This is me playing (very badly) “In the Bleak Midwinter”, a wonderful Christmas song with lyrics (actually a poem) by Christina Rossetti, and music by Gustave Holst. However, I am still learning and I play really badly. Check for other versions for a better experience. Hopefully, one day I will learn to play it… Here…
Author: Tom
A Pandemic of Bureaucracy
The “war on viruses” must go on. Some compare corona times to the novel “1984”, but I thought that perhaps Terry Gillian’s “Brazil” could be an even more apt comparison. In that movie, the totalitarian nightmare is coordinated by bumbling and incompetent bureaucrats, who nevertheless never give up in their indefatigable pursuit of more paperwork….
How to catch a spider
(without burning down the house) I remember reading a story a few years ago about a man who was so afraid of spiders that in order to kill one, he burned down his own house. When I think of the response of most Western governments to the pandemic, that story comes back to my mind….
Scenes from 2030
The following was a text written for “Off-Guardian” almost a year ago as a satirical piece, but since then most of it has come to pass, except (so far) for the brain implants. “Hi, dude!” “Oh. Hi. How are you?” “I’m good. How do you like my shoes?” “Nice. Are those…” “Yeah. The original Nike…
Der Impfpass
A Kafkian Short Story Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. His landlady, Frau Grubach, had a cook who brought him breakfast each day around eight, but this time she didn’t appear. Instead, there were two gentlemen in dark grey clothes standing by the…
Merry Christmas!
Recently, I received many corporate emails from different companies wishing “Happy Holidays”, “Happy Season”, but curiously enough not one of them was wishing “Merry Christmas”. One of them had the outline of a Christmas tree, but it only wished “Happy New Year”, even though it was sent on Christmas’ Eve. And yet, it is Christmas….
Frozen
Today, even though it’s only early December, there was a lot of snow. It had fallen the previous night and all the streets were white. So I went out for my morning walk and I saw this little girl walking all alone, with a “Frozen” bag and a huge “FP2” mask covering her face. She…
GEIST nr. 3 (Fall) is here
The brand new Geist magazine is up. Check it online, or buy a print copy at our shop!
Eppur si muove
I haven’t posted in a while, with all the world apparently going insane, with all the nonsense of “health passes” and mandatory vaccinations. I didn’t think we would live in a technocratic sci-fi dystopia in my lifetime, but it is here. Honestly, anyone that after more than two years of failed policies still believes that…
New Short Story at the NER
My latest short story, “Letter to Mack“, was published in the July issue of the New English Review. It is part of the collection “The Sphere“, available through Amazon. I have been publishing at the NER since January this year.