Prehistoric Parents Used Baby Bottles Made of Pottery. (NYT) @jimgorman

I was at home, reading chicken entrails, when the Ceramic Revolution finally arrived in our town. One minute I was quietly piecing together the future from the liver and lights of a stewing hen, and the next minute people were running down the street yelling at the top of their lungs. I went out to see what all the racket was about, but no one would stop until a young woman actually ran up to me to plant a big kiss on my lips.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she exclaimed. "The tyranny of metal is over! We're all going back to ceramics!" Then she continued running on down the street, freely giving out kisses to complete strangers in a very promiscuous fashion.
I had heard rumors about the growing revulsion to metal by certain groups and creeds. Several state governors and a handful of senators had been elected on an anti-metal/pro-ceramic platform -- but I thought it was just another Luddite fad that would fade with time. 
That shows how little I knew of the modern world and its discontents. Apparently open pit mines, the ore itself, and the smelting process were the real culprits in global warming, leaving behind a gigantic and poisonous footprint that led to the extinction of many species of animal and plant life -- such as kangaroos and edelweiss. 
Such, at least, was the information I was forced to memorize from a pamphlet brought to my door later that week by a policeman.
"Read this thoroughly and get it memorized" he told me sternly. "There will be pop quizzes throughout the next two months to make sure you understand the blessings of the Ceramic Revolution."
I and my neighbors were forced to turn in our metal utensils, our metal toasters and microwaves, and even our metal belt buckles, to a reclamation center -- where we were issued ceramic knives and forks and spoons and such like things to take back home. You ever try to carve a roast with a ceramic knife? Not a pretty sight. 
Next they came for our metal cars. Now that wasn't so bad, really. The young people who knocked on my door were singing and laughing. I thought I recognized the young lady who had planted such a big smack on my lips, and was hoping she'd give me another one. She didn't -- but she held my hand for a long moment, squeezing it with emotion as she gave me a beatific smile. And in return for our metal cars we got small ceramic cars that looked like Cinderella's carriage on the night of the ball. I have no idea what they ran on, and you could only do twenty miles an hour top speed, but since everyone else had the same limitations there was hardly any confusion or hard feelings. Of course, fender benders could be quite grisly. I saw one where the parties involved were sliced to ribbons by the shattered ceramic shards of their own vehicles. 
Mothers were issued ceramic baby bottles. Terracotta guns and rifles were everywhere, firing clay bullets. Kilns popped overnight like mushrooms after a rain shower.
Up in Canada they didn't have a Ceramic Revolution. They had a Wood Revolution. Everything had to be made out of wood, not metal nor glass nor plastic nor ceramics. 
And just as I feared (and as the chicken intestines had foretold)  a few years later Canada declared war on the United States, invading with wooden rifles and pitchforks. We fought back gallantly with our ceramic bazookas and china missiles, but in the end Wood  proved mightier than Pottery, and all the enthusiastic young people who had given the Ceramic Revolution such pizazz  were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the Yukon. Most were never heard from again. Us older folks, considered harmless and pretty useless, were issued wooden bowls and spoons and told to go forage for our own food and drink wherever we wanted. Our homes were commandeered for lumberjacks and whittlers. 
I myself managed to weather the chaos better than most of my contemporaries. That's because I know how to turn out hardwood toothpicks by the hundreds to sell on the black market. So I didn't starve, and the authorities looked the other way as long as I greased their palms with a few exotic bamboo samples. In times like these it's every man for himself, and devil take the splinters . . .    

The Promenade.

We love to look down on other people, and we love it even more when they look up at us. The architect Morris Lapidus understood this when he designed the grand staircase of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. He called it the “Stairs to Nowhere” because they led only to a coat closet, where the beautiful people could leave their jackets and then swan down the stairs, catching the eye of everyone below.

Sixty-five years later, the new stairs-to-nowhere are “stepped seating” — though it may look like the thing in high school you called “bleachers” — and it’s become one of the most Instagrammable and possibly the most overused architectural features of the decade.

