Chicken Mãâàn's Open Salon Blog

Keep the Community, Ditch the Site

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:11:05 -0500

Open Salon is a community that uses the OS website to stay in touch with a core group of people who enjoy writing and discussing all kinds of topics. We, the writers, are the community; Open Salon is only a platform. We believe the OS platform has become incapable of supporting the community that has developed here. We want to preserve our community as much as possible. The destination of choice for the greatest number of OS members has become OurSalon, a site that was created as a sort of lifeboat for Open Salon members in the event that Open Salon closed down. We have established memberships over there and many of us habitually double-post.

That has proven effective, but the result is a community split between two locations, complete with duplicate conversations, many between the same people at both locations. Until Open Salon becomes technically viable again, we would rather collect it at a single location, as that would result in less duplication of effort and, more importantly, far less frustration for the members of this community. That frustration has resulted in some community members leaving us altogether.

Let’s try this again. We will not engage in any activity on Open Salon for a minimum of a month. This will allow us to centralize our community in a location that is fully functioning. After that period, if Open Salon has addressed its problems, those of us who want to will revert to double-posting.

If you are ready to join in this trial move, please post this letter on your blog right away and make sure you open an account on Our Salon. We will plan to begin the trial on Monday morning, November 19, 2012.

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When you comment, please give us an opinion as to how long you think the period above in brackets should be. Up to now, majority of expressed opinion is a month. Also, the tentative title is new as of 11 AM EST Thursday and I'd like opinions/suggestions. Thank you.

Hemingway Test – 14 (Brainstorm)

Fri, 9 Nov 2012 23:11:36 -0500

Geddes started the meeting without ceremony in a voice that never rose above conversational. He explained his temporary regression and asked if anyone else had experienced something similar. They glanced at each other, then back at Geddes. All shook their heads.

“Good,” he said, “but if anyone starts to feel depressed or experiences hallucinations, chances are you'll be where I was three days ago. It's temporary, but you should check in at the clinic or contact Dr. Knoe. She'll be with us awhile.

“And now, ta da, it's planning time. Number one on my agenda is defense. Randy here" He indicated Newgate, who was staring at an iPad, "has learned that the feds have put a new guy in charge of finding us. He's an advertising exec and just happens to be the guy who put Chill on the map by exploiting my hypothetical in Sacrifice.

“His agency planted the rumor that we actually had spiked a couple cases of Chill with Vulcana and that they were unkowingly distributed. It was very cleverly done. They insisted it was only a rumor, and because there were no complaints of people experiencing ill-effects after drinking Chill, there was no call for the company to recall the product. Chill quickly became the cool drink among teens.“

“I didn't know American teenagers cared about empathy,” said Gladys Alabi.

“My daughters do,” said Em. “They won't even let me kill a cock-a-roach. I do it anyway, when they're not looking.”

Newgate said, “The empathy part was excluded from the rumor. The publisher had already pulled the book after the brouhaha in the news about the guy who killed himself because he couldn't get rid of his erection. So this ad agency, Gahagan Nixon, puts a bootleg copy online with all the references to empathy edited out. Bottom line, the punks think they'll get the bottle of Chill that has the drug that will give them a permanent erection.”

“They don't mind that a guy's already killed himself?” said Chesapeake Security head Anthony Cromwell.

“They're teenagers,” said Gladys Alabi. “It won't happen to them. They live forever, remember?”

“Just the boys drinking it?” Cromwell asked.

“My daughters love the stuff,” said Em. “I won't allow any soft drinks in the house, but I know they drink it anyway. Is that Vulcana stuff really in Chill?”

“No,” said Geddes.

“But if it was what would it do to women?” said Em.

Geddes frowned. "You haven't taken it yet?"

"No, sir. I was sick the day you were giving the shots."

"We'll have to take care of that right away. Today, in fact."

"I don't like shots. And you didn't answer my question."

Geddes stood up and stretched. “Ask Gladys,” he said. “Ask Dr. Knoe. Ask Ms. Usher. We require every adult associated with Wilde Labs to take it.”

“That's right,” said Em. “I read the book. The original one. I remember that part.”

