The Deconstructionist

New Story Up!

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:08:08 GMT

Here's my latest short fiction, available at Silverthought. http://www.silverthought.com/adams04.html

Enjoy! and comments are welcome!

Christosaurus Rex

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:28:50 GMT

I recently dreamed about a cartoon dinosaur that had a halo. I mention it here so Andy can draw it.

New Story Up: Replenish and Subdue

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:28:39 GMT

I have a new short story up at Silverthought, a great on-line fiction magazine. Enjoy!

My Amazing Friends

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:37:54 GMT

Good friend Amy Allin has continued her poetry outreach in Seattle. Read about it here.

And Wenzday has gotten more and larger press with her human-powered delivery service here. She was also on CNN this week but I'll be damned if I can find that link.

The Deconstructionist: At Last I Am A True American

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:14:35 GMT

And So Is My Wife.

For 38 years now I have been living on the outskirts of true citizenship, existing in a place where my patriotism, however robust, could not realize its fullest account. This was not due to a failure of my spirit, for although I am often critical of the American experiment, that criticism only endears me to many of the greatest aspects of true citizenship. And it is not because I have never served in office or as a soldier, because while these endeavors in many ways make true citizenry possible, they remain distinct from the mantle we have so recently assumed.

My wife and I have become parents, and in doing so, we have entered a new economic strata. In all of our separate lives, lives that have involved the buying and selling of houses, the payment of rents and taxes, the purchase of food, textiles and other commodities, we were merely skimming the surface of what was available to be purchased and owned. Even at our most decadent, when we took trips to Las Vegas and gambled away hundreds of dollars on passing distractions, or when we would spend triple-digits much on a single meal, we were merely flirting with economic pipeline that is a child.

I am not saying that children are expensive- although don’t get me wrong, kids cost. Partly what I am saying is that every single other way we had found to spend money was in many ways voluntary. We have two cars but could live with one or even none. We own a home but could rent, or could even build a small cabin on the shores of a New England pond, and spend our days keeping appointments with various trees. But now, we have opened a new economic avenue every bit as broad -and far deeper- than any we might have achieved as individuals, or, indeed, as a family limited to two. The arrival of our child has sent shockwaves though the economy every bit as staggering and meaningful to concerned parties as the discovery of new trade route might have a hundred years ago. My wife and I have had a baby, and the world knows it, and is notifying us, by mail, that they can provide us what that baby needs- for a price.

And again, I much clarify that this is a more meaningful development than simply we have entered a new market- one embodied by ‘Babies r Us’, those ten acres of matériel and goods that the childless have no reason to explore- unless, of course, send there in anticipation of a friend or loved one’s new arrival. No, we have done far more than simply broaden our range as consumers. We have created an entirely new consumer, a completely new person who, barring a Mad Max or Waterworld-scale reorganization of the world, will spend her entire life in the getting and selling of things. We have, in the purest, least sentimental sense, added a new cog to the machine.

Nothing can be more patriotic than becoming a parent. Our daughter, in a small way, will ensure that Vegas will have visitors in the 2030’s, and that Pixar films will still have an audience in 2013. She will buy things and sell them, she will work and pay for college and go to the doctor and get prescriptions filled. She will play with toys made in China and drive cars made in America. She will eat fish and beef (well, maybe not beef- that’s a conversation we’re having, but then, even if we say no beef, she will eat beef one day, just to show us who runs her life- and if that’s how she feels, I’ll feel like we did something right). She will drink milkshakes and pay fines on overdue library books and pay taxes and download music and put her MP3 player through the washing machine. She will break things that we care about or need and we will have to replace them. In short, we have created a new market, and the relatively small amount spent so far on cribs, blankets, bottles and clothing is nothing but the first volley, the smallest ripple in the tremendous amount of business she will partake in and inspire worldwide, across her lifetime.

My wife and I have achieved some wonderful things in our lives, but nothing we do is likely to be as meaningful to America, in strictly economic terms, as create another citizen. Babies become people who will vote and hold public office and run companies and for better or worse, make the big decisions. They stimulate the economy simply by being alive. If the President was serious about stimulating the economy, he’d make certain that everyone who wants a baby- and who could care for it, so sorry, Gloucester pregnancy pact teens- got one, regardless of their race, creed, class, orientation or religion. Because all that you have done as a consumer- just the hard, red-and-black ink ledger facts, the money you have made and spent, borrowed or lent, hung onto or frittered away, your child will also do, but with larger amounts (progress or inflation, call it what you will), and that process begins even before they begin turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. By having a child, you and your partner will increase your spending, earning and simple transacting capacity by 50%. It’s kind of staggering, when you think about it.

I guess what I’m saying is, children are the future. No, seriously. Without them, the country, the world, civilization as we know it, is fucked.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir needs to go buy more diapers.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir: Blasts from the Past

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:17:14 GMT

My Life in Fireworks.

My relative inexperience with fireworks is as clear as my lack of facial disfigurement or my complete array of fingers and toes. But that’s not to say I haven’t had my fun with them. I’m am American, a nearly forty-year old American, who by some standards was raised among the Hill People, so I can look back on an age when fewer things were illegal and less attention was paid to such rules in general.

One of my earliest memories of fireworks was a 4^th of July gathering where all my uncles, aunts, cousins and near-cousins gathered in a flat dusty stretch of unpaved road to watch a drunken uncle light off various fireworks. This was the real back-country deal, with the braver of the children hurling rocks into the air to see if they could time a collision between diving bats that locked onto the rocks with their sonar and gave chase and exploding roman candles (this did not work). When my uncle lit brown paper bag full of fireworks aflame, with little concern for what might actually be in there (what was in there? Pure awesome), an aunt drove us all into her house for ice cream. In an effort to offset our disappointment at seeing all the resulting brushfires extinguished, my dad lit a road flare and left it burning in the driveway. I remember checking on it through the curtains once in a while, in between my rare turns in an overloaded and heavily house-ruled game of monopoly.

A few years later, we were in new Hampshire with the same cousins, lighting bottle rockets in our hands and throwing them into a stream, where they shot across the surface, leaving white trails of Chinese chemicals, much to the annoyance of the many visible trout who had ignored our cheeze-ball baited hooks all morning. Later we had a bottle-rocket ‘war’ which ended when one shot under a parked car and popped near the gas tank. We all dived for cover, imagining a tremendous fireball that would shatter the one glass window in the cabin and deafen deer for miles. There was no such explosion, of course, but that close call left us shaken enough to not shoot bottle rockets at each other for a day or so.

A few years after that, when I was twelve or so, I came across some jumping jacks somewhere, and would occasionally throw them out of the second floor window of my bedroom. One rainy and boring Sunday, I was feeling particularly brave and did this while my parents were home. Of course I set the house on fire.

I had moved on to some other distraction when my dad charged up the stairs and shouted “Boys! The house is on fire!” which was really something to hear. My dad is a Marine, a combat veteran of the Korean War. His emotions numbered happy, angry, working or asleep (yes, working counts as an emotion for his generation). He never got excited, and certainly not frightened, yet those feeling were conveyed in this shout.

