• John Gruber
• Roger Ebert

Now for something a little less jubilant…

My lovely wife teaches in La Vega Independent School District, which serves the city of Bellmead. Her school, La Vega Intermediate School H. P. Miles Campus, was built in 1963, and is in horrible, horrible shape. It desperately needs to be renovated or rebuilt entirely, but nobody appears to really care.

-The 2000 census shows Bellmead’s population at 9,214. 29.5% were under 18 years of age, leaving 6,496 voting-age residents. Last night, just 1210 votes were cast for four school-related issuesless than 19% of the voting population of the city.-

Correction: The 2004 General Election results for Bellmead indicate that there were 4,847 registered voters. That means that 25% of the electorate turned up to vote yesterday. That’s a pitifully low number, but it positively dwarfs the 212 individuals (4.4%) who voted in 2004. By comparison, 59% of McLennan county registered voters participated in the 2008 election.

All four ballot issues were voted down.

• Bellmead won’t be building a new athletic facility.
• Bellmead won’t be building a new administrative building.
• Bellmead won’t be building a new intermediate school.
• Bellmead won’t be increasing taxes to pay for teacher raises or expanded school programs and services.

Finally, gay rights activists didn’t fare very well across the country, either. State amendments to ban gay marriage were passed in Arizona and Florida, and Arkansas voters approved a measure banning adoption or foster care by unmarried parents (backers of the measure made it clear that they were targeting homosexual couples).

So, here’s my analysis: The racial barrier has been broken. Children raised in low-income cities (and the teachers who essentially raise them) continue to suffer due to voter apathy and ignorance. We still discriminate against people based on what they do in their own bedrooms.

We have a long way to go.

To make a long story short, it whas phenomenal. The courses went thusly:

1. Pickled cucumber amuse bouche
2. Flounder sashimi with yuzu and shredded daikon salad
3. Poached Maine lobster with fennel and Granny Smith apple
4. Sweet shrimp sashimi with uni
5. Seared diver’s scallops with bone marrow, steamed chard greens and pickled chard stalks
6. Grilled halibut with crab gelée, okra, and heirloom cherry tomatoes
7. Sea bream with Thai chili
8. Escolar carpaccio
9. Young chicken with gooseberries and a mustardy sauce
10. Foie gras sushi (by far my favorite)
11. Oak-smoked chocolate, red pepper sorbet, dark chocolate sauce, bitter chocolate wafer, with a white chocolate powder

We’ll definitely go back, but probably not splurge on the omakase dinner. Instead, I could probably spend a couple of hours eating some amazing sashimi and sushi, and drinking some nice sake (I was pleasantly surprised by my first experience with unfiltered sake). It’d be a fantastic place to take friends and/or family…

I left my company later that evening, found and retraced my path through the woods, and emerged into the clearing. Threads of energy crackled from stone to stone, blue like the moonlight which filtered down through the treetops.

I stepped through the circle’s perimeter, hand grazing one of them fondly. They were more weathered than when I set them.

My centuries here complete, I gained the center, looked up, and went home.

I have very much enjoyed this project. I make no promises about continuing the pace, but I reserve the right to leave more literary detritus of this sort lying around. In the meantime, I am compelled to point you towards an amazing piece of flash fiction—indeed, the inspiration for my meager effort—by one Neil Gaiman: Nicholas Was…

I’ll never understand how my eyes singled her out of the crowd, or how our gazes somehow locked on each other across that morass. We found each other, though. We moved tentatively, locked onto a common frequency, bounced, twisted, danced, lived, died, were reborn. Always together, always in synchrony.

The night ended, as they all do, with the rising sun. We parted reluctantly. I see her sometimes, fleetingly, like moonbeams.

One to go.

Upon arrival at the nearest station, all attempts to enter the car were fruitless. Examination revealed that the doors were not functional: they were sections of the exterior surface molded and painted to look like doors.

The car was separated from the others and moved to a service building where it remained for one night before vanishing without a trace.

I tried to forgive his tripping feet and shoving hands, but human forgiveness has limits, and in the end I could allow him to continue no longer. It was the incident with the cat, about which I may have written elsewhere. I don’t recall.

In any case, I tricked him (with a promise of money, I assume) and led him down the creek bed to where the tangled birch roots caught his feet. I incanted the old words, and went home.

The wind whipping by was strong enough to cause him to lose control of the cycle if he let his head rise up too much. He kept his eyes fixed on the readouts instead, trusting them for advice far more than the limited field of vision afforded by the tiny windshield. At these speeds, eyes were essentially useless. Of course, so were human reflexes, but those were all he had to work with.

Projectiles rained down, white-hot and trailing streamers of plasma from their descent through the atmosphere.

Survival was paramount. Failure meant extinction.

Today is the day, he told himself. Records will be broken, doubters silenced. Today. Is. The. Day.

He ran.

His legs were pistons, stronger and faster than ever before. He rocketed down the runway toward the mark, unconsciously counting down the steps to launch time.

Three. Two. One. It was time.

He launched himself skyward, and never descended.

It wasn’t until I was being marched through the Reformatory that I began to understand. Even now, I am unable to accurately express in words what I saw, what I felt. What I heard, oh what I heard!

I hear footsteps coming, the jangling of keys. Today is my Emergence day. Pray for

He stood there a moment longer, regarding me coldly and massaging his throat, then issued a phlegmy cough and sat down.

“It is entirely inappropriate for you to barge in here like this,” he said. I could hear a buzzing undertone in his speech.

“You’re a fly,” I offered.

“Nonsense.”

“You’re an insect of some sort.”

“Preposterous.”

“I’m bringing bug spray next time.”

His gaze hardened.