"Whenever I see someone pull a cigarette from a pack at a party, I'm always reminded of my college days where I once ate a cigarette on a bet. Many people ask me what I got for that and I tell them that the cigarette entered my blood stream through my stomach and I becamse immune to cigarette smoke. Unfortunately, the only place I could make use of my super power was at dance clubs and, unfortunately, I wasn't immune to the ear splitting volume or willing to put up with the bullshit pretentiousness of most of the people I met there. Of course, that was back in college when everyone went places in groups and just got hammered for the sake of it. Now I find myself single and dating people that keep pushing me back to the clubs like there is anything appealing about them. The only reason people go there is to be able to feel free to dance in whatever way they please that would make them look weird at a party. It all just ends up looking like a sea of people with no personal space swinging their arms wildly and rocking their hips."
The red head in the short skirt sucking on a Marlboro exhaled loudly in plume of nicotine enriched air. Standing next to her was a man in his late thirties with a buzzcut and a faded blue t-shirt that used to hold a Cubs logo long ago lost in the pain of seasons failed. He stared wide eyed at her waiting for a response to his unsolicited soliloquy. She smiled a patronizing smile with more than a little lipstick on her front teeth before hissing, "Go away."
"Statistics state that cigarette smokers are more likely to be under-educated or high school drop outs. 20% of white women smoke and I'd say roughly 95% of the men here are not speaking to you right now. You have no ring on your finger and have been sitting alone here for the past 20 minutes. Even if someone is just around the corner coming to meet you, you should heed sage advice no matter what moment in time you find yourself in. If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."
The stare the odd man received was meant to melt him to the puddle of nothingness she had already imagined him being before she dropped her gaze to her ash tray and glanced around the room at the single men not coming to see her. She turned her head to the table next to her in time to see a very attractive man in his late twenties glancing her way. She smiled and exhaled another stream of smoke as he frowned back, waved the smoke away from his head and walked away to the bar leaving his table empty. Turning back to her unwanted conversationalist, she found nothing but a hazy view of an empty space in front of the bar. When she turned back to her ash tray, she found him sitting next to her on the now abandoned stool left from the next table.
"I'm Allen. You'll want to remember my name when you call me later." Laying a business card on the table with a phone number scrawled across the front, Allen turned to the door and walked away. He managed to get to the curb before his cell phone rang. He let it go to voicemail and waved for a cab.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Not So Hidden Treasure
Thanis McGuffin presses the round plastic power button on his PC and blows the steam off of his coffee cup as the monitor lights up. He sips the cup apprehensively and swears out loud at his impatience. His lips sting with the burning sensation from the ghost of boiling coffee past that is not upsetting his stomach. As the sensation returns to his lips, he begins to taste where the scalding has now past his tongue and reaches for another packet of cream.
Dumping the small cup of cream into his mug, he spills a few drops on the keyboard as he attempts to login while attending to his coffee. He feigns a sense of confidence as if he does this sort of multi-tasking all of the time even though no one is watching him. The status bar slowly ticks towards 100% loading as he thinks to himself how much he needed a newer computer if this job pans out. He glances at the post-it note on his desk with the name Gregory Larker. A study of the last name gives him more comfort as it is not a common sounding last name and it looks American enough not to be a common name with which he is not familiar.
The speakers shriek a triumphant, high pitched tada noise causing Than to nearly knock over his coffee onto the stack of papers on his desk. The papers don't have any meaning, but the mere sight of them legitimizes him as a private detective with experience and plenty of cases to show for it. He couldn't let the man in the $1,000 suit not cut quite wide enough to conceal the bulge of what he assumed was a gun that had shown up that morning think he was a rookie. He had been fired from his job as a computer lab monitor for abusing his computer rights and ignoring his responsibilities. Coincidentally, he was caught while printing out the certificate for completing the at home private investigation online course. He had aced the forensics question and was able to correctly guess what Occam's razor indicated. The certificate was now hung in his office with a phone notary seal he made with sunflower seed impressions and a pin.