“What parts don't you remember?” said Geddes, feigning a look of shock.

“It wasn't very well written, Aloysius. Sorry.”

Geddes, staring at Em all the while, sat back down, reached for his water bottle and drank from it, making a distracting crinkly sound as the thin pastic gave way under the grip of his fingers.

“Seawell, can't we fire this woman? We don't need any new killing machines. She's served her purpose,” he said, suppressing a grin behind the water bottle.

“You need me for maintenance,” Em said. She made no effort to hide her smirk. “If there's a problem, I'm the only one knows how they work.”

“She's right,” said Seawell. “Plus I've asked her to develop a stun feature in the microlaser. We could've used that back at The Cottage.”

This had the effect of a minor chord appearing suddenly to halt a merry scherzo. All faces around the table went serious. Em's shifted from smirk to sad. She lowered her eyes to the table.

“How you coming on that,” Geddes said.

“Slow, but I'll have it.” Her eyes glistened when she looked up.

Geddes nodded and quickly changed the subject. “I'm bothered by this federal interest in something that's clearly not a public health hazard. The kid who killed himself – that was tragic, we can't deny it – left Wilde on his own, as I understand it, against Dr. Knoe's advice. She and Gladys and Mr. Pinkerton are confident they could have prevented it from happening.

“It was the very first formula, before the one I took by accident. You could have relieved that young man's problem, am I right, Glad?”

“Yes, sir. We had an antidote ready at the time. If he had stayed at The Cottage we wouldn't be in the mess we have now.”

“Anyway, for some reason no official at any level of government has approached us – Ms. Usher or Mr. Hendrian or even Ruth...the President – with an inquiry of any kind. All Gladstone has to go on is what I wrote in my book, which was clearly identified as satire. I did that for the express purpose of giving us some cover, and my purpose was twofold.

“I wanted to put what was happening on the record, mainly because I was concerned about what I was getting into and what it might mean in the broader sense, and I wanted to keep it muted in the event what was happening was bigger than I imagined. I didn't want to be waving a red flag for somebody like Bart Bullshit, who would charge at it like the mad bull he is wholly capable of being.

“Gladstone and I go back quite a ways. If you read my White House journal you know that while he can come across as an obnoxious buffoon, he can surprise the hell out of you.”

“You called that satire, too,” said Em. “I didn't take it seriously.”

“I did, Em, and for the same reason. I had to protect the president, both from a possible assassination and from the possibility her chief of staff was losing his mind. I was on a tightrope there. I had to leave some room for interpretation.”

“Your writing was better in that one.”

They exchanged polite smiles.

Hemingway Test – 13 (Em)

Wed, 7 Nov 2012 19:11:07 -0500

Al Geddes was surprised to see he wasn't the only one to arrive early for the meeting he'd called. A woman he'd not seen before sat at the conference room table with a notebook and a bottle of Aquafina water in front of her. Geddes had called the meeting of his department heads in part to reassure them he had fully recovered from what Dr. Knoe was calling his “Vulcana episode”. At the same time he wanted to discuss strategies he'd been mulling during his three-day downtime.

The woman looked up and smiled when Geddes entered. He was struck by her face -- fresh and pretty, cheeks like apples framed by hickory blond hair that barely reached her shoulders, friendly, sparkling hazel eyes that peered into his with a touch of playful mischief.

“Hello,” he said. She said nothing, but held the smile and followed him with her eyes as he walked past the table into the adjoining kitchenette. When he returned with a bottle of water her face was still turned his way but the smile had lessened and she'd canted her head to one side, giving her an expression of curiosity. From the side, he saw she was wearing faded jeans and a white blouse with thin red stripes. She was leaning against her forearms on the table. Something gold in front of her refracted a flash of overhead light, and he found it odd that instead of the piece of jewelry he'd assumed it to be the flash instead had come from a gold pen beside her notepad.

“I'm Al Geddes,” he said, as he seated himself on a folding chair across from the woman. “I guess we're early,” he added. Her silence was beginning to make him uncomfortable. When she still remained silent, he said, “You with Mr. Cromwell?” That seemed to do the trick, as her face stretched beyond the initial smile and she uttered the first sound he heard from her, a soft chuckle.

