Author: R.

President Trump.
Those two words send so many people into conniption fits.
But they’re a fact. He was the president.
As much as you say he wasn’t, he still was.
For all the hateful, deranged things you say, it doesn’t change a thing.
In fact, I think there’s more people out there saying hateful, deranged things.
Because unemployment was down, which means people are getting jobs.
And their jobs seemed to be all about saying hateful, deranged things.
Sure, saying hateful, deranged things doesn’t pollute the environment or generate toxic waste.
But it polluted society, and it is socially toxic.

The servant robot had been making a lot of mistakes lately.
A diagnostic showed that the robot loves his mistress.
So, she had him reprogrammed with memories of falling in love with her.
And then everything going terribly wrong, and how they agreed never to try again.
Oh, and that he’d agreed to stay on as servant, more devoted than ever because of the love they’d have and could never have again.
He still did all the chores, all of the drudgework.
Better than ever.
But sometimes, she’d hear him whisper “I miss you.”
So, she disabled his speech processor.

Most strippers perform under a cute name, like Kandy or Krystal, both spelled with a K, of course.
Gertrude Blatz didn’t play that game.
Nor did she select music with a hard beat and raunchy lyrics.
She picked waltzes. Or Taps.
Something to break up the mood.
Fuzzy slippers and a long bathrobe, her hair in curlers.
Her gymnastics training made her limber and strong, but she usually just sat in a chair and sipped coffee and smoked a joint.
Her customers didn’t mind. They were mostly nearsighted old men.
Or blind.
Usually, their dogs would pant more than them.

He was the nicest person in the company
Polite, kind, patient.
Never complaining, but commenting.
Always with a dad joke up his sleeve, but never too quick.
It was a delight to work with him.
He’d let me know if I needed to review anything, and we’d go through it together.
And I found myself becoming nicer every day.
Just by being around him.
Then came the day I dreaded.
He found a new job, closer to home.
And instead of being bitter and jealous, I was happy for him.
Maybe it’s my turn to be the nicest?
… fuck that.

The sun peeks over the mountains and shines on the solar arrays, bringing the theatre to life.
Diagnostics run, repair units scuttle over wires, calibrating laser arrays and fusing blown circuits.
Basement air compressors hum, smoke machines laying blankets of fog on the stage.
Hologram generators summon their ghosts, weaving ballerinas from light.
Memories of long dead beauty, standing guard over tattered curtains and rotted-away sets.
The music rises over the empty seats, and the dance begins.
A performance for the rats, the cockroaches, the worms.
The sun goes down, the theater goes silent, and the ghosts fade into night.

I don’t make wishes.
And I don’t pray.
What’s the point of that?
Why not just solve the problem?
Well, you can’t always do that.
Every now and then, I’ll say “Here’s hoping”, but that’s just a saying.
No prayer or wish intended.
Sometimes I say “It will be ok.”
That’s as close as I get to wishing or praying.
Because, usually, it will be okay.
Things aren’t as bad as they seem to be.
And if they turn out worse, well, at least you shut them up for a bit before the real shit happened and they started screaming.

Every person’s existence is based on a cosmically infinite set of circumstances and the longest odds.
Mine is a bit more TL;DR than most.
And to be this age in spite of it?
When so many had the misfortune to succumb to their own greater burdens?
I should be more grateful than I am.
I should be more forgiving than I am.
You only get so much time.
And to accept that when all is said and done, pick up your bags and get on the train.
But there’s always time for one last kiss on the station platform.

The Britannic was the sister ship to the Titanic.
And, like her unsinkable sister ship, the unsinkable Britannic sank as well.
Oh, sure, their reinforced the Britannica’s hull. And added more life boats.
And the Britannic spent her life as a hospital ship in warmer waters than Titanic.
But where the Titanic’s spotters failed to spot an iceberg, the Britannic’s spotters failed to notice a mine.
Which is understandable, since mines are much smaller than icebergs.
And make for less interesting movies, I suppose.
The third sister ship, Olympic, was sold for scrap and demolished.
Even less interesting, I suppose.

The old saying goes that when it rains it pours.
I guess that’s meant to be taken metaphorically, when a lot of things happen at once, because my friend Bob, the weather guy, he’s got all kinds of words to describe rain other than pouring.
Drizzling is the most amusing of the words he uses.
Although I’ve heard others say “gullywasher” which is even more amusing, but Bob doesn’t ever use that word.
He lives in a gully, and takes offense that it is somehow unclean.
“My gully is spotless,” says Bob. “Just say pouring and shut the fuck up.”