In the den at night with the flue to the gas fire open it’s so drafty it feels like we’re outside, and Dawn and I wrap ourselves in blankets, play vinyl, and it’s a pain to get up and have… Read More ›
Anti-Technology Dystopic Riff
‘We’re a happy family’
We craved some intimacy with each other that was probably sexual in nature but we didn’t know how to express it yet so we stayed up late talking on the phone and fell asleep next to the handset, and when… Read More ›
‘Jesus cleanse’ this:
I tried to get into bed to read, the dog was there. I had my phone and Bluetooth speaker. My friend Mike was texting me about his speakers, sending photos, telling me what he was listening to. I got an… Read More ›
Someone called ‘The Necromancer’ is on the line, and they say it’s really important
The smartphone moved with him from room to room as a torch in a dark and threatening castle, everything outside its light potentially harmful. And in public places where people otherwise had the chance to connect now they didn’t, they… Read More ›
After most humans were gone and it was just the robots
One day the robots started to romanticize the humans, what little they knew about them. They formed robot families, small social structures, gathered around screens. There was a film in black and white set around Christmas time with fake snow… Read More ›
The entertainment unto death
I hadn’t gotten sick like that in seven years, with my head in a toilet, and it was the same toilet seven years ago, the last time at my mom’s in 2009, I had to ask Dawn if she could… Read More ›
Open the pod bay doors, Hal
The river’s too high, it brings no calm. It moves with the force of a mob squeezed down the streets, knows not where it goes just that it must, turns from brown to gray, slaps the sides, moves with the… Read More ›
That one winter in the UK
By the time we got to Bath there was nothing left to see. I could have skipped London which would have been dumb, hiding instead in some quiet town by a river in the Cotswolds, some place even the English don’t… Read More ›
The problem with the Internet is it never turns off
I had to watch myself on Skype last night, which was hard. The beard’s gotten so long it gets in the way of my food, I get moustache hairs in my meat which feels barbaric — and unemployed now for… Read More ›
FitBit burned a hole in my head
I got a FitBit for some reason I’m not clear on: my dad suggested it, like when you recommend something to someone to help justify it for yourself, and my wife left hers at a friend’s house who then lost it… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 