Author: R.

In addition to her depression, my mother suffered from seasonal affective disorder.
And she was living in the Pacific Northwest, so the Winters were excessively dark compared to here.
Not that I was going to invite her to move here.
So, I said “Turn on a light.”
That wasn’t enough.
I then sent a big 4K television with a player and some wildlife and other scenery disks.
By closing the windows, she could fool herself into thinking it was nice outside.
When I visited, the disks were unopened, and my asshole father was watching football and porn on the TV.

My school had a senior project requirement.
A brief internship at some business or organization you’re interested in.
I was interested in Science, so I planned a few weeks in their medical technology lab.
Instead, my mother conspired with the program coordinator to dump me in a homeless shelter.
Where I was attacked repeatedly, and once forcibly injected with heroin.
These days, when bums on the corner beg for money, I hand out monopoly money.
I donate the itchiest clothes and blankets to shelters.
And drop cans of creamed beets and other disgusting things off at food bank donation drives.

• Lisa
• Lizzie
• Richard
• Serendipidy
• Norval Joe
• Tom
• Planet Z

The next topic is All our tomorrows

RICHARD

Beans

I has beans every day, plenty of fibre in them, see. Scientists say it’s good for you, all I knows is they makes me fart.

Guess that’s a good thing though: better out, than in, I says, just so long as you ain’t downwind of me at the time.

Ferocious, they are… pungent!

But, I suppose that’s one of the downsides of taking care of your body, occupational hazard, you might say.

Of course, if I’m honest, it’s not strictly true. I’m not really health conscious at all.

I just loves my beans, with a passion.

And farting, of course.

SERENDIPIDY

Just because we’ve been around for millennia, don’t write us off. It doesn’t mean that we’re a bunch of has-beens.
Even the forces of evil have to evolve with the times, otherwise how else are we going to stay relevant and a force to be reckoned with?
Why do you think social media is so toxic, and there’s so much disagreeable content online? As for the Dark Web, we invented it!
One thing we won’t touch though is artificial intelligence. We prefer to leave it well alone.
Because we simply can’t have AI taking over the world.
That’s our job!

LISA

Why Are We Here?
“After the death of our parents, we partied. We partied pretty hard. We travelled. We travelled far and then returned here to the only house we’ve ever known feeling like has-beens.
Thirty years old, stinking rich, and feeling like life had nothing left to offer us.
It’s ludicrous, isn’t it?”
He’d spoken for ages. The sofa, despite its softness, was feeling more uncomfortable than the basement. I felt I had to say something. My speech felt slurred when I spoke and the room felt a little blurry.
“Where exactly do we fit in to this idea for a new community?

LIZZIE

The train station was still there. The door was locked. I peered through the window but couldn’t see anything. The bike was rotting away at the usual place. The windsock was still flapping on the rusty pole. Back then I didn’t understand why the station master wanted that windsock up there. Trains don’t run on wind. The old station master would smile and say that the birds needed to know. But I never saw any birds. The station master would smile again and say, you don’t? Look. And point to the sky. He saw birds, and that made me smile.

TOM

Cold Fusion

In the land of the has beens is a tiny corner set aside for the never was-s. Rudy was in charge of this sad clump of lost souls. To be a has been you got to have been a been. Done something of at least marginal success. The never was-s came so close to that level, but just couldn’t get their head above the waters of failure. Rudy kept track of each “C-list” personality in an ever-growing ledger. Rudy got this gig after losing the Noble Prize seven times. I can’t quite remember what was his contribution to physics.
858

Millions of Arrows

I am a fan of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. After the war he set out to make films that would explain the American and European mindset. Seven Samurai was basically a western. Throne of Blood was a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In the over-the-top climax Generals Washizu played my Toshiro Mifune is driven mad by the trees of Spider’s Web Forest “they have risen to attack us” he screams. A direct nod to Birnam Wood. What follows is millions of Arrows. End of the Magnificat Seven doesn’t hold a candle to Mifune’s pitching about like a human pin cushion.

