the final straw

The final entry in the “Shotgun Room” trilogy. For mature readers.

“An aging philanthropist experiences first-hand the justice system of a near-apocalyptic future.”

In forty years Roy had been driving, he never had a parking ticket. He had never been convicted of a crime in his lifetime, and his police record was spotless. But in the world of today, that didn’t matter. The socially-constructed walls of political government didn’t work anymore, and people had begun to stray, even if Roy remained a saint: never deviating, never surrendering. He had persevered during the initial food shortages that plagued the middle-classes, and managed to clear the hump when most thought things could only get better. And then global warming hit. His house was paid-off and nested on an embankment that was high enough for the rising ocean levels to wipe out the communities below but not enough to take him with them. They didn’t even get so high as the support beams, but Roy felt no pride in his investment. And when the tide warning was issued, he was no slouch to doing his part: he opened his doors and let in the waterfront refugees. It was the least he could do: he hadn’t been to a Lions meeting since they disbanded in his area. It was too hard to get around anymore anyway, what with his sciatica and his athlete’s foot and, well, he didn’t really feel like talking about it. He just appreciated the company, feeding the displaced families with the canned goods he had accumulated in his basement from years of stocking-up. Sure, when the initial wave was over, he never received a medal, or a commendation from the Mayor, or a pat-on-the-back from any of the bureaucrats who seemed to permeate the halls of the directorate these days, but Roy had been doing his civic duty his whole life and he wasn’t ready to start asking for charity now. He was one of the good ones. The government had no time for the bad ones anymore.

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Capsule Reviews Vol.3

A collection of spoiler-heavy mini movie reviews.


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365 Days

2020 – Director: Barbara Bialowas & Tomasz Mandes

I’ve been wanting to write a review of this dreck since my wife and I finished watching it. It was on the Netflix Top-10 for a good length of time and I assume that a few of her friends recommended it to her because I see no other reason to be attracted to it save for fleeting exhortation (more like extortion). What draws women to this kind of subject matter? The “50 Shades”-style “meek woman who doesn’t understand her own sexual power seduced by an overly-aggressive and socially-distant hunk of man-meat” story is all well-and-good for your dime-store Harlequin romance (and I’ve read a couple of those in my time), but as a movie – to make it work – you have to decide what side of the subject-matter line you toe. “365 Days” is pornography. And it’s hilarious, that right now, you can go on your regular Netflix account without any additional parental lock and watch a movie where there’s a full face-fuck blowjob scene with a fake dick and everything; frequent nudity (male & female); and enough bumping-and-grinding to give Sonny Jim (sic) that first uncomfortable feeling in his pants. And much like pornography, the story takes second-fiddle to the diddling, and what we are left with is a provocative experiment in adult-only content on the platform and not much else. For some, that will be enough.

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bring back the clubbing rock

bring back the clubbing rock

A short story for mature readers.

“A fantastical tale of a succubus and her new victim is not what it seems.”

A Long Time Ago, in an Age when middle income families couldn’t afford cell phones and elementary school computer labs housed Macintosh 128ks, there lived a Boy. This wasn’t a young man but a grown Boy who still worked at a labour-intensive warehouse picking orders into his thirties. He was bearded and bright-eyed and you could trace his Germanic roots all the way back to the time of the Vikings; if he wanted more from life then he was given, all he had to do was reach out and take it and it would be his. This was his family’s Gift. But the Boy didn’t feel the pleasure of youth he once used to and was frightened of the responsibility; and his own callous nature towards the Gift. He had a good life. A complicated one, but whose life didn’t have its share? And this Boy lived peacefully in a basement suite with his girlfriend of ten years, who loved him very much: so much that she still took him back after he had cheated on her. She had convinced him that life without her was unfruitful and he made the commitment that in the New Year he would be a better boyfriend: he would cut back on the drink; and he would stop stepping out with girls who fell outside the Rule Of Sevens.

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Capsule Reviews Vol.1


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Dora and the Lost City of Gold

I had a morbid fascination with this when I heard it was coming out. Really? A live-action “Dora” movie? Where Dora is now in high school and the film actively breaks the fourth-wall to poke fun at the tropes from the show? It shouldn’t have worked. Who is the audience for this? Turns out: seniors! My 83-year-old father-in-law was thoroughly entertained even if he had trouble reading the subtitles.

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