Victor Schwartzman is 61 and lives in Winnipeg, though he was born in Brooklyn, just like pretty much everyone else. Victor majored in creative writing at Queens College of the City University of New York, and was accepted into the MFA programme at the University of California, though first he had to agree go kill strangers in Vietnam for the US government. He did not want to kill people he knew, much less strangers. After serious, thoughtful struggle, he ended up going to Canada instead where the only thing he had to kill was the occasional rabid beaver.
His current day job (for the last 19 years) is Human Rights Officer. He investigates complaints of discrimation, failure to accommodate people (the biggest single block of complaints are disability-related), and general bad behaviour, human-to-human. He's been on the Boards of "straight" writers' organizations, the local social planning council, and was Head of Administration for ConAdian, the World Science Fiction Convention of 1994. Since 1995 he has run the Video Room at the local science fiction convention, KeyCon.
Victor writes short fables, very clunky poetry, and a graphic novel he has been working on for about ten years, real time, which is approximately equal to three Hungarian yogurt eaters lifetimes, Internet time. Victor hates yogurt, by the way. Also strawberries, which are the only fruit he knows of that is covered with acne. You can find his writing at his personal website, http://victorhypertension.blogspot.com/, which also contains useful information about high blood pressure.
(Victor's bio is long because he is old. He hopes for it to get longer....)
A Slave Of Property
Harriet wasted her invaluable time on earth at a job. The only reason she stuck with the job was because it enabled her to buy possessions to help her recover from the job. This circular nature of her life worried her, so one evening she pushed all of her possessions into a big pile in the living room and set them on fire.
She then moved away from the big city and built a hut in the woods. Water came from a nearby stream, food from her garden, clothes from the plants around her. It was not an easy life, but she enjoyed it.
Word eventually got out about the wonderfully strange woman who lived in the woods without possessions. Soon people began to visit. They sought her advice on life. Harriet told them to burn all their possessions. No one followed her advice but they all felt better just thinking about it.
Over the years, Harriet became a tourist attraction.
Thousands visited her, seeking answers. To raise money to publish pamphlets about the dangers of consumerism, she started a gift shop, Natural Harriet's, where she sold collectables.
Boiled in Salted Water
As the broadcast and print industries became owned by fewer and fewer multinational companies, all media gradually mutated into vegetable entertainment. As it turned out, it was not a big change. Cultural industries had been pumping out vegetable art for years, but on a smaller scale.
Vegetable art did not hurt or challenge anyone. The only solutions serious dramas suggested were to accept. Increasingly, the audiences of vegetable media turned into veggie people. They continued to work, and often were more productive.
Eventually the real vegetables took control. The veggie people did not care. Corn turned into politicians while onions frequently became entertainers (they could make people cry). Vegetables ruled society and everyone acknowledged that to be a vegetable was to achieve society’s highest goal.
Veggie people encouraged their children to spread out, depending on the climate and soil conditions (bananas in Alaska were tragedies in the making). Dead veggie people were conveniently turned into fertilizer. It was not much different from before, except there were no coffins.
Eventually, as the roles completely switched, the vegetables began to eat the people. Vegetables especially enjoyed people after they had been boiled in salted water until nice and soft. The veggie people chosen cooperated fully. We like ourselves properly prepared for those who eat us.
Last update : 30-05-2007 20:32
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By: David Blaine (Registered) on 31-05-2007 05:01