Tag: life

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Week 607: Behold The Anti Hamlet

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It has been long believed (and I think correctly) that Hamlet is the acme of roles for actors (nowadays the ladies are giving the melancholy one a go themselves). Actually that doesn’t matter much, because the character is so complicated that gender is secondary, and the shape of the production can be re-configured easily enough. Of course this is not a status of acclimation, many feel that Conan-Doyle’s Sherlock is the top of the mountain (I like Will’s Falstaff best myself)–so, far be it from me to put up too much of a fight against that idea. Yet let us go with Hamlet because I have arrived at the character I consider to be as far away from Hamlet in gravitas as Kim Jong Un is from the Nobel Peace Prize. The Anti-Hamlet. Who is no one other than James Robert Walton–better known (or unknown) as “Jim Bob” of The Waltons.

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Fantasy, Horror

The Navvy’s Bargain by Matthew J. Richardson

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‘I’m sorry,’ said the waiter. ‘Do I recognise you?’

‘Shouldn’t have thought so,’ replied Robert. ‘I imagine I have the same face as any other holiday canaller, one whose week has become a search for water points and a battle with the bilge pump.’

Robert looked across to where Sylvie was staring pursed-lipped into the pub’s log burner.

‘Brave,’ continued the waiter, who judging by the empty tables surrounding them was not overworked. ‘Navigating the Llangollen in January.’

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

When the Railroad Comes by Leila Allison

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1985

There comes a moment when God stops everything and shines the Big Light on you. You’re presented with a problem that has no solution, and doing nothing isn’t possible. When that first happened to me in 1985, I learned the truth: the closer you get to God, the further you are from your humanity. I have yet to decide if that’s sarcasm, irony, or the wages of being holy. But none of it mattered at that moment. It was up to me to select the least shitty course of action, and I had to choose now.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Short Fiction, Writers Reading, Writing

Dirty Glass by Hugh Cron – Adult Content

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“Dirty glass…Fuck!”

…The first time that Martin had really focused on a dirty glass was decades back, in another one of his lifetimes. He’d had a few lifetimes and each had caused him a different level of grief.

Martin thought back to that morning at 8.00am, when he had been told that he had to check on a property. He found that depressing, fuck all was said about checking on the resident, no, he had to check on the property.

He pulled up beside the row of Maisonettes and sighed as he saw that the main entrance door was hanging off its hinges. He headed into the building. It always made him laugh that this was a building that you had to go inside, to go upstairs, to then go outside to get to the front door. He rattled the door. He could hear some mumbling and drunken giggles, “I hope that’s a lovely lady with nice tits!!”

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Week 589: Blessed Benedictines and Bad Celery

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We should keep the past closer than we do our enemies. There is much ago worth remembering, and not just in what George Santayana had to say.

For example, nearly a hundred years ago, the great Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) penned a bit of advice that, upon my finding it some seven decades down the road, has stayed with me and is one of the few guide stars in my life (I live in one of the cloudiest places in the world, so my guide stars are often metaphorical and/or flat out imaginary). Regardless, in her “Constant Reader” book review column, published by the New Yorker on Saturday, 28 January 1928 Mrs. Parker wisely warned readers against the perils of assumedly healthy eating and at the same time averred a particular form of hydration that has always been superior to simple and extremely boring H2O. (As it goes with natural items found in abundance, drinking water when choices are plentiful is as dull as dentist office decor.)

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Week 587: Sometimes it Helps to Hear Another Voice

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(Elliott the Pigeon is on Vacation this week; Daisy Kloverleaf and her brother Fenwick are the header stars. Daisy is on your left)

One of life’s burdens involves processing repetition. Some people are sensitive to it, others meet it with the awareness of a cantaloupe. I am not always smarter than produce, but I have a keen sense for repetition. Therefore I know that the eternal concepts of Good and Bad dictate the perception of welcomed and unwanted repetition. A woman who keeps peeling off twenties is obviously a good thing to have repeated at you, but unless she is gaining something worth it the peeler may have different feelings in her cold little heart–that emotional storage bin that imploded eons ago and is so compressed into inner dimensions that it takes three journeys through as many event horizons just to reach the outskirts of her kindness. You may assume that she, the peeler, has developed a sense of negativity for the old “again and again.”

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Editor Picks, General Fiction, Humour, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 583: Mama Mama Please No More Step Dads

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Tomorrow is Mother’s Day in the U.S. of A. (In the UK and Ireland it was 15 March–a belated happy one to Diane and the rest of the Islanders), I am not a mother, but I had one and found her to be sufficient. She was the sort of Mother who would die for her children and often made this one wish she would do just that.

We are awfully unfair to our mothers. We either over praise them up to Mother Mary Poppins or we blame them for not just all the heinous shit we do but for all the heinous shit ever committed in history. Expecting mothers to maintain a higher standard than what we are willing to consider is one of humankind’s greatest failings. Still, objectivity is not something we associate with family members. But alack and alas, all in all, in the end, everything tabulated, I’m glad I got the mother I was stuck with (vice versa); I do not believe anyone else out there could have made me and–despite my plentiful laments on the subject of me–I am used to being the person I am, and I’ve never been one for wishing I was someone else.

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Week 577: Can’t Teach a Shark to Kill Tofu

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(Elliott the Header Pigeon is on vacation this week. PDQ Peety is filling in and is also  filling  himself with PDQ Pilsner.)

Introduction

I again found myself undertaking the idea of the End of Humankind. Which is not to be confused with the End of the World because that will happen a few billion years from now when the sun dies, at which time it will greatly expand and obliterate everything on out to Jupiter. Like the rabid cur shot dead by Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird a dead sun is still a dangerous sun.

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