sjg1978

Trust Machines - Mail Order Imagine, if you will, a large leather-bound portfolio.  Inside it, carefully inserted into protective sleeves, are picture after picture of foreign women on heavy, glossy photo-stock.  Some cute, some posed sexily, some barely smiling.  Each picture represents a real girl, in the most literal of senses.  They were turned into pictures of themselves for a year or more by a Venn Machine, and mailed to another country to find husbands. After paging through the portfolio for a while, a question preyed on my mind.  “What’s it like to be a picture like this for months?” The middle-aged woman who was m

Trust Machines - Winter Social The sign over the mall entrance said "South Hawkley High School Winter Social Dance".  Underneath those letters was a deliberately cruder splash of red lettering: "Get Venned". The line was out the door.  Inside the mall, it snaked back and forth through a series of velvet ropes, ending up next to a pair of plain looking cubicles.  The interlocking circle icons on them marked them as Venn Machines.  At the head of the line, a tall, curvy blonde was yelling at the girl who was trying to keep it all organized. "Kari, I don't care about the rules, I shouldn't have to go through the stupid machine.  I'm already we