Paddle

This is a story about how the author is afraid we’ll all soon be dumb and afraid and nobody will remember how to make electricity.

Frown

Dumb stuff blurs along in shapes and sounds you reassemble in your imagination because it’s a gift your brain gave you, and because you’re bored, and secretly anxious and fed up and scared and tired and nearly deceased. Enjoy!

Survive

The new normal is still the old normal which under normal circumstances will probably end in our extinction. But think of the clearance sales!

Let

People used to go to large auditoriums and crowd near each other, screaming out mists of germs while rubbing elbows and swaying against other bodies while handsome musicians sang about banal lusts.

Dunk

If you are giving a gift it is a good idea to brand it with an identifying mark in case somebody tries to steal it and later on you run into the thief in another time zone.

Trust

These days lifting oneself up by the bootstraps means performing your own medical procedures on yourself with money you had to borrow from Aunt Helen.

Roll

This is one of those cute stories where you think: Well, I guess that was cute, if you are into that sort of thing in a miniature story.

Shine

We are all barely here for barely any longer, but that still might be a long time, like however long the dinosaurs were here, and maybe still are.

Stock

We can’t promise it won’t sting a little to ponder olden times when you could casually browse the bulk section of a supermarket and maybe even flirt with another human without wearing rubber gloves or having to say, “where’d you get that mask?”