Fiction
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We watched a Netflix series called Feel Good. I suppose that the series title must be taken ironically, because throughout the first two seasons, not one character seemed to feel even slightly positive or healthy. Just about everyone was miserable — their unhappiness usually linked to romantic or more specifically sexual dissatisfaction. The program introduced…
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Telephone conversation with an eighty-two year old cousin. "Evreryone down here, all they ever talk about is their pains, their doctors, their diets, their diseases. Now I have something to talk about. For years I went to this doctor, maybe forty years, he's almost as old as I am Every time I go into see him, with…
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In order to illustrate the precarious social standing of Mr. Smouch, who takes Pickwick into custody for debt, Dickens described his carriage as neither one thing or another. "The vehicle was not exactly a gig, neither was it a stanhope. It was not what is currently denominated a dog-cart, neither was it a taxed-cart, nor a…
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Ever since I retired a few years ago, friends and relations have been asking what I intend to do with the rest of my life. It's time to start on a new career, and after much deliberation, I've decided to fulfill a lifelong dream. I've always had the soul of a power forward; now I'm…
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We were flying Frontier from DC back to Colorado. Two old guys (old, but younger than I) were swapping stories. Here's one. "Rosie and I were at a hotel in Vegas, in bed. About one in the morning, we hear a hooker knock on the door across the hall. 'Anyone want a little action.' No…
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A friend, a retired nurse, was keeping watch when her ninety-plus-year-old mother was about to breath her last. The mother, who had not been coherent for some days, was either unconscious or sleeping deeply when she suddenly roused herself, looked closely at the daughter, uttered the words "you need rouge," and died. This story is…
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I was at Peet's Coffee in Alameda, California this morning, drinking hot chocolate and reading Lord of the Flies. There were three retired guys a couple of tables away, chatting. I overheard the following story: "He was a lawyer for an intellectual property firm–a big-time litigator. He met this woman and fell in love with…