Archive for the ‘The Stories’ Category

Early depiction of Time Zones or “Time Belts” as they were called upon their introduction in 1883. Eventually citizens found them less confusing than a Thursday Night edition of Monday Night Football.

Ogg returned to the cave and proudly presented his proto-wife with the spoils for the day – a scrawny pterodactyl. She cast one withering glance at his meager bounty and huffed, “You call that hunting and gathering? You’re all hunt and no gather. Would it kill you to gather some berries once in a while?”

In a similar way I return from my writing desk and hope to present you with more than a scrawny bird-brained essay to chew on, lest you cast one withering glance at my meager typing and huff, “You call that hunting and pecking? You’re all hunt and no pecker. Would it kill you to gather your thoughts once in a while?”

My speculation here is extravagant. Not only in assuming prehistoric man spoke English, but in assuming readers are interested in an essay that tries to bypass the usual clichés of “Life being about the journey” and instead suggests an even less appealing theme: “If everyone behaved more like me, the world would be a better place.” Read the rest of this entry »

“This unbidden dilemma vexes me to no end.” 

In 1861 United States Army Colonel Robert E Lee was the South’s first choice for a commanding position in the Confederate Army. His outstanding military reputation and patriotic lineage merited a similar offer from the North. Ultimately he chose to resign his commission in the United States Army and sign on with his secessionist home state of Virginia. He was promptly named a General in the Confederate Army and in short order the patriotic brotherhood of the Revolution devolved into the bitter animus of the Civil War.

We will never know what would’ve happened had Lee decided otherwise. We only know the predictable result of his imprudent decision – a prolonged and lethal struggle to defend a state’s right to extend slavery into the territories. Of course I’m not suggesting Robert E Lee was entirely responsible for the abomination of the Civil War. What I am suggesting is that his faulty decision amplified the length and breadth of this irrepressible conflict. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many foods in my Father’s house. I recommend everything but the apple.

Could this be what Mary Baker Eddy had in mind when she established her church in 1879? Apparently Church elders thought so and have doubled down on their past success with Christian Science Reading Rooms by introducing Christian Science Eating Rooms. I was curious about this ecumenical eatery and spoke with Comestible Services Director Harley Karnoff, who explained the Church’s marketing philosophy; “We hope to appeal to Christian Foodies everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Quaker or a Shaker, Orthodox or Hydrox, Plain or Peanut – the Christian Science Eating Room has a pew for you. Even atheists are welcomed, although they usually come away with a little indigestion.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sir Isaac Newton: Scientist extraordinaire and genealogical forefather of Rod Stewart.

Mrs. Hattie Beasley of Ipswich expected nothing more than a serviceable Queen Anne picture frame when she paid a bargain 3 quid 10 bob for it at the estate sale of dearly departed Gwendolyn Chatham in 1992. She planned on removing the existing picture of 4 English Bulldogs playing poker and replacing it with one of her own – a little hand-painted still life of apples for which she was renown in Suffolk County. In fact for about the price of a pint of mead, the purchase yielded Mrs. Beasley much more than she bargained for. Because when she removed the frame’s backer and withdrew the folded spacing materials that helped to press the English Bulldog print flush against the glass, she discovered a trove of remarkably well-preserved papers from Trinity College in Cambridge dating from 1661. Amazingly the authenticated papers were written in the strong, clear hand of Sir Isaac Newton, who, at the time they were written, was known as Isaac the Underachiever. As she examined the clean and unspoiled historic sheets, she noted they were from some kind of examination paper whose subject was titled: Catholic Church History: On Tracing Its Origin, Development and Cultural Semiotics with Respect to its Hierarchy, Heresies and Celibacy – All within an Aristotelian Construct. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1967 I believed our family of 4 would bunk in these palatial billets while being whisked to Florida in unsurpassed comfort. I felt railroaded when I discovered the actual accommodations were less welcoming.

I’m told that in order to activate the App known as “Life” you have to accept the terms and conditions of its 900+ page User Agreement, otherwise you’re not granted the privilege of playing it. And while I have no recollection of agreeing to anything, apparently I did. Life is such a “killer app.” Literally. At the end of the App the game is over – for all time. Seems self-defeating, but apparently this App is so much fun to play you don’t mind the abrupt ending. And while I don’t recall agreeing to its terms and conditions, I do recall selecting my User Defined Pref Sets at about age 4 when I checked those boxes that make me appear as the man I am today – a guy who has been in Airplane Mode since 1965.

