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Sukilh and his three daughters lived outside of Jakarta near the landfill. Every morning before dawn, they awoke to catch the first trucks in from the wealthy suburbs. These carried their breakfast: melon rinds with some meat still clinging to their edges, pork bones and fat, and the occasional crust of moldy bread. (Dalor, the youngest daughter at 8, loved peanut butter, but often cut her tongue on the broken glass from which she licked it.) The next twelve hours were passed sifting through the detritus, collecting metal to sell to the scrap yards and any clothing that was still in salvageable enough condition for Malinka, the eldest daughter, and the apple of Sukilh's eye, to mend and barter with some of their richer neighbors, the ones lucky enough to have jobs in the factories.
This morning, a wonderful thing happened. Malinka found a vibrant length of batik cloth, enough for her to convert into a dress. With this, she hoped to adorn herself into fine enough fettle to realize her dream of being a whore in the city, where she could earn as much as $3.00 a night! She wrapped the cloth around her head to keep it as far as possible from the garbage soup in which she waded, and continued working. Later in the day, as she walked behind one of the landfill tractors (their flattened trails were easier to move on), a glitter caught her eye. She darted forward and fell to her hands and knees to retrieve the prize: a gold ring set with a false diamond. This could easily fetch as much as--
A violent jerk brought Malinka flat to the ground. She tried to raise her face from the muck, but found it impossible. The tail end of her batik headdress was stuck in the tractor's treads, and she was being dragged slowly through the trash.
"Stop! Stop!" Sukilh cried to the tractor's driver.
Malinka grabbed two handfuls of the fabric and tried to rip it, but found it to be of too high a quality.
"Stop!" Sukilh shouted, leaping onto the tractor's cab. "Stop!"
Malinka's lungs filled with thick landfill juice, and she drowned.
"Stop!" Gwyneth Paltrow, 9,000 miles away, squealed, nearly snarfing her mouthful of Cristal. Her husband, Chris Martin of Coldplay, had made that funny face again.
“Stop it!” she squealed again, without a care in the world for Sukilh and Malinka. Gwyneth Paltrow didn’t even try to help them. Gwyneth Paltrow seemed to care only about herself. She topped off another glass of champagne (those few ounces alone worth enough to support Sukilh and his remaining daughters for one year) and poured it down her rich white throat. Fucking Gwyneth Paltrow. What a jerk.
Date Written: September 07, 2004
Author: qualcomm
Average Vote: 4.4
Comments:
09/9/2004 Will Disney (4): the beginning of this short really took me away to another place - and i agree that gywneth is a jerk and all but i already knew that. still i'll give it 4 stars for setting the scene. 3.75 stars maybe.
09/9/2004 Joe Frankenstone (5): Match cut! Merry Christmas...and a happy new year!
09/9/2004 anonymous: I don't think I've ever been more stumped by the question of authorship as I have by this short here. Especially since I didn't write it.
09/9/2004 qualcomm (4): nor'd i
09/9/2004 qualcomm: hey frankenstone, is acme dwindling on the vine due to some curse you and your cabal put on us?
09/9/2004 TheBuyer (4):
09/9/2004 Dylan Danko (4): Yes, authorship is puzzling. So anyway, last night Ariana Huffington was on Bill Maher along with Andrew (Poof) Sullivan and Jason Alexander and I noticed that whenever Ariana was talking I felt something stir below. Don't you think she'd be fucking great in bed? Discuss.
09/9/2004 Will Disney: yes, definitely should would be. now how about a three way including her and camille paglia? those broads would really rip your balls off.
09/9/2004 Dylan Danko: Ewww! Maybe Ann Coulter but not Camille.
09/9/2004 Will Disney: yeah but obviously ann coulter wouldn't be any good in bed, other than as an object of humiliation.
09/9/2004 qualcomm: paglia's vag would be too cthonian, and untamed jungle of snares and booby-traps. a gorilla salad, if you will.
09/9/2004 qualcomm: *chthonian*
09/9/2004 Litcube (4): How is Acme dwindling on the vine?
09/9/2004 qualcomm: aphids
09/9/2004 Litcube: Like me, I presume.
09/9/2004 qualcomm: no, i was just being stupid. it's dwindling because the authors seem to be bored or lazy. at any rate, submissions are low, as is energy/hustle.
09/9/2004 Mr. Pony: meh
09/9/2004 Litcube: Shouldn't your motivating slogan of "Let's see some hustle out there today, faggots!" have carried over thus far? Perhaps they need more motivating slogans.
09/9/2004 Jon Matza: Maybe what's needed is some positive reinforcement. Hey everyone, your work lately has been out of this world. I for one am very pleased with your efforts. You deserve tons of credit. You bunch of fucking Chef-Boy-Ar-Dees.
09/9/2004 scoop: There was a stretch there in the 4th Grade when my mom (Mother) would furnish me with thermos fulls of various Chef Boyardee delectables such as spaghetti with meatballs, beefaroni and beef filled raviolis. I certainly enjoyed those youthful lunch treats. My 4th Grade teacher Mrs. McGowan would tell me, "Your going to turn into a big giant meatball one day!" I never did, but I thought she was a wonderful woman for saying something so silly. One day she said I was going to rot in hell if I kept reading Mad magazine. That came as a shock! I have never trusted adults since then, and sometimes, when my mind's eye wanders over the visage of Chef Boyardee, I wonder if things might have turned out differently for me...