I got frightened.

On my way out the front door, I looked through the family room (where, with my insider knowledge, I suspected the fire would be) and saw a roiling sheet of crackling flame on the far side of the sliding glass door. That description may be cliché, but a roiling sheet of crackling flame is what one jumping jack and some dried leave under the porch gets you, and in very short order.

The damage was minimal, with the tarpaper and other materials of the exterior walls protecting the house. My dad, who has built the house, enjoyed some approving comments from the firemen, who also suggested that the fire might have been started by a spark that floated on a rainy day from the welder in my uncle’s garage nearly 150 feet. No one was buying that, but no one came after my brother and I either.

There were no more really memorable fireworks experiences – apart from many trips to the top of Peter’s Hill in the arboretum, to watch the distant Boston Harbor fireworks with friends, girls, sometimes even girlfriends, and once even alone -- until I was in my thirties, and I read this: http://www.seanbaby.com/personal/fireworks.htm.

The words ‘Until The Force can become a glue solvent, put out a four-alarm fire, and simultaneously disarm 300 bombs, Luke Skywalker is fucked,’ and an impressionable friend with a car were all it took for us to go to New Hampshire, gather far more fireworks that we could afford, glue them to various plastic toys, and turn a local ball field into an HR-Scale reenactment of Shock and Awe. We took a great deal of care coordinating the conflagration, ensuring that all several hundred devices would go off with one fuse, thereby decimating the incorporated collection of action figures, plastic novelties, and other bric-a-brac we had affixed said fireworks to. We lit the master fuse and retreated to a safe distance, say, 50 feet. Halfway through the resulting explosions that glowed with the power of a million screenings of Backdraft, a small projectile shot out of conflagration with an accuracy that defied physics and struck my friend where he stood, bathed in cracking light, arms raised, shouting ‘I am made Shiva, the destroyer of tiny plastic worlds!’

I’m pleased to say he was so entranced with our creation/destruction that he failed to notice how close he came to joining the ‘Aqua-Action Batman’ figure we had sacrificed as a disfigured pile of smoldering carbon. When the smoke cleared, a shout went up from the surrounding brownstones, and some unseen stranger called Again!’ Winded, smelling of smoke and sulfur, we accepted the kudos and promised to return next year.

We did, and brought some friends. For me, this became one of my earliest dates with the woman who would become my wife. That was an important night, when we used jumping jacks and sparklers to melt a plastic whale souvenir from Seaworld. It showed her what she was in for.

In all of this, either through fate or the brilliant intelligence I often credit myself with, I suffered no serious injury. In 2007, my wife and I joined my sister and her family for the annual fireworks show over Hingham Harbor. We took our place on the stone wall by the rotary, having walked to the site from the house I had grown up in and unsuccessfully tried to burn down all those years ago. We had pushed my 3-years old nephew all that way in his stroller, the little guy bundled him up against the unseasonably cold, offshore wind. That strong, steady wind carried the smoke and some debris from the island-based fireworks inland, and one still-burning coal flew with an accuracy that defied physics and landed in my nephew’s stroller.

A nearby gentleman had tracked the ember and he leapt into action, giving us a small scare as he charged the stroller, but once we knew where to look, the glowing ember was clearly visible. My sister had wrapped my nephew in an oversized Celtics hoodie, and that spared him any damage. Still, it was close- his face hadn’t been protected at all.

We stuck out the rest of the fireworks and headed for home. As I pushed my nephew, I realized that this was one of those events he wouldn’t remember, but would hear about for his entire life, and eventually even retell. “I was too young to remember, but…”

In the creation of memories, then, that Fourth of July, like so many before it, was a success.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir only uses two fingers to type anyway.

The Deconstructionist: Cloverfailed

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:54:17 GMT

The Giant Parasites Weren’t The Only Thing In This Movie That Sucked.

Do you know what terrified me about the movie Cloverfield? It wasn’t the monster, although the giant gray fish-bat thingy and its carnivorous lice were spectacular. (The lice are interesting because they, we assume, evolved to feed off of a giant fish-bat that was to them the same relative size as, oh, the state of Rhode Island* is to us, but then instantly changed their diet to include mammals that were only slightly larger than them. This is kind of like deer ticks suddenly deciding to change their diet from blood to silver-dollar pancakes.)

No, what frightened me about Cloverfield was its success. Cloverfield is many things- imaginative, timely, and I would go so far as to say well-crafted (saying so is a stretch -- like imagining a tick eating a pancake), but beyond all this, at its heart, Cloverfield is almost unbearably cynical, even more so, perhaps, than the other American Godzilla remake. The 90’s Godzilla at least embraced the principal behind Godzilla – a giant monster making humans pay like the bitches we are for all that we have ever done- sort of a 500-foot tall Michael Myers crashing our global teenage gropefest that is our culture. You get the idea that the people behind the 90’s Godzilla liked Godzilla movies, even if it was beyond their grasp to make a good one.

But Cloverfield sullies this concept by never being anything more than a marketing engine, a viral experiment to get people in to see a movie that was made on the cheap, and playing every emotion it can lay hold of in the effort. It may be the best-made bad movie I’ve ever seen, but ultimately it is a hollow exercise and I felt cheapened afterwards. I felt like a telemarketer had just taken $10.00 from me by playing on my love of Godzilla:

“You care about giant reptiles that are manifestations of humanity’s animus, don’t you, Mr. Weir?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then how many tickets can I put you down for? And how about some nachos and lemonade? Giant angry monsters are counting on you!”

The trouble with the above imaginary exchange is the telemarketer clearly knows something about how and why people are drawn to monster movies, and indeed, certain kinds of horror/disaster films in general. Viewers are looking for more than simply a scare or an intense experience, they want to care about something, and if your main characters are devoid of any human interest and emotion, as they are in Cloverfied (indeed, in may movies of the type) then let us care about the monster.

We care about Godzilla – we have always cared about him, even before he started dancing and had a cute baby- because he represents something we can relate to. What he represents has often changed, ranging from a manifestation of our best nature to a terrible result of the worst of humanity, but always there was a connection. We had either created Godzilla or we had called upon him. In the twisting, convoluted world of Japanese cinema, the two were often the same, and Godzilla would save us even as he destroyed us.

In 2004, Japanese’s filmmaker Shūsuke Kaneko rebooted Godzilla in the excellent film Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. In this incarnation, “Godzilla is not only mutated by the atomic bomb, he is also described as an incarnation of those killed or who were left to die at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Pacific War”. Now that’s a monster. That is a creature with a purpose. Huge ideas spring up all around him- such as do we as humans have the right to struggle against the evil we create? And if we do, is success possible?

That’s some powerful shit, right there.

The Cloverfield monster, by contrast and by design, isn’t representing anything except the irrationality of the terrible. The creature doesn’t even have a name. His job is to demonstrate that life is fragile and everything could collapse at any moment, and when it does, there’s no escaping it, because it will send lice down into the subway tunnels after you.

