How beautiful, this infinite sun of mine. Along the shore, where the handgarbage lie, and amongst the stoneblue sky an ancient miracle, this golden eyedazzler, a powersource. My weary feet burrow footprints in the sand waterfringed, and the sand clings and annoys and burns the balls. But I bear this particleprick for I am awed and yellowblinded by the grandness, and I think of homeward shoes.
Drunk on saltwater, the brown people lie back and run on dune buggies. Coca-Cola. Pepsi. And French fries in palmy handbowls. My stomach churns but how beautiful, this raging machine. So calm through the looking glasses, even though it fills them with atomspots and irate curtains flicking back and forth at the hands of a masochistic director. The froth blows a tattered trumpet along the brassy sparkles and I notice because only I am aware. A superior pity at the back of my burning head. An awareness of my tanning skin. A nagging pin drop of the future. Women. They never come. So a pin drop it will be, a hopefully suppressed twang.
Closer. This journey foreverending. Ireland in the summer. Cottages at Dublin's nails. Till dusk, manual labour. Till midnight, love and wine. Love and wine. Love. Love? Maybe not. Maybe a pale face without lipstick that understands. A singer songwriter? A troubadour. With accidental speech and occidental eyes. Ann-Margaret's neckline. Subtle but. But there. Eyelash caress on my cheeks and hands indefinitely at the belt buckle. How I define sweet, like I never have. Kisstuts. Sounds of laughter and pretty tears. Of elation, a possibility. This possibility.
Waterlicked ankles mine. Wavering against this alternating current. My head needs a shave and my face needs hair. Parents sterncalling let me know of my sun's demise. Bye Bye Birdie. It's followed you away. But I am not hopeless. This sun will return, till my woman does. And these waves my troubadour.
No lovers on this beach. This government of ours. These boxed people of ours. A taste and we flee, this pandemonium of lost joy. Of this connectedness to strangers, to a pretty face that passes. I sing in my mind of a hopeful goodbye. That pin drop really must stop. But n. Nono. It's all I think of, clutching at an invisible shadow and stinking of blanketcome. Dampens the mood. But a few seconds of panting and I think of this. Sole infinitum? Infinita.
Time ticks a bomb of the boomerang return. Haven't thought enough. Or thought too long. Thoughts that weave a second and harness meters on the face of a clock. Short. Succinct. This life. Under winklights I do not like to see till they come. But they calm and too much heat gives a headache. Headnumbs fog the screen and falling down, falling down, falling down, I am falling down, my fair lady.
Eekcries pull an invisible string. I look up at small flapping airplanes, grey. Fly, like I would. If I could. If I only could. A literal dream, sometimes, but not often. Mostly it's a singing girl that summersolaces the heart. Disinterest cuts the string and ten footroots refuse to move despite an emptying panorama. Oh, Dublin. Concerts. And chocolate. Soufflés and cake. European money. With a vacuum in my pocket. Will you never have me?
O!
Bottlestings in this bleeding sea. The stupidity is astounding, the carelessness. The audacity of their rights to complain. Red ants march from a solitary root and beg me to return. I do not want to butokayIwill. At this waterstain on my knees. Turning heads and turning pricks and turning soles. And turning souls. If I never had one, I have one now, at this dying blaze.
Farther. This everending journey. So fast for one unwills a quickstop. A sinister ticking time bomb and. That blue background behind her blond hair. Reminds me of the sky. Elvis. This powerful powerlessness handles my strings. Stingrays on my toes and I whistlewalk through the wind and before long, my souls have vanquished under my soles. Again. This Neverraven. Forevermore. For now.
Bye Bye Birhdie. Guess I'll always care. Guess I'll always caaaaare.
Into concrete monsters, up helpful ladders and back into awning darkness. Bulbous fluorescence and artificial colouring. Call me names. To be pretending otherwise. To the front. It is I, I think. Don't say because I am scared. Soulscared without a soul. Hurting without a cause. Le soleil me manque. How beautiful, this infinite sun of mine. The price I pay for the autocracy of heaven.
