?
Humans can always
Create
Humans

it's part of what makes us
Human

but now
Machines can
Create
Humans too

so does that make
Them
Human?

Strange how time never seems to flow,
(the pendulum swings not to and fro)
right when you need to stand down and let go.
Another girl I wish I’d never met,
now I can do nothing but sit and fret.
Gentle tidings and never a lie,
right up until I knew she needed to die.
Enter my parlor, quoth spider to fly.


It has also come to my attention (thanks to E. and her undying sense of perverted humor) that I neglected to include the quark 'flavors' of "Top" and "Bottom" in my last stint of poetry.

I'd like to clear this up now: I'm not going to add them.

a) because I'm sick of my own poetry
b) because that's just damned awkward.

(the names 'top' and 'bottom' are really just asking to have some sort of sex joke attached (I can think of several) and I'm just not in the mood to deal with that right now)

***

I had this conversation with a friend once upon a time:
"Life really sucks right now."
"Well, why don't you go take it up with God?"
"Oh come now, you know I'm Agnostic."
"Sucks for you, then, doesn't it?"

Having remembered this somewhat randomly during my physics class today, I have come to a conclusion: Sometime you managed to kill the rabid, slavering bease before it can get to you. But, sometimes when the irony gods are feeling particularly malevolent, it comes back to life to bite you in the ass anyway the second your back is turned.

That, in turn, led to a completely different train of thought: My life can currently be allegoried to a particularly insane Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon due to... certain recent events.

It should be fairly obvious who is who.

One of us always has the upper hand, and at first it seems like it might be Elmer. He's really a lot more intelligent than Bugs, he should know what he's doing. Unfortunately, Bugs is entirely too cunning for his own good and, right when victory for Elmer seems like it might be at hand, the tables turn. It's Bugs who now holds all the cards and eventually comes out on top, purely because he has just managed to rub everyone else's faces in the dirt.

It's funny, really, how everything that happens to Elmer seems like it ought to kill him, but somehow he always manages to survive. And, no matter what sort of abuse he ends up being subjected to, Elmer always comes back for more. Always.

Can you say "Stockholm syndrome"?

Cha. Story of my life.

Down and underneath it all
only one reality exists.
What holds us together now
not once obeyed the laws of physics.


Chambers lead to other rooms
holding treasures yet unseen.
Another day has come and gone,
(rays of sunlight fading fast)
might you stay another hour?

Rosario, Rosario, Rosario Blue,
tell me whatever shall you do?
The birds have flown away with all that you knew,
is it time to start anew?

In the beginning there was only one people, and in the beginning they lived together in harmony in a single city.

They called this city Arrista’arryn, the city that touches the sky. They say that it was created by the long forgotten gods of old in the tallest branches of the tallest trees in the entire world; towers and citadels built from stones of frozen clouds and windows of frozen light, all strung together with bridges as fine and strong as a spider’s web. The gods lived there, until they died, and their other creations, the humans, took over. They extended the city, building as the gods never had, right up until towers threatened to tumble from the branches in which their bases were anchored. When they could go no further, when the white city truly did scrape the sky, they extended down instead, giving the city a solid footing, giving the people roots in the earth they had never before touched.

But being this close to the ground contaminated the people, made them nothing more than animals, and the beautiful white city began to turn grey. And so the people, the real people, where the stones remained white laid a glass ceiling between the two worlds. “They are animals,” The people above reasoned, “they will not see reason. So down there they shall stay, always looking up at the sun and the sky, always reaching but never touching.” There the animals have stayed.
___
Ask just about anyone, and they will tell you this is exactly how it happened, especially the historians who wrote it. They will tell you that that is why there is an enormous city in the middle of nothing but the rolling green plains of farmland. Too bad it is all a lie, but such a pleasant lie it is.

Very few remember much of anything that happened before the memory of The Tree failed hundreds of years ago, what is known comes only from the few actual books that have survived.