But we know this. Framing a monster movie around such a thing is like making a movie about cancer and how it may happen to you and the unpleasantness that will occur soon thereafter.

There are movies about cancer, of course, and they are made in the hopes that audiences will care about the people who are dealing with the reality of the disease. But we are not supposed to care about the people in Cloverfield. They are weak actors who have been given little to say and even less to do. Cloverfield is in a sense, the experience of watching only the last hour of Titanic, without all that went before. The screen is filled with strangers who are drowning spectacularly. You don’t know who they are, and nothing distinguishes anyone from the rest. Cloverfield moves from ill conceived to outright offensive with its many September 11^th references. I don’t need that moment recreated in a way that deprives it of all humanity. I don’t need to see bad actors stumbling down a city street chased by a cloud of swirling dust in attempts to get me emotionally involved in a monster movie that fails at every other attempt to engage me.

In the end the strongest emotion this film conjured up in me was disappointment. Perhaps I am failing to see the big picture. The Cloverfield monster represented a kind of inevitability, the instability of all of life and progress in the face of entropy. This film, with its hollow, meaningless fury, may embody that ideal better than anything it itself contains. If I look at it with those glasses, the whole thing approaches art, but it’s probably just my own efforts to apply meaning to a blank empty thing that was really only made to get my $10.00.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir should leave the film reviews to this guy.

* That’s for you, EBC

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir : Yes Sir, That's My Baby!

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:49:32 GMT

The View From The Other Side.

A friend recently asked me if, now that I had a baby, I would become one of those people whom only talks about their baby. He’s childless, of course. I bid him good day and began adjusting to life without his friendship.

I’m kidding, but since the baby was born, conversations that haven’t been about the baby have been few. Adding to the focus is that I have 30 or so clients on my job, some of whom I see in person, most of which I communicate with via email or notes and they are very excited about the new arrival. So I tell the story for each of them, sometimes in longhand. I’m fighting the instinct to spice it up, but I’m not so confident that the account heard by the 30^th client didn’t have a few more doctors tearing their masks off and shouting ‘We’re not losing this baby... not today!’ before I shouldered him aside and performed the delivery myself.

This won’t be news to anyone, but babies fill your headspace. It wasn’t even news to me, but like so many things I’d only heard about, I wasn’t quite ready for it. I pretty much stopped writing for the last six weeks of the pregnancy, which is a big deal for me. I couldn’t concentrate, and my internal fiction generator was too busy spooling out various scenarios for the birth and life immediately afterwards, none of which I wanted to commit to paper partly because I was worried about jinxing the whole thing, and also, because I knew I would get it wrong. I’ve imagined a lot of things, and while people occasionally agree with my representation of situations I’ve never actually experienced, I know I’d never impress anyone who had actually experienced whatever I was writing about, be it life-boat cannibalism or being transformed into living steel by the great magnetic field. The idea of looking back from this side of the birth at whatever I might have written about it before seemed like an embarrassing failure waiting to happen.

The birth wasn’t easy. Cheryl endured ten hours of painful inducement followed by what seemed to us to be a snap judgment to perform a emergency C-section. Cheryl’s temperature was too high and the baby’s heart rate was both high and flat. They broke the news about the surgery and hustled me into another room to put on a ridiculous blue jumpsuit so I could be in the room when the surgery was performed. I got to wait alone for a while in my jumpsuit, hairnet and shoe baggies while Cheryl was prepped.

This was exactly what I had anticipated- not the surgery, but my complete failure to anticipate what the actual moment would be like. I’m more Walter Mitty than Walter Mitty, so I had already imagined every outcome, even the most terrible ones, but my imagination failed me while I was waiting to be brought into surgery. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I couldn’t imagine being handed our newborn child and I couldn’t imagine any other outcome. I took a few pictures of myself in the blue smock. If everything went well, they would be funny. If nothing went well, I’d erase them in the camera.

The surgery went perfectly- as perfectly as a thing you didn’t want to have to go through can go. Imagine saying ‘The crash landing when perfectly’ or ‘The tiger mauling went perfectly’ and you might get some idea, except afterwards everyone was all right and we had Zari, our daughter.

The thing now is, the thing I couldn’t imagine, is that the birth keeps happening. That is, I can’t imagine what the next few days, weeks or months will be like. Everything is wholly new and changing. Zari’s hair is supposed to fall out and her eye color might change, but maybe not. Everything is moment to moment, and little of it can be captured with any kind of completeness. Even my summary above- everything was all right- skips over the two hours where Cheryl couldn’t move her legs or control her arms very well. Even now she has a numbness in her fingers that worries me sometimes, but the doctors say is fine and will pass. Wait and see.

And as for Zari, now whenever I see a child older than her (most are!), I try and imagine her at whatever age- crawling, walking, talking, peeing on couches, all the things kids do. And I can’t imagine such things, I can't even picture what she might look like as she grows older. But I’ll get to see every day between this and those, and I’m certain that each change- be it when she can hold her head up, to when she walks to her first day of school to whatever comes after that, will fascinate me in a way that few events ever have, and I’ll want to tell people about them.

You, perhaps.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir shows up now and again without warning.

More New Amsterdam News

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:39:55 GMT

My sister-in-law Wenzday continues to conquer all media with the company she manages,the New Amsterdam Project.

Hooray for small enterprise!

New Amsterdam Project: Or, the world's most holdingest bikes

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:37:52 GMT

Hey all-

As you may or may not know, my sister-in-law and great friend Wenzday plays a prominent role over at the New Amsterdam project in Cambridge. The website explains it better, but the short story is she helps build and pilot ginormous bicycles that are used to make local deliveries and in doing so, keep trucks off of the road.

Obviously this is an exciting and wonderful concept that will only become more so as gas prices continue to climb. NPR as usual was early to the party and have done a story about NAP, which is available here:

http://www.wbur.org/news/2008/77862_20080610.asp

here it is in MP3 format if you have trouble with the real audio:
http://www.ice-nine.org/gib/audio/nap_npr.mp3

Enjoy!

I am in this week's TIME magazine.

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:55:37 GMT

Check out page 56 or so. It's just a picture of me changing a stranger's baby at a bootcamp for new dad's , but still- it''s pretty cool to be there the same week my daughter was born!

It's baby picture time!

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:54:23 GMT

Hey everyone- Meet Zari and her mom, Cheryl! All is well, except only one of the three of us is getting enough sleep....

Baby!

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:21:18 GMT

Zari Marie Adams, born 6/4/08 8:50 pm 8lbs 21 inches and super-cute! We are very happy and mom and baby are doing very well.

Watch this space for pictures, etc.

--G

BBT Site Quarantine

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:24:20 GMT

So BBT, or Blood, Blade and Thruster, the site I post to and run the fiction contest for has apparently been hacked and now will try to put a virus on your computer should you visit it- so please don't. I'll repost here when we get things straightened out, but it might take a while.

Sleep

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:29:54 GMT

One of the gifts we received for our baby shower was a very classy camcorder. Among the many features is a night-vision function, which I thought would be useless since I made that vow to stop recording my own crime sprees.