By S. N. Rasul
All the weird sounding words are intentional, not typos. -RS
Concordia FAQ
Italian ship Captain proves that rocks are hard stuff. The ones in his head? Not so much.
What the hell is a “Concordia”?
Yes. That probably is the most frequently asked question. Or so our sources say. Our sources being whatever our brain is thinking of at any particular moment. Like Halo. But back to Concordia, which is a class of cruise ships. Yeah, that's about it. Why is this on RS? What do we care about cruise ship classes? Truth is, cruise ship classes are something completely useless. You'll never need to know about them. Unless you have lots of money and can actually go on a cruise. If this is the case, will you be my best friend? Ok, but let's be serious now. If you are not aware (which most of you probably aren't), there's a ship lying on its side near the Island of Giglio (make whatever jokes you feel are necessary for this name), on the western coast of Italy. The Costa Concordia, a 450 million Euro ship, hit a rock, tilted sideways, capsized with more than half of it sticking out of the water, slowly sinking while the old man who owns the ship tries desperately to claim insurance for it.
Oh, seriously? What happened?
There is a certain practice among ship captains called near shore saluting, where a ship comes close enough to shore for people on the ship to see people on the land. And they salute each other or something like that. It's prohibited and was not included in the programmed course for the cruise ship. We wonder why. On the 13th of January, 2012, the Costa Concordia, a ship that is nearly 1000 feet long, carrying over 4000 people on board, hit a rock. Yes. It hit a rock. Granted, it was a submerged rock but it wasn't even that big. But this rock must've been made of some hard stuff because it ripped a 50 metre gash along the port side.
The captain, Francesco Schettino, had ignored the navigation system because apparently he knew these waters like a boss. When his first mate asked him if he knew where he was going, he had replied, “Off course”. Ok, we're sorry. We couldn't resist cracking that one. He was also drinking and dining with a young blonde woman. We are pretty sure that had nothing do to with anything.
Well after that, the ship continued moving. They sailed past Giglio and nothing happened for an hour, before the ship starts listing to port due to the extra few tons of water. Then the captain - who had so brilliantly turned off the alarm - decided to turn the ship back towards the Giglio port.
The ship had started tilting, first to port and then to the starboard, thanks to the turn. Only when it had tilted towards the starboard by 20 degrees did the captain finally realise that his ship isn't going to be sea worthy for a long while.
I assume you're inserting another question here for suspense. Then what happened?
The passengers were in the dining hall when they heard a large boom. They were told that it was an electric failure to keep them from panicking and keep them oblivious towards their impending doom. The head of the engine room informed the captain that the gash was irreparable.
And then evacuation started. This is where it gets good. The captain, desperately trying to help his passengers to safety, accidentally fell into a lifeboat. Yeah, what are the chances of that happening?
Any deaths?
17 of them. There are still divers searching for what by now are surely corpses.
These ships have passenger records, shouldn't they know by now how many people are still unaccounted for?
There was an undetermined (illegally stowed away) number of Koreans, Mexicans and Irish on board.
Anything else?
Well, there was the coincidence that the Titanic had crashed in the same week. Just a fun fact. The Costa Concordia had its moment in the spotlight on internet humour sites. Dark humour (now politically correct after being changed from black comedy) is not new. And it's funny even though people died. Wow, we're terrible people.
We'll end this piece, not with a quote like the last FAQ. Instead We'll post a joke shamelessly stolen from the internet. How does Captain Coward Francesco Schettino like his whiskey?
The same way he likes his ship. On the rocks.
By Bareesh
A drunk man was stumbling down the street with one foot on the curb and one foot in the gutter. A cop pulled up and said, "I've got to take you in, pal. You're obviously drunk."
The wasted guy asked, "Officer, are you absolutely sure I'm drunk?"
"Yeah, buddy, I'm sure," said the cop. "Let's go."
Breathing a sigh of relief, the man said, "Thank goodness, I thought I was crippled."
