Reader Buzz
on SWITCH
‘Wow! Loved it … desperately wanted more after racing through the first 130 pages. Fast, thrilling, gripping, scary…When can I read the rest?
— Gavin Hilzbrich
This book is so cinematic . . . due to the punchy dialogue and the succession of crisp, sharp images which drive the narrative forward. I want to read more!
— Sam Eades
This is absolutely brilliant! A very compelling read but I was upset when I got to the last page because I wanted more!
— Jeanette Slinger
I can't stand crime novels that have a long preamble before getting to the action and this one certainly doesn't disappoint in that way. From page one it's straight in there, bish bash bosh and continues on in that vein, so you are frantically turning the pages to find out what happens next.
— Sandra Hawe
The material I read was mad, frantic, super quick and entertaining.
— Martin Higgins
Gripping… Explosive… Page Turning…
And that’s only 140 pages in!!
— Darren Elliot
This was great - I really wanted to read on. Very much made me think of Simon Kernick and Relentless actually - same kind of ordinary guy suddenly finding his life turned upside down when he just comes home from work... Decidedly scary and asks some very dark questions: just how far would you go to save your family?
— Sue Cook
Turn bathroom breaks into a profit generator
Story & Illustration
By Grant McKenzie
As regular readers of this column know, I’m always searching for new ways for management to get the most out of their lazy employees.
Let’s face it, if we could replace the worker bees with robots, management would be all over it. Today’s workers take breaks for coffee, to go to the bathroom, to stretch their muscles after being hunched over a keyboard for hours, to share ideas and seek opinions, to check facts and ask questions, etc.
And let’s not get into the hassle of employing child slave labour. Those little ingrates are often so short, they need to stand on wobbly wooden crates just to reach the assembly line, and half the time they don’t have anything to eat so they faint at the first sign of the warehouse temperature rising above 40°C.
Yep, robots would definitely be better. No breaks, no flirting, no talking back, just work, work, work. We would still have to deal with the age issue, I suppose. Robots getting old and leaking oil all over the place, but at least it would be an easy matter to dump them on the scrapheap and purchase a newer model.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the dawn of the age of robots will rise for a few more decades at least, so in the meantime we need to get the most out of the human swill.
To that end, a museum in
The museum, you see -- which is probably staffed by a bunch of peace loving, environmentally-conscious lefties -- plans to use, how shall we put this as delicately as possible, the poo of its visitors to provide energy that will then reduce its electricity bills.
The
“With free admission it would be a great way for visitors to give something back to the museum”, director John Tucker told Agence France-Presse (AFP) recently.
For the ecological science geeks in our midst, the idea is that bacteria will break down the waste in a sealed can fitted with electrodes. By depriving the bacteria of oxygen, the electrons released in the process would be freed to set up a voltage between the electrodes.
For the non-science geeks: Poo + Electrodes = Energy.
(Now I don’t want to drift off on a tangent here, but imagine if you could make this process cheap and portable. You’re off camping in the wilderness and suddenly need to recharge your cell phone for an emergency call. With this process, you could simply do your business in an electrode-coated, baked-bean-sized can, seal it up, wait an hour or so for the bacteria to do its thing, and then plug your dead cell phone into an adapter on the can. The advertising slogan could be: Power at the drop of your pants.)
Anyways, back to being an evil, err, efficient boss.
With the museum’s idea incorporated into large office buildings, you might even generate enough energy that you could sell the excess to other companies at a nice profit. This would be especially true if you also included the executive washrooms as, according to most of the workers I’ve talked to -- who all wished to remain anonymous -- there is a lot of poo that flows downhill from there.
Another great invention that will help squeeze every last second out of your workers is a new dried food ration developed for the U.S. Army that can be warmed up and rehydrated using, again we venture into delicate word play here, pee.
According to New Scientist magazine, the chicken and rice ration comes in a pouch containing a filter that removes 99.9 per cent of bacteria and most toxic chemicals from the water used to rehydrate it. It’s also reassuring to note that this product comes from the same organization that created the “indestructible sandwich” that will stay fresh for three years. That sandwich, of course, was developed for college dorms and bachelors.
Just think of the energy and time your company will save once you ban microwave ovens and kettles, and make people rehydrate and heat up their special lunch during bathroom break.
The only downside to this is that -- according to Hydration Technology of Albany, Oregon, which makes the pouch’s special filter -- in the long term rehydrating food with pee will cause kidney damage.
But, hey, if employees are going to complain about that little caveat then how loyal are they to your company anyway?
For more tips on improving morale while screwing over your workers, I’m always available for a hefty consulting fee. Just give me a dingle.
Short Stories
An author Q&A,
plus my short Out of Order
appeared in Spinetingler's Summer 08 issue.
My short White Volcano appeared in
Out Of The Gutter 2
My short Ragamuffin Girl appeared in Spinetingler's Summer 07 issue.
My short She Remembers The Future appeared in The Late Late Show's Summer 03 issue.