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March 26, 2007
Jeff R.: Had to be Done
Now, I love your mother, no question. It's her family I've problems with. I can take her dad Phil's conspiracy theories just fine, or her brother Allen's get-rich-quick schemes, but her sister Deanna's a bridge too far.
It's good that she lives in rural Mississippi, in a small town where that kind of thing is in the mainstream. In fact, it is the mainstream down there, which is bad, but it's good that we're living far away from her white-supremasist ways.
Anyhow, son, that's why I said we're like the Anglicans.
Always a bit embarassed by Auntie Dee's establishment Arianism.
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March 27, 2007
Jeff R.:Meet Me In the Crowd
I've been able to see auras since I was thirteen, but I'd never seen anything like hers. It shone golden and clear, with flares leaping high above and returning to that glow like flying fish.
The body that housed that magnificent aura was unremarkable. Short, with short-cropped black hair, an unexceptional, healthy body. I was smitten, instantly, even knowing that nothing could come of it. She was married, perfectly mated for life. It was all in the aura.
So I sat down in front of the fountain, content to sit and watch her shine, until she walked out of view.
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March 28, 2007
Jeff R.: No Doubt Based on a Design by Rambaldi
"And here's our most important gadget."
"Looks like a cell phone."
"Ah, but it's so much more. This cell phone enables faster-than-light communication."
"So?"
"So when an agent is in the field, say, in Ankara, when her cover has her in Chicago, and her friend in DC calls her, she isn't given away immediately by the lag time that a normal cell call would have while the signal travels around the world."
"Wouldn't it be easier to not let our agents take personal calls in the field?"
"You haven't met them. Trust me, changing the laws of physics was easier."
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March 29, 2007
Jeff R.: And of Course, Nobody Ate Any
It took a long time for anyone to notice. There's lots of people who make up jar after jar of preserves yearly and never look at them again, so those weren't noticed early. You may have heard about nut shortages, but those always passed quickly.
They didn't even put a dent in barley supplies.
It was only when they gathered the rum that anyone was aware something was afoot. By then it was too late.
Some people will do anything to get into the world records book. And that's why there's a fruitcake the size of Sheboygan out in Denver.
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April 4, 2007
Jeff R.: On Gods, Children, and Other Nuisances
The first thing to understand is that the idea of refraining from anything is utterly foreign to the divine temperment. Rather like three-year-olds, except that there isn't anybody around to give a god a good spanking, and if there was it'd probably enjoy it.
We're talking about a group with sexual ethics that make tomcats look like comatose nuns. They'll go at it with brothers, sisters, parents, children, farm animals, planets, trees, inanimate objects, shades of the color blue.
There's one thing that they won't touch, though: birth control. Which is why the world gets so lousy with demigods nowadays.
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April 6, 2007
Jeff R.: The Word on the Street
"I'm getting a little bit worried about Sal. I'm good. You?"
"Worried? What do you mean? Thanks."
"I think he's been holding out on us. Every way I figure it, his book's gotta be taking in at least twice what he's saying."
"Ah, you know everyone cheats a bit. Not the Kiwi, the Shinola."
"Not his much. Besides, word is, he's been talking to Dirty Louis on the sly."
"Huh. So what do you wanna do about Sal?"
"Don't worry, I'll take care of it."
Booker silently polished their shoes. After six, the G-man showed up with his second paycheck.
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April 9, 2007
Jeff R.: Reaching Bottom
She called me a drunk and a bum and a liar, and I took it. It isn't as if she were wrong.
Then she started to pound on me with her fists. After that came open hands, drawing blood as her nails clawed my cheeks. We've had this fight a thousand times, I know how it goes. Eventually she tires, collapses in my arms. One of us apologizes, and we 'make up' with violent, hate-filled rutting. Our only passion these past five years.
Not tonight, though. Pushed too far, I did the cruelest thing I could.
I mentioned our son.
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April 11, 2007
Jeff R.: Within the Walls
The odd thing is, I don't remember actually dying. I remember that final confrontation with Eliza, gold-digging tramp she turned out to be. And of course I remember waking up, sealed in the cell between the walls. And then, just year after year of restless waiting. Surely I died early on, of starvation or thirst. But it wasn't until yesterday I noticed my bones, learned that the walls could no longer hold me.
I suppose my Eliza has been dead almost as long, by now. But this shameless woman who now lives in my house so reminds me of her...
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April 18, 2007
Jeff R.: Huddled Up
The festival was mostly indoors that year, within the great halls of the Countess' keep. Winter had come early, ruining much of the harvest. The Countess had had to open her woods to hunters, to keep down the wolves and give the commonfolk salted jerky to suppliment their stores.
Nonetheless, even in cold, cramped halls, it was the festival, the last feast before the long winter, a chance to say goodbye to neighbors who would be unseen for months, if the survived at all, and the last chance to find a wife or husband to bundle with against the cold.
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April 19, 2007
Jeff R.:Tangled Web
Twenty years after he died, I'm still paying for dad's mistakes. It doesn't help that he was a time traveller, of course. Just yesterday he ran up a monster tab down at the pub, then told the owner I'd cover it. Which I did, like a perfect schmuck.
Could be worse, though. Like last week, when my girlfriend left me. Her description of the guy she ran off with was just a bit too familiar, and sure enough, it was dad, sweeping her away off to the seventies where she became my mother. Next Thanksgiving's going to be mighty awkward.
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