The CuisinArt

When Brad caught up to his longtime crush in the domestic departures terminal of the Los Angeles International Airport, he had precious little time to dissuade her from boarding a plane to Europe. “Without you, I’m like ice cream without rainbow sprinkles,” a breathless Brad told Marcia, who had not until that very moment realized that she too loved him back. “And without you, I’m a doughnut without a hole,” Marcia replied before flinging herself into Brad’s awaiting arms. Their newly requited love took a tragic turn however, when a spontaneous round of applause initiated by an anonymous onlooker spun out of control, killing six and injuring 47.

Spontaneous applause, commonly referred to as slow clapping, has become a growing problem in America. Originally a German conception resulting from Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech, slow clapping found its way into the American mainstream following the rush of John Hughes films in the 1980’s. Denise Trumbault, Social Communications researcher at the University of California remarks, “After Pretty in Pink, this largely elitist custom was suddenly accessible to middle class America. Soon after slow clapping became expected, if not downright mandatory in achieving catharsis.”

End of school parties, prom nights, and extemporized orations carry the highest risk for spontaneous applause related disasters. The possibility for moments of individualized glory present at these events creates an atmosphere of vicarious empathy, the ideal breeding ground for spontaneous ovations. Typically, crowd temperament and geographic isolation keep slow claps in check, but a particularly contiguous and heterogeneous crowd has the potential to fuel slow claps indefinitely.

Authorities describe the LAX ovation as one of the most devastating in recent memory. Deputy Fire Chief Timothy Lundy calls it the worst he has seen since 1996 Glenville State Championships when “that kid with terminal cancer showed up to do the opening kickoff.” Mart Stevens recalls watching the events unfold from the airport Starbucks. “I remember screaming at my son to cover his eyes and ears as I helplessly watched myself begin to applaud an event I had not even witnessed. I was clapping and clapping and screaming ‘did somebody win something’ at the top of my lungs.”

With the ovation poised to spread to the international terminals, airport sanitation employee Brock Jefferies stepped in to assist. Jefferies, a former prom king and starting quarterback, is no stranger to slow claps, and knew just how to subdue the rampant applause. “What most people don’t understand,” Jefferies told reporters, “is that slow claps require a down tempo cue to stop, just as they require an up tempo cue to start.” Taking control of the situation, Brock borrowed an automated baggage cart and drove the length of the terminal, slowing the clap gate by gate.

Authorities confirm that a majority of the applause has been subdued, though smaller, isolated pockets still exist in the outer food courts. The identities of the deceased are being withheld until the families can be notified, while the injured have been transferred to Cedar Sinai for minor skin burns and third degree calluses. Standing Novation, a non profit consortium aimed at promoting alternative methods of mass congratulation including whistling, foot stomping, and gold claps, will hold a memorial service for the deceased. Information can be accessed on their website

Fuck my life.

I mean, you know, fuck my afterlife.

Caught in this dead end fucking job. I’m not being cute here. I don’t know how to make this anymore literal. I’m dead. This is the end. And I’ve got a fucking job.

Old Smithtown Manor, a crappy 17th century relic brilliantly built atop an old Indian burial ground. But do you actually see any fucking Indians haunting this motherfucker. No, you see me, rural farmhand from Nebraska trapped in this musky, mold infested claptrap that smells, or would smell if I remembered smell, like an old jockstrap, stuffed at the bottom of a pile of other, older jockstraps. Fuck, I don’t even get the run of the house. I bet the upstairs has some pretty cool antiques, and at the very least I could find a window or two. But nooo, I’m stuck on this 4’ by 4’ fucking patch of cracked linoleum in the Northeast corner of the fucking boarded up pantry. Spending my days clanking old pots, rattling old glassware, and talking to you, stupid fucking mouse.

And then there’s Bob. Fucking Bob. All nice and comfy over in the main foyer. Prime fucking real estate he’s holding there. Nobody ever spends the night in the pantry. No its always “I dare you to spend the night in the old Smithtown foyer,” or some shit. On top of that he’s got chandeliers, and candles, and old paintings, and a whole other bag of goodies that bump in the night. Have you ever heard the screams coming out of that room? I’m a ghost and even I’d call it uncanny. And what do I fucking get: corrugated linoleum, peeling stucco, mold stains, and yes, you, stupid fucking mouse. No, no that was not an invitation to come closer. Don’t you fucking approach me or I will crush you beneath my astral foot and, well you won’t quite get squashed, but you’ll probably feel a weird chill or something like that, and you’ll find that pretty difficult to interpret and it will probably delay you for a couple of seconds.

Fuck

Then the other night the fucking the Ghost Hunters filmed here. Don’t have to tell you they did the majority of their filming. “We’re getting massive spectral energy readings in the main Foyer.” “Check out these paranormal frequencies, they’re unreal.” The walls may be sturdy, but they’re not soundproof, assholes. I’m dead, but I’m not fucking deaf. And what did they do with the pantry? Turned it into a God dam R&R room for the crew. Oh, and guess where they stashed the porta-potty? That’s right, atop a trusty, old 4’ by 4’ patch of cracked linoleum in the Northeast corner.

