Editorial notes: One of Shai’s special skills was writing short stories in a style used by famous authors. The two short stories below are a reflection of these attempts. The first written in the writing style of the American-British novelist and screenwriter, Raymond Chandler[I] and the second in the writing style of Jorge Luis Borges. Instant Noodles with Egg by Raymond Chandler The night...
Socrates and Leonard Cohen sit beneath an olive tree smoking opium from a Chinese pipe. Socrates: Gestures at black tar. Is this British? It has that tangy taste. LC: You know I don’t buy British. Both are silent as they mull over each other’s words. LC: You know I got fans. S: I got fans. LC: Yeah, but mine are alive. S: LC: Sometimes I think they want all my songs to be about sex, but I don’t...
In the middle of my life, I found myself adrift in elderly trails of an ancient forest. The forest was older than the fur and feathers that tossed and curled amongst its barks and tendrils. It was older even than the soil that was its current home. Once, long ago, it had been under the sea, composed of microbial blooms and an innovative evolutionary whirlwind. Forest Alone in the forest, lost...
It is oft-repeated that Buddhism is not a religion, but rather a pragmatic psychology – it is quite here that the controversy within Scientology found its ground-swell, ensuring that the archaeological finds be immune to apathetic amnesia. Professor Chowdhury and three graduate students were completing work at a monastic complex in northern India when a hermetically sealed cave was...
Brainstorming notes: Assuming the following re sexuality: Men desire to dominate women physically, but then to be needed by them physically and emotionally, and woman desire the emotional connection after Men/woman shock each other, re being dishonest to each other about how they feel about each other’s sexual mores; hence to be cross-binary-gender, need to incorporate this, e.g. part1 with...
Parallel story of Saul and Shabbatai Tzvi to create a single narrative that turns the conversion of the latter into an act of secret heroism, frame the whole story as being told by Monsieur Chouchani as a commentary to the story of Isaac’s celebration by his father, to a street urchin called Avram in Paris 1945, revealing to him that the secret of the story is not helplessness and confusion, but...
Henry Rockovich; or, Do Magic Mirrors Cause Evil Proclivities (Wicked Witches vs Nokia)? “The ghosts and their assorted undead et al were the first to adopt the new mobile technology. For those who had kept their thumbs when transitioning into the bright light, the keypad was an obvious winner in an industry previously dominated by Ouija boards and foggy mirrors. There were the usual grumble and...
I hope that enough time has passed for me to talk about the last time I saw Hitch[I]. Fortune had blessed me with the opportunity to interview the shrunken titan, and also to test the mettle of my confidence against the confidence of his mettle. [Editor: Strike, no one cares about your B.A. – people want to know about Hitchens because he’s dead, not you] I had planned to write an article...
Editorial notes: The short story below was found in Shai’s Google Drive notes and is clearly incomplete. The Brain Storming section at the end of the narrative alludes to the continuation of the story An apocryphal Braisa, non-canonical and existing only in Arabic: “Rabbi Yona was lost at sea. Can a man’s name be changed in absentia to avert an ill-luck? […]” Thus I have heard, when...
[Editor: This is shit] In our burrow, recipes are passed down from great Aunt to nieces[1]. The rules are simple and powerful, meaning that the wedding presently underway was not merely a solemn vow of love and faithfulness, but also a merger such as had never been seen since the Deepfriers and Brunches fusioned through marriage six generations past. The transport, transcription, and devolution...
