An apt one from Neil

Nicholas Was...

Older than sin and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarfs, invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho

Ho

Ho

Neil Gaiman is totally church pt.2

Here's another story from Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things that i typed up, it's probably not really legal but i'm just trying to spread the good word. The way it's formatted makes it a bit of a pain to read but it's the way he wrote it out so i wanted to leave it the same:

My Life

My life? Hell, you don't want to hear about my life. Jesus, my throat is dry...
A drink? Well, since you're buying, and it's a hot day, sure. Why not. Just a little one.
Maybe a beer. And a whisky chaser. It's good to drink, on a hot
day. Only
Problem with drinking is it makes me remember. And
sometimes i don't want
To remember. I mean, my mom: there was a woman. I never
knew her as a woman
But i seen photographs of her, before the operation. She said i
needed a father,
And seeing my own father had dumped her after he regained
his eyesight (following
A blow to the head from a Burmese cat, which jumped from a
penthouse apartment window and fell
Thirty stories, miraculously striking my father in exactly the
right place to restore his sight,
And then lending uninjured on the sidewalk, proving it's true
what the say about
Cats always landing on their feet), claiming he had thought he
was marrying her twin sister
Who looked completely different, but had, through a miracle of
biology, exactly the same voice
Which was why the judge granted the divorce, closed his eyes
and even he couldn't tell them apart.
So my father walked out a free man, and on the way from the
court he was struck on the head
By detritus falling from the sky; there was folks said it was
lavatorial waste from a plane
Through chemical examination revealed traces of elements
unknown to science, and it said
In the papers that the fecal matter contained alien proteins,
but then it was hushed up.
They took my fathers body away for safekeeping. The
government gave us a receipt
Through in a week it faded, i guess it was something in the
ink, but that's another story.
So then my mom announced i needed a man around the house
and it was going to be her.
And she worked a deal with that doctor so when the two of
them won the Underwater Tango contest
he agreed to change her sex for nothing. growing up i called
her dad, and knew none of this.
Nothing else interesting has ever happened to me. Another
drink?
Well, just to keep you company maybe, another beer, and don't
forget the whisky,
Hey, make it a double. It isn't that i drink, but it's a hot day, and
even when you're
Not a drinking man...You know,
it was just such a day as this my wife dissolved. I'd ready about
the people who blew up,
Spontaneous combustion, that's the words. but mary-Lou -
that was my wife's name,
We met the day she came out of her coma, seventy years asleep
and hadn't aged a day,
It's scary what ball-lightning can do. And all the people on that
submarine,
Like Mary-Lou, they all were frozen in time, and after we were
wed she'd visit them,
Sit by their bedsides, watch them while they slept. i drove a
truck, back then.
And life was good. She coped well with the missing seven
decades, and me, i like to think that if
The dishwasher had not been haunted - well, possessed, i
guess, would be more accurate-
She'd still be here today. It preyed upon her mind, and the only
exorcist that we could get
Turned out to be a midget from Utrecht and actually not a
priest at all,
For all he had a candle, bell and book. And by coincidence, the
very day my wife,
All haunted by the washer, deliquesced - went liquid in out
bed - my truck was stole.
That was when i left the States to travel round the world.
And life's been dull as ditchwater since then. except.... but
no, my mind is going blank.
My memory's been swallowed by the heat. Another drink?
Well, sure....

Neil Gaiman is totally church pt.1

I love this author. I believe he is the reason there are so many bland, unoriginal and boring people in the world - he got way more than his fair share of imagination when they were parceling it out at the Beginning. I have two short stories (poems actually i think) to share with you, both of them can be found in his new book Fragile Things.

The first one i got from www.spiderwords.com

The Day the Saucers Came

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,

Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,

And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,

Waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us

And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow

But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,

Was the day that the graves gave up their dead

And the zombies pushed up through soft earth

or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,

Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,

But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was

Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us

A ship built of dead-man's nails, a serpent, a wolf,

All bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could

Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out

But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day the floodgates broke

And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites

Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities

And charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of

gold

While giants feefofummed across the land, and killer bees,

But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day

The Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came

And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day

All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the

Computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the

day

Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,

And all the bells of London were sounded, the day

Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,

The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,

You didn't notice any of this because

you were sitting in your room, not doing anything

not even reading, not really, just

looking at your telephone,

wondering if I was going to call.