09/9/2004 Mr. Pony (4): Isn't this scoop?
09/9/2004 scoop: Possibly, Pony. But both OSS and I saw this doc togehter about a one legged, one armed man who lived in a sliver of real estate between two train tracks in Inodnesia. Outside of Jakarta, come to think of it. It's also possible I am anona.
09/9/2004 qualcomm: yeah, i could've written this.
09/9/2004 scoop: If OSS wrote this I will give it 5 stars. If someone else wrote it, I will give them four. So I am going to wait for the anonymtiy period to elapse, so I can vote. If anyone needs me I'll be availble through either the user feedback feature or the message board. PS - This is awfully political for the creature formally known as The Lerpa. PPS -- rich white throat is a dubiously qua line.
09/9/2004 The Fonch:
scoop is correct, the anonymity feature will lapse at midnight, then the author of today's Short will be revealed and he will vote.
Signed,
The Fonch
09/9/2004 Benny Maniacs (4): She was good in the Royal Tennenbaums.
09/9/2004 TheBuyer: Section II. Grammar
The sentence:
Dalor, the youngest daughter at 8, loved peanut butter, but often cut her tongue on the broken glass from which she licked it.
Could be better. For three free benefit-of-the-doubt rating point "stars", please re-write this sentence differently, and better but without changing the meaning.
09/9/2004 Mr. Pony: if peanutbutter_exists = "true"
---init peanutbutter [0,5]
---init dalor [8, "youngest", 0,0]
---set current_mental_state[dalor]=current_mental_state[dalor]+5
---repeat while Vpos dalor =! Vpos peanutbutter
------set Vpos dalor=set Vpos dalor+1
---end repeat
---repeat while peanutbutter_exists = "true"
------set dalor=dalor-1
---end repeat
end if
09/9/2004 Mr. Pony: curses!
09/9/2004 Mr. Pony: What I meant, of course, was this:
09/9/2004 Mr. Pony:
if peanutbutter_exists = "true"
---init peanutbutter [0,5]
---init dalor [8, "youngest", 0,0]
---set current_mental_state[dalor]=current_mental_state[dalor]+5
---repeat while Vpos dalor =! Vpos peanutbutter
------set Vpos dalor=set Vpos dalor+1
---end repeat
---repeat while peanutbutter_exists = "true"
------set dalor=dalor-1
---end repeat
end if
09/9/2004 Litcube: So if peanut butter (boolean) exists, Dalor's mental state is equal to someone elses (whoever's 5 after her). Also, Dalor's vertical position will increase until it's level with peanut butter. Also, once this is finished, Dalor will get smaller and smaller until the end of time.
09/9/2004 Mr. Pony: Just until the peanut butter's gone!
09/9/2004 Litcube: Nope!
09/9/2004 Litcube: She's at about -(10^6) right now, and the situation is getting worse.
09/9/2004 Mr. Pony: Actually, if what you're saying was even remotely true, her value would be a negative whole number. To bad YOU'RE TOTALLY WRONG.
09/9/2004 Litcube: -(10 ^ 6) *is* a negative whole number, silly! Plus, your "set dalor=dalor-1" is encapsulated in a loop wherein the conditional identifier remains unchanged. BooYah!
09/10/2004 Mr. Pony: Ah. You're right, I spoke too soon. For some reason I read that as ten to the negative sixth and not the negative of ten to the sixth. Also, I omitted a peanut butter-eating routine, so if you're going to read this literally, she approaches the peanut butter, stands on it, and then loses value, forever! But what about suggestion? What about poetry?
09/10/2004 scoop: Five Stars!!!
09/10/2004 scoop (5): !!!
09/10/2004 TheBuyer: You know, man, if you poetry and suggest into one hand and shit in the other, you're probably just nuts. But that's good enough for me!
09/10/2004 qualcomm: and i'm the one with a grammar problem?
09/10/2004 John Slocum (5): A nice piece of work. Say, summer - you're a good writer.
09/10/2004 qualcomm: you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. asshole.
09/10/2004 Jon Matza: It grieves me to say so, but I feel this is overrated. However "Malinka...tried to rip it, but found it to be of too high a quality" was pretty nutterbutter.
09/10/2004 John Slocum: Good writer, but your rhythm guitar needs work, you unsteady cunt.
09/10/2004 qualcomm: your woman hated us, didn't she?
09/10/2004 John Slocum: no, au contraire, she thought it was great.
09/10/2004 Jon Matza: Loathe, yes. Disapprove of, by all means. Pity, certainly. Hate, never.
09/10/2004 qualcomm: maybe she was just "saying" it was great, while simultaneously holding thoughts of an opposite nature. did you ever consider that?
09/10/2004 Mr. Pony: That would be a deception!
09/10/2004 qualcomm: what if everything you hold to be true is a lie?
09/10/2004 Mr. Pony: Including that particular revelation?
09/10/2004 qualcomm: no, including its inverse.
09/10/2004 Mr. Pony: Then I guess I would have some thinking to do.
02/21/2005 qualcomm: topical
09/18/2010 Marvin_Bernstein (5): transcendental and magnificent and Gweneth bores me to tears
10/7/2010 anonymous: those are sexual metaphors are they not?
10/7/2010 anonymous: those are sexual metaphors are they not?