“I work with Sean.” Geddes liked the husky sound of her voice. Of course, he thought. She was Sean Seawell's secretary. Seawell, former CEO of Chesapeake Security and now its chief operations officer. So where was he?

“I see. Sean running late this afternoon?”

“Haven't seen him today,” she said, dropping the smile completely yet not spoiling the charm or her natural facial contours. It pleased Geddes to see she was pretty even without the intentional show of teeth and bunching of cheeks. Her features were proportioned evenly with full lips that seemed constantly to be moving slightly as if in response to private thoughts.

“I'm sorry, Miss, I didn't catch your name,” Geddes said, feeling awkward advancing so hackneyed a gambit. His embarrassment annoyed him despite its simultaneous thrill.

She studied him soberly, took a deep breath and let it out in an obvious sigh before responding: “It would have been quite a catch, Mr. Geddes, considering I never tossed it to you.”

Geddes's turn to chuckle. “Touché,” he said and smiled, waiting for her to respond. When she merely smirked, he added, “So, what would you like me to call you?“

The smirk softened. “Em,” she said.

“Em? That's nice. Short for Emily?”

“Nope.”

“Emma!”

“No!” They both laughed.

“OK, Em, I give up. Wait! One more guess. Just the letter M?”

“You kidding? Who would name their kid with just a letter?”

“I knew a guy in the Army whose name was T. Just the letter T. He was from some county in the Virginia mountains. He had a brother name of P. I'm not kidding. T and P, that's all.” After a beat, Geddes realized how that sounded, and so did she. Both laughed again.

“After the tea they had to pee! You ever consider stand-up comedy?” she said. He noticed she'd stopped tapping her pen on the notepad. Maybe she was relaxing.

He said, “No I haven't, Em. I'm afraid that's the extent of my repertoire. One-joke Al.”

“Alphonso?” she said.

“Ha! Turnabout is fair play. Nope, 'fraid not”

“Aloysius!”

“What?”

“Aloysius. Delicious Aloysius. I knew one in school.”

“Sounds like some kind of apple.”

“I think it's a derivative of Ulysses. I kinda like it. So am I right?”

“You mean about me being...how do you say that again?”

“Never mind. If you can't pronounce your own name, what good are you?” She tried to hide her face behind a hand, peeking through her fingers. “So I suppose you'll fire me now.”

“I dunno, Em, I'll have to think about it. You've hurt me pretty deeply.”

“Aww, poor Aloysius. I'm so sorry.”

“Yeah, you sound sorry. Tell you what, though. I'll make you a deal. You stop calling me...delicious and I won't fire you. Besides I don't even know what you do.”

“Well actually, Al – that better? – actually, since Sean hired me wouldn't he be the one to fire me? I mean, if somebody's gonna fire me?”

“That's a good question. You're probly right, but it might depend on what you do, you know. For instance if we have a budget problem and have to lay somebody off, that could be my job. I'm still pretty new in it, so I'd have to check with Mr. Hendrian, I suppose.”

“You really don't know what I do?”

“I already said that. And I don't know your name, either, Em. I mean, it must be short for something. How about, ummm, oh I dunno, could it beeee...Emilicious?” Geddes waited for the laugh, and shook his head when it didn't come. Not even a smirk. She shook her head, too.

“Better not quit your day job, Al. That was even worse than your other joke, which I've already forgotten.”

“Oh, Auntie Em, I've missed you all so much. You'd better tell me your real name or I'm gonna call you Antie Em, Em.”

“That was pretty funny, Al. I almost laughed that time. So what if I told you 'Em' stands for E equals emcee squared? Would you believe me?”

Geddes held his bottle of water up to the light and studied its contents. “Maybe there's something in the water,” he murmured and snuck a peek at the woman across the table. She was grinning.

“You don't believe me, do you? It's true. That's the name my classmates gave me at M.I.T.”

Geddes set the bottle down and studied her anew. “You're serious.”

“I'm serious. I was the smartest in my physics class. One wise guy, the teacher, actually, called me 'Miss E equals emcee squared' one day when he pretended to forget my name. It stuck, of course. I didn't really mind. Didn't like my real name anyway.”

