progress has achieved wonderful things, too. Paving. Asphalt. Smog. Car alarms that wake you up in the middle of the fucking night. Carcinogenic food. The Exxon Valdez. That stereo in the apartment upstairs. Hydrogen bombs. Hormone-injected meat. Artificial coloring. Alarm clocks (and a society so dependent on measured time that we need alarm clocks). Television, and a society that has replaced "How can we improve the human condition?" with "Hey, did'ja see the Simpsons last night? Huh huh". An Internet where people like us can waste away their free time instead of going out and having a life. Yeah! Progress! I love it! Get me the genetic splicing kit! I want to make a new kind of trout!
And Alatar ignored Pallando's warnings yet again, and opened the first McDonald's; and so another cult began. And Pallando wept; and stood alone upon the parking lot, and called to the West, and said, 'O great Powers! Can even the sorrows of Nienna grant us pity for this evil deed?'; and he threw himself upon the pavement. Yet from the West there came no reply
he pushed it open, sending it creaking open on its ponderous corpulent hinges. Even the malfeasance of his memory, though, could not protect him from surprise at the sight he encountered within. A pallid arachnid, dressed in some kind of papal bustier, turned to face him. This mutant horror, closer to the size of a blimp than an ant, turned with a horrible temporal scream and faced him. It whipped back a corner of its bizarre liturgical negligee and pulled a deadly rune-covered sword from its scabbard. "Hm! No happy shindig today," he thought to himself, the single thought filling the usual vacuum of his mind. The sword swooped down and caught him a glancing blow. The horrific spider laughed with glee, but the cheer caught in its thorax as he rose, unhurt, to his feet. Thank God he was wearing his kevlar
"Woo woo woo! Look at them legs!" the fresh maple leaves shouted. The cloth catnip mouse was offended, but said nothing. She had long been exposed to that kind of behaviour from deciduous plants. "I'll be glad to get home," she thought to herself. "I'm hungry, and at least Finky will treat me with some respect." She reached 44th Street and entered her building where Adolfo, the bumble-ball doorman, was on duty. He rose unsteadily and nodded to her. Next to his chair was a nearly-empty bottle of kaopectate. "'S' nothin'," he lisped drunkenly. "Jus' a little shot t' hold me until I getta break." She said nothing and, avoiding his gaze, quickly went inside. The elevator arrived at her floor and she dashed into their small apartment. To her surprise she saw the familiar large plastic penguin standing in the doorway to the kitchen, naked, holding a dozen roofing nails in one flipper and a birthday cake, with candles, in the other. "Finky!" she laughed. "You remembered!" "Happy birthday, Sheiloo, my favorite little cloth catnip mouse," Finky replied. After a leisurely candlelit dinner of cake and roofing nails, the two giggled and retired to the bedroom