“Folkstone looks a lot less orange today,” says Denise. “So that’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s still not quite on message about the school funding thing. He told the Nurses Association that his plan would cut their property taxes by an average of 31%. But our data shows that 64% of nurses in our state rent rather than own their primary residences. And as you know …”
In the Ninth Ward of New New Orleans, the CEO of Atomitronics unleashed a flock of flamingobots. John LeChien, walking to work in the morning, heard them before he turned and saw them: a stiff-gaited pink horde clacking across the street and sidewalks.
He evaded the sharp beak of the first one and dropped to all fours to snap its plastic neck with his jaws. The beak of the second ripped his overalls to expose short blond fur. There were too many of them, rushing him from all directions. Tail between his legs, he dove between them and rolled, hearing the too-close thok-thok-thok of beaks striking the sidewalk.
“The Redcoats are coming! The Redcoats are coming!”
“What?” the newcomer asks. “The red what?”
“The Red Coats. You know, Redcoats — the British soldiers: the Regulars, the King’s Men, the Lobsters, the Bloody Backs, etc. etc. etc.”
“But why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you yelling? Why are you trying to warn me about…the British, you said?” The newcomer pauses and kneads his hands. “I mean, they don’t seem that bad.” He does a quick scan of the area. “And I don’t think I see any here.”
Amidst the glut of über-chic boutique eateries crowding the labyrinthine streets of Manchester’s resurgent North-West district nestles the new venture of renowned gastronaut Harley Figgs-Baumgartner. In keeping with its so-trendy-it-hurts postcode, the restaurant plies its trade under the near-unpronounceable moniker of Xtcokpøt, and spreads it tables over seventeen floors in a tall cylindrical building, converted from an industrial chimney.
After all these years of suffering under a hopeless crush, I’ve finally gotten my heart’s desire. I am literally (sort of) sleeping with John Stuart Mill. And let me tell you, darlings, People magazine needs to make up a new contest, because he is the sexiest man no longer alive. Or at least he’s the sexiest moral philosopher no longer alive. For one thing, he is HUGE—485 pages, not even counting the extended bibliography and prodigious notes. Now like most women, there’s nothing I like better than a long, slow read. But it’s not just the size. From the first time I read the Autobiography, On Liberty, and of course On the Subjection of Women, I was sure JStill was the only man who would ever really get me (except maybe Captain Kangaroo).