Category: My stories

I know a poet.
She’s been writing poetry for years.
In her personal notebooks and diaries.
Reading them at a coffeeshop.
Handing out leaflets and pamphlets.
Submitting them to magazines, receiving rejection letter after rejection letter.
And then, she gets published.
A magazine here, a university collection there.
Submitted for a few prizes, until she wins a few.
Then the commissions roll in.
Write a thousand words on this, two thousand on that.
From self-published books to a publishing deal.
All the while, she’s been sharing them with me.
And I’ve been deleting them.
I’m not all that into poetry.

I know when the COVID-19 pandemic will be over.
It’s when they run out of Greek letters.
So many damn letters!
“I have Omicron.”
“I have Delta.”
“I have Omega.”
“Oh, you have Omega? You’re done.”
Then they give you three more boosters.
And ice cream.
This, of course, is a brilliant strategy because the WHO already skipped Xi so as not to insult the Chinese, who made COVID-19 in a lab.
Of course, the Chinese have thousands of letters in their alphabet.
Thank God they had the sense to use the Greek alphabet or this shit would never end.

The Uvalde shooter was a monster.
He killed cats and threatened women, and all sorts of other sick things.
His mother didn’t report him, and didn’t believe him when he was abused by her boyfriends.
She is just as responsible for the massacre as he is.
I remember back in school, a kid dying.
Turned out, he was a sick son of a bitch. Abusing his sister and her friends. Tormenting their dog.
The coroner ruled it a suicide.
But we were all told it was a mercy-killing.
“Be good,” our parents and teachers said. “Or it’ll happen to you.”

The prisoner exchange took place on the bridge.
Soldiers and snipers and floodlights everywhere.
Two men shook hands in the middle of the bridge and waved to their respective sides.
A line of men in chains with bags over their heads walked South.
One man in a suit and tie walked North.
When the line of men reached their side, the chains were removed, the bags were lifted, and their families saw them and hugged them and thanked God.
“Did you use my latest formula?” the man in the suit said.
“Yes,” said the soldiers.
The virus spread like wildfire.

Deep, in the deepest cave, there lies The Book Of Life.
If you are written in The Book Of Life, you will live.
If you are removed from The Book Of Life, you will die.
Twenty monks watch the book constantly.
The same twenty have watched for as long as people have known about The Book.
They wrote their names in The Book, and have never removed them.
Don’t try to go down to the cave, because the monks will remove your name.
We send down food and water, they send their gratitude.
And we all live our lives happily.

Leroy Brown called every white person a racist.
When he wasn’t screaming it at white people, he was shouting it at the television.
Neighbors who complained were in cahoots with the racist white folk.
Cops who came to tell him to quiet down were sent by the racist white folk.
But nobody did anything, because they didn’t want to be called a racist.
Leroy called the mailman a racist for walking on his property.
The mailman said the mailbox was by his front door.
So, from then on, he threw the mail on Leroy’s sidewalk.
And ignored the yelling Leroy.

The Clone Law states that no clone may be activated as long as the source is alive.
When Roger 7 woke up Roger 8, it meant death to one or the other.
Roger 8 climbed out of the copytank and looked around.
Just a note: “Meet me at the drugstore.”
So, Roger 8 showered, got dressed, and walked to the drugstore.
Where he was met by the police.
“You have the right to remain silent,” they began.
Roger 8 tried to explain he didn’t kill his wife. It was his source.
“Well, then,” said the police. “Then you’ll die anyway.”

I’m on a lot of teams, and I have a lot of meetings.
They’re usually pretty good about scheduling them so they don’t conflict, but sometimes, it’s unavoidable.
Nobody ever says the other team’s meeting is more important, so go see them.
If I pick one meeting, I get follow messages about super important stuff from the other meeting.
And vice versa.
So, I started filling a coin to decide.
Heads, one team. Tails, the other team.
Then I use the coin to scratch off a lottery ticket.
And pray that I don’t need to attend either meeting ever again.

Governments are passing laws about data collection consent.
And browsers are making it easier to block all cookies and data collection.
So, we added a consent popup to our site.
Do you allow this site to collect data and store cookies on your browser?
And it saves your choice… as a cookie.
People complained that they had to tell it no every time they came to the site.
“That’s because we store your answer as a cookie… and you’re blocking cookies.”
They complain over and over about it.
But we don’t remember their complaints, because we aren’t tracking that data.

Oh, Greta.
You little Nazi.
Hitler Youth wet dream, blonde and blue-eyed.
Chiseled features, the Nordic ideal.
Danish? Dutch?
It doesn’t matter which master race you come from.
Like any child star, you’ve memorized your lines.
Your father’s words, hurled at the audience from your mouth like a plunger thrusting sewage down a clogged toilet.
America is bad. America is evil.
The America full of universities researching solutions to the ills you blame it for.
While Chinese factories spew more poison and death into the world.
But your blind hate knows no reason.
Leni Reifenstahl’s ghost smiles, and says “Cut.”