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I'm Dreaming of a Nihilistic Christmas

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The mind sparkles with Shakespeare. It's like hearing the rain fall. The world becomes silent and dark and the rain becomes snow and falls like snow and rests on the ground like snow and informs the mind with the values of heaven. A distant oboe pins its sympathies…

So long

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Years later he surveys this place again to post something, anything. He plays "sex on fire," sounds that once fueled him. Now he knows the song is about VD, not unbridled potency. Names and words all seem at once familiar and numbing and noise. He once wanted fame or…

Walking to Gibraltar, Chapter 13: In Which Dr. Cowboy Rides Again

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Frank sat next to her on the gurney and squeezed her hand. "You're going to be okay, Astrid. You're going to wake and it's going to be over and you're going to be okay." "You don't know that," she said.

Assiduity Sixteen

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I'm fascinated by Don's evolution . . .

Thirteen Random Things I Learned About Jon Stewart From "Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart."

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Jon Stewart factoids!

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 54

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Frank shouldered his backpack, grabbed the leather satchel packed with his brushes, palette knives, pens, and pencils, and exited the vaporetto at the Rialto Bridge.

Hardware Store Tour

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The Plaza had a chess-board floor, green wood booths, and the lights stayed up. I might be combining a memory of Fitzie's in Binghamton. The Plaza felt like a preppy soda fountain with beer.

Cifesboren

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He nodded six times, and waged his stubby fingers repeatedly, forgetting she was simply two wags of the forefinger and a thin waif of girl came running over.

Cups for Saucers

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They were everywhere walking right above us or so it seemed, back and forth, back and forth with their lousy, crunching heels making hollow chewed up noises that took all the sweet sounds left on earth and had them march along…

Haiku for Jogging

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Haiku for Jogging

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.5 - c.5

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Getting answers felt like it was not enough. Madam Mayweather wanted more. She wanted to hurt someone.

The Hero in Heart of Darkness

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Remember the equatorial heat, the flies,/ the lurking hum and scream of jungle,/ the squalor? Remember the functionary.

Tarzan on Mars

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Tarzan peers through a telescope. Earth, in its aphelion, is approximately 40 million miles away. A star. He lives alone. He is old. He worries about going blind. Mars is cold. But there are ways to keep warm. He reads poetry. He lets out bloodcurdling…

Louise at Christmas

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My brother used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them ..

Transcription of Audio: Meeting with Miss Jewel Eppinette

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No one has touched me for a long, long time and I believe that is why I am dying. This is a notion that is new to me but it has persisted over the last few weeks and I believe I finally have apprehended the truth. There was a time, I remember all too well, when I might…

Gastro Ad Astra

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He had a simple dream: He wanted to become a star, and not one of those tv stars because those die, those die all the time, and before dying they usually become terrible shadows of their former selves, vile creatures who exploit their own former glory...

I Don't Want to Go to the Bronx

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"... each of them stuck in one finger to sample the goods. Just then Katie felt a breeze on her bare legs. Her skirt literally moving."

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 8

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—So much for a cocktail at the tender hour of twilight, he told the empty beer bottle.

The Facts of This Life as Its End Approaches

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The knees remind you: you are old,/ and broken, and unlikely to improve

My Father Teaches Me To Drink Straight Shots

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of Jim Beam when I was maybe fifteen. Or anyway old enough to admire the lesson.

Arcana Magi Zero + Pure - c.4

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Everyone kept up with Nemo until the scent led them to the edge of the city. The elders sniffed the ground and found Satoshi’s scent into the stoned woods.

The Hound - Part 2

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The temperature would drop rapidly once the sun hit the horizon. I had about an hour before this would happen. I stood and put on my coat. The fire had gone out. There was no smoke...

The Best Banana Bread

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Rock, Roll, et al.

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She looks for the obit, can't find. Over and over, looks. Nothing. Nothing except something touching her shoulder. Follow me. Corridors, doors, along and along, no time to notice that this last is the stage door — she was so suddenly there in the blare and…

Australia (from slushpilemag.com)

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Now Ninalee gets up from the table. She starts to put some snacks in a bag for Janny and Benjie, and some storybooks in there too, to read to them in the park: books about trains, mostly, and there’s one with a bus and one with a car...

Sugared. Spiced. Salted.

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They continued sitting by the fake oasis, drinking single malt, eating soy crackers and chatting about the quality of escorts in glitzy glamping resorts. The Paring happened on number three. Just as the gold leafed chocolate fondant oozed decadent Bolivia

Arcana Magi Zero + Pure - c.9

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Emi watched the Perez sisters show each other support. It brought back memories of Mayumi giving her support, even fighting for her.

After Prometheus

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His method is simple...

A Shadow on the Summer Sun

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Shadows are so admirable in film noir less so on x-rays and mammograms

Sarah the Witch

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Secretly she suspected she was really a witch. She didn't have green skin or scraggly black hair, and certainly no flying monkeys. Maybe those came over time, the more bad things you did, the more ugly you became until all the world could see how horrible