Snowflakes like little, flat shards of glass were drifting in the air, hanging still, slicing sideways, twirling and flipping, slowly working their way to pavement as if from giant windows shattered thousands of feet above. The earth, some immense greenhouse in space, its air kept in by an enveloping lattice of glass. I imagined all the world’s air leisurely escaping in the night, through a single missing pane. In the morning the whole world would wake up in a vacuum, our only warning these few delicate fragments fluttering their way to the ground.

And then, for the briefest of moments, the sun came out. But it was enough.

I deserve that.

Oh yeah. Here am in doing that industrial worker thing. I particularily enjoy my embroidered nametag. Always wanted one of those. What you need to ask yourself is this: if you were a four-footed wooly mammal, would you mess with this guy?




















Now, this guy...

What can I say? This is the one and only Jason.

I open the battered hatch in time for the sunrise , distant fire flickering on an underbelly of cloud and in a thousand tiny mirrors - a frost-covered world. I trudge out to inspect the pipes. It is silent. I stand in my little trampled path between mounds of snow. In the summer, I am told, the steel rack that the pipes are on comes up to the chest. Now, the snow I stand on puts it below my knees.
Strange things in a shop can be beautiful. Morning sun backlights the saw, rendering the unseen visible, a golden brightness in a fine spray of liquid and pulverized metal, steam rising lazily from cold pipes, glinting in drops of coolant spray.

Farther inside, showers of sparks flicker in mirror-polished steel. Long pipes, fluted with precisely spiraled holes, are stacked upright like magnificent church organ, immense, dignified and full of unheard music.

Yesterday I ate a sheep. It was glorious. They had it coming.

I told you they were not to be trifled with. The other day I came home, threw my coat on the chair, stretched, reached for the light, and....froze, clenched in the icy creeping grip of sheer woolly terror. THIS is what awaited me.



They were here. In this room. IN THIS VERY ROOM. The sheep. They followed me. they know where I live. They have somehow escaped the bounds of the interent, entered the real world, and, in their menacing herd, have bounded over green fields and fences to my very door, and left me this terrifying token. What does it mean? A warning? Some kind of voodoo curse? I tired to notify the authorities ( um...Alberta Fish & Wildlife?) that the sheep were preparing for some kind of massive assault on humanity - but they informed me that sheep were livestock and therefore not their jurisdiction, sent me to an Agriculture Canada office, who referred me to an Alberta agriculture office, who sent me to an infectious diseases control office, who sent me to an office listed as in the second basement level of the Mcleod building, which, upon investigation, has been turned into condos and never had even ONE basement - at which point i began to develop the suspiscion that i might be being given the run around, and went home in a huff to leave humanity to its well-deserved fate.

In other equally terrifying news, my cat can walk through walls. Now that i have accepted this odd, but increasingly obvious fact, the world seems to make a lot more sense. On several occaisons i have left my house secure in the knowlede that O'Malley, while a super-being, lacks the opposable-thumb-granted dexterity to turn doorknobs, and is therefore safely imprisoned in my apartment till my return. How wrong i was. More than once i have opened my outer door to a much louder than usual meow and the incongruous sight of my self satisfied cat waiting at the bottom of the steps. In the laundry room. Where he is not supposed to be. Two triple locked steel hydraulically-sealed doors and a sophisticated anti-sheep security system away from where i left him. Once I arrived at my door to the eerie silohette of a cat in the upstairs apartment window. For a moment, i thought the ghost of my landlords demon-posessed cat Simon continued to haunt the place after his departure. It was somewhat relieving to find it was only MY cat, who had simply developed the ability to pass through solid matter. I theorize that Mr. O' Malley has learned to exploit a little known physics loophole - one that was first brought to my attention by renowned physics expert My Friend Gerry - whereby it is theoretically possible that when two solid objects collide their molecules all simultaneously miss each other and they will pass through unaffected (Which sounds like much of Jeremy's love life).
My cat, being exceptionally lucky, has managed to do this on numerous occasions.
My other theory involves the scientifically documented Feline Multiple Life phenomenem. (Actually 9.65, according to the latest studies). My Cat could be killing himself in my apartment, only to resurrect in the laundry room. If that is the case, a stern talking to is in order. We don't know how many of those things he has left! (Newer cats come with a bar of little cat icons on their collar that dissapear each time a life is used up- for the nintendo generation of pet owners)

There might just be a secret cat-sized passage in the closet. But that doesn't seem very plausible.