Cult Diaries
June 15:
Those cult guys came around again today. I know they are in a cult because of the nametags, photocopied literature, and matching discount suits from Tip Top. I pretended I wasn’t home. I hate those cult guys.
June 16:
Cult guys are back, they knocked, and knocked, and knocked. They must have waited on the porch for twenty minutes. I think they stole my newspaper. I would never be an asshole like those newspaper thieving cult assholes. Do they know I’m home?
Concrete Blackboard Jungle Minds
Arlene Patterson was new to teaching in an inner city school- brand new- but she knew, after her extensive teacher training, that she could reach out to these kids and make a difference. The fact that she was a white, hardline mormon from a middle-class suburban middle-America made no difference in her mind. She knew, right through her very soul, that she was the one who could teach these delinquent kids- the ones the Principle of PS 101 had called “unteachable”, “hopeless” and even “Seriously dangerous, and not at all stereotypically gang members, but actually gang members.”. Arlene knew when “the Man” was talking, and she knew she didn’t have to accept anyone else’s prejudices or “written warnings from the city police force”.
Gerald and the Sea
Gerald McAfferty had a very normal life. He was a claims adjuster, for a large insurance company. He lived in Ohio, and had never left the state. When he finished high school, with near perfect grades, he went immediately to university. After he completed his degree, he was hired directly to the job which he held to this day. He lived alone, in a one bedroom apartment, and ate his lunch all alone every day. Life was quite predictable for Gerald, until his 31st birthday. Soon after that forgettable day, Gerald heard the call of the sea for the first time.
The Insufferable Teatime at Petticoat Manor
Randolph Holstershire the Third arrived in a coach precisely on time. He stepped out and tipped the driver ten percent to the penny- an amount which he had calculated using the abacus he was so rarely parted from. The abacus had been given to him as a gift by a Chinaman he had kept in his employ whilst he was on sabbatical in the Eastern Lands. Randolph couldn’t recall the name of his servant, but he did recall how best to use the abacus- for tipping. He also recalled a torrid night in Afghanistan, just he and his servant, naked and clinging to each other to create enough body heat to survive a mountain storm. It was that night he’d learned the secrets of the abacus, and more he would rarely say. Calculating a square root by hand takes dextrous fingers and delicate instruction to say the least, but thoughts of this kind were not relevant to his visit to Petticoat Manor.
The Epic of Karnes, or, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“…Yes, he had slain the Ogres of Tangle’s Deep, yes he had tricked the Warlock King of Hellsbridge Meadows, yes he had climbed the insurmountable peaks of Zordan, but at the moment, he thought to himself, after all his achievements “ I could really take a dump right now. That would totally smooth out this coronation”…