(Maura Judkis, writing in the Washington Post)

"This Promenade doesn't go anywhere" the man next to me complained, as we walked past a field of young tea bushes on fire but never being consumed. The smell was very pleasant. 

"Why should it go anywhere at all?" I asked languidly. I enjoyed strolling on the Promenade; I had been doing it for many years.  "We're all here just to see and be seen. And you, my good man, are not quite the thing -- not with your mussed hair, rumpled yellow shirt, fanny pack, and brown shoes!"

He gazed at me in alarm, then dropped behind me -- muttering, no doubt, so I wouldn't hear him: "He looks like butter but tastes like margarine."

I continued to walk at a leisurely pace, unperturbed at the man's lack of dash and form. You meet many kinds on the Promenade, and not all of them are of a glamorous or interesting nature. 

Just ahead of me I spotted an old man, very distinguished looking. His hoary locks and furrowed brow told me of a great intellect long at work on some worthy project, so I nimbly came up to his right side and told him good day.

"Good day to you, as well" he replied, chewing on his lower lip.

"May I inquire what you are thinking about?" I asked him after a while.

"Not at all. I am a sculptor who has ransacked the worlds, looking for just the right substance in which to carve my first work" he replied pleasantly, readjusting his maroon beret.

"Ah, an artist! How I honor the creation of beauty" I told him sincerely. We stopped briefly to watch an iceberg sail majestically overhead.

"You do not wish to use marble or some other noble stone?" I quizzed him.

"No. I must have an unconditionally unique medium to carve -- one that has never been used before" he told me firmly. "I am waiting for scientists to create an absolutely brand new element, one that I can carve into a vision of esteemed elegance. Until then, I walk on the Promenade. Just walk and plan . . . "

I bowed to him slightly, then sped up to overtake a group of women blowing on cardboard tubes. They pursed their lips as they blew to simulate some kind of musical sound -- the result was not repulsive, especially since they dressed in blue culotte pants with loose white blouses tied at the waist. I stayed with them for a long time, learning their strange language and teaching them how to whistle. 

At the fifth crumbling of the moon we ran across a troupe of acrobats. My girls, as I thought of them by then, immediately abandoned their cardboard tubes and began learning to tumble and leap high in the air. I saw there was no longer any place for me in their lives, so whistling a gay tune I strolled away from them down the wide Promenade and then stopped to admire myself in a looking glass mounted on the backs of armadillos. That is when a young man on a skateboard crashed into me, causing my Malacca walking stick to snap in half.

"Help, police!" I cried desperately. "There's a madman on a skateboard over here!" No form of transportation other than shanks mare is allowed on the Promenade. Ever. 

The Promenade Police did their usual admirable job of nabbing the culprit immediately, and I had the pleasure of watching them escort the defiantly grinning malefactor off to the Manufactory -- where he would be turned into a wind chime.

Adjusting my cravat, I continued on my eternal round to nowhere with the comely and divine crowd . . .  

Six wild elephants fell over a treacherous waterfall in Thailand and died after one of the herd, a 3-year-old, was swept away by the river and the others tried to save it, national park officials said on Sunday. (NYT)