“Which is?”

“Doesn't matter. Em is fine. It's my name now.”

“OK, Em. That's cool. So what is it you do for Sean. I was thinking you might be his secretary, but that thought just now bit the dust.”

“She designs our weapons systems.” The voice was a man's. Geddes swung around and beheld Sean Seawell, who had just entered the room. Seawell's moustachioed face was expressionless.

Geddes's mind went into overdrive. He lifted his plastic bottle as if proposing a toast, and took a quick slug. He let the water cool his throat and esophagus on its way to dilute the sudden surge of peptic acid in his stomach.

“Oh,” he said, “I see.”

Hemingway Test – 12 (Man from WACKO)

Thu, 1 Nov 2012 21:11:29 -0400

Trueblood heard the barking as he stepped into Gladstone's office and saw his boss doing his “Bart” routine with what looked like a pink bowling ball perched atop the back of the upholstered chair in front of Gladstone's desk.

Gladstone's receptionist, Cathy, had left Trueblood at the office entrance and returned to her desk in the reception room after fetching him from his office for the unscheduled meeting. She'd tried to call his secretary but the phones weren't working that morning, so she walked next door and cheerfully informed him herself.

Gladstone's face spread in surprise when he looked up and saw Trueblood in the doorway, and it seemed to take him a couple of seconds to adjust to the new dynamic. As he did, his behemoth face bypassed the conventional smile, collapsing from startled to a twitchy fragility, which confused Trueblood with its contrast to the macho bluster he'd seen in Gladstone up to then.

Without acknowledging Trueblood's presence with voice or gesture besides the surprised expression, Gladstone returned his attention to the pink globe, from which Trueblood heard a whispery voice saying something like, “Knock that 'Bart' shit off, Gladstone. I'll call you anything I want. You sound like a goddam seal, and it's fucking annoying.”

Gladstone nodded nervously and raised his eyes again to Trueblood. “Come in, Harry. We have a visitor.” He nodded toward the other chair in front of his desk. Trueblood entered and took the chair, shooting glances at the “visitor,” who made no visible effort to turn his head Trueblood's way.

“This is my assistant, Harry Trueblood,” Gladstone said, his effort to project confidence failing. “Harry, Mr...” His eyebrows raised inquisitively, he turned to the visitor, “...umm, I didn't catch your name.”

“Skip the formalities,” the visitor hissed. “My name is unimportant. What is important is that as a representative of the Worldwide Action Coalition Klux of Oligarchists I'm here to relay information .”

The visitor rotated his head just enough to take in Trueblood, who turned his head, as well, hoping for at least a lateral look at the pink bowling ball. What Trueblood saw was a face too small for its head. Its features appeared to be miniature, clustered together amid an expansive forehead, puffy mottled cheeks and a long, narrow chin. The mouth was small and pouty under a pug nose, giving the lips a swollen, disproportionate prominence, and the eyes were narrowed to slits as if facing blinding light. An apparent absence of any facial hair – not even eyelashes or eyebrows – called attention to the complexion's vivid, almost rosy, pinkness. It was the face of a very large, sullen baby.

“Looked like a big pink light bulb to me,” Gladstone said with a subdued, cautious tone after the visitor left and after shooting a quick nervous glance around his office as if somehow the visitor might still be lurking.

The visitor seemed to take the air with him from the room when he left, although a trace of odor remained behind that struck Trueblood as vaguely medicinal. Climbing out of his chair and standing up, wearing the grey trenchcoat he'd not taken off while in the office, the strange, unfriendly visitor surprised Trueblood with his stature, considerably taller than he appeared slumped in the chair. Maybe he just had long legs, Trueblood thought, thinking the shorter seated appearance might be due to a disproportionately shorter abdomen.

Trueblood and Gladstone stared vacantly at each other after Gladstone's “light bulb” remark. Neither man had laughed at the remark. Trueblood thought Gladstone looked stunned.

“How do you supposed he got in here if he won't give his name?” Trueblood asked.

