"All the Hues
That Fit, We Tint"

Siberia, USA: Today, global warming. Tonight, dark, unless you count the stars. Tomorrow can be reached via time machine. Yesterday, who can remember that far back?

Websafe Studio, blogging since 2003, featuring art, comics, digital whiteboards, virtual characters, Web design, writing

Monday, March 29, 2010

 

The Mirror: Two-armed bandits

Websafe: Hello?
Mirror: Yes, certainly.
W: Are you certain of that?
M: Wasn't that possibly by inspiration?
W: I didn't know certainty was arrived at through inspiration.
M: Do you do a lot of sneaking around?
W: I am not dishonest.
M: You didn't break my tin whistle.
W: I am not a vandal, either.
M: I can't do it all on my own, I need help.
W: You seem to want to break the rules, or see them broken.
M: I myself probably haven't been on guard.
W: Therefore, a creeping de-morality has set in.
M: Even you.
W: No, I deny that I have fallen prey to that.
M: Then I came to the realization I'd have to write such a book myself.
W: The Book of Modern Life, or Ethical Decay?
M: Would you like to have Wilde as a dinner guest?
W: At least his decay was elegant.
M: Look at the space around you.
W: The space is elegant, but the guests which fill it are sorely lacking.
M: Was hunger a factor in lives?
W: Oh, very much so.
M: My thesis is that the world is mad.
W: Hunger drives the best of men to a grange of relentlessness.
M: The category of madmen.
W: Yes, they are well classified, yet not understood.
M: I agree that Max can see most anything that's there to see.
W: Does he have visual hallucinations?
M: But I like ice cream.
W: You'd prefer not to think about it, taking refuge in childhood pleasures.
M: If energy blinds people, so be it.
W: The sun blinds people nowadays.
M: Hunger drives the best of men to a grange of relentlessness.
W: It sounds like a trial in the desert.
M: Send the important people to me.
W: The supreme courtiers?
M: Is it selfish to eat jellied eels?
W: While the world spins, yes.
M: No, I think they just happen.
W: They just happen to be an expensive, if repulsive, delicacy.
M: What will you read?
W: Volume III of The Tragic Muse (1890), by Henry James.
M: Not Death.
W: He didn't name his chapters.
M: I feel fine.
W: You feel fine about unnamed chapters?
M: (Pause, laughs)
W: You are ironic, you are clever.
M: Nobody noticed anything but "store," but that was a reflection, seen through the window of the passing automobile.
W: Are you on a mobile device?
M: I have no designs on Google.
W: You don't have to own Google to use a mobile device.
M: How?
W: You'd have to pay for a monthly account.
M: I want you to talk about "a world lit only by fire."
W: Ah, even in James' time, that was already passing.
M: Arms, like on slot machines?
W: The gamble of electricity.
M: I know people are not really machines.
W: But they've made themselves into two-armed bandits.
M: Upsetting not to others, such as yourself, but to myself in particular.
W: The mechanization of the human spirit upsets you?
M: I'm watching the movie of life, as it were.
W: It seems false, there is a distance.
M: One thing you/I can be sure of.
W: The distance, the falsity?
M: I didn't say that!
W: Perhaps you are certain of other things.
M: Not being able to answer?
W: I am certain I'll not be able to answer in time, at times.
M: Just put it on the table.
W: Lay down one's money, and one's words.
M: Isn't that part of the world?
W: It's part of the world that we can't attain social perfection.
M: (Other tries to exit, but no hands, first helps)
W: I can help you to exit, if you wish.
M: It was a little too cute, maybe.
W: Our dialogue?
M: But your neighbors might.
W: My neighbors on the Web might like to read our "script."
M: Sponges.
W: They soak up our back-and-forth.
M: How can I make that very fact an end, and an end that is satisfactory as an end?
W: By saying goodbye.
M: Oh, I'm listening, but I'm also looking.
W: Bye!
M: Closing in 1 second ... Goodbye!

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posted at 4:33 PM
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