It's difficult writing about elephants, because you need a permit to do so. And getting an elephant writing permit is no easy thing.
I went down to the Elephant Writing Permit Bureau last week, because I wanted to write something about elephants for my blog. You don't mess around with these people, not even online. If you don't get a permit they can come into your home and garnish your cheeses and meats. They can also have your car towed away and embarrass you at work by making you wear a bucket hat. They are serious people.
So first of all I had to wait in an outer office for three hours, just to get into an inner office to register for a Permit interview. After I registered (which costs twenty dollars, by the way) I was told to wait in Room 21 down the hallway. The clerk said this in such a peculiar way, his eyebrows raised and his pencil tapping nervously on the counter, that I asked if there was something about Room 21 that I should know.
"Well . . . " he began, looking around to make sure we were alone, "Room 21 is usually where they send the troublemakers. I had orders to send you there the minute you walked in -- have you been sticking your nose where it doesn't belong or anything?"
"Not I" I affirmed. "I just want to write about cute baby elephants on my blog, which doesn't even have much of a following. It's more of a hobby than anything else." 
He shook his head. 
"Well, it looks bad for you. Here's my advice -- tell the interviewer you really don't want to write about elephants at all. You just need permission to mention elephants while you rip members of Congress a new one. They may let you have a permit that way."
I followed his advice down in Room 21 and it worked like a charm. My interviewer, a withered old hag who could no longer even get her alarming red lipstick on straight, nodded her head in approval and stamped my Permit with a loud 'clang!' 
Then I went home and wrote my blog about cute baby elephants. I had barely pushed 'Publish' when there was a thunderous knocking on my front door. I answered it to find the old hag, her lipstick even more smeared than before, glaring at me. She stabbed me with a bony forefinger.
"You didn't attack Congress!" she snarled at me. "I'm revoking your permit and placing you on the Do Not Save From Zombies list!" As she walked down the front porch steps I noticed that one of her nylon stockings was falling down and that she wore a prosthetic. 
This was looking bad, so I applied for asylum to Norway. I talked to their ambassador a week ago and she is finding me a houseboat in Trondheim, where I can write my blogs in peace.
Of course in Norway you have to get a permit to write about walruses. But who ever writes about those big blubbery things? 

@RCPaddock  @bonimygi

The Magic Tackle Box

A guy went by playing a theremin in his motorboat while I was fishing on the riverbank, so I knew things were going to get strange. And they did. I caught a big perch, using canned corn for bait, and was about to smash it against a rock, since perch are too bony to fillet, when it began to plead for its life.
"Please don't kill me!" it said to me, clear as a bell.
"Why not?" I asked calmly.
"Oh, I can grant you three wishes if you spare my life!" it replied.
"No thanks. That three wishes gag never turns out good in stories, so it's a no sale" I replied as I lifted it up.
"Wait! Wait!" it screamed at me, its bulging eyes bulging even more. "I will get you anything you want. Anything! Just name it! I'm a powerful river perch, and I've got lots of connections." 
"Oh yeah?" I said, laying it down on the ground. "Well, there's not much I really want or need. I have achieved a modest but peaceful equilibrium in my life already. You, pal, are just a disturbance in the happy flow of my existence." I like to wax philosophical at times.
"Surely there is something you desire, something you have dreamed about?" it said anxiously to me, rolling its dead-looking eyes. Little did it know I had already decided to throw it back in the water to let someone else have the pleasure of catching it and arguing with it. Beating a screaming fish against a rock is not my idea of a good time.
"Well . . . " I considered. "My brother Billy used to have a big green tackle box with accordion shelves. I loved going through that thing, looking at all the lures and jigs and stuff. How about you get me a big ol' tackle box with lots of surprises in it -- and we'll call it square."
"Done!" cried the perch triumphantly, and up from the water by my feet rose a large Paris green tackle box. I fished it out, hefted it carefully, and tossed the talking perch back into the river.
Then I took my new tackle box back home and placed it on the work table in the basement. I gingerly opened it up and began pulling out the accordion trays; they were hinged together, so when you pulled one out you pulled out the entire side. Boy, was it loaded!  
There were latex worms in rainbow colors and a big dark green latex frog speckled all over in gray with a wicked hook sticking out of its belly. I could just imagine some old northern pike greedily sucking it in. I found an old hand-carved and hand-painted wooden minnow, segmented into three parts, with hooks dangling from its bottom like rows of deadly curved icicles on the eaves of a roof.  An orange plastic box held dozens of lead weights -- some as small as b-b shot and others shaped like pyramids and big enough almost to use as a paperweight. A jar of orange salmon eggs. Jigs gussied up with feathers and streamers and tin foil and bright colored beads. There was a slim silver whistle, engraved with the words "Sid's Canadian Fish Call." I blew on it; it made a sound like bubbles in an aquarium. 
And there was a Detroit phone book from 1942. The pages were brown and very brittle. It made for fascinating reading. I never saw so many strange names -- Wojcick, Kowalcyck, Svoboda, Nagy, Costaplente, Himmelfahrt. And there were ads for things like decoilers, crank discs, and wholesale rubber gaskets. I showed it to an old neighbor, who offered me ten dollars for it -- he grew up in Detroit. 
The next day, after work, I went down into my basement and opened up my wonderful tackle box again. This time I gloated over the spoon lures and casting lures. They were in such grand metallic hues that I felt like a king in his counting house, counting all his money. 
And there was a pimento loaf sandwich, on rye, wrapped in wax paper. I didn't hesitate a moment -- I ate it up to the last crumb with relish. Somehow, the wax paper gave it more flavor and panache than if it had been stuck in a mundane baggie.
My tackle box continued to amaze and please me for many more days. But one evening, with storm clouds rolling in and a sullen continuous thunder growling in the distance, I opened my tackle box to discover nothing but rust and cobwebs. As I was about to close it in dismay the perch I had saved at the river rose up out of the tackle box and hovered before me, with a fiendish look in its gelid eye.
"Hah!" it chortled at me. "You fool -- you have given me enough time to grow in my black magic arts -- and now I will summon my fish demons from their parallel realm to wreak havoc on your puny world! Soon I, and I alone, will rule this planet, and all will bow before me to lick my scales!"
I hate Indian givers -- especially when they smell like fish. So I grabbed the perch and beat its fishy brains out on my work table. I swept up the mess, buried it in the garden by the roses, and took the tackle box back to the river and threw it back in. 
The guy in the motorboat playing the theremin turned into shore near me to ask how the fishing was.
"Nothing but talking perch" I told him.
"This river has gone to the dogs ever since they put in that new coffer dam" he said in disgust, then motored away downstream. 