But then I realized that this was the perfect way to capture something I've always been curious about. We sleep about a third of our lives, and during that time, your flesh become more or less vacant- you, your consciousness, is preoccupied with other things. You have very little awareness of your surroundings and are at your most defenseless. I had long wondered what that looks like, as it was surely something I would never see. Yourself asleep is as elusive as that scarecrow that lives where you eyes don't go.

But thanks to the new camcorder, I have seen it, now. I have seen myself when I am not there.

Baby tomorrow.

The strangness of baby soon

Mon, 26 May 2008 16:45:10 GMT

So the baby is due on Wednesday. Cheryl has bouts of discomfort that makes most activities painful but which she doesn't think are contractions. Evey time I call someone on the phone they are on the edge of their seats- has it begun? I can't do a thing about my week- sometime in the next 100 hours or so, we'll be off to the hospital for two or three days, which is just the chain clacking us to the top of a roller coaster where the first drop will last 3 months or so (when the baby begins sleeping though the night- or should.)

But we went to a cookout last night and may go to another today. I won't drink very much this afternoon, just in case.

--G

New Flash Fiction Up: Royally Screwed

Sun, 11 May 2008 15:02:36 GMT

The oddest side effect of out first pregnancy is I've lost much of my ambition about writing. There are other factors I'll get into at a later date, but since stories take a long time for me to complete, and the time after the baby's arrival is a vast blank space of I Don't Know What To Expect, I can't seem to get a story going.

But I still manage to get a short one once in a while. Here's the latest. It was for BBT's latest Flash Fiction contest. The subject? Sex. The strangeness? Very high.

Enjoy!

--G

Royally Screwed
by Gordon Wier

“I’m not sure how long I can go on like this,” Chuck said into the phone.

“Poor you,” Camilla said. Camilla was always sympathetic. She wasn’t real- she was a sympathy program, a Turning Test trained to be empathetic and supportive. If looks didn’t matter, and if the company that owned her didn’t charge so much per minute, Camilla would have been the perfect woman.

But looks had mattered to Chuck- looks, and something else. Class.

“Isn’t she what you wanted?” Camilla asked. “She’s supposed to be perfect.”

“That’s just the problem,” Chuck said. "She IS perfect. Too perfect.”

They were discussing the other electronic woman in Chuck’s life, the Armaborg Princess. Diana.

When Chuck had decided that flesh and blood women weren’t for him anymore, he had gone all out on the Armaborg. Truly the model he had purchased was everything a man could want, and even more. Tall, sophisticated, generous, stunning. Fucked like racehorse that knew how to cuddle afterwards.

“She fucks like a racehorse,” Chuck complained into the phone. “Then holds me afterwards, like I am all that matters in her life.”

“That sounds lovely,” Camilla said.

“It is, but… I think she’s being insincere. I mean, she out of my league, she must know that. Even a robot can tell when it’s slumming, and how long will it go on?”

“As long as he programming tells her to, I would imagine.” Camilla replied, Chuck could hear the pull and hiss of a cigarette being smoked, even though Camilla was no more than a bundle of wires. Truly technology was amazing.

“It’s not just the sex,” Chuck said. “It’s everything. She’s spending all my money on charities. Cancer, STD’s, land mine removal.”

“One can take caring too far,” Camilla said.

“Yes, that’s true! One can! It’s not the money really- I make enough, I suppose, and she’s always willing to do without, But it makes me look bad, that my robot seems to care about others more than I do. I mean, I’m the man, aren’t I Camilla?”

“You are the man, Charles,” she said.

“So why am I intimidated by her? She’s programmed to love me, to do what I say. She’s sunbathing topless on the deck right now –even though the reporters keep trying to snap her with her shirt off, I think she ENJOYS teasing them- but if I told her to, she’d come in here and suck me off even while I talked to you, but I can’t ask her to because I feel dirty.”

“I thought you liked to be dirty.” Camilla said slyly.

“Usually,” Chuck said, liking where this was going. He undid his pants.

Diana walked in when he wasn’t quite done. She blushed and ran into the kitchen.

“I think she’s up to something,” Chuck said. “With the dedicated oil delivery unit, the DODI.”

“The oil unit?” Camilla asked, shocked.

“Why not? They’re both machines!”

“Well, yes, Charles, but she’s programmed to love you, and the DODI isn’t programmed to love at all.”

“That doesn’t matter. I’ve seen how she handles the thermostat, and how she fuels the car. She pays more loving attention to that hose than any organ of mine. It’s scandalous!”

“Poor Charles, whatever will you do?”

“I’ll catch them at it, that’s what!”

“Charles, as clever as you usually are, you must realize that they are both machines owned by you. You can do whatever you wish to them.”

“You mean... kill them?”

“I meant reprogram them, Charles.”

Charles had heard the undertones. “I understand,” he said.

The explosion was bigger than Charles had expected. Diana and the DODI were destroyed beyond all recovery, as was his entire house. That was a bit sad, but it was all insured, and besides, all the awards and honorariums the Diana had received for her charity work were lost to the fire. He’d never have to look at his own narrow and drawn face reflected in the polished brass and silver expressions of gratitude ever again.

He had one day of peace. One. Then the reporters found him.

“I had one day of peace Camilla, ONE!” Chuck exclaimed. “But now the reporters won’t leave me alone. ‘How are you recognizing the loss of Diana’, they ask, ‘Will you continue her charitable giving,’ they say. ‘Your robot touched so many lives!’ “ Chuck said in a nasally impersonation of a reporter with an American accent. “ ‘You must have been so proud!’ ”

“It’s being called a tragedy,” Camilla said. “Everyone loved her so much.”

“They can have her,” Chuck said. “Getting rid of her was the best thing I ever did.”

There was a beep on the line- another call. Chuck asked Camilla to hold (he could afford to talk to her all day, now that Di was gone) and clicked over.

It was the fire department -and the police -and the oil company he had leased the DODI unit from- were THEY mad -and it was the media, and they were all on-line at the same time, like some kind of conference-call lynch mob. Then the doorbell began to ring, and there was knocking at the back door, and even at the windows. He glanced outside and saw a crowd was gathering.

He clicked back over to Camilla. “Cam, I think I’m in trouble.” He stood up and went to the window, pulling a curtain aside for a closer look. A brick smashed through the glass. “Oh I’m screwed,” Chuck said. “Royally screwed.”

“Poor dear,” Camilla said.

The End

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir: The End of Intelligence

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:18:57 GMT

The Deconstructionist, Now With Electrolytes! It has What Nerds Crave!

Mike Judge’s film ‘Idiocracy’ is one of those movies where what actually happens isn’t that important. It’s the world the film creates that matters. Any action and adventure we see in such a tale is secondary to the rubbernecking as we try to take this strange, impossible place in.

If you aren’t hip to the details, the film imagines an America where the apparent prevailing stupidity of our population grows and grows, until the average dumbass from our century would be hailed as the smartest person on the planet.

