…with illustrations
365 People, Places & Things #165
The Alphabet: X
X is for XAXIX
The multiverse is home to many wonderful things, but one of the most wonderful is the Earth 19 candy known as Xaxix. It is so good that the next 15 top selling candies combined don’t sell half as much as Xaxix does. It has made the inventor, master candymaker Marcus Delmont, the wealthiest man on earth.
The secret to the success of Xaxix is not the wonderfully creamy caramel, or even the thin layer of thickened real cherry juice (which, by itself, has made some people’s nipples go hard) or the sublimely crispy wafer. No, the real secret is rich deep dark hyperchocolate. How good is hyperchocolate? Well, several religions have made it a sin and in a recent poll of people 18 to 65, 74% would give up sex for a daily 6 ounce slab of it.
Hyperchocolate is made from regular chocolate using a top secret process that is known only to Marcus Delmont. The resulting product has been called “chocolate on steroids” and “the REAL food of the gods”.
A 4 ounce Xaxix bar sells for $1.00 in the U.S. A box of 10 half ounce bonbons sells for $1.50.
365 People, Places & Things #166
The Alphabet: Y
Y is for YELLOW SPIDER
Yellow Spider is a crime fighting masked vigilante who mostly works out of 1930’s era Osaka, Japan. He is a ruthless dispenser of justice and seldom turns his adversaries over to the police. Most of the time, they are found shot or hung or decapitated by a katana. Each body is found with a small yellow paper cutout of a spider, usually in their mouth.
The Yakuza is both enraged and terrified by all of this. No Yakuza member will travel anywhere alone now and most travel in groups of at least five. There is a huge standing reward for delivery of the Yellow Spider alive or dead. Thus far, nobody has collected.
Apparently, the vigilante doesn’t much care for corrupt politicians or warmongers, either. He has racked up a pretty good headcount of members of the military high command and powerful government leaders. A few of these vicyims have been found in many pieces, often in their well guarded homes.
Nobody knows who Yellow Spider is and the very few people who have seen him (if it is a man) are willing to talk about it.
365 People, Places & Things #167
The Alphabet: Z
Z is for ZERO DAY
On August 11th, 1958, at exactly 12:01 AM, every human being on the planet Earth blacked out for exactly 24 hours. Oddly, this did not result in great loss of life or property damage. In fact, everyone was just fine. Planes that had been in the air were on the ground safely, all cars were stopped, ships were ok, medical procedures were still at the exact point where the staff and/or patient blacked out…everything was fine except for the missing 24 hours.
Well, that and…
The cities of Novosibirsk, Adelaide, Long Beach, Stockholm, Cusco and Hong Kong were gone. In their places were terrain and ecosystems that should have taken at least 200 years to arise.
There were real live leprechauns in Ireland and the equivelant little faery folk in many other lands.
Portions of deserts all over the world had been changed into grasslands, complete with ponds and lakes that were fed by artesian springs.
Apes, pigs, dolphins and elephants could all speak human languages. They had a lot to say, most of it not good and directed at humans.
All of the nuclear weapons were gone.
Some people slowly, over the course of about a month, changed sex or ethnicity or both.
There has not been a single case of multiple human births since that day. The last set of human twins was born 2 minutes before the blackout in Toronto, Canada.
To this day (present date: March 3rd, 2018) nobody knows what the hell happened on Zero Day or why it happened. Well, maybe the apes, pigs, dolphins and elephants do, but they aren’t telling.
ZERO DAY.
This wins.