3-minute story

Entry for NPR’s three-minute story contest, never submitted.  The rules: under 600 words and beginning with the sentence
“The nurse left work at five o’clock.  The sun had not yet come up, and as she waited for the bus, a man rolled his I/V out of the hospital entrance, fumbled under his gown and, realizing he [...]

You and the Law: A Guide to getting Robbed

Submitted to the biguglyreview.com as a nonfiction entry for their forthcoming “So I’ve been Robbed” *(or something to that effect) issue, (thanks, BUR for the nice rejection note) at the behest of a friend who knows just how many times we’ve been robbed.
You’re going to need a stiff drink.
So after the detective leaves, consider taking the half-drunk [...]

Bear Incident Report

Not  that you asked, but what could be worse than being subjected to vacation photos?  Why vacation photos embedded in a narrative of dubious informative value, with quotes from John Muir, of course.  Yosemite National Park.  After we parked our rental under a sheer, red cliff, in a field which would have been beautiful if [...]

“A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to stop, but that’s about all.”

Bessie Smith
It’s been years since I read the story below in its vintage format, a nicotine-yellowed Cosmopolitan magazine from 1948, from the Special Collections Department in the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina, which I frequently visited as an ILL tech. One of its greatest patrons and denizens, my favorite [...]

Parking Meter Roulette

I should preface by mentioning The City of Cincinnati’s long-standing vendetta against me. I’ve been fined for jay walking, for getting hit on my bike by an SUV, and have also had the occasional displeasure of finding little orange slips of my windshield for “abandoning” a vehicle and for the occasional parking violation. [...]

Bike Month, ya’ll

We’re really stepping up our biking at the Merc.

The Weight of History

The other day I went to the practice space to play drums with these guys. We were rearranging some amps when something heavy fell off a shelf and struck me in the back of my head. I found myself in a sunny meadow, next to a sleeping dragon and a sign that said “in many [...]

The Irony of Refrigeration

Isn’t it odd that when we pay gas and electric bills we are simultaneously paying to heat our domiciles and to cool the food that is in our refrigerators inside our toasty domiciles?
In his recent biography, Fidel Castro calculates the number of days he has saved in the course of his life by not shaving. [...]

WHAT EVER IS A META FOR?

Some people on my street have set up their Christmas display. My dog eyes their light-up wire reindeer. They have balanced Santa Claus, in his sleigh, on their porch rail but every night the sled pitches forward and tosses Santa face-first into their hedge, where he lies all night like some wino.

Adam Finlay

It’s true, as George Saunder’s suggests, it actually is more depressing when funny people die. In my fantasy, Adam FInlay faked his own death. Unfortunately, he didn’t. He’s actually dead. But if anyone was to fake their own death, he would have been the one witty enough to do it.