Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Creation >

Far * Outing : yet another writing game

22:53 / 25.06.03

The only rule is that the first three words of every paragraph are "Neuro brain machine," and that these three words aren't used anywhere else in your portion of the story. Stream of concon writing is suggested.

Oh ya, and you've gotta use these things:

*

to divide paragraphs so things will look cooler.

Let's start.

Neuro brain machines decided they forgot to paint their pockets purple on the last day of their wedding state, so it all became a matter of accepting the facts that were handed to Mexico by the international bankers of Texas.

*

Neuro brain machines didn't choose to sign onto such hostile contracts, but the circumstances of the past days were reactionary tactics used to impose communist thought on liberal anarchists for the sake of fascist chess games.

*
Neuro brain machines had no idea if they could use the word "mind" or not, so the event of the Chess HItler went back to Texas where it belonged. Oh for the berries of Mexico! Science? I hardly even tried!

23:47 / 25.06.03

"New roe & brains, Machine," he said. The food-preparation unit cycled with a whirr and a jolt, then served up his steaming platter of fish eggs and headguts--along with a noe, typed in monospace font on a small square of cardstock: YOU SHOULD NOT EAT SO MANY ORGAN MEATS, SIR: IT IS BAD FOR YOUR GOUT.

*

Nero-Brahma sheen: the Empire never fell because it was never confined; Augustus never dictated its boundaries. And so through generations of Caesars (Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius) it expanded--until, in the day of Clodius Pilchus, the first garrisons were established in the northern edge of the Indian subcontinent. As was customary, the Emperor proclaimed himself an avatar of the local deity: idols were carved in his image, and the priests ere ordered to keep them highly polished.

Whisky Priestess

06:09 / 26.06.03

New-robed rain machine: it stands on the runway immobile, shivering slightly in the heat rising from the steaming tarmac. The Residents stare at it impassively through their eye slits: the thing is covered with an translucent, dust-proof mantle to prevent its delicate parts being blocked or eroded by the desert planet's endless sandstorms. But what parts? Beneath the mantle it seems jointless, constructed of a single piece of metal or plastic which shimmers sinuously like a mirage.

*

"Show us what it can do," growls a resident, whom old age has made suspicious, to the machine's guardian. The guardian flicks a button on a remote, which he ahnds to the elder before dashing for cover beneath the wing of his vehicle.

*

Nothing happens. The illusion of movement beneath the machine's iridescent mantle is maintained by the wind coming off the desert. As one, the Residents turn towards the guardian and begin to draw their scimitars.
"No, wait!" he cries, pointing to the device. "it's working!"
And it is. The impression of movement was true. Beneath the cover the machine - although it seems more organic than metallic now - is writhing and undulating, its silver surface flowing into itself like water. If the men of this dry planet were not so accustomed to the desert's wild dreams, they would say that it is dancing...

*

And thunder cracks overhead.

12:10 / 26.06.03

New Rose Bahrain—mission control for the illegal movement of information and materiel throughout North Africa and beyond, and named in homage to the work of William Gibson—was ideally situated for its purposes: the ready petrodollars made for a high standard of living, and the archipelago's central position in the Gulf simplified the logistics of transportation and distribution. Most importantly, though, its proprietors had on their side the simple truth that it is astonishingly easy to move contraband in a society that has fetishized female modesty. A woman in the company of her brother could pass unchallenged in the souks, and the Bahraini cops (even the ones that hadn't been bought off) would never dream of searching such a woman—even if the bewitching dark eyes behind the hijab belonged in reality to a thirteen-year-old Thai ladyboy with microchips sewn into the lining of his burqua, a bellyful of smack-filled condoms, and two saline bags swimming with illegally harvested stem cells stuffed into his brassiere.

*

New robe. Rain. Ma chine soie—my China silk cassock, the last one I owned—had been ruined in a sudden downpour like this one. Too bad, but really: I'd never have gotten the stains out. When I was a boy, my maman took me to a fortune-teller: the gypsy told me I had the hands of a priest. And years later—ah, God has been so good to me. I laugh to myself as I stroll in the rain, from Sacré Coeur (where I left the boy, weeping, in the confessional to do up his trousers in privacy) across town for Evenbsong at the nunnery: the nuns will be so glad to see me. I laugh, and the rain from Heaven is a baptism, washing boystink from my priest's hands, and I am born again.

*

New row, bran. My jeans stick to my legs, wet with labor sweat. My shoulders ache. I am walking heavily, guiding the plough. There is no horse, there is no ox—only the earth, and the plough, and the seed. The small field for bran oats, thirty rows, and the rest of the property for corn. The seed cost me dear. Reach the fence, lean against it for a moment, then turn. The day is hot. The plough bites the earth, and, step by heavy step, there is another new row.

14:27 / 26.06.03

No rainbow, rain machines lining the route just beyond the fields, immovable hulks filling the sky like the massive nail parings of an unimaginable God. The plow is heavy in my hands, and I rest in their shadow. I am too old to wish for the irrigation cycle to start now, too soon, cooling the air for me. But as a child I can still remember days when the Central Control misfired, and the planters were sent running, half their seeds still in their canvas bags. The roads filled with mud, and the grown-ups scowled when they caught us hurling mud balls at fast-moving cars. It was the sound of the splash. Now, I watch the same scene in minature, as my sweat drops onto the black muck beneath me.

*

16:10 / 26.06.03

[Quick question: is this meant to be one story, or is each para meant to be a standalone thing?]

