Category: My stories

What did they call Queen Anne’s Lace before Queen Anne?
Some call it wild carrot. Others call it bishop’s lace.
“I’ll take that wild carrot, if you don’t mind,” said the young Queen Anne to a bishop.
And she plucked the lacy white flower with red buds from the bishop’s hands.
“So lovely,” she said, twirling it in her hands. “I think I will name it after myself.”
The bishops protested, so Queen Anne had them all executed, their blood staining her gown.
But the legend of the red buds was changed to her pricking her finger while making lace.

I’m not one for birthdays.
When I see one on my timeline, I hide the post.
And I hide mine from my profiles.
Those who matter, know.
Those who don’t matter, don’t know.
They post all kinds of garish animated GIFs and empty sentiments.
And then they forget me for the rest of the year.
I prefer the quiet to the meaningless token displays.
Wake up, go through my routine, and make it through the day.
Be grateful for each day, and don’t wait for meaningless milestones to be grateful.
To think, to feel, to learn… this is life’s meaning.

Yosemite Park got its name from the Miwok word “Yohhe’meti.”
It means “They are killers.” And it refers to the violent Pai-Ute tribe who fought with the Miwok and the Ahwahnee.
As Ken Burns wrote his documentary series about the national parks, he looked over the piles of research and smirked.
It didn’t his narrative of white people being the source of evil in the world.
“I’ll just put the meaning after white settlers slaughter the natives,” said Ken. “It will sound like it refers to the settlers.”
Peter Coyote let the booth know that he was ready to record.

With the rise of digital currencies, like bitcoin, the miners of those digital currencies compete to throw raw computing power at earning those currencies, whether its their own or servers that they’ve hacked and taken over.
They don’t completely take over a server’s resources, because that would alert the owner to their presence.
Instead, they use all of the unused resources, so there is no performance loss.
When the administrator logs in and performs any tasks, the mining program hides and sleeps, until the admin logs out.
They start back up and begin once more to mine for more coins.

Every prince wants to one day be king.
And Prince Drogo was no exception to that.
His father, King Grond, who taught him well.
As well as Drogo’s brother, Prince Victor.
A year older than Drogo.
When Grond died, Victor took the crown.
Drogo did all he could to get it for himself.
Assassins and poisons aren’t cheap.
Victor’s wives and children died, but Victor survived.
And then, the crown was Drogo’s to take.
He took it off of his brother’s corpse and put it on his head.
“Oh shit,” he said. “The poison. I forgot to wash it off.”

My Muslim friend tells me that ISIS isn’t really Islamic.
Despite the fact that they’re called the Islamic State.
Despite the fact that they quote the Q’ran as they behead people.
Despite the fact that they’re forcing people to convert to Islam or die.
Despite the fact that when they’re captured, they demand Q’rans, prisons, imams, and halal meals in prison.
Despite the fact that Muslims protest that the prisoners are treated badly, or that it’s a War On Islam.
So, I took out a massive scimitar, and beheaded my friend.
“I guess I’m more Islamic than you,” I said.

When I was little, my family had a great big green car.
It was from the days when everybody smoked, and there were ashtrays in the back.
I remember pulling out the ashtray assembly and stuffing a toy plastic dinosaur in the well of the seat panel.
I’d look in there every time I rode in that car.
Then, one day, my dad traded in that car for another.
The car and the dinosaur were gone.
I don’t worry too much about losing things.
I like to think of them as being with the dinosaur in his little ashtray cave.

Instead of getting presents for my birthday from my parents, I give them presents.
After all, weren’t they the ones who gave me life in the first place?
I give my dad a tie and some flowers to my mother.
Then, on Fathers Day, I demand a present from my dad, because, after all, aren’t I the one who made him a father in the first place?
On Mothers Day, I demand a present from my mother, because, after all, aren’t I the one who made her a mother in the first place.
“That was your father’s fault,” she says.

I’ve always been a zipper-fly jeans wearer. Never been the button-fly kind of guy.
Never zipped the zipper into my cock, either. Never been that careless. Or drunk.
Until yesterday.
So, here I am in the hospital, all stitched up and drugged to the point of not caring.
I wish I had been drugged to the point of not remembering, too.
They asked for my ID and my insurance, and I told them it was in my wallet in my back pocket.
“Be gentle,” I said.
They were.
Seen the bill? The cuts will heal long before the wallet will.

It started with a simple filter. Fred sent email from his bank to a Banking folder.
Then, Fred filtered some mailing lists into their own folders.
All the while, Fred was creating filters for Spam, sending it to the trash.
A few rules here, a few filters there.
Then Fred added auto-responders. This let people know he got their mail.
Pretty soon, Fred’s email box could run itself.
Fred’s car, on the other hand, couldn’t drive itself.
He got drunk and ran into a tree, and died.
But Fred’s email box kept on going.
And so will yours, one day.