“Oh, no doubt he has special credentials. He was just reminding us how unimportant we are.”

“What an asshole.”

“Oh, that he is,” said Gladstone. “But a dangerous asshole. No doubt aobut that. Buford is probly the most dangerous asshole in D.C.”

“Buford?”

“Gotta call him something. He looks like a Buford.”

“Works for me, Bart. Buford it is. So what do we do now?”

“We do what we been doing. You set up your shop and get your hacker working and you start brainstorming on your propaganda stuff. I'm sure Buford will get in touch with us if he doesn't like it.”

“I just don't get it, Bart. This asshole comes in off the street and treats you like shit and you just sit there and take it. The guy looks at me like I'm a peanut in a turd. I wanted to kick his goddam ass, but you're the boss so I followed your lead. Pardon my asking, but has he got something on you?”

Gladstone stared intently at Trueblood as if looking for some sign in his demeanor that could help decide his answer. When he finally spoke it was in a voice even further subdued. “Yes,” he murmured, and dropped his eyes to his desk. He looked up and added, “On both of us.”

Trueblood immediately looked at his thumb, the one that had wrestled and broken his boss's. “No, not that,” said Gladstone, shaking his head and smiling weakly. He picked up a manila envelope from his desk and tossed it to Trueblood. “Here.”

Trueblood reached his fingers into the envelope and felt what were apparently several photographic prints. He pulled them out and flipped through them, his face crinkling in bafflement.

“There's nothing on these things,” he blurted. “They're black, overexposed.”

Gladstone nodded, his jowly jaw gone slack in resignation. “I mighta known. The sonofabitch.”

“You mean the images disappeared just now, since you got them?”

“That's a fact, Harry. They were sharp as they could be a half hour ago, the sonofabitch.” He added, “Not that I'da sent them to the lab anyway. In our situation they were truly an eyes-only thing.”

“So what did your eyes see.”

“You'll think I'm loony toons.”

“Bart, what was on those prints?”

“The Kennedy assassination.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Those prints were made from negatives that were taken over half a century ago.”

“So what's that got to do with us. I wasn't even born yet.”

“Those images have never been publicized. They've never been seen in any official investigation.”

“How do you know this, Bart?”

“I've been in the federal government most of my adult life. I was an FBI agent and a U.S. Senator. You don't think I would know?”

“Sorry. It's just that there must be hundreds of photographs from that day. What makes these so special?”

“What's special about them is where they were taken. There wasn't supposed to be anybody there, where these pictures were taken, and if there was...somebody there, and they took these pictures, whoever took them would have sold them to Life, like Zapruder did with his home movie. I've never seen these pictures before, and I almost threw up when I saw them just now.”

Trueblood's verbal capacity seemed to go south. He gawked at Gladstone until he managed to spit out a word: “Where?”

“Ever heard of the Grassy Knoll?”

Trueblood nodded slowly. “There were theories a second gunman shot from up there. There was never any good evidence.”

“I just saw some.”

“But...couldn't anybody go up there and...”

“With Kennedy's head exploding in the frame? With the end of a smoking rifle barrel in the frame?”

“Photoshop?”

“Could be, but I doubt WACKO would do something that chickenshit.”

“You wouldn't think so.”

Gladstone shook his head.

Hemingway Test – 11 (Hacker on board)

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 20:10:53 -0400

Secord's computer guy couldn't make the lunch, but Trueblood hired him anyway. Secord had taken his boss to The Willard's Occidental Bar and Grill “...where Lincoln ate.”

“Here? In this room?”

“Dunno if this kitchen was here then, but The Willard was. Lincoln stayed here before he moved into the White House, they say,” Secord said, “And this was where he liked to have power lunches, or whatever they called these things back then.”

“These things? So this is a power lunch, huh.”

“It is if you pick up the check. Otherwise it's a we-wash-the-dishes lunch.”

Secord checked his watch several times. Finally, frowning, he pulled a cellphone from a belt holster and punched in a call.

“Yeah,” he said, so quietly the gravel rattled in his voice. “That's right, we're about finished with the soup. The soup, you know, soup? Yeah. So? You can be undercover here. Why not? Oh, shit. OK.