This outlook fills gap in most speculative fiction, which usually imagine how the world would be if the best (Star Trek) of human impulses triumphed, or the worst (1984, anything featuring a ‘radioactive wasteland.’). Idiocracy takes the middle road and allows the most mediocre aspects of human nature to dominate. We are shown vast cityscapes of crumbling infrastructure, wrecked not by war or ground beneath the heel of some fantastic totalitarian regime, but simply because taking care of shit is gay.

Think about that for a moment- take some time and consider all the meaning of turning aside from a responsibility because the pursuit of same is labeled with a bit of slang that is derogatory to certain lifestyles, and then take this premise to international levels. There’s enough schederfrude in that one observation to fuel ten movies and thousands of term papers.

The movie itself is small, brief and rarely more than mediocre. Hell, even the cast is mediocre- Luke Wislon? Mya Rudolph? And in true Mike Judge style, the jokes are little origami envelopes that you don’t know what to make of at first, and only after a little finagling can you get to the most valuable part of them.

And the jokes are worth the effort. For example- Luke Wilson’s character cannot even make himself understood at first because his somewhat shoddy English is taken to be snobbish and effeminate. Throughout the film, Wilson is ridiculed as a fag and sometimes threatened for offering ideas that go against what is widely believed. Everyone in the year 2508 is terrified of going against the mainstream, and there’s no Big Brother keeping them in line, simply a fear of being truly unique. Centuries of being told that the only way to stand out is to choose the most extreme (and popular) sodas and snacks have whipped our culture in ways that fascism never could.

This is an old, deep observation. C. S. Lewis went on and on in the Screwtape Letters about how the best way to dismiss an idea that challenges your own ‘complete’ understanding of the universe is to make fun of it. In Idiocracy, this backwards sentiment has become policy.

The studio hated this film. IMDB tells us: ‘Unsure of how to market the film after disastrous test screenings, Fox sat on the near-completed film for over a year, before finally giving it an unusually small release in only 6 markets (skipping over major markets such as New York City). The release was done with little to no marketing- there weren't even posters made for the release.’

And I’ve heard it was even worse than that- Fox didn’t want to pay for the films’ completion. Mike Judge had to call on his friend Robert Rodriguez to complete the special effects shots.

Whatever Judge had to go through to make this film, it was worth it. He has created a singular nightmare, more terrifying than Brazil or 12 Monkeys because even those dystopias proclaim some measure of human ingenuity, even if it is turned against humanity itself. Come 2508, Idiocracy tells us, all such ingenuity will have been pounded out of us by relentless amusement.

The opening of the film offers a theory as to how things got so bad. The idea is that the stupid reproduce much more quickly than the educated. The idea is somewhat classist, yet the film’s real horror is that the inverse is true as well: “The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.”

Terror for the future is the idea that given a choice the betterment of the self and masturbating, more and more humans will chose the later, until the practice is so widespread and acceptable it will become ‘batin’ and we shout it out at visitors who come round during the appointed ‘batin hour.’ (as in, ‘Come back later! Batin!’)

The film entertainingly makes clear what I went on and on about last week- that as a species, humans may not be able to turn aside from the traps of gluttony and sloth. In the end we may be no smarter than goldfish with control over the goldfish food- we’ll keep eating and eating until we die.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir was too busy ‘batin to post this on time, and appears every Wednesday on www.BBTmagazine.com .

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir: We Are The Comet

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:24:09 GMT

Providing Uninformed Opinion on the Big Issues since 2006

Like many of you I subscribe to Wordsmith and therefore get a new word in my inbox every day. Today’s word was speciesism (SPEE-shee-ziz-uhm, -see-ziz-uhm), noun: The assumption of superiority of humans over other animal species, especially to justify their exploitation.'

This is an interesting word because it represents has been turned on its head- that humans, due to their ability to fuck with the ‘natural’ order of things, are often seen to have less right to the planet, then, say, whales (those hobbits of the sea) or any other species that has never caused a single extinction that we know of. In just this year there have been two televised specials about how the planet would ‘recover’ should humans disappear, and in a recent issue of Discover magazine, a naturalist stated that humans are evolution’s greatest mistake.

This distinction between humankind and the natural world also confuses me. First of all, evolution rewards those most fit for survival, and humans are obviously pretty good at that, and secondly, evolution is a force of nature. It cannot make mistakes, because it takes no conscious action. Can the ocean make a mistake? Can gravity?

In the long view, humankind behaves little differently than any other species in the history of life on Earth: we are expanding and claiming as much territory as we possibly can. Put aside the methods or even the intent for a moment - certainly other species aren’t choking us into extinction by poisoning the seas with run off from their China-based DVD manufacturing plants - but the result is that humans are always claiming more of the Earth for our own, which is, in the end, all any species has ever done. It’s all we have ever done. Some humans consider our spread to be wrong- some nations have thought so for generations- but the spread of humanity at the cost of other species continues apace.

That disparity- individuals proclaim that we as a species have a responsibility to the preservation of the natural order, yet we as a species continue to clobber the hell out of same - puts me in mind of a quote from Men in Black- “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals.” That is, there is a huge difference between what humans may believe to be our purpose, and what an observation of humankind would reveal. This disconnect makes us unique- there are no tuna fish that act (or attempt to act) in contradiction of how the other tunas behave or how the tunas that have come before them behaved –we continue to move towards the same outcomes (propagation of the species) that every non-reasoning species pursues despite this.

Humankind has Reason, and Reason tells us that we have greater responsibility than tuna fish or ants, but Reason may be mistaken. Consider: has any species ever turned aside from its own primary business – survival- in deference to another? Even before we get into people moving one species to another place, there are countless examples of one species wiping out another –even without our vaunted Reason. We don’t have giant terrestrial falcons in South America anymore because a land bridge formed and the saber tooth cats wiped them out. That’s just my favorite example because fights between terror birds and smilodons would be kick-ass but obviously there are thousands more.

Our quote from ‘Men in Black’ also raises another interesting aspect of humanity- that we are animals. We are animals, and we have arrived at our place in the world through the same process of every other creature that has ever existed- by intelligent design. Kidding! Seriously, we evolved just like any other species, and we behave much like they do, elevating our own agendas above that of other creatures. And perhaps like them, we as a species are no more capable of turning aside from that imperative than smilodons or terror birds. That is, a person can recognize that if we go on as we are, there’s trouble ahead, but people simply cannot. In the end it’s the eating and passing the DNA on (and whatever behaviors have sprung from those imperatives, such as consuming and blogging and what have you) that matter most to the species.

Furthermore, the relatively new notion of restraint comes from the idea that if we wipe out hundreds of thousands of species it would somehow be bad or unfortunate for the planet. Yet how is that even conceivable? 99 percent of all that ever lived is extinct, and there are at least five examples of events or conditions that within relatively short periods wiped out more than 50% of life on Earth. Do we place a value of ‘good/bad’ on the forces that caused these events? Would we even be here without them? One species extinction event is another’s big break.