But I know, the genes of the human race remember every wrong that has ever been done to us. At first there were just humans, working together to ever increase the city’s size. But when the buildings reached the ground, something happened. A terrible disease sprang from only the gods know where, only part of the population was immune, most everyone who was not died. But our technology was advanced enough that it had become possible to effectively ‘save’ the human consciousness in a Tree, to be replaced in a cybernetic body later on. Those who were immune, against all reason, were believed to have something wrong with them and banished to the very bottom levels of the city where the disease had originated and sealed off with a three meter slab of glass that extended all across the city, a ceiling for them and a floor for those above. Those below are the farmers now, they supply the world above with a bare minimum of contact, everything being picked over with a fine toothed comb.

Shortly thereafter the surviving humans above the glass realized that cybernetics could be used for more than just storing minds, they could be used to augment what was already there. There are very few now who are not at least partially machine in an attempt to get ahead by suppressing some genes and enhancing others, and even just replacing the unwanted material with something newer, something…better.

Certainly some humans still remain above the barrier. Certainly some refuse to give in to what they see as the greatest temptation to face what is left of mankind since that incident with the stupid fruit. But they are few and far between, almost all of them the sort of philanthropists that no one ever sees. The secluded rich, some of them seeking solace in the bottom of a glass, others just biding there time.
___
“How long has he been dead, Mike?” I crouched down and stared into the face of the body, much to the annoyance of the person behind me trying to take the pictures of it. I had to be careful to avoid the pool of drying blood, mildly surprised that there had actually been any blood left in this man before he’d died. Every once in a while a spark of static electricity would creep across the dead man’s skin, testament to just how much of him wasn’t actually organic.

The man with the camera, Mike, grumbled something inaudible under his breath, but answered my question. “We don’t know. Whoever killed him was smart about it. This must be one of three rooms in the entire place without surveillance, and the only one that’s sound proofed.” He shook his head and continued snapping pictures once I obliged him by standing up and getting out of the way. “It could have been any time last night, but no earlier, since that blood is still wet.”

I thanked Mike, who just muttered something else unintelligible at me, and went to find the officer in charge of securing the scene. Inspector Richard Oswald was, most simply put, a hard man and as unmovable as ten tons of granite who’d risen through the ranks of homicide only because those in charge recognized his talent, but didn’t trust him not to make still more corpses that would need dealing with. He almost never wore the police uniform, instead dressing in consistently impeccably ironed suits (I’d never seen trouser creases quite that sharp before I met him), and with never a hair out of place. This was a bit unnerving, if one really thought about it, since underneath the fake skin most of the left side of his body was fake. Apparently, like inspectors of old, it was something of a prerequisite for one of your eyes not to move when the other did.

Inspector Oswald also seemed to regard me as the lowest life form possible, probably because with the exception of appearance and major prosthetics, I’d might as well be him. “What do you want, Perun?” He asked, without even looking up. Inspector Oswald never called me by my first name, which is Saul, or my rank, which was Sergeant. I was always referred to by my surname, a habit which he exercised only upon Mike and myself.

“Who’s the stiff?” I made an attempt to get a look at the folder Oswald was holding. I took his lack of movement to get it out of my line of sight as a sign that he’d decided to give me that case.

“Dr. Eamon Douglas IV was his name.” Oswald grunted his derision for the title. “Some idiot scientist, apparently. His records don’t say what he was working on, but it was making him pretty popular up here, the University was already working on a commemorative statue that they’re going to have to turn into a memorial.”

“Do you think that could have served as motive? What have we got to go on?”

Oswald didn’t answer at first, but snapped the folder shut and handed it to me. “That’s your job to find out, and not much. There are only two pieces of evidence found so far, and forensics has dibs on the chunk of lead they expect to dig out of Dr. Douglas’ brain. What we’ve got is in that plastic bag in the back of the folder.”

