Netrat0's New Writeups

Chrysalis and the Lake elder (fiction)

2010-11-14T00:13:56Z

Five young women walked on a dry dirt trail in the shade of spindly lodgepole pine. Theresa McKiernan was breathing hard, sweating, taking big gulps from a stainless steel canteen. She was dressed inappropriately for the heat, in a pair of khaki cargo pants, green Chuck Taylors, a long-sleeved flannel button-down. She was out of shape, soft everywhere -- skinny, but with a round belly and oversized ass. The other girls were far ahead. They were all husky, firm water polo players with lungs like cantilevers. They had legs like steel struts.

…

The Disaster Junkies in Outer Space (fiction)

2010-10-02T20:11:45Z

Things went well for us until the cupcake factory closed. We were a one trick-city. We made the Galaxy's very best cupcakes. Chocolate, strawberry, lemon-raspberry. Those were our flavors and they were absolutely unassailable. We had just one four star Yelp! rating, and the guy was a known asshole. But tastes change, times change. After the Torps took over, flour became more expensive, for obvious reasons. Jewslam grew into a dominant religion concurrently, gained trillions of new followers in just a year, so nobody was eating any butter. Fuck a cupcake without butter, right? We could have cut quality, cut standards, but we had too much pride. We were ethnic Californians, and we took shit seriously. We took hard work seriously. We took the end product seriously. So we decided to blow up the factory. The headline that day read "Fuck it.". It was accompanied by a big photo of the debris cloud. Our little moon was pretty self-sufficient. We could grow the staples: corn, wheat, beans. We had enough…

Dwayne Two Houses Down (idea)

2010-09-06T18:49:12Z

2008:

It was a damp, cold morning in San Jose. It had rained the night before.The sky was silver. Dwayne stood on my neighbor's lawn. He wore a white crew t-shirt, grey 501's, a brown knit skull-cap, brown, scuffed-up workboots. His leashless black Dachshund took a piss on my neighbor's bougainvilleas. I didn't want to talk.

"Hey Stan?" he called at me, "Stan?" He rushed to the edge of the lawn to make sure I could see him.

"Yeah, hey," I waved , locked up my duplex, hopped off my porch and started to cross the double-wide driveway.

"I've got your package," he said.

"Oh?" My right loafer dipped into a puddle. I pulled it, shook it off, shouted "Motherfucker!" Dwayne laughed, came at me, adjusted his crotch but didn't miss a step, said, "Those are nice shoes. You'd better watch out."

"They're not real leather or anything," I answered. We stood in the middle of the driveway. "What package? Is it kind of big?"

"Ma…

It's Called Subtext, Honey (person)

2008-07-06T21:50:51Z

Boring. Boring. Boring. Jackhammer beat. Sepia light and dripping bodies close everywhere on the black linoleum. He's pressing against her, she's pressing against him and she feels his feeling grow, but her mouth is getting dry, her temples are stinging bad and the bass and drums are kicking her stomach too hard.

She stands on her toes, hugs him and yells up into his ear, "Do you want to go outside! I need to smoke!"

He looks back and her with drifting brown eyes. His pores are large and ooze. He says, "Ok. Yeah!"

His hand is on the bared small of her back. He stares at her coffee skin. She pierces the crowd, guides him around the stainless steel column at the center of the floor.

The cold midnight air makes their sweat…

Lifted A Mariachi Bassline (person)

2008-05-27T05:17:35Z

Lifted a Mariachi Bassline

Cars are a disgusting pox upon the earth, sure, but when it's hot out and the windows are rolled down, and my elbow is touching thick air and I feel cool, like I could wear a bandanna and get some tattoos, because I live in Califorina; so when you feed into the one-oh-one you're inside a carotid artery with a thready pulse that pumps the oilslick blood of a people undefined.

This rubber ball rhythm that goes one-two-one-two-one-two. I guess that's what it is while the sound gets bigger and a fat mexican -- greasy pony-tail, receding hairline, stained wifebeater -- saddles up alongside. I have to keep the bassline. It's grey and caked in white-hot dust like all this concrete. Agile even though its just three notes and heavier than original sin. Black shades hide his eyes. His secrecy will suck in the sounds forever if I fail to act.

What goes on top of this rumbling, badass California earthquake?…

The SAS Special Submit (idea)

2006-11-29T04:55:06Z

The SAS Special Submit is a useful hot key assignment that streamlines SAS usage. Any SAS user who is not a masochist will love this hotkey assignment as they have loved no other.

Those who are familiar with SAS know that the 'log' and 'output' windows do not clear automatically at any point during a session. Much of the time, the information that builds up in these windows clutters things and interferes with work. Debugging via examination of the 'log' window in particular becomes a headache.

The following snippet, when entered in as a hot-key value, provides the SAS user with a quick, efficient, painless way to submit code:

log; clear; output; clear; wpgm; sub; log; top;

The above clears the log window, clears the output window, submits the code in the editor window, and then brings the log window (which now contains only information relevant to the most recent submission) into view. All this with a single keystroke.