Fact #7

Today’s fact is If you don’t confront a bully directly, he will own you. This applies to all levels of society, from the schoolyard to the overarching government itself. Bullies are on a power trip. They get off on making the “alien” element among them, among their version of society, kneel. It is up to […]

|short story| The Skull

Sitting in the White House, the Conqueror poured wine into his favorite skull: that of the last President of the United States. The skull was sealed up in the eyes and mouth with glass. Wine rose past the eyes to the white brow of the skull. The Conqueror quaffed a goodly amount of liquid ambrosia […]

|short story| Sex Doll

It was the year 2083. With the invention of the realistic synthetic woman for private masturbation purposes, the number of men dating real women plummeted. Some pundits said it was because real women were too fat, while the synth version was slim and svelte and nicely breasted. Some pundits claimed it was because women had […]

Creativity

I was reading an AI-generated story today. It was well-written technically, but lacked any spirit or writer’s voice. It went nowhere. It was full of hackneyed cliches. Apparently, short story magazines (the few that remain) are being inundated by bland, machine-written texts in the hopes of making some easy money for their human masters. This […]

The Cautious Mindset

My father, who I love dearly, is a conservative, cautious sort. He has 5 credit cards to his name — a couple of Visa’s, an American Express, and a Costco credit card — because if he’s in Europe he wants to have $15-30 thousand dollars of credit “cash” available to him in an emergency. Why […]

|poem| Victory

This poem fits my heart to a T. It is a paean to winning. And winning it all. Unlike the music group Rush’s song “Bravado,” which celebrates attempts at greatness that lead to failure, “Victory” by Greg Nikolic exults in attempts at greatness that WIN. Take your own message from it.

Migrant Dyspepsia

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a man from El Salvador, living in the United States, who was deemed wrongfully deported by the immigration men with their silver mirrorshades. He was sent back to El Salvador with no hope of returning, until the Supreme Court heard his case and ordered the president to make “an effort” to […]