“I’ll try the university first, then.” I sketched a salute, earning a curt nod from Oswald, who was already turning around to sign a piece of paperwork being shoved in his face by an orderly, and left.
___
Where do they get these idiots? Was my first coherent thought after two hours spent on the campus of the Vesa University. I’d been rerouted through the various departments of the university so many times I’d lost count until I realized that being polite was getting me nowhere (all secretaries are trained to keep you from reaching anyone of a higher rank than they are by any means possible) and finally spent a great deal of time giving a secretary an eyeful of my badge and explaining to her very sternly just what would happen if I didn’t see someone closely connected with the late Dr. Douglas within the next ten minutes. That same secretary was currently leading me down the hallways of the biochemical building until we reached a door, the plaque on which had recently been removed. She swiped her access card, opening the door, gave me a sour look and turned on her heel and left.

Inside a harried looking lab assistant greeted me upon entering the room. She was fidgeting alternately with a stack of papers and the cuff of her lab coat, but her voice was steady. “They told me someone would be coming, so I gathered up anything that I thought might be relevant.”

“That’s nice, Ms…ah…” I squinted at her name tag, but couldn’t quite make it out through the glare of the lighting.

“Phoebe Deniel.”

“That’s nice, Ms. Deniel, but why the warm welcome?”

“Force of habit, we’ve spent all day trying to keep the reporters out. I guess the category of ‘reporter’ has been extended to anyone asking after Dr. Douglas.” Phoebe seemed to realize for the first time that she was speaking rather mechanically and asked “Who are you, anyway?”

I flashed my badge. “Sergeant Saul Perun, homicide. Tell me, what was Dr. Douglas working on before he met his, ah, untimely end?”

“A sort of chemical cleaning agent.” Ms. Deniel walked around the table she’d been standing behind and handed me a packet of papers covered in complicated formulas and a bunch of chemical jargon. I couldn’t make head or tales of it, so I just stuffed into the folder I was still carrying. She continued. “It was, will, work as a disinfectant and solvent that will get rid of just about any organic material except for Trees. This was why he was getting a statue, it was his crowning achievement.”

“Everything except Trees? What could you possibly need something that heavy duty for?” Even my relatively average brain (they only cybernetic implants I’d ever gotten were in my legs for purposes of speed) knew that was not something to be taken lightly.

“They’re going to…” Ms. Deniel looked suddenly uncomfortable.

“They’re going to what?”

“Lower the Glass.”

“Oh.” Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and one that I was having some degree of difficulty coming to terms with. “Thank you very much for your assistance, Ms. Deniel. I’ll be leaving now.”
___
Once safely outside I sat down on the nearest bench and pulled out the plastic bag from the back of the folder. Inside was a sheet of plain white paper with a few lines of typed text. “Oh great,” I muttered to myself. “poetry."

I saw a restless shepherd traveling back and forth on his paths.
He garbs himself in that which goes in the same and in an opposite direction.
He goes hither and thither among creatures.
In light, all becomes clear.

The last line was somewhat obscured, adding only to my annoyance, until I realized what the smudge actually was. A phone call seemed to be in order.

A few minutes, some spare change, and ten rings later Inspector Oswald’s voice greeted me on the other end of the phone line. “What is it?”

“It’s Perun, sir. I think we’ve got a problem.”

“How’s that, exactly?”

“That piece of evidence you gave me, I think it’s a riddle leading to the murderer. He wants to be caught, sir.”

“So? Psychopaths do that sort of thing, Perun. They always want to claim responsibility for sake of publicity.”

“That’s not the problem. There’s a smudge covering up most of the last line. It’s dirt.”

