THE SATANIC SAILS AT DAWN (mid January 1982)

Once there was a church with a Pastor named Charles Smith. And Smith thought it would be nice if he organized a cruise to take members of the church on a fourteen day excoursion to the Caribean Islands. So he immediately began selling tickets which members of his congragation paid cash for months in advance. But the deal to charter a ship fell through. Smith prayed. Apparently church donations weren't near to the level that Rev Smith imagined them to be. And if there was one thing he wasn't going to do as Pastor it was to go before the congragation and grovel for money. Then there was a ship that came on the market at dirt cheap prices called the Satanic. It seems that the government had recently passed laws against Satanism and suddenly this vessel was useless. Smith took it to be a sign from the Lord. His view is "Why should the Devil have all the good music- - or lands or boats or anything else?" Anyhow they painted the ship white and gave it some really tasteless name such as the Holy Roller or the S S Azlin or something. Formerly the vessel had been done up in impressive black with gold trim and covering it all up took a lot of paint. At last the morning came when the ship was to sail. Jack Johnson was among the many who went right up to the ticket booth and got a ticket and went right up the gang plank. At nine AM sharp they pulled up the gang plank and the ship was unmoored and sailed out of the harbor. People noted that Johnson was Black. They asked him "What do you do for a living?" and he responded "I'm a pugelist". One lady looked at him a little strangely and disdainful. He said "Yeah, that's how I make my money". She said "Shame on you. I bought a book written by a pugelist once. He pugelized an unpublished Mark Train novel, God rest his soul, and passed it off as his own. Things went well till a later on when the ship's captain came over and asked Johnson how he ever got on board. Johnson told him. And the captain said, "But you're Black" and Johnson said, "But I have money" and the Captain said, "Yeah, but you're Black" and to make it legal and everything the Captain read a proclamation how this ship doesn't allow Blacks on board as passengers. So Johnson was taken to one of the life boats and compelled to board it, and take off alone. There was another guy on board, with long curly light brown hair and wore his shirt open. People asked him "Are you one of the deck hands?" And he said, "No, my name is Frankie Lee." By now the water was starting to get a little rough and one man was kind of hanging over the edge feeling sick. And Frankie Lee came up to him and said "You look like a man who's not doing anything now. How would you like to read this book?" It was a paperback that read "A Brief Summary of the Theology of Karl "Barf". And the man looked at it and said, "Where'd you get it?" And Frankie Lee said "The last cruise I was on there was a man named Guy Owens who was reading it but he got bored and tossed the book on the ship's deck, and I picked it up. Then Owens said "This ship is going way too slow" so he looked out into the sea and saw a passing whale and said "I'm going to hook a ride from him". Another passenger said, "You don't suppose a storm is coming, do you?" He was greeted with a chorus of "NO" s from several other passengers. Frankie Lee said "You know we are violating Mother Earth in riding on her Ocean and getting free transportation from it. The sea is for fishes and other sea life dezigned by the Creator for the water, and not for these iron artifacts of man." He got a lot of strange looks from the other passengers but nobody really gave him much of an argument. Frankie Lee went below to the engine room. There were a couple of Black guys working down there and Frankie Lee pulls out a roll of tens. He said "A fellow named Judas gave these to me but I have no use for them so I want you to have them". The first deck hand showed it to his Black companion and the second Black said "Hot damn. These bills are REAL. " And the first guy said "how can you be so sure?" And the second guy said "Hell all the time I have spent in crap and poker games in my life, believe me in that business you come to know what a real bill looks like and what is a fake". And the first guy says "I have counted the bills twice and there is exactly a hundred dollars there and I'll split it with you fifty-fifty. " So he began counting out the bills, ten, twenty, thirty, forty- - and then the engine made a steam discharge. And someone said "Are you workers in any danger of the engine exploding? And they said "Oh, they are only thinking of us. If anything bad happens we'll die first whereas the others on deck will die a slow death as the ship sinks". The first deck hand then continued counting, "Where was I?" "Twenty" the other guy says. So he continued - - thirty - - forty - - fifty. The second guy walked away smugly. The first guy counted his bills and was amazed and pleasently surprised to see that he had seventy dollars. Frankie Lee went back top side and decided to get something out of the vending machine. And was puzzled at what he received. It was a bag gull of these puff like orange things that left bright orange residew on his hands. Lee said "I can't eat this kind of garbage. No natural substance is that color orange". Then the ship's captain showed up and said he was here to arrest Frankie Lee and take him to the brig. Frankie Lee asked why and the Captain said "There have been roomers that you gave one of our black boys a substantial ammount of counterfeit money, and we don't like people taking advantage of our Black people, just because they aren't as smart as the rest of us. " Lee was insensed but went with them. "What are you doing to do with that money?" and the captain just grinned and said "Oh don't you worry about that. I'm going to take real good care of it personally myself. But while Lee was in custody being escorted he managed to get free and made his way to a portion of the boat where a power boat was, and he got in it and sped away from the ship. Since the ship had no TV or movies to entertain themselves they passed the time having theological arguments with each other. They also had debates as to how much gold was on the islands where they were going or the size of the breasts of the maidens. They didn't notice that there was now a strange agitation in the water and the ocean was glowing with an odd greenish hew. The ship then sank to the bottom of the sea due to a mysterious whirlpool that had arisen seemingly out of nowhere.