16:13 / 26.06.03

[ each of my paragraphs is a standalone microstory. others may do differently. rules are a bourgeois construct: make your own decision. ]

19:19 / 26.06.03

Neuro Brain Machine confirms authority when naught is asked for oval apes tie die people with little concern for the overall aural aesthetic.

*

Neuro Brain Machines glisten atop the lightly lulling firmament. Often wires have crossed the arches, buttresses, twisting amongst the methodically placed columns. Cathode Ray Tubes, plasma screens, has not but mantles. Teasing wires leave pleading eyes empty and count.

09:26 / 01.07.03

"Neuro Brain Machine" was able to take genetic samples from two dead people, one a pioneer of science, the other a great artist, and fuse them together!! It took a German mathematician famous for his non-Euclidean geometry and prime number theory (as well as the zeta function) and a French Rococo artist who is was gifted as a painter, tapestry maker and engraver. This fusion is known as a "Riemannian Boucher".

11:57 / 04.07.03

Neuro Brain Machine: one of the many casualties of the Great Redundancy Storm of 2117, which wiped out swathes of that era's then fashionable tautological technologies. As far as our historians have been able to gather, it functioned rather like the modern-day Zaueltraub Funkmcguffin, in as much as it synchronized with the users alpha waves and then proceeded, very slowly, to map an exact copy of the users mind onto a primitive form of digital memory facility while distracting the user with hallucinations of Indo-Roman empires, clerical child abuse, pastoral scenery, gibberish, ladyboys in burqas etc. However, it lacked some of the Funkmcguffin's more enjoyable functions, such as the 'massage' facility, or the ever-popular Pervert Frappucino Switch. See also Super FootShoe One, Hand Glove Dataminer, DriveCar Omega, and Irritating Charva Breed-kits for further examples of tautological technologies wiped out during the Redundancy Storm.

12:10 / 04.07.03

Neuro Brian Machine - one of the few extant devices of the tautolgical technology era to survive the Redundancy Storm, due almost entirely to a clerical error made by staff at the Palace of Notions when transcribing notes made by the inventor of the Neuro Brain Machine, Professor Herbert von Huflstufl. The Neuro Brian Machine did much the same as its predecessor, except that it only worked on people called Brian, thus making it technically not redundant in a strict linguistic sense, and allowing it to survive the Storm. In the years following the Great Technological Arsekick in 2294, a temporal-bypass function was grafted onto the machine, at exactly the same time as it's data-parameters were widened to include the storage of information, not just from people called Brian, but from Brian-variants such as Bryan, for example. This meant that, for the first time in human history, the entire knowledge-base of everybody on the planet who had ever been called Brian (or Bryan) was at last available to humankind. At last, humanity could marvel at the searing insights of intellectual giants like Brian Cant, Brian May, Brian Molko and, of course, Bryan Ferry, not to mention a host of many other famous Brians (and indeed Bryans!) of the past. The reapplication of the Neuro Brian Machine ushered in a new technological renaissance across the galaxy and, in recognition of its great achievements, it was unanimously voted Supreme Life President of the Universal Skiddlybop Empire in the year 2341.

15:12 / 04.07.03

New! Rob Reiner shins!

Also:

Ridley Scott chops!

David Lynch bacon!

Kevin Smith loins!

John Woo ribs!

*

Go to the Deli Counter NOW and ask for our DIRECTORS' CUTS!!!

Whisky Priestess

18:30 / 04.07.03

hur hur

Saveloy funny.

21:50 / 04.07.03

neuro brain macheens spiral down and fuck it all... the end is always why are you am i writing this? exactly what do you mean by that thing in the corner of my head MY FUCKING HEAD!!!
*
nero bran ma(charlie) sheen. wet and shiny and cold like a virus or a greased gerbil the boys like it when you tell them that dr. bill and saint jack looking over your shoulder to make sure you dont screw it up

20:30 / 05.07.03

neuro brain machines, tell me if the X is up and down and the world pertains to infinity as seen by the purveyor of the filth

02:45 / 07.07.03

neurobrainmachine

17:01 / 07.07.03

Neuro brain machine with stand, bio-adaptor and plenty of software (Berkeley's Employment law 2.0, Vogue Fashion & Make-up, Majick Astral travel 5.2 pro, Microsoft Office 8.1ib, etc.) €700 ono. Must sell: new girlfriend turned out to be cogito-sympatic. (Find more for sale page 81)
*
Neuro brain machine wltm vascular autogland for sensation and emotion. Must have own limbic flooder. No time wasters. (Find more soul mates page 15)
*
Neuro brain machine 9lb born to John and Julia Hunter. We were expecting a baby. Mother healthy. (More birth announcements page 44)

11:18 / 08.07.03

Neuro brain machine was the reason that I surrounded the shopping trolley with empty envelopes. I hoped someone would fill them, or at least look inside all of them just to see if there was anything in there. It seemed like a good idea until I realized that the envelope with a letter confirming my desire for a certain species of zebra had also been left there by mistake. I ran back immediately, and started looking through all the carefully arranged envelopes, one by one, but there were too many, I'd been too successful in arranging them. I started to bury myself in them, underneath the pile, noticing that one particular envelope was stuck to my lower lip. I must have been well-hidden because I didn't notice that anyone was coming, as I laid there silently, imagining myself being posted. That was my last thought before the envelopes caught fire.