Than clicked on the small blue icon to launch a web browser. He thought about how much easier the PI business would have been 50 years back if they could have googled their suspects to find them. After the search results for Gregory Larker asked him if he meant Gregory Parker or the Gregorian Lark, a web page from an old geocities space came up. The page listed itself as the home space for Gregory Larker of Bulmot, Massachusetts. This was turning out to be easier than he had imagined. The site had no pictures, but listed a link to his facebook profile.
Than clicked the link and watched as the picture loaded showing a man in his mid-twenties with curly black hair and a day's worth of facial hair. He listed his hometown as Bulmot, but he had himself listed under the San Francisco network of contacts. Even his bio matched perfectly and then some to the story told to him be the gun toting suit he met that morning.
"Greg was a pharmaceutical lab assistant working on a breakthrough cure for various forms of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma when his lab caught fire taking all of the data and research in the lab. Luckily, Greg held onto the backups of the research, but went into hiding when he discovered the fire was set intentionally. I am currently in hiding and can not be found anymore. I will continue my research outside of the reaches of those wishing me harm. My cell is 510-833-6868 if you need to reach me."
If only every case could be this easy, Than thought to himself. Jumping onto the Southwest.com site to book a cheap flight to San Francisco, Than began mentally packing his bags and shopping for a new laptop.
Dumping the small cup of cream into his mug, he spills a few drops on the keyboard as he attempts to login while attending to his coffee. He feigns a sense of confidence as if he does this sort of multi-tasking all of the time even though no one is watching him. The status bar slowly ticks towards 100% loading as he thinks to himself how much he needed a newer computer if this job pans out. He glances at the post-it note on his desk with the name Gregory Larker. A study of the last name gives him more comfort as it is not a common sounding last name and it looks American enough not to be a common name with which he is not familiar.
The speakers shriek a triumphant, high pitched tada noise causing Than to nearly knock over his coffee onto the stack of papers on his desk. The papers don't have any meaning, but the mere sight of them legitimizes him as a private detective with experience and plenty of cases to show for it. He couldn't let the man in the $1,000 suit not cut quite wide enough to conceal the bulge of what he assumed was a gun that had shown up that morning think he was a rookie. He had been fired from his job as a computer lab monitor for abusing his computer rights and ignoring his responsibilities. Coincidentally, he was caught while printing out the certificate for completing the at home private investigation online course. He had aced the forensics question and was able to correctly guess what Occam's razor indicated. The certificate was now hung in his office with a phone notary seal he made with sunflower seed impressions and a pin.
Than clicked on the small blue icon to launch a web browser. He thought about how much easier the PI business would have been 50 years back if they could have googled their suspects to find them. After the search results for Gregory Larker asked him if he meant Gregory Parker or the Gregorian Lark, a web page from an old geocities space came up. The page listed itself as the home space for Gregory Larker of Bulmot, Massachusetts. This was turning out to be easier than he had imagined. The site had no pictures, but listed a link to his facebook profile.
Than clicked the link and watched as the picture loaded showing a man in his mid-twenties with curly black hair and a day's worth of facial hair. He listed his hometown as Bulmot, but he had himself listed under the San Francisco network of contacts. Even his bio matched perfectly and then some to the story told to him be the gun toting suit he met that morning.
"Greg was a pharmaceutical lab assistant working on a breakthrough cure for various forms of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma when his lab caught fire taking all of the data and research in the lab. Luckily, Greg held onto the backups of the research, but went into hiding when he discovered the fire was set intentionally. I am currently in hiding and can not be found anymore. I will continue my research outside of the reaches of those wishing me harm. My cell is 510-833-6868 if you need to reach me."
