Month: February 2009 (Page 2 of 4)

“It is a thing of beauty is it not?”

Pierre turned to the voice and saw that his host’s elder son was stood a few feet behind him. He turned back to the painting and nodded;

“Ah yes, it is indeed a privilege to be able to look upon the original, and in such otherwise beautiful surroundings as awell, rather than in a crowded and rowdy public gallery. Did you meet the maestro when your father commissioned the piece?”

“Alas no, I was away being fostered to a neighbouring baron; learning the laws of war and chivalry and I missed that chance. My younger brother, Oswald, met him and spoke to him as often as he could.”

Pierre nodded again and turned back to Gerard.

“I was thinking of taking a short ride for the sake of my health and to pass some time. Your father has graciously asked me to dine with him, but he cannot spare me any time before dinner. I do not wish to be under foot. Would you be kind enough to join me and show me the estate?”

Gerard grinned, clearly some, or perhaps all, of this request suited his tastes.

“Excuse me, Sir, but could you explain to me what’s going on here?”

Frank looked up at the Police Officer that had approached him while he was framing the shot. The Officer’s face seemed blank to Frank, seemed to be devoid of anything either positive or negative leaving him no clues as to how to play the situation. His model, Tess, was already hurriedly covering her previously naked form and anxiously looking on to have the best chance of choosing her moment to run if that seemed to be the best course of action.

Frank was still deciding how to play this situation out when his thought process was interrupted by a shift from questions to commands from the Police Officer;

“Could you stand up, please Sir, and pass me your camera, please.”

Frank’s position on the Police had always been that they ought to be respected and obeyed, but he was fairly sure that he had not been breaking any laws, and more to the point that the Police Officer had no legal right to his camera. He decided to meet the guy half way and stood up.

“C’mon! It’ll be fun!”

Tabitha scowled at Daniel and shook her head even more fervently than she had the first time. She pointedly turned away from him and crossed her arms, before she realised that this left her with no hand free to retrieve her cigarette from her mouth. She flailed around for a moment and ended up shoulders back, arms laid across each other, back to Daniel, with a thin trail of smoke appearing to rise out of the top of her head; he tried not to laugh, reasoning that such an outburst might actually lead to violence.

“It’s just an interview for my film class, Tab. What harm can it do? I mean you’ve been on camera before.”

He knew as he said it that he had made a grave error, but now she was on her feet and coming for him. There was a look of fire in her eyes as she advanced, and he found himself mesmerised, a little like a deer in the lamp light. She stopped when they were toe to toe;

“You only want to interview me because you’ve found out that I’ve done porn and you think it will be a scoop.”

…and please, let’s be clear, I don’t mean “I really fancy this woman”, or even that I have any illusions about meeting her, forming a meaningful and reciprocal relationship with her and finding peace… I just mean “I love this person’s mind”, and for what it’s worth I would love to know her better, but I will certainly always treasure this…

I hope that you enjoy it too… 😉

..::EDIT::..

(You can download a higher resolution version for free by using this URL:

Thanks to jfs for isolating this address for me.

and as you may be able to tell, you can subscribe to TED Talks as a video podcast, visit the iTunes Podcast Library to subscribe; just search for TED)

Donovan paused to light a cigarette, and then turned back to Fiona as he took a long deep drag and almost immediately lifted his coffee to his mouth and took a huge slug of the searingly hot beverage. She sucked her teeth, rolled her eyes and then took one of his smokes and joined him.

“You know, Donovan, you have a shitty job.”

He laughed, smoke signal staccato issuing forth as her remark caught him off guard.

“Yeah, I know. Thing is, it’s all I know how to do.”

She nodded, trying to simply stay cool and not show that his low, gravel voice was almost sexy enough for her to forget that he was a twice divorced, borderline alcoholic, chainsmoking paparrazo. She wondered if it was his voice and his raw arrogant bravado that meant she had chosen to shadow him, but she quickly banished that behind the convenient fact that he was the highest earning member of his profession in the city that had agreed to even talk to her.

“Don’t you ever get tired of staking out C-Listers and hoping they aren’t wearing panties though?”

The bed felt small beneath him as he sat there in the quiet. He passed the cricket ball from hand to hand, trying to focus on simple things; the smoothness of the leather, the fine work on the seam. He ran his thumb over it, trying to find the joins, trying to understand how it was made, to focus his mind on something mundane. Of course it was not working. How could he think of anything else in this room? He looked around at discarded toys, at posters and the models that Christian had made, never accepting any offers of help. All he could think about was the coffin in the study downstairs, smaller than any coffin should be.

It had been a glorious afternoon in the sun. There had been maybe thirty of their friends and all of their kids on the lakeshore, eating, playing, dancing and generally making a good time of the weekend. He had been running the grill, like any good host and father, and when Christian had come to ask if he and some friends could go swimming he had just said yes. Of course he had said yes.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Baby”

She licked her lips seductively and traced the very tips of her fingers along the shaft of his cock, playing with it idly as his erection started to fade. He smiled and pulled her towards him kissing her passionately. He loved the feeling of their mouths becoming one, the way in which as their tongues met and wrapped around each other they became one in just as real a way as when they made love. They came up for air, but stayed close with their foreheads touching one another.

“I love the way you will just kiss me after you’ve come in my mouth. It’s like you, oh I dunno, like you are in no way bothered by the fact that you might taste yourself on me, you are just filled with love, and that is all that matters.”

“It is all that matters. I love you so much, Rachel. I’m certainly not going to let the fact that you’ve just given me a mind blowing orgasm get in the way of me kissing you.”

He threw her a self-satisfied grin and she pulled his hair playfully;

“Well you’d better show me. Now.”

“I hate that shit, man. I mean why is it that whenever someone is ‘hacking’ or writing a virus or enhancing some kind of image, video or audio that they are always dancing around and clapping their hands and high-fiving with their hacking buddy? Does anyone who doesn’t really know anything about computers really believe that this is what actually happens?”

Terry nodded, admittedly without taking his eyes from his screen, his fingers still moving at speed as he typed line after line of code into the terminal window.

“I mean it’s not like that, right? You want this last slice of pizza?”

Terry shook his head, but still did not turn away from his work.

“So what you workin’ on T?”

For a few moments Terry did not respond, he was clearly finishing a thought, but then he took his hands off the keyboard and turned to Hugh;

“Well, mi compadré, I think that I can say wtih some certainty that we can have whatever grades we want this year.”

“No way, that’s outstanding!”

It was as their hands met in a high-five that Hugh realised.