Where’s that stupid fucking blond kid with the dumb-ass bowl cut and the overly protective single mom when you need him. Hell, I’d even settle for Bruce Willis at this point. Get em ‘on board. Together we’ll release my Manifesto: Dead and NOT Loving It. Show the world a thing or two about banal minutiae.

And then you and me we’ll…what’s that? Oh you’ve got to get going? So soon? You sure you don’t want to…I mean we could rattle some of the glassware together and…Okay. Yeh, I understand. Family comes first. Goodnight mouse. Same time tomorrow, okay?

Once, in a magazine, he’d read that a liberal application of foreplay could compensate for a sub-par sexual performance. Using this as a template, he made his way down to frolic face first in her forested meadow. There he smelled familiar flowers, heard the soar of familiar moans above, and felt at ease. New plan. He would continue these oral acrobatics until she passed out—or at least until her parents came home.

Concerning gravity, what goes up must come down, while concerning foreplay, what goes down must come up. An unbreakable law of sexual thermodynamics, and it had slipped his mind. In time she wrenched his tongue from her nethers, and placed it between her teeth. He knew then that his plan had backfired. Instead of placation, he had achieved titillation, turning a presumed penetration into an inevitability.

The woman wasted little time. She reached across the bed and produced a condom wrapped in orange foil. Lifestyles. Ribbed for Her Pleasure. The man let out a sigh of relief. Good, the ribs will take care of everything.

The man understood the principles of what was to follow. Shaft. Hole. Insert. Remove. Repeat. But three years of rabid porn viewing had muddied his certainty about the particulars. Porn is a world of receded testicles slamming against prolapsed anuses, and 10x zoomed vaginas oozing ejaculate. Porn is a world concerned only with the ends: one that has little time to point out the means.

His penis, an object of unprecedented familiarity, felt suddenly alien and obtrusive. Confused, he started to poke her. Distraught, he poked harder. In a little under 17 seconds he managed to probe her navel, buttocks, and grundle without once making the slightest contact with her labia.

Then it came as a shooting star: sudden, explosive, ultimately fleeting. The nothingness of air gave way to a warm nestling, and even the woman’s face, previously contemplating the mold stains on the ceiling, showed a slight tweak of the eyebrows. But it left sooner than it had come, leaving him yet again to flap his latex sheathed rod in the wind.

It was then that the woman, in a quite literal fashion, took matters into her own hands. He did not mind the ease with which she slipped him inside, but her sudden change of direction left him suspicious.

Moans followed. Not sexy. Monotonous, rehearsed. Like vocal exercises in drama class. He checked her chest for clarification. No flush. No contractions of the vaginal walls, either. Certainly no increase in wetness. In fact, with each passing second he sensed an increasing aridness. Her moans turned to grunts. Her hands flailed, pulling and tugging at whatever she could find.

No, he thought to himself. Something is not right. There’s no way I’m this good. There’s no way I’m even fractionally this good. A woman flopping and floundering perhaps. But a woman writhing?

The revelation came with a swiftness he wished his hips could emulate. She was preparing to fake on him.

A man confronted with unspeakable evil has but two courses: submit and be consumed, or become that very evil in the hopes of destroying it. The man chose the latter. He chose to become what he feared most. He chose to fake his own orgasm.

The desertification of the vagina was almost complete. Time was of the essence. Using what little wetness remained, he built to a steady rhythm. He pulled out only as shallow as he dared, knowing if he slipped out entirely the lips would close forever. In time he began to palpitate his own breathing. Moments before she closed the deal, he pushed himself the full depth of her, closed his eyes, quivered his right leg and held his breath. After a believable three seconds he exhaled an exaggerated breath, fluttered his eyelids, and let a small droplet of saliva splash onto her breasts. He fell atop her, wheezing, snorting, his lips mashed against her collarbone. It was a revolting sight, no doubt. But she could not argue with its authenticity.

“Get off,” she grunted

Not one to upset her further, he pulled out and ran to the bathroom to dispose of the evidence. There he shed a tear of respect for the fallen condom, en route to sexual purgatory, never fulfilling its intended purpose. A face full of denim welcomed him back into the room. He peeled them off to find the woman already dressed, clacking bubbles with her lips, avidly tapping the keys on her cell phone. The man dressed with haste and silence, not quite sure what to say.

She took the initiative.

“Remember the number I gave you when we left the bar,” she asked.

“No,” he answered truthfully

“Good,” she cut.

But a wave of embarrassment did not follow. He felt instead a warm and impregnable numbness. As a somnambulist he left the room, head in clouds, toes dragging across the asphalt. There had been no ejaculation. No pleasure. No ecstasy. The whole experience had more or less resembled a siege on a castle wall. But he was no longer a virgin, because as long as you get it in it still counts, right?

