Shadow Flutter

Is there a philosophy of plastic bags?  Their use?  The nature of their being?  What one can know about plastic bags?  The ethics of plastic bagging?  I would not have thought so, but there is a convenience store and supermarket nearby that makes me wonder. The convenience store, like all convenience stores, sells junk food at exorbitant prices. Yet this doesn’t stop me from going to the store every day to purchase a couple bottles of pepsi, some chips, and an ice cream or two.   The first time I ever bought something in this store that’s what I purchased.  And this is what happens: I place my items down at the register, and the male clerk rings up each item, placing each one right back down on the counter.   I swipe my credit card, and he gives me a receipt.   Then we stare at one another.  Waiting. I refuse to say the obvious.  He must take the first step.  We wait.  We stare.  The line builds....

Upon entering the great Azetc City of Tenochtitlan, Cortez's conquistadores behold the following: By far the largest city in the Americas, Tenochtitlan occupied a cluster of islands in a large lake.  Interwoven with canals, the city reached the mainland by three long and narrow causeways.  Fresh water arrived by a stone aqueduct.  Most of the whitewashed stone adobe buildings were small and humble, but some lofty aristocratic houses embraced internal courtyards and gardens.  Above all, the Spanish marveled at the immense palace of Moctezuma.  Cortez declared, "In Spain there is nothing to compare with it."  The city's central plaza of tall stone pyramid-temples also dazzled with a combination of red, blue, and ocher stucco.  Dedicated to both Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec's god of war, and Tlaloc, their god of rain, the largest pyramid stood sixty meters tall.  Every year it hosted public ritual human sacrifices of captured people, their...

The Only One, by Caola Dibble The Only Ones is billed as a near future, post-pandemic science fiction novel.  But there is nothing post-pandemic about it.  Millions are dying and continue dying of diseases, great and small, and no one is more susceptible to these diseases than children.  This is a world in which orphans abound, streets and buildings are regularly sprayed with industrial strength antiseptics, and people are hosed down with anti-pathogen solutions as they move zone to zone.  Government institutions shatter or fray.  Cities and suburbs retain some form of order, while rural areas are lawless.   But not everyone is susceptible to the diseases.  There are those called “hardys,” mostly women, who are immune to some or many of the diseases.  In a world where children are dying at an alarming rate, there is a demand for children; and where there is a demand, a supply follows.  Black market cloners pop up around the wor...

You all know what I’m talking about.  You’ve all stepped in it.  You find it on your lawn or on the sidewalk and often on popular walking and biking trails.  That’s right, dog poop, the scourge of city and suburban living.  HOA’s raise fees to strategically place on grounds dog poop bags and dog poop receptacles.  But many dog owners refuse to use them, preferring instead to leave their pet’s gift where it lies for others to admire.  And who can blame them.  Who want’s to stick his hand in a plastic bag and reach down and dispose of poop with only a sliver of plastic separating hand and poop.  All of this drives HOA management mad.  So now one HOA is striking back.  Beginning immediately the management of one Chicago apartment complex is requiring their residents to take cheek swabs — no, not that cheek — of their dogs.  Management will set up a DNA database, and whenever an offending poop is found on the grounds a sample will ...