Breathe Deep This is a piece of Flash Fiction. The topic: A person goes to a doctor’s office, and a nurse gives him some free sample medicine. Archibald “Butane” Maclaine struggled to walk into the doctor’s office. He paused to grab the back of a chair, moved forward a couple steps, and then leaned against […]
Dog Man and Puppy Boy This is a piece of Flash Fiction. The topic: A person finds a die with a missing 6 alongside a quarter standing on end. Millionaire playboy Jedediah Magillicutty power-walked down the street, waving to his unsuspecting neighbors as he continued his daily morning constitutional. Unknown to all but a select […]
THE CLOSING This is a piece of Flash Fiction. The topic: A family moves into the neighborhood haunted house. And by signing this form, you acknowledge that you have been informed about any and all paranormal activity that has been witnessed at the property located at 124 Chestnut Street. Noah Kuhn turned and […]
D’oh! We, and our many supporters worldwide, have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won! John Richards Did you hear the news? Something extraordinary happened a couple days ago. Much to my surprise, a punctuation mark made international news. No, it wasn’t the ampersand, or my personal favorite, […]
This is a piece of Flash Fiction. The topic: a second-person account of an individual who picks up an almost empty can of air freshener. Air Effects You are in your upstairs library, you appear to be reading Proust. Your thoughts, though, are not on the text. Let’s begin there. Things seem normal until […]
An Existential Threat Two things happened in the last couple of days that have required me to spend hours in front of my computer. First, Harvard Magazine sent me a digital copy of my monthly subscription. Second, Harvard played Yale in football on Saturday. Decades from now, people will be writing about that game, not […]
This is a piece of Flash Fiction. The topic: A teenage girl gets a letter from George Mason University. Professor Bob Rosemary bounced through the door, simultaneously kicking off her vans and throwing her backpack against the couch. She didn’t notice that her giant chapstick fell out and rolled under the big, puffy chair […]
My Favorite President: A Note on The Pythagorean Theorem Many years ago I had a buddy named Mariah, she was a high school senior working part-time at a restaurant I used to hang out at. One day she approached me to tell me about a paper she needed to write for both her Government and […]
Bonus Eruptus! Let me begin by letting everyone know that I love The Simpsons. The show is now in year 31, and I still look forward to each week’s episode. I will admit that a few years in the middle of the run were pretty lean, but the show is experiencing a renaissance. The Simpsons […]
Where is my Dollar? This is an essay about counting. Simple counting, you know, like the kind that the puppet vampire on Sesame Street does. You remember “The Count,” right? One, Two, Three, Four, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just did a little research, and I discovered his full name is Count Von Count. Who […]