That night he regaled his younger siblings with the mysteries of the fairer sex. He phoned friends, and hinted of a story to tell. A story, unknown to them, that he would embellish and transform at his leisure. No one needed to know every harrowing detail of room 24-17 B. He’d keep certain facts intact—lack of stamina, mismatched experience—for believability’s sake. But the rest was his to do with what he would. Once home, his newfound manhood would glisten and shine amid the drab virginity of his friends. They would flock to him, honor him, admire him, and with a gracious wave of his hand, he would bestow onto them all that he had learned.

In the land the virgin, the man who kind of, sort of, almost had sex is king.

New from Shea, the satyric scribe from San Francisco…
–
This here’s a tale about a virgin.

A virgin who came to Disney to ride the rides, and stayed behind to ride a woman.

There are some who might call him a hero, and others who’d call him a fool, but then again the line between the two has never been but a hair thin.

His story doesn’t get told too much. Common lore favors instead the tale of the virgin woman. Wherein man is cast as the hornet: a savage insect who rends a flower’s virginity with multi-pronged perforation pistil, spewing white-hot trauma inducing poison. The myth is so injurious that unassociated third parties still trouble to craft consistent pollination metaphors.

Yes. His story is less told. But it is replete nonetheless with its own unique mortification.

To frame his story, let us take the aforementioned metaphor, polish it a mite, and turn it on its axis. Viewed like such, we see that long before he became the hornet, man began his sexual journey as the carpenter bee—incommodious, oafish, cumbersome, spending more of his day in congress with the wood surrounding the nest than the nest itself. A life spent fluttering six inches from the bull’s-eye.

Yes, a carpenter bee has wings and a man has a penis but neither is too sure what to do with their given extremity. Still, the man was willing to brave this uncertainty for the opportunity to understand the mysteries of the fairer sex.

Many people talked about it. The Juniors spoke frequently. The seniors spoke more. Even the occasional sophomore hinted at an understanding. He wanted in, and Disney seemed as fitting a place as any to gain membership. Look hard enough, the innuendo is there: Mickey; Minnie; phallic train cars penetrating dark, cavernous tunnels.

By day the man trolled the parks; by night he trolled palm-lined walkways of his resort. Orlando was rife with young vixens. Blondes. Brunettes. The occasional redhead. The man would have been happy to cast any as the willing damsel in his tale. But there was one he hoped for above all the rest.

A brunette, with eyes of a deep, snakeskin color, and a porcelain face that reflected a mastery of symmetry. She was the type of woman who made flowers bloom as she passed and wilt in her wake. She bore the figure of an hourglass, and not only in her curves, but in her ability to effect time. She had unrelenting nipples, and wore only that which would highlight such an anatomical curiosity. She was anthropometric perfection, the Sandwoman who dwells only in the wettest of dreams.

With her he always kept it innocent, hanging back to watch her from afar. He’d like to think he did it out of common decency and respect for the chase. Hazard instead it was the flimsy stitching of his bathing suit and a hair trigger erectile response that stayed his course.

Came the day he happened upon a bar. Virginity, they say, loves company, so he ordered a Pina Colada without rum. He nursed it conservatively, and a steady influx of adolescent males soon turned the pair of virgins into a crowd. Perhaps they came to the bar to find women; but perhaps, too, they came unconsciously to avoid them. If so, they picked the appropriate joint. Most of the night the bar remained estrogen free. Until she arrived.

The woman blew in as a wayward ship run aground by an invisible tempest. Her spandex framed camel toe, and halter-top accentuated cleavage had no business in a place of boys dressed by their mothers. She nursed her cigarette in front of a no-smoking sign, and through the puffs the man could see snakeskin eyes, which until that very moment had been but a mirage.

The man felt the sudden pull of his erection. Fate, it seemed, had put him in this very bar. His mother, however, had put him in a pair of triple stitched cargo pants. No hard-on short of an immaculate erection could defy the durability of those seams. And it was a good thing too. Because she was headed his way.

Cut from the impending adolescent flirting and flash forward to room 24-17-B.

Prostrate naked upon pastel sheets, ass angled at 15 degrees, with two fingers reaching behind to explore various curiosities laid the woman. Framed in the doorway, wearing an XL Gap sweatshirt with no pants, double palming a sweaty erection stood the man. A look of confusion etched upon his face as he struggled with both the vision before him and the unsettling fact that his pants lay ruffled 12 feet away yet his sweatshirt remained upon his shoulders.

He always knew his impending sexual performance would be abysmal. He had only hoped that his relationship to the girl in question might lessen the mortification. Given an equally nascent virgin, for example, shared ignorance might have negated inexperience. Or if he were to meet a soul mate, a sense of cosmic destiny and overarching synchronicity would nullify the need for any kind of carnal fulfillment.

