ryan lambert – 2 stories

Price-Stabilized Streaming Services for the Houseless

AFTER LAUGHTER COMES FEAR. It’s a slogan on the bathroom stall’s wall, a few inches above a pencil-thin glory hole, and if you hold your ear close you can hear observations like “I was sexually assaulted therefore I am entitled to your undivided attention and blind faith in my every word in order to destroy my opponents with no further questioning” repeated ad infinitum.

If you hold your mouth close a dental technician practices experimental acupuncture based on the crackpot theory that sociopolitical affiliation is derived from gum health. Stick your snout near that Glory Glory Hallelujah hole and three hundred thousand nanobots ramp up the manufacturing of multilingual nose hairs, sentient follicles to spread like spores to the far reaches of our grand green husk, their prime directive to disseminate the canonical gospel of Topsy-Turvy, whose basic tenets include the abolition of oppressive institutions like ceilings—roofs can remain, though good luck parsing the applied difference—and the promotion of price-stabilized streaming services for the houseless, a demographic soon to be rebranded as Those Who Are Temporarily [Un]Sheltered yet optimistically-or-pessimistically awarded the misnomer acronym of T.W.A.T.S.

Level your left eye along the horizon line of the aforementioned hovel de grandeur and you’ll bear witness to sights unimaginable by anyone or anything other than the most advanced supercomputer, connected via cyberspace to the full breadth of human knowledge and experience, raw material for crunching through conjecture models in arcane pursuit of the perfect simulation of the ancient apocalyptic city of Hell.


Peasant Gut Annihilated by Homemade Knife 1080p

My brother is an animal doctor with aspirations of military service—a real vet’s vet. With his sardonic tongue and sweetheart’s touch, I question if time spent within that most notorious of industrial complexes might grind into gristle the qualities that supply his vast well of charm, our familial curse being nearly unlimited charisma tucked away behind a wry grin. Not one of us can swallow our twisted words, a surprising burden with downstream impact to the tune of frazzled romance, deep-fried friendship, and perhaps, at some pivotal moment in the centuries to come, after a fissure has split open the ground and devoured the flesh and bones of our apathetic aristocracy, leaving fractured tribes to make war over unfertile land, an empire of dirt returned to primitive economies and trust lower than the trenches where the slain are stored, perhaps the last lost soul in a long line of [INSERT LAST NAME], a borne hustler even among the ruins of a haphazard system of barter, perhaps he will graciously receive a homemade knife shoved through his starved peasant gut in exchange for a final sarcastic remark, the closing statement of one thousand generations of oppositionally-defiant rakes, rascals, and roustabouts.

In my view, humbled by foresight, our clan benefits from this trade, as a flabbergasted comment is intangible relative to the practical utility of a blade, even if the price paid is death. The kangaroo court of the far future sides with the killer, as words of incitement are penalized much worse than genuine acts of abhorrent violence.


RYAN LAMBERT is a filmmaker, writer, and propagandist (for-hire).


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