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The baby scurried for cover with the urgency of a cockroach when the kitchen light is flicked on.
It hid behind the derelict oil tanker; scorched and blasted from a battle no one had bothered to name. Its little feet settled in to the carpet of bleached bones. It couldn’t tell whether they were baby or puppy. It didn’t care.

It breathed shallow, like it was trained to. Puppies had been running patrols irregularly since the latest escalation in "activity", and now here the baby was a good click from camp. Some cease-fire. Just another chance for the two sides to rearm, feed their armies weapons and rations and lies.

It could hear the puppies panting as they padded by; their weapons mounted to camouflage collars. Fucking puppies with their lolling tongues and slavish obedience. But are we any better, it thought? With our chubby, ruddy cheeks and biologically designed innocence? Ever since its last kill these questions, dangerous questions, had bounced around the stinking baby’s head like a big red ball. When was it going to end?

No one could remember how it started, but since it did the war in the wasteland between the babies and the puppies would cost millions of lives on both sides. But the frenzy of war, much to the surprise of both the babies and the puppies, did eventually subside. It ended as suddenly as it began. A cease-fire finally held. It lasted one month. Then two. Until, finally, a sleepy-eyed peace took hold, and the combatants wiped the war from their eyes and tried peace on for size.
But the memories, fetid and rotten, would live on forever -- interred in the bones of the lost, and in the buried enmity of the living