But the truth of the matter was that he was a carpenter bee lost in a place carpenter bees have no business being. The jungles of Disney grow thick and arboreal, and the flowers are unforgiving.

He would have to stall…
–
Tune in tomorrow for Part 2…

Latest from Shea (see more in his Author Page)…

–

Trivia is dead and the I-Phone killed it.

Take a moment between questions during your next barroom trivia. Look at the frequency of I-Phone and Blackberry usage and notice how that frequency increases dramatically when a question is asked. Coincidence…

“But Shea, I wasn’t searching the Internet for an answer, I was just having a text conversation with my friend.” Get serious. Your friend, is he the one with the psychic connection to the VJ, because it seems like he only texts following the delivery of a question!

A Theory About Why They Do It and Why that Makes Them Stupid

They do it for the prize money. This is the stupidest of all reasons. Barring the crème of the crop trivia challenges, we’re looking at around 30 dollars as the grand prize, and typically its not even currency, but bar dollars.

Lets say you’re on a team of four people. Two drinks each at four dollars apiece, comes out to 32 dollars. You have, after only two drinks (and that is if you refuse to tip) broke even. You have entered into a self perpetuating cycle: you came to win thirty dollars in order to repay the thirty dollars you spent coming to win thirty dollars. Most of the time the tab is closer to seventy dollars, so essentially you’ve spent seventy to win thirty, a net loss of about ten dollars per person.

Now, everyone is guilty of this. Anyone who comes to trivia will leave with a lighter wallet, win or lose. But some people aren’t willing to cheat to achieve this end. It would be like bringing cliff notes to an SAT exam and getting a 600 anyway.

So it can’t be the money. It’s probably because these people need to hear their team name announced next to the highest point total. That way, in case we somehow forgot that “Quiz on My Chest” is without a doubt the pinnacle of all human creativity, we can remember that the folks behind the name weren’t just incredibly original and witty, but damn savvy intellectuals to boot!

The Nature of Cheating

I do not denounce cheating. It is natural and I believe it keeps man on his toes. It is a test of human ingenuity as trivia is a test of memory retention: yin to the yang, cunning to intellect. Without it, there would be no equalizer between people who have brains and people who have wits.

But searching the Internet for an answer is not cheating. It’s just being a dick. A lazy, lazy dick.

It’s like cheating at cheating!

Here are some acceptable methods of cheating

Bathroom Barter Con: Enter the bathroom and slink in close to the man at the adjacent urinal. He will become uncomfortable, and thus his guard will lessen. Offer to trade him an answer for an answer. He will want nothing more than to terminate the current lavatory exchange, so he will agree without argument. After you have pertained the necessary answer, return the favor with a fake but plausible answer. Zip up and return.

Surreptitious Observation: Sometimes bars have televisions. The channels are usually fixed on celebrity gossip, or news, or sports. If a question pertains to any of these subjects, take the opportunity to use these televisions to your aid.

Accidental Eavesdrop: Anyone careless enough to shout an answer deserves to have it copied. People’s faults should be exploited at all times.

Shea O’Neill Solves the Trivia Problem:

Solution One: Random EMP Generation. At several points during the night, the bartender will generate a short wave EMP burst, effectively disabling all electronic devices in the premise. Any phone not turned off before the blast will find its circuits irrevocably fried, and justice will be served with electromagnetic precision.

Solution Two: Hold Trivia Contests in the Absolute Most Dangerous Neighborhoods Imaginable. I’m talking places that average three shootings a night, where muggings are as commonplace as hobos asking for change. Let’s see how many people bring their I-Phone’s into these neighborhoods.

Solution Three: Random Decimations. On random nights, one in every ten IPhones should be taken outside and executed, gangland style

Solution Four: Accept it and Move On.

Editor’s Addendum:

Well said Shea. Cuisinart’s next item of busines: A crusade against the ’sub-mental’ social catastrophes who shout out answers that are obviously wrong, for all to hear. This is not wit. This is not even “Quarter-Wit.”

No one - save for the other sub-mental cromagnum men at your table - laughs at this. Never, ever. And when you’re “winning,” that does not make it OK, it makes it worse. You will be found. You will be confronted. You will be destroyed.

And another thing, Shea and I are not bitter about never winning the 30 dollars at our respective bar trivia nights, ok? We’re not! So shut up and leave us alone!

A new entry from Shea:

On Valentine’s Day, while some sipped champagne, composed fruitless love letters, or, more accurately, masturbated using homemade lubricant of tears and self-pity, others converged amid gathering storm clouds to exhaust their own romantic frustrations and sexual aggressions in a much different manner. Below is one man’s recollection of what truly happened that day.

–Two thousand, contiguous, nameless faces. A light drizzle. Heavy fog lingers over the Bay. In the distance, storm clouds foreshadow the events to come. Even the women and children have been called to arms. I scan the masses. There are no allegiances here safe what fellowship and love entail, and even these bonds are uncertain when pillows are involved.

