
                                    _
                                   | \
                                   |  \
                                   | | \
                            __     | |\ \             __
      _____________       _/_/     | | \ \          _/_/     _____________
     |  ___________     _/_/       | |  \ \       _/_/       ___________  |
     | |              _/_/_____    | |   > >    _/_/_____               | |
     | |             /________/    | |  / /    /________/               | |
     | |                           | | / /                              | |
     | |                           | |/ /                               | |
     | |                           | | /                                | |
     | |                           |  /                                 | |
     | |                           |_/                                  | |
     | |                                                                | |
     | |      c   o   m   m   u   n   i   c   a   t   i   o   n   s     | |
     | |________________________________________________________________| |
     |____________________________________________________________________|

  ...presents...           Radiocarbon Dating Service
                                                         by Markian Gooley

                      >>> a cDc publication.......1993 <<<
                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
  ____       _     ____       _       ____       _     ____       _       ____
 |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|

     Melanie became a blender rather than go out on a date with me.  I wept as
her golden hair became the blender-jar's lid, and so forth.  Vanessa developed
a snout and sharp teeth and tore out her own intestines rather than see
_La Boheme_ with me, though she loved opera.  Michelle had herself sealed
inside a fifteen-ounce can of pinto beans, Sally grew a beard and performed a
double mastectomy on herself with the Girl Scout pocket knife she still carried
for cutting up Girl Scouts, Claire became a Buddhist nun (aged 76), Conchita
had her skin and skeleton replaced with those of a large dog, Sheri became a
case of Amontillado bricked up inside a wall by a madman named Montresor,
Valerie became a six-year-old boy, Helen became a giant wooden horse, Laura
became a bay tree.  I was hounded from town to town because women I asked out
on dates had a way of changing into people or objects I found uninteresting.

     I tried asking out horseshoes, lumps of lead-bismuth alloy, bottles of
ketchup, motorcycles, sections of concrete sewer pipe, and so on.  Some of the
smaller objects seemed to have no objection to being carried, but none of them
metamorphosed into humans.  I thought that one of my invitations stripped the
gold plating from a cheap wristwatch, but that might have been my imagination.

     I began to ask out abstract things: the nature of God, the idea of
liberty, equilateral triangles, infinite series.  Green's Theorem became a
magnificent Titian-haired beauty with a Scotish accent and a raunchy sense of
humor, but thousands of enraged mathematicians beat me nearly to death with
chalk and Rubik's Cubes until the Theorem agreed to become her usual self.  I
was heartbroken: her pale woman-skin had been impossibly soft and smooth, her
alto voice arousing, her caresses entrancing.

     I hocked my diamond tiara and with the proceeds joined a radiocarbon
dating service.  The level of Carbon 14, the smarmy bearded balding man who
talked me into signing up informed me, was a certain measure of compatibility.
With a Geiger counter and a violinist and a group of Germans who got that joke,
he measured my radiocarbon and radio reception.  "You've been dead for 5760
years," he informed me, stroking his hair back and causing a handful of it to
fall out.  "No wonder women are disgusted by you."

     "May I have a refund?" I asked.

     "No," he said, grinning.  "You signed the contract, sucker."

     "I'll put a whammy on you," I said, and he just laughed.  The goddess
Athena, a personal friend, borrowed a thunderbolt from her daddy and struck him
and the others dead and set the building ablaze.  Unfortunately, Athena was not
such a friend of mine as to impersonate a human woman for me, as happens in
ingenious anonymous stories that I should have written, so that I had to be
content with the burnt-mutton smell in the air and the hope of a timely death.
 _______  __________________________________________________________________
/ _   _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842|
 ((___)) |Cool Beans!..........510/THE-COOL|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362|
 [ x x ] |Metalland Southwest..713/468-5802|Lunatic Labs........213/655-0691|
  \   /  |The Works............617/861-8976|Ripco ][............312/528-5020|
  (' ')  |ftp - zero.cypher.com in pub/cdc |ftp - ftp.eff.org in pub/cud/cdc|
   (U)   |==================================================================|
  .ooM   |1993 cDc communications by Markian Gooley            12/30/93-#244|
\_______/|            Save yourself!  Go outside!  DO SOMETHING!            |

