"If you decide to gamble irresponsibly, smoke while you do it so that you will look cool."

I have brought up wifl again! I want to collect my old writing.

Random excerpt:

"Cola contains...", October 5, 2002

One worries -- briefly -- whether Google has some sort of sinister, overarcing motive behind its provision of valuable group-mind services to the Web and Usenet, before dismissing this notion as obviously absurd.

Part of "Eye on the World", September 22, 2003

"Who were?"  The question was put in a calm and quiet tone.

"The... the who was downtown, you know, the people - no, not the
people, the, the... Passing by!"  The dirty man began scratching
his arm violently, raising red welts on the smutty skin.

"If they weren't people, what were they?"

"Wings," he says.  "Eyes."

"Cola contains...", December 14, 2003

In a dirt-floored market, underneath an awning, an old man sells lacquered model ships that he says he made. The ships have dark brown colours, an oak brown. The masts of the ships are crazy spirals, with blue and green patchwork sails.

One night long ago, he dreamt of the wind in the rigging. The restless sea-hand that he was had goaded him out of bed, and he woke in his night-gown in the hall; and in the morning he found that he'd whittled a galleon out of rose-wood and cut squares out of linen and fastened them on. That ship was a dream-ship, designed by a madman, planks all at an angle, radiating from spiral-centres.

He lacquered the boat, which was his trade, and set it afloat from the ocean's shore. He turned away, and walked home; but now when he tells the story, he says: Somehow it seemed to get larger as it receded for the sea.

He built the next that night.