Cult of the Dead Cow 244

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

Cult of the Dead Cow

 · 5 years ago

  

 
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     | |      c   o   m   m   u   n   i   c   a   t   i   o   n   s     | | 
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  ...presents...           Radiocarbon Dating Service 
                                                         by Markian Gooley 

                      >>> a cDc publication.......1993 <<< 
                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- 
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 |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____| 

     Melanie became a blender rather than go out on a date with me.  I wept as 
her golden hair became the blender-jar's lid, and so forth.  Vanessa developed 
a snout and sharp teeth and tore out her own intestines rather than see 
_La Boheme_ with me, though she loved opera.  Michelle had herself sealed 
inside a fifteen-ounce can of pinto beans, Sally grew a beard and performed a 
double mastectomy on herself with the Girl Scout pocket knife she still carried 
for cutting up Girl Scouts, Claire became a Buddhist nun (aged 76), Conchita 
had her skin and skeleton replaced with those of a large dog, Sheri became a 
case of Amontillado bricked up inside a wall by a madman named Montresor, 
Valerie became a six-year-old boy, Helen became a giant wooden horse, Laura 
became a bay tree.  I was hounded from town to town because women I asked out 
on dates had a way of changing into people or objects I found uninteresting. 

     I tried asking out horseshoes, lumps of lead-bismuth alloy, bottles of 
ketchup, motorcycles, sections of concrete sewer pipe, and so on.  Some of the 
smaller objects seemed to have no objection to being carried, but none of them 
metamorphosed into humans.  I thought that one of my invitations stripped the 
gold plating from a cheap wristwatch, but that might have been my imagination. 

     I began to ask out abstract things: the nature of God, the idea of 
liberty, equilateral triangles, infinite series.  Green's Theorem became a 
magnificent Titian-haired beauty with a Scotish accent and a raunchy sense of 
humor, but thousands of enraged mathematicians beat me nearly to death with 
chalk and Rubik's Cubes until the Theorem agreed to become her usual self.  I 
was heartbroken: her pale woman-skin had been impossibly soft and smooth, her 
alto voice arousing, her caresses entrancing. 

     I hocked my diamond tiara and with the proceeds joined a radiocarbon 
dating service.  The level of Carbon 14, the smarmy bearded balding man who 
talked me into signing up informed me, was a certain measure of compatibility. 
With a Geiger counter and a violinist and a group of Germans who got that joke, 
he measured my radiocarbon and radio reception.  "You've been dead for 5760 
years," he informed me, stroking his hair back and causing a handful of it to 
fall out.  "No wonder women are disgusted by you." 

     "May I have a refund?" I asked. 

     "No," he said, grinning.  "You signed the contract, sucker." 

     "I'll put a whammy on you," I said, and he just laughed.  The goddess 
Athena, a personal friend, borrowed a thunderbolt from her daddy and struck him 
and the others dead and set the building ablaze.  Unfortunately, Athena was not 
such a friend of mine as to impersonate a human woman for me, as happens in 
ingenious anonymous stories that I should have written, so that I had to be 
content with the burnt-mutton smell in the air and the hope of a timely death. 
 _______  __________________________________________________________________ 
/ _   _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842| 
 ((___)) |Cool Beans!..........510/THE-COOL|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362| 
 [ x x ] |Metalland Southwest..713/468-5802|Lunatic Labs........213/655-0691| 
  \   /  |The Works............617/861-8976|Ripco ][............312/528-5020| 
  (' ')  |ftp - zero.cypher.com in pub/cdc |ftp - ftp.eff.org in pub/cud/cdc| 
   (U)   |==================================================================| 
  .ooM   |1993 cDc communications by Markian Gooley            12/30/93-#244| 
\_______/|            Save yourself!  Go outside!  DO SOMETHING!            |