Months ago, the line, “I’m not racist, but” – followed by something entirely mundane – started as a joke in my standup comedy routine. I couldn’t make it work right, so I dropped it. But I kept thinking about it, and eventually birthed this story. It’ll take barely two minutes to read. The website that… Read More »
We went to Paraguay in 2017. I wrote “A Shakespearean Tragedy on a Paraguayan Ranch” about one aspect of our stay there. It took me a long time to find a publisher with the sense of humor required for this particular piece, but Danse Macabre fits the bill nicely. A three-minute read.
Piker Press put up “The Long Goodbye“, a non-fiction piece about one of our hosting adventures. Wait, is it an adventure if we don’t go anywhere? Hmm…deep. A five-minute read.
Jason found it wedged into the folded-up child seat of the shopping cart. A woman’s, the wallet was cheap and plastic, with a zipper handle shaped like a heart. Opening it, the first things to notice were the $100 bills. They were crisp and looked unused. Jason had to lick his fingertips to pull them apart. He counted 15. So far, so good – he hoped not to find any identification so he could keep the money with a clean conscience.
The announcer called the adult contestants to the line and I had that first guilty tingle – similar to what the Roman plebeians must have felt when they watched the lions pacing back and forth in the coliseum, waiting for dinner to be served. The drivers skidded through the watered-down infield to the start. Engines in need of lozenges roared. The announcer counted down. The green flag waved and seconds later my senses were overwhelmed by the endorphin rush from hearing the first metal-on-metal collision.
Last night I debuted my standup comedy routine at the Revival Theater here in Hyde Park. The video misses the first 5 or 10 seconds, but it won’t take long to pick up the plot. 4:41.
Engaged? Or thinking of popping the question? Then this is for you. It’s barely a two-minute read, and come on, is being on time for that next thing you have to do really all that important?
Here’s a romantic story, with time-travel, that went up on a site called /Asymmetry. It will take 9 minutes to read.
All those years of dead-end programming jobs finally paid off. Here is a link to the “The Help Desk“. The story is a four-minute read, but it’s so funny you’ll swear it only took 3:55.
The good people at Theme of Absence are fast becoming my best friends. They have put up another short story of mine, Days of the Dead. It’s either a dark comedy or a lighthearted horror. It’ll take you four minutes to read, excluding pauses for the laughing and the quaking in fear.