Monday, September 13, 2010

"There's a huge user demand to not only filter spam day-by-day but to do something more," he said "Before now users have never had the chance to be a bit more offensive."

My screensaver is a narrow dirt road dashed with autumn leaves, caped in the arms of several decaying maples. There are short cobblestone walls no taller than children dividing the road from the countryside. A pair of mostly eroded steps gesture upward into the woods beyond my peripheral. Against the most abrupt maple is a wheel barrow leaning horizontally over a pile of leaves as if having been turned upright and wearily left for another. You can tell it is sunrise by the way it opens over the cracked and slanted panels of the old Willoughby storm shed at road’s end. A three-legged Dalmatian named Bailey scampers across the path of Uncle Jesse and up toward the cocked door. He whistles John Wesley Harding and flicks a cigarette into a patch of dead leaves that now seem spray painted to season. Jesse knocks on the door while pushing it slowly aside, wiping his face with a dusty handkerchief as he steps into shadow. “Precious,” he says, approaching the far left corner. “Precious Darling,” he says again, eyes adjusting to darkness. The decomposing body of a twelve-year-old boy lay wrapped in towels up to his chin, most of his hair plucked brashly from his scalp, his eyes closed and damaged. Uncle Jesse inhales deeply into his handkerchief, his body collapsing against shed walls.  The door abruptly opens. A young robin shrills from the contact of wall and door, falls from its nest, and dies.  In the doorframe, completely eclipsed by the smell of rot and season, is the silhouette of a young woman hair tightly wound in a bun skirt firmly fastened with thick buckle, and a shovel, its head still wrapped in plastic.

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