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 liberally. Woman: I’ll book us …
Monthly Archives: February 2022
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 price! The more the better; no, don’t worry; …
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 such anger between the two halves of the …
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 facets of reality, but you leave much to be desired. …
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 sloshing around in my head so …
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 are robust and …
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, that’s perfectly clear, Socrates. Socrates: And, in our state, the color …
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 is dirty. Sylvia: Well, the …
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 have to take …
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 life? Isn’t this sunshine lovely? Dull: Plague; who can enjoy …
In which a reporter interviews Johnny (incarcerated philosopher 10)
A jail cell. Johnny sits on the cell cot. The philosopher sits upon the toilet. The interviewer stands at the bars of the cell and points a pen at Johnny. Reporter: In a recent interview for GQ you mentioned that you are twenty years ahead of your audience. Johnny: That interview was like twenty years …
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