236 Words Only Literate People Will Understand

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Chances are if you’re reading this post, you’re a literate person– and in English, moreover.  Otherwise this text would look sort of like լիզում իմ ոտք ունեցող մարդ.  But how did you get that way?  What sets you apart from the throng of people who just don’t understand the symbolic interpretation of glyphs on a page? Continue reading

A Parable of Cat-pitalism, Part VI

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It was already dark when the man arrived home that night.  His wife was still awake, and her eyes pierced through the darkness like the eyes of an angry wife whose husband has come home late and drunk.

“Where have you been?” she asked the man icily.

“I have quit my job,” he said drunkenly.

She was speechless.  “How could you?” she asked.  “How could you?Continue reading

A Parable of Cat-pitalisim, Part IV

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Sunday had come and gone.  Today was the day of fate.  Today was Monday.

The man walked to work in the morning darkness.  The man walked alone.  He thought about what his coworker had said, what the street woman had said, and what his wife had said.

He passed a homeless man on the street.  He knew that a sane man would not throw away everything he had in this job.  Really, stabbing kittens as they came down the conveyor belt was an opportunity.  Many had no jobs at all.

But he could not shake the feeling that stabbing kittens was wrong.  It was his conscience that he could not escape.  And so he resolved that he would ask the owner to explain what the purpose of their work was. Continue reading

A Parable of Cat-pitalisim, Part III

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The man managed to finally make it home, and he collapsed in his favorite chair.  Their dwelling was Spartan, but it was what they had.  His wife set their youngest child on the kitchen counter and rushed to his side.

“My husband,” she said.  “Why are you home so early?  Have you been fired from the factory?” Continue reading

A Parable of Cat-pitalisim, Part I

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He and a coworker clocked in at the kitten-stabbing factory.  They worked first shift at Katkill, so they had to be up bright and early to get to work at six o’clock on the dot.  He’d worked at Katkill for years.  His hands were rugged but surprisingly unstained.  Of course, he’d just gotten to work.  They took their places at the assembly line, grasped their tools of choice.  His co-worker was skilled with the miter saw, but he’d done his apprenticeship long enough ago that he still favored the bread knife.  Normally they would exchange some ritual pleasantries, ask about each other’s wives and children, comment on the weather.

But this day was different. Continue reading