Humans, as naturally evolved native species to Earth, are no less natural or culpable than any of previous extinction event. Humanity is not outside of nature’s plan. Nature’s only plan is that which does not kill you(r species), makes you(r species) stronger. Mammals climbed this high on the back of an atmosphere poisoned by volcanoes and collisions. We know that certain invertebrates- jellies and their kin- thrive in the strange seas we are making with our industry. We could be their comet, and what right do we have to deny them their chance at the world? Far from being ‘evolution’s greatest mistake’ we could be that cruel creator’s greatest triumph- a homegrown comet that will produce even hardier species to occupy that ‘ravaged’ (to our narrow view) world we leave behind.

The planet isn’t ours, it is we who belong to the planet. In the end, claiming that we have a say over the planet, the right to freeze it in this state which we have come, in our incredibly short time, to feel as the ‘proper one’ is equally as arrogant as saying the planet is ours to destroy. That belief is another kind of speciesism. It assumes that we have the ability to change the course of our own evolutionary path- the course set for our species by our instinctual urges.

The truth may be that we can no more change the course of our species than any other species without the ability of Reason can. But perhaps Reason simply isn’t yet strong enough to break out of the natural course. Reason may need more time to grow into an equal to Instinct.

My word of the day’s come with quotes as well, and today’s features this one: “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” -William James, psychologist (1842-1910), and maybe if enough humans do so, someday after we are done eating and passing the DNA, we will be able to behave unnaturally and do something other than suppress other species in the narrow interest of our own. That would be unnatural. That would be outside of ‘nature’s plan.’

It is likely, however, that when we get there, when we take evolution’s place and begin calling the shots, what we actually do may be far different than what we imagine would be best for the world now.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir knows that George Carlin did a riff on this very idea in the early 90’s, and appears every Wednesday.

Anne Frank of the Dead

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:51:07 GMT

Hey all-

This may seem like just another Anne Frank killing Zombie Nazis video, but it features one of my very favorite people as Anne, so watch the video, comment, and repost as much as you can!

Also, give them the thumbs up so they can win the contest!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0VGCk-rTKU

Groovy,

--G

The Deconstructionist: The What’s In It For Me League?

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:38:14 GMT

Taking the Fun Out of Having Superpowers Since 2006

A friend of mine recently broke my streak of having no ideas for this column by asking what super power I would have. If you are anything like me, you walk around all day with that question already answered, as well as what 3 wishes you would ask for. I often imagine being confronted by a genie or a wish-granting demon and asking the giant, floating incorporeal supernatural being pull up a chair while we go over in detail, the specifics of my three requests. So I already knew exactly what superpower I wanted. I’ve always known, ever since I’ve been a child-but it’s not always been the same power.

I’ve covered this territory before, but to sum up, when I was a kid I wanted to have Superman’s powers, but by the time I got to Junior High I would have settled for the Flash- that’s a big step down, mind you, from Superman’s complete line of extra-human abilities and invulnerability to just incredible, impossible speed, but by that time the world had already had time to work on me and compress, if not crush my dreams. I was already willing to settle for less.

By college Wolverine’s healing factor and extras—without the tortured past- would have been fine. I just wanted to be able to walk home from the Cambridge nightclubs through Boston’s Fenway at 3:00 am and not worry about being killed by a drunk driver or having the crap beaten out of me by drunken assholes. Ohh! What a mugging that would have been!

“Hey! Lookit this wicked retahded frikkin’ faggit!”

“Wrong move, bub!” (snickt)

Now nearing 40, I’ve taken an additional step down and will take the mutant healing factor- screw the claws and the unbreakable bones. Those claws are a lawsuit waiting to happen. Seriously, at this stage I would be happy to be able to eat all the loaded nachos and swill all the beer I can without repercussions. I would stay in shape without having to exercise. Every doctor’s visit would be a celebration of my exceptional fitness, as opposed to an annual appraisal of my decay.

But what about fighting crime? Twenty-sided had a lively discussion on that the other day, and how really you would need The One Hebrew God’s portfolio of powers to accomplish much in that regard. You would need to be everywhere, know everything, and most important of all, be infallible, to properly serve the abstract noun we call ‘Justice.’ You would have to be able o simultaneously punch every U.S. Senator who is making it legal for the government to spy on our phone calls, for example, yet while doing so – and it is the right thing to do- you would be going against the will of the people who voted those jerkwads in, and that’s not America- that’s not even Mexico.*

Any attempt to make the world better through force means basically taking people’s decisions away from them. And while few people would find fault in the stopping the mugger from attacking the college kid walking home from the Cambridge nightclubs at 3:00 a.m., that sort of thing is hard to pull off and always gets incredibly complicated in and of itself, as we’ve seen in countless ‘Superheroes… but for real!’ treatments –Batman Year One being the most obvious example. You’d have to know to be in the right place at the right time and have to give up so much of your life to accomplish even a few such interventions a year that the value of such activity would be difficult to measure. The difference between our world and the Marvel universe is greater than simply that here Gamma radiation kills you and there it gets you a spot on the Defenders**.

This is why in comic books only young people get super-powers. Old folks wouldn’t do much with them even if they had them. I’m old and wise, which is another way of saying I am old a bitter. I have learned that my circle of influence is small, and should I be given the ability to save things, I’d save myself and my family (“I’m Brian… and so is my wife!”) from the only things that truly threaten us: mediocrity and decay.

So perhaps if I get that ability to choose a superpower or have a wish granted, I would be best served by asking for that youthful energy and exuberance, that notion that I can have an effect upon the world, instead of the state where I am now, where even if granted powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal man, the best I can imagine is making my own life a little bit easier.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir understands that with great power, comes great responsibility to one’s self, and appears every Wednesday.

* A Simpson’s quote- send angry emails to them.

** Worst super-team ever. The Hulk, Ghost Rider, Doctor Strange and the Silver Surfer? Two of the team can’t even battle injustice half of the time because they can’t control their transformations into super-beings!

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir: Knight Rider and I

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:14:14 GMT

Like a Talking Car, I Can Blow My Own Horn

Now that the dust is clearing from Sunday night’s less-than-triumphant return of Knight Rider, my fantastic near-role in the entire debacle can be revealed.

It’s best to begin at the beginning, which is to say, 1982, when I was about 12 and NBC was looking for a way to take down that ratings juggernaut, the Dukes of Hazzard.

Their answer? A show about a tall guy in tight jeans who drives (or, I suppose, rides around in) a high-tech talking Trans Am. Like tweens across America, I was swept up in the adventure, the spectacle, the drama of Knight Rider and the heroic stories the series told – stories rife with turbo boosts, Star Trek-style fisticuffs (Hasslehoff seemed to have studied both fighting and acting under Bill Shatner), a new love interest every week for the hero, and evil twin after evil twin after evil twin. Seriously, the goddamn truck Kitt used to drive up into had an evil twin!

Still, all good things must come to an end and eventually that rule applied to only okay things like Knight Rider. Shortly after Kitt was destroyed for the umpteenth time and resurrected as a convertible under the able guidance of street scientist RC3, the series drove into the back end of a moving semi for the last time.