Oswald swore loudly and told me to hold. I spent a long time listening to the dial tone before his voice crackled back into existence. “You have your gun, Perun?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. You have full authority to use it.” The line went dead.
___
I eventually ended up in a library, trying to figure out what that riddle meant, though not before copying into my own handwriting, to keep the masses from panicking. Finally a particularly enterprising young volunteer offered the answer of ‘sun’. Not the sun in the sky either, since no one could possibly get there and hope to be found, but the biggest one in the city: the light source underneath The Tree in the very center of the city. I reflected as I left that that kid was wasted sorting Seedlings according to their content, but that wasn’t my problem.

Underneath The Tree is a giant luminescent sun sunk into the Glass. It was placed there ages ago, right after The Tree was wiped, to keep it running now that the towers all around it blocked out most of the natural sunlight. Besides that it provided a very popular place to either meet up with people or hide from them, considering it’s proximity to the world below.

It was the dead of night now (or so my watch said, it was impossible to tell the time of day next to a sun that never set), so I was one of only two people present. The other was a small figure sitting in the very center, staring up at the slightly pulsating roots of the floating Tree, a book in hand.

He didn’t move when I walked up, not even when I tossed the original riddle at his feet. “You write this?”

“Maybe I did.”

“Why?”

The man looked at me, smiling broadly, but somewhat sadly. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “They tried to get rid of us once, when they thought that no one would remember, but sealing us off underneath a ceiling of glass. But we remember, it’s in the blood and bones of every human there has ever been, and there is only so far that human nature can be pushed before it fights back.” His smile widened. “You look pretty human to me, boy. Don’t you feel it? The wrongness that pervades through every corner of this bloody city?”

“You’re an animal.” I told him, but I knew my words lacked conviction. It was safe to assume that this man, whoever he was, knew it.

“But even animal deserve to live. Apparently we don’t even have that right any more. They were going to lower the ceiling, you know.”

“I know. But Douglas’ death isn’t going to stop them.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The man’s smile faded as he opened his book to the first page and stared at it for a moment. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Saul.” I answered, before I really knew what was happening.

“Well then, Saul, hold on to your humanity, and see what happens. They have to know, they have to remember what this,” He made a sweeping motion indicating The Tree. “won’t tell them. That’s why I killed him, you know. I didn’t think I could stop them, but I could get someone to stop and think.”

“Then you will have died in vain.” I drew my gun, and once again the man didn’t even flinch.

“No. Not completely. I, at least, have died with my humanity intact.”

In the end, he didn’t look much different that Douglas had in death. Underneath his body, the book was still visible. I wrenched it out and read the first line, the only one that wasn’t soaked in blood.

In the beginning there was only one people…

Since the beginning of time
man has looked up to the sky
and cried.

For he knew in his heart
that the birds, they could fly
“But not I, not I!”

Then man taught machines to fly,
so they might allow him to soar
staying aloft until their wings tore
to shreds.

For with that one, single idea,
man had opened a locked door
to the venerable and ancient lore
of the blind.

When Icarus was just a boy
his father gave him waxen wings
knowing full well there would be no joy.

When Icarus crashed into the ocean,
a flurry of screams and burning down
going down
so came the nature of this strange notion
of man in flight, a terrible plight.

Man’s only wish is to know
the truth of why he cannot fly
and why he can’t ever touch the sky.

But if he can…
is it time to say
… good-bye?
Humans can always
Create
Humans

it's part of what makes us
Human

but now
Machines can
Create
Humans too

so does that make
Them
Human?

Strange how time never seems to flow,
(the pendulum swings not to and fro)
right when you need to stand down and let go.
Another girl I wish I’d never met,
now I can do nothing but sit and fret.
Gentle tidings and never a lie,
right up until I knew she needed to die.
Enter my parlor, quoth spider to fly.





It has also come to my attention (thanks to E. and her undying sense of perverted humor) that I neglected to include the quark 'flavors' of "Top" and "Bottom" in my last stint of poetry.

I'd like to clear this up now: I'm not going to add them.

a) because I'm sick of my own poetry
b) because that's just damned awkward.

