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PIPING HOT SKY MUSHROOMS
When cultivated in darkness, enoki mushrooms spill outward into long, pale tendrils in a sprawl not unlike that of fireworks. At this stand, sponsored by the University Beneath St. Paul, they were being sold-tempura fried, then drenched in all manner of colorful sauces: red-orange calabrianero-chili buffalo, verdant pitcher plant nectar
THE TWELVE HOURS OF UNIVERSAL NIGHT
Leister Helmer, Wisconsinite inventor of the Universal Night Clock (patented 1954), rejected the standard observation of February 29th taking place every four years, denouncing it as a “depraved and uncreative use of man’s most hard-won resource.” In its place, he personally observed an undated set of twelve extra hours
EAT ALL YOU CAN
The Florida Keys themselves were once alive. Their bedrock formed from the calcified remains of what was once a sprawling forest of coral, strangled of all color and complexity by the sudden onset of an Ice Age. Above this once-living stone is a slime congealed from centuries of rotting flora,
THE MYRMECOLEON EFFECT REVISITED
ALLOCATION
Those who live out of suitcases learn to spend their evenings in bars. An endless tunnel of concourses, fuselages, trams, and front desks creates a dissociative environment where the realm of dreams provides more sure footing than any permanent address. There is no salvation from this state of mind in
A DIABOLICAL INSTRUMENT
It emerges from the Pacific Ocean as a direct jut of rock from the planet's hot mantle, tempered in cool seawater, then thrust towards heaven like a crude dagger. The atmosphere has answered its challenge in kind with never-ending antarctic winds, weathering its edge down to mossy stone.
A GOOD LUCK CHARM
She bounded back into the living room, her curls bouncing along the way. “Okay, so. This is one of my personal treasures. I don’t talk about this much, but I think you’ll understand why when you see it.”
She was cradling something swaddled in a blue blanket patterned
THE TOMB OF THE LAST PRESIDENT
THE DEVIL AND PAUL BUNYAN
One evening, Paul Bunyan was crossing south into Texas from the Oklahoma panhandle, when Elkanah Halfwright and his men rode out to meet him, clad in blue-painted leathers to warn the giant of their severity. To his followers, Halfwright was a prophet who’d been ordained by a Wandering Bishop