8/2/07
The past month or so has had held a few pleasant surprises. All of them were in unread books. I remember going to the bookstore and picking up these volumes then forgetting about them on the shelf for more than a year.

First was The Dark Beyond the Stars which exceeded my expectations. Now I'm reading Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt. Now I do find this to be a fun tale but it suffers from the protagonists being relatively invincible while traversing the United States of America in the far future after a vast plague. One would expect robbers at every turn and other dangers but I'm getting the impression this is no more dangerous than walking through Central Park at noontime on a Saturday in July. It's horribly rushed, some stuff seems to be tacked-on to explain things to the reader rather than leaving it up to the imagination but once again Mr. McDevitt has produced a guilty pleasure.

The Old Man of Providence was keen on felines. During the years of estrangement in New York City which was bursting at the seams with dark skinned, thick lipped immigrants with greasy hair the only solace he found outside of Sonia Greene's arms was supporting the unofficial feline fraternity of Kappa Alpha Tau that met infrequently upon a neighboring rooftop.
Gunshots woke him from a sound sleep haunted by dreams of eldritch gods and the blasphemous voids of space. Leaning out the tenement window he discovered Al Capone engaged in target practice.
"See here, dago!" he shouted as best as he could with his thin, piping voice. "If it is sport that you seek then I shall accomodate you tenfold but get ye hence from those cats!" The seamy lord of crime and sin thoughtfully chewed his cigar sizing up the lanky writer. At his feet a black tom yowled his final agonies only to be silenced with the heel of a wing-tip.
"Little man," he spoke with the cool tones one would expect of the Adversary in Paradise Lost, "you don't know what you're up against. I'm Al Capone. I run this burg. You have three to apologize and avoid sleeping with the fishes." Howard shuddered inwardly reminded of the foul miasma that would haunt him from summer jobs as a fishmonger in south Providence.

"One"

Lovecraft felt his gorge rise followed by syllables with gutteral resonance which had remained forgotten and unspoken in the waking realm. A brief visit with Kuranes of Celephais acquainted him with the incantation.

"Tw-"

Capone gasped and doubled over in pain. His finger reflexively pulling the trigger and rendering his foot into hamburger. "This is how we deal with troublemakers in our neighborhood! You'll get into one little fight and your mother will get scared upon which she will declare 'You're moving in with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air!'"