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 »

Now that I’ve passed on I want to share something with you. Of course you can believe me – both of my eyebrows are raised.

I think it’s always preferable to die of natural causes. Unnatural causes are so unhealthy and dying of supernatural causes is so Hollywood. Anyway I died of natural causes – too much bacon grease in the blood – and I’m here to give a quick report from the other side. I expired in the early morning hours of Saturday March 14^th just missing the unlucky Friday the 13^th by only a few hours – dodged that one. The non-alarmist hospital conveyed my expiration with subtle understatement by gently explaining to my wife Loretta, “It appears your husband has embarked on a nap from which there is no awakening.” 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 »

Close up of Keith Richards skin. Also the condition of several California reservoirs.

What if your tap was tapped-out? What if you turned on your faucet and the only sound you heard was the telltale groan of a creaky system run dry? Instead of water emerging from your pipes you’d be mocked by the mournful cry of Chewbacca’s melancholy wail. This decidedly bleak future from the Dark Side may yet come to pass if California doesn’t get some rain soon. May the Force reign over us and then rain over us. Having such a plentiful resource suddenly morph into a scarce commodity is a new experience to a state perennially flush with nature’s bounty. And if John Q. Public doesn’t have enough problems deciding which photos to delete from his capacity-filled iPhone, now he has to make a Sophie’s choice between watering his begonia or irrigating his wife’s petunia. I know which one I’d choose. Read the rest of this entry »

Not photoshopped. Seafarers can walk from shore to shore using boats as stepping stones.

Few things bind a country together more tightly than an attack on our shared interests. 911 proved that as did the hasty return of the McRib sandwich after MacDonald’s unwisely removed it from their menu. And now the latest wagon-circling calamity: California’s third year of record drought brought about by the coordinated efforts of El Niña and Al-Qaeda. Alright maybe Al-Qaeda has nothing to do with it, but they’re sure happy about our parched state (get it). If a rising tide lifts all boats, well then a falling tide makes them look like cock-eyed toy boats run aground in a bathtub. And right now California looks like somebody drained all the fun out of our hot tub. Read the rest of this entry »

My first love was the NY Yankees. And this iconic logo was the centerfold.

Few things in life thrilled little David Hardiman more than the pinstriped wonders known as the New York Yankees. I was a lovelorn 6 year old Little Leaguer when I first fell under the Yankees Big League spell. The New York Yankees were a legendary and scarce commodity in Syracuse; the club being located 200 miles to the southeast in the teeming metropolis of Gotham – home to the Empire State Building and Batman. My fanatical bond and romantic sentiments for the Yankees were fed by neighborhood friends, by cataloguing their exploits in scrapbooks (now thoughtfully displayed deep in a Syracuse landfill) and by listening to them on the radio or watching them on TV. Well, not exactly on traditional TV. Read the rest of this entry »

Money is, if not the root of all evil, certainly the soil of all evil. Here we see a formerly happy sapling weighed down by financial considerations.

It is a little known fact that Jesus Christ almost missed the Last Supper because of a jury summons. He was invariably rejected by the court because of his “I cannot judge thee, lest I be judged” sentiments. If only he’d been selected he might have lived longer and we’d all be coloring Easter eggs in July. Jesus was well ahead of his time. Before Christ it was like BC. His carbon footprint was practically zero. In fact when he walked on the beach he had no footprints at all. Sometimes I think (and I’m not alone on this) the man was a God. But how does Jesus’ experience relate to me? Well looking back I too would’ve done great things if a jury hadn’t gotten in my way. Who do they think they are – my peers? I mean judge not lest ye too operated a Ponzi Scheme. 

I, Sonny Upside, deserved better. Having received several offshore diplomas, I was knowledgeable, persuasive, and seemingly disinterested enough to evince an aura of certainty around whatever financial scheme I proposed. Investors wanted sure things in their wanton lives and I gave it to them by promising them not millions, but thousands in easy profits. Reasonable enough – right? My actuarially-tuned asset allocation strategy was shiftily constructed of hypes and dreams. It all seemed ironclad enough until Mr. IRS and Lady SEC started nosing around my second set of books. They said I should’ve done better crunching the numbers. Well if hindsight is 20/20, then embezzling is 10 to 20. Read the rest of this entry »