Prose

“Why I Can Proudly Check the Box That Says, ‘I am Not a Robot.'” By Chris Bullard

Nov 20th, 2024 | By

1. The three laws of Robotics prevent robots from harming humans. I have harmed humans, mostly emotionally.

2. Robots can be reprogrammed. I cannot be. I am stuck with values were determined by my upbringing, relentless peer pressure and what I see on social media.



“Why I Should Be Awarded a Nobel Prize,” by Zoé Mahfouz

Nov 13th, 2024 | By

“The Nobel Prize is awarded to the person who has done the greatest benefit to humankind”. Well, I have. I’ve been taking birth control pills for over 15 years.



“An Open Letter to Wikipedia, In Re: Myself,” by David Guaspari

Nov 6th, 2024 | By

Where to begin? With your relentless negativity? That snotty list of what Wikipedia is not? Not a dictionary, publisher of original thought, means of promotion, blog, memorial site, manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal. Not censored. (Sez who!?!) A nihilistic orgy of not-ness. Contributors (or, to use your cloying jargon, Wikipedians) are told to “Be bold!” Yet boldness, one soon learns, invites retaliation—with accusations and insults including, but hardly limited, to “blatant hoax” (Speedy Deletion Criterion G3) and “no indication of importance” (SDC A7).



“The Common Features of Other People’s Houses,” by Sarp Sozdinler

Oct 30th, 2024 | By

No particle of dust would dare occasion to life and every speck of fingernail dirt is manicured to death in those matrimonial homes where attention to detail is a time-honored virtue and everything smells of the same multipurpose detergent, like bedsheets in sad hotels. Those houses are policed by unimpressed Virgos who massage their furniture with spit and wash their mopheads as frequently as their hair. If living inside a toothpaste tube were a social norm, those homeowners would be the forebearers of an all-white nation.



“Stumpy Yums: A True Story,” by Libby Molyneaux

Oct 23rd, 2024 | By

When my son was about three days old, I was still figuring out breast-feeding—how to do it, where to do it.

One of my worries, though, was our big shaggy Disney dog Guinness and how she would react to the baby. Guinness was my girl. She looked more like me than my own child—same shaggy brown hair, same brown eyes. She was the center of our attention for the eight years we’d had her, so I even stupidly bought a muzzle imagining her unwelcoming reaction to the baby.