–Phone calls from invisible sources. Where are you amid this madness? I’m next to the statue? What statue? Actually it is more of a structure? What structure? Its pretty abstract so I’m not sure what you call it. Nevermind, I’m going to wave my red pillow in the air. Yes, I am aware there are about a hundred red pillows in the air. Mine is the one near the statue. What statue? Actually it’s more of a structure…

–I am alone. Utterly, utterly alone.

– Off in the distance a light thwack of matted goose against corduroy. The sound precipitates a contagious frenzy that circles outward until my hand is no longer my own, raining down upon the button nose and ovular face of a bearded Spaniard in khakis.

–The fray has begun.

–It does not take long for the first feathers to burst from their cotton linings, leaving one to speculate what part their owners played in such an early release. Tricky knife work, or a premature exertion of excessive force? The feathers hang in the air listless, like ash from a volcanic eruption. Some see the airborne threat, and bring masks and bandanas to their mouths. We not previously versed in the terms of this peculiar battle must do without.

–A circle forms. Contained within a man in a chicken hat. “Chicken hat,” screams the crowd. We stop our small conflicts and swarm upon him like moths to the flame. We are the mob and the mob asks no questions. One feels sorry for the individual who thought a chicken hat would suit the festive nature of this battle. One feels sorry for all the hapless souls who brought backpacks, hats, or any clothing accessory easily identified in the sea of flesh and pillows. Panic sets in. I begin to question how my own outfit will be perceived amid the madness. Jeans. Black Shirt. Blue flannel. Wait, how blue? Medium blue. Phew. Facial scars? None of note. Hair? Sweaty and mousy, but not spiked enough to stand above the crowd. Pillow? Red—but, then again, its Valentine’s Day.

–Predictable, little warrior. You are a prisoner to your zealotry, and thus you must swing first. I find my timing. Side step. Grab your pillow between my elbow and ribs. “You cant’ Grab my pillow, it’s a rule,” you say. “Rule, MWUAHAHAHA. There are no rules in pillow fights,” I thrash your rule abiding face with my pillow of anarchy, bringing your perfectly ordered little world to a standstill in a shower of feathers. I watch in ironic horror as you twist my own maniacal laugh back upon me. I am left with a limp, tattered shroud of linen. You hold a mace of hardened goose and a score to settle. You beat me senseless. Without weapon I flee. The ground is littered with the dead. Gutted, sinewy strands of tattered goose lay muddied with footprints, and soiled with spit and sweat. I search the cotton gore for an intact pillow. Please. Please. Success. It will take some time to grow accustomed to the new weight. But I am optimistic, even in these dark times.

—Amidst a particularly hazy storm of white feathers and the pungent odor of farts, released comfortably and openly in the confidence that no one will ever identify the asshole of origin, two men fight opposite one another. Perceiving a presence behind them they turn, pillows drawn. Their eyes light up. Their embrace is as vicious as the swipes of their pillows. How long has it been since they last saw one another? How many have they lost along the way? The questions do not linger, and the reunion is soon shattered. Love has no place in a pillow fight. Not even on Valentine’s Day.

— Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. You once taught me a valuable lesson. Relationships based on intense experiences never work. I should have paid heed to your advice. Knocked to the ground with a sideways blow to the face. A defensive reflex, my feet swipe the floor like antennae, feeling for my assailant. I connect with her shins, bringing her down on top of me. Eyes lock, lips meet. We do not part, but instead steal a moment. Our lips are sweaty and the kiss is sour. Yet we hold. “Make out,” I hear, and realize my mistake too late. Pillows guided by anonymous hands pummel us like shoes in a dryer. Is it their jealousy that fuels them? Or is it a painful reminder that one must never let sex obscure the task at hand? Especially when pillows are involved.

—A miracle. Among pillow induced pain and feather related emphysema, I find an old friend. We agree to join forces, fighting back to back. We fight small fish at first. Graduating soon to dual wielders, and similar duos. From the distance lumbers our greatest challenge. He rises high above the crowd like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or an Ultrasaurus in a new growth forest. “Get the Giant,” cries the masses, and once again we are united by purpose. He has physics on his side. One by one he flattens his assailants like hapless moles in circular arcade prisons. Some attack his thighs. Others attack his abdomen. His blows are powerful, but they exhaust him quickly. Soon he ceases his attack. Was it the combined might of our pillows? Or in the distance did he glimpse more supple prey? Who knows what he sees with his giant’s eyes?

—Thirst consumes me. I meet someone and ask for water. She provides Fresca. It offers no refreshment and leaves a sour taste of over processed grapefruit in my mouth. What is Fresca? What is its purpose for existing? Why does grapefruit need to be carbonated? I spit the remnants about the crowd. The girl follows suit. Our actions enrage a pack of Asians. They swarm upon us, fueled by a sticky, grapefruit flavored vengeance. I look upon Lady Fresca. Her eyes speak of courage and loyalty. We are bonded in this Fresca debacle, she and I. I know then that she will follow me until the very end. I, on the other hand, will have no part in such madness. I grab her by the shoulders and toss her into the hoard. In the ensuing confusion I flee.