Date Written: May 19, 2004
Author: scoop
Average Vote: 4.66667

Comments:
05/21/2004 Ferucio P. Chhretan (5): I don't care if this was designed to lure the geeks out, I love this short.
05/21/2004 Will Disney: holy crap it's an afternoon author short!
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony (5): That's really very good.
05/21/2004 qualcomm (5):
05/21/2004 qualcomm: really, it's only one star better than disney's penny/nickel urban myth, right pony? homo.
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: And I suppose it's also just one star better than "It was Women's Baskeball", lerpa? Get over yourself.
05/21/2004 anonymous: Oh no he didn't, oh no he didn't! No seriously he didn't just go there, did he. OMG I think he did.
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: I'm getting really tired of the Lerpa telling us all what to do.
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: Who is he to stand over us in judgment?
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: It's getting so I can't vote without the Lerpa sticking his ass in my face demanding an apology.
05/21/2004 qualcomm: i've been over myself for years, pony, ever since i stood myself up for the big dance. it's you, pony, you i need to get over, you who stick in my craw, with your standardless voting. there will be a reckoning for your kind, pony, a reckoning and a totalling, followed by a rounding up and a gathering, a fencing in and an 'internment' if you will. it will happen in the territory that will be known as California, during a period of time that will one day be referred to as World War II.
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: Standardless? Every single time you've demanded an explanation for my "standardless" voting, I've come forward with one. (Perhaps I've been spoiling you!) I know that you're not suggesting that those who don't agree with you are automatically wrong, foolish, and/or not thinking things through properly, but you should take note that it's sort of coming off that way.
05/21/2004 qualcomm: oh, so you're saying i'm not thinking through what i'm saying properly?
05/21/2004 qualcomm: and yes, you were wrong to give that disney short four stars. wrong wrong wrong.
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: Why would you even try to do what you just tried to do? Has it been a long week for you? As for the stars I gave the short, they were for the laughs that came out of me because of it. I know the short was kind of dumb, but haven't you ever given four stars to something that made you laugh, even thought you thought it was dumb?
05/21/2004 qualcomm: yes.
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: Well, okay then.
05/21/2004 Mr. Joshua: Pony, instead of baiting the Lerpa, shouldn't you be working on the next Smarty Jones short? Did you see that because of your misspelling of Smarty (Smartie) that 'Smartie Jones' is now the number one query that has brought well-meaning people to Acme? Also, if it makes you feel any better, I once drooled on the Lerpa while he was sleeping.
05/21/2004 Ewan Snow: Ha!
05/21/2004 qualcomm: (what did i just try to do, pony?)
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: (you offered a hollow suggestion that I was guilty of the same activity I was accusing you of)
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: I have also posted a link to "Smartie Jones" on a couple of "Equestrian Art" Message boards!
05/21/2004 qualcomm: that sucker was solid chocolate, pony. it's your usual rhetorical gambit, attributing your own faults to your opponent (such as your repeated cry that i put words in your mouth, when you are so much more guilty of that (for example of this, see argument regarding airea poem in next sentence's parenthetical)). not to mention, as i've said before, universalizing every particular argument i make (eg: i say you're wrong to vote 4 for disney's urban myth and you accuse me of saying anyone who disagrees with me is wrong; or, i say that your poetry reading was a naked ridicule of airea, and you basically accuse me of saying that it's impossible (italics yours) to both make fun of and pay tribute to something simultaneously). in addition, you have a penchant for taking hard, opinionated stances on a given subject (which of course i have no problem with), but couching your argument in the self-effacing, populist language of relativism, meanwhile accusing your opponents of being fascist tastemakers. thank you. "no hard feelings."
05/21/2004 Ewan Snow: Wait, where's the chocolate?
05/21/2004 Ewan Snow (4): I like the idea of a puppy/baby way and this was well written. Not quite five material in my book, but enjoyable.
05/21/2004 TheBuyer (5): Whatever universe this is I want to live in it. I'd be a goddamn giant!
Also, I forwarded this short to my old roommate who was the butt of a running joke where she lives on Princess Island and the biggest debates involve heated discussions about which is cutest - puppies, babies, or kittens and the ongoing controversy - does sunshine really radiate out of her ass?
She's gonna love this.
...damnit, I just blew my next short.
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: As far as your main point goes, it's true, I have been relying on italics a little too much lately. Concerning the other stuff, defending myself against that would (obviously) just perpetuate the feedback loop that has been reverberating between us for months. I'd like it to stop here, at least for a moment. As anyone who has closely followed one of our arguments will tell you, we both put an inordinate number of words into each other's mouths. Both of us have a tendency to make a grab for the moral and intellectual high ground. Each of us is more likely than usual to accuse the other of something we ourselves are guilty of. And yes, I believe that both of us have a tendency to universalize our arguments. I think that's maybe why we find ourselves at odds with each other on the scale that we do. I'm not saying I'm right, or that you're right, or even that we're somehow even, I just think that both of us need to think about this for a moment before proceeding.
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: That said, where's the fucking chocolate?
05/21/2004 anonymous: That was possibly one of the most monstrous things I've ever heard Pony say.
05/21/2004 TheBuyer: The ACME THUNDERDOME is screaming for this ongoing outpouring of impotent rage over what is (almost) a fresh dispute and is ruining a damn good short.
05/21/2004 qualcomm: CAN'T ARGUE NOW.... POWERPOINT...
05/21/2004 Mr. Pony: ^_^
05/21/2004 Jon Matza (5): What sickens me is the hypocrisy of the civilians, letting the babies and puppies fight their battles for them and then treating them like a dirty little secret after it was over.
05/21/2004 John Slocum (4): I agree with snow on this short, the same way I agree with him on the increased use of new oak barrels in the elevage of certain wines in excellent vintages.
05/22/2004 TheBuyer: The last two sentences make my effing day.
05/22/2004 Snack Bar: if innocence is biologically designed, does that then mean my evil, in its counterpart, can be genetically scientifically altered, plastic-surgerized, snip tuck lifted and redesigned if i am also gifted with the bitch-dog human bastard child of my own thoughts? in heat, dry-humping with ugly protruding red lipstick, i want to be fixed. there must be a market for this in either Beverly Hills or animal shelters.
05/22/2004 Jimson S. Sorghum (5): Babies and puppies....
05/23/2004 scoop: Yes Snack Bar, of course it means your evil, in its counterpart, can be genetically scientifically altered, plastic-surgerized, snip tuck lifted and redesigned especially since you are especially gifted with the bitch-dog human bastard child of your own thoughts. In fact if you were my little angel I would make sure to place you in the gifted with the bitch-dog human bastard child of your own thoughts program at a select area private school. And I would proudly and prominently place a bumper sticker on my car that read: "Proud Parent of the gifted with the bitch-dog human bastard child of your own thoughts program!"
05/23/2004 Mr. Pony: Scoop, I believe the video game rights to this story will make you a very wealthy man someday.
05/24/2004 Snack Bar: my whole 7 X 1 long life spent over-thinking and scraggy-mutt drifting, wandering the streets in heat, ne'er a decent bone in sight (ain't THAT the truth), always hoping i'd find my way home and... Daddy?
05/27/2004 mr.coffee (4):
03/19/2010 qualcomm: know what i wonder? what powerpoint presentation was i working on at 5/21/2004 6:31:19 PM?
03/19/2010 Ewan Snow: Penny Pulaski, praps? Prolly.