Alex Carrick’s Blog

Griselda Beamish was happier than she had been in a hundred years. While others of her kind were having trouble adjusting to modern times, Zelda embraced the new. All of the most recent advances in technology made her life simpler. There were opportunities that she could never have imagined before. Take her job for instance. […]

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Twitter has a quaint tradition known as Follow Friday. This is the commendable practice, carried out during the last workday of each week, of recommending fellow tweeters for following. The means is to list names (the @ avatars) along with an accompanying hashtag description (#fridayfollow). The problem is that a mere listing of names quickly turns bland. In fairly short order, it […]

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The following are a dozen good reasons a proper young lady should never date a vampire. (1) There’s not much point to installing a mirror over your bed. (2) Your blood pudding will never measure up to his mother’s. (3) When you tell your BFFs about his mother, they’re disappointed you think she’s an old […]

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Here are sixteen new highly-sophisticated road jokes. (1) Why did all the world’s politicians cross the road? The bridge? The highway? To take credit for the infrastructure work. (2) Why did Jack Bauer cross the road? He finished torturing all the terrorists on this side. (3) Why did Gregory House cross the road? To avoid walking under a ladder, […]

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For all her flustered outward appearance, Jilal was a deep thinker. Single, aged 32, a brunette well-above average in appearance and living in an eco-friendly home halfway between the citizens on ground level and those perched high above, she was having a typical day off. Mid-morning and her heart was already pounding. Too much to […]

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As a special favor, Louise Traynor was escorted to a couple’s table in the trattoria’s alcove by the establishment’s executive chef and owner late into the luncheon sitting. The faux Italian décor was complemented by Dean Martin crooning in the background. A tiny fountain listlessly gurgled in the centre of the room. Other diners noted […]

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Note: This story received an honorable mention in the 2010 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. The man, his son and his daughter had a routine when they went for a bike ride. Taking point position would be the son, about to turn age 12, on a medium-sized bike. In the middle would be the daughter, just […]

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Tracy Tindale was at her wits end. This was the Olympics in which she was supposed to shine. Instead, she was struggling again. While most of the problem was mental, it wasn’t all her fault. In fact, her condition had recently been given a name. It was going down in the medical books as a […]

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Hostess Betty Bernard didn’t know what she was letting herself in for when she invited the television producer Mark Gatheral and the newspaper critic Gracie Phitts to the same soirée. Mr. Gatheral was a corpulent, but still handsome, man of 45. Ms. Phitts was an attractive dynamic go-getter in her early 30s. They could both […]

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Pug-nosed Pat and gum-chewing Chris, two long-time Irish cops, were back on the day shift after a month spent on the night rotation. Their patrol area ranged from the entertainment district in the east to the upscale shopping blocks downtown. Being a cop in these days was quite a different experience than it had been […]

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