—The fray continues, but I will no longer play any part. I reconvene with my friends at long last in front of the statue, which is perhaps more accurately a structure. We share stories of battle, sipping interchangeably upon water and beer. We wonder had this been Lord of the Rings how quickly we would have died, and how we would have met our ends. We settle upon seven seconds, though allowances are made for protagonists.

—I arrive home. I go on to cap the night in true warrior fashion—with beer and pizza, though to me it tastes like mead and mutton. I revel in my moments of glory, and toast to the fallen. Finally, returning at long last to my chambers, I put the day to rest in a most fitting manner: I lay down my weapon, and allow it at last to fulfill its intended purpose.

It’s a pleasure to present Part Deux of Shea’s harrowing tale of time travel…

As we have touched briefly upon its potential, let us pause for a moment to reflect upon Time. There are those who say Time is like casting a stone into a pond and watching the ripples circle outward. Sometimes this is the case. But mostly, Time is like a handful of pebbles strewn across a lake, with each pebble creating its own tiny ripple. The ripples scatter, directionless. Sometimes they flow into one another; sometimes they ebb into nothingness.

One pebble is a woman.

There is nothing special about her as far as appearances go. She looks as any plain faced, 20 something, might look in 1970’s Pondicherry—familiar.

Each day at 3 o’clock she would pass a small, family owned-café in the northwest section of town. Each day there would sit a man reading a book in the corner. The man was Indian, but with a foreign quality about him, and not particularly just that he was from another country, but like he was from an entirely different kind of place. At the same time he felt so familiar. It was almost as if he were pleading to tell her a story: a story that by some peculiar design featured only her.

Still, their days were spent in silence. Try as she would to engage his attention, he never once looked up from his book.

The man is another pebble. The man is Manoj Vindalu.

Though he departed from Dunville with a plan, Manoj arrived in 1970 Pondicherry without the faintest idea of how to execute it. He hadn’t a clue where to find M Knight’s future mother. Worse yet, he had no idea when the time of conception was, and could not be sure that, even if he found her, the genetic miracle of life was not already stewing within her uterus.

Manoj decided that his first plan of action would be to use the time machine as a sort of research device to uncover the moment when the two lovers first met. It should have taken months (or years depending on how you look at it) and yet he stumbled almost instantly upon a street corner where they shared their first kiss. Upon further investigation, he was fortunate enough to overhear them discussing the details of the day they first met. He went back in time again and followed her to the meeting. He found it at a small, family owned café in the northwest section of town.

Finding two specific souls in the bottomless abyss of time? Learning further the exact date of their meeting? Why Manoj never thought to reflect upon this wave of good luck is uncertain. Though it is often the tragedy of the unwise to mistake fate for fortune, as he would soon come to understand.

After ascertaining the details of their meeting, he traveled innumerably to the past of M Knight’s future mother. He made periodic appearances throughout her life, positioning himself in places where their eyes would meet, sometimes only for an instant. His eyes would become a motif that defined her life. His eyes would be the dream she unconsciously sought in her waking hours. He would become her perpetual déjà vu. Once he was certain that his eyes would never be forgotten, he traveled to the small, family owned-café in the northwest section of town. There he waited three weeks, each day feeling her gaze hot upon his neck.

Then came the day of the fated meeting. Everything played out as normal: M Knight’s future mother was on track to meet her one-time future husband. But, at the precise moment when the eyes of her one-time future husband looked forward, hers instinctively looked right—to Manoj in the café. And there, for the first time in three weeks, she met his eyes. They were the eyes of her dreams. They were eyes that reflected her past. They were eyes that had seen time. And with no greater passing than any of the other innumerable, shifting bodies, her one-time future husband continued on his way, unaware as she that their shared future had been struck from existence with the swiftness of a single quill stroke.

Manoj offered her a seat, though he could scarcely understand why. He had already averted fate. His task was finished. He had assured that M. Knight could not possibly be conceived. He had thwarted their meeting, and in a city of millions, no one gets a second chance at something like that. Perhaps it was the intoxicating power of his success, or the sweet aroma of coconut milk that swam from her pores, but he found himself wishing to pursue his advances further. He had bested his rival. Now he would taste the spoils.

Manoj never had much skill with women. But he wouldn’t need any for this. The consequences of his meddling with her past had ensured that she would never want for another as long as she lived. On a tattered, single mattress, within the walls of a small inn, they engaged in carnal congress with a passion that can only be exhibited by lovers who have seen time, and returned to write its designs upon one another in their sweat.