“Look, you want the job or not? Twice as much. Twice, double what you make now. I thought you were good in math. My man don't wanna hear that. No way. Yes or no. GS...hold on...” He covered the phone with one of his thick hands. “You said GS-15, right?”

“Bart said I can go up to 14.”

“You gonna let him break your thumb?”

“Right. OK, 15 it is.”

“Roger? Fifteen it is. GS-15. Full bennies. Yup. K. Two weeks. I'll give you a temporary pass at Franklin's Friday. You'll be there, right? Right.” He snapped the phone shut and returned to his soup. “Good man. You'll get your money's worth.”

“I remember now. When you said 'Franklin's'. You guys still play poker?”

“What? That's right, you read the book. We sure do. Wanna play? Heh heh heh.”

“Sounds like fun, but I never carry much cash.”

“You best be carryin' much cash when you come to Franklin's.”

“Uh huh. We'll see. So this Roger guy, pretty good, huh.”

“Best there is. He's like Max Headroom. Remember Max Headroom?”

“The electron guy, lives in the circuits. One of the craziest shows I ever saw.”

“Fact I think Roger is Max Headroom. You never see him much, but things happen, you know? Computers stop workin' and start workin', you need somethin' from somewhere, out it comes, pops up on your computer screen. Just like that. Roger is magic, man.”

“What's his rank now? He must be up there. It's been, what, seven, eight years?”

“Nah, just a detective. He don't play office politics. Just like me. I never even took the test for lieutenant. Never kissed no ass. Just did my job.”

“You read the second book, too, right? The one with this Newgate character?”

“Oh yeah, I read it. I was halfway through it when it got jerked offline. Rog got it back up so I could finish it. I think he burned a copy. So Newgate's the guy he'll be up against, I'm guessing.”

“Well, if you believe the book, Newgate and Anonymous.”

“Oh, shit, tha's right. Buncha geeks all over the world. Anonymous. Rog duels with those punks now and again.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah. They're like an invisible army. An invisible cyber army, Rog calls 'em. They like to fuck with him. He fucks right back. Tracked one of them motherfuckers to Dublin once.”

“Dublin?”

“Yeah, Dublin. Ireland. Some asshole living in his mother's basement no doubt. Rog sent him a nice present. Nasty little virus he coded himself. Calls it The Snake. Puts a cookie right onto the punk's hard drive without the punk even knowing. The cookie fools all the commercial anti-virus software. SuperAntiSpyware, Kaspersky, Norton, you name it. To them it looks like a Windows update prompt and they leave it alone. After about a week it starts eating everything in sight. In one day it turns a PC into a digital typewriter that types only lower case letters and they all come out backwards. And no more online nuttin'. Too big for a paperweight. Might as well shoot the poor thing.”

“What about Macs?”

“They're harder to get to, but Rog can punch through a Mac firewall and pull stuff out without leaving a print. Like a master pickpocket.”

“Can he find Newgate?”

“I'd bet a year's salary on it.”

“I'll have Doris get the paperwork started.”

“He'll need some fancy shit, you know.”

“White House communications equipment good enough?”

“Dunno, Harry. Rog will wanna look it over. Special antennas, too.”

“Oh, I imagine we have some pretty good antennas on the roof, don't you think?”

“Shit, Harry, I sho' hope so. So you ready for some poker?”

“How about I bring Bart along? He says he's got more cash lying around than he knows what to do with.”

“That big fat bullshit dude? What's with him, anyways? All this Bart Bart bullshit? He's your boss, right?”

“That he is. You know him. You read the book, right?”

“Just the parts with me in it. But I do remember now. He had that accident. Ended up in a wheelchair.”

“That's the one. Senate Finance chairman, undercover FBI. Hard to believe.”

“Oh, nuttin's hard to believe in this place, Harry. This is Washington. The D.C., we calls it. District of Crazy.”

“You were joking about Bart, weren't you? At the poker game?”

“You best believe it. He be gettin' us all to laughin' at his Bart Bart bullshit and then he be rakin' in all the pots. No, but you can come. We got a couple white dudes show up now and again. You fit right in.”