Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of September 16, 2018
I’m canceling my subscription to Esquire after more than a decade of being a loyal subscriber and reader. Since Jay Fielden became editor-in-chief, it’s become an apologetic magazine for angry feminists and their terrified husbands. Granted, the reporting and fiction is still of value but it’s become too hard for me to get past the loaded front half of the rag — even flipping through it — without getting annoyed or feeling talked down to. I’ll miss you, Esquire, but I’ve missed you for a few years now.
Love Curse — Part III
She liked Len okay, really. She just didn’t true love love him. They barely knew each other. They’d met on a Tuesday, gone home together on Wednesday, and by Friday decided to go all in on the whole “boyfriend/girlfriend” thing. She’d taken things slow with her last relationship, after all, and look how that turned out. She wished Len would stop letting his mom cut his hair and go to a real barber for fuck’s sake, but the sex was good and they got along smoothly enough.
American Shithole #26 — A Remarkable, Unremarkable Day
Imagine you’re standing in the middle of a busy airport. Passengers crowd past you in every direction. Looking up at the arrivals and departures; all flights are delayed. Suddenly, the entire board changes — rows and columns of numbers and letters flip with the familiar clickety-clack, clickety-clack of the old, analog displays — revealing only destinations on your bucket list, as the throngs of weary travelers part before you like the Red Sea.
That’s how I felt today.
Noble X - Episode 11: Internet Famous
Conversations with Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut, two of his favorite writers, at the same time! John feels very fortunate to be able to communicate so openly and honestly with so many of his heroes, alive and dead.
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting – From the Standpoint of Water
Donald: Like somebody famous once said, “I have a dream.”
Kiff: That was Martin Luther King, Sir.
Donald: I don’t think so.
Love Curse — Part II
This graveyard had a reputation for being haunted. But what graveyard wasn’t? By the time they got there, she thought, this van would be haunted with the ghosts of what she’d rather have been doing. Playing old SEGA Genesis video games; binge watching Arrested Development; sleeping on the couch with a partially chewed bite of Tony’s frozen cheese pizza in her mouth. She caved to hanging out only after her boyfriend, Len, promised they’d spend all next weekend at home on the couch.
Love Curse
Fast & Short is a flash fiction collaboration between eight Literate Ape writers. Each was tasked with authoring one piece of flash fiction that would be combined to create a single short story. The writers’ flash fiction needed to serve two purposes: 1. Stand alone as a unique piece of flash fiction and 2. Serve as a vehicle for building a larger story and driving that story forward. Over the next two weeks, Literate Ape will publish all eight flash fiction stories individually with a link to the growing compilation.
Playing "What If?" Can Save Your Sanity
“Can I tell you something that you won’t judge me on?”
I Believe… [Hurricanes Give CNN Staffers Boners]
…that as horrifying as the latest hurricane is/was, all I can see in my mind’s eye is CNN programmers furiously masturbating (with consent from the female staffers, of course) as the ratings go higher and higher because nothing sells ads more than American disasters.
Love Curse — Part I
She remembered it was a full moon right before she got in. As soon as they pulled out of the uptown apartment parking lot, all packed in and heading out to a dark graveyard in rural nowhere, she wanted out of the car. But she couldn’t say so. She was hanging out. This is what you did when you hung out and had idyll time. Suddenly, she wanted to be alone. She was hating herself for not turning around and walking back down the hill toward home. Her eyes grew big and dark. Her mouth pulled in with silence.
Free the Prisoner: Book Excerpt from "Fallout Princess"
Her freedom hard-won, her love finally secure, Gaia must sacrifice it all to rescue a friend falsely accused of kidnapping her. But to do that, she will have to face the warlord and his army of soldiers. Can she rescue him and still retain her new life?
Beach Love
We would wake up at 5 a.m. and run along the lake. Not on the running/bike path, mind you, but actually along the lake, in the sand. I was not the best running partner; I am slow as hell and I hate sand. After a few weeks, he asked me to stay at home, which I understood. I wasn’t helping him advance his training. It was annoying him. Annoying like having, oh, I don’t know, sand in your shoe.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of September 9, 2018
The people who post how excited they are about the Christmas Season/Holiday Season in September are the worst kind of people. Slow your roll. Appreciate what’s in front of you. Be present. It’s OK to be excited and have things to look forward to but dial back your enthusiasm. No one likes an adult who gets giddy over something three months away like a puppy gets giddy over rolling around in its own shit.
I Will Let Go of Straws When You Let Go of the Bloated Corpse of Capitalism
Doing away with straws is the thoughts & prayers of environmentalism. It makes us feel like we did something good without having to put in any actual effort whatsoever.
American Shithole #25 — Can the Dying Mule Become the Butterfly?
We are still in the age of clutching things. We humans like to clutch. Our belongings, our pearls. Our ideas. Our instincts to gather and protect were selected long ago — so the idea that resource collecting is at the heart of our concerns today, is a tough pickle to swallow, compounded by the behavior’s hidden influence on all other human doctrine.
Identifying the Corpse on the Blue Line’s Third Rail
I turned around. There were wakes of glistening human coolant running down this woman’s forehead. They were almost as long as her airbrushed and bedazzled fingernails. It was too hot for a weave that thick. She kept tapping at it, itchy from all that sweat spewing out from the top of her head. The nails, the hair — how does she function in this kind of heat? There’s no way she worked a desk job, or any job that requires her to type on a keyboard of any kind.
You do?
“I see this shit all the time working for the CTA,” the sweaty woman said. “He’s just some gutter punk.”
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting – Bridgeport Neighborhood Watch Tackles Gang Violence
It’s my neighborhood. It’s where I live. I want to keep my friends safe. I want to keep my family safe and will, if they come back.
Required Watching: Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)
Time for another installment of Required Watching where we knock you out of your comfortable routine of TV and movies to show you a documentary that's weird for the sole purpose of making you a better person. Knowledge is power.
The Suicide of Abigale Walters
Abigale Walters had been found in the morning by her young nieces and nephews on the couch. They couldn’t wake her, so they called their mother who called 911. When responders arrived, they couldn’t find a pulse. CPR was performed for over two minutes before bringing her back. They did not know how long she had gone without breathing.
I Believe… [The Positives of Trump]
…that if there is anything positive about the Trump presidency it is that all of a sudden, more of the citizenry is paying attention to the mechanics of governance and he's making every other president we've ever had look great.
Misrepresenting intention/ And donning it as/Passion, I’m reactive—