Later, Manoj rose in the moonlight and stared at the woman whose womb now lay dormant. He paused for a moment of reflection. He was 8,000 miles and 40 years from the only life that he knew. What was he in the future but a cranky, middle-aged video store clerk, with a now-complete vendetta against a prominent Hollywood director? In the now he was a time traveler. He was a man with knowledge of the future. Knowledge he could use to make him a very rich man. And so he fled without so much as a fare-thee well, pawned the device, and booked passage to America.

Manoj could not see the grand lake of Time. If he could he would have seen that the many ripples caused by the pebbles he had strewn were slowly merging into one. And though many interesting things happened to Manoj in America, nothing of true merit occurred until nine years later. He was on a stroll through Fairmount Park when he bumped into his Indian mistress of nine years past. It was awkward. But it was nothing compared to what he felt when she introduced a small child, scarcely older than eight: the product of their quieted lust.

How does a penguin know her child? How does a bird known the passage south only just being born? Is it in the blood? Is it in the genes? Or is it in the eyes? Manoj met the frightened gaze and he saw familiar eyes—eyes that had seen time. And when the revelation came, it did not come like surf upon a beach, but like waves upon sharp rocks.

There, in a park in Philadelphia, were the eyes of the man who would go on to create the greatest atrocities known to modern cinema. The very man Manoj had set out to destroy so long ago had been born from the fruits of his own lust. Was it always destined to be like this? We do not know. All we know is that Time is pebbles strewn across a lake. And no matter how many ripples circle outward in untold directions, they all settle in the end.

Manoj fled. He felt the hands of madness begin to claw at him, and he knew it was only a matter of time before they would pull him asunder. Unless…

Unless Milo! If Milo knew the truth perhaps he could avert such an undeserved fate. But how would he contact a man 30 years in the future? Something came to him, an idea he had seen in Back to the Future Part II. He would send a letter to Milo. He would recount every vivid detail of his journey. Milo would learn from his mistakes and then, only then, could he save Manoj.
He ran to the nearest pharmacy and bought paper, envelops, a pen, and Sitcky’s Quick Bonding Glue: guaranteed to last 30 years. He scribbled furiously, penning letters barely more legible than Sanskrit. He closed the letter and applied a glob of glue to the back. He ran to the nearest mailbox, opened it, and glued it beneath the lid. With any luck the envelope would survive the 30 advertised years before falling in the appropriate time period. It was a long shot. All he could do was wait.

Against all odds, the plan worked. The letter fell a little more than a week or so after the day Manoj had first begun his journey through time. It fell among similar parcels, differentiated only by the tawny coloring it had accumulated over the years. It was retrieved by the mailman and delivered to the home of the intended recipient. And yet, not all went according to plan.

Manoj had peeked so far into his own past that he had forgotten entirely about the future—more specifically, Milo’s future. He and Manoj may have shared drastically different geography, but they still inhabited the same timeline.

So on that fateful day as the credits began to roll and Manoj activated the device, Milo had turned right to offer him some popcorn. As he extended a handful, he saw Manoj disappear into nothingness. Milo screamed inconsolably. He made such a ruckus that he was arrested. He continued to scream all the way to the police department. He screamed past his holding cell and into the office of a psychiatric evaluator. He screamed at every turn in the brief, albeit windy, road that led him to be confined within The Montgomery County Psychiatric Hospital. Perhaps he screamed out of horror from seeing his friend vanish. Perhaps because he could not stomach the fact that time travel was nothing more elaborate than the liberal application of glue to circuitry.

The incident aroused the attention of many. Bad popcorn some said. Too much pornography said others. It also attracted the attention of a 40 something movie director with a strong affinity for such mysteries. The man spent his evenings trolling various newspapers in search of critics who reviewed his movies favorably. He never found any. But what he did find while browsing through a supermarket tabloid he had purchased in the hopes of finding a favorable review, was a story about an individual who claimed his best friend disappeared into thin air during a recent screening of The Happening. He decided it was a story worth investigating.

So he went to the man’s home and talked to his mother. She told him her son had been committed and was not allowed visitors for the first 50 days. When the man inquired further about the incident she left the room. She returned with a tawny colored envelope. The envelope had arrived a week after the incident. It was addressed from the man who Milo claimed disappeared. Stranger yet was that no one had seen that man since. She had kept the letter out of fear. She gave it to the man at her doorstep for the same reason.

He bid farewell and hailed a taxi. In the backseat he opened the letter and read its contents. He became entranced in a story that both explored and transcended Time. It was a Greek tragedy; it was an exploration in science fiction. Its protagonist was raw. He even saw the potential for a subplot of redemption in the rewrite. As the cab pulled into his driveway, he produced a twenty for the driver and a cell phone for himself. Dialing a number he dialed once a year, he heard a voice click on the other end; and he spoke.

“Hello Mike, its me, M Knight. I’ve just had the best idea for my next film.”

