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Suck and Burn

Sun, May 06, 2001 11:02PM -0600

Some more random firings of neurons. This was inspired by a short-story called Lobsters by Charles Stross found in the June 2001 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. No, the story isn't on the site, but I thought I'd post a link anyway. I wonder if this is the first use of the word slashdotted in a published (we're talking dead trees here) work of fiction. Oh, and yes, I'm also half-assedly studying for my neuro final.... This is not poetry or anything even remotely aesthetic. Most likely, it's just me being unable to control my overactive Wernecke's area....

There's an image in this somewhere
if I only had grep installed in my /usr/bin/prefrontal cortex
all the LEDs are flashing flickering blinking winking
sucking and burning data by the gig
while raster lines dance upon my screen
(is this some demented abstractoporn
a virtual, anthropomorphosed form of fellatio
as the binary equivalent of sperm DNA
comes shooting through a copper wire?)

The temperature in the room++
as the laser etches the binary pattern onto an
ersatz-metallic pseudo radiant (glistening, glimmering, shimmering in the sunlight)
spinning flat disc
made of cyanoazide
nanograms of it vaporizing into a poisonous gas
Data everywhere, so thick you can feel the oscillating bits
like pinpricks on your frazzled nerve endings
(Meckel's discs fluttering like smashed butterflies)
neurons firing away like lightning storms on Io

and here I am skritch-skritching away on dead tree
using dust and ashes to scribble out some meaningless photon pattern
now burning away at my retina

and here I am tap-tap-tapping on plastic
zap hum glow
upload download
now burning away at your retina

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l i n k s

Asimov's Science Fiction
Definition of 'slashdotted'