52 Short Stories

When Americans Think Of Scotland They try to recall what's the difference between it and Ireland. And whether or not it's part of Britain or England or whatever the UK is. They don't even bother trying to picture where it is on a map -- that's just stretching the powers of memory too far. And that's fine. That's the way the people of Scotland want it to be. The last thing they want is for Americans to go messing around with their affairs. Because then they might start to notice things...things that aren't easily explained. Like fog -- that talks to you. Britain's much better at explaining away their phenomena when the Yanks comes to visit. That's because Americans have always known that -- whether it's supposed to be called Britain or England -- it's a place that a long time ago was a contemptible place (although an American would probably use a different adjective) that tried to take their money, but nowadays it gives them many of their favo...

They came in super technologically-advanced spaceships. They had traveled a bagillion space miles, or light-years or whatever. They came to do all the typical alien things that humans (at least the ones in the USA) are afraid of extraterrestrials doing. They wanted to introduce a huge multi-functional monarchy that ran on a communistic economic system that didn't benefit the rich or men...just the aliens. The space kind, not the foreign kind. It was a nightmare. And the demons of Earth were of no help. They didn't want to get involved in the affairs of humanity. Or at least, they were waiting for Ms. Kills-A-Lot to give them the go ahead. But she couldn't because she herself was mostly dying shortly after the invasion took place because the aliens were also quite good at wholesale slaughter. The aliens blasted up the entire planet. Indiscriminately, really. They were killing humans in a very evens-Stevens sort of way. At least, that's what all the other countries claime...

 "I went to the bathroom at the little one's school the other day," Carl Finklebakker, President of Wooden Pallet and Shipping Enterprises , said to an auditorium full of all, every single one of WP&S Enterprises' employees. "There was a paper printed in the bathroom, this was in one of the teachers' restrooms, not the children's because of rules and such," he continued, "and so I couldn't help but to read this sign, flyer, what have you -- call it what you like, it said the following, well rather first, let me describe the image associated with it because the whole experience was rather very profound for me, the image was of Elmo, the furry red puppet from Sesame Street, and he, she, whatever Elmo is, Elmo was sitting on a hopper, struggling it seemed to have a bowel movement. And the text on the sign said, 'Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, so that's why I poop on the Company's time.'" Carl paused. He observed so...

After completing the reading assignment, the students avoided looking up at their teacher. Instead, they opted to make as many disgusted, eye-rolling, or otherwise disapproving glances that they knew of to each other. One student however, chose instead to stare at a point roughly eight to ten inches through the teacher's head. Increasingly uncomfortable, Mr. Keisher decided to turn the tables, but in then end it failed spectacularly. "And what do you think of the Halu-hawthi people?" he asked her. "Buncha savages." She shrugged and continued staring for no better reason than that making Mr. Keisher uncomfortable was a more interesting thing to do than acknowledge that around her existed smelly, sex-obsessed classmates who kept snickering about the naked photo of some Hello-whatever  women grinding food with rocks. "That's an extremely offensive thing to say," snapped Mr. Keisher.  "Doesn't make it less true." The girl smirked, and Mr....

 When I was 7 years old, my great-grandparents decided to renew their wedding vows for their 65th anniversary. And this quickly became a family affair given the rarity of such an occurrence. They decided they wanted the entire family together for the ceremony: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, anyone remotely connected to the family by blood, marriage or adoption. And the only venue big enough was a cruise ship, which made the whole celebratory event that much more exciting.  I was really looking forward to the trip -- a giant family reunion vacation -- where I could hang out with all of my cousins, eat all the food I wanted (and whatever kinds of food I wanted -- dessert first every single night even!) and try out all the fun activities both on and off the boat. Obviously the percentage of rooms booked by my family and relatives was a small percentage compared to all the rooms available on a giant cruise ship, but by sheer force of numbers, we had quite a bit of...