It was true. Henge had hubris, per se. Clint Dossier’s observations were right, at least from a far. Hubris, that expression originating from the Greek: a classical crime of pride, of gloating. Henge’s hubris, however, was a rare case of preemptive gloating. A sort of bragging prior to victory, which in modern parlance has become the ( Read more... )

The engine wouldn’t crank all the way, and the radio blared Rush Limbaugh loudly,

echoing across the fetid brown surface of Lake Me. The scene in the lake looked like recess, when a playground monitor had blown her whistle, summoning transgressors to the principal’s office.

Carmine could see Pete slump his shoulders in that New York ( Read more... )

            You are all under arrest, the megaphone said.

Pete Limpelli, sopping wet and drooping after being dragged along the surface of Lake Me at an estimated twenty four knots by Goliath, the cryptid 800 pound catfish looked up and squinted through his glasses. Arrest? What the fuck is all this? Hadn’t he okayed it will Bill Badalamente in ( Read more... )

            Henge watched the blue crown of the gas burner cup the bottom of the percolator pot, and meditated on the blurbs of hot brown organic coffee lapping the inside of the yellowed percolator bulb on the top. He went over his notes for the day’s Hubba Bubba radio show. On a few crumpled sheets of yellow legal paper, Henge had transcribed his ( Read more... )

            Sax fashioned a crank mechanism out of an old Huffy bicycle pedal, a cam from a John Deer riding mower, a door hinge, and some lengths of steel strapping. When finished the thing looked like a gun on a turret, with a two handed crank at the butt end, and a swivel mount in the center. Running down the side of the cannon was an intake ( Read more... )

            Sax attached the base, or breech of the metal barrel of the water cannon to the magnum penis pump with some JB Weld, a series of grommets, and a few discretely welded lap joints.

The air inside the basement shop of Cheviot Machine and Screw was stale, stinking of rust and metal shavings, ozone, and cigarette smoke and the ( Read more... )

            Sax Taxson was a polymath and an unabashed autodidact. He loved reading chapters from books in bookstores - calling in to local radio talk shows, and editing wikipedia entries.

Sax also subscribed to Popular Mechanics, and had done some research surrounding fluid dynamics. Archimedean screws. Sump pumps. Bilge pumps. ( Read more... )

            At Len Wiedeshofer’s place later that night, Henge and Len went into the master bathroom and filled up the bathtub.

“It’s cold bubba,” said Henge. He dabbed his hand in the off pink tub basin, and flung water droplets into the broiling maelstrom. He toweled off his middle and index fingers with a chenille scalloped shelled ( Read more... )

            With the pump on the front passenger seat of Chomsky, buckled in, Sax Taxson roared back down US 27. It was three in the afternoon, and Henge was slated to pick up the finished water cannon at Len Wiedeshofer’s house around seven. Big Ernie Shores supposedly had the underlying structure and barrel of the weapon completed - an ( Read more... )

            “Drive carefully,” said the trooper.

“Oh I will officer,” said Sax. “Boy oh boy I will.”

Sax Taxson looked out the driver side window and craned his neck down the straight ribbon of US 27. Shimmers of heat rose up, and a wall of corn six feet high buttressed each side. US 27, from that view, was a flume. US 27 ( Read more... )