Mini-update 3 with a bit of Flash

We’ll be on the road a bit longer than planned . . . but, that gives me a chance to do different kinds of posts. Who knows, I might even do some writing.

Meanwhile, I will continue with the plane-and-car motif. I don’t have another smiling plane, but I do have a spitting plane.

Of course, this one spits depleted uranium chunks . . .

OK, let me get back to the old Fords . . . as a reminder, here’s the row of cars I’m referencing.

We start with what’s behind this row of cars . . . other cars. More precisely, vehicles based on the chassis of cars.

I mean, this looks like a period car, but . . .

. . . I’m not sure those are stock wheels. Then again, maybe they are.

I can’t be bothered to research the matter, but this does look like a tractor derived from the same architecture used for automobiles.

They probably started with something like this . . .

. . . and built whatever they needed, perhaps using larger engines for heavier-duty vehicles.

People might have noticed a different vehicle lurking in the background. While it looks larger, it’s really about the same size as the others. Some components look a bit heftier, as they should be since this is an early tow truck.

The truck bed makes this vehicle longer than the cars, but the wheelbase looks to be the same. Take a look at the winch . . .

Here’s a couple of different photo treatments for the front view.

Here’s the label on it . . .

I think this was priced in the neighborhood of $10K, but I don’t remember for sure.

Here’s a final shot of this tow truck . . .

Tomorrow I will continue with the next two vehicles in the lineup.

For now, I’m going to direct my interest toward writing a short story. Even as I write this, I have no idea what I will be writing about, what kind of story will pour forth. I hope it’s a funny one.

The Patsy

Copyright 2014 by E. J. D’Alise

“You do so, work for him!” Ed was beginning to lose patience with the figure clad in red in front of him.

Truthfully, dying had already fouled Ed’s mood, and getting into yet another religious argument, especially in the afterlife, was grating on his already-strained nerves.

The Devil sat in his throne made of fused human bones, and shifted his position. Having a tail added to his imposing image, but it sure made sitting an uncomfortable ordeal. Settling on his preferred cheek, he regarded the man before him even as he reviewed the file sent down from the Office Above.

Ed had been an atheist. Satan disliked having to deal with atheists.; one, they were all so damn logical, and two, they sure loved to argue. Not the kind of rambling arguments believers used, more to fool themselves than to convince others, but well thought-out arguments, anchored in facts and exploiting huge inconsistent holes in the Scriptures.

“No,” Satan replied, “I compete with Him for men’s souls; I am His nemesis; I thwart His plan, subvert His good will, and  work to undermine all the good He does.”

“Really! Riddle me this, then; what commandments or other laws have you established for men to follow in their path here, to this,” Ed looked around, rolling up his sleeves as he spoke, “hell-hole?”

“Just Hell,” Satan replied. He was losing patience with this soul, and was ready to move on to the next, especially as he could see the line behind Ed getting longer. He faced another long day, and was not thrilled about it. He had planned on working on a new barbed fork, one with swept barbs that would rip tendons and flesh with less effort.

“. . . and I don’t make laws for men to break. I just punish men for breaking . . . ” Satan stopped, his mind falling into a new line of thought, one he had not explored before. His brow furrowed, or as close to furrowing as his horns would allow.

Ed saw it happen; light, so to speak, shining onto the truth of it.

“You see it now, don’t you?”

Satan raise his hand. “Let me think a moment . . . “

“Sonofabitch!” Satan got up, and started pacing as he contemplated this new line of thought.

“Crap,” he said, “you are right; I don’t make the rules. Impossible rules all humans are constantly breaking, and do so only because He created humans to fail His arbitrary and conflicting will, starting with the very first two, whom He made so innocent that they were little more than unthinking dolls.”

Satan turned toward Ed, who took an involuntary step back.

“I tried to help them, you know? They were made ignorant of the world, as mere babes, and I felt sorry for them. At no time did I lie to them, even as He told untruth after untruth.”

“I know,” Ed chimed in, “and I, along with many others, thank you for the gift.”

Ed was not patronizing the Devil; he really meant it. Reason led to the cumulative building of  human knowledge, and was as great a gift as humanity had ever received, even if so many squandered it, pissing it away on superstition and wishful thinking.

“But you see how it is,” Ed jumped in. “You are not competing for men’s souls; you are the fall guy! You get blamed when men fail, and then you take the burden of punishing them who do fail, but none of it is of your doing.”

Ed too was now pacing as he spoke.

“Men blame you for corrupting their thinking, but you have nothing to do with it.”

Ed turned and stopped in front of Satan, and leaned forward. This time it was Satan who took an involuntary step back.

“You are not the one who made the rules; you are not the one who made humans weak of will, and you are not the one with a plan for all humans. You, sir, are just the patsy!”

“Sonofabitch!” As Satan spit out the words, his tail twitched as if having a mind of its own.

Ed idly remembered the movie “Creator“, where he first heard the proper way to say ‘sonofabitch’; as Harry said, it was all one word, with the accent on the “i”.

Satan looked around, extending his gaze to all the levels of Hell he maintained. He extended his senses, and touched the suffering of billions. He extended his senses a bit more, and felt the self-righteous glee of the ‘saved’ souls reveling, from their perches in Heaven, in the suffering below.

Satan sank into his throne, leaning into the opposite cheek as his tail continued to whip about.

“Sonofabitch,” he repeated, this time softer, and with the realization of countless centuries of being a patsy to the nut-job upstairs.

“But, what can I do,” he asked, turning to Ed.

Ed approached, and put his hand on Satan’s slumping shoulder, a gesture that had all within sight stare in disbelief.

“Well, if you really want to compete for souls, you can start by making this a better place to spend eternity.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one, you can start by stopping that whole burning for eternity bit.”

Satan waved a hand, and for the first time in millenniums the fires of hell abated, and then extinguished. As the tortured flesh on countless bodies began to rebuild for one last time, Ed continued.

“You then can just offer a place for humans to live without fear. Heck, you already have a huge advantage over the place upstairs!”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on! Who want to spend eternity worshiping light, or whatever they do upstairs. Worse yet, no sane person would revel in the sole entertainment being watching the suffering of billions of souls below.”

Ed stepped toward the gathering crowd, sweeping his arm toward them.

“You have learned men, scientists, engineers, people who had never heard of god, children who suffered for a few years before dying; we can all pitch in and make this what Earth should have been; a place free from the influence of god, self-governed . . . er . . . you think you can set aside a corner of Hell where we can keep politicians from interfering?”

And so it came to pass that Satan started recruiting in earnest. Within a few years, a vibrant society of free and free-thinking people created a near idyllic place to live, with individual freedom, no crime to speak of, art, music, parties . . . why, it was like Heaven in Hell.

Saved souls started asking for admittance, but, of course, being saved, they could not enter Hell. It was not nearly as much fun as it used to be for them to look down on Hell from Heaven.

Suddenly, eternal basking in the light of god was not as attractive as it once had sounded. Then again, it probably had never been so.

The End

Eh, not too bad. Not great, but for seat-of-the-pants writing I’m not displeased with it.

Once again I’m setting this to go live in the morning. There is a chance I might be in Internet blackout for most of the day, but I’ll try to respond to any comments whenever I can (if I get any comments). Goodnight.

. . . er . . . good morning.

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