Snailzilla Attacks

-

Surfr
Originally uploaded by zenera

[Ficlets is being turned off by AOL on January 15. Here's one of my ficlets that never got posted here.]

Leaving gooey destruction in its wake, Snailzilla oozed back into the turquoise depths from whence it came.

Who knows why it chose to erupt (slowly) from its watery slumbers? Who can tell what provoked it into the (rather sedate, and quite beautiful) mating frenzy with New York? Perhaps only Professor Limpopo Flatnat, international playboy and mollusc expert.

Even now, the National Guard are combing the sticky ruins, searching desperately for a trace of the gallant Professor. Last seen leaping onto the writhing gastropod from the top of the Empire State building, a rusty letter-opener in one hand and a salt shaker in the other, his last words screamed over his shoulder to his faithful assistant, Juan: “I’ve always loved you, you know!”

He gave his life for the city, and the assistant, he loved. Perhaps his rapid application of salt caused the great beast to retreat, or perhaps, its fearsome lust slaked (and slathered) on the back of Liberty herself, the creature lost interest. We shall never know.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

(fre)ebooks

-
Tor are currently giving away free ebooks as part of a promotion for their new website. Just sign up for their newsletter and once a week they'll email you a link to download it in html, pdf, or mobi format. They're on their third book at the moment: " The Outstretched Shadow " by Mercedes Lackey and Someone Else Whose Name Isn't As Distinctive. The previous two were " Old Man's War " by that nice Mr. Scalzi, and " Spin " by Robert Wilson. I have a decent-sized screen on my PDA-phone-thing, and reading "Spin" was quite comfortable. There were advantages over the paper version (reading in the dark; not as heavy; easier to read one-handed while swaying on the commuter meat wagon; I always have my phone with me so I've always got a book too), and disadvantages (could not read at the beach; or anywhere in bright light; not as high contrast as print on paper which did give me a slight headache after an hour or so; my book now depe...
Read more

Best. Purchase. Ever.

-
About two weeks ago I managed to pop the little rubber cover off one of my Apple in-ear headphones . It pinged off into the middle of the open railway crossings we have here in Australia, during a collision with one of my more indecisive fellow-pedestrians. These little rubber doobries have to fit your lughole snugly otherwise they sound shithouse. I tried using the medium sized ones (the headphones come with three different sizes; my giant canals need the large size), but it was no good. I journeyed far and wide in search of replacement whatsits, but no-one makes them. Not even Apple. In times of crisis I find it helps to turn to a higher power. Google found me an article where someone recommended the use of the foam sleeves for the Shure E2C in-ear headphones . These happen to be a perfect fit for the Apple ones. Great! Only problem is that there are only two places in Australia that distribute them. One charges $35, with free shipping. The other charges $25 , plus $7 shipping. The ...
Read more

Sharing Files Between Windows Mobile and Mac OS X via Wi-Fi

-
Image
I bought an ibook just before they started bundling bluetooth, but after they started bundling airport extreme. On Friday, my new i-mate jasjam (also called a HTC Hermes / TyTN ) was delivered. It comes with Active Sync, which only works on PCs. It comes with a USB cable, but all I could do with that was charge the battery on a Mac. It has Wi-Fi and joined my home network easily, but it won't sync over wireless. A bit of googling later, and I found out that you can share files, and get it to work as a modem with a mac - but only via bluetooth. Grr - no good for me unless I shell out for a dongle. There's also Missing Sync , an Active Sync replacement for Mac OS X, but it costs money and requires OS 10.4 (I've got 10.3 - so that would be an extra $200 on top). I thought of using FTP to transfer files, but Windows Mobile doesn't come with a FTP client. You can buy them, but I'm a skinflint. Ah-ha, I thought, Windows Mobile probably supports SMB (the windows standard ...
Read more