Fiction

Numa hung a left turn only to find himself caught up in the middle of a nastily developing situation.
Line after line of passengers stood waiting, bags by their side, as they slowly, one by one, were herded to the front.

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon.
Today the United States is changing its relationship with Cuba and the rest of the world, and we are beginning a project to lift the veil on the reality of our brutal and audacious imperial arrogance that has brought so much misery and suffering to Cuba, the hemisphere, and the world.

Some books exemplify the moment they are written about. These books, through the power of their narrative, provide a contextual ambience so real the reader becomes a part of the tale being told. Some such texts that come to mind are Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The engrossed reader of these two novels cannot separate themselves from the surf or the ship of Ishmael, Queegeeq and Captain Ahab. Nor can they view Kurtz’s jungle nightmare from a distance that might allow a dispassionate response.

Men who are eager to terrorize others will inevitably become frightened of the very people they are intimidating.
–Cicero, “On Duties”

…we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor…
—Macbeth

but they still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth . . . and, well, that US of Amerika is the best country since, well, Eden!

“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward all research.”
-Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

“If you don’t know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.”
-Howard Zinn

Has Christmas become too commercialized? In some towns the display of decorated trees is now controversial. Is it a ‘holiday’, or is it a ‘holyday’? Is it ‘Christmas’, or is it ‘Xmas’?
Confused about whether to say, “Merry Christmas” or, “Happy Holidays”. What about Kwanza, Hanukkah, and the Holy Days of Islam? Maybe a simple greeting of, “Peace to you brother”, would be appropriate. Ah, the stress of it all could drive a person to over-indulge in the spiked nog.

The Jack the Ripper murders that plagued late 19th century London were the work of the first modern serial killer. They have also been the subject of many a literary investigation and speculation, both fictional and otherwise. The basic ingredients of most succeeding serial killing sprees are present in the Jack the Ripper case; dead women, many of them prostitutes; a twisted killer who mutilates his victims; a police investigation that sputters and starts without an apparent understanding of the nature of the perpetrator; and the potential for so-called copycat crimes.

We are in the mad-mad-mad world of delusions and Pokémon. Sure, that Fukushima premature, err, glow, solved by dental lead bib over the ovaries and testes (see photo directly below). Yep, the world has gone to Type Three Diabetes. Quoting that article on radioactive proof of our dumbdowning DNA. Is it HFCS that’s eating away at our noggin? Those 10,000 newly compounded chemicals produced each year chipping away at IQ?

Just what are we teaching young people, society at large,  in and out of school? Just what is it to be an American today, awash in consumer madness? The Last One with the Most Toys Wins bumper sticker,  or is it this little chant:  You’ll have to peel this i-thing Apple appendage from my cold dead mind, err, hand?