Short Pieces – GTC
World According to Americans
Don’t know if they were godless communists or radical Muslims but some outrageous critters emailed world map insulting Americans. On map they write we think Canada’s uninhabited. Bull feathers. We know few icy people live up there, and they sure as hell want to be like Alaska next door, which is now America except for…
Read MoreTravel Advice
Avoid crowded and dangerous Mexico City, stay way from torrid beaches, ignore over-hyped pyramids, and forget boring cathedrals. Instead, come to San Juan in infernal yet enchanting Nuevo León. Here you’ll meet friendly and forthright people. Don’t worry about forty-nine headless corpses on highway under welcoming white arch. Everything’s been cleaned up, and narcotics traffickers…
Read MoreBig Sneeze
After hosting amorous boyfriend Sunday night and pounding treadmill half hour early Monday morning, popular high school math teacher Martha H drove to school, parked car, and walked toward class, confident she’d have another great week. She sneezed after shutting car door, and nose and sinuses had tickly, cleaned out feeling that became more pleasurable…
Read MoreMaris Prime Rib
In mid-sixties Sacramento a restaurateur, exhibiting either grand generosity or manifest ignorance of human hunger, offered eat all you want prime rib lunch on Sundays. Two fast-growing adolescents and I, salivating after a hot afternoon of schoolyard baseball, scurried into an establishment that, a few years earlier, had presented Roger Maris the baseball he hit…
Read MoreRetirement Express
Harold was usually nervous at work and home, worrying he couldn’t survive ten more years arrogant supervisors, indifferent coworkers, and rude customers, so started naps after work and earlier bedtimes and weekends in bed sleeping away years thankful to miss.
Read MoreNewspaper Alert
Harold was usually nervous at work and home, worrying he couldn’t survive ten more years arrogant supervisors, indifferent coworkers, and rude customers, so started naps after work and earlier bedtimes and weekends in bed sleeping away years thankful to miss.
Read MoreMass Murder in Mexico
Hasn’t been much new in search engines about discovery of hundred seventy-seven corpses near San Fernando, Mexico. Occasional reports reminded just eighty miles south of border Mexican authorities ignored mountain of unclaimed luggage in bus depot before finally digging holes and discovering mummified Central Americans and Mexicans who’d headed north to work. Some had been…
Read MorePruning
Alice liked to save money. She scoured newspapers and tabloids to find coupons. She drove across town to pay few cents less per gallon of gas. She never dined in restaurants or went to movies. She hadn’t taken vacation since husband died twenty years ago. She mowed lawn until arthritis forced to have dug out…
Read MoreWork and Retirement
Bill liked job until Thursdays when mind and body tired. Then he craved weekends but got bored by Sunday afternoons. He fantasized about learning to enjoy free time, and made lists of activities, but had been profligate in youth and could not retire.
Read MoreBig Al Allosaurus Responds to Brother – Part 2
How strange my brother accuses me of predatory incompetence and cognitive ineptitude. Let me clarify dark history with precision dear brother never practiced or understood. As youngsters he frequently tried to maim me and other siblings but I always overpowered him and rebuked with restrained bites. Our mother never disciplined him and would’ve perhaps turned…
Read MoreTwilight Next Door
Soon after moving into current home Joe walked out front to trim bushes and met next door neighbors, lady and gentleman both about eighty. She introduced herself and said, “This is George.” Joe said hello and enjoyed lady’s vivacity and charm but thought what rude bastard husband was, bearing silly semi-smile and not looking at…
Read MoreShooting Baskets in Dreams
Generation after Hal moved from two small dingy rooms connected to old house in battery-stealing part of town, he thought dreams had disappeared so was saddened to see himself there shooting baskets. Old friend sat behind and watched errant shots. Damn ceiling’s too low to shoot right. Friend should’ve agreed but only stared as Hal…
Read MoreWarden Condemns the Alcatraz Hotel
Let’s start with what you’re bound to ask: why’d I take damn job if feared from inception whole scheme doomed? I had to because believed only I was tough and traditional enough to prevent do-gooders from ruining entire penal system. If they were going to transform Alcatraz into convict heaven, I was honor bound to…
Read MoreRaccoon Attacks Child and Father
As the paramount raccoon I am hosting this press conference to explain and apologize rather than justify. I understand we raccoons stand rather low in the eyes of you humans who consider us stealthy and untrustworthy creatures because we wear bandit black masks across our eyes. Our physical stature is also uninspiring as we usually…
Read MoreDevil Rebukes Pat Robertson for Remarks about Haiti
I’m weary of people blaming me for calamities both natural and premeditated. Recently, religious charlatan Pat Robertson attributed the disastrous earthquake in Haiti – as well as its tragic history of slavery, colonialism, bloodthirsty leaders, crime, poverty, hurricanes, floods, and other disasters – to a “pact with the devil” by leaders of the 1791 slave…
Read MoreThe Atomic Cafe
Welcome to The Atomic Café where we serve vivid images of tests from July 1945 Alamogordo leading to uncontested flight over Hiroshima about which crewman notes hard to conceive damage they’ve done. Smiling President Truman reports we’ve taken biggest scientific gamble in history, awful responsibility, and won, and thank God it’s our responsibility and not…
Read MoreI’m not Hitler
Forgive anger for I have been abused. Though millions suffered more than I, we all ended alike, so I speak with humility and wouldn’t at all if not for most recent outrage which shall address in moment. First, I acknowledge years of good fortune. I was raised in affluent household of physician and charming and…
Read MoreThe Wal-Mart Experience
I’m not going to say my former south Bakersfield neighborhood, once a middle class haven, turned foul because it bordered a Wal-Mart store. In fairness to the elephantine retailer, the area swirled into a sewer because absentee landlords sucked the Section 8 tit and, in exchange for government housing subsidies, stuffed criminals and other loud…
Read MoreCrisis in the Sink
Harold wasn’t going to let them blame this crisis on shoddy housekeeping. Granted, the aged food covered with starving ants on the floor between refrigerator and cabinet must have been his responsibility since he didn’t see anyone else throw it there and couldn’t plausibly explain who might’ve committed such an act. That, at any rate,…
Read MoreDiscouraged
I’m not going to tell whether as security officer I serve old Baathists, new Sunnis, Sadr Shiites, Iranian Shiites, autonomous Kurds, Christians, or CIA operatives. I can’t tell you because I often don’t know. Look what happened November fourteenth – year doesn’t matter – at Ministry of Education research center: several dozen men driving pickup…
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