He dreamed he was walking. Looked down and his hands were holding papers. Folders of mistakes he’d made at work. It was the day of his annual review. In one or more areas he had not been Very Satisfactory. He woke up thinking he was late. Then remembered. There had been a nuclear holocaust.
Thank God, he thought. Continue reading
Don’t come inside, said Maricar. She was 4′ 11”, 19, looked 14. Waray-Waray. The father a coconut farmer on Samar. There are beach there but no tourist, she explained. He’d never heard of it but decided to move there.
They were in the best hotel in Angeles. You could tell because there were so many Arabs. In the elevators they’d quietly appraise your girls and smile. One named Waleed he’d seen three times, earned enough trust to hear that your George W. Bush was a criminal. He worked for the Jews. Continue reading
My new novel Finally, Some Good News is live on Amazon. You can read the first seven chapters below.
If you buy paperback you get Kindle copy free (buy paperback, navigate to Kindle version, price will show as “FREE”):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1790356229
Sample chapters:
Previously:
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The Sherman Oaks Outdoorsman
The gun shop door was open but half the ceiling had collapsed. The Sherman Oaks Outdoorsman. Here too hissing sprinklers, shrieking alarms. He had to press his fingertip into his left ear and still the back of his head rang with the sound of cicadas. Shelves fallen into each other. Tile floor covered with flashlights and Rambo knives, spreadeagled Guns & Ammo magazines. Soldier of Fortune open to honeypot ads in the back for hit men, all sopping wet. Marcy still catatonic in the ’79 Mercedes outside, in the handicapped space. He’d wrapped her in his picnic blanket. Strapped her in like a baby. Eased the seat all the way back so her head wouldn’t stick up. He’d thought about taking another car, a 4-wheel drive. But the hallway floor tilted in and the first burned corpse he checked for keys groaned when he tried its pockets. Continue reading
Previously:
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We can fix the stove, said the landlady.
OK Gre-
AT YOUR COST
How are you going to even say that
YOU told me that YOU broke it cleaning the-
That’s not what I said Maureen
Listen: to fix that stove I have to go in there, get the make and model number, call a repairman, wait for him, pay him for an estimate, wait for him to get the parts… Continue reading
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Power Achiever
The Monday before Halloween there were vegetables in the break room. Broccoli and baby carrots. Continue reading
Typing on my flattened out keyboard. Broke the struts punching it. Or the strut, singular. The one that was left. I did this because Microsoft Word was “justifying” margins on the last line of a piece in my putative next book. Broke the other strut from some formatting fuckup in my last book. You start with Createspace’s Microsoft Word 5.5 by 8.5 template. Cut/ paste from your web site. Whatever bits of Createspace’s aesthetic vision you disagree with, edit once. Define your font and layout as a style. Everything you paste should be in that style. Easy. Continue reading
Have to write something family friendly so I don’t miss a month in archives. Point of pride. Done this over five years and if you look on the bottom right you’ll see not a month missed. In the beginning not a day missed. I’m a god damn institution. Continue reading
Three years later he still looked at her Facebook. Once every six months. Violet. She was in a relationship. Formally engaged or not was hard to tell. That section of About Me was blank. She’d had to look available for her career. Often key decision makers were still men.
But they went on trips together. Resorts insulated from global unrest. Engaged in all but name. The fiance had been a photographer. Now Creative Director for a lifestyle brand famously run by a DisruptHer/ She-EO. His early work made it look like he fucked the models. You don’t become a photographer to take pictures. She still worked for the ad agency. An early adopter of La Croix. No doubt they’d moved on past pamplemousse, an apres-garde flavor.
She was still beautiful. When he felt bad enough he’d stop looking. Continue reading
Annie, the Anemone of Online Anonymity
Here’s an “Editor’s Note:” I got doxed. I’m making some archives private. Don’t know how long.
Am I selling out? Is my new shit going to be a hostage video?
We’ll see.
I’d wanted to back off my shtick. Start with a new name. Publish a few things I’m proud of. Focus on the book. Not like this, but still– maybe it will be good for me.
Some posts are in books. Others gone for now. Might not give out the password. Making shit scarce and using that scarcity for rainy day money has an appeal, suddenly. Continue reading
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