And to this day my hopes and fears, likes and dislikes haven’t changed that much. Like a tiger, I can’t change my stripes unless I go back into Settings, select the User Defined Pref Sets tab and change my preferences. And that would be great except it’ll never happen – I forgot my password. Damn it! So typical of modern man. Now I’m locked out of my own hard drive like a guy who wants to change the channel but lost the remote. So I’m stuck with my so-called preferences until God activates his “killer app” and zaps me home using his universal remote. And I agreed to all this? Read the rest of this entry »

Man becomes a shadow of his former self. However I discover it works both ways.

Sir Isaac Newton’s 2^nd Law of Motion memorialized the truth that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And as in the scientific world, so too in the literary world. This law was never more operable than it was in reference to Franz Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis in which an ordinary man awakens one morning to find himself in the body of an insect. Its authorship by the tortured Mr. Kafka spontaneously generated an equal and opposite novella in a parallel literary universe titled Morphometasis in which an ordinary insect awakens one morning in the body of a man. And having recently discovered this heretofore unknown novella while NyQuil-binging at a book fair in Rutland, VT, I thought it only fitting that I introduce it to a gullible society and contrast the novella’s salient plot points with those of the more well-known Metamorphosis.
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My tooth is killing me. Only kidding. This picture is just a metaphor phor our submerged subconscious.

The first sentence can define your entire story. And in this story I’ve been sentenced to Earth. You too? Yeah, I figured as much – why else would you be reading this? What are you in for? Were you caught reading too many rhetorical questions in a story about the unbearable hypocrisy of being? Don’t answer that. It’s a trap. Life is like that sometimes. It can be a weird version of one of those horror movies where, after chasing their tales for 30 minutes, the “authorities” finally discover the teenage babysitter is in great danger and give her a last second warning over the phone: “Ma’am. Get out of your body right now! Leave your body immediately. We’ve discovered all those stupid ideas you’ve been getting…they’re coming from inside your head!” Read the rest of this entry »

How do you buy an imaginary line? With Monopoly money?

Fund-Raising Effort Blurs Already Murky Distinction Between the Imaginary and the Real

In an effort to raise critically needed cash for its numerous outreach programs, the United Nations has begun selling the naming rights to the Earth’s Imaginary Lines. Despite earlier assurances from UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres that these well-known imaginary lines were not for sale, corporations are now offering untold billions – $378 billion at last count – to secure sponsorship to some of the most illustrious imaginary lines ever not actually in existence. Of course now that I’ve told you the exact amount of money corporations have paid, the untold billions are now “told billions.”

The Secretary General has emphatically maintained that, “The United Nations is a global exemplar of trust and integrity, and as such, any attempt at prostituting this institution for short term profit is where I draw the line.” However it was an imaginary line and it sold for over $4 billion to a lobbyist from Dubai. And now it’s like a Middle Eastern bazaar in the General Assembly as corporations lustily haggle over the price of all sorts of imaginary lines including the one separating North Korea from reality. Read the rest of this entry »

JFK at Rice University in Houston on Sept. 12th, 1962, inspiring the nation to go…where?

It was one of those dreams where, as usual, I didn’t realize I was dreaming. So I unquestioningly participated in a fully matured, yet strangely demented world located just beyond my grasp. As an experienced dreamer I’m comfortable enough with surrendering myself to presented circumstances and found no cause for anxiety in my dream’s inherently disordered context. For example, in this particular dream I blithely accepted my location (Rice University – I don’t remember traveling to Houston.), my time period (1962 – I was 1.) and my surroundings (why wasn’t I asking those nearby Texans what the hell we were all doing there?). And yet I felt no cause for alarm. Non-sequitur preconditions often arose in my dreams and never worried me unless I found myself in line for a Disney ride called Proctologists of the Caribbean.
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Dinky wet planet of ours as seen from Mars. Note absence of nations’ boundaries. Imagine that…

There was no contingency plan for it because no one at NASA’s Office of Risk Management ever dreamed it could happen. So when astronauts Deke Culpepper and Carla Winsome blasted off from Cape Canaveral on January 20^th 2025 there was every expectation their 5 year historic mission to Mars would be completed by those 2 astronauts – and those 2 astronauts alone. No one anticipated they’d be returning to Earth with a little bundle of extra-terrestrial joy courtesy of a botched vasectomy. The birth of this little male space dividend on the Martian surface, and his subsequent return to earth added credence to the widely held belief that, men are from Mars. In the end though, this event demonstrated something we already knew about forces of nature – that although there is no gravity in space, the attraction between the heavenly bodies of Deke Culpepper and Carla Winsome proved irresistible. Read the rest of this entry »