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Page 9 of 13

I tend to not believe in the idea of “the muse” to get things done creatively. It’s part of the reason I don’t guard my smaller ideas, my short poems, comedy bits or one-off short stories with al...

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Dear Mr. Hemmingway, May we call you Ernest? Look, Ernest, we appreciate the work you’ve put in here but we’re going to have to pass on this manuscript as it currently exists. Your spare journali...

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The dinosaurs didn’t die out, not really, they just became the duck. Evolution doesn’t have a plan, it’s just whatever happens next and whoever has the genetic luck to accidentally survive. Our c...

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For a stretch of time in the early 20th century, the most effective treatment for advanced syphilis was to intentionally infect with malaria on top of the syphilis. It induced a high-fever that k...

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Some call it “ruins photography” or “ruin tourism” but the most vulgar term is also the most apt: “ruin porn”. Documenting crumbling infrastructures, in best case showcasing our abandoned but mos...

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The buggies in my furs, they sometimes hurt but they’ve been on there so long I can’t help but feel like they’re a part of me. They make me itch sometimes but when Momma goes off to work, I know ...

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I could get you anything, anything you wanted, within reason, with a certain value for the word “reason”. It was so easy, of course, when the requests were mostly just street-drugs, prescription ...

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The idea of taking on the rap personae of a grizzled gold prospector sounded ridiculous to me as well when my agent first pitched it, but as he was quick to remind, this business isn’t just about...

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“Last we tried this, we went about it all wrong,” She told you from behind the desk in Her sleek minimalist office, “investing so much in one messiah to save you all at once, as much Myself as ma...

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“What was he like in your timeline?” one asked. “Well,” the other whispered, “I certainly don’t remember him being this fat.” They thought I couldn’t hear them, but I could, every single word. M...

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Most of us don’t get to carefully choose our last words but he did. Most of us don’t die so neatly, it’s too sudden or we’re in denial or our minds too far gone from illness or fear to wax eloque...

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In the Realm of Possibility on the shore of Lake Whatweknow, sat a king within a castle guarded by a more-or-less probable moat. From the peaks of the Expectations to the low Despondent Sea, his ...

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We’d expected the Rapture to be fun, of course. We figured it would leave humanity without the sanctimonious stick-in-the-mud hypocrites and full-stop psychotics that’d ranted about it for the la...

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In the large print of happy endings, certainly when wild and powerful magic’s involved, there’s almost always some unintended horror deep down in the small print. Belle and the Prince indeed got ...

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She’d heard the story of the wishing apples in the ruins before she understood the words used to tell it. She was always drawn to that tale but when still just a child, the adults tried to protec...

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This life is a series of lessons on the subject of letting things go. Avoid learning these lessons at your own peril because the lessons will continue to be taught, whether you want to accept the...

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Consider the curious case of a planet called in its various tongues “Zemlja” “Di’qiu” or “Earth” which exo-ethnographers dubbed “Hospice Sol-Three.” It’s not rare to discover a planet whose senti...

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There are only two escalators in the entire state of Wyoming. Well, four, two sets, matching up-and-down pairs, just two sets in two banks in the same city, not even the capital Cheyenne, in its ...

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Most can’t say they’ve had the Secret Service begin to draw their guns on them but, then again, I’m not most people. Most folk can date level-headed partners without getting bored out of their sk...

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They say when you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes and while that’s kind of what it’s like, they’re not quite right. Flashing before your eyes describes a strict linear order, ...

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At first, I was ecstatic, I couldn’t believe that they picked me. I mean, I was nothing out of the ordinary, maybe a little bigger than the others but what in the hell could that count for? But f...

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(note: I just wrote a different version of this as a poem but “list” just fit the idea too perfectly) Just for once, Lifetime Channel, Hallmark Channel, when the overworked CEO comes home for Chr...

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You aren’t your hopes and dreams, you know. They’re parts of you, important parts, but not all that you are. You aren’t a list of aspirations, goals and immutable desires, to either be achieved i...

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Three A.M. I’m awake again. The prescriptions in my blood need the toilet more than my brain needs the sleep, I guess. Stumbling back through kitchenette, the cat jumps upon the counter and says ...

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It started innocuously enough but the lead-up to a war always begins a great distance away from where the situation ends in bloodshed. The Great War didn’t start with the assassination of some ro...

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