In this Issue:
Corporation sits on a hill overlooking the duck pond. It sits next to me while I eat lunch. I've packed a turkey and cheese sandwich with mustard. Along with some apple slices. Corporation eats from a microwaved black plate filled with what might be pasta or rice, it's hard to tell. It has red sauce on its face and white shirt. I don't say anything because Corporation will get upset and then I'll have to hear about it for the rest of my break. I look out at the pond, trying to watch the ducks, but Corporation is going on about long-term debt to equity and I'm sitting here thinking you make 3000x the amount of money I make, and I ignore it, so I can watch the mallards in peace. Read more...
1.
When they emerge from the egg sacs, they are ravenous. They scrounge, steal, and beg.
"We love hot dogs," the Toms say, with relish.
2.
They take shelter at the edges of civilization, where old buildings, once devoted to agriculture, now sit disused.
As they eat, they grow.
And grow.
And grow. Read more...
After a long night of sky watching that ended with a pale purple dawn, the boys rolled up their blankets and went looking for drinking water. This was late summer, when all the nearby streams dried up. Provisions were seriously low, so it was time to scavenge. On the horizon a cluster of low dark clouds lightened by the minute.
Some hours later, when the sun was high and intensely bright, the boys hiked through a stretch of prickly bushes and thorny thickets that led onto a clumpy field. No sign of water but the field was fringed by crabapple trees, and at this time of year there were more crabapples on the ground than on the branches. Read more...
1.
He has dreamed of coming across one of the truly huge holes. One that would have to be folded eight or more times to fit into a hole detention box. A hole so large it has become lugubrious, that tends to stay put, that does not so much have to be chased as found. Hole wranglers can build their entire reputations on encountering just one such hole, but most never do. In defense, they argue that surface circumference is irrelevant, with holes being bottomless. That is the stance of the jealous. He is driven. And monster holes, he believes, know of him.
2.
Every wrangler has a favorite hole. It is usually one they have caught many times. Read more...
Give Us a Hand
When Boss says the quarterly results are in and the stocks are plunging, it's all hands on deck now, we make a show of hands we want to demonstrate how much impact we can offer for the company, how dexterous we are, how committed we are, and we hand over our hands to pick and stow packages for customers. We break carpal bones, twist ligaments, tear muscles off our hands, we detach hands from wrists, we rip the right hand the left hand away, we hacksaw them out, blood sprays everywhere on our torsos, our faces, our hair, we taste the metallic sting of blood on our tongue. Read more...
My favorite artist works in this hotel, and not at the art colony in the outskirts of this city where Lenny Dachshund has set up shop.
No, my favorite artist – Lisa – lives near the very hotel where I have made my home, and she has decided to work exclusively in oil and glass.
I have never truly bought that TV show cliché that domestics dislike doing windows.
I have done a few windows myself and found that the work can be almost like a kind of yoga.
Windows in a renovated Holiday Inn do not need to be done everyday. I asked the desk, after my third night here, and was assured that I was just a lucky man. Read more...
Morty went to his favorite bagel shop on the Lower East Side and purchased a single onion bagel and a small container of scallion cream cheese. It was a treat. His doctor had told him to cut back on carbs and fats, but he refused to slavishly follow doctor's orders.
When he got home, Morty brought his booty into the kitchen and pulled a bread knife from the knife rack to cut the bagel with and a butter knife from the drying rack to spread the cream cheese with. Oh boy, he thought, a nice bagel with cream cheese!
Morty took the bagel out of the bag and laid it on a plate. As he was about to cut it, bread knife in hand, the bagel all of a sudden started throbbing, pulsating. Read more...
About Our Coffee and Other Fare
Please Note: All of the coffee served at The Irreal Cafe is fair trade, organic, shade-grown and not real. All of the food served at The Irreal Cafe is organic, vegan, locally sourced and not real. See "At Our Cafe" for more about what we would serve at The Irreal Cafe and how we would serve it if there were an Irreal Cafe.