Author: Victor

The Lure of Sycophancy We are all, Carl believed, sycophants.  What we personally believed meant little in real life because to please colleagues, friends and family we normally agree, rarely argue.  In his early twenties, Carl decided that greasing the wheels worked as an amateur–why not go professional? Sycophancy offered many careers everywhere.  Getting into […]

Constipation [Reader Advisory: Ugh] Mitchell never thought much about constipation (who does?) until it quietly arrived in his late seventies.  His body had been a tool he used.  He never thought about greasing it, feeding it fibre, forgetting fries, having his tires rotated.  Turns out, took quite a while to realize he was constipated, almost […]

Presidential Extraditions God smiled when the new President called upon the Devil.  It was not enough for the new President to deport people, not enough to criminally prosecute anyone who opposed him.  The new President wanted to send them all to hell.   The Devil, as one would expect, liked the idea.  But every deal with […]

Rising prices Cassandra, in her seventies, remembered going to movies as a child.  She walked to the theatre on her own, it was safe.  Cost twenty-five cents, plus ten cents for popcorn and a drink.  A plump roaster chicken at the grocery was under two dollars.  Gas was pennies.  Homes were sold on fixed mortgages.  […]

Destiny Humans had not evolved to live beyond the Earth but a consortium of wealthy tech entrepreneurs believed it was humanity’s destiny—to create colonies in space (not on the Moon, boring, but on Mars.)  Destiny must be fulfilled and the entrepreneurs had money.  Getting colonists to Mars held imposing problems, including lengthy exposure to solar […]

Hummingbirds Hummingbirds are a tiny miracle.  They race through life.  They are the smallest of living avian therpod dinosaurs, eating flower nectar and insects.  They are known as hummingbirds because of the sound created flapping their wings, which can reach 99 flaps per second.  They must eat a great deal and hibernate when foods is […]

Ruth Ruth was born in Brooklyn of parents who immigrated from the Ukraine around 1920, a shoemaker and a homemaker.  In the late 1930s, she met Sidney at a Communist Party meeting.  She believed in workers’ rights and equality.  He was there to meet girls.  They dated, married, had two sons.  He formed a jewellery […]

Sidney Sidney always felt shortchanged by life.  Yes, he had a fine, loving wife and eventually two sons.  But he wanted to go to college, make something of himself.  Instead, as jobs were scarce, he and his two brothers formed a jewelry business, making rings.  Sidney created the gold and silver rings, his two brothers […]

Everyone copes with bad feelings, Charlene included: bad feelings from relationships, from family, from her colleagues and supervisor.  None of them directly affected her, except the break-ups.  Work was okay enough.  No, it was when a movie ended badly (poorly written.)  Feeling angry, jealous, depressed.  Charlene had relationships full of eventual bad feelings, though they […]