05/08/2013 - 1:17am

Wait, we cured depression?

by Benjamin Wachs


Charles Barber writes in Salon that we now live in the Age of Trauma.

Every era has a particular mental disorder, you see, and for 21st century America that disorder is...




05/07/2013 - 12:44am

Dreaming

by Leslie Ingham


Vivian is Taken by the Machine (Dave Senecal)

The mother was dreaming about the closet.

The closet was always there, just around the corner in Bill’s room, a closet with a lock on the outside.

She’d only been put in there three times, but it seemed like fifty because of the dreams.

No louvres....




05/03/2013 - 1:31am

Origins

by Benjamin Wachs


The Mokarran Inversion (by Dave Senecal)

This is how it happened.

Time is circular, so after the serpent convinced Adam and Even to bite the forbidden apple, they were given the knowledge of good and evil, made more like God, and expelled from paradise.  Not being God, they did not understand why, and so...




05/01/2013 - 10:16am

The Mattress Inspector

by Stephanie Vernier


Fully clothed, Richard Yoost lay flat as a plank across the covers on the king-size bed.  It was ninety degrees out and only a slight cross breeze came through the bedroom windows.  The plank position was his first response test, and he learned early on it left an...




04/30/2013 - 12:53am

Let's map the cracks in reality!

by Benjamin Wachs


The Mechanical Institute (by Dave Senecal)

William Eggington has an essay in the New York Times’ “The Stone” blog about the way in which Borges and Kant(among others) prefigured the...




04/28/2013 - 10:57pm

Midnight Blue

by St. John Campbell


At the Opalescent Altar of the UltraViolets (by Dave Senecal)

I was alone in the forest.  I was alone on the hill.  The sky above me was midnight blue, and its darkness shone like a sheet of glass in the moonlight.  But there was no moon.  There were even no stars, though there should have been:  the nearest town was dozens of...




04/23/2013 - 11:25pm

The Dare

by Anita Anand


Erzulie (by Dave Senecal)

“How could you stand there naked in front of a bunch of strangers, stark naked?”

Phil didn’t get it, and that saddened Karen a bit. He usually got her perfectly.

“Well, for a shy person, it was the perfect job. I didn’t have to talk to anybody, or make eye...




04/22/2013 - 6:32pm

The “Social Media Self” now has a manifesto

by Benjamin Wachs


Facebook ergo sum.  Or, by contrast:  I am not on Facebook, therefore I do not exist. 

This is not the conclusion of an extraordinary new article by Rob Horning, “Google Alert...




04/18/2013 - 3:43pm

Authority

by St. John Campbell


O Destiny I Hear Your Voice (by Dave Senecal)

Once, he had graded papers.  People make jokes about a red pen, but it had been standard, back in those days, and the students hadn’t argued.  The red, like the robe of an inquisitor, had meant authority.  He was a polymath, teaching history and mathematics both … a...




04/17/2013 - 1:27am

You Ruined Batman!

by Benjamin Wachs


I’m going to admit something.

Back when I was a kid, a truly little kid, I would sit in front of the TV and watch the old 60’s Batman show … and didn’t know that it was camp.

Come on.  What did I know from camp?  I vaguely knew how the whole “superhero”...




Pages