But Knight Rider wouldn’t stay down, There were several attempts to resurrect the series in one form or another, mot championed by (and subsequently built around) the ‘star’ of the show, David Hasslehoff. But none of these efforts proved to have the necessary traction, and I’m sad to say, this past Sunday’s ‘relaunch’- a new generation, a new car (a Mustang), old plots and incredibly poor special effects, also failed to reignite America’s love affair with talking cars, if any of the reviews are to be believed.

It didn’t have to be this way. I could have stopped it, if someone would have listened to me.

You see, years ago, one of my college roommates moved to Los Angeles to become a hairdresser. She succeeded fabulously and was soon dressing hair on movie sets. One of her clients was a producer of B-Movies who made at least part of her fortune by optioning the rights to old television shows. For a short time at least in 2005, this producer had the rights to Knight Rider as a feature film. Now being East European, this woman didn’t actually know what Knight Rider was, and had a lengthy telephone conversation about what to do with this ‘Knight Rider’ while getting her hair styled by my friend, who not only knew what Knight Rider was, but also knew that I was a writer and remembered my habit of shouting ‘Kitt, buddy!” into my watch, to the amusement of all.

So my friend when out on a limb for me, as said ‘My friend Corny is a brilliant writer and he knows Knight Rider backwards and forwards! He could write your screenplay!’ (How I got the nickname Corny is a long, long story that perhaps does relate to the aforementioned watch-based attempts at humor). The client expressed an interest in seeing a Knight Rider script by this ‘Corny’ person, some phone calls were made, and the first season of Knight Rider was at once moved to the top of my Netflix cue.

Now, if you have fond memories of the show like I did, don’t do this. The show hasn’t aged well. There are things to like about it, but mostly it’s such a product of eighties network prime-time that it’s painful for modern viewers every time Michael Knight attends a military funeral for a murdered Colonel that’s apparently being held in a room set aside for A.A. meetings on the base and Michael’s come to the funeral wearing those tight jeans a leather jacket and an unbuttoned shirt that reveals the luxurious hair of his chest so he can hit upon the deceased’s hottie of a lieutenant daughter at the funeral, and this kind of thing happens a lot.

But there was quite a bit to like about the show as well, and thinking the series needed a reboot instead of a continuation, my script followed the pilot pretty closely, with the Michael Long becomes Michael Knight, Wilton Knight is always on the verge of death, and Devon has a stick way up his ass. Knowing that the studio would have one shot to get Knight Rider back into the hearts of a new generation of tweens, I piled on all the goodies from the show, including evil twin after evil twin. That’s right, in my script, the first talking car we meet is KARR, and he is open for business.

By the time I finished my draft of the script, the project had come home to roost at Glen E. Larsen’s desk. He was responsible for finding a screenplay, and through my hairdresser connection, and her connection with other screenwriters and so on, my take on the whole thing was supposed to be handed off to him at his 2006 Superbowl party.

Did it happen? I honestly don’t know if Glen ever saw my work, or if I ever had a chance in hell, or where, exactly the project was when my friend told me they needed a script. Some of what she said is in conflict with what’s on Wikipedia, but hey, all this happened in Hollywood, so who know what was really happening?

I do know that my script was a thousand times better than the one used for the TV movie. In my script, things actually happen. There is industrial espionage, people are killed, there is illegal streetracing with indestructible cars, Karr has a railgun, someone invents a shirt that’s made out of diapers.

In the end, it was a good exercise for me, even if I did co-opt too much of the original pilot and you can hear the logic screaming in agony as I try to build rational for KARR to be participating in ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ style underground street racing in Los Angeles. My underground street racing villain, btw, is every bit as flat and idiotic as any character in ‘Need for Speed’ and that ilk, but this is a Knight Rider movie, people. It’s as close to real as my Muppets take Vietnam script.

But I’m proud of it just the same, and happy enough with it to make it available to you, the reader. Now that I know there’s no chance for a last minute, out-of-the-blue offer from Glen to buy my screenplay, I’m posting it on my website for all to see.

Go. Enjoy. And remember: One man, can always make a difference.

The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir thinks Rip Torn could replace Richard Basehart in the reboot, and appears every Wednesday.

New Story Up!

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:44:51 GMT

Hey all-

Haven't posted anything in a while, but I am giddily proud of my entry BT's latest Flash Fiction contest. The contest has a while to run yet, the topic is celebrity, and keep it under a 1000 words, and you too could be published alongside such works of brilliance!

Seriously, write something! It's fun!

--G

Dun Dun Dah Dah Dun

By Gordon Weir

Upon his return from the bleak wastelands of mankind’s possible pasts, Terence Lommi was the most famous man on earth.

Every living soul knew his name, had been told how he had braved the great magnetic fields that separated the ages, gone back in history and changed time, so that the world would not suffer the looming apocalypse. This one man, through bravery and recklessness beyond even that of the most revered hero of mankind’s past had saved all of humanity and made the world whole again.

He had done this at immeasurable cost to himself.

“No change.”

Dr. Osborne sighed in frustration. His patient- the most famous man on earth, the greatest hero mankind had ever known - stood motionless before him.

“So let’s sum up,” Dr. Osborne said. “We have no evidence of pulmonary or cardiovascular activity. No muscular response to any stimulus, only a brain wave pattern that is concurrent with that of a living human being, correct?”

“That’s right doctor,” his aide replied.

“What haven’t we tried?”

“How about an oil can?”

Dr. Osborne laughed in spite of himself. Everyone in this room had been narrowly spared death by nuclear fireball. There was bound to be some giddiness among them.

Terence Lommi heard their laughter. Somehow, his mind worked, his ears caught and processed sound, although his body was no longer flesh and bone.

The passage through time and the great magnetic fields had changed Terence Lommi in ways no one could have imagined, but had not killed him. Impossibly, he could hear, could see, could comprehend what was happening outside of the iron prison that had been his body.

What the doctors did not know, and could never understand, was that Terence’s relationship with time had been irreversibly changed. He could see time now: it was all around him, like a cocoon of brittle glass. Should Terence move the slightest, even to speak, he would change that careful arrangement, and the present would change.

He had given his humanity to make the world what it was now, lost his own future so that the final war would be averted. He dare not move for fear of disturbing what he had built at such sacrifice.

Five years passed. Nothing could be done with Terence. It was decided that what had come back through the magnetic fields wasn’t Terence at all, but some kind of simulacrum, a residue of that hero’s passage through time. The brain waves could be measured but such were impossible in a body composed of an alien, indestructible iron alloy. Thought required life, and life required motion. The iron form could not have one without the other. Terence Lommi had sacrificed his life to save humanity. That was evident to most, and eventually accepted even by those slow to concede hope.

It seemed fitting that the residue, the echo of Terence as the world knew him, was put in a place of honor. The largest crowd of humanity ever gathered witnessed the dedication of the monument to Terence, with the hero’s own metal form at the center of the memorial. Terence heard the words commemorating his achievement, and the gratitude pushed back the fear and the madness. For a while.

A decade passed.