So comes to rest another tragic tale about a man who thought himself the better of Time. But Time is not a foe to be conquered, or a trial to be endured. Time is pebbles strewn across a lake. And whether Time really is a thing, an abstraction, or a cosmic seamstress weaving tapestries of fate by celestial candlelight, one thing is certain: it sure can spin a good yarn.

We’ve got contributor #2, folks. The leather-foot, scatterbrained, and immensely clever- Shea O’Neill. He is single, bearded, and author of the kerouacian (care-OH-whack-ee-n) blog ‘Northwest Excursion.’

Below is part one of his quirky time travel saga. Enjoy:

It did not surprise Milo Stampton, repudiated best friend of Manoj Vindalu, when Manoj burst into his apartment one Friday afternoon with a solution to the “M Knight problem.” Nor did it confound his sensibilities that the “solution” appeared to be a shoebox, wherein wires and circuits co-mingled in a pool of Elmer’s Glue. It fazed him little when Manoj called the box a time machine; less when he explained the mechanics: it would encapsulate him within a pan-dimensional, time-neutral bubble, allowing him to transport instantaneously while time continued as normal outside. His plan was easily deducible: use the machine to fast-forward to the twist endings in M. Knight’s movies.

Considering Manoj’s zealotry, single mindedness, and weekend propensity for glue huffing, it all made perfect sense. Except for the fact that Manoj, an often solitary man, invited Milo to the device’s inauguration. This was truly surprising.

They traveled together to the movie theatre, though Milo, admittedly, went only to ridicule. At the concession stand Milo bought a large tub of popcorn. Manoj refused concessions, reminding Milo that “he won’t need snacks where he’s going.” They filed into their seats, nodding or sneering accordingly throughout the previews. The credits silenced the crowd. Taking his cue, Manoj closed his eyes and activated the device.

He awoke to find himself staring once again at the opening credits. Defeated, he tossed the device among fallen popcorn kernels and half chewed bubblegum. It appeared Milo had been right all along and that one cannot deconstruct the mysteries of time travel using wires and glue. Perhaps next time he would use rubber cement instead. He turned to congratulate Milo. In his place he found an older gentlemen, ashen white, waving his hands and stuttering “G-G-Ghost.”

It would be far too convenient to construe the man’s outburst as just another “senior moment.” The man is, or rather was—as these events would surely precipitate a downfall in his sanity—a rather competent and upstanding citizen. But what other conclusion could he possibly draw? He had, after all, been minding his own businesses, palming a rather ambitious handful of popcorn, when an Indian man appeared out of the Ether and plopped into the seat beside him.

While hovering beyond the earth in his pan-dimensional, time neutral bubble, Manoj forgot the fact that the Earth would continue to turn on its normal 24-hour rotation, spinning at an impressive 800 mph below. And so, two hours later, the geographic location from which he had originated was no longer the geographic location in which he re-emerged. He resurfaced two hours West in a small midwestern town called Dunville. The true miracle was that he had somehow managed to reappear inside another movie theatre showing the same film he had attempted to avert two hours and 1,600 miles earlier.

Manoj fled the escalating awkwardness in search of a bus station. Nearing the depot he heard a whisper from an adjacent alleyway. Curiosity piqued, he slinked into the darkness. There he found a man cloaked in black.

“Looking for some time?” the man asked.

Manoj, confused and still distraught over his failed experiment, decided to inquire further into what the man meant by time. Most likely he was some black market clock salesman. Though Manoj clung to hope that just maybe he was selling some thyme, which would go nicely with the stew Manoj planned to cook later that evening.

“Time,” the man repeated. “The Great Journey. Miss Scary Plane. The Relevancy Factor. The STC. Time Travel.”

“You mean to tell me,” Manoj replied skeptically, “that you are peddling time travel in the back alley of a small midwestern town? How do I know this is not a hoax?”

“You’ll just have to trust me the same way you trusted Marty Coopersmith to sell you an official early release copy of Cloverfield, instead of some cheap bootleg,” he answered, checking over each shoulder for whatever authorities might police against illegal time dealing.

Manoj then concluded that no stranger could possibly know such personal information unless they had traveled back in time to obtain it.

And so perhaps it was the curious name drop. Or perhaps it is because a bootleg time travel device turned out to be much cheaper than a bus ticket back to Philadelphia. But Manoj decided to make a deal.

“So where will you be going, forward or backward?” the man asked, opening his coat to reveal a colorful assortment of trinkets and mechanical devices, all of which hummed at a deep and unsettling frequency. Manoj’s instincts told him to say forward, but he caught his tongue. Why continue to go forward when there would always be another movie theatre just beyond the horizon? Why run a race he could not win? Why not just go back to the beginning and rig the race in his favor?

He would travel backward to the curry swept bazaars of 1970’s Pondicherry, India. He would find the parents of M Knight. He would thwart their love. And once and for all he would avert the ill-fated conception of the man responsible for cinematic holocaust.

“I’ll take an order of the past,” Manoj said, smiling wryly. “And make it to go.” End Part I.