(written the day after the final episode of Breaking Bad; Spoiler Alerts) Hank is as real to us as our own brother-in-law. The gaping pain of Marie Schrader is almost unbearable. We can only pray to God top to deliver Walter Jr from the madness seeming inevitable. No show has evoked how we feel after the…
REPORT FROM THE UPTEAM
LOG OF FIRST ASCENT UPTEAM DAY 4 ALTITUDE 11,125 Meters FROM: Vernon Tanaka/Upteam Leader TO: ANOMALY BASE ARRIVAL Happy to report the Upteam set Base Camp at 11,125 meters inside the Tube of Big Bamboo 16 after three days’ climb. The ingenious vascular Fujitsu Snail must be considered a great success.…
THE LANGLEY CONFERENCE
What follows is the transcript of a meeting held last fall that assembled the nation's top policy-makers to discuss America's security future. The names and nomenclature have been changed and some of the actual details of the techniques and methodologies of monitoring and mass-arrest have been intentionally altered, so as not to risk our source within the…
SERFCO
There’s still a fortune to be made for the venture capitalist in the emerging indentured servitude industry. Angel investors who early backed today’s big names like Serfco, American Helotics and Enchaintment have watched their IPO gold transmute exponentially, buoyed by one of the world’s fastest-growing emerging lifestyle trends: Voluntary Servitude. “The misperception for the longest…
MY SUPER POWER
It’s kind of a strange thing, really. My superpower. It’s a special kind of psychic power, a mind power. I must have been born with it, I think. The ability? It’s more than mind-reading. It’s the power to allow anyone… to read my mind. It’s the opposite of mind-reading. Perhaps “mind-telling” is a better way…
OFF-FREQUENCY
910 kHz He had the SUV’s abnormally sensitive AM radio tuned to a frequency well between the powerful nearby and clear channel stations. He sat with a fine view of a mid-January sunset over Satchyayuga County, waiting for his wife to emerge from her yoga class. It was the time of day when the distant stations…
THE ABANDONED TV
I saw it on a granite porch of sorts, as I walked the sterile disorder of crumbling masonry near the train station.An old Sony Trinitron. Resting face down, on its tube. I’d recognize it anywhere. Such an indignity for such a deathless companion! We used to have one in the den, back in the day…
THE WRECTOR
I met Giselle on the evening of the great Victory fireworks display, a pyrotechnic show of dubious timing, considering the unusually dry conditions of the Northeast then prevailing. You remember, the night of the Dumbarton Oaks fire, with the Capitol and the New Monument as backdrop? The, terrible, lingering fire that smoked all autumn, infusing…
AFFORDABLE ELDER CARE
Travel is perhaps the universal enjoyment of the Baby Boomer. After the hard work of adulthood and career, travel is the reward for us. As I happen to be among the youngest of the so-called Baby Boomers on our journey, it often falls to me to help some of the other voyagers with their things.…
WHEN JUMBO JETS VACATION
It’s a truly magical vacation. And I mean that in the worst way. For when 777s fly away with no cell phone for a fortnight, legends get born, new gods announce themselves, magic is conjured from the vastness of our revealed ignorance. Wonderful is this ignorance, for us, as individuals. For now we are as…
SELF-INFLICTED WORLD 