The String and The Pearl

The String and The Pearl

A string of pearls once hung round a woman’s throat. The woman liked to hold them in her hands, and feel their smooth surety. These are my lucky pearls, she thought, and liked them best of all her things.

The woman was leaving a place alone, as sometimes was her way, when a raven saw her. Look at those grubs, the raven thought, as he watched the pearls with hunger. The bird swooped down and grabbed the string, the woman shouting loudly. The string ripped, the pearls fell down, strewing the ground with small white seeds.

These are not grubs, thought the bird. My lucky pearls, thought the woman, and gathered them up in her glove, sliding them down the empty fingers, like a tasseled purse. She left the raven only the pearl in his mouth and the broken piece of string. The raven took the string to line his nest, and coughed up the fat pearl to one of his chicks.

"More!' cried the chick. "More!"


- from The Insect Diviner

The Sausage and the Coal

The Sausage and the Coal

A sausage was placed on a grill by a hungry man.

I will cook this sausage until it is charred and crispy, thought the man, saliva on his tongue. He turned the sausage with a long fork and pricked its skin. The juices ran down and hit a hot coal.

The sausage thought, I wish I was that hot coal, then the man wouldn’t eat me.

The coal sizzled from the hot juices and thought, I wish I was that sausage, then I wouldn’t fade away.

The man turned the sausage and thought, I wish I had another sausage.


- from Abel's Fables, by Jason Messinger

The Sweet Smith

The Sweet Smith

There was a place where a sweet smith lived, who made sweets for children and adults. He made sweets as yellow as sunshine, and as dark as earth. Sweets as finely carved as insects, and as crudely shaped as rocks. Some were small like raindrops, others large as millstones. Some were as thin as a spider’s web, others as brittle as a wasp nest. But all were as sweet as the honey bee’s home, as sweet as your first secret kiss, as sweet as a baby’s ten toes. The sweet smith delighted everyone with his creations, but especially himself.

Now in this same place was a woman who knew all the names of everything, and all the words ever written, and all the ways that this becomes that, and that becomes this. But one thing always eluded the woman, one thing she could not learn. What was inside her own heart? At last the woman decided that perhaps someone else could see what eluded her, so she found the sweet smith and gave him a request. "Make me a sweet that is filled the same as my own heart."

The sweet smith looked in his recipe books, and searched through his shelves. He went a great distance for the things he needed, and spent a long time perfecting his plan. At last he made the sweet, and called the woman in.

"Here it is," said the sweet smith. "Here is the sweet, filled the same as your own heart."

"Ah," said the woman who picked it up, then put it down, then turned around and left.

"Wait," cried the sweet smith, "don’t you want to taste?"

"You eat it," smiled the woman, walking away.


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Michael Jackson Was a Fembot

Michael Jackson Was a Fembot!        

8/4/2009

New evidence has been released that the recent death of the super pop-cultural celebrity, singer and entertainer Michael Jackson was a hoax. The actual Michael Jackson tragically died in 1977 when he contracted a fatal case of Legionnaires' Disease while performing with the Jackson Five at a Veteran's Hospital Benefit in the nations Capitol. Scheduled to star in The Wiz, Walt Disney ‘Imagineers’ created what many experts are now saying was the most successful robotic hoax since Joseph Stalin, which mesmerized the USSR for over a decade.

US News and Entertainment Corp released information that reveals that since Michael Jackson's actual death in 1977, the entertainer the world knew and collectively adored was actually a robot-like animatronic device engineered by the scientists of Disney Worldring Industries.

 

First envisioned in the late fifties, when the untimely death of teen star icon James Dean showed the movie industry the critical financial incentive to keeping stars ‘alive’ past their deaths, robotic devices have captivated the American Public for decades. Starting with Elizabeth Taylor, the first successful pop stars to be 'resurrected' through the miracle of feminized robotic devises - or ‘Fembots’ - enjoyed lengthy careers unhindered by the actual mechanics of living. These synthetic creations became actual puppets for CEO's of the entertainment industry, creating pure revenue streams easily hidden through creative accounting tricks coupled with public stories of profligate spending by those 'crazy entertainers'.

 

Designed to capitalize on pop culture's whims, Michael Jackson was the first successful male version of the Fembot, although many argue that designers never got past their earlier female influences. Over time, the marvelous singing, dancing and squeaking automaton was revised and improved upon to add new dance moves and more life-like qualities. While the verisimilitude of each new model was improved, the entire line of robotic devices had been plagued by slip-shod construction, resulting in bizarre public displays and inconsistent physical characteristics.

While later versions added longer interaction-simulations, many experts now argue that the best version of the Michael Jackson doppleganger was the original created for the production of the film The Wiz. Later versions had been famously marred by programming glitches and poorly reasoned PR campaigns, as when Never Land Ranch was created to make the Michael Jackson robot seem more sympathetic to children.

 

The general appearance of the Michael Jackson impersonating machine was modified over the years to reflect a changing taste for a ‘whiter’ entertainer, as determined by focus groups for Disney Worldring Industries. “Later efforts to humanize the device, with short term marriages and adopted children, only met with limited success,” says an expert in Social-Imagineering who worked at Disney Worldring but could not reveal his identity pending an ongoing Federal Investigation.

Many who were duped by the sly ingenious simulacrums are now demanding amends. Jackson’s Mother-In-Law and known Fembot Pricilla Presley may still be called on to testify at upcoming congressional hearings on the preponderance of artificial entertainment idols marketed to the American public. Congress is expected to focus on whether Chinese manufacturers are partly to blame for our cherished illusions being pierced. Alleged master criminal Diana Ross faces up to two hundred and fifty consecutive life sentences for her part in the vast fraudulent conspiracy against the American buying public.

In related news, President Barack Obama sat down for a beer last week with honored intellectual Henry Louis Gates and Sergeant James Crowley, the police sergeant who arrested Gates in his own home. Sergeant Crowley called his beer "too warm", Dr. Gates complained his beer was "too cold", but President Obama called his beer "just right", thus ending over three hundred years of racial tension in America.