If only every case could be this easy, Than thought to himself. Jumping onto the Southwest.com site to book a cheap flight to San Francisco, Than began mentally packing his bags and shopping for a new laptop.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Levitation
Levitation comes from the Latin word levitas meaning "lightness". It is described in Webster's dictionary as the act or process of levitating especially the rising or lifting of a person or thing by means held to be supernatural. Some heroes may use high tech devices to mimic a sort of anti-gravity or a propulsion system giving the body release from the bonds of gravity, but true levitation comes from the constant stable suspension beyond the earth's gravitational forces. Some super small objects maybe be able to be levitated by the use of the Casimir effect by equalizing the force between two plates causing no field of magnetic force. Human beings are incapable of levitation without mechanical means.
Tony awoke from a dream of kittens leaping from a cliff into the icy blue water of the Pacific ocean. He had fallen asleep 45 minutes earlier on the bus watching the billboards in the city go by leading him to this strange imagery. He now sees puppies chasing giant red tennis balls in an empty swimming pool. Before long he's back to the cliff watching the kittens leap only now they don't reach the water. They've begun to soar into the clouds followed by the tennis balls and followed by the chasing puppies. A psychiatrist would see a simple mind looking for the simple pleasures of childhood. A 28 year old man should not be thinking of such odd things.
This thought is still floating in his mind when he opens his eyes to a bus load of people watching him. They stare up at him confused by the 5 foot 8 inch man. Even the tall biker looking man with the severe handlebar mustache is staring up at him. His butt is not numb from the hard seat like his typical 2 hour bus ride's usual results. He looks to his shoes and sees his shoelace is untied and dangling over the back of the seat in front of him. The tips barely touch the seat back as Tony is floating four feet above his seat.
His head is pressing against the bars on the ceiling for a few seconds before he comes crashing to his seat. His left ankle lands on the seat back in front of him and his head bangs into the plexiglass window. He is still swearing under his breath when the bus slams to a halt and the bus driver demands he get off the bus.
"How do you expect me to get home? I'm in the middle of nowhere at least an hour from my stop!"
"Why should I care you freak? Fly home for all I care, just get off my damn bus." The bus driver now has the large biker guy behind him supporting the intimidation factor. Tony takes the hint and grabs his bag before walking to the rear doors and pressing his way onto the shoulder of highway 98. After an hour of walking, he arrived at a small roadside motel. After arguing with the young man behind the counter reading a comic, Tony was forced to get a room until the morning bus could arrive. His sleep would not be as sound as the bus trip.
Tony awoke from a dream of kittens leaping from a cliff into the icy blue water of the Pacific ocean. He had fallen asleep 45 minutes earlier on the bus watching the billboards in the city go by leading him to this strange imagery. He now sees puppies chasing giant red tennis balls in an empty swimming pool. Before long he's back to the cliff watching the kittens leap only now they don't reach the water. They've begun to soar into the clouds followed by the tennis balls and followed by the chasing puppies. A psychiatrist would see a simple mind looking for the simple pleasures of childhood. A 28 year old man should not be thinking of such odd things.
This thought is still floating in his mind when he opens his eyes to a bus load of people watching him. They stare up at him confused by the 5 foot 8 inch man. Even the tall biker looking man with the severe handlebar mustache is staring up at him. His butt is not numb from the hard seat like his typical 2 hour bus ride's usual results. He looks to his shoes and sees his shoelace is untied and dangling over the back of the seat in front of him. The tips barely touch the seat back as Tony is floating four feet above his seat.
His head is pressing against the bars on the ceiling for a few seconds before he comes crashing to his seat. His left ankle lands on the seat back in front of him and his head bangs into the plexiglass window. He is still swearing under his breath when the bus slams to a halt and the bus driver demands he get off the bus.
"How do you expect me to get home? I'm in the middle of nowhere at least an hour from my stop!"
"Why should I care you freak? Fly home for all I care, just get off my damn bus." The bus driver now has the large biker guy behind him supporting the intimidation factor. Tony takes the hint and grabs his bag before walking to the rear doors and pressing his way onto the shoulder of highway 98. After an hour of walking, he arrived at a small roadside motel. After arguing with the young man behind the counter reading a comic, Tony was forced to get a room until the morning bus could arrive. His sleep would not be as sound as the bus trip.
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