, originally uploaded by kwikzilver.

the holographic bartender program

that the Down Lounge franchise subscribed to could be amusing, or it could be sort of a pain in the ass....the tired looking mousy blonde on the bar stool to my right was just trying to get a gin-and-tonic, but the holotender was giving her a whole song and dance....almost like the cyber-circuits were trying to hit on her....what sense does that make?

"Ah yes, the gin and the tonic, my dear." drawls the program in the accents of W.C. Fields, it's facial features fleetingly morphing to fit the voice.

"Affirmative" she mutters, holding her head up with a hand under her chin.

"With the tall glass and rocks and the lime wedge, the whole nine yards or what have you....by the way my dear what have you?" offers the silly machine, sounding like Groucho, all of a sudden sporting the wide painted on 'stash, eyebrows pumping, cigar flicking the illusion of ash.

The poor girl turns and looks at me with a drop-jawed helpless hang-dog expression of mounting dispair....

"Just get the lady the fucking drink, you two-bit piece of binary trash, or I'll kick your virtual butt clear into the n-dimension." says I.

"One generous tonic, coming right up!" says Jackie Gleason, in his barkeep persona....I forget his name in that sketch.....

From "The Coffee Trader" by David Liss

"She knew that when they were boys their father had told them that Lienzo brothers had never gotten along, not since their great-great-grandfather had killed their great-great-great uncle in an argument over a tavern bill. When he saw the boys playing happily together, he would remind them of this tradition."

it came out really tender and moist

it came out really tender and moist, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

small world

small world #2, originally uploaded by bass_nroll.

the horizon is very close

on a small world.....and the sky isn't very high....you can see right through to the stars all the time, day or night. And the days and nights are real short and fast, with the small world spinning around so quick.......and with the small gravity to match the small world, it's amazing that the quick spin doesn't just throw you off through the thin sky to the looming stars.....you kind of feel on the edge all the time, like everything is transient.....even more transient than it really is.....but all the big bountiful worlds are filled up by now, so we poor children of the future must make do with what's left.....little bitty stray worlds nobody else wanted to bother with before....there are some good points I guess....it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to the next town, because there's not enough room for it to be far away.....so it's easy to visit with your relatives on holidays.....

dead forest

dead forest, originally uploaded by sarafigal.

there was a forest

east of here, before the leaf blight came along. Now there is the ruin of a forest....some sticks still standing, but mostly just logs moldering on the ground....some mutant brush has come up, strange looking with the purple foliage that works in the new atmosphere, with the new chemical balance of the soil....but there aren't any animals out there anymore....all that moves are the creeping carpets of stray nanocultures, the aborted "fixes" they tried to plug the holes in the ecosystem with back when there was still a government that thought it could do things. That's all in the past now.....as long as I have been here we've had to rely on suits and masks to breath and walk around....we need powercells and smart materials to give us the energy to stay alive, to fight the toxins.....the sky is still blue...sort of....the river still flows....but it's not exactly water that goes downstream anymore....the old highways are buckled and cracked, the old towns abandoned.....we cyborgs wander endlessly and aimlessly ......we scavenge what we can from the leavings of the old human race, but it's a losing battle......to reproduce would be immoral.....what monster would bring a child into this world?

biscuit jar

biscuit jar, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

flags in the breeze

flags in the breeze, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

from the front porch

strangers

Contrail & Shadow, originally uploaded by Jeff Kubina.

streaks in the sky

rolling booms of shuttles coming down.....this has been going on for days now, more and more of the strangers descending from the big space ships you can actually see up there in orbit with your own eyeballs, the damn things are that huge.....so far none of them have come down near us, isolated out here in the sierras.....most are probably landing around Newport and Angel Town, the big settlements on the coastal plain. Why are they coming here now? Maybe the trans-dimensional disturbances have chased them off the older worlds. That's what they get for messing with reality, if that's what's going on. We came out this far to try to keep clear of all that....people weren't meant to slide around on astral planes, in and out of various multiverse phases....it's just not natural. Just give me that old time Reality, like our Fathers used to know. Out here we've got dirt and rocks and trees and dogs and real born children....all the way things used to be, and should be. The strangers have become too strange altogether, mixing genes with fairy realms, with aliens, with God knows what. And they keep opening doors that should have been left shut and locked. At first it was all great wonder and glory and dreams come true....but bad things started coming too soon enough. So here they are now in their gigantic faster than light flying cities, trying to get away from all that weirdness and grief by seeking refuge on our poor little frontier planet.....damn them.....they should leave us alone.

fall trees

fall trees, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

out at the falls edited photo

omnishades

are a cheap trick....they look like sunglasses, a fashion statement, but they are really a way to get a digital overlay of your surroundings. Nano-tech circuits access cyberspace and give the wearer video and audio ....eye movements and retina focus scroll the cursor. A step up are the contact lens controllers ......nobody can see that you are wired.....yet the smart lens and the ear canal audio keep you online. And to go top dollar, to be real secret agent hip, you can go ahead and just drink the damn circuitry.....a nano cocktail that settles into your gray matter and starts picking up the radio waves that run the postmodern world.....you want a drink?

in the mall

Up and down, and all around, originally uploaded by bhophoto.