(the names 'top' and 'bottom' are really just asking to have some sort of sex joke attached (I can think of several) and I'm just not in the mood to deal with that right now)

***

I had this conversation with a friend once upon a time:
"Life really sucks right now."
"Well, why don't you go take it up with God?"
"Oh come now, you know I'm Agnostic."
"Sucks for you, then, doesn't it?"

Having remembered this somewhat randomly during my physics class today, I have come to a conclusion: Sometime you managed to kill the rabid, slavering bease before it can get to you. But, sometimes when the irony gods are feeling particularly malevolent, it comes back to life to bite you in the ass anyway the second your back is turned.

That, in turn, led to a completely different train of thought: My life can currently be allegoried to a particularly insane Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon due to... certain recent events.

It should be fairly obvious who is who.

One of us always has the upper hand, and at first it seems like it might be Elmer. He's really a lot more intelligent than Bugs, he should know what he's doing. Unfortunately, Bugs is entirely too cunning for his own good and, right when victory for Elmer seems like it might be at hand, the tables turn. It's Bugs who now holds all the cards and eventually comes out on top, purely because he has just managed to rub everyone else's faces in the dirt.

It's funny, really, how everything that happens to Elmer seems like it ought to kill him, but somehow he always manages to survive. And, no matter what sort of abuse he ends up being subjected to, Elmer always comes back for more. Always.

Can you say "Stockholm syndrome"?

Cha. Story of my life.

Down and underneath it all
only one reality exists.
What holds us together now
not once obeyed the laws of physics.


Chambers lead to other rooms
holding treasures yet unseen.
Another day has come and gone,
(rays of sunlight fading fast)
might you stay another hour?

Rosario, Rosario, Rosario Blue,
tell me whatever shall you do?
The birds have flown away with all that you knew,
is it time to start anew?

In the beginning there was only one people, and in the beginning they lived together in harmony in a single city.

They called this city Arrista’arryn, the city that touches the sky. They say that it was created by the long forgotten gods of old in the tallest branches of the tallest trees in the entire world; towers and citadels built from stones of frozen clouds and windows of frozen light, all strung together with bridges as fine and strong as a spider’s web. The gods lived there, until they died, and their other creations, the humans, took over. They extended the city, building as the gods never had, right up until towers threatened to tumble from the branches in which their bases were anchored. When they could go no further, when the white city truly did scrape the sky, they extended down instead, giving the city a solid footing, giving the people roots in the earth they had never before touched.

But being this close to the ground contaminated the people, made them nothing more than animals, and the beautiful white city began to turn grey. And so the people, the real people, where the stones remained white laid a glass ceiling between the two worlds. “They are animals,” The people above reasoned, “they will not see reason. So down there they shall stay, always looking up at the sun and the sky, always reaching but never touching.” There the animals have stayed.
___
Ask just about anyone, and they will tell you this is exactly how it happened, especially the historians who wrote it. They will tell you that that is why there is an enormous city in the middle of nothing but the rolling green plains of farmland. Too bad it is all a lie, but such a pleasant lie it is.

Very few remember much of anything that happened before the memory of The Tree failed hundreds of years ago, what is known comes only from the few actual books that have survived.

But I know, the genes of the human race remember every wrong that has ever been done to us. At first there were just humans, working together to ever increase the city’s size. But when the buildings reached the ground, something happened. A terrible disease sprang from only the gods know where, only part of the population was immune, most everyone who was not died. But our technology was advanced enough that it had become possible to effectively ‘save’ the human consciousness in a Tree, to be replaced in a cybernetic body later on. Those who were immune, against all reason, were believed to have something wrong with them and banished to the very bottom levels of the city where the disease had originated and sealed off with a three meter slab of glass that extended all across the city, a ceiling for them and a floor for those above. Those below are the farmers now, they supply the world above with a bare minimum of contact, everything being picked over with a fine toothed comb.

