flash fiction, satire, horoscopes, & more
Jean-Paul Sartre observed that hell is other people. Who can disagree?
Anyone whose dinner conversation was drowned out by louts sitting three tables away?
Anyone stuck in the 15-items-or-fewer supermarket line behind somebody with 24 items in her cart?
Anyone needing to use a port-o-potty at a rock concert?
Anyone?
We darn well love the sound of irregardless. It’s a four-syllable word from the wrong side of the dictionary, we know; but one should never send a three-syllable word to do the work clearly intended for a four-syllable roustabout.
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The Romans had an expression for it . . . “it” being a foul, snot-flinging, food-showing, ass-kicking mood that envelops a person for no reason. The expression was In lectulo surgens sinistram: He got up on the wrong side of the bed. (When Roman women were in a foul mood, it was assumed they were in rag, an expression that doesn’t need translating.)
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A critical shortfall of gravity brought on by the failed gravitational policies of the past is the greatest existential threat facing this country. The United States, which is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, consumes nearly 60 percent of its gravity. The air travel involved in the current presidential campaign will consume more gravity than the entire 18th century.
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WEST GOSHEN TWP, Pa.–”Screw the pooch”—short for “man humps dog”— is an expression made popular in Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book about the Mercury space program, The Right Stuff. To screw the pooch is to commit a horribly wrong and embarrassing mistake, one from which there is no recovering. Predictably dogs hate the expression because . . .
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(Special to Women & Children Last from the Daily Lack of News)
Our culture is obsessed with going the extra mile, giving 110 percent, leaving it all on the field. Supermarkets are open 24/7/365 to satisfy our shopping needs from A-to-Z, while athletes routinely crow about taking their games “to a whole ‘nother level.” In the midst of this maelstrom, like the voice of one hand clapping in the wilderness, stands Phil Maggitti, founder and HMFIC of National Penultimate Day℠.
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The average American pick-up truck has gained 1,142 pounds since 1990. The average American, about the same. The average Phish tune, in concert, added nearly two minutes around its middle, and personal pizzas got 25 percent larger. Go big or go home: The 11th Commandment writ large.
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Apple and Google are locked in a hair-pulling, eye-gouging, nut-smacking contest to see who can get to market first with a significant upgrade for the Old White Man (OWM) app, which was originally patterned after Grindr, a popular app that helps gay men to locate other gay men who are close enough to shake a dick at—or at least within a fifteen-mile radius.
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WEST GOSHEN TWP., PA–We take no small measure of joy in knowing there are people in the world quietly going about undoing the work done by others in god’s name. The Universal Brotherhood of the Confrontational Atheist (UBCA) is one such group. We honor them by pausing to observe National Unbaptize the Dead Day.
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Celiac disease affects 1 percent of normal Americans. When people with this inherited autoimmune disorder of the small intestine eat bread, pasta, muffins, or other foods containing gluten, their immune systems open up giant-economy-size cans of whup-ass on their persons. It isn’t pretty. It could be fatal. That’s why people with celiac follow diets completely free of gluten, a protein found in most grains.
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