THE DEAD ZONE -The Sequel of Indeterminate Ordenal

This story is part of a whole "Death Series" starting on April first 1996. Once upon a time Guy Owens was planning to commit suicide. He had a jar of mixed Amyltal and Secconal pills, blues and reds in a jar, and more available. He thought first he'd dissolve an Anytal in a glass of water to see how that affected him. Then he didn't like the bitter taste so decided to wash that down with some Burgandy. But then at this point he had a sudden mental flash. This wasn't real. It already happened. I was actually living in an apartment in 1996 on my own. "I remember now. Somebody told me that if I stayed alive me and Becky would be having sex by the following February." Since Owens was a virgin he held such news at a high premium. "Gee - am I being given a second chance or something now?" Hell, he didn't know but decided perhaps the whole suicide thing was way too premature. Instead he made his three o clock appointment that afternoon to see Dr. Glidden, his Psychiatrist. He didn't see his parents till the next day because they had gone out to dinner. Then his Mom yelled at him for drinking someone's wine without permission. But what struck him now was all the bad stuff he'd forgotten about his parents came back to him in stark reminders. How they belittled him and insulted him, and threatened him, and in general made life with them miserable. For Sunday dinner - four days later - Pete Richards came over, oddly without his girlfriend, Margie. The idea of getting rid of their two cats was brought up and now Guy Owens was the only one who seemed to be opposed to the idea, and anything he said on the subject would be deemed "irrational". They then tossed barbs at him for volenteering to do a project with a church group. He reminded them "That is tonight". They said "Well - - you're just LUCKY this time!" They were being downright surly bringing up petty stuff. Guy then thought he'd have fun with them and begin predicting things that hadn't happened yet. So he mentioned Nixon's mining of the port of Hai Pong, that would be announced the next day, or the shooting of George Wallace that would take place a week from tomorrow. And he mentioned the Watergate break-in. When they heard these things their eyes bulged in their heads almost as if they KNEW what he was saying was TRUE and were MAD about it. So Pete Richards began taunting Guy and said "Anyhow, why aren't you dead yet? I've done nothing but play mind games on you in the name of Jesus for the full year and had you doubt yourself and running around in circles." Owens said "Are you admitting something" and Pete says "Don't try to put words in my mouth". Oh yeah you and your predictions. You fool! You think somehow if you TRY hard enough you can PROVE that you are somehow a worthy person. It doesn't work that way in God's economy. Owen's Dad kicks in and says "You know if you open your mouth you're the only one that ends up getting hurt". Suddenly OWENS was transported back to Heaven and he knew it was true. Maybe it was the future but he wasn't at all sure When NOW was at this point. An angel guide said to him "I had to get you out of there. You were learning too much". Guy laughed loud and nervously. "You know I've learned more than enough. You DO know that. That horse had long ago left the barn!"

THE REPLICATORS ARE HERE Well now tool replicators are not just for the crew of the Next Generation. Now you can put any tool like a wrench under a 3 D scanner and apparently it's X Ray also or something because it replicates moving parts that can't even be seen. You can also instruct the printer how to color each part. Then you start the printer. It uses a powder that disolves into a solid plastic formed in the shape of the object that was scanned, hidden moving parts and all, and you "can use it to perform a task just like you'd use any other wrench". You just fish the object out of the powder and blow off the dust and you're all set. So if you're in space and you lose a tool, it's no problem. You just print out and replicate another tool. They also have something called magnetic fluid that seems to spontaniously form artistic shapes, don't even ask me how. I hope that video was on the level. Clearly, the Future has Arrived.

It has been noted that big business seems surprisingly uncerned about the looming debt default of the United States government. Do they know something we don't? Or is perhaps the crisis less momentus than what we have led to believe? Somehow big business has found a way to insulate itself from the problem, perhaps because they have so much money they've stockpiled now without giving any out, that they can ride out this credit crunch. After all they are already used to not making new investments or hiring new people. So that won't change. We will all find out in just over three weeks, and I have no predictions except to expect the unexpected.