PicoBlog

Welcome to my new section on A Literary Eye. Here I will be posting my flash fiction entries in the various special days here on Substack, but not necessarily for every one on every week. Time and the Flash Fiction Muse will be in charge. On this Thorny Thursday, I present something that might be more appropriate for Macabre Monday. Nevertheless, here it is. —— “We seem to be signed up for the same class,” he said.

No relation to Alex Christoforou, I am aware of his work, he is a clever guy... I like your style of writing, it's fluid and easy to read, which is not an easy thing to achieve. I am envious of your jungle, the landscape in the UK is beautiful, but almost entirely sculpted by man, like one big garden, nothing truly wild apart from the coastline and rocky outcrops. Regrettably I am no good at making money, but if I fall through a massive popularity internet wormhole, I will take you with me : )

A "thought-terminating cliché" (TTC) is a phrase or argument typically used to end a debate, generally by leveraging a phrase that sounds meaningful, but which is actually just a superficial means of ending discourse. Such clichés are sometimes called "semantic stop-signs" or derided as bits of "bumper sticker logic" because they're thrown around by folks who are keen to end a line of inquiry, to not have to think about something, or to quickly score a point in an argument that doesn't seem to be going their way.

Happy March 1st, my dear readers. Given the swift advent of Spring, before delving into today’s thought, I want to share a song that has been keeping me in good spirits lately. It is mandatory you listen to this track before starting to read because the tone of the piece today is quite vexed. I would hate to rile you up without offering a palliative solution. So get a quick dance in!

First off, thank you everyone for bearing with me. These past weeks, I have not been posting here because I’ve been working on the book I’m co-writing with James Patterson about the Moscow Murders. I’ll be back soon enough! It’s very hard, if not impossible, I find, to immerse yourself in deep storytelling on too many fronts at once. You can certainly write multiple things that are top-of-mind, and bounce off of the news, but as you know, I prefer, when possible, to bring you reporting, not just insights.

Amid the sweltering humidity of early September, I took refuge at one of my best friend’s homes. Here, L and I were joined by a mutual best friend T. Together, the three of us relished the air conditioning and planted ourselves on the soft sofa. We were then in prime movie-watching position. The film: Idiocracy (2006). Directed by Mike Judge and starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph, Idiocracy lambasts insatiable consumerism, mindless hedonism, and demagoguery; the film predicts these factors halving the median IQ by 2505, catering to people’s basest impulses, and producing a society of dopamine-addicted cretins who do little but watch porn and masturbate.

dynomight.net/seed-oil A friend has spent the last three years hounding me about seed oils. Every time I thought I was safe, he’d wait a couple months and renew his attack: “When are you going to write about seed oils?” “Did you know that seed oils are why there’s so much {obesity, heart disease, diabetes, inflammation, cancer, dementia}?” “Why did you write about {meth, the death penalty, consciousness, nukes, ethylene, abortion, AI, aliens, colonoscopies, Tunnel Man, Bourdieu, Assange} when you could have written about seed oils?

I’ve been thinking about Time a great deal recently. It’s a curious business, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s because I’m at the sort of age where it starts moving ever faster, or perhaps because “on this day” memories filtering through social media and photo albums remind of spring lockdowns and curfews—once so entirely all-encompassing, but now distant and diaphanous—which gave it a newly amorphous, malleable, form. Time is an aspect of Raphael’s last painting which I find particularly intriguing.

(This post was originally published by Reduxx and is currently being suppressed by the Australian government. My thanks to Reduxx for granting permission to republish it here) An Australian amateur football league is receiving backlash from parents and players who are voicing frustrations after learning that a man who identifies as a woman has been dominating the female soccer league and injuring female players. Football New South Wales’ League One reportedly has five trans-identified male players, but one player in particular has led the 1st Grade goal kickers table, with seven goals.