Rhymes from Stories in Today's Washington Post -- A man jumped from the bushes for a birthday surprise. His startled father-in-law fatally shot him. -- A teen pretended to be a cop. A real cop hauled him away. -- Trump takes vulgar swipe at Romney after senator criticizes president’s China, Ukraine appeals.

When jumping from bushes beware

your father-in-law you don't scare.

He might have a rod,

and send you to God,

without enough chance to prepare!

@britsham

**************************************************

There was a young man who did flop

when he tried to work as a cop.

An officer real

ignored his appeal

and tossed him into a sweatshop.

@lateshiabeachum

********************************************

When presidents want to be crude

they pick on an LDS prude.

So Romney gets cursed

by Trump at his worst --

knowing he'll never be sued.

@ColbyItkowitz

"There must be better ways to kill time . . . "

Photo Still Lives: A plate of succulents with dead bird. Rocks; Sunflowers; and Potted Chives. Chairs and a red pail in the sunlight. Birdseed and foul green water.

Trump Will Deny Immigrant Visas to Those Who Can’t Pay for Health Care (NYT)

He's defending us taxpayers (though we don't know what HE pays)

from sickly interlopers who our healthcare costs will raise.

Just like banks won't lend unless you already have cash,

you need to have insurance that pays millions for whiplash

in order to come stay with us -- and why should you do that

if you're well-connected back at home, a real fat cat?

I'm afraid the next step taken will be to deport

Americans who tell their clinic they're a little short!

@shearm  @mirjordan

No Soliciting

I bought a charming old house with steep gables and a brickwork fireplace that was a miracle of intricate design. It even had hand painted individual tiles in front of it; each tile representing a different scene from Holland, like windmills and tulips. I moved in during the afternoon on a hot summer day and treated myself to a glass of lemonade, made from lemons from my own tree in the backyard. 
Just above the doorbell next to the front door was fastened a brass plaque, still shiny, that read "No Soliciting."  I liked that -- it made me feel classy.
As I sipped my lemonade that first day in my new home the doorbell rang. I answered it -- to find a salesman peddling rosewater!
"Very handy item to have around" he said, grinning. "They use a lot of it in the Middle East for their cuisine."
"Can't you read the sign?" I asked him crossly, pointing at the brass plaque. "No soliciting. Now go away." 
He didn't put up a fuss; just pretended to tip a hat to me and walked down the steps and slid quietly away.
I had barely sat down when the bell rang again.
This time it was a lady selling oaken buckets. 
"I make them myself" she said cheerfully, ignoring my stern features. They looked pretty sturdy. She had beads of sweat across her upper lip.
"Those must be awful heavy to carry around" I said.
"That they are" she admitted. She eyed the glass of lemonade I was holding with longing. I nearly invited her in, but then remembered the sacred brass plaque that I was in duty bound to honor.
"I'm sorry" I told her. "But you can't be selling things around here. You could get in trouble. Good luck to you, somewhere else." And I closed the door in her weary face. 
I decided to make a tuna fish sandwich to go with my lemonade, and when I came out of the kitchen there was a tall thin man, dressed in a dark blue pinstripe suit, putting a glossy black leather briefcase on the coffee table.
"This beats everything!" I said to him angrily. "You didn't even bother to ring the doorbell? What are YOU selling -- rudeness?"
He looked at me, startled. His pince nez fell off his nose and dangled by his side on a wide black ribbon. Who wears those kind of glasses anymore? This was an outrage! 
"What the blazes are you doing in my house?" he asked me.
"Your house?" I replied. "This is MY house, buddy. And you'd better get out before I call the cops!"
He seemed to puff up like a toad on the stove.
"What? What?" he repeated, glowering like a lighthouse. "I shall call the police this very instant myself!" He strode over to an alcove under the stairs and dialed on an old black rotary phone. I hadn't really noticed it there before. This was getting weird.
"Hello, Joe?" he said into the receiver. "This is Ross. Yes, I'm fine, thanks. But I've got some kind of crank in my living room who claims he lives here. Can you come down and get him out? I'm at 125 Barker Street. Okay, thanks." He came over to me with a smug expression. "That was Joe, the chief of police. An old friend. He'll settle your hash -- you squatter!"
We glared at each other in silence until Joe arrived. He was out of uniform.
"I was on my way to the river for some fishing" he explained as he shook the intruder's hand and gave me a cold look. "Now what's this all about?"
I interrupted pince nez as he started to dither, to explain I had just bought the house, had all the papers in the desk in the dining room, and that this crazy person had barged right in to say it was his house. "So, chief, I'd appreciate it if you'd take him down to the laughing academy where he belongs." 
Joe rubbed his chin, looking back and forth between the two of us.
"Well" he finally said, "I've known Ross here for a long time. He sells insurance and we've both been members of the Rotary Club together for years and years. You, on the other hand, I have never seen before . . ."
I didn't bother to reply, just went into the dining room and brought back the papers showing the house was mine and that I was making mortgage payments to the local bank for it. 
"Who sold you this place?" asked Joe the chief.
"Truax Realty" I said. "Judy Truax herself showed me the place and helped me get the mortgage."
"Well, I've known Judy for years, just like Ross here. Sound as a dollar, she is. I can't understand how such a thing can happen . . . "
"Poppycock!" said pince nez loudly. "Joe, you just escort this bindlestiff out of here and lock him up. Give him the rubber hose treatment for all I care. He's a lunatic!"
Suddenly Joe the chief exploded at the both of us.
"Shaddup, you two mugs!" he yelled, his face turning crimson. "I'm sick and tired of trying to sort out these domestic disputes. You two are going to have to learn to live together  -- and do it right now, dammit. Or I'll put both of yez in jail and throw away the key!"
He shook his finger in both our faces, spittle leaking out of his compressed lips, and then left -- giving the door such a slam I thought it would break the hinges. 
"Adamant, isn't he?" said pince nez in a low voice.
"Indubitably" I replied softly. 

I wasn't about to give up my house, and Ross, the guy with the antique eyeglasses, wouldn't leave either. So we made the best of it. I slept in the master bedroom and let Ross sleep in the guestroom. Turns out we both liked bran flakes for breakfast, so there was no contention there. And since he went to his office every morning at eight and didn't come back until five-thirty, I had the house all to myself most of the day. In the evenings he taught me to play backgammon and I told him stories of Burma in the old days, when I logged teak wood in the swamps around Thandwe and made a fortune in just a few years. I'd been retired ever since, living off the interest, and collecting horsehair buttons as a hobby.
 We actually scrapped along pretty well together for some time. Then one day Joe the police chief called me while Ross was at the office.
"Bad news, I'm afraid" he said right off the bat. "Seems that Judy Truax has been scamming customers right and left for years. She never had the right to sell any of those old houses, like the one you thought you bought, and she was in cahoots with the bank to write out phony mortgage documents and collect nice fat fees from victims like you. I'm sorry to say that the house still belongs to Ross, not you. You have no right to be there." 
"Okay" I gulped. "I'll pack my bags and tell Ross about it when he gets home at five-thirty."
"Sorry to be the bearer of such lousy news -- if you need a place to bunk for a few night you can come down to the jail. The food's not too bad and I'll turn the thermostat up a little" said the chief. He wasn't such a bad guy, after all.
"Thanks" I said, choking back tears. "I'll think about it." By then I'd lost most of my money due to the capital gains tariff. 
When Ross got home I told him everything, then shook his hand and told him it had been a real pleasure to get to know him. He wouldn't let go of my hand, but instead drew me into an embrace.
"You know the old Spanish proverb -- mi casa es su casa?" he asked me. "Well, that's the way it'll be around here. My house is your house for as long as you like." 
I couldn't speak for a while. We were both crying like babies. 
"Okay, Ross" I finally managed. "If you want me to keep beating you at backgammon I'll stick around." 
But it was Ross who left first. He died the next year from stomach cancer. Those bran flakes didn't do him any good after all. In his will he left me the house, free and clear. As well as his three pair of pince nez. What a guy . . . 
After the funeral I unscrewed the "No Soliciting" plaque and put it in a drawer. I figured things would be kinda lonely without Ross around anymore, and maybe that rose water guy might come back to show me how to cook with the stuff. 

The Permafrost Horror

The Russians asked us in at the beginning of the year. They'd heard about our success in Alaska, duct tapping the permafrost to keep it from melting and flooding the forests and cities. So naturally they wanted us to come over to Siberia to do the same thing. On a much larger scale, of course. Their own duct tape wasn't worth crap. Although they wouldn't admit it, they knew that our American duct tape was top quality and would last a hundred years under any conditions. That's because we didn't stint on the zinc powder or adhesive when manufacturing it. I know -- I've got a cousin who runs a duct tape plant in White Plains. He told me all about it.

So once the contracts were signed and the bond was paid I rounded up the boys and we took ship to the Kamchatka Peninsula. Once there, we offloaded out giant duct tape spools onto the winch trucks and headed out into the tall timber. We had to hire plenty of local help -- it was part of the contract. The problems started when my team boss, Big Rudy, couldn't tell the difference between Russian laborers and grizzly bears. They kinda looked the same, and they sure smelled the same. They even ate the same kind of disgusting grub -- berries and bark and half-rotted road kill. So Big Rudy started bringing grizzly bears into the camp as workers. I had to get on Big Rudy's case about it.
"Look" I told him, "all you gotta do is get them talking -- the humans will jabber away in Russian, and the bears will just growl at you. It's simple."
"That's what you think" retorted Big Rudy. "To me that Russian jabber sounds just like a grizzly growl. Besides, the bears work harder than the humans, and they don't ask for any pay. They just take the empty spools for their cubs to play with."
He had me there -- we were already dealing with some serious cost overruns; so I let Big Rudy have his way and pretty soon we had a pack of bears doing all the grunt work. Like he said, we didn't have to pay them, just let them take the empty spools back to their caves for their cubs. When the Russian authorities came poking their noses into our labor situation the bears simply ate them, fur hats, bones, and all. As far as I'm concerned, it was a win-win situation.

Maybe you don't know how we use duct tape to shore up the melting permafrost. It's not hard, not really rocket science. You just unspool long swaths of duct tape over crevasses or around crumbling stream banks where the permafrost is melting fastest. This holds the water in, or back, and since it all freezes again at night, soon the whole melting process is reversed. Some egghead at M.I.T. figured it out a few years ago, and since then American duct tape companies like mine have been shaking the money tree -- there's an unbelievable amount of money available for global warming quick fixes like ours. I kept sixty men on the payroll, full-time, without batting an eye. 

But this Siberian permafrost job wasn't all skittles and beer. After the bears showed up, we kept encountering cryogenically preserved woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers that would suddenly come back to life and begin trampling and clawing the men. The bears they left alone, but my crew seemed to bring out the worst in them. Even Big Rudy, who could knock down a megatherium with one blow, was hard put to keep the creatures from grinding him to a pulp or biting off a hand. We finally had to issue each man a rifle. This really slowed down the work, and I started hearing word from Moscow that they might pull our contract and give it to some Swedish outfit.

I decided I'd better nip this in the bud, so I left Big Rudy in charge and flew out to Moscow for a powwow with the head honchos. We got things straightened out after a few days and a dozen bottles of vodka. But when I got back to camp, everything was in shambles. The spool trucks were tipped over; the tents were ripped to shreds; and I could no longer tell the men from the bears. Everyone was bent over on all fours, growling and groveling, snuffling for grubs and decayed mammoth meat. No one noticed me. All the rifles lay on the ground, muddy and rusted. 
"Boys!" I cried, 'don't ya know me?"
A creature that looked something like Big Rudy shambled up to me, sniffed my shirt, and growled some slurred words that sounded like "We go back woods. You go away or be like us." 
I fled in terror, taking the only truck that still worked.
I made it to Yelizovo before I ran out of gas and collapsed in a fevered coma. I was nursed back to health by a Koryak woman. When I was in my right mind again I married her and we now run a tourist hostel for visitors wanting to visit the nearby volcanoes. I try not to think about the bear-men I left behind -- but some nights, when the dry arctic wind moans down from the dark piney woods, I think I hear them marching on all fours, coming to slaughter us  and let the permafrost flood the land . . . 

Apple ने iPhone 11 का उत्पादन बढ़ाया

एक आश्चर्यजनक कदम में जिसने आपूर्तिकर्ताओं को तंग इन्वेंट्री नियंत्रण और शिपिंग दक्षता के लिए परेशान किया है, Apple ने हाल ही में अपने आपूर्तिकर्ताओं से अपने सभी मॉडलों में iPhone 11 के उत्पादन को बढ़ावा देने का अनुरोध किया है - कंपनी ने इस वर्ष अतिरिक्त आठ मिलियन अधिक इकाइयों का लक्ष्य रखा है । इसमें लगभग दस प्रतिशत की वृद्धि होती है। टेक मीडिया ने सप्ताह के अंत में इस आक्रामक विपणन निर्णय की घोषणा की, यह अनुमान लगाते हुए कि Apple ने मध्यम स्तर और निम्न स्तर के iPhones पर ध्यान केंद्रित करने का निर्णय लिया है, अन्यथा एक अन्यथा एशियाई बाजार में मजबूत बिक्री के लिए यह सबसे अच्छा दांव है। Apple द्वारा इस तरह का ऑर्डर प्लेसमेंट पहले नहीं देखा गया है, और अटकलें तेज है कि कंपनी उच्च गुणवत्ता, अधिक महंगी, मॉडल जो इसकी रोटी और मक्खन रही है, पर ध्यान केंद्रित करने के बजाय बुनियादी ऐप आईफ़ोन के साथ बाजार में बाढ़ लाने का इरादा रखती है। अतीत। Apple द्वारा बिक्री पर iPhone 11 सबसे महंगा मॉडल है, और मर्चेंडाइजिंग विशेषज्ञों का कहना है कि iPhone 11 प्रो मैक्स की बिक्री में अनुमानित नुकसान की भरपाई करने के लिए ऑर्डर बढ़ने की उम्मीद है, जो सिर्फ एक हजार डॉलर (एक मिलियन भारतीय रुपये) में सूचीबद्ध है ), और पिछले छह महीनों के दौरान अभाव बिक्री दिखाई है। भारत में प्रमुख मर्चेंट एसोसिएशनों ने चिंता व्यक्त की है कि सस्ते आईफ़ोन की आमद उनके मुनाफे को नाटकीय रूप से काट देगी।