in a mall

on Mars, the Eastgate Mall, in Paradise City.....Eddie cooly leans back against the wall near the InPlant kiosk, checking out the traffic.....he thumbs the little slide switch on the bottom of the right hand side of his omnishades, calling up an overlay pirated from SolarCreditAgency.....the SCA patch puts dollar signs above the passersby that are recognized by the data bank scanners....it always amuses Eddie that the sort of threadbare looking older ladies always have the higher ratings, while the spiffy dressing thirty-something dudes sometimes barely rate at all....the older generations have the bucks, while youth sucks. Same old story has been going on for most of the 21st Century.....and will keep on into the fast approaching 22nd, probably. Just too many young people, is the root of the situation....and they keep coming, even with the birth tax being so outrageous.....Eddie waits calmly....what he's scanning for is a female in her twenties with more bucks than he has himself, which isn't saying much....Eddie is damn near broke....but if he can find some likely chick to give the old song-and-dance.....maybe he can sleaze his way into a free lunch, at least.....

http://www.nicktingle.net/2007/01/yard-chicken.html

guess they are still crazy at Oxy

2009-11-07_Jeffers-377, originally uploaded by Occidental College.

guitar light

guitar light, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

Alley Monster

Alley Monster, originally uploaded by DJVelveteen.

beneath the be-bop moon

I've got stars in my beard and I feel real wierd.....coming off a twelve hour shift at nine on a Thursday morning, I wait in my Jeep for the bar to open at ten. I can see the alley door from here in the public parking lot off Second.....Pat has already been in and out a couple of times with trash or whatever, and Dan with the Bud truck has come and gone.....Pat sticks his head out the door about five minutes 'til, and waves me on in. It is blessfully dim in the Down Lounge, after the bright morning sunshine outside.....a pint of Coors with a can of Snappy Tom in it starts things off....Lucia comes in from the taco shop next door, and me and Pat both ask for huevos rancheros, with corn tortillas.....a couple more reprobates wander in.....Cowboy Bill puts some dollars in the jukebox, and starts playing Patsy Cline.....the kid from next door brings us our styrofoam breakfast boxes, with plastic forks and paper napkins.....Pat and I chow down, as Cowboy Bill negotiates with the kid in spanglish, trying for that kind of breakfast steak they do, fixed his own peculiar Texas way......the food gone, I graduate to a Bloody Mary, which, at this time of day, comes with a pickled egg .....fine with me, more protein.....

NO ACCESS to the HOLLYWOOD SIGN

NO ACCESS to the HOLLYWOOD SIGN, originally uploaded by dogwelder.

We were partying in Hollywood

but I woke up in the Berkeley hills. I didn't know the name of the girl under the quilt with me. I found my jeans, and tried to figure out where the smell of waffles was coming from. Searching for the kitchen, I stopped stunned briefly by the view from the huge living room window.....the fog breaking to reveal the bay and the bridges. In the kitchen I found Mary, whom I did know, and we ate many waffles, and drank Irish coffee. Slowly, others crawled out from under quilts and sleeping bags, and I helped crank out more waffles and coffee. There was a whole case of whiskey under the sink. Someone turned on the television, and they were bombing Hanoi. Howard had this funky Ford Fairlane with a 390, and we blasted south down the 101, and were back in Political Science 200 by eight Monday morning. I got an A minus in that class. Forty years later, I found out that the girl under the quilt had a top ten country music hit somewhere along the line, but just died last week of an overdose in Hamburg, Germany.

Durthers

Durthers was trying to locate two nits to make a cream dela coffee out of the shoot. It would warm him to a frazzle and he would be off, but not without two nits. He was on his own in the valley between the four ground where two nits should have been located, but were not. Instead he gathered up three extra nickels' and a hounds tooth to get a small Coffee, sugar, cream out of the slot. It burned his hand and he almost dropped it. But then he made his way out of the pass and into the neither region where he took up a cab to which he said : "4th by 8th" and was off.

By 4th by 8th was a tall, tall building of which Durthers, having paid the cab, finished his coffee and made his way into it was accosted by security.

"No, No, not Burthers, D-urthers..."

The security bots made a note of it and sent him on his way. Down the trapezium and into a slot which would take him to the 314 floor. He had time to take a pee witch he did from the common bathroom. Made sure his hair was coiffed and departed to one of the three instances of floor 314. Milliquim.com, he passed. Freeval.com. he passed. And made his way to Boodiddy.com and said hello to the secretary.

"Hello Ms. M."

"Why Durthers how are you?"

"Very fine Ms. M, and you?"

Ms. M had to be around 98 give or take a year, but she looked 45.

"All very kind, Durthers, all very kind...." She paused to make a connection with Boodiddy. "...you know my knees are about to give out, but what are you going to do? He shall see you now."

The portal made way for Durthers. He said "Ado" to Mr. M.

Boodiddy was awash in the land of dreams. But with one eye open to the portal he saw Durthers come in and focused his way into being. He had once weighted 350 lbs, back in the day. But now, 178,  fit him to a tee.

"Come in, come in." he said. Make yourself a coffee and I shall be right with you.

Boodiddy went from a bath rich in hearthstones to a shower and then got cleaned up. He took a look at his face. At approaching 217 years, he looked weathered but approachable. He found his slippers and put on robe and slicking back his hair went to meet his guest.