“Man, these are some sexy robots,” Alan said, watching a femme fatale assassin robot walk by his patio chair.

“You’re telling me,” Miranda replied, observing a beefcake forklift robot lift a beam on the half-finished building across from their apartment. He slid the iron into place with a clang loud enough to send ripples through the glass of white wine on the patio table. The robot’s pneumatic muscles made its oiled, artificial skin ripple in the afternoon sunlight.

“Remember when robots weren’t sexy at all?” Alan asked.

“Vaguely. I recall it being boring.”

“They were real boxy, with no aesthetic appeal, and if you got close they’d try to weld you to something, or spray you with toxic paint.”

“And now…” Miranda said. She trailed off, watching the beefcake robot’s butt as it bent over to pick up another heavy beam.

“Really, no reason for them not to be sexy,” Alan said. He let out a lustful sigh while he stared at a gorgeous sunbathing robot, her solar panels out for the whole world to see while she soaked up the rays.

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Casimir ran after Amy, but her long, athletic legs allowed her to spring down the concrete hallway ahead of him. She skidded to a stop in front of one of the doorways that lined the hallway, then ran inside with a rage-filled yell. Casimir followed and saw a great tangle of zombies chasing a small, grey-haired woman down the hallway. She carried an armful of books.

“Drop the books and run, Aunt Ivy!” Amy yelled, jabbing the point of her spear into the milky-white eye of a zombie.

Ivy hustled as fast as she could with the load of books.

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“The arts are not something that can survive another cut in funding!” cried Gant, the local mononymous artist, to the village meeting. “You’re already cut them more than old Genghis over there cuts the cheese!”

Old Genghis had been asleep, but started mid-snore when he heard his name. With bleary eyes, he picked up his enormous cheese-cleaver and gave the village assembly his famous cheese-cutting scowl. He was one of the most famous attractions in the village. His cheese cutting drew travelers from all over the region, and he was regularly called upon to cater these village meetings. Platters of his cheeses sat around the room.

“Please, can we stop with the hyperbole? It’s killing me!” replied Robert Henrysmith. “It’s tiresome and based in the fantasy land that you paint.”

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“Finally, I have perfected my time machine!” Lucy said to her empty basement. She picked up a cold beer from one of her workbenches and wrapped her throbbing fingertips around it. The endless twisting of wires, day in, day out, over the course of months did a number on her fingers. Forget Rosie the Riveter, she thought, I should be called Lucy the logic board programmer: I did it!

She sipped her beer and smiled.

Her smile faded as she saw a white triangle sticking out from underneath a box of transistors. Lifting the box, she saw that it was a bill, it was from United Electric, and that it was due several months ago. She saw another bill beneath it. And another. Lucy’s time machine used about as much electricity as a washing machine. A washing machine the size of Rhode Island, going full blast twenty-four-seven, with water pumps like a hydroelectric dam and an agitator bigger than Poseidon’s trident.

And the late fees. Those hurt the most.

“Shit,” Lucy said. She glanced from the electric bill, to her time machine.

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“Where the fuck is it?” Dan yelled. He shoved a bucket of dead mice off of the table. It crashed to the concrete floor with a bang. “Where the fuck is the Codex?” With another furious wave of his arms he sent a pair of brass scales clattering against the bucket.

“Where, indeed,” Arkephalous said.

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I’m pleased to announce the upcoming publication of Bears, Recycling and Confusing Time Paradoxes: An Anthology of the Guide to Moral Living in Examples! Because my fingers are quite tired of typing the details over and over again and because I introduce more and more errors every time that I do, all of the information can be found here. If I had to type them all out once more, then it would cease to be a collection of entries from the Guide to Moral Living in Examples and instead be described as an LP containing the noises of sweaty men juggling fish in a wind storm.

That would, however, make a badass set of samples. Thud thud slap woosh. Sounds from the wharf.

Now that I have a book with pages to turn, I feel that I should extend that page-turning metaphor to introduce the new site design! The columns are larger and less space-efficient than ever before, and I’ve created a proper homepage instead of the digital equivalent of me writing my name and phone number on your palm in ballpoint. I struggled with widening the columns because it makes the site more difficult to read on mobile devices, but I think I managed to strike a happy balance. Please do let me know if you encounter any crap with the layout on iThingies, small screens or crystal orbs.

Now I’m off to nurse my hangover.