The Cartoon Revolt. By John von Daler

                   The silence was overwhelming. The idea of going deaf had always terrified me, but this was worse: being able to hear, but without having the slightest sound to hear. The world had evidently been sound-proofed. At any rate no one could detect the slightest reverberation: not the scruff of a shoe, nor a stifled burp, nor a window closing, nor water boiling. The sounds had been replaced with small signs on which the relevant phonetic depictions had been printed. We might as well have been locked inside four solid walls lined with acoustic tiles.

Dead-end. By John von Daler

                          Some call it the dangling carrot that draws you on. Others, the tragic end. Some are happy when it happens; others can hardly get over it. Some find it a topic of extreme interest. Others find it unmentionable.

Breaking News. By John von Daler

                       Ping, Ping, Ping! The little, insistent, synthetic sound from the dishwasher bleats out its warning signal.

#Shrimp and Self. By John von Daler

                          The plump, old lady bends down and pulls out her shopping bag from beneath the sink.

                "We'll get 'em from Jens Fisherman," she says. As she straightens up, she feels a sudden jab of pain.

The Man Who was #Slow. By John von Daler

                            "That must be the slowest man on God's earth," said the woman at the wheel of the car. With her son who sat on the seat beside her she was looking through the windshield at her husband snailing his way toward them.

Slapstick. By John von Daler

                With the exquisite and inevitable timing of a situation comedy, the characters in her stories betray each other often and fully. Her world is evil; it thirsts for salvation and that thirst is quenched in the blood of the lamb. A shard of glass has lodged itself in the heart of her mankind that only can be removed by the hand of God.

Innuendo. By John von Daler

                 A gaudy place it was. I guess it was because of the gaudiness that I wanted so badly to get in. I stood in line for years in silence with the others, mute, perhaps slightly embarrassed at being there. What if someone I knew came by and saw me waiting?

A Trial Run. By John von Daler

                          The room was as pure and as light and as empty as a good conscience. The height of the ceiling and the identical length and breadth of the walls formed a kind of over-sized cube that diminished the people within it and rendered them insignificant. The white, wooden panels pointed up and away in the direction of god, but the ceiling above the room probably prevented Him from getting any kind of view of what went on there.

Before the Storm. By John von Daler

                         The Eton suit: brown with short pants, a jacket with three buttons, collarless, single-breasted. Underneath, a white shirt with a rounded collar. On my feet sturdy brown shoes into which the salesman, unaware of the dangers of leukemia, had peered through the x-rays to see that my toes did not touch the rounded leather tip. In my hand my half-size #violin. I was a #prodigy.

The Hitman. By John von Daler

                 I shot him at the worst - and most propitious - moment: just as he was putting the last touches on their home-to-be. With the genial touch of the master builder that he was, he had just put in place the final piece of the east side of the round wall and was admiring his own work, when I let go a ruthless round from the sub-machine gun.

A Chagall Epiphany. By John von Daler

                                You realize when you open it that the window has not been moved since last October. As you push the glass out and up, the rubber insulation ring gives off a soft schyttt! and part of the gray strip lingers for a moment, stuck against the frame. Then it gives way and the lightly warm air rushes in. As you sit back in your arm chair, the breeze brings with it the budding sounds of spring.

Tell, Don't Show. By John von Daler

                        In “1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare” by James Shapiro the author makes the point that Shakespeare’s audience knew the theater exceptionally well, so well in fact that they made his great works possible through their sophisticated response.