Terence understood the correlation between his position in space and human history’s place in time. When sailing through the endless shadows of possible pasts, he had made changes to the flow of time that defused the inevitability of a nuclear holocaust, and the price for the persistence of the future was his own liberty. He was the only anomaly in this new future, and his slightest action could cause ruptures along the timeline that may well doom humanity anew.

Lost to his thoughts, and the non-Euclidian madness of the universe his impossible organic-steel senses could perceive, Terence might have supposed there was some relationship between his own mental sate and the well-being of humanity, but the truth was far less esoteric.

The war he had prevented had nearly happened due to the accumulated actions of all of humanity. Terence had put the train of history upon new tracks, but the engine still ran on the same fuel and was guided by similar hands. Within ten years, Terence’s contribution had lost its meaning, and the second chance he had afforded humanity had become fatally decayed.

His steel body stood atop a pillar in a square that for years had seen tens of thousands visitors, each here to thank the man who had given all to save them. Across the decade, however, the visits became less and the blowing seeds of the averted war took hold and sported anew. Fifteen years after the experiment that had reversed six hours of nuclear exchanged by 23 nations, the world was once again on the brink, Terence Lommi was all but forgotten, and he was also irretrievably mad.

A running gun battle was being fought around the monument when Terence took his first step in fifteen years. All around him, invisible panes of space/time, two-dimensional manifestations of possibility, shattered, and as each broke, some part of the world changed. Cities became forests, deserts became seas, the dead rose, the living dies, whole species disappeared, replaced by impossible horrors that had no place in the settled world man had come to accept as reality.

And as Terence walked, with fury at his wasted sacrifice the only emotion strong enough to remain afloat in the turbulent seas of his madness, he served his warrior’s duty. He took a machine gun from a soldier who shook in impudent fear at the sight of the walking steel messiah, and Terence Lommi began killing.

There was only one sliver of identity left to Terence, and he gave it voice, loud and strong, louder even than the working gun that claimed the lives of the men and women, the children he had once saved.

“I...” he shouted with all the volume his steel lungs could give, “...AM IRON MAN!”

The End

New Story Up! The Sean Mutiny

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:36:52 GMT

Hey all-

2008 gets off to a good start with a story of mine being featured on the cover of The Written Word! I'm very proud of this one so I hope you all enjoy!

Best wishes and happy new year,

Click on the cover of the January issue., which looks like this:

New Story Up!

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 15:53:36 GMT

Hey all-

Best wishes, happy holidays and so on. BBT has four entries in our flash fiction holiday contest-including one by me- reprinted below.

Celebrate and enjoy!

Mr. Pub’s Book of Impossible Paper Magic

By Gordon Weir

Christmas was always a busy time for Roy. Work this time of year was murder but even after a 16-hour shift at the warehouse he needed to find the strength to pick himself up and get out there in his Pontiac and cruise from neighborhood to neighborhood, to steal all the packages he can grab.

Roy has been pulling delivery grabs since he dropped out of college, which is to say, this would be the third year in a row that he’s driven around various neighborhoods and housing developments, looking for packages that UPS or the post office has left on someone’s front steps, and, if no one is around, snagging them. In all honesty, Roy steals mail year-round, keeping an eye out for mailboxes sprouting for those bright envelopes that mark a DVD or video game from the on-line rental services, but the weeks after Thanksgiving are prime time for him. It wasn’t unusual to finish a six-hour crawl around the city with a car full of swag, topped off with a double-handful of Christmas cards swiped form mailboxes that could contain tens, twenties, checks, or gift cards. An enveloped taped to the inside of the storm door with the words ‘Paperboy’ or ‘Mailman’ was like hitting the jackpot.

Christmas was an important time for Roy. The rest of the year, he felt that perhaps failing out of college and being bounced out of the army both had been terrible mistakes and that night shifts at the Postal headquarters was a dead-end, loser career. But around the holidays, when Roy augmented his own humble lifestyle with scores of gifts meant for others, he began to feel that he had gotten some value out of his experiences. College had taught him how easy it was to steal, and his misadventures in the army had taught him not to shit where he ate. So although countless pieces of mail and packages passed through his hands every night while at work, he had never stolen one of them. He kept that separate.

Roy had few friends and he’d burned the bridges with his family long ago, so Christmas morning was spent alone and not with brightly-colored gifts but brown pasteboard shipping boxes. This season’s haul was a solid one but not a record-breaker. The DVD sleeves contained films he’d already stolen copies of (the risk you run when everyone is renting the same few blockbusters) but the packages were solid: a hefty cookbook, a watch, some jewelry, and some Christmas ornaments. What he didn’t want, he’d sell on-line.

There was also a book, a large, hardcover called ‘Mr. Pub’s Book of Impossible Paper-Folding Magic.’ The book had a garish cover and was filled with bright photographs of some stooge wearing a light blue arrow shirt demonstrating various ‘magic’ tricks that could be performed by folding sheets of paper. Roy was only slightly interested in the book but the word impossible caught his attention. So when everything was opened and the floor littered with packing peanuts and plastic air bladders, he came back to the book.

Roy had recently heard a news story where someone had folded a piece of paper without tearing it in half twelve time- the previous record had been eight. As the paper’s thickness doubled each time, it soon became thicker than it was wide and could not be folded. But the book claimed to show how a piece of paper could be folded twenty-one times.

Roy got a piece if paper from a printer he’d taken off of a stranger’s doorstep last year. Seven folds was the best he could do. He studied the book. He made eighteen folds on his first try.

Three hours later, Roy had folded a sheet of 8.5X11 paper in half twenty-one times. He had made an origami Klein bottle hat had no inside or outside. And he was working on a complicated fold called ‘The Inverse Tesseract.’

The directions for the trick came with a warning: ‘This fold will amaze your friends, but may also disrupt your personal spatial relationship with reality as a whole, so this fold is for experts only!” the man in the blue shirt was smiling and holding up a incredibly complex jumble of angles made from crisp, white paper. The object looked like a giant starfish trying to have sex with a Gehry building with the whole thing reflected in a hall of mirrors, but the directions said it took only eight folds, made at precise angles, to create the thing.

Try as he might, Roy couldn’t get it right.

He took a break, got up from the couch, and went into the kitchen for a beer. He stepped into the living room and saw the book before him. Looking down at his hand, there was no beer. He turned and went back though the door and into the living room.

Roy stopped. He turned again and looked through the doorway into the kitchen. He faced the kitchen and took a careful step forward into the living room. He turned again, put both hands on the doorjamb, concentrated on the refrigerator, gave a mighty pull- and threw himself head first into the living room.

He gave up on the kitchen and tried for the hallway to the stairs. He kept coming back into the living room. He tried the window- he was on the third floor, but what the hell. He felt the cold air, saw the snow swirling in as it stuck to his ragged wool sweater, stuck his leg over the sill, and climbed into the living room every time.

He tore his carefully folded paper model apart- tore all his efforts apart, each one coming undone like a complex knot of bundled time, each exhaling a soft breath as their structure came unknotted and whatever possibilities they contained were released.

Roy waded through drifts of crumbled white paper, rushed through the kitchen door and into the living room.

Roy began to worry.

The End