NORVAL JOE

Initially, everyone who passed Billbert sitting against the wall asked him what he was doing there. Hours later they all acted like he was invisible or just ignored him like he was some embarrassing has-been.
Ten minutes before the end of visiting hours, a nurse opened the door. “Okay, Billbert. You have ten minutes. Then you need to leave.”
Sabrina lay as still as death in a yellow hospital gown. Her injured leg was exposed with wicked looking rods and apparatuses piercing the flesh. A monitor beeped regularly, displaying her heart rate and respirations.
Billbert took her hand in his.

PLANET Z

I used to be a big podcaster.
But back then, podcasting was really small.
And everybody knew everyone else.
Then, podcasting got big.
Big people got into podcasting.
If you were big before, well, you either hitched your wagon to these big people, or you got lost in the crowd.
You either had to do more and more outrageous things for attention, or you just learned to accept the fact that you were always a small fish, it’s the pond that changed.
And I’m okay with that, because in the end, every fish ends up drinking every other fish’s piss.

Someone complained about Abraham Lincoln and his Gettysburg Address being on display in a university library, so the staff removed them, saying it had been part of a temporary exhibit, even though they had been on display for years.
Then, at another library, a parent complained about Ru Paul’s book, so the library pulled it from the shelves.
People started complaining about everything, books, artwork, the chairs, the stairs…
Pretty soon, there was nothing left in any library in America.
Which offered plenty of room for drag queens to read stories to little kids.
Until someone complained about that, too.

Someone smashed my car window and took some stuff.
“Yeah, it happens,” said the police.
They gave me some paperwork to fill out.
“Leave the doors unlocked,” they said. “And don’t leave anything in your car.”
My insurance company said “The deductible is five hundred dollars.”
So, I went to the repair shop, and they charged me… five hundred dollars.
When they were finished, I smashed the store owner’s car window.
Then I drove to the insurance agent’s office and smashed her car window, too.
Because the police won’t do anything, right?
Oh, and they didn’t leave their doors unlocked.

I remember a fireworks cake, long ago.
When I was still too young to know better.
“Those fireworks are for you,” we’d say.
The bruises on my face still sore from whatever transgression against her fragile, bitter ego.
There’s still a bit of red glitter in the car’s cupholders.
From the flowers I got her last year.
The day that I found out she was a willing part of my father’s plan to ruin me.
They couldn’t die fast enough.
I should get the car fully detailed and cleaned out.
And rid myself of her ghost once and for all.

When trailblazer Senator Betty Riley first went to Washington, she railed against the old men she was forced to suffer at the hands of.
The sexist harassment and abuse, their constantly falling asleep in meetings, and carelessly letting their staffers run their offices.
“You washed-up evil monsters!” she shouted. “You should retire to let fresh new perspectives in!”
Fifty years later, decrepit and falling asleep in meetings, Betty let her own staffers run her office.
Occasionally, they wheeled her to talk shows and woke her up long enough to shriek at detractors as being sexist and disrespectful of her elders.

Courtney raised a steer as part of her 4H classes.
She never gave it a name or talked to it. Just wrote X on every form.
It won competition after competition, until they got to the State Fair.
They never managed a win there.
But it did place, and at the auction, Courtney came away with enough scholarship money to pay her way through State.
The steer ended up as steaks and burgers, and its horns adorned a Russian billionaire’s golf cart.
At her graduation, Courtney thanked her parents and her teachers.
Not a single thought about X the steer.

So, kids are taking guns to schools and shooting their classmates and teachers.
It doesn’t matter if they were picked on, bullied, or abused. It’s wrong.
But for those people wanting to ban guns, well, it’s impossible.
And limiting magazine and clip sizes just means the kid carries more of them and reload.
The solution is, of course, to build bigger and heavier guns.
Ones that a kid can’t carry.
If it takes two or three kids to carry a gun, it can’t be concealed easily.
And maybe one of the kids will say “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.”