A fourth power outage at a restaurant

A fourth power outage at a restaurant. A man and wife sit in a restaurant in Europe. Man: Oh, thank god, we can fly to Iceland this summer without regard for covid restrictions; the old normal is back in Iceland. I vote we go there immediately and spread our money...

Overheard on the way to the beach

A Portuguese woman walks to the beach and talks into her phone. Tourist: She’s an American; she wants the enormous kitchen. Yes, it looks like a morgue. So what? She likes it; she wants stainless steel everywhere and the deep drawers that hide dead bodies. And the...

A covid patient reads Plato

Afternoon sunlight shines through a window into a bedroom; a covid patient sits reading in the sunlight on the bed. Patient: Well, I finally have my answer. How many years ago did I write that question on Quora asking about why America’s two party system was creating...
Socrates interviews Ben Shapiro

Socrates interviews Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro sits for an interview with Socrates. Socrates: Hey, thanks for joining me today. Ben: Happy to be here. Socrates: I’ve been listening to your social commentary and find it lacking in a good measure of truth. You’ve definitely expressed one of the many...

The swing

A ten-year-old swings from a rope swing hung from an oak tree in rural Idaho; he talks to himself: Ten-year-old: Gosh, I really like to swing; I swing so much some days that I get sick. What is that sickness? A motion sickness? What causes that sickness? Is something...

A bit of Rufus

My mentor, Dermot Dermot, came into the Teacher’s Assistant rooms and yelled at me yesterday; I don’t know if he was having a bad day or if it got bad when he saw me standing atop the cubical wall. I thought it was an overreaction on his part because the cubical walls...

The republic

The Republic. Socrates stands before his troupe of Greeks and lectures at length about the perfect society. Socrates: All fiction stories must have a strong moral in which the good is rewarded and evil punished; if not, society will decay and die. Glaucon: Well,...

The soup

An apartment building. Sylvia stands outside the door of 37a and rings the bell. She holds a soup pot in her hand. After a moment, Kathy opens the door. Kathy: Hi! Sylvia: We finished your soup! Kathy: Oh, good; did you like it? Sylvia: Oh, of course! Kathy: The pot...

A Rufus Wooster narration

If you are like me, you know what it is like to wash up unconscious on the beach with sand in your undergarments and have a beautiful Italian woman resuscitate you vigorously. If you are not like me—and I seriously doubt that you are like me in any way—, then you will...

A conversation about the plague

A sixteenth-century city street. Alabaster Wren walks on the sunny side; Anthony Dull stands in a shadowed doorway. As Wren passes, Dull calls out and the two men have the following dialogue: Dull: Hi, mister Wren! Stop a moment, please! Wren: Mister Dull, how is...