Shortly thereafter the surviving humans above the glass realized that cybernetics could be used for more than just storing minds, they could be used to augment what was already there. There are very few now who are not at least partially machine in an attempt to get ahead by suppressing some genes and enhancing others, and even just replacing the unwanted material with something newer, something…better.

Certainly some humans still remain above the barrier. Certainly some refuse to give in to what they see as the greatest temptation to face what is left of mankind since that incident with the stupid fruit. But they are few and far between, almost all of them the sort of philanthropists that no one ever sees. The secluded rich, some of them seeking solace in the bottom of a glass, others just biding there time.
___
“How long has he been dead, Mike?” I crouched down and stared into the face of the body, much to the annoyance of the person behind me trying to take the pictures of it. I had to be careful to avoid the pool of drying blood, mildly surprised that there had actually been any blood left in this man before he’d died. Every once in a while a spark of static electricity would creep across the dead man’s skin, testament to just how much of him wasn’t actually organic.

The man with the camera, Mike, grumbled somethin

--
Caveman Resourceful! Caveman chew off legs to make bone tools! When caveman can't walk, caveman chew off arms to make BOAT for mobility on all lands!!!!!!

[link] #PleaseNoNuts; we want to hear from you...

AH, Pancakes!

--
Caveman Resourceful! Caveman chew off legs to make bone tools! When caveman can't walk, caveman chew off arms to make BOAT for mobility on all lands!!!!!!

[link] #PleaseNoNuts; we want to hear from you...

Well, well, "Ron Nasty,"

What a pleasure it ISN'T to be plagued by your lot over the internet as well as EVERYWHERE else!

I have no problems with you, specifically, but rather your ghoulish entourage. Please, keep them wherever they belong, far away from me. If you can do that, I would be willing to discuss future collaboration.

Warm Regards, Goodmorning.

"Dirk"

I have some new and amusing things to say! (and a narcisstic need to announce it.) but i shall have to wait until tomorrow because my brain is too amused by it to write the usual nonsense. the "jist" of it will be this: i've been skiing for the first time in somewhere around 40 years!

--
My foot runneth allover.

Oh, You gnave
, you dirty old Crossdresser!

BAiley has nothing on you!

Bodies have nothing to do with it... Dirty mouth lawyer pants.

--
Caveman Resourceful! Caveman chew off legs to make bone tools! When caveman can't walk, caveman chew off arms to make BOAT for mobility on all lands!!!!!!

[link] #PleaseNoNuts; we want to hear from you...

Couldn't have been better said.
The sad thing is, they're most likely too stupid to heed anything you say, and so I think that I may be the only one who really understood it. I was not asking you to do anything about my "problems"

I will also point out that I wasn't that attached to the matter, but this buttery person has threatened me/suicide/a choir director before, likely lacking serious intent, but with a wide enough mouth to get somebody in trouble. I thank you deeply in your assistance, clarity, and sound minded use of the word "wake up". YEs, it is one word.

Somehow I wound up caught up in whatever was going on, but you seemed to have removed me from the situation by pointing out how idiotic I look... I for some reason forgot to look stupid at the right time, being a hypocrite to my own philosophy... No, not out of self consciousness, but out of regret for being so blind.

I will defend my actions in that, though inexperienced though I may be, pettiness, (I am not immune) absorbs a good percentage of the human race, and obstruct the actual clarity of most emotion. True emotion remains a mystery to me, and I will therefore claim that I do not know what it is yet, but that there are serious problems in me and the rest of those included (morons if you will) in grasping its concept, and that pettiness is far easier to grasp.

Thank you for attempting to ward off such things (pettiness), but you could be a little more destructive...

in waking up I will now sleep.

beluga

--
Caveman Resourceful! Caveman chew off legs to make bone tools! When caveman can't walk, caveman chew off arms to make BOAT for mobility on all lands!!!!!!

[link] #PleaseNoNuts; we want to hear from you...