"How could you say such a thing?" The finality of her expression brought him to the edge of tears. "You're beautiful, I'm brilliant. We can't stand to be apart and everyone loves us together!"
She threw a glance over her shoulder as her bedroom door creaked. "Not everyone."
She put both hands to the top of the window sash and jerked it down. It barely missed his fingers as he allowed himself to fall the eighteen feet to the street below.
2. Policy Decision.
"Behold!" He spread his hands.
I burst into applause. "Jolly well done!"
He smiled, obviously pleased with Himself. "Yes, rather. The last batch were so long ago, I wasn't sure I remembered how."
Yet even when the winds of His power had quieted, the bipeds continued to scatter about the Garden. The animals fled them as if gripped by fear. Had this been part of His intention?
"Lord, was this the way you wanted it?"
His eyebrows rose. "Oh, didn't I mention? This lot will need room to grow, so I gave them the ability to move about on their own. No restrictions."
"But... but soon they'll be everywhere!"
He nodded and cast a fond eye over His newest creatures. "Afraid so, Michael. Made in My image, just like you and yours. But you'll keep a good eye on them for Me, won't you?"
The Curmudgeon Emeritus: Fran's acerbic, irascible alter ego, to whom most of his tirades are attributed.
The Co-Conspirators: Your Curmudgeon's nine esteemed co-contributors (see the left sidebar).
The C.S.O.: The Curmudgeon's Significant Other, a.k.a. his wife Beth.
The Place of Little Appreciation: Where your Curmudgeon earns his daily bread and struggles to afford the C.S.O's shoe addiction.
The Fortress of Crankitude: Your Curmudgeon's Long Island home, from which he refuses to budge even though it perpetually threatens to collapse around him.
The Menagerie: Keiko (Chow Chow)
Sable (Border Collie)
Electra (Shorthair)
Orestes (Shorthair)
April (Shorthair)
Uriel the Great (Shorthair)
Irving the Creamsicle a.k.a. Creamy (Shorthair)
Gentle Reader: That's you, fuzzface. Look awake when your Curmudgeon is talking to you!
The Internet Commentariat: We who labor, mostly unpaid and uncelebrated, to vent our frustrations (and, hopefully, yours, Gentle Reader) with Things As They Are.
The Punditocracy: Gasbags who recline on silken couches, eating peeled grapes and being fanned by pretty slave girls, and emit bilious nostrums about politics, culture, and society for which they are, astonishingly, paid.
The Old Media: The enemies of all that is right, true, and beautiful, i.e., they who pay the Punditocracy (and the pretty slave girls). (